1. If you pay attention much to things happening in social media, you probably know that Twitter is going through some upheaval since Elon Musk took it over. For several years now, for me, Twitter has been a valuable source of ideas and insights. I follow quite a few contributors in the worlds of cinema, photography, baseball, college basketball, politics, social analysis and other areas who have expanded my thinking, helped me sort out questions that I wrestle with, and helped keep my perspectives fresh. Yes, I read snarky, smug, sarcastic posts on Twitter, and, yes, I read too much trolling, but I can zoom past this stuff and keep my eyes out for quality posts and threads.
Right now, things at Twitter are in flux. Several of the people I follow are migrating away from Twitter and looking elsewhere online for platforms for discussions.
A new emerging platform is called Post. It's in its beta stage. I decided a few weeks ago to put my name on the Post waiting list and today I joined.
I'll continue to post my 3BTs on Twitter and I'll continue to read those contributors I follow who are continuing to post at Twitter. I'll also be trying to figure out which of the people I value at Twitter now have opened accounts at Post. (By the way, Post is not the only alternative to Twitter that people are joining, but, for now, I'm going to divide my time between Post and Twitter.)
I considered my first day on Post a success. Two different people read my 12-15-22 blog post and decided to follow me on Post and they both wrote kind comments about beef stroganoff and one of these people told me they have here in the Silver Valley.
2. When I signed up for Post today, the form included a place to write a description of myself. It's a way of letting other people on Post get a peek into why I'm on this platform.
I wrote: "Looking to fill in the gaps . . ."
My knowledge and understanding of things going on in the United States and elsewhere is very limited.
Two developments in my life have created gaps I'm always looking to fill in.
First, I retired.
I've loved retirement. I knew when I retired that I'd be created gaps in my life because I wouldn't be having daily conversations with friends I taught with nor with the students in my classes.
In my work, I valued the great conversations I had with people I worked with. Some of us dined together. Russell and I shot pictures together. Other faculty friends and I talked regularly over coffee. I met regularly with a group of guys over beers. Our shared interests, yes, included our work in the classroom, but these friends helped expand my perspective on countless other interests we shared.
My conversations with fellow faculty were both intellectual and personal. We were always in the process of working out ideas and exploring new territories, and, at the same time, we talked with each other about family life, relationships, our health, aging, and an array of other personal matters. All of these conversations helped me fill in gaps about things I was ignorant about or helped strengthen my understanding of things I knew a thing or two about.
Not working with students has opened different gaps in my life. Because I taught writing and literature courses, it was, at least in the way I approached these courses, inevitable that students wrote about things going on in their lives. I don't read or hear their stories any longer. Over the years, I learned about the pressures of poverty, the impact of verbal and physical violence in the home, the chaos brought on by drug addicted and drug dealing parents, the humiliations of working as dancers in "gentlemen's" clubs; I learned how oppressive and damaging unrelenting strictness in the home can be, how and why it becomes intolerable for some to live as a man and so begin the process of becoming a woman (and vice versa), and I learned more than I had ever known about the day to day lives of LGBTQ people in my classes, some from their writings, others from our conversations. I learned about what my students endured as loggers, CNAs, servers, cooks, dishwashers, and bartenders in restaurants and bars, and a wide range of other jobs. I learned about why some of my students loved guns and loved to hunt and learned from others who quit hunting and turned to photography. And there was a lot more.
(You might think that from reading the paragraph I just wrote that my writing courses had some kind of political or social problem focus. They didn't. My writing courses focused on philosophical questions:what is happiness? what does it mean to live well? what is beauty? what is a self-examined life? what is the meaning of work? These questions led students to write about and want to talk about a wide array of experiences, many of them far outside my own.)
I try to fill the gaps left by not being a faculty member and not working with students by reading people's stories and insights online. Twitter has been good for this -- we'll see about Post.
I wrote that two developments in my life have opened gaps in my life.
The second development involves our decision to move to Kellogg five years ago.
I'm an Episcopalian and the Silver Valley where I now live can no longer sustain a parish. For years, both Kellogg and Wallace had Episcopal churches, but over the years the Espiscopal Church wilted and now the closest Episcopal Church is St. Luke's in CdA.
Until I decided back in March 2020 to spend most of my time at home, I had been driving over to CdA to worship about two or three times a morn to worship at St. Luke's. I'm cautious about driving over to CdA in the winter, but surely there will be Sundays that will feel safe.
I especially miss being in an Episcopal Church in the Advent season and for Christmas Eve services.
I'm not looking to Twitter or Post or anything else online to fill this gap.
I can't kneel at the Communion rail and partake of the Eucharistic bread and wine online and that's the gap I feel most acutely, especially at Christmas time.
3. Ed swung by around 4:45 and we headed up to the Elks for Friday night burger night. I hadn't been out for nearly three weeks and I'm still not in the mood for drinking alcohol, but I sure enjoyed my burger, fries, and 7 Up. The Elks hall was packed with people I know! Jake and Carol Lee, Tim and Cindy, Bucky and Debbie, Maxine, Wanda, Phil, and Dale. I saw Marty and Kim across the room. Normally, Ed and I would hop across the street for a drink at The Lounge, but we decided to call it night once we finished our burgers and I settled into watching Marquette thump the steeply sliding Creighton Bluejays, 69-58.
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