500,000

Sometime this afternoon this blog logged its 500,000th page view.

To note the occasion, I supply this list of the ten most viewed posts, which will also give some idea of how people end up here.

1) Romance at the Lincoln Memorial (February 4, 2012, 13,464 views)

Can anybody tell me why this post gets so many hits? I keep worrying that there is some typo that makes it hilariously funny, because otherwise I don't know why anybody would end up there. Yet is has been my most popular post almost from the day I put it up.

2) Picasso for Picasso Haters (November 25, 2011, 13,081 views)

Most of my top 50 posts are like this one, collections of images from some famous artist.

3) Joseph Cornell's Boxes (December 23, 2011, 10,628 views)

I'm glad this one is on the list, because I think it is the best written and composed of my art posts.

4) Eduardo Souto de Moura wins the Pritzker Prize (March 28, 2011, 6075 views)

The success of this one shows the importance of immediacy on the web. I happened to be at my computer when this news was announced, so I was one of the first bloggers to respond, hence the prominence of the post even though most of my architecture posts don't get much attention.

5) The Watts Towers are in Trouble (February 7, 2011, 5085 views)

My first big art post.

6) Interesting Definitions (March 28, 2011, 4504 views)

People get to this post by searching for images of an AC-130 Specter gunship. Which I think is weird, since the image I posted is a US Air Force photo that I got off some defense news site, so it must be everywhere.

7) Our Friend the Black Bear (May11, 2011, 4448 views)

People like to laugh, I guess, and this is mildly amusing (the closest I ever get to funny).

8) Cairo  (October 16, 2010, 4439 views)

One of my better written posts, I think, a short history of the racial troubles that doomed Cairo, Illinois. The web has a lot of fans of ruin and decline.

9) Anselm Kiefer's Grim Extravagance (July 4, 2012, 2813 views)

Another post I am proud of. These days it is my second most popular, and it is gaining quickly on the older posts.

10) Conflict in Cordoba (November 5, 2010, 1978 views)

If I were going to write about only one thing, I would call my blog something like "The Long View" and write posts like this one, giving the historical background to contemporary events or trends. But since this is by far the most popular of my posts in this vein, you can see that I wouldn't have much success like that.

A bunch of my book reviews have gotten hundreds of hits, although none made the top ten. The most popular reviews are of book that professors assign in classes. This blog gets a lot more action during the school year than during the summer; since Memorial Day my daily count of page views has shot up from around 900 to around 1500.

One category of posts that nobody ever looks at is politics; I think my most viewed political posts have gotten around 50 hits, and most get no more than 10.

But, anyway, here I am, and I have no plans to ever stop doing this. It's too much fun.