You are a bunch of troublemakers... :)

You may have noticed a site slowdown at various times this week. My server tells me all the traffic and comments this site receives have created havoc for its entire system.

(This month, we will experience another personal best - over 70,000 unique visitors and 2.5 million hits.)

Tonight after 9p EST my server is transferring me to an isolated server. I don't understand much (any?) of this but want to give you a heads up. You may experience a few snags here tonight.

BTW, I've been watching the comment accumulation. We're nearing 95,000 total comments for the past 2.5 years. When we get close to 100k, I'll let you know. I'll give a prize and accolades to the 100,000th commenter!

Thank you all so much for reading and commenting on this blog. Special thanks to our moderators, Bethany, Jacque, Jasper, Lauren (currently "on leave"), MK, and Valerie, and proofreader Angela. These dear people devote untold hours here helping things run smoothly.

"Mahalo" means "thank you" in Hawaiian. And that's what I'd like to say to my moderators for ably filling in the gap while Rich and I vacationed there.

I enjoyed great peace of mind knowing Bethany, Jacque, Jasper, MK, and Valerie were at the blog helm.

I'd like to particularly thank Bethany and MK for being the glue and primary contributors.

Site stats didn't suffer in the least during the past 1.5 weeks, meaning everyone still tuned in during my absence for pro-life news and commentary. Mahalo to you readers and commenters for that as well.

We're on Day 3 of our Hawaiian vacation, and I thought I'd say aloha and show some photos.

If you don't watch Lost, you won't understand our photo montage. You may not understand it anyway.

It has been overcast and even rainy, but this development has merely spared us from having to make the tortured decision between bumming on the beach or seeing the sites. We've now travelled from top to bottom of the Big Island and today are scouting its interior. Tomorrow we head to the east side....

Photo 1: Help! We got on the wrong airline, Oceanic, and our plane crashed on a strange island! (Actually this is Jill on the edge of the Kilauea Caldera ("big crater"....)

Photo 2: Smoldering remains of the plane. (Actually, sulfur fumes still smoldering from the site's last volcanic activity in 1982....)

Photo 3: Word to the wise. Don't try looking in volcanic steam vents with your glasses on....

Photo 4: Fortunately, Rich found us an abandoned VW van....

Photo 5: This is a shot just before Rich drove us into the ocean, belatedly discovering nonworking brakes. (Actually, this is a mud road not intended for convertibles that Jill heroically but mistakenly thought we could negotiate on a hunt for an ancient Hawaiian site....)

Aloha! We're off on another big adventure. (It's 10:35a here now. Time to start the day.)

Aloha from Hawaii! My husband Rich and I (pictured right at the annual IL pro-life conference this past Sunday) are celebrating our 25th anniversary 2 years late (i.e., 27th... :)

We'll be gone until February 14. Meanwhile, the moderators will write posts. Bethany, bless her heart, will bear the brunt of my absence by taking over administrative responsibilities.

I'll check in every day, unless we decide to become beach bums and live here forever.

Meanwhile, I can't part without passing along this one, courtesy of Fran at Illinois Review, who also took our picture:

Blog friends Jacque, Jill, MK, and Sandy are together in DC to attend the March for Life. MK has blogged an activities update on DC I.

We're staying at Jill's daughter Daena's apartment, wonderfully located just 2 blocks from the White House but miniscule. Life is full of trade-offs, right?

So MK took photos of our "slumber party" last night - 5 chicks in a 425 sq. ft. space, 85 sq. ft. per person, not including luggage.

5 girls blogging...

(See more photos on page 2.)

Daena and Jill...

Jacque...

Sandy watching her Packers lose...

Just a portion of our stuff...

Us at the White House West Wing (L to R): Sandy, MK, Jacqueline, Jill.

Daena in White House Rose Garden with Oval Office over right shoulder.

(More photos on page 2.)

No tours beyond this point? Don't you know who we are?

Jill in White House Press Office preparing to interview the president.

Stay tuned for more live blogging from the 2008 March for Life or pictures of us if we can all agree what to post.

Who are these people?

Why, they are us, names you know well as participants in this blog, from left to right, starting with top row: Bethany, Amanda, Midnite, Doug, Rachael (and hubby), Will, Elizabeth (and daughter), and Carla!

Moderator Bethany has created a snapshots page of us all, linked in the "discussions" box on the right side of the home page. Email your photo to Bethany today!

Perhaps because I made a resolution last year and stuck to it, I'm high on resolutions.

I committed last January, after the Blogs4Life conference, to focusing on my blog, which I did, and thanks to all of you, traffic increased by 650%!

The blog also received nods from the Chicago Tribune and LA Times this year and more nyas than ever from pro-abort blogs.

God brought 6 invaluable moderators to help with the comment load this year - Bethany, Jacqueline, Jasper, Lauren, MK, and Valerie - and very recently brought proofreader Angela! Jasper additionally finds the quote of the day, which is a huge help....

Thank you to you all for a very successful year promoting pro-lifers and activities and shedding light on the notorious abortion industry!

I have a few pro-life resolutions for 2008: to continue to grow the blog, to consistently submit my columns to WorldNetDaily, and to tackle that book.

A personal resolution is to read the Bible in one year. I found a good One Year Bible a couple days ago at my local Bible book store that includes a section of the OT, NT, Psalms and Proverbs in each 15-minute daily reading. I like that variety. I have a chronological One Year Bible but always gave up a couple chapters into Leviticus.

And my final (public) personal resolution is to eat healthy and exercise this year. A month ago I mentioned starting The Maker's Diet, and I'm pleased to report I've lost 10 pounds. The author of TMD, Jordan Rubin, has just published a new book, Perfect Weight America, which I also purchased at my Bible book store the other day and have not been able to put down. After a lifetime of yo-yo dieting, I find Jordan has answers that click for me.

What about you? Would you like to commit to some resolutions or goals for 2008?

My friend Denise gave me a great idea. She emailed her verse for 2008, Proverbs 4:23:

Above all else, guard your heart, for it affects everything you do.

I had never considered choosing a verse of focus for the year but thought it was a great idea and picked II Peter 1:5-9, which is actually verses....

So don't lose a minute in building on what you've been given, complementing your basic faith with integrity; and to integrity add knowledge; to knowledge add self-control; to self-control add endurance; to endurance add godliness; to godliness add Christian affection; and to Christian affection add love, each dimension fitting into and developing the others.

With these qualities, no grass will grow under your feet, no day will pass without its reward as you mature in your experience of Jesus Christ. Without these qualities, you can't see what is right before you.

Mine is a long one, but the passage incorporates pretty much everything I want to focus on. I've been memorizing it for a couple weeks now and almost have it.

What about you? How about considering your verse for 2008? If you're not very experienced with the Bible, crack practically any of the Psalms and you're likely to find something good. Others may share their favorite verses for suggestions.

Or perhaps you have a favorite quote you'd like to live by this year. My favorite is by Gwendolyn Brooks:

Nevertheless, live. Conduct your blooming in the noise and whip of the whirlwind.

Just got a note from the Washington Times that it linked to my Hodari post today.

Thanks, WT!

Thanks to you, October saw this blog's biggest gain ever in visitors, resulting in its most trafficked month ever. We came thisclose to having 60,000 unique visitors (59,978 to be exact) and had 2.24 million hits. That's all hard for me to comprehend, and I think I'll get rattled if I try....

Helping maintain order is our Mod(erator) Squad, to whom I am inexpressibly indebted: Bethany, Jasper, Lauren, Mary Kay (MK), and Valerie. They spend as much time on the site as I do, and I appreciate them very much.

And awhile back Jasper took on the added task of finding the Quote of Day every day, which has also freed up my time. He does such a good job that I often tell him I'm converting the quote he found into a post, please find another!

At this time I'm pleased to announce the addition of another member of the Mod Squad, Jacqueline, who has added wit and wisdom to the site in the comments section for quite some time. I've also been bugging her to write some posts, so maybe you'll see her authoring as well as commenting soon. Welcome, Jacqueline!

Other odds and ends

Reader and commenter Rosie took this picture at the October 27 pro-life rally at the Aurora Planned Parenthood of Stanek site bloggers (l to r) Rosie, MK, Kristen, PL Laura and various and sundry children:

Finally, I'm told if you go to BottRadioNetwork.net Saturday at 7:30a or 2:30p, Sunday at 6a or 3p, or Monday at 2p (all times CST), you can hear an interview I taped with Mr. Bott about my column this week, "Inside Planned Parenthood."

Thanks again to all of you for visiting and participating on this blog, dedicated to advancing the sanctity of life.

UPDATE, 4:10p: Dan, a commenter from the other side, has reminded me I owe thanks to the pro-choice commenters (I'll not call you pro-aborts just this once to be nice) for stimulating the conversation, which is absolutely true. We do appreciate reading what you have to say. Iron sharpens iron, as Solomon said. And, hey, stick around long enough, and we'll win you over.

I received this email today from Nicole:

Jill,

I saw your website from a link on another blog, which (of course) took your comment out of context.

Anyway I'm glad it brought me to your site because I like the discussion that I saw in the comment section.... Unlike a lot of other sites where people insult others and pass judgment (I get very upset with people just revert to insults), I saw that most people on your site were respectful and intelligent in their comments, and it made me want to participate....

I'm a teacher, so I'm very used to discussion containing wide ranges of opinion. To me it's a big turnoff if all people do is mud-sling and "I'm right your wrong...end of discussion."

So, thanks for reading my comment [on "Fighting liars with fires"]. I'll check back in the posts often, and make my future comments more relevant to the actual post. I really appreciate the time you take to personally read the comments on your site. It shows that you are very dedicated....

What we all need is honest intelligent discussion on these controversial subjects and your site is a good example of this. I have sympathy for both sides of the isle.... I try not to be judgmental of anyone for their beliefs or opinions, but that's not to say that the things like what you described don't make me upset....

Our world is filled with entirely too much death and destruction. Any assault on a life, in my mind, is an assault on humanity. If only I could wake up one day and there would be no more wars, famine, or violence....

Nicole was mostly right, although she has missed a few of our whopper arguments... :)

Kudos to you highly intelligent, witty commenters on both sides of the abortion issue, and I have to say thanks again to the Mod(erator) Squad for maintaining order when need be and writing excellent pro-life apologetics. You are all read by many, many lurkers who digest your thoughts.

Speaking of, the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People thought for yesterday is timely:

The end of an argument or discussion should be, not victory, but enlightenment. ~ Joseph Joubert

This is why I have no qualms letting abortion proponents freely debate here, btw. Truth always prevails.

I am pleased to announce the addition of three new moderators on the blog to work beside our experienced aces, Bethany and MK.

You all know Jasper, Lauren, and Valerie. They have been loyal, reliable, and astute commenters for some time, and they have all agreed to come on board as moderators, for which I am very appreciative.

It's not that the crowd has grown too rough for Bethany and MK to handle alone.

It's that it has grown too big, a good problem. Traffic to the site has increased more than 300% since January, now over 30,000 unique visitors a month. And in August we reached a milestone of 1 million hits for the month.

Thanks to all for your interest and participation in this blog. Your comments make it such an interesting and informative read.

And thanks to Bethany, Jasper, Lauren, MK, and Valerie for moderating. It takes quite a bit of time and energy.

In addition, Jasper has agreed to scout out each day's quote of the day, which will be a big help. Thanks to him for that, too.

This question is for abortion proponents:

Would you mind if an abortion clinic located in your neighborhood?

Last week Prolifeblogs.com was hit by 1 million spam attempts. Yes, 1 million.

Well, this week it's our turn. You may have noticed the site was slow yesterday. A few of you even commented on it.

I contacted my server, Hosting Matters, last night, and was told the attack on my site was actually causing problems for their entire system. The technical support agent said all we can do is "continue to hold things together until the storm dies down."

So, thanks in advance for your patience. This comes with our territory. Know that ace moderators MK and Bethany are doing their best to delete your multiple posts, one of the consequences of the storm. It's not your fault, so no need to apologize. But we're also having trouble accessing the administrative end of things, so there may be a slight delay.

I posted August 2 I had to moderate comments, i.e., force people to sign in, due to a spike in spam comments I was receiving - 500 to 1,000 a day.

Behind the scenes my server and moreso my kind and patient friend Tim from ProLifeBLogs.com have been working to upgrade my site with software and stopgaps to halt the spam. (One interesting find: 155,000 spam comments my software had automatically saved as "junk" of which I was unaware. No wonder things were bogging down a bit.)

Tim completed the additions and changes last night, so I have dumped that aggravating authentication process once again, which kept many willing commenters off due to its own glitches.

All can once again post freely. Thanks for your patience.

Spam comments to my site have gotten out of hand this week for some reason. They've been coming in at a faster and faster rate, but suddenly I'm getting 500-1,000 a day. Bless her heart, moderator Bethany is trying to delete them and can't physically keep up.

I'm sorry to have to put the site in authentication mode, meaning you'll have to sign in before posting. When I do this, comments drop, and I hate that. That said, signing in should be a one time deal once every two weeks.

If you run into trouble signing in, please email me at jillstanek@comcast.net.

Thank you for your patience. Your comments, each and every one, are valuable. I appreciate your taking the extra time to publish your thoughts.

I posted a month ago that our daughter Daena had graduated from college and was looking for a job in DC. (She majored in political science and French.) Well, she did get the job she was after, working for an undisclosed elected official. So we are moving her to DC this week, to an incredibly small apartment with incredibly high rent.

We're looking forward to watching the 4th of July fireworks from the slope of the Washington Monument in our nation's capital (!), and then Rich and I will return home Thursday.

So I won't be posting anything until Friday, although I'll be checking in.

I'm leaving comments open, and Bethany and Mary Kay (MK), the site moderators, are in charge. You can contact them at their email addresses in the right column, if you have any obnoxious comments (i.e., threatening, blasphemous, gutter) to report, etc.

Have a great 4th!

Turns out my site was out of space! This was actually a good problem, indicative of the jump in activity since the first of the year, due in large part to your participation, which has made this a much more interesting place to visit.

I've upgraded with my server, rebuilt the site, and things look good! Yeah! Sorry again for the inconvenience. Thanks to Peter and Tim for dropping many things to help me yesterday.

Since 11:00 a.m. yesterday morning, my blog has been acting up. You can comment on all but the "Virgin challenge" post. I'm turning comments off this post, because if you tried to do so you'd get a blank white screen.

I'm sorry about this. Two kind website-building friends, my server, and my software company are all involved in trying to get to the bottom of the problem. I'm pretty worthless on this sort of thing.

We (by that I mean my web guru, Peter) have been making improvements to the blog the last few weeks, most undetectable. We experimented with one poll type last week, and today we're trying another, which you'll see on the right, under the "quote of the day" box.

Also, they're official! Bethany and Mary Kay (MK) have agreed to serve as my blog moderators. You'll also see them listed on the right under the poll box. If you spot an out-of-line comment or have questions, please email Bethany or MK by clicking on their names. I very much appreciate their help with this growing blog.

October is a big banquet month for pro-life groups, and I appreciate your patience as I travelled extensively speaking last month and just couldn't do it all, which meant I had to forego blogging.

I met hundreds of pro-lifers and spoke to thousands more. If pro-lifers only understood how vast our U.S. network is, we'd become more assertive in our demands to stop abortion.

Of course, liberals and the mainstream media would have us believe we're in the minority, but I'd like to see them gather large groups of abortion supporters in literally every county, city, and town of America like pro-lifers do. They can't.

The abortion strongholds are urban areas. But even those living in big cities aren't necessarily abortion proponents; they just abort more.

This brings me to one of the higher points of my travels (and every stop last month was literally a memorable high point), and that was attending Michigan Right to Life's Urban Outreach Seminar.

I have had a growing awareness that pro-lifers must focus on big cities. We will not only succeed in the point of it all: cutting down on the number of abortions in the places where most abortions are committed, we will also succeed in organically growing more pro-life legislators. Most liberal legislators come from big cities.

MI RTL has created a compelling powerpoint presentation called, "The Life of a People," which outlines the destruction of the black community due to abortion. (51% of blacks live in urban areas, as opposed to 21% of whites.)

You can view a cut from that presentation on MI RTL's website. MI RTL also has established an office in Detroit, which is where the Urban Outreach Seminar was held.

Do you have a large city near you? Don't give up on it. It is a field white unto the harvest. Discuss with your pro-life group your responsibility to bring the truth about abortion to that city. Contact Kathy Crombie at MI RTL's Detroit office at 248-553-8800 or kbcrombie@rtl.org for ideas and to purchase "The Life of a People."

P.S. Thanks for your concern and prayers for my mother-in-law. She is comfortable.

Welcome to Day #1 of jillstanek.com — an oft-updated blog dedicated to the latest pro-life scoops, tips, news, and analysis!