A Young Old House

A year ago, on just her second day of blogging, my colleague and friend, Ann, wrote this about the name of her blog:

After some deep thought, I've decided to go with my last name.
1. It's fairly unusual. I've never met anyone outside of my own family who has this name, though I always can find one or two in a phone book when I travel about the United States. Especially Pennsylvania.
2. It has the word "house" in it, which makes it seem like a place, and a blog is a sort of place.
3. I think the trend may be more toward using one's own name, but that is just a casual observation.
4. People who know me will eventually find this blog, and it's good to remember that what one writes in public counts against (or for) your reputation.
5. My family is so very small, so why not have a shred of visibility for the old family name--which really does mean "old" (along with "house").
6. I considered This Old House, but that too was taken.

Her predictive talents were average: I haven’t noticed many using their last names for blogs. I also do not think she could have predicted then the thousands that would flock to her House each day to read her musings. What’s truly splendid is that not everyone who visits Althouse on a regular basis agrees with all that she has to say. But they come anyway and they read because hers is a calm, smart and reasoned voice, without the anger and the menacing assertions so often found in blogs that touch on politics and culture.

Ann: congratulations for your year in cyberspace! On Sunday, during a long and delicious car trip, three of us questioned the necessity of space exploration just now, when the world continues to demonstrate such great need for economic resources. Is it that boys need always to be playing with rocket toys? – we asked. But we didn’t mean cyberspace.

I, for one, am happy that Ann explored the blogshpere and stayed. My attention to her blog goes beyond clicking to the top of the alphabet and beyond the fact that she is the most regular purveyor of posts on this planet! May she keep snapping with her little Sony and jotting things in her moleskin book. I’m looking forward to the second year of Althouse.