My Personal Virtual Year in Review

Okay, so this is late. I often don't bother with Year in Review kinds of things. But last year was really exceptional for me when it comes to blogging. Basically I went from being pretty much unknown except to a handful of random people to achieving a level of infamy previously unimagined by me.

At the beginning of 2006 hardly anyone had heard of "mole333." Now, I kid you not, I have had a local judge come up to me after a political meeting and say "Hey, you're that blogger guy." Three rival candidates and the campaign of a fourth rival all read my coverage of the NY-11 race and sometimes even took my online advice to heart. The Republican even took my off hand statement that "the Democrats could run a sponge cake and still beat any Republican in the district" and started to refer to himself as the "non-sponge cake candidate." I have been called by BBC radio twice and interviewed by a NY Times reporter. What happened? What got me noticed?

I am not even sure I know. Probably pure luck.

My favorite bit of recognition, though, came from a high school student who wrote to ask my permission to use a piece I wrote on Health Care in America, for a report she was writing. She somewhat sheepishly asked if I could give her more info on who I was because her teacher might not like it if she referenced someone named "mole333."

To this day I have no expectation of anyone reading what I blog. But I always appreciate it when they do!

I have to thank three people in particular for being part of my rise to infamy as a blogger. Bill Batson, who recently ran for NY State Assembly, provided me with the spark to write about the suspicious fires that have been happening in Brooklyn. My wife and I had discussed these fires as seeming suspiciously like arson to further development projects through Brooklyn. But my gut feeling was not worth blogging. Hearing Bill Batson come out and say what we had only thought led to one of my most read and, at the time, most vilified piece: Why is Brooklyn Burning?. That remains one of my favorite diaries. Interestingly, despite being vilified for my article at the time, it WAS very widely read and later very similar issues were brought up, also using Bill Batson as inspiration, in an article in New York Magazine.

The other two were David Yassky and Chris Owens. Their rivalry, in a field of originally five, later four, candidates in the Democratic primary for the NY-11 congressional seat led to the Daily Gotham reporting by Michael Bouldin and myself that became quite widely read. Michael and I to some degree played, respectively, bad cop/good cop when writing about Yassky, but both of us supported Chris. Some have credited Michael's blogging with Yassky's loss (not that it did Chris much good!). Perhaps that gives us too much credit, but I was proud that my piece, The Wonk and the Preacher which both Yassky and Chris expressed appreciation for. That was, in many ways, the best of my writing on that particular race. But another important piece I wrote after the primary dealt with a much more important issue: racism that was brought to the surface due to Yassky's run in a predominantly black neighborhood. In this article I discuss why race was an underlying issue in that congressional race and tried putting it into a context not often considered by white, wealthy liberals who were the backbone of Yassky's support. It was an emotional piece written after my daughter was taunted as racist for supporting a black candidate. Though probably not as well written as the Wonk and the Preacher, but I like it better because of the catharsis it gave me during a rather angry moment.

But the piece I wrote that in many ways is the most personally important for me is Preserving Heritage, Preserving Identity, discussing my personal search into my genealogy and how it led me to a small, condemned synagogue in Eastern Latvia and my efforts to save that synagogue. I have to thank the Latvia Special Interest Group who inspired this piece by asking me to give a presentation to their group at a Jewish genealogcal meeting in NYC and, once again, to Bill Batson for a great statement he made that helped me put my obsession for genealogy and this synagogue into perspective.

This year would never have been made possible without Liza, who asked me to blog for Daily Gotham and Culture Kitchen. God knows why she recruited me, but I am glad she did. And I also can thank Michael Bouldin because it was our joint efforts on Daily Gotham that really got my personal style going and together I think we muscled our way into NYC political blogging, much to the chagrin and then respect of more established NYC bloggers like the now defunct Gatemouth. My wife, daughter and son all provided excellent insight into local politics that I made free use of, making my wife comment that people will think my family is nothing but a literary tool. But of course they aren't just a literary tool but a real source of a great deal of inspiration.

That is my year in review: BBC radio, NY Times, NY-11 congressional race, Bill Batson, a Latvian synagogue, Michael Bouldin and Gatemouth. At the beginning of 2006 I saw none of it coming.

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