This is the inaugural post for The Dowd Gazette, a web log (blog for short) designed to provide a vehicle for the presentation and distribution of family news. The Gazette will publish accounts, dispatches, polemics and screeds penned by the sons, daughters-in-law, grandchildren and great-grandchildren of David D. Dowd, Sr. and Martha Combrink Dowd, for many years residing at 1021 Oxford NE in Massillon, Ohio.
It is worth remembering that the internet is vast, with many nodes and crannies, but also public. Be warned that extremely personal accounts--perhaps those that reveal surprising details about peculiar undergarments or unsolved crimes--will be visible to all who click by. Contrarily, the same realities of access may turn up wonderful surprises. That is, digital searchers and passersby with a fervent interest in--say--broader Dowd family genealogy will be able to contact us with information of interest. As a blogger with several years of experience by now, I can say that the latter is far more likely to occur than the former. Our intutive filters are pretty good, except for the foolish and the chowderheaded. Since no such persons are known to populate our family, we should be okay. So let those amusing anecdotes fly.
The idea of this project is this: we all bemoan the loss of letter writing and despair of the frantic pace of contemporary life. But we all use computers for our work, and many of us use them as a sort of informational leisure tool. We can all read this blog, and by subscribing to the RSS feed at right, we can be notified via email of fresh postings as they occur. We can all learn to write simple posts and upload photographs of sporting exploits and birthday misadventures. We can opine on the issues of the day. We can gnash our teeth about the Cleveland Browns. Really. The sky's the limit.
If you're interested, the snippets of map visible in this blog's headline were taken from the US Geological Survey Map of Massillon, Ohio. Another, more legible detail of same is shown at the top of this post. Below, just to underscore this whole 21st century thing, a satellite photograph courtesy of Google Maps of Rose Hill Cemetery on Wales Road north of Massillon, where David and Martha are buried.
Send questions to me. Get a Google account and let me know what your gmail address is, so that you can be listed as a blog author, which will enable each of you to write your own stuff and put it up for the group to see.
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