Looking Back ....

Well, here we are at the end of another year, and our thoughts naturally turn to looking back to see what’s been accomplished in the last twelve months.

In addition to keeping to my initial resolution for this blog when I first began it, that of posting at least twice a week, I feel good about having met that goal. And I hope that the one hundred and some odd posts this year have been at least occasionally interesting and informative to you.

The number of visitors to this blog has been increasing at a slow but steady pace, and I appreciate those of you who drop by and take an interest in what I’ve said here. It’s been interesting to me to see where the visitors come from: from every continent except Antarctica (so far); from large countries (e.g., Russia) and small islands (e.g., the Canary Islands). Thank you all for dropping by.

I’ve also had the chance to do a bit of traveling about this last year, and to talk about heraldry (well, okay, and sometimes genealogy) when I did so. From “An Introduction to Heraldry for Genealogists” locally here in Texas and farther away in Virginia Beach, Virginia, to “The Herald’s Visitations: An often overlooked genealogical resource” down in Houston (immediately following the worst winter storm I have seen since moving to Dallas), to “The Winslows: An American Family and Its Coat of Arms” at the XXIX International Congress of Genealogical and Heraldic Sciences in Stuttgart, Germany. (You can find a more complete listing of where I’ve been and what presentations I’ve given on my website at www.appletonstudios.com/Speaker.htm) It’s been a great opportunity to me to be able to go to all these places, to see some old friends, and to make some new ones. And, let me not forget, to see some new displays of heraldry everywhere I went, from British mortars at Yorktown to a three-dimensional achievement of arms in front of the New Castle at Stuttgart. (Not to mention the vast amount of heraldry which can be found in Florence, Italy, about which I will be posting some, but not nearly all, in the near future.)