Special 500th Edition!

I am pleased to announce this milestone of the Swann Family News! Not only is this the 500th edition or posting of this little venture, but yesterday also marked the 12th anniversary of when this all started. The software I use estimates that I’ve typed almost 400,000 words to share stories of what goes on in our family with you. I never dreamed it would last this long.

To briefly recount the history, I began a journal of sorts in the form of letters to my father when I was in college at UT. The idea for the format was inspired by the “Dear Dad” letters Hawkeye Pierce would write to his father in the early seasons of M*A*S*H. I continued this until some time after Vicki and I married when I switched over to writing a daily log of our lives. That lasted for a number of years, but by the time Ben came along I couldn’t get to my notebook every evening. I quickly fell behind and then dropped the log completely. I regretted this, but life was so busy that I could never make that format work again.

I credit Bill Chatman for inspiring me to restart some sort of written record of our family life. I was returning a tractor and field mower I had borrowed when we got into a conversation and he mentioned the diary he had kept for years and how much he and his family enjoyed looking back through it when they had evenings at home.

That conversation stayed in the back of my mind for some time. I was really pondering it as I mowed the strawberry patch in Aunt Mar’s yard on September 6, 2003. That’s when I hit upon the idea of doing an email newsletter. The original idea was to try to send it out weekly, but not to be tied to any set schedule. I figured that if I were writing to an audience–even if I simply imagined that they enjoyed hearing from me–it would create some accountability to keep it up. Honestly, I thought I’d be doing good to last a couple of years or make it to 100 editions. I thought about getting to 500 editions while riding the mower that day, but laughed and told myself I’d never last that long. Today I laugh with the joy of exceeding my expectations.

All of you receiving this newsletter are people we love and treasure. Some of you we see or hear from frequently. Whether that’s the case with you or not–and it’s okay either way–know that you are a special part of our lives and we value you. Thank you for your indulgence with my writings. You have helped me stay true to my task.

Over the years I have become more aware of the fact that the people on my address list aren’t the only audience for this newsletter. I am also writing to people who will be special to me but aren’t yet part of my life. Any grandchildren our kids may bless us with are the first to come to mind. I look forward to the day that I can say to one of them, “Let me tell you a story of when your mom or dad was your age,” while opening a book, however I have that stored, and read some of these stories to them.

There have been very few changes to the Swann Family News over the years. I created a blog site at http://swannfamilynews.blogspot.com back in 2007 and have kept it current ever since in addition to sending the latest edition by email. You can go there and find every issue ever written.

With this milestone you will notice changes with the formatting or look of the newsletter. I’ve made the first four years of our newsletter into books for my family. They turned out nicely, but the process it took to put them into book form could have been a lot easier, and that only lent itself to printed books. I want to streamline this operation so that I can easily create both print and digital books for them. It will be a lot easier for my kids to duplicate digital copies of these books to pass along to their children when the time comes. And who knows, I might grow a wild hair and start including pictures!

So here we are at number 500. A lot has changed with our family. Jenna was starting kindergarten then and is in her senior year now. Ben was in Mom’s Day Out at church and is a lanky freshmen who towers above me and Vicki. And Nate, who was just six months old the, is a seventh grader with a big growth spurt just ahead. The years have brought lots of laughs and some tears. Pauline, who had just moved in to her new house behind us, passed away in 2010 and Aunt Mar will have been gone three years as of the end of this month. The little kids who drove the battery powered Gator across the field to Pauline’s are now driving real cars on public roads.

I’m not going to sell myself short and say this won’t be around for 500 more editions. I’ll keep writing until the project has run its course, though I’m not going to worry so much about writing weekly as I used to. I’ll simply publish when I can. There’s no telling what our family will look like by then. I’m simply thankful to my Creator who gifts each day for us to enjoy. More than anything else the Swann Family News is a testimony to our God who has been so good to me and my family. If I ever doubt that all I need to do is come back here and read.

Joe