I know, I know. I had a long hiatus on this blog, produced by a heterogeneous combination of factors that kept me off balance throughout the spring and into the summer. I was probably tempting fate with my New Year’s blog post, asking to be “shot out of a cannon” this year after last year’s medical challenges, and I have plenty on my plate.
I did not expect in April to acquire a persistent cold that would last three weeks through a road trip to Minneapolis to the APA National Planning Conference, a subsequent four-day stop in Madison to co-instruct an Emergency Management Institute course, and a week at home afterwards. A visit to the doctor finally resulted in a prescription that eased the remaining dry sinus problems, but the confluence of activities and mild malaise took its toll for a while. I’ll skip the rest of the story, which gets complicated, but by May I was playing catch-up on numerous fronts.
All that said, I am back in the blog-writing saddle in July, with several new topics in the offing. In the meantime, however, I re-engaged web designer Luke Renn to complete a fresh redesign of the entire website on which this blog resides. Toward the end of that process, I grew hesitant to create new blog posts until he was ready to take the new format live. I made one exception for the most recent piece about our acquisition of an electric induction stove because I wanted to discuss the environmental issues connected to that move. I plan to much more often for the rest of the year. The blog, you may already have noticed, has its own new look. I hope we are improving the reader experience.
I hope people like what they see. The old format was growing stale, but it takes a while to spare enough time to think through and produce new copy and new illustrations for a new design. Readers will find a new series of Reflections that still reflect my life experiences and philosophical outlook. I hope to find time eventually, amid competing demands, to generate more photo essays like the one on New Zealand. In the meantime, however, I will be preparing new content for the graduate elective course I will teach again this fall on disaster planning for the University of Iowa School of Planning and Public Affairs. The topic virtually requires an annual refresh because it is a moving target, more than a little bit intellectually demanding. I will also continue to lead work on the independent documentary film I have previously highlighted, Planning to Turn the Tide, whose volunteer crew has grown steadily over the past year. There may be a new book in the works. I am enjoying life but not lacking for ideas or things to do. I guess I got what I asked for.
Jim Schwab