Fare Thee Well, Summer

This picture, 'Spider Says Good-bye to Summer' is about endings.

Unlike Spider I'm not saying good-bye but I am saying that I probably won't be as active on my blog as I have been.

The reason is that I have started a new page on face book called 'Francie McGlynn Art'.  It is allowing me to post my pictures and follow other artists from around the world.  Unfortunately I'm simply running our of time.

I'll check in with everyone when I can and I'm not closing down a North End Journal because I've learned these things wax and wane and by next summer I may be back here posting five times a day.

:)

I'm off to Ottawa this week-end for a National Remembrance Day that may be very, very different from anything we've seen before.

Freedom, especially for women, has never seemed so precious.

Till next time,

Francie

Grounded in Merritton

A now-abandoned lock of the Second Welland Canal in Merritton, Ontario. The photo shows the previous location of one of the two lock gates. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)


A few weeks ago I mentioned that I had started a new blog

about my hometown Merritton, Ontario

 http://www.slabtowncanada.blogspot.com 

and was hoping to inspire others Merritton people to blog

their stories about  the old town.

 

On one hand I haven't been very successful.  I didn't realize

that blogging is a unique  form of writing to which not all people

can  adapt.

On the other hand the face book group that I set up to go along

with the blog is becoming quite popular.  More and more folks

are connecting with long lost friends and the "do you remember

when ..." conversations are long and always amusing.

 

Old photos are coming out of albums and being posted for

everybody to see. 


People we've lost are being mourned.

 

It has given me a feeling of being grounded. 

Of belonging.

 

I'm still hoping to round up more bloggers but for now

I'm one happy Cave Springs* camper!




* Cave Springs was the name of the camp a

lot of Merritton kids went to in the summer




***

Jahvoll Mein Herr Google+

Google 貼牌冰箱（Google Refrigerator） (Photo credit: Aray Chen)

I am so sorry I signed onto Google+.

And I feel even worse now that I understand my signing

on means that my old blog buddies have to set up a Google+

profile to comment on my blog.

 

Joining Google+ is easy enough. 

You segregate your online contacts into circles called 'friends',

'acquaintances' or 'family'. 

Presumably 'family' is where you put anyone who is extremely

annoying.

 

Anyway -  that part is like a false front on a building.

 

Behind the scenes things seem rather manipulative, i.e., I keep

getting messages from Google+ that people I have never followed

are 'following me back' and then of course I feel obligated to add

them to my circles.

 And you can quickly lose control of what is happening to your blog site.

Example:

Sometime in the last week or so bossy Google+ took over

a North End Journal from its parent, user friendly Google.

No comments come to me except through them now.

 

It feels like being in a face book forced labour camp.

What I'm saying is that I did not, to my knowledge give

Google+ permission to go into Blogger and make such

 

changes on my blog.

I don't like Google+ and my advice is to stay away.

***

Your News Ain't My News

Great TED talk about what Google and Face Book aren't telling us.

Creepy though.

Authentic Old White Woman

There are a lot of evil-looking, bloated things floating to the surface during this election campaign.


Much of it alarms me and for what it is worth I do find myself making outraged tweets and posting blogs every few days.



But on twitter I usually feel a lot like my family's late, much loved, old beagle.


Banjo liked to think he was in the thick of things.

If bigger, younger dogs were roughhousing, he would bark and run along beside them pretending to himself that he was part of the action.



I post the same things I say on twitter to face book, but I have a completely different feeling about it, mainly because on fb more people read my blogs.

Worse still, people I know read my blogs.

The result is that while I feel like a non-player on twitter, on face book I feel like a political zealot, a crazed Louis Riel raving away at the Federal government issuing fatwahs every second day and I always suspect that people think that I have gone over the edge.



I worry about that.

A lot.

Probably more than I should.



This morning I read Geezeronline's blog about being authentic.

http://geezeronline.blogspot.com/



Heaven knows most women spend their lives trying to please other people - unless they are as rich as Oprah or on anti-depressants in which case they don't give a flying fig about anything.

(Speaking from past experience.)



I guess a benefit of being an old white woman with no addictions at present other than blogging, is that I can be authentic, (online anyway), and say what I really think.



If I could just get rid of my guilt for daring to say it ...