I apologize for the lack of posting lately. After the loss of my mother’s partner last week and then the trip to DC and two days of walking around in sub-freezing temperatures, my body finally said, “Screw it!” and I’m in bed with a nasty cold. We’ll have some more photos later today and will get back to regular posting […]

DC bound… I’m typing this as we drive down the highway, en route to the 57th Inauguration of the President of the United States. Vice President Joe Biden was sworn in just a short time ago by Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor. The President will be sworn in a bit later. Why today? Because today is the official Inauguration Day. […]

Pure Progressive blogging First, a big “THANK YOU” to everyone who has contributed during our first quarter fundraiser. It’s your contributions that keep us going and help us to pay the bills. The face of blogging is changing dramatically. Daily Kos, which once was able to sustain itself on ad revenue, has changed to a membership approach because blogad revenues […]

Thank you kindly

Hi, folks. As you know, Eclectablog is a fully self-funded effort. We make a small amount of money from the ads but, frankly, it’s barely worth the effort. Most of the funds that we have to pay writers and expand our coverage with better equipment and to pay for travel comes from our quarterly fundraisers. I hope you’ll consider showing how much you value Eclectablog by making a donation today.

Details are after the jump.

Support your local blogger!

Hello, again. Welcome to Day Two of our First Quarter Fundraiser where we come to you, asking you to show a bit of financial support for the work that I, Anne and LOLGOP do here at Eclectablog. For your time, we have a little inauguration goodness for you after the jump.

Paying for what you believe in

Hi, folks. It’s that time of year again where we come to you, hat in hand, asking for you to support the work we do here at Eclectablog. We work hard throughout the year to bring you news and analysis that you can’t get anywhere else. In return, four times a year for a week, we ask you to support us financially.

Your contributions allow us to pay our server bills, purchase new equipment to make our content more rich and interesting, and to help pay for the travel that we do to cover events both in Michigan and elsewhere.

Whatever your reason for reading Eclectablog, we hope you find it of enough value that you’re willing to help support us financially. Please consider making a donation of $25, $50, or even $100 to help us continue to improve your experience. Details on how to do that after the jump.

Wow

Before we head off into 2013, I wanted to take a moment to look back on 2012, a year that put Eclectablog on the map.

As you can see from the chart below the fold, Eclectablog had a stellar year in 2012. When we started the year, we were getting well under 100,000 pageviews per month. Not bad for a small blog but certainly not in the Big Leagues. By the end of the year, however, we had 3,307,857 pageviews and nearly 3 million unique visits. Our highest month was, not surprisingly, October, with well over a half million pageviews. Even in December, when people were sick of the election and politics in general, we had 272,000+ pageviews.

Much more after the jump.

“Two North” is a story about one Christmas when my mom was spending time on the psychiatric ward of our town’s hospital after trying to commit suicide to escape a physically-abusive husband. I was thirteen. It was a cataclysmic event in our lives but it brought us together into a two-person tribe like no other event ever has in my life.

My wife’s cousin, an editor (e.g. “Flags of Our Fathers”), has convinced me to use it as the launching pad for a book about life with my mom. I have yet to find the time to do this but that book is still inside me and waiting to get out. It’ll happen.

I offer this story to my friends here at Eclectablog on Christmas as a tribute to my mother, a woman who went from a pregnant sixteen-year old to an executive for the Chrysler Corporation in the short span of twenty years.

Much of who I am today is because of her and the lessons she taught me.

Read it after the jump.

Thanks

The day after Rachel Maddow and her producer Laura Conaway made a video of themselves making and enjoying our new drink, the “Emergency Manager”, our blog got a mention on The Rachel Maddow Show itself. Last night, Rachel ran through a rather impressive of lists of things that she is thankful for, things we should ALL be thankful for. Eclectablog was one of them.

Video and more after the jump.

Last chance!!!

Today is the last day of our fourth quarter fundraiser and your last chance to enter the drawing for a set of two signed photomosaic posters of President Obama. We’ve spent the week making the case for your financial support. Now it’s up to you to decide if you’re willing to be part of supporting what we do here.

Details about the drawing and how you can contribute after the jump.

This is hard work – your support helps make it possible

With Election Day right around the corner, things are in full swing at Eclectablog. In addition to our daily drumbeat to re-elect President Obama and to do everything in our power to keep Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan as far from the reins of power as possible, we’re also bringing you information about the candidates and ballot initiatives that will appear on the ballot. These are rehashes of articles others have written — these are interviews done by us and analysis by us — the type of original content you’ve come to expect from Eclectablog.

Some of the exciting things coming up this week and information on how to make a contribution to help us keep things going after the jump.