Skip to main content

Leaving Facebook

I have used Facebook for quite a few years now. My interactions fell into three categories:

  1. Seeing and reacting to posts of friends and acquaintances
  2. Sharing stories that I thought would be of interest to others. I've made a point of trying to double-source news from reputable sources or to state explicitly that the item had not been confirmed.
  3. Posting longer essays that I have written after long periods of dwelling on a given topic.
Now that I have left Facebook, the first item will need to be supplemented with other communications. I kept up with friends and loved ones before Facebook and expect to reinvigorate those atrophied muscles.

I do feel as if I still have something to contribute with the other two items, if only for an audience of one, myself. Most folk keep Facebook open long-term on their devices and so finding what I had posted was just a matter of catching upon it in the fire hose of other postings. Now readers will be required to work harder if they have any interest in seeing my thoughts and stories.

That places a burden on me to make it worth the effort for others to come to this page. The internet is still littered with blogs that died out after a few meager postings.  

So, I do commit to post at least one item of interest here each day until further notice.  There will be interruptions for travel, illness, etc., but as long as I am healthy and in a stable setting I will commit to posting here daily.

This is new for me. If you have enjoyed my writing in the past perhaps you can see fit to share it with others. If not, feel free to derogate it to others. 

Most important of all, if you happen to see something here of interest please comment so that this can become a dialogue and not a monologue. Monologues have their place, but this is not one of them.

So, let me end with what I should have begun with:  welcome. I'm glad you stopped by here.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Betrayal

I caught a student cheating on a final exam this morning. I had a line of sight on them and watched for ten minutes as they took their cellphone out of their pocket, kept it below their table, typed into it, read it, put it away, then wrote on the exam, repeating this cycle over and over again.  I was a bit surprised as the exam was open notes but this student had not attended many of our classes, just stopping by for exams, and I conjecture that they had no notes to open. I confronted the student who admitted that they had done wrong in an inarticulate non-confessional way. By the afternoon they had signed off on the honor code violation report to avoid further investigation and possible sanctions beyond failing the exam.  Is anger the right emotion to feel now? I had a working relationship with the student, although they had not contributed much to it. They had deceived me in order to gain unwarranted advantage over their peers in the class and that is not right. I don't wan...
1 comment
Read more

Standing Your Corner

I'm a long-term David Simon fan ever since I read his book "Homicide", detailing a year-long embedding with Baltimore homicide detectives. It was clear-eyed about all of the strengths and weaknesses, good reflexes and prejudices of everyone that he met.  I enjoyed the television show that followed that he wrote for, and then of course "The Wire" on HBO and a number of his other shows---only limited by my access to streaming services.  There was a histrionic moment in a later season of "Homicide" where he just let a character vent; a homicide detective who was part-owner of a bar frequented by cops watched a particularly violent drug criminal, responsible for many unsolved homicides, come into his bar with his associates, violating the detective's territory. The detective came around the bar holding a billy club in his hand and loudly discussed his first year as a patrol officer walking a beat. His supervising officer told him that he had a corner a...
Post a Comment
Read more

Car Accident

I was in a car accident a few days ago. There was a stopped car in the interstate and I didn't see it in advance; the car in front of me swerved into another lane and then there it was in front of me. I also swerved but damaged my commuter car, which is old and had many miles on it. The insurance company declared it a total loss.  The damage was where I scraped along the passenger side of my car (and the driver side of the stopped car). I had no deployment of airbags and no damage from my seat belt; no glass on either car broke, so it was a glancing blow if that makes sense. The front passenger wheel was damaged and I could not drive the car very far.  I pulled over to the shoulder and dialed 911. A state trooper made sure I was alright and proceeded to take care of the situation. I was moving slowly, aware that I had had a shock to my system and trying not to do anything to worsen the situation (stepping into traffic when I exited my vehicle, etc.) The trooper took my informa...
2 comments
Read more