3,000 and Counting

I noted yesterday that Lost Legacy has now passed 3,000 posts since 2005.  This total if it were evenly spread over the seven years since March 2005 when it started would be about 422 posts per year (over 1 post per day). 

However, it was not evenly spread each year, nor were posts spread regularly each day.   In some weeks, several days pass without a post – the exigencies of daily life, retired with grandchildren, occasional travel – less now – and writing tasks that can crush against deadlines from which Lost Legacy suffers in the queue of very important family demands on my time. Health issues also sometimes intervene.

Fortunately, I thoroughly enjoy writing the Lost Legacy Blog, despite the number of literal errors, misspellings, poor typing, and unwieldy composition (of which one visitor complained so vigorously he/she promised not to come back - may he/she ever be blessed with leisure, supporting staff, and time to be so choosy).  I too note these defects and try to edit them out afterwards.

In 2005 I did not think very far ahead, thinking that a Lost Legacy Blog (a relatively new computer activity just then) could be a fine way of publicising my book, Adam Smith’s Lost Legacy, Palgrave-Macmillan, also published in 2005 at an expensive price (£80) both here and in the USA.  The USA edition had a poorer portrait of Smith on the front cover than te edition printed for the UK, due to the high price that the Scottish National Portrait Gallery of Edinburgh charged me, not Palgrave, for very limited publication rights of Smith’s live portrait from the excellent 1767 Tassie Medallions in its collection.  Having been charged £600 (negotiated down from £800+) for my short direct quotations from the Oxford editions of Smith’s works, I effectively had to call a halt when faced with a large extra cost for rights for Lost Legacy, the book, in North America.

Well, that was then, this is now, 2013, and I intend to continue Lost Legacy, the Blog, for as long as I am able.  So it is now on to 5,000 posts and the welcome growing number of comments from readers.  Moderation of comments is not my preferred option, but I had to draw the line at hundreds of pornographic posts, sadly from China, a few years back, which took me a week to clear after somebody pointed them out (thank you!).  I never refuse a reader’s comment, no matter how critical (they usually provide a topic for a new post).

Also, remember my standing invitation to those visiting Edinburgh to contact me about my guided ‘Adam Smith Tour’ (no charge) which I conduct along Edinburgh’s High Street from Adam Smith’s statue, beside the Cathedral, and opposite the original building where he was a Scottish Commissioner of Customs from 1778-90 (now the City of Edinburgh's council offices).  We then walk down the High Street to Canongate Churchyard, where he is buried, and then almost next door to Panmure House.  He lived there with his mother (she died in 1784) and his cousin, Janet (died 1787). Smith also regularly entertained the leading figures of the Scottish Enlightenment up to a few days before he died in 1790.  Panmure House is now being restored by Edinburgh Business School, Heriot-Watt University, hopefully to be ready in 2014-15 for its new role of an international centre of economic and social research and public advocacy in the sceptical sense refined by Adam Smith and his Enlightenment friends. Drop me a line for details of the fund raising and the planned use of the restored house. 

So it is a large thanks to all readers, both new and those re-visiting, the Lost Legacy Bog over the years since 2005.