Published in April 2020

I too was subject to the strange temporal phenomenon of an eon-like March and an April that passed in the blink of an eye. But I still managed to write and publish a lot of articles in April, and the best part is that hardly any of them related to the pandemic. If you, like me, would like to read about something else for a while, maybe check out some of these articles from April.

Earth911

A big focus of my work for Earth911 in April was a series of articles on the 50th anniversary of Earth Day. The first two, The Great Global Cleanup and EARTHRISE, published in March. In April, I finished the series with:

Earth Challenge

Foodprints for the Future

Artists for the Earth

Five Environmental Campaigns for Earth Day

I also started a new series, called Good, Better, Best that gives waste reduction tips for three different levels of effort.

Good, Better, Best – Cutting Down on Paper Waste

Good, Better, Best – Eliminating Plastic Waste

Good, Better, Best – Reducing Metal Waste

Good, Better, Best – Reducing Textile Waste

And then there was one “freestanding” article on A Circular Packaging Economy.

Seattle Times

For the Seattle Times, I wrote about the postponed Folklife Festival and what they are doing to bring the festival into homes this year while the Seattle Center is closed to large gatherings.

ParentMap

I did some Earth Day-related articles for ParentMap, too:

Cutting Carbon From Your Family’s Diet

5 Backyard Environmental Learning Ideas for Kids

Another timely yet unrelated-to-pandemic article suggested Great Ramadan Reads for Kids of All Ages. These books are equally great choices for Muslim families to read to celebrate Ramadan and for nonMuslim families to learn more about the world’s second-largest religion.

Crooked Road Blog

Wow. I published 15 posts on the blog in April. I’m impressed with myself. That’s even more than March’s 14 when I was trying to write about homeschooling every day. The most-read posts in April were:

The Necessary and Proper Clause

The Punishment for Counterfeiting

Calling Forth the Militia

More Asian Metal I Like

Pandemic Homeschool Diaries Week Three Themes

Oookaaay, so the top three posts were from a series I discontinued two years ago that wasn’t actually very popular when I was writing it. Also, I can’t help but feel like people are interested in the wrong clauses – seriously, calling forth militias and counterfeiting? What are you people up to?

Acquisition

Almost 60% of my traffic came from organic searches. The top search terms were:

christina siemens – Siemens plays piano and sings for the Pacific Northwest Ballet Orchestra, so several ballet-related posts come up when you search for her.

gemma alexander – well, obviously

kaleidoscope dance performances – Kaleidoscope is a student performance company, but it’s also very good and it’s the contemporary dance company I watch most often.

marjukka tepponen – She was not in the cast I saw, but Marjukka Tepponen did perform in Seattle Opera’s Eugene Onegin earlier this season.

melissa hough – I saw one of her ballets last year in Oslo.

Further down the list, but still delightful was the Howl’s Moving Castle reference “what a pretty fire.”

About 17% was direct traffic, which is sort of gratifying. Nearly a fifth of users already knew about the blog and went directly to it, cool. Social media drove only 12% of traffic, which I guess isn’t surprising, since I don’t have a huge following anywhere.

And that, my friends, just about covers April.