Celebrating 3,000 Blog Posts (Plus Surviving This Long!) With A New Template, Changes To Blog's Masthead...

Stock photo, a soldier at FOB Gardez checks out the house his wife bought while he was in Afghanistan, blog post by John Hoff

Don't worry, The Adventures of Johnny Northside hasn't been taken over by evil anti-revitalization trolls, it just looks a little different because I changed the template.

I figured...

....this was as good a time as any, because Blogspot is sort of pushing new templates, new "interfaces," promising "Try it, you'll like it." 

On the one hand, I embrace technology and change. Heaven knows I'm trying to change my whole neighborhood into an Urban Utopia. On the other hand, if I had one kind of cell phone for the rest of my life, I could be perfectly happy never learning a bunch of new buttons. But with 3,000 blog posts under my belt, (not all written by me, of course) and oral arguments scheduled in the Jerry Moore v. John Hoff a/k/a Johnny Northside court case, I thought today, this moment, RIGHT NOW is a good time to embrace a new template. 

I tried to make it look as close as possible to the old template, but I've been forced to abandon that familiar shade of green. The light gray color of the letters has been selected to be easier on readers' eyes, so you can all read longer. 

Also, I am changing the heading at the top of the blog, what I insist upon calling the "masthead," using an old dead tree media term which is, itself, an old naval term. 

I am changing the description of myself from "divorced man" to "Afghan war veteran." This is because the personal issues which made me move to North Minneapolis are in the past, why rehash them? I am here and I am glad. It was fate. It was God's Will. 

Though I am many things--a scholar, an author, a country boy who grew up without indoor plumbing until I was in 5th grade--I feel "Afghan war vet" is how I wish to describe myself. Also, describing myself this way is like saying, "Tough challenges ahead in revitalizing our neighborhood? WELL, BRING IT ON." 

It's not the first time I've changed the masthead, slightly. Every year I update the age of my son who is mentioned as the inspiration for the blog. I once changed the description of my neighborhood, emphasizing how we are "rapidly revitalizing" rather than focusing on the problems and challenges ahead of us. I added the word "NoMi" after North Minneapolis as part of the ongoing neighborhood rebranding effort. 

And, when disgraced former JACC executive director Jerry Moore sued me and his loony toons lawyer tried to paint my blog as a personal blog, not grass roots journalism, and she pointed with her witchy finger to the description of the blog in the masthead I was, like, you know what? Let's put that word JOURNALISM in there, up at the top. 

As with other forms of media slightly changing their appearance, I'm probably more excited about it than my readers. But the whole point of this blog is that people want to know WHAT'S UP? WHAT'S GOING ON? So I'm telling you.

There, I've told you. 

Thank you, readers who read, commenters who comment and frequently provide invaluable info, other blog authors who contribute (I wish you'd contribute a lot more, all the time) but I'd especially like to thank my son, who is the inspiration for this blog and so many of the other things I do. I've missed you terribly, and I'll be home before too terribly long.