Squeaked in my first update of the year

Got some updates served nice and hot for you — all thanks to several people who emailed me recently with links to articles etc. I hadn’t known about. No new cases, but ten updated ones and one resolved case. No fewer than SIX of them are murder-without-a-body cases.

(I got into a dispute online a few days ago with some guy who said nobody should be prosecuted for murder without the victim’s body. I got very angry about it, actually. I hadn’t realized I felt so strongly on the subject. After a few exchanges in the comments section of an article, I gave up talking to him because it was clear I would never be able to convince him. Oh, well.)

I look forward to the coming year of adding, updating and — best of all — resolving cases.

Mission?

It occurred to me that Charley does not have an official mission statement, and I wonder if it’s worthwhile to make one for the site. I suppose the Charley Project’s mission is to tell, as thoroughly as possible, the story behind each person’s disappearance, and publicize the cases. Is that worth stretching into an entire mission statement?

A happy New Year to you and yours.

Highlights of the year 2014

Here’s some of the cooler things that happened to me in the past year:

1. Rollo finally got deported to the armpit of Africa.
2. Y’all bought me a computer named Orville, whom I love and cherish.
3. I learned how to braid hair.
4. I began studying the Dutch language, using the really handy Duolingo app on my phone. I highly recommend Duolingo; it’s free and you can also learn Spanish, Portuguese, French, German, Italian, Irish Gaelic, Danish and Swedish. (Why did I choose Dutch? Simple: it’s supposed to be the easiest language for English speakers to learn.)
5. I donated dozens of books and one DVD to the library.
6. I had 25 entries run on Executed Today.
7. I read 185 books, slightly fewer than last year. That’s about one book every two days. I suppose that seems like a lot, but I read fewer books every year and am more than a little disturbed by this fact. There was a lot of true crime and history this year and comparatively little YA fiction or Holocaust stories.
8. I added 215 books to my “to read” list (not counting the books I added and then subsequently removed after I read them.) The list is currently 1,060 books long. Why do I get the feeling I will never catch up?