Over the past year, there have been almost 12,000 views of my blog posts—a huge increase over 2022. The number of subscribers has increased modestly, to 152. (Some of the new subscribers are relatives of residents, and some are from other Kendals.) There were 40 posts in 2023, about the same as previous years.  

As I did last year, I have taken a look at the number of views of the various posts, and (not surprisingly) most of the top posts this year were about Kendal at Longwood’s disaffiliation from the Kendal system.

1. The top post was “Withdrawing from Kendal Corporation”. It got 868 views. The choice to withdraw (and the almost complete lack of resident input into that decision) was clearly the most significant news story of the year for Kendal residents. That happened back in April, 2023.

2 & 3. On the other hand, the next two most popular posts were both from previous years, and I find that surprising. In the #2 slot was one about a favorite blend of coffee beans (“What happened to Trader Joe’s Bay Blend coffee beans?”); there are obviously a lot of passionate coffee drinkers out there still bemoaning the loss of those beans. The #3 post was about temperature stratification (“Is your floor too cold but your ceiling too hot?”). That’s clearly a problem for a lot of people, not just Kendal residents. In fact, the vast majority of views for those two posts were from people who were not Kendal residents, including some from overseas.

4. The number 4 post was again about withdrawing from Kendal Corporation. This was Harry Hammond’s guest post, “Our Kendal’s Changed Sense of Self.” It delves into the history of Kendal at Longwood and the Kendal Corporation, and provides a sense of what is lost by disaffiliating from the Corporation. With 553 views, this post had by far the most views that any guest-written post has ever had.

5. The decision by The Admiral to follow Kendal-Crosslands’ lead and withdraw from the Kendal Corporation was the subject of fifth most popular post, “Another affiliate withdraws from Kendal Corporation”. The Admiral was a Kendal affiliate in Chicago. Details were sparse when that post was published (October 6, 2023). I was able to provide additional information the following day. (See #8, below).

6. In September, a trade magazine published an upbeat assessment of Kendal Corporation without a single mention of the withdrawal of Kendal-Crosslands Communities, which had been announced five months earlier (“An upbeat profile of Kendal Corporation, with no mention of KCC“). I thought that was worth a post, and so, apparently, did my readers. To profile a corporation without mentioning the event that I’d consider its most momentous change in many years seemed like poor journalism to me. But you know trade magazines: they tend to report what their industry and their advertisers want them to.

7. As part of the “disaffiliation” process, Kendal-Crosslands Communities needed a new document to replace the Kendal Corporation “Values and Practices”. That process got started in August, as reported in the post “New values draft: it’s a good start but there is still work to be done.” Some of the limitations mentioned there have since been remedied; others have not.

8. In “The Admiral’s withdrawal from the Kendal system: money is a major factor”, I provided more details about the reasons that The Admiral withdrew from Kendal Corporation. The Admiral’s history was quite different than Kendal-Crosslands, but the reason for withdrawal—a sense that the affiliation fees cost more than the benefits of affiliation were worth—was very similar.

9. The very first post of 2023 was “Attainable housing: a new direction for Kendal-Crosslands Communities?” The Kendal-Crosslands board was exploring the possibility of starting a less expensive community, perhaps based on a rental model with no entry fee and without medical care built into the fees. That concept seems to have dropped off the board’s agenda, given the issues surrounding disaffiliation. At any rate, there hasn’t been any further public discussion of the idea. I hope it hasn’t been totally dropped from consideration.

10. Rounding out the top 10 was a June post about “Evaluating Kendal’s take-out container options: plastic vs. single-use paper.” Its conclusion was that reuseable plastic containers save money and are better for the environment as long as they get used repeatedly over the course of many months (which, at Kendal, seems to be the case).

There were a lot of other interesting posts in 2023 (in my opinion) and you can explore them by clicking on the “Recent Posts” list when you open any post, then scrolling down to the section titled “Previous Posts”. There, you will find a link to a list of posts for each month.

Alternatively, you can click on the “Category” displayed above the title of each post. That will show you other posts in the same category (including posts from previous years).