For the last two years, I have offered readers a recap of the most-viewed blog posts of the year just ending, and I am continuing that tradition.

Readership of “On the Kendal Journey” has grown steadily since the first post in March of 2020. There are now over 180 subscribers (the majority of whom are Kendal residents, but there are many others as well). There have been 32 posts this year—8 less than last year—and the number of views has been down slightly too. My attention (and perhaps the attention of potential readers) was diverted by the political events of the year.

This blog has just passed a major milestone: 200 posts. In honor of that, and in celebration of five years of blogging, I have included some of the “all-time” rankings along with the 2024 rankings below.

It is worth noting that some 2024 posts are so new that they may not have had a chance to accumulate enough views to reach the top 10. But I don’t think that has affected the list very much.

The top 10 for 2024. Somewhat surprisingly, the top three posts in terms of viewership this year were all published in previous years, and they had little to do with Kendal.

The #1 post this year had to do with temperature stratification: Is your floor too cold, but your ceiling is too hot? You have a stratification problem—and you’re not alone. This post received ver 500 views, many of them from other countries. That is a sign that winter-season temperature stratification (hot ceilings and cold floors) is a very widespread problem. This post, based on data from a temperature-sensing system that Charles Robertson devised, has been one of the top posts in each year since it was written in 2021. It ranks #1 on both the 2024 and the all-time list.

The #2 and #3 posts were both about coffee beans: What happened to Trader Joe’s Bay Blend coffee? and My choices to replace Trader Joe’s “Bay Blend” coffee beans. It’s surprising that these posts are still popular, given that these particular coffee beans were taken off the Trader Joe’s shelves back in 2021 (at least in our region). On the all-time viewership list, these two posts rank #1 and #5, respectively.

The rest of this year’s top 10 had to do either with retirement communities or with sustainability, two major topics of my blog. Except as noted, the following posts didn’t make the top 10 of the all-time list.

In the #4 slot for 2024 was Yes, CCRC residents do live longer than those who remain at home (at least in some CCRCs) This blog post describes a study of seniors who moved into retirement communities vs. those who chose to stay in their homes. Those who moved into CCRCs lived longer.

The #5 post was Withdrawing from Kendal Corporation: “it’s a business decision” This 2023 post, about the controversial decision to withdraw from Kendal Corporation, continues to draw a lot of readers. In addition to being #5 this year, it is #3 on the all-time list.

At #6 was a post about an important DuPont project that involved two of our residents, Jim Prober and Charles Robertson: Two Kendal residents played a key (but almost unknown) role in decoding the human genome. This is an interesting story that had gotten lost over the years, and there is almost no trace of it on the internet or in the many books about the human genome project. I hope this post will help revive the story and get it incorporated into some of the standard histories.

The post that came in at #7 was a guest post by Kendal resident Ann Congleton: What does Kendal at Longwood want to be? This post raises questions about some past decisions, and it suggests ways that Kendal’s history might help to guide future decisions. This was the only guest post to make the top 10 for this year.

Sustainability is an essential goal for our planet, and retirement communities need to figure out how to do their part. The #8 blog post provides one approach: What makes a good “sustainability plan” for a CCRC? Here is Piper Shores’ answer. Very few retirement communities have developed a comprehensive plan like the one described here, but every community will soon need to.

The #9 post doesn’t relate directly to retirement communities, but it does provide an important perspective on sustainability: Kenneth Boulding’s legacy: the economics of “spaceship earth”. This post from 2023 describes the contribution of the remarkable economist/philosopher/peace activist Kenneth Boulding to the study of planetary sustainability. How can the economic profession focus on a goal of permanent growth, when that is not possible on a finite planet? Boulding was among the first to point out this fallacy. This post appears at #7 on the all-time list.

Rounding out the top 10 is a post on Kendal’s rent increase for 2025: How does our 3% increase in monthly rent compare with other CCRCs? Kendal has done a good job of keeping costs down. It is tied for the lowest rent increase among a dozen CCRCs in our local area.

This was an interesting year for On the Kendal Journey, and I look forward to finding out what 2025 will be like.