State of the blog nearing a decade--Even North Korea

Almost 10 years of blog traffic, note--started in May, 2009, not 2010

Even someone from heavily censored North Korea took a chance and clicked on this blog this year!
People in more than 150 countries have done so, and I've lost count.
Every year I've wondered about the future of this endeavor, probably more this year than ever as my life and focus have radically changed.
In fact, it marked the first time since it began in 2009 that I missed two months without writing.
My life, since retirement, has focused  more on watercolor painting that writing--both are hard work but writing well takes much more time, for me, and while I'm still deep down a journalist, I'm more interested in becoming a visual storyteller.
It's reflected in how the blog has changed--once heavy on writing, then photography, it's now more a forum for my art work, combined with words.
This coming year may see the end of the blog as I try to merge it with a art website, but I'm technologically challenged. We'll see--but I need a better place to promote and sell what I do. I think.
But every year I recap what has be on the blog, so here goes. The question has always been, why do I bother, especially on something that makes no money? Journalism drives me, I guess.

Traffic, posting  facts--

• 275,000+ page views since 2009.
• Highest  monthly traffic--May, 2014--7,896 (May have been hacked by Russians--serious)
• Lowest monthly traffic--May, 2018--638 
• 2,077 posts since 2009--all but one or two by me
• Most posts in a month--August, 2009--76
• Fewest posts in a month--April, May, 2018--0

Posts per year--

• 2018 --149 (counting this one)
• 2017--158
• 2016--137
• 2015--136
• 2014--276
• 2013--252
• 2012--203
• 2011--134
• 2010--292
• 2009--339 (started in May)
•  Totals--2007 posts in 2,948 days

Post with most traffic--"All aboard for Bartlesville," May, 2010

My most popular posts all seem to refer to trains. "All Aboard" may be click bait.

Audience facts--
New countries with audience I know of this year--Yemen, Morocco, Turkmenistan, Zimbabwe, plus some from "Unknown region," in the EU.
This doesn't include all from the flag counter on my blog which I started using only a few years ago. I don't check the blog everyday, and therefore miss some, I guess.
North Korea? Checking the Flag counter showed me that visit sometime this year.
Below are the countries by continent that I had record of. (ignore the x'es, I was trying to keep up and write about them).
Then below are the multitude of ones on Flag Counter I didn't have.
Four notes.

• First, some of them are not independent territories, but still have individual flags, which is the Flag Counter.
• In addition, some are countries, that I missed.
• Third, I'm pretty good at geography, but there are places here I can't locate off the top of my head, and some I've not heard of. There's work to do in 2019, for a while at least.
• There are only about 168 countries in the world, so the flag counter adds territories, etc. I wonder about people who find this blog, what they think, how they find it, why so many in Russia find it interesting, and m

Traffic by Countries

Total Pageviews by Countries Entry Pageviews United States 155003 Russia 17280 China 12927 Germany 12680 Ukraine 12474 France 10041 United Kingdom 3959 Canada 2268 Poland 2102 Turkey 1505

Africa--Morocco, Algeria, Libya, Egypt, Togo, Ghana, Ethiopia, Ghana, Uganda, Tanzania, Kenya, Nigeria, Tunisia, Gabon, South Africa, Mali, Mauritus, Mauritania, Cameroonx, Zambia, Mozambique, South Sudan, Senegal, Benin, Angola, Botswana,   Zimbabwe--27

Asia--Russia, China, Taiwan, Cambodia, S Korea, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore, India, Vietnam, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Thailand, Kazahkstan, Azerbaijan, Japan, Mongolia, Armenia, Georgia,  Nepal, Uzbekistan, Macau, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Burma (Myamar), Turkmenistan-27

Caribbean--Caymans,  Sint Maartin, Trinidad and Tobago, Puerto Rico, Jamaica, Dominican Republic, The Bahamas, Anguilla, Netherlands Antilles,  St. Kitts and Nevis, Bermuda-11

Central America--Panama, Guatemala, Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador-5

Europe--UKx, Isle of Man, Francex, Spainx, Germanyx, Italyx, Switzerlandx, Monaco, Czech Republicx, Polandx, Croatia, Greecex, Macedonia, Netherlandsx, Icelandx, Norwayx, Swedenx, Denmarkx, Finlandx, Latviax, Lithuania, Estonia, Belarus, Ukrainex, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Hungary, Romania, Serbia, Austria, Sloveniax, Belgium, Irelandx,  Bulgariax, Turkey, Portugal, Luxembourg, Slovakiax, Albania,Slovenia, Leichtenstein, Montenegro-42

Indian Ocean--Maldives, Seychelles-2

Mediterranean--Maltax, Cyprus,-2

MidEast--Israel, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, UAE, Kuwait,Qatar, Bahrain, Palestine, Lebanon, Oman, Yemen-, Syria-14

North America--US, Canada, Mexico-3

Oceana--Australia, New Zealand, Philippines, Indonesia, Guam, New Caledonia, Fiji, Samoa-7

South America--Colombia, Peru, Chili, Uruguay, Argentina, Brazil, Venezuela, Ecuador, French Guiana, Guyana, Bolivia, Paraguay-12

Unknown Region-EU
Total -152 countries

Other traffic on Flag counter: Aland Islands, Andorra, Armenia, Bhutan, British Virgina Islands, British Indian Ocean Territory, Brunei, Burkina Faso,  Burundi, Cabo Verde, Cote d'Ivoire, Curaco,  Democratic Republic of the Congo, Djbouti, Dominica, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Falkland Islands, Guernsey, Guadaloupe, Grenada, Greenland, Gilbraltar, Georgia, French Guiana, Guinea-Bissau, Guayana, Haiti, Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Malaysia, Malta, Marshall Islands, Martinique,  Mayotte, Micronesia, Mongolia, Montserrat, Namibia, Nauru,  Nicaragua, Niger, Niue, Norfolk Island, North Korea, Northern Mariana Islands, Oman, Palau, Palestinian Territory, Papua New Guinea, Republic of the Congo, Reunion, Rwanda, Saint Barthelemy, Saint Helena, Saint Lucia, Saint Martin, Saint Pierre and Miquelon, Saint Vince and the Grenadines, San Marino, Sao Tome and Principle, Sierra Leone, Solomon Islands, Suriname, Sudan, Svalbard, Swaziland, Tajikistan, The Gambia, Timor-Leste, Tonga, Turks and Caicos Islands, Tuvalu, Vanuatu, Vatican City, Virgin Islands, Wallis and Futuna,
Total--I don't know yet.

Korea...60 years later, and still no peace

Korean War Memorial in D.C., where an American infantry brigade moves  weary and wary

This is the 60th anniversary of the signing of  the armistice that brought an end to the fighting in Korea, where 36, 516 Americans were killed in three years. It was an armistice and not a peace treaty, and we still live with that hostility  from a paranoid Communist dictatorship. Only a few yards away, across a "demilitarized" zone,  American soldiers are still on duty, in one of the places in the world where nuclear war could break out. South of the DMZ, flourish a free economic dynamo, South Korea.
Have you been to the Korean War Memorial in Washington? I have, and it was on a rainy day, fitting the mood of the gray soldiers marching uphill,  weary and wary. Here's some things you should know about the Korean War.
I know three people who served in that war. The first was my late uncle Mike, who was aboard an LST, under fire, at the Inchon landing. The next was my late cousin Charles Rogers Lutrick, and I have no idea of his duty there. The third was my former colleague at the OSU j-school, advertising professor Charles Overstreet, who was a "tanker." I think most Americans probably know about the Korean War because of the TV show "MASH."

Here's a salute to those men and women who served, died, or have survived. The veterans observed a solemn  ceremony today. It was a "forgotten" war, except to them.

Island reader threatened with war

A new reader clicked on this blog this past week, and while that person's island home not a country, it has a flag, the most western outpost of American soil. Guam becomes the 96th "country" to have readers of this blog.
Guam is in the news again, because the megalomaniac (the term usually reserved for Hitler) dictator of North Korea has threatened it this past week as one of his targets as he blusters about war.
Guam's flag dates from 1948, carrying the coat of arms, with a proa sailing in Agana Bay, and a prominent headline in the background.

The southernmost of the Mariana islands, Guam is about 40 miles long and no more than 12 miles wide, home to about 140,000 people. The first people settled about 4,000 years ago, and then was "discovered" by Magellan in 1521. Colonized in 1668, it became an important stop for Spanish galleons from the Philippines. The U.S.  took over at the end of the Spanish American War in 1898. the Japanese conquered it the day after Pearl Harbor and held it for more than two years, subjecting the residents to torture, beheadings and rape. Liberation Day was July 21, 1944. 

It's located 1,600  miles east of the Philippines, and is one of five U.S. territories with a civilian government. Today it continues to be important strategically a with U.S. naval base, (I've seen a photo of one of our nuclear carriers entering the main bay) which is why the North Korean nut is threatening it. It is probably in missile range of the Koreans, 2,100 miles to the north. It is also threatened by an imported tree snake that has almost wiped out its bird population. Two snakes, two threats.

Naval photo of the south end of Guam.

Flag surviving invasions, wars, division, dictators

Flags tell stories, and one flag of the readers of this blog this week has survived years of invasions, wars, dictators and political division as a symbol of peace and unity in a region of continuing danger to free people.
The distinctive and perhaps most deeply symbolic of flags belongs to the Republic of Korea, known to us as South Korea.
Koreans are hardy, intelligent, hard-working people. They have to be or they wouldn't have survived. The name comes from a Middle Ages dynasty that ruled the peninsula, Goryeo. That and another dynasty ruled for hundreds of years in peace until the rest of the world intruded. Japan annexed it in 1910, and held it until the end of WWII. That's when the country was divided into north and south zones of occupation for the Russians and Americans. A 1948 election led to the creation of the republic and the UN recognized it as the only lawful government. The Russians promptly set up a rival government in the north.

North  Korean flag

In 1950 the North, backed by the Chinese and Soviet Union,  invaded the South, starting the Korean War that involved the US and other nations in a UN "Police Action" to stop communism, just five years after the end of WWII. When MacArthur invaded the north, Communist China retaliated, sending waves of troops into battle and pushing the Americans back. America came close to using another nuclear bomb, but when Eisenhower was elected president, he decided not to.
The war lasted three years and solidified the previous boundaries. The 1953 armistice, never signed by South Korea, split the peninsula along a so-called 2 mile-wide "demilitarized" zone. No peace treaty was ever signed,  so the countries are still technically at war. That border is the most heavily fortified in the world, one of the world's danger points, with U.S. military stationed there. North Korea continues to be in the news, raising the dangers of nuclear war.

Mike Clark's ship in the Korean War

The war is personal to me because my late uncle  Mike was in combat at the Inchon Landing in September, 1852. A signalman on LST 975, he was under fire as the first wave hit the beach in the decisive battle near Seoul behind enemy lines. And my late cousin Charles Rogers Lutrick also served in the war.
Still South Korea suffered under despots until 1987, when military rule ended and civilians took over. Today, the country has perhaps the fastest Internet in the world, the fourth largest Asian economy and is a model of progress and economic growth. South Korea also has strict gun control laws, with the fewest firearms per capital. And just north of it, sits this backward country of have-nots, ruled by someone who calls himself the "Supreme Leader." We Americans don't take to people who think they're supreme over anybody.

Flying over this turmoil is the flag influenced by Taoism and Chinese culture. The white background symbolizes cleanliness of the people, and the center symbol, the "yin and yang" the perfect balance of the universe, a continuous move in infinity. The four trigrams represent justice, fruition, wisdom and vitality.
Just to the north flies the red star flag of the so-called "People's Republic of Korea. " Originally that flag also carried the yin and yang symbol but adopted the red star of communism. Today, the rogue state is puts less emphasis on communism, but hasn't changed its ruthless dictatorship and determinatipn to subject its people and threaten the world with war. I have no readers of this blog from that heavily censored country.

Koreas, at night, from space

If you want to see the difference in two countries, look at nighttime energy usage. Electricity usage is the clearest indicator of economy and personal strength, and in this case, freedom, where everything seems to be in balance, regardless of the outside world. I have colleagues and have had students from South Korea. They reflect those values.