Greetings! Welcome to "De Omnis," a blog wherein I hope to present some thoughts on various things of a wide range of topics.  This site has come about due partly to my need for a place to share some things I have written in the not too distant past, besides a place on the Internet to post things that are not local history or Texas ghost stories (subjects of my two other blogs). Some of my earlier blog posts were originally posted for a small audience of online friends in social networking websites.  One of these sites (Yahoo! 360, which was a terrific and fun site, albeit one with some glitches that its users would good-naturedly gripe about from time to time) has gone belly up, and some of my writings were thus displaced.

In a way, I am a reluctant blogger!  I'm really not all that opinionated (at least not to my way of thinking), but then, of course, that label tends to get stuck on each of us anyway, mostly by those who negatively regard whatever ideas and opinions we express that they don't particularly like; nor am I all that driven to ruminate just for the sake of "writing" something. Something thus written to me is just blurb, not that I claim that anything I write is (or was ever meant to be) great writing.  I don't even like to write about writing because such pieces sometimes seem a bit haughty and nearly always tend to come across as professorial and preachy, as though intended as some great revelation handed down from some lofty place, position, or experience. I write for more utilitarian reasons: when something interests me, when there is something I want to share with others (whether "FYI" or simply because it was fun to create), or to ask for others' opinions about something that interests or perplexes me. I write when I write and when I think I have something that to me is worth saying (whether others think it is worth their time and effort is up to them---but then they won't know until after they've read it, so I'll try hard not to waste anyone's time!)

Likewise, I don't consider myself a philosopher or an essayist.  I prefer the "just the facts" treatment because all so often the facts themselves are what makes a subject so interesting.  Speaking of facts as such, there won't be much written here of a political nature. I AM political (kinda-sorta) but I really hate politics.  It is too depressing a field of interest, simply because so much good is claimed and recommended for the common good (and votes) by persons who, it so often soon becomes apparent, have only special interests and personal gain at heart. I am very interested in history (particularly that which is not overly steeped in politics), genealogy, science (in general), agriculture, architecture, the unexplained, the strange-but-true, art, photography, and folklore.

I can't at this point, though, give readers too much of an idea of what to expect here.  (I'm still sort of wondering that myself!)  You will simply have to stop by from time to time to see what is new.  As the blog title means to suggest, I guess you can expect a bit of just about anything or everything.