Ten years is a long time.

If that old saw is true about how our whole bodies regenerate every 7 years, then a decade ago we were all literally different people. Same or not, we certainly lived in a different world ten years ago; for one thing, when I flew back then, I took a Swiss Army Knife on board with me, and everyone treated airport security drones with the respect they deserved and not as some crucial imaginary barrier between us and Mooslim hordes.

There’s more than that, though, obviously. While the greater Heathen cast carries many long-term members who date to the early nineties or even before, we have many tribemembers today that we hadn’t even met in November of 2000. Even better, more than a few proto-heathen didn’t even exist back then. One Heathen in particular was known to us, but it didn’t become clear until a year later how important she’d turn out to be. ;)

Today is the tenth anniversary of Miscellaneous Heathen as a weblog. For some time prior to 27 November 2000, I maintained a mailing list for amusing items collectively called “Some Arrant Knaves I Know,” a reference to Hamlet (III.1) appropriately drawn from my English major background. The title of the weblog itself was taken from a photo (by, I believe, cartoonist Tom Tomorrow) of a clearly insane protester at a location now lost to memory; said protestor’s sign, taller than the holder, listed a catalog of hellbound miscreants and concluded with our eponymous phrase.

I happily join that category, today more than ever, and thank you all for reading my yammerings for ten whole years. Here’s to ten more.