Blog milestones: 800 posts and 135,000 page views

Homer, will you kindly do the honors?  Thanks.

Three years and 11 months ago, in mid May of 2018, around dusk, a group of men with baseball bats and assorted clubs went into a patch of woods in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.  The were out there to surround my tent, and threaten to "kick the tent in and teach me a lesson I should have learned a long time ago."  I was in the tent where I lived alone.  I had no weapon, no phone, and no way to record what was happening.  They knew that.  My tent had been searched a few times, and a wall slashed open once.  

The group, of at least 8-10 men, likely more, stomped around outside, hit nearby trees, and the walls of my tent with their clubs, and told me I needed to stop blogging.  The blog that had pissed them off was this one.  Steve Emig: The White Bear blog was about 10 1/2 months old, and had 26 to 28,000 pageviews at the time.  Something like that.  I had started the blog three weeks after moving into the tent, in June of 2017.

When they threatened to beat the shit out of me, my reply was, "Hoka hey, it's a good day to die.  Go for it."  The quote fro mCrazy Horse just popped into my head.  Apparently the guys weren't used to people standing up to them.  After all, this was how The South had been run for over 300 years.  They wound up having a discussion for 15 minutes or so, trying to figure out what to do.  One guy, in a really thick Southern accent, helpfully offered to break all of my fingers so I couldn't type anymore.  

I sat in my large tent, all windows and flaps closed, listening to their conversation, and waiting to see how things would play out.  There was a thunderstorm rolling in, and Carolina storms are the most intense I've ever experienced.  Ultimately, the guys just wandered back to their cars, parked in nearby Bolton Park, I presume.  I hunkered down through another thunderstorm in the tent, and kept on blogging, and drawing my #sharpiescribblestyle drawings for food money.  

There are people in the United States, right now, going to great lengths these days to suppress the free speech of some writers, journalists, artists, film makers, You Tube channel producers, and all kinds of other creative people.  There are thousands of individual creative people, and businesses that produce and promote creative work, fighting for all of our free speech rights every day.  Me?  I just keep drawing pictures, blogging, and trying to make people laugh on social media.  

Thanks for checking out this blog, reading posts, sharing and buying my #sharpiescribblestyle artwork, and supporting me in general.  You guys and gals rock!  

OK, enough celebrating these two little milestones.  Time to go create some more shit...

I have a new blog now, check it out:

The Spot Finder     #thespotfinder