This is the 1000th post of the Industrial History blog. I have also published 538 posts in the Towns and Nature Blog and 27 posts in the DLD Reference Blog. And I have 142, 49, and 12 draft postings.
When I started the Towns and Nature Blog, I thought it would be more of a travel log blog concerning non-technical topics such as courthouses. But I quickly realized that the main (Industrial History) blog was growing rather quickly. So I decided to use the towns blog for industrial topics that are out of the Chicago area even though that meant duplicating a lot of the labels. One exception is bridges because I wanted the bridge and waterway (ww) labels to select all of the bridge postings I have concerning a label.
Believe it or not, I do proofread before I post. But I discovered at work that every time I proofread a memo, I'm going to find more problems. So at work, I seldom published. I let a draft do the job of communicating with my peers. Later, email pretty much replaced memos. I post after just one or two proofreadings because if I didn't, nothing would get published. Also, I learn by writing a post. I do not learn anything new by editing a post. Going with quantity instead of quality captures information so that later, with the labels and searches, I can find that information again.
I also decided that depots and grain elevators, which almost every town had, would be in just the Towns blog. That is why some of the early posts such as Olney's grain elevator became stubs in the Industrial History blog.
I originally started DLD Reference as a private blog with postings that saved historical pictures of the Chicago River, old railyards in Chicago, Chicago skylines, etc. The reason it is a private collection is because the pictures come from web sites where some of the main posters seem to pride themselves on not providing any information about the source of a photo. When I noticed a photo that I knew was copyrighted, I removed the content from my Chicago River Scenes posting because I could not figure out which pictures were legal copies.
I have taken 1000s of pictures during the last two years. I've gotten to the point that I sometimes have trouble finding a picture I want when I'm writing a posting. I needed to put the pictures somewhere where I could annotate them with some text so that I could search for pictures. I don't like Flickr because I can't figure out how to change the default usage from All Right Reserved to CC BY-SA. Then it occurred to me that creating a post for the more interesting trips would allow me to search for pictures. I don't know how interesting the raw photos are to others, but I have published them anyhow. (One reason to publish is that I can't destroy the contents with a Cntrl-Z like I can in a draft.) I just added the "trip" label to the three "raw photos" postings that I have done so far. So the blog does have a "travel log" function after all.
Quite a few drafts I had concerned farming topics. As I came across pictures and videos that would be useful in some postings I wanted to write, I would add them to an appropriate draft posting. As I accumulated more information, I realized that my initial guess of post topics was not correct. For example, I had Old Hay Bailing for little square bale balers and Modern Hay Bailing for big (round and square) balers. Then I discovered that a lot of machines have been invented to make little bales competitive with big bales in terms of labor. So little balers are not obsolete. I have also learned that there are a lot of videos concerning combines working in the field. Consequently, some of the earlier video links I saved should be weeded out because I came across better videos later. I moved the "farm" drafts to DLD Reference so that it would be easier to see what I have in order to edit the material. It is probably going to be a long time before I figure out how to organize that information and write about farming in the main blog. So I published them since DLD Reference is a "raw resource" or "notes" blog and maybe others would be interested in the info in the meantime. I thought about creating a new Farm Blog, but I see I already have 57 postings with the "farm" label. That would be too many "stubs" in the main blog if I created a Farm Blog. So I won't.
I'm also going to use DLD Reference to publish drafts for which I need to ask another person a question about the content or get permission to use a photo. If I get an answer, I'll update the post and move it to the main blog.
I have over 250 saved posts in Facebook. I'm feeling stress because I can discover new information faster than I can process it. I am still trying to figure out how to "catch up."
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