Happy (Belated) Third Anniversary

Now that the weekend is here, I have a moment to note that Buller Time recently completed its third year of existence. The first post, which went live on Sunday, 15 June 2014, was intended as a Father’s Day gift. The idea was to honor my own father Carl as well as all of our forefathers—Grandpa Chris, Peter P, Peter D, and David (those were the only ones we knew at the time)—by offering a place for Chris and Malinda’s family to connect online—or at least to call their own.

As it turns out, Buller Time blog became more a site for historical exploration than a place for socializing, but that has produced, I think, a different kind of social bonding, a strong sense of family belonging and rootedness in the line of Bullers who proceeded us in Molotschna and Volhynia before that and Poland before that.

Buller Time’s first post was a simple one: a photograph of a Mennonite barn in Molotschna plus a few sentences totaling fewer than fifty words (see here). Now, three years later,  this is post 468. On average, Buller Time has had a new post every 2.3 days—although, obviously, the pace has been much slower the past month or two.

If Word’s counting function can be trusted, posts have averaged a little more than 600 words, which puts the total Buller Time word count somewhere north of 250,000 words (a conservative estimate would be 275,000). To put this in terms of a book: the average academic book (6 × 9-inch trim size) without pictures averages around 400 words per page, so if Buller Time were a words-only book it would be book of over 650 pages. Add in all the photos, maps, and other graphics we have posted, and the length would no doubt exceed 750 pages. Who knew so much could be said about the family of Chris and Malinda?

In the end, family is all that matters with Buller Time, and so it was appropriate that it was launched on Father’s Day in 2014 and observes three years (plus a few days) on Father’s Day 2017. Sincere thanks to all of our fathers—but especially to you, Dad—for making the Buller family something in which we all can take great pride.