Happy Birthday

No, not to me, I just had one. To Confined Space. It's 6 months old today. Never thought I'd make it this far, but I've managed to successfully fight off hurricanes and family members who think (for some crazy reason) that I spend too much time on the computer.

Over the past 6 months, we've had over 14,000 visitors and almost 23,000 page views. (Some blogs get that many in a few days, but there's always next year.)

It's had visitors from over 80 countries, from Argentina to Zimbabwe, from Oman to Croatia, from Jamaica to the Cook Islands.

Has it been everything I've hoped it would be? Well, first it's been fun. It keeps me from kicking the kids and yelling at the dogs every time I read the newspaper. I've gotten a lot of good feedback from those of you out there in internet land, and surprisingly few "flames" or death threats.

I've managed to share my perspective on workplace safety and health issues, the environment, labor, politics or whatever I was in the mood for. Hopefully, it's inspired some thinking among those who don't have the time (and ability to exist on very little sleep) that I do.

On the other hand, I'm not sure I've yet inspired a major movement of millions of health and safety activists to storm the halls of OSHA and take back the country. It's been a challenge to reach local workplace health and safety activists who may not spend a lot of time hanging out on the internet. While I've been linked on a number of union, COSH and other Weblogs, I'm still around 13 million short of being read by every member of the AFL-CIO.

I've also found it difficult to inspire fights on health and safety issues, when OSHA's chief mission these days seem to be to make itself invisible and irrelevant. Not to mention a few other issues dominating the news of late.

Over the next 6 months (if I survive that long), I'd like to try to make this site more interactive. I had a very underused "comments" section for a while before it ran into technical difficulties. I may try that again. I'd also like to invite more of you to send me information or even "guest" articles. I can't do this all alone. And, in fact, I haven't. Many of you, especially Rory O'Neill at Hazards and Jonathan Bennet at NYCOSH, and others too numerous or shy to mention (but you know who you are) send me frequent news stories without which I wouldn't have half so much to write (although I'd get more sleep.)

So, if you have any great ideas or stories or suggestions or even criticisms, please e-mail me. If you see a webpage that I should be linked to, e-mail them (or me). If you'd like to be added to my weekly "I'm still here" e-mail list, let me know. And if any of your local or national magazines or newsletters are looking for stories, suggest one about the one and only blog focusing on "News and Commentary on Workplace Health & Safety, Labor and Politics"

Otherwise, don't just websurf, organize.

-- Jordan