Hi folks! Boy, 2017 was a humdinger, huh? You may notice that this site looks and behaves a little differently than before- and that my blog now has a name, Mudlarking (here’s the backstory). I’m still fussing with it a little, but it’s nice to start out the new year with a tabula rasa, so to speak.

I suppose a quick summary of 2017 is in store. Here’s the highlights reel:

Things I did that I wrote about…

• Took a Digital History course and made a bunch of digital projects, which I’m slowly incorporating into my portfolio page
• Co-organized the 7th Annual Public History Community Forum, and it was pretty great.
• Attended the Victorian Society in America Summer School in Chicago and reflected on the experience in a two-part series (Part 1, Part 2)
• Was honored to be the inaugural Martin L. Levitt Fellow at the American Philosophical Society, and I kept a log detailing my experience working on an open data project in their Center for Digital Scholarship
• Went to a Monument Lab event entitled “Hidden Histories and Missing Monuments” and had some mixed feelings about it
• Hung out in Port Penn, Delaware and wrote about their rich and distinctive maritime history
• Made a Twitterbot that suggests hiking trails in the Philadelphia area, @trailbotphilly

My blogging stats…

• I wrote a whopping 36 blog entries
• That adds up to 23,633 words (or about 95 standard-size pages)
• Which makes for an average of 1,969 words per month (or about 8 standard-size pages)

Wow, no wonder I’m so tired! Anyway, as ever, thanks to the people who made my year better in myriad ways, who challenged me and comforted me and had my back on numerous occasions. You know who you are. Bring on 2018.