Wednesday, June 7, 2023

A Belated 19th Anniversary Post

On June 4 2023 A Shroud of Thoughts turned 19 years old. I generally do a special blog post each year on its anniversary, but this year it totally slipped my mind. During the month of May I was very concerned about my health, as I felt absolutely miserable. As it turned out, my blood pressure medication was not working and, worse yet, had saddled me with side effects (headaches, body pains, et. al.) that made me feel miserable. Fortunately, my cardiologist changed my medication and now I feel much better.

As to the origins of A Shroud of Thoughts, in 2004 blogs were a bit of fad. I had a lady friend who had one and it looked like it might be fun. Originally A Shroud of Thoughts was meant to be on a variety of subjects, some of them quite personal. It was not long before it evolved into the pop culture/nostalgia blog that it is today and the more personal posts fell by the wayside. As to the title, in 2004 the big trend in blog titles included words like "thoughts," "musings," et. al. I then took the title from a quote from Lord Byron's Childe Harold's Pilgrimage. I have to admit that I have since regretted not choosing a title more befitting a pop culture/nostalgia blog. Unfortunately, by the time I thought about changing it, the blog already had a readership and I feared changing the title might confuse my readers. It would be a bit like the movie That Thing You Do! (1996), "Whatever happened to The Oneders?" "Whatever happened to A Shroud of Thoughts?"

Next year A Shroud of Thoughts will turn 20, which astounds me. If someone told me in 2004 that I would still be writing this blog after 19 years, I would have thought they were joking. I hope to continue writing it for many more years to come.

Each year I post what I think were my best posts from the past year. Here are this year's best posts.

"The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars", June 16 2022

"The Lasting Influence of Vanessa Marquez", August 20 2022

"The 50th Anniversary of The Waltons", September 15 2022

"The TV series M*A*S*H Turns 50
", September 17 2022

"The 60th Anniversary of The Beverly Hillbillies", September 26 2022

"Seinfeld: 'The Cheever Letters", October 22 2022

"Kenny & Company (1976)"
, October 29 2022

"The 80th Anniversary of I Married a Witch (1942)", October 30 2022

"American Graffiti (1973)"
, November 20 2022

"The Norelco Santa Claus"
, December 16 2022

"The 54th Birthday of Vanessa Marquez", December 21 2022

"The 50th Anniversary of The Poseidon Adventure (1972)", December 30 2022

"Jack Carson, What a Character", January 7 2023

"The 30th Anniversary of Twenty Bucks (1993)", January 22 2023

"Barbarella (1968)", February 24 2023

"DC Comics Movie Serials of the Forties Part One", March 3 2023

"DC Comics Movie Serials of the Forties Part Two", March 4 2023

"The 1970-1971 Television Season: When the Networks Tried to Be 'Relevant'", March 18 2023

"The X-Files, "Home'", March 25 2023

The Week of My Four-Part Series on the 100th Anniversary of Warner Bros., April 4-April 7 2023

"Death Race 2000 (1975)", April 28 2023

"The 30th Anniversary of Blood In Blood Out (1993)", April 30 2023

3 comments:

Evil Woman Blues said...

Good job Terrence. i read your blog (and Instagram posts) every day. Dennis

Phyl said...

Happy to hear you were able to find out what the problem was! 19 years! That’s amazing! My blog will be 9 in October. I too wish I could change the name of my blog as my real name is Laura. Back then I was more concerned about that sort of thing.

Terence Towles Canote said...

Thanks, Dennis and Laura! Laura, I can understand about the name. When I first started A Shroud of Posts I used "mercurie" as a pen name as I was worried about my privacy. It was after the blog had been around for a while that I started using my name. Enough people knew mercurie was Terence Towles Canote anyway that it didn't really matter.