"Hello Nigeria! What's happening Morocco!"

Good morning world!

I'm very new to blogging, find that it encourages discipline in my writing and I enjoy the opportunity to express my personal views without the artificial filters and confining nature of traditional message boards. 

Being older, I am also fascinated with the magic of the Internet.  Unlike younger folks, the Internet has not been around for my entire life so I am perhaps more appreciative of the internet's capability to communicate with people all over the world.

Google is my blog host and one of the programming features is the ability for me to see the geographic area my blog visitors are coming from.  So, I look with wonder at the disparate places my visitors come from.  While the vast majority of my visitors are from the U.S. I do have visitors from all over.  Just this past week my blog has been read somewhere in Russian, China, Nigeria, Belarus (Belarus?), Canada, Vietnam, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, the United Kingdom, Mexico (oh, they must love me down there!) and Germany.

I appear to have regular visitors from Raleigh, Atlanta, Little Rock, Phoenix, Denver, Philadelphia, Los Angeles and San Diego.  I also appear to have three regulars from Vietnam, two from Canada and two from Mexico.

While I don't know much about my regular blog visitors I'm always curious about what they may be thinking about what I write about.  Too few of you leave comments so it is impossible to know.  I do hope, though, that whether my readers agree with me or not, that my blog stimulates their own thinking about my subject for the day.

Our greatest challenge today, whether one lives in Raleigh or Nigeria, is whether or not we, as citizens of the world, will be engaged in how world events are unfolding.  Most of us will be more concerned with what is happening to us personally.  That is only natural.  But I hope my writing will inspire readers to think in larger terms; to work to understand the impact that world events will have on their own lives and in their own community.

My blog allows me to vent my frustrations and voice my concerns.  But I hope it serves a larger purpose.  I hope it encourages others to think for themselves...and think of something larger than themselves.

So, good morning Los Angeles and San Diego, good afternoon London, and goodnight Vietnam!