This blog has moved to a new address

 

This website is migrating

Due to a problem with this platform, Google Blogger, I have moved my blog to WordPress and given it a new address,  Stressline.org which you can read here.  If you don't find new blogs posted here please go to that address.

The new title of the blog is no longer halbrown.org. It is now Hal Brown's Stressline. Stressline is a term I used in the titles of two websites I published 20 years ago. I thought I'd resurrect the name since what is going on the world today is causing my friends and I a great amount of stress.

Wed, Oct 11 at 6:20 AM

This is a blog with my opinions on politics, psychology, and pop culture. Posts are sometimes serious and sometimes snarky. I’m a retired MSW clinical social worker/psychotherapist and mental health center director who was a cranberry farmer and a reserve police officer. I create images using software to illustrate my stories. If I don’t have anything original to say I try not to say anything at all.

About 20 years ago I had two Stressline websites, Cranberry Stressline and Police Stressline. Being Ocean Spray cranberry growers my wife and I started a website because we objected to poor management in the co-up we belonged to. Eventually we rallied like-minded growers and after a few years the end result was that the CEO was fired and the board of directors was replaced. This may have been the first blog (the word “blog” wasn’t even commonly used then) which had a major impact on a large company. Over the course of two years the website was featured in articles in The New York Times (read here, subscription) , Forbes, ABC News here, and local Massachusetts media.

Here’s my late wife Betty with the then CEO of Ocean Spray Tom Bullock on the front page of the Sunday NY Times business section:

The other website, Police Stressline (you can still read it here) came about because I was a reserve police officer who, as a therapist, had many police officers as clients. At the time if you did a web search for police stress it came up as the number one website on the subject and articles I posted there were republished in print police magazines.

Both websites can be found on the WayBack machine.

In 2012 I started a personal blog on Google Blogger (before Google bought it the platform was just called Blogger). Until six years ago it consisted mostly of photo essays. All of those blogs can be seen at https://www.halbrown.org.

For some reason I can no long post new stories on Google Blogger so I have started a new blog here on WordPress. For those not familiar with WordPress, it hosts almost half of all websites including the official White House website and the sites of major newspapers.

I resurrected the name Stressline because these days the state of the country is causing me, not that I need to explain why if you’re a liberal like I am, a lot of stress.