Yesterday Carl said to me, “Are you going to stop blogging now that I’m retired? Things won’t be so insane anymore!” Hmmm  . . .  I revisited the very first post I wrote, which was last year, June 22nd, 2010 called “Why are we starting this blog?” and the reason I listed was to document Carl Crosier’s last season — which by all measures, was pure insanity. Insane because the sheer volume and quantity of music and number of musical performances in the space of one year. But perhaps it was interesting to all you readers out there to know what was happening behind the scenes.

The whole idea of blogging came out of an LCH Communications Committee meeting last June 2010 — to perhaps engage new concertgoers to LCH musical events (and perhaps new members to the parish). Along the way I hoped to not only give readers a behind-the-scenes perspective, but also to document what I remembered of the music past and present. So I wrote blogs on The First LCH Compline,  the Rudolf von Beckerath organ, how we got the Petit and Fritsen handbells, Carl’s mentors Peter Hallock and Edith Ho, the St. Matthew Passion, our musical travels and much, much more — a lot more! This in fact is my 290th posting which means I’ve written a new post almost daily. I only started tracking statistics since January 1st, 2011 and as of today the blog has gotten over 16,000 pageviews this year! The top posts were those which paralleled our musical calendar — the biggest day was August 22nd, the day after Carl’s last service when 301 people read the blog. Other big days were the day after the B-minor Mass, the day we announced Miguel Felipe as Carl’s successor, and the day the story about Carl’s retirement journey made the front cover of the Association of Lutheran Church Musicians journal, GraceNotes. The biggest months have been May and August, when an average of 89 people looked at the blog per day. In all it’s been quite a ride.

But no, I’m not going to stop blogging —it’s almost become quite an obsession — or a little bit like writing a diary. I asked Bill Potter, the LCH Webmaster, his opinion about my continuing the blog. Should I change the name of the blog? Bill seemed to think that under Miguel, it might still be insane but that remains to be seen. We will, however, take a new photo of the choir.

So it looks like the music (and this blog) will continue. Please comment on this post or on my FaceBook page your thoughts on “Another Year of Insanity.”