I don’t know what happened, but almost all of my sidebar content disappeared a couple of days ago. I didn’t do anything or make any changes that would have precipitated this. All of a sudden, I got a new look and I didn’t like it.

What distressed me the most was losing the widget that shows a map of the world with red dots showing the locations of visitors to my blog. By clicking on the map, you can see a list of all of the countries where my visitors live. The number had grown to an impressive count and I didn’t want to start all over again.

After spending a bit of time in the WordPress forums, I learned that there is an “inactive widget” section on my “dashboard” where unused widgets are saved. I hoped that my sidebar content had inexplicably landed there. I looked, and sure enough, all of the missing sidebar content had moved there. It took me a short while to rebuild my sidebar. So now the archives are back, the tag cloud is back, the links are sorted again, and most importantly to me, the countries where my visitors live is back.

I decided to check the “country count” of where my visitors live, and was shocked to see that the number has grown to 149 countries. I didn’t know that there were that many countries, but my husband says that there are about 175 recognized countries. So I have a way to go before the whole world has seen my blog. Or at least a representative sample of the whole world.

Some of the surprises (to me) are that I’ve had 102 hits from Iran and only one hit from Iraq. What’s up with that? I’ve had as many hits from Turkey as from France. The number of hits from Croatia and Malaysia (92 and 87 respectively) doesn’t surprise me, as I have readers from those countries. Naturally, most of the hits are from English speaking countries.

I’ve had only four hits from the Maldives, which disappoints me. One of the reasons why I battle global warming is to keep that island nation and other low-lying areas from going under water. This past decade has been the warmest ever recorded. It may be cool this summer in Huntington Beach, but that’s weather, not climate. The climate is definitely warming. Yes, a few glaciers and ice sheets are growing, but the vast majority are melting. When you look at the global picture, it’s a scary one. So let me close this post by thanking all of you who are eating what is in season, eating locally grown food, and growing your own food, at least some of it. That reduces use of fossil fuel in transporting food from 1500 miles away. SAVE THE MALDIVES! And the rest of the world while you’re at it. Peace out.