“They were watching, out there past men’s knowing…”

They were watching, out there past men’s knowing, where stars are drowning and whales ferry their vast souls through the black and seamless sea.
― Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West

I was testing out Youtube Live the other week, looking to see what had changed from the Hangouts on Air that we used to use to record video chats for ds106. I noticed something surprising in my video list: the Blood Meridian discussion Jim and I did had been viewed over 800 times.

This was shocking because almost all of my viewership is in the single digits, unless it’s something for ds106 where I might get two dozen views. Jim blogged about the discussion which certainly raised the visibility of it, but still, it seems a crazy number of views.

My guess is that people google for information on the book for lit classes, and our video comes up. It’s a top ten result when I look up “blood meridian discussion,” which I find hard to accept. Maybe students were trying to get around reading it, or maybe they wanted help in understanding it. Maybe they’re looking for ideas for essays and discussions of their own. Maybe, hopefully, my meager attempts as being open helped a few people out. I hope no one got an F because of us.