Why the New Page

The New Page, and the Goodbye to the old pages: Why

Well, it was bound to happen eventually. I can't maintain a dozen websites, write on a dozen boards, keep a dozen blogs, et cetera. I've been on the Internet talking about Orthodoxy since 1998 (and I've been talking about Politics since about 2004). I've been saying since around January of 2006 I am going to "clean up my Internet work". Gonna "make it all one".

Well, it's just gone too darn far. It's time to start housecleaning. And there were a few considerations in my choices.

The first was the former Orthodox Apologetics page you see here. Since I first put up my apologetics page(back on Angelfire) in 1998, over a dozen fairly good Orthodox apologetics pages have popped up--and stayed, better than I ever could have imagined. I will be including more and more of them on my links pages. Mine, however, because of my moving it about the internet, has simply gotten worse. Meanwhile, my writing has broadened. I don't just write about apologetics anymore. I write about Orthodoxy. And I don't just write about Orthodoxy either but about things that affect my Orthodox life. I don't think I've ever had a "pure apologetics" site, but the title above finally reflects that fact. Nor can I ignore the fact that some subjects are too broad to be called apologetics (like the book I finally wrote on Orthodox Spain) and some are too specific (like my new essay on HOCNA).

More surprising to some, however, will be the redirects from the News site later on. Notes From the Underground, my former ROAC-news site, will always be a tragic loss for me. But it was a loss, and has been since 2006. It was a loss because it had a purpose, and that purpose was taken away from it. Looking back, I guess it was kind of "preparation" for what was ahead. I genuinely feel that I was betrayed by ambitious individuals trying to get ahead, who I believe (may God forgive me for judging) did not have the best interest of the Church remotely in their minds. I said my piece when this was all going on: I said that promotion of pseudo-news, gossip and slander would only make True Orthodox Christians look bad. And I pointed out correctly; this is precisely what has occurred, and the damage has become completely irreversible to the ROAC's mission in North America. In early 2006, I decided to take inspiration from Matushka Anastasia Shatiloff's Church News (not this miserable online insult to yellow journalism called "Church News" we have now, with implicit episcopal blessing). My gambit failed, if only for lack of time and support from the Church administratively; in terms of readership, it was the most-read website I had ever done.

And finally, I've gotten to the point, having finished my first attempt at a book and hitting the second one, and putting on the shoes of a person who at long last knows what he is talking about, I've learned that to put your two cents in, you should put them both in the same place. And in the end, you have to put your things somewhere- but not of necessity everywhere.