November 5th, 2022

Done the basics of the clean up

Ok, I finished my big clean up of this blog–if you find a broken link, at this point that would be surprising and please report it to me. I have gone through the books, bio, and publications pages and updated any links that have moved and deleted any that were gone for ever. I hadn’t done this task in a loooong time and it was very sad–lots of long gone publications and websites, and lots of great spots don’t keep archives. I wrote a bunch for the fab old blog The Afterword at the National Post books section–all gone now. Canadian Notes and Queries doesn’t seem to have archived the stuff that was once on their website, although of course if you have a paper copy you are good. The New Quarterly DID keep up everything on their website from way way back in the day, but a lot of the oldies moved behind a paywall, which is completely legit. The Danforth Review 1.0 went to the Archives of Canada, where you can still read whatever you want, actually–it’s just a little surprising to go through the Archives interface. There’s also a TDR 2.0 that rose and fell later and you can still access directly.

A lot of smaller, briefer venues are gone entirely, but a lot remain. There’s a bunch of classic RR stories and articles in the publications tab, if you would like to read something I wrote–or listen to it, as there are a few audio and video links in there as well. And if I’m sad that the older stuff is not as permanent as I had hoped, I guess I’ll just have to write and publish some new stuff…coming soon! Although if there is a particular old story that anyone out there in blog land really needs for some reason and can’t find, I will of course try to help you (I see such people as a fair part of this blog’s readership–perhaps 3-4 loyal friends and 3-4 mildly interested passersby, plus the occasional student who saw the title of one of my book/stories on a list of essay topics and wants to work on it because it looked interesting/easy/short).

Also on the topic of blog updates, a very kind blog reader asked me about how one subscribes to this blog, and I have NO IDEA. How does anyone subscribe to any blog? I have an ancient Blogger reader that I suppose is some sort of RSS feed for dummies, but there are more modern ways, I think? I have been bashing around in the back end of WordPress for a WHILE and believe me, I have exhausted the limits of my own intelligence on this matter, so if there is a way a dumb person can do this for themselves, please let me know in very small words and I will be forever grateful. If your way is hard, though, just…nevermind. I have been very humbled by my failure on this project–me and WordPress are barely speaking at the moment.