Madison Square Garden can seat 20,000 people for a concert. This blog was viewed 62,081 times in 2014. If it were a concert at Madison Square Garden, it would take about 3 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.
It’s been an especially challenging year for “Another Year of Insanity,” the blog I started writing in June 2010, with the purpose of documenting and celebrating Carl Crosier’s last year as Cantor of the Lutheran Church of Honolulu. Since then, my faithful readers have come along with me on my journey of musical adventures and travels, and most importantly, been there for me in my darkest hour — the death of Carl Crosier on August 28, 2014. In fact, that was the busiest day for the blog, receiving 2,554 views within the space of 8 hours, and 2,807 views overall. That post also elicited 63 comments, and scores of Facebook comments. During the period August 28 to September 4, I published a post every single day — my longest streak of 8 days in a row. Of the top five posts, four of them occurred during this period.
Other top posts include:
• The death of Hawaii Symphony percussionist, Steve Dinion “A gentle soul gone too soon”, 2436 views. I also reported on the death of our friend and business partner, Peter Hallock, Kamehameha Schools retired choral director, Dale Noble, organist Paul Bornand, legendary choral director Paul Salamunovich, and church musician David Kayner.
• A detailed listing of memorial services for Carl Crosier “Services of remembrance“, 1129 views
• The next step in the journey, in which I announced Carl Crosier’s decision to enter hospice care following the metastasis of his pancreatic cancer to his liver and stomach, 908 views and 41 comments
• A window opens, in which I wrote about the silver lining in Carl’s illness: the engagement and marriage of our son, Stephen Crosier to Jessica Palomar, 682 views.
I wrote 148 new posts this year, now totaling 853 posts to date. If you would like to see the complete list of posts, you can click here to see the archives. And where did all those readers come from? From an unbelievable 140 countries! Mostly they came from the United States and the United Kingdom, but also from Canada, Germany, France, Australia, Brazil, Peru, Bolivia, Pakistan, India, Russia, China, even Iraq and Moldavia. I’m flabbergasted!
The complete report can be found here. Thank you for reading, and thank you to the Lutheran Church of Honolulu which continues to host this blog.
You always have important things to say. I look forward to more posts in the new year!