Ten years of Reason Rest Stop

Sitting here and pondering its beginning, it seems like it was only a few weeks ago. It was a late autumn afternoon, specifically the 26th of November in the year 2014, that Yours Truly drove to the home of an IT friend who walked me through the process of establishing a permanent web presence with a purchased domain name and explained the basic mechanics of how to use WordPress. It was a few days after that two-hour session of webmaster training that the first post appeared on this webpage. It was dated November 21st and was a cut & paste from my post to a website that hosted my first ever blog. In that first post was a detailed report of the Tulsa County Democratic Party’s monthly luncheon at the Campbell Hotel. Then as now, the Democrats were licking their wounds lamenting a solid shellacking up and down the ballot. It is not anyone’s imagination that the more things change, the more they stay the same. Reason Rest Stop was founded as an oasis of Liberal news and views along what was undisputedly the most Conservative segment of the Mother Road. The election results in ten years’ time demonstrates that if anything, this stretch of Old Route 66 has only gotten more Conservative. Despite this irrefutable reality, there remains a vibrant Progressive presence along the way. That also applies to cyberspace as Reason Rest Stop is still up and running after a decade online.

Although RRS was not fully functional until a few weeks after its founding, it has since provided Yours Truly with a platform to express original thoughts and feelings on local happenings and activities. It is also a means to convey an individual viewpoint on historic events and news of the day. In short, it is a tool to help a non-professional writer organize his ideas and present them in a scholarly fashion, limited as it may be. This blog generates no income for anyone, not even the owner/operator. It is merely an outgrowth of one person’s perception of reality recorded in daily writings of the day’s events in real time, be they personal or worldly. Blogging and journal keeping are worthy activities and have proven to this keeper of chronicles a valuable source of reference material useful for recall of pertinent events and milestones years after they happen.

Much has happened in the ten years since RRS made its debut on the World Wide Web. Once it was up and running, readers could reliably count on two to four items per month often concert, movie or book reviews or opinion pieces on various topics. This rate of posting slowed down considerably when Yours Truly ran for state senate, the campaign of which lasted from mid-2019 to mid-2020. During this time, posting frequency became a once-a-month event and has continued as such with occasional additional items posted when pertinent happenings require them. Initially, the IT friend who assisted in the startup allowed free use of his server. As the popularity of RRS grew, the need for increased bandwidth became an issue. What ultimately forced change was the hacking of that server in early 2021 which necessitated a move to a larger and more secure platform. Sadly, most of the graphics pre-April 2021 failed to make the move from the hacked server to the new upgraded one, but all the printed material survived intact.

The original concept and audience to which RRS was dedicated remains clearly articulated on the Welcome Page as “Liberal news and views from the Mother Road’s most Conservative stretch.” This was gently revised after the 2020 general election to “a Route 66 online oasis of political and literary opinion as well as commentary on current events and happenings offering an alternative viewpoint.” Although this was done as an effort to move away from it, politics and all the grist it provides remains a frequent subject for comment. Like comedians that gravitate to issues that generate laughter, bloggers tend to go where the best ideas for commentary are generated. It is truly a double-edged sword of joy and sadness that our government and so many in it too often suck all the air out the room, so to speak. The good news is that in another year’s time, it will be the Route 66 Centennial, something that caters directly to the RRS motif.

Looking ahead, one can clearly see a bright future for blogs and aspiring writers who keep them. Knowing there will always be something to extol, criticize, uplift or oppose ensures there will never be a shortage of material for commentary appropriate for a webpage such as this. Just like Old Route 66 has been a permanent fixture in the American and Oklahoma landscape for nearly a century on, Reason Rest Stop has kept its place among the Mother Road’s cyber scenery now for a full decade. For the here and now at least, it will maintain that place and be counted as one of those badly needed online enclaves that elevates the mood of those less conservative in the community.

Thank you for reading.