Rachel E. Watson

Tonight, I was updating my interests on my Facebook profile, and out of curiosity, tested the automatic link that is under "Current City," and was directed to a Facebook/Wikipedia page for Grand Rapids that included the history of the city, along with demographics, population, industry, economy and cultural information.

Can I just take a minute to say that I am so thankful for a city that has...

• A strong arts base (GR Symphony, Ballet and Opera, various art museums and galleries, and of course, now ArtPrize)
• A booming medical industry (Think Medical Mile's cancer and heart centers)
• Several higher education institutions (Grand Valley State University, Ferris State University, Calvin College, Cornerstone University, Aquinas College, Grand Rapids Community College, etc.)
• Numerous types of media organizations (I counted 61, which includes newspapers -- The Grand Rapids Press, of course -- TV and radio stations and online publications)
• Four Christian publishing houses (Zondervan, Baker, Eerdmans and Kregel)
• Plenty of museums (for art and area history/culture)
• A million good places to eat (And now we have Restaurant Week, which I get to go to this week!)
• Rising film opportunities (Festivals and film offices alike)
• Beautiful scenery (Go to Belknap Lookout at night.)
• Tons of festivals throughout the year (Festival of the Arts, Hispanic Festival, Celebration on the Grand, etc.)
• Concerts to attend (Meijer Gardens venue is the prettiest, Van Andel attracts national acts, and MixTape, Orbit Room and The Intersection book the smaller/local/up-and-coming bands)
• Authors to see (This week I am going to see Stephen Prothero lecture on his new book, "God Is Not One" at GRCC's Diversity Lecture Series. Prothero is a professor of religion at Boston University and recently was featured on The Colbert Report.)
• So many different neighborhoods to visit (Hint: Heritage Hill, Eastown, East Hills, Belknap-Monroe, for starters) 

I think I'll stay here. :)

Hello, readers. I know you're there.

This wonderful age of social media and internet analytics just offered up another cool twist recently. Google added a stats tracking tool to blogger.

Apparently it took effect in July, but I didn't find out about it until this week, when I was talking to a fellow blogging friend who pointed it out to me.

Here's how it works: When you log into your blog and land on your Dashboard (the administrator homepage), underneath "Manage Blogs" in the same toolbar where "Posting" appears, on the far right, there now is a tab called "Stats." Click through, and you'll find you can look at an overview or hone in more specifically on traffic sources and your audience demographics by country.

Screengrab of my stats page -- you're looking at the audience tracker tab.

So guess what that means? If you're reading this post right now from the U.S., Italy, Brazil, Belgium, Malaysia, Ukraine, Serbia or anywhere else in the world, I can look on my stats page and find a record of your visit and, in some cases, see what searches led you here. I don't know who you are or anything about you, but I know you're out there, and I hope you'll visit me again.

If you've landed on my page and you hail from somewhere outside the U.S., leave me a comment! I'd love to hear the story of how you landed here and what you're looking to find.

** Clarification: A reader brought up a valid privacy concern. Let me be clear that the only information Google Blogger Stats lets me see is the readers' country of residence and the search terms/search path they used to get to my page. It does not share individual IP addresses or personal information. **