I remember an elder saying , " you know you have reached the status of an 'elder' when you think the world is going to Hell in a hand cart". Yes. Well. Just go into your local big box store and ask where the hand carts are.
One of my current grievances is Pinterest.
Yes, I know, it is fun and interesting and actually very useful in my business. But I think our blogs are suffering because some of our key blog community contributors are AWOL to the P.
I get it. I do. I have a board. I even have a blog with strictly visual content.
But I miss the blog
writers well ... writing. And commenting, And arguing. And thinking.
I read somewhere the largest growing segment in publishing is graphic novels. I find this disturbing. Like reading "we" are no longer teaching
cursive writing in our public schools because of the use of "devices".
Most of us mastered cursive writing in third grade. Now this skill has been classified as "obsolete". A waste of time. A non -essential subject.
Is reading next? Students are no longer
reading the classics. Now our students are
viewing Shakespeare from graphic novels and cartoons. A teacher friend says the current generation of "learners" are saturated with visual stimuli from birth onward. Now "visual learning" has become the new norm.
My elder view of this is not positive.
Are our blogs going the way of Shakespeare and cursive?
This trend to blog less and pin more disturbs me. Blogging is an awesome form of communication. I do not actually "know" the people I blog with regularly but I do know their importance to me. Even those with whom I disagree on key issues, I still want to understand the path to their positions. To quote my Dad, understanding the "why of a thing" is how progress is made.
Once, we had our very own form of graphic communication.
Mute Mondays. It was how I came to join this blog community.
First I sort of lurked around visiting all the MM posts leaving comments as an anonymous participant. Eventually one of you recognized me as a stalker and challenged me to get in it. I am still glad I did!
Our current game is Haiku Monday .
I like this game. I like the players too.
Some of us play a visual version of this game, others do not.
Both are good games. But. The elder in me still misses Mute Mondays.
Especially the Mondays where the subject spawned written posts.
I am not particularly interested in pinned boards of cute chihuahuas doing cute chihuahua things. I am interested in watching the impact of Henry on Boxer's pack and her life in general. Yes a 2.5 pound tiny creature did change the life of an entire family. Charmingly I might add. I would not know what I know about Henry, Coco, Micky or Lucy from a Pinterest board. Nor would I know the progression of fabricating a driftwood chandelier or running a plastics production plant.
I can happily look at pictures of fruits and veggies but it does not mean the same to me as reading about and seeing what happens in the gardens of Chickory. Had Chickory not
written her posts about chickens in the gardens or teaching dogs not to eat chickens or trample veggies or how to sky rocket the hawks away from her flocks, or life within the gray truck empire would we be engaged in this life story?
Unlikely.
What would we all have missed?
Speaking of missing.
How do you suppose we would feel if one by one our blogs went missing?
Right.
There's going to be a run on hand carts.
A wisp of ether
wafts o'er moss draped emptiness.
The net burn'd master!
