Addendum: You might want to begin with this.

As for why the gray screen appears, I don’t know. I’ve been in communication with BlueHost technicians many times, both by e-mail and by telephone. They say that my archive is too big and that certain queries are taking a long time. I had no idea what “queries” meant in this context, but a technician told me today that whenever a spammer tries to post a comment on my blog, it slows everything down. I told him that I never allow spam comments to appear. Each day, I delete a handful of spam comments when I go to my blog for the first time. It doesn’t matter, he said; the mere attempt to post spam, even if it never appears on my blog, slows things down.

That did it. I want to allow readers to comment, but if I do, I risk making the blog inaccessible. You would think that there’s a simple solution to this problem, but no technician suggested one. WordPress is no help. I don’t think I’ve ever been in touch with anyone from WordPress. I don’t pay anything for the blog and therefore can’t complain about it when things go wrong. As for BlueHost, it’s a hosting company, not a blog company. The BlueHost technicians have bent over backward to help me, so far as I can tell.

It’s time to move. I should have no trouble with spam comments on TypePad, and there are technicians available 24 hours a day to help me. I’ve already had many of my questions answered. I signed up for premium service, which is $299.50 per year. That’s $24.95 per month, which, to me, is nothing. I love blogging. I apologize in advance for the inconvenience of having to reset your bookmarks, shortcuts, or favorites, as well as for having to learn a new system of posting comments. Keep telling yourself that change is good!

Addendum: Shortly before composing this post, I turned off the comment function. That should prevent spammers from slowing things down. Alas, it will also keep you from posting comments. When you go to the new blog tomorrow, you should be able to figure out how to post comments. Someone please let me know whether there’s an anti-spam mechanism in place, e.g., one of those boxes with skewed letters that must be typed in. Please remember my policy of requiring full names. Only my friend Peg gets to use her first name. That is because she is an exceptional person.

Addendum 2: I’m not the only one having CPU problems, evidently. Maybe BlueHost isn’t so innocent, after all.

Re “Change Germans Can’t Believe In” (Op-Ed, July 26):

Being German, I have to disagree with Susan Neiman: Change we can believe in.

Although we think that it is out of place for us to support one American candidate more than the other, for we do not have a vote, there is indeed a lot of enthusiasm for Barack Obama here.

We fiercely hope that with him, the trans-Atlantic relationship will evolve into a friendship again. Nevertheless, we try not to be too optimistic, because we are not entirely sure if Americans define the word “friendship” the same way we do.

Friendship implies equality. Ms. Neiman’s statements that President Ronald Reagan’s hosts in Berlin “saw his speech as a tiresome bit of American naïveté” for “they had made their peace with a structure they thought would last forever” makes me think that we are still far from being equal partners.

Germans are becoming more self-confident. We do not want to build our relationship with the United States on a debt of gratitude only. In fact, we might actually take Mr. Obama at his word and use the chance to choose our “own tomorrow free from the shadows of yesterday.”

Katharina Thalmann
Germersheim, Germany, July 26, 2008

Note from KBJ: Germany will be our equal when it assumes responsibility for its own defense. (Somebody find an Internet site that shows how much Americans spend to defend Germans.)

Addendum: Here are comments on Kristof’s column.

Addendum: Here is Frank at work. Here is Frank in earlier days. My favorite song on the album is “Cruising Altitude,” but I can’t find it on YouTube.