Looking back on 2011: My most-widely read online articles

		Views
Home page		67,699
Motherhood and Apple Pie		31,594
Florence Nightingale: Mother of Nursing		26,395
Queen Victoria and Sir James Simpson		17,492
Alexander Graham Bell: Inventing the future		5,324
Thomas Edison: Let There Be Light….		4,131
Samuel de Champlain and Sieur de Monts: Canadian heroes		3,820
Laura Secord: more than just chocolates		3,753
Dr. James Naismith: Father of Basketball		3,738
My Fair Lady		2,768
Sir Alexander Fleming: Countless Millions Saved		2,554
Simon Fraser: Canada’s most successful failure		2,236
Carl Jung and the Gnostic Reconciliation of Gender Opposites		2,204
Taekwondo and the Martial Arts: Mere Exercise or Trojan Horse??		2,044
Louis Riel: Canadian Patriot?		1,856
Carl Jung, Neo-gnosticism, and the MBTI		1,573
The Birth of the Book		1,432
Sir Alexander Mackenzie the Scottish Bulldog		1,378
Captain James Cook: World Explorer		1,264
David Thompson: “Star-Gazer”		1,216
Jesus Loves me, This I know…		1,179

Over 1,100 visitors yesterday

		Views
Motherhood and Apple Pie		351
Home page		345
Florence Nightingale: Mother of Nursing		145
Alexander Graham Bell: Inventing the future		36
Sir Alexander Fleming: Countless Millions Saved		28
Dr. James Naismith: Father of Basketball		25
My Fair Lady		16
Thomas Edison: Let There Be Light….		15
Simon Fraser: Canada’s most successful failure		13
The Passion of Louis Riel		9
Other posts		134
Total views of posts on your blog		1,117

 

Yesterday was the most traffic on my blog since I started in just over two years. For the first time, over 1,100 people dialed in to read the 383 postings.  Most of these postings are newspaper articles that I have written over the past twenty-five years for the Deep Cove Crier and the North Shore News. During this past month of October, my blog had for the first time over 25,000 visitors. The first month of the blog in August 2009, I had just over 1,000 visitors. So there has been a 25-fold increase in internet traffic to the site.  Thank you so much for your continued interest and support.

 

Also, as of yesterday, the blog has now had 275,000+ visitors.  Here are the favorite articles viewed for the past 30 days.  You can read any of them right now by just clicking on the name of a particular article. Your feedback is most welcome.  Without readers, writing is not quite the same:

Home page		8,073
Motherhood and Apple Pie		5,974
Florence Nightingale: Mother of Nursing		3,602
Alexander Graham Bell: Inventing the future		773
Thomas Edison: Let There Be Light….		597
My Fair Lady		503
Sir Alexander Fleming: Countless Millions Saved		430
Simon Fraser: Canada’s most successful failure		393
Queen Victoria and Sir James Simpson		370
Dr. James Naismith: Father of Basketball		359

250,000 visitors later

As of today, the http://edhird.wordpress.com  blog has had 250,000 visitors in just over two years.  These are the more widely read of the blog articles:

Home page		63,585
Florence Nightingale: Mother of Nursing		24,444
Motherhood and Apple Pie		18,289
Queen Victoria and Sir James Simpson		17,724
The Unforgettable Benjamin Franklin		15,781
Winston Churchill the British Bulldog		9,406
Alexander Graham Bell: Inventing the future		7,990
Laura Secord: more than just chocolates		4,460
Jesus Loves me, This I know…		4,216
Samuel de Champlain and Sieur de Monts: Canadian heroes		3,682
Dr. James Naismith: Father of Basketball		3,649
Pain: Useless intrusion or gift of God?		3,611
Thomas Edison: Let There Be Light….		3,124
Carl Jung, Neo-gnosticism, and the MBTI		2,918
Alfred Nobel: Lord of Dynamite, Servant of Peace		2,863
Sir Alexander Mackenzie the Scottish Bulldog		2,627
Taekwondo and the Martial Arts: Mere Exercise or Trojan Horse??		2,045
Simon Fraser: Canada’s most successful failure		1,978
Louis Riel: Canadian Patriot?		1,964
Carl Jung and the Gnostic Reconciliation of Gender Opposites		1,919
Don Quixote: Chasing After Marriage’s Windmills		1,859
James Watt: Creative Genius		1,679
Good King Wenceslas last looked out…		1,660
My Fair Lady		1,530
The Gift of Courage Can Be Imparted		1,510
Sir Alexander Fleming: Countless Millions Saved		1,435
When the Saints Come Marching In		1,433
The Birth of the Book		1,395
Captain James Cook: World Explorer		1,392
Lord and Lady Baden-Powell: Character Builders		1,200
David Thompson: “Star-Gazer”		1,088

The Reverend Ed Hird, Rector

St. Simon’s Church North Vancouver

Anglican Mission in the Americas (Canada)

http://stsimonschurch.ca 

-previously published in the North Shore News & the Deep Cove Crier

-award-winning author of the book ‘Battle for the Soul of Canada’

http://www.battleforthesoulofcanada.blogspot.com

p.s. In order to obtain a copy of the book ‘Battle for the Soul of Canada’, please send a $18.50 cheque to ‘Ed Hird’, #1008-555 West 28th Street, North Vancouver, BC V7N 2J7. For mailing the book to the USA, please send $20.00 USD.  This can also be done by PAYPAL using the e-mail ed_hird@telus.net . Be sure to list your mailing address. The Battle for the Soul of Canada e-book can be obtained for $9.99 CDN/USD.

-Click to download a complimentary PDF copy of the Battle for the Soul study guide :  Seeking God’s Solution for a Spirit-Filled Canada 

You can also download the complimentary Leader’s Guide PDF: Battle for the Soul Leaders Guide

200,000 visitors…

Within the next 24 or so hours, we will have had 200,000 visitors to this blog (100,000 new visitors since Jan 2011 http://edhird.wordpress.com

 

Through your dialing in today, you will help us reach that number of people .

 

This blog started on August 2009, less than two years ago.  The next goal will be to have a total of 500,000 visitors which we will hopefully see within the next two years.

 

There are now 353 articles on the blog that you can check out. Thanks for your support and interest. The most popular articles are as follows:

Home page		48,091
Florence Nightingale: Mother of Nursing		18,844
Queen Victoria and Sir James Simpson		16,619
The Unforgettable Benjamin Franklin		15,684
Winston Churchill the British Bulldog		9,288
Alexander Graham Bell: Inventing the future		7,216
Motherhood and Apple Pie		4,939
Laura Secord: more than just chocolates		4,081
Jesus Loves me, This I know…		3,851
Pain: Useless intrusion or gift of God?		3,592
Samuel de Champlain and Sieur de Monts: Canadian heroes		3,320
Dr. James Naismith: Father of Basketball		3,058
Alfred Nobel: Lord of Dynamite, Servant of Peace		2,719
Carl Jung, Neo-gnosticism, and the MBTI		2,668
Sir Alexander Mackenzie the Scottish Bulldog		2,545
Louis Riel: Canadian Patriot?		1,927
Don Quixote: Chasing After Marriage’s Windmills		1,831
Good King Wenceslas last looked out…		1,609
Taekwondo and the Martial Arts: Mere Exercise or Trojan Horse??		1,582
James Watt: Creative Genius		1,542
The Gift of Courage Can Be Imparted		1,502
Thomas Edison: Let There Be Light….		1,463
When the Saints Come Marching In		1,358
Carl Jung and the Gnostic Reconciliation of Gender Opposites		1,335
Captain James Cook: World Explorer		1,257
Sir Alexander Fleming: Countless Millions Saved		1,216
Lord and Lady Baden-Powell: Character Builders		1,138
Simon Fraser: Canada’s most successful failure		1,052
David Thompson: “Star-Gazer”		1,038

Thomas Edison: Let There Be Light….

By Rev Ed Hird

 

I had no idea that Thomas Edison’s family were United Empire Loyalists, refugees fleeing to Canada in the aftermath of the American Revolutionary War.  Thomas’ grandfather Samuel Sr. even took part in the Canadian conquest of Detroit during the war of 1812.  But frustrated with inequalities in Canada, his son Samuel Jr. joined in Mayor William Lyon Mackenzie’s 1837 unsuccessful plot to liberate Toronto from Canada.  As Samuel Edison Jr. fled with his family to Ohio, Canada lost one of the world’s greatest inventors: Thomas Alva Edison.

 

In talking to many people, I have not met one yet who hasn’t heard of Thomas Edison.  But few of us have realized just how prolific an inventor Edison really was, with 1,069 different inventions patented!   Edison of course is best known for the creation of the world’s first usable lightbulb.  Realizing that a lightbulb needed a power source, he went on to create the world’s first electrical power station, a revolutionary act that transformed modern technology, and created ten of millions of jobs.  Henry Ford once commented: ‘To find a man who has not benefited by Edison and who is not in debt to him, it would be necessary to go deep into the jungle.’

 

It was also interesting to discover that his own father and his teachers saw this unique genius as unintelligent.  He irritated his superiors by continually asking questions.  He also had trouble hearing which made learning difficult in school.  Years later, Thomas said, ‘My father thought I was stupid, and I almost decided I must be a dunce’.  Thomas was afraid to tell his mother how difficult school was, in case she too would lose her confidence in him.  His mother Nancy, who always stood up for him, eventually pulled him out and home-schooled him herself.  Edison later said: ‘My mother was the making of me; she let me follow my bent’.  At one particularly low point, he realized that his mother was ‘the most enthusiastic champion a boy ever had.’  At age 12, he began selling newspapers and snacks from 6am-11pm to railway passengers.  During his spare moments, he used to conduct chemistry experiments in the baggage cars until one day he was fired for setting the train car on fire. As the last of seven children, Thomas was always a kid at heart, seeing life as one big experiment.

 

Edison’s next job as a telegrapher allowed him to create his first invention, an automatic telegraph dispatcher that allowed him to work on his experiments and sleep the rest of the time.  His invention worked like clockwork until one day sleepy Edison was fired for not forwarding an unusual message warning of a narrowly-averted head-on train collision.

 

Thomas Edison changed his world before he even reached age 40.  His success in the fields of telegraph, telephone, phonograph, and the electric light were achieved between the ages of 20 to 39.  He continued inventing right up until his death at age 85.  Edison aimed to produce one minor invention every ten days and one major one every six months.  Inventing for Edison was as natural as breathing.

 

One co-worker said of Edison that ‘His genius for sleep equaled his genius for invention. He could go to sleep anywhere, any time on anything.’  Always a night bird, Edison would often start work at nightfall, break for ‘lunch’ at midnight, and then go until daybreak.  Because Edison believed that changing clothes was bad for creativity, he often slept fully clothed.  His wife Mary was so irritated by this habit that she often encouraged him to sleep elsewhere.  Sadly time for his wife and children often became lost in his passion for creativity and invention.

 

Edison created and patented both the gramophone, the ancestor of our modern CD and Tape Player, as well as the Kinetoscope, the ancestor of movie cameras.  As well as creating the world’s first Movie Studio in New Jersey, he indirectly created the Hollywood film industry by ‘driving’ his competitors right across the country in their efforts to avoid Edison’s subpoenas and court orders.  Edison struggled all his life with lawsuits over people stealing or imitating his inventions.  But it never stopped Edison’s creativity in bringing new light to age-old technological problems.

 

As Edison brought physical light, so Jesus brings spiritual light to the darkness and confusion that we all face on a daily basis.  Jesus said: ‘I am the light of the world.  Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.’  As you are reading this article, it may be very dark outside, but you are directly benefiting from Edison’s enlightening breakthrough with workable light bulbs. My prayer is that in the same way that each of us benefit from the light that Edison has brought into our lives, so too we may be willing to benefit from the light that Jesus is waiting to bring into our lives.

 

The Reverend Ed Hird

Rector, St. Simon’s Church North Vancouver

Anglican Mission in the Americas (Canada)

http://stsimonschurch.ca

-award-winning author of the book ‘Battle for the Soul of Canada’

http://www.battleforthesoulofcanada.blogspot.com

p.s. In order to obtain a copy of the book ‘Battle for the Soul of Canada’, please send a $18.50 cheque to ‘Ed Hird’, #1008-555 West 28th Street, North Vancouver, BC V7N 2J7. For mailing the book to the USA, please send $20.00 USD. This can also be done by PAYPAL using the e-mail ed_hird@telus.net . Be sure to list your mailing address. The Battle for the Soul of Canada e-book can be obtained for $9.99CDN/USD.

-Click to download a complimentary PDF copy of the Battle for the Soul study guide :  Seeking God’s Solution for a Spirit-Filled Canada 

You can also download the complimentary Leader’s Guide PDF: Battle for the Soul Leaders Guide

-previously published in the Deep Cove Crier