At the Milestone

A few days ago we welcomed our thousandth reader; this event came just 6 weeks after Rescumi begin its life on Google. Thanks to one and all for taking the time to visit, and welcome newcomers.
    At this point, it's useful to pause, not just to salute the readers, but to develop a mission statement.
    Well, mission is perhaps grandiose. The question is, "What's this blog all about?"
    I must admit I have asked myself that same question. Or rather, I avoided confronting the question, while implicitly exploring it, by posting on a number of topics.
    Finally, it dawned on me: this Blog is about Everything and Nothing. It's about everything you wanted to talk about, but found little opportunity for. And, it's about the looming Nothing that's allowed to be said openly, or discussed candidly, in traditional media.
    For example, a certain amount of chatter is available on Sharon Pollock's Blood Relations in university papers, journals, etc. But no-one seems to have examined it through the lens I've provided in my article on Rescumi. Why? It's possible no-one ever considered the issues I've raised; but I rather doubt that. No, given how eagerly the play has been promoted, I suspect some people have worried about the kernel of it, why it gets produced, why it was even written in the first place. But to ponder those matters is to raise indelicate questions that are banned from conversation.
     Then, there's the series on the residential real-estate industry. When  I began writing it, I did whatever research I could on  the topic. Not necessarily to "understand" real-estate agents: I've had rather too much contact with those people for that to ever be a need. But simply to ask, "What's been written on the topic?"
      The answer astounded me. In professional and academic databases, in commercial magazines, newspapers, the Internet, there was not a single word. There was a bit of chatter about whether or not you needed to hire an agent, but that was sparse, and all of it was generated by agents themselves.
       Even more amazing was the bland acceptance of "house staging." When I looked, there was not a single, third-party, disinterested, and genuine examination of that very current issue. And yet, "staging" is now a vast cottage industry, one of the biggest  make-work schemes for the under- or unemployable since F.D.R. set up work camps in the Great Depression.     
      So we must tackle it, first, because it's a colossal distortion, even perversion of an essential trade; but mostly because critical examination of the topic is banned from the mainstream media.
         And so we seem to have done it, stumbled onto a mission for Rescumi -- simply by writing about what everyone else won't touch; by interrogating that which is being actively stifled. As Auntie Mame said to a horrified room of Upscale types: Someone should open the curtains in here!
    Signed, Recti