Pearls of wisdom—self-explanatory.
Pearls before swine—idiomatic: To give things of value to those that will not understand or appreciate them.
Etymology: From the Bible—King James version—Matthew 7:6:
“. . . neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you.”
As of my last posting I have contributed 265 posts to Word Press, covering 53 categories and 3,988 tags. The 265 postings have attracted 7,324 visits and garnered 349 comments. That’s an average of 27 visits per posting—that’s not too shabby, but the number of comments averaged less than one per posting.
I have worn my fingers to the bone in my efforts to attract readers and subsequent comments. Have I worn my fingers—and gnawed my knuckles—to the bone and bitten my nails well past the point of picking my nose or scratching myself, all to no avail?
Am I tinkling into the wind?
Should I cease and desist?
I am considering inserting one or more naughty images into each posting—anything to improve my stats—I realize that Word Press would probably disown me, but if that should happen this corruption of Edna Saint Vincent Millay’s poem would be appropriate:
My candle burned at both ends; It did not last the night; But, ah, my foes, and, oh, my friends – it gave a lovely light.
I readily admit that my writings fall a bit short of the works of Charles Dickens, O’Henry or even Jack London, but at least I have not begun a posting with, It was a dark and stormy night . . .
Statistics are sustenance for any blogger—they are the meat and bread, the necessities of life—they give support, endurance and strength to aspiring writers. And trust me, if you choose to render unto me that which I feel is my due, namely cogent comments, do ye also unto other bloggers as well—they crave comments as much as I do—they just hesitate to admit it.
Si mi hace el favor—if you will do me the favor—comment! Tell me if there is something you like and why you like it, and tell me if there is something you don’t like and why you don’t like it. You might want to consider beginning with this posting.
I’m rather partial to positive comments and criticisms, but I will accept and respond to negative comments and criticisms, provided they are expressed in good taste—and my responses will also be in good taste.
That’s my story and I’m sticking to it!
The King of Texas 
Larry Sones
August 21, 2010 at 8:59 am
You’ve reminded me of a recent meeting with a church building committee. The purpose of the meeting was to interview building contractors and to try and make a decision about which of three contractors would be chosen to build the new church building. One of the three building contractors had submitted a lower price than the other two, but there was still some doubt in the committee member’s minds about whom to select. That doubt was the reason for the meeting.
After the contractors had left the meeting, the committee discussed their feelings about how the interviews went and, generally, how they felt about the contractor’s responses to questions and comments made by various committee members. One of the committee members made the observation that a couple of the contractors didn’t seem very interested in what they had to say. When asked why he felt that, he responded by saying that he, at one time, was an insurance salesman and that he always looked for some kind of response from prospective clients when he did his sales pitch. “At least a nod,” he said. At least that let him know that they were listening.
I’ve enjoyed, in one way or the other, all of your postings. Happy. Sad. Contemplative. They’ve evoked a wide range of emotions. I haven’t commented often, but if you could see me, you would know that I am nodding. I’ll try to do better.
thekingoftexas
August 21, 2010 at 7:16 pm
Hi, Larry—my reason for the posting was mostly in fun, especially since I am guilty of not commenting enough. I’m afraid that I do not follow the Golden Rule in commenting on others’ postings. I do not frequently do unto them as I would have them do unto me. Thanks for the comment, and don’t change a thing—I know you’re out there whether you comment or not. Oh, and congratulations on your 41 years of marriage—it couldn’t happen to a nicer couple! Come December 13 of this year, Janie and will have completed 58 years of marriage—how she’s tolerated me for that length of time is just as much of a mystery to me as it is to other people—no, make that more of a mystery to me than it is to others.
I paired your comment with that of another viewer’s comment and did a separate posting—I felt that both comments were worthy of more exposure. Thanks for visiting, and thanks for the comment.
Val Erde
August 21, 2010 at 2:53 pm
I don’t really know how to comment on this without it sounding like a criticism, Mike – and I really don’t want to upset you. So – I hope you’ll just regard this as my personal thoughts (which is all they can be anyway).
Personally-speaking, you lost me a little way back. Reasons? A few. One is that you keep reposting old posts in the hope (as I understand it) that the reposting will garner comments where the original posting didn’t. The thing about the blogging world is that it thrives on freshness – readers rarely enjoy seeing the same old stuff, they just move on to pastures new. A lot of your posts are ones that were not posted all that far back and anyway, there is an archive here if people want to see what you’ve posted before.
There are a lot of reasons people don’t comment on a post, some of it to do with the content, some to do with that person’s mood at the time of reading it. Some people intend to post a comment and then get distracted. Some leave it so that they can think about what to say and then decide that they can’t put into words what they want to express, or decide that they don’t really know what they think about the content anyway. Some don’t feel sufficiently tuned in to the blog author’s train of thought or way of saying what they’ve written.
You mention the number of people who have come to your blog compared to the number who have commented. 27 visits per posting… and few comments? That’s either not enough people visiting to make many comments. The reason being that this world is made up of more people who follow than people who lead, and the ones who comment tend to be those who lead and not those who like to be led. You need to attract the right sort of people, in other words the sort of people who are like yourself, possibly with a similar type of history or background or perhaps coming from a similar philosophical or political background. Does that make sense? It’s fine to have people who disagree with you, but only if you find something to agree on too and I get the impression from reading a lot of your posts that you feel more comfortable with people who don’t provoke you too much (or at all!) And how to do that? How to find those people? Only by spending time finding them, via their own blogs. Find blogs that you like yourself, find bloggers with whom you have something in common, whatever that is – whatever is important to you. It’s a strange world, the world of blogging, in many ways it’s not like ‘real life’, and in many ways it’s exactly like it – but it takes a lot of effort.
Another reason for my absence is that I feel your blog is mostly for your family, it’s full of reminiscences, which is nice, but I feel a lot of the time that I’m just intruding on someone else’s life rather than being included in any of it. A family blog is fine, but then you need to draw in your family to read it and, as I don’t personally know your family, I can offer no advice as to how you could do that. I’m not sure if you know this, but there are settings in WordPress in which, should you want, you could invite certain readers in, give them a password, and let only those people read your posts. Perhaps this might be something to consider, if you are mostly writing a memoir (which is what it seems to be). On the other hand, as your blog is (mostly) searchable via Google, you’ve obviously opened it out to be search engine friendly – so I’m rather confused about the intent of the blog!
The main reason, though that I’ve been absent, is our politics and viewpoints about things are very different and I feel quite alienated at times by the content of some of your posts. I’m not, by nature, a confrontational sort of person so I don’t comment on things that I strongly disagree with. I prefer, usually, to remain silent. However, that said – why am I responding to this post? Because I think it would be a shame if you were to stop writing your blog. You do need to attract more people to read it, and yes, you do need more comments from people, but I do understand how upsetting it can be to have no response. I hope things improve for you, I really do.
thekingoftexas
August 21, 2010 at 7:27 pm
Hi, Val—I appreciate your taking the time and effort to comment on this posting, and I have no problem with any of the comment’s content. I know you simply expressed your feelings, and I respect that—I do not consider them criticisms. I was pleased by those expressions, and I have paired your comment with that of another viewer in a subsequent posting. Both comments reflect serious thought on the part of the writers, and I felt that they deserved more exposure than they will get in the shadow of the comments section.
Thanks for visiting and thanks for the comment.
Cindy
August 22, 2010 at 9:54 pm
I know how good it feels to have comments—to have an audience acknowledge that they’re reading your postings and appreciating them (regardless of whether they agree with you or not on the more controversial postings). But remember this…you must write because “it’s your nature.” And because you have such a memory, such a gift, such a penchant for storytelling. Keep writing regardless the quantity and quality of the feedback. Just keep building a “field of dreams” and they will come. I just know it.