A Report  from the Editor

This November 2003 ChickenBones: A Journal will celebrate its 2nd Anniversary (with the above event). We went online Fall 200l. Though it has been a short period of time, it has been a wonderful and phenomenal journey. Those who direct the activities are a small group of six devoted individuals residing in Baltimore, Maryland: Amin Sharif, Kinya Kiongozi, Yvonne Terry, Keith "Bilal" Shortridge, Ernestine Holley, and me. These individuals have contributed financial resources from their shallow pockets and a great deal of time and energy to make ChickenBones a success.

Of course, there has been a great corps of writers and artists who have contributed their writings and work to make ChickenBones one of the most extraordinary sites dedicated to the free, independent, and noncommercial transmission of inaccessible information to the broadest number of people. Presently, we have over 1500 text files and over 15,000 image files that create one of the more informative, attractive websites on the Internet. Moreover, we have bridged a lot of gaps between writers and writers, writers and artists, and writers and readers, and so on. We are pleased with the service and sacrifice that all have made. But there is still much to do.

The November 22 Benefit "Poetry in the Rhythm of Life" is our first effort to broaden the financial base to support ChickenBones: A Journal. It has become a necessity. Our online journal has grown in traffic at a much faster rate than we anticipated. From January through June 2003, we averaged over a 1000 visitors a day. There were steady increases month by month and we began to receive warnings of traffic overages from our ISP and in July 2003 we had over 38,000 visitors and over 460,000 hits. For the year at that time, over 247,000 visitors and over 2.6 million hits. Presently (22 Oct.), we have had over 400,000 visitors and over 4 million hits.

The penalty for the overage for July was over $100. Instead of paying the penalty we decided to go from our Bronze plan to the ISP's Silver Plan, which provided us 2.5 gigs more of transfer. That suited us fine for August: we ended the month with over 40,000 visitors and over 435,000 hits.

The September 2003 traffic of ChickenBones: A Journal leapt forward by over a 1,000 visitors a day. It seems many students learned about ChickenBones on their return to school and they have found it a great resource and they are coming back daily. For our website is a dynamic website; materials are being added daily and there is always something surprisingly new. But we also have visitors from over 75 countries (all six inhabitable continents) a month who come to ChickenBones. Persons in Canada, the UK, Australia, Japan, the Netherlands, France, China are the most frequent visitors. But there also visitors from South Africa and Zimbawe; Hong Kong and Brazil; India and Israel.

In September we averaged over 2100 visitors per day and over 19,000 hits a day. Thus ending the month with over 64,000 visitors and over 580,000 hits. There was another overage and a penalty of $66. Our Silver Plan was not sufficient to deal with the traffic. We expect the traffic to the site for October to be similar to September. At this writing (22 Oct.), for the month, we have had over 53,000 visitors and 420,000 hits. So it again looks as if we will go over 64,000 visitors for October.

In short, we need help from friends, writers, and artists to help us in our efforts to sustain ChickenBones: A Journal. We have need to go to the ISP's Gold Plan. We need your help. And there is much to be done. Help us to sustain our momentum and service. 

If you cannot attend the November 22 event, Support ChickenBones: A Journal with your donation. Donations of any amount should be made out to ChickenBones: A Journal. Please send your check or money order to: 

ChickenBones: A Journal / 2536 Druid Hill Avenue / Baltimore, MD 21217

We look forward to our continued cooperation and collaboration. As ever and always, Rudy

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We served a great audience in 2006: nearly 2 million sessions; over 3.3 million pageviews. In 2007, we still need your active financial support. ChickenBones is adding and supporting daily new and established writers, scholars and publishers. We are a unique and fresh experience in Internet publishing.  Our Black Arts  files are growing and including table of contents of anthologies of the 60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s out of publication and not on the Internet.  We have archival material that is difficult to access. We have current African writers and a Nigerian audience. We have religionists of every stripe, including Turks and atheists, too. We have articles and materials still on the site published 5 years ago. We have free access. Artists, writers, publishers want to be on ChickenBones because google and other search engines put their work in the top ten hits. But they are lax in their financial support. I cannot accomplish what we do alone: we need your continuing support. Please send in your donations, today, encourage your friends, also.  Help Save ChickenBones

Send contributions to: ChickenBones: A Journal /  13219 Kientz Road / Jarratt, VA 23867