Year-End Gallery 2024

Minnesota Museum of American Art, Saint Paul, Minnesota

Not the best year.

Still, FITK perseveres or, perhaps more accurately, abides. The ill-logic of running an endeavor such as this has always been apparent, but in the doing of it there are just enough rewards to keep me continuing. The biggest question mark in online publishing these days is AI, in all of its various guises. AI-generated content is overwhelming search engines, making finding this blog a needle in a hay field, not a haystack. When my stats indicate over 10k views a month (over 1 million total!), I have a sneaking suspicion that most of these ‘visits’ are bots or other scrapers. Apple, Amazon, Microsoft and Facebook all stop by fairly often and there are also regular visits from various LLCs. Not many commenters anymore, though—it seems that it just isn’t done as much as it used to be.

My Icelandic obsession coverage here is ending but I’ll keep the index in the sidebar for the book and music reviews and for anyone interested in perusing these old posts. Many thanks to all those who have stoked my Iceland fires over the last 20 years—the embers of which will always remain warm. This past month’s ‘Little Miss Loopy’ posts were a fond farewell to Auður who had shown me the way in nearly everything on the internet (her early 2004 Icelandic blog was very similar to Twitter!) All the other Icelandic bloggers from 20 years ago have moved on as well, mostly to bigger and better things.

While still using FITK as a base, my photography has been expanding to other outlets in the past couple of years: regular posts to the Steve Hoffman site and my involvement with the Homewood Photo Collective have broadened my horizons. Conversely, my travel plans have been scaled back, with grandchildren and a general ‘malaise of the flying experience’ rising, the quantity of my trips has been curtailed. Places I’ve traveled post-covid have all had difficulties (but not Iceland which, from my travel perspective, is about as seamless trip in logistics as could be imagined.) Alas, my desire is spent. The U.S. Southwest still has some appeal (I’ll be there in February) but flights there are always more difficult than they need to be. Seattle is always an option (and a great destination if you don’t have to drive.)

So, what will the upcoming year bring to FITK?

Having 20+ years of posts to revisit once a week is a nice way to establish an over-all perspective of the blog. Getting in touch with some of my old blog-pals (Maria, Kristín, Reshma, DJ Cousin Mary, Darien, and Karen/Sharon) over the last 12 months was especially nice. The rise of AI Suno program allowed me to set some of the more poetic FITK posts to music (which may not be a completely good thing.) The idea of a FITK podcast keeps bubbling up from my subconscious. Is there a DJ Batty in the offing? More long fiction is not on the roadmap, but there will be some shorter pieces showing up from time to time in addition to the usual mess olio of thought-pieces and images.

I will offer you this, my closing comment, in Icelandic:

Þetta reddast.