Vespucci, the Statue of Liberty and a Mash-Up of Other Miscellaneous Topics

It is a habit of mine to try to squeeze one more page or article or story into the end of my day. Last night, it was a piece in The New Yorker ("No, We Cannot" by Jill Lepore, June 5 issue) with references to Utopias and Dystopias and, unexpectedly, a reference to Amerigo Vespucci, who mapped North America and got his name attached to the pair of continents in our segment of the world. The Vespucci reference would have meant nothing except that earlier yesterday I was reading something else with comments about Amerigo Vespucci, and it seemed I'd not thought of this early explorer in a very long time.

Just before this I was paging through some of my blog posts of the past year, noting the number of pageviews various themes obtain, when this Fourth of July post opened featuring the Statue of Liberty. At that precise moment the Simon & Garfunkel's American Tune was playing and Paul Simon sang "and high up above my eyes could clearly see the Statue of Liberty..."

Does this happen to you? The sequence of coincidences seemed uncanny. Two instances of Amerigo Vespucci and American Tune, with the line about the Statue of Liberty accompanied by the image itself... very strange.

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This week I'm approaching the 10th anniversary of daily blogging at Ennyman's Territory, an experience that has taught me a lot. One thing I've found is that there is no end to the topics one can write about.

A couple days ago I decided to take an audit and see which subjects generated the most traffic, a measured in pageviews. I noticed, while doing this, that in addition to daily blog posts I also have started dozens of additional posts which I never completed, so my blog history is littered with a long string of unfinished ideas that could still be developed. Here's a list of blog themes from this past year or so that I began to write about but never completed:

Remembering Roberto Clemente

Temperance

In 200 Years Will Doctors Rule the World?

Love Letters, Inc. -- A Dark British Comedy, Reviewed

In My Time of Dying

Till I Fell In Love With You

The Sword of Damocles

Troy

I Don't Believe You (She Acts Like We Never Have Met)

Plagiarizing Writers, Chefs & Stand-Up Comics

Leon Russell, R.I.P.

I Protested When I Was Young. Here's What I Learned.

The Six Stages of Personal Power (A Book Review)

The U.S. Election: A Reality Show the Whole World Has Been Watching

Smoke on the Water

Canzone III: A Love Poem By Petrarch

Bobby Avila and the Cleveland Indians

A Recipe for Red Snapper

Why Shakespeare Still Matters

AI Wants To Be Your Bro'

Interesting Twitter Accounts for Writers

Don't Look Now But Here Come the Chatbots

A Jargon-Generating Machine for Business People

Memories Sweet & Sour

10 Reasons You Should Be Blogging (Or So They Say)

Verisimilitude

What Is Useful and What Is Not

Par Lagerkvist

Hammond's Folly & Other Famous Foolishness

Regis McKenna, Apple's Secret Weapon

The Century of Self

The Evolution of Consciousness

Creativity, Inc. (A Book Review)

And so much more....

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Ideas are everywhere. There's so much to write about, and so little time. What are the things you think about that you never get around to?

Meantime, life goes on all around you. Engage it.