I would like everyone who reads this site to take time out of his or her day to join me in saying thank you to ELMalvaney for starting Preservation in Mississippi nine years ago and for the incredible posting schedule maintained over the years, helping to increase awareness about Mississippi’s important historic buildings and the history behind those buildings. In nine years, Malvaney, first joined by Tom Barnes, then myself, Jack D. Elliott, Jr., Thomas J. Rosell, JRGordon, Suzassippi, Lolly Barnes, and various guest authors, have published just under 2,300 posts, an average of 254 annually, or five per week, every week, for just shy of a decade. The vast majority of those posts, over 1,500, were by Malvaney. An incredible posting schedule for a person who, I have been told (from a reliable source, no less), has a completely full schedule before we even start counting the time spent writing for this site.

Malvaney wrote on the three year anniversary of the site about how it began:

“…after a full day of painting on my house renovation project, I sat down at my computer and started a blog. I had never started a blog before. I thought it would be an interesting exercise, but I had no long-term vision for where it would go. To be honest, I’m not sure I expected to be able to keep it up for one month, much less one year or three.”

Malvaney has now kept up the site for not just one month, not just one year, not just three years, but nine years, 90% of a decade, a year longer than presidents are allowed to be president.

The internet is ephemeral. Even history and historic preservation sites seem to be as permanent as sandcastles. Preservation Online, Architecture Research Blog, Regional Modernism :: The New Orleans Archives, DOCOMOMO-Louisiana, “And speaking of which…“, Sippiana Succotash, the late Gaston Callum’s Southland Historic Preservation, The Curator of “Excrement”, and many, many other websites have come and gone (a tip of the hat to Andrew Morang at Urban Decay for eight years of great photography). Thanks to ELMalvaney, Preservation in Mississippi is not one of those sites.

Here is a thank you to Malvaney for nine years of Preservation in Mississippi and a salute to the next year on the site as we speed toward the decade mark. Mississippi is last in the nation in a few things, but thanks to you, it is first in having the best architectural history and historic preservation website of any state.

Categories: Asides, Historic Preservation, Preservation People/Events

Tags: Featured