“Everybody says you should have a blog. I don’t think I can blog,” I said to my husband at the breakfast table recently.

He looked up over the paper and asked, “Why not?”

“Well it’s all about opinion, and I don’t have any. Opinions, I mean.”

After he got up from rolling on the floor in laughter, he reminded me that I used to write op-ed pieces for the Baltimore Evening Sun. He also reminded me that I have a long list of people who will be executed when I become Sultan.

“I’m going to expose their heads on the city walls as horrible examples,” I said. “The guy who invented clamshell packaging for one. And the Unknown Caller who calls every afternoon at 1:30 when I’m taking a nap. But that’s not what I used to write about for the Sun. I used to write about terrorism. The topics I write about now are terrorism, money-laundering, the arms trade, and women’s rights. That’s heavy stuff to write about all the time. Or for readers to read about all the time.”

“Can’t you write about something else? After all you do have opinions on other things – like the guy who invented clamshell packaging.”

So I decided I’d give it a try. After all I’m certainly opinionated enough. I’ll be blogging once a week, on Monday, I think, so that I’ll have Sunday to write it. I’ll be writing about terrorism, money-laundering, women’s rights, the gun trade, and other heavy topics, but I’ll also be writing about the writer’s life, what it’s like to live in in a two hundred-year-old farmhouse, my husband’s conflict with machines, and anything else I can think of. I hope you’ll join me.

It’s going to be an adventure.