Welcome to the first blog posting on my eponymous website.

For those of you who were readers of the Austin American-Statesman several years ago, this blog more or less resurrects Grapeshot, the blog I started in September 2008 when I was editing and writing for Insight, the Statesman’s Sunday commentary and analysis section. I continued Grapeshot through my two-year tenure as the Statesman’s books editor and through my first year as an editorial writer for the Statesman before retiring Grapeshot in early 2013 after the editorial board created its own blog, Viewpoints.

Grapeshot was an 18th- and 19th-century artillery charge made up of clustered musket balls or other shrapnel that essentially turned cannons into big ol’ shotguns. As I explained eight years ago in my first American-Statesman blog post, I named my blog Grapeshot not to project belligerence or pugnacity, but to illustrate my interest in numerous subjects. “One blog, multiple targets,” I labeled Grapeshot, and I think I honored that label over the blog’s four-plus years. Politics, foreign affairs, economics, business, the courts, history, science, religion, sports, food, books, film, music and pop culture — it’s hard to think of a topic I didn’t write about at least once.

My plan for this blog is to carry on Grapeshot’s wide-ranging spirit, but to do so independent of any institutional restraint, real or (mostly) perceived, now that I’m writing and editing on my own. So thank you for finding jodyseaborn.com and I hope I reward your time by offering a unique and worthwhile perspective on issues and events. I trust you’ll let me know how I’m doing.

But first: This blog and my website will be works in progress for the next several weeks as I tweak its appearance and archive hundreds of articles I wrote for the American-Statesman under the pages listed above in the menu. It will take a while to collect and select those relatively few articles worth sharing. I hope to occasionally rotate them in and out as events make old pieces relevant again. Your patience is greatly appreciated.