The A list

This blog is about four months old, and I’m still trying to gauge what readers like. Fortunately I have a guide.

On my dashboard (I think that’s the term for the page on which I prepare new posts and moderate comments), there is a running readership count. There I can see the number of readers who view each page and where, by country, the traffic originates. (Not sure who’s clicking on the blog from China and Russia, but I do like to see Egypt, France, Germany and Belgium turn light green on the world map when friends and relatives check it out.)

On the basis of my newspaper experience, I’m not surprised that the most popular posts are personal, topical and opinionated. The most-read post is about a high school classmate who died recently, and the third on the list is about my musical friend Al Hutchison. No. 2 is my historian friend Michael Birkner’s look at why the Lincoln Republicans morphed into the Obama Democrats.

Here is the top ten list as it stands today (in the spirit of the college football polls, I’m adding a couple of close calls):

1. My friend Chester

2.  How did Lincoln Republicans morph into Obama Democrats?

3.   A love of music, a way with words

4.  Emails from afar and a happy coincidence

5.  Faces of Fort Wagner, Olustee and Andersonville

6.  The ever-changing past

7. Capt. Butler, saved for posterity

8.  Ours was a smaller, more neighborly country in ’61

9. Gallery: Faces of the Fighting Fifth (part one)

10.  Exeter’s Civil War general

Just missed: My hunt after the story and A kick in the pants at Chancellorsville.