New accounts/dead bodies in These titles mean nothing.

I almost opened a new account in Facebook today. I haven’t been able to get into my old one since I got my new computer and lost the old one’s memory of my password. I have had mixed feelings about Facebook - in fact I still have them - so for every reason to be there there is another almost equal and opposite reason now to be there. Besides it’s a lot of work.

You see the email account my Facebook account is attached to is my first email account at Yahoo for heaven’s sake. And I haven’t had a password for that account in maybe ten years.

Think of the dead bodies we leave on line. Think of all the photos that Photobucket, to quote a friend, holds hostage. Think of dear old Open Diary which I at one time got myself back into but can no longer access. The code they gave me is in .... oh God I have no idea. I suppose I could beg for a a new code to get in - Open Diary did come back and I think it’s still here....

It’s funny. We live so much of our lives online. I love the internet in general, my friends in particular. Some of you reading this have known me longer and better than almost anyone in my life. I really value my life here. I like the availability of the communication that’s here.

But.

I have this long string of lost people. I could make a list and some of you might remember some of them. It gets hard to describe people in a way that other people can recognize. I suppose that’s partly because we show ourselves differently and we see others differently. In the end - which may or may not be close - we are left without own memories.

%@!&@ - that’s my zip code with the shift button held down.

Did you ever want to be a spy? Or write spy novels? Or any kind of novels?
I was just imagining heaven this morning - I was imagining authors at table signing their books. I wondered who’d have the longest lines. There might be a New Yorker cartoon in that idea.

I have the email address of the editorial page editor of The Gazette. I might write to him. He’s a nice man. I have intended to write about The Gazette for the last few montaths. They have cut back on their printed edition. It comes three days a week now. It’s on line but I haven’t tried to read it there. They send extra puzzles in the print editions - no doubt popular with their demographic but still they are kind to do it. All newspapers are struggling. For a bushel basket full of good and bad reasons.

I need to take stuff to the dump. My cans and glass and sacks of newspapers. Back when I was doing my hundred trips up and down my cellar steps I had wanted to clean out both basement rooms - the laundry and the furnace rooms. Each had a pile of stuff left from furnace and other installations. I though it would be easy stuff to get rid of, and I though the extra room would make both those rooms more useful and more attractive. One hundred trips and walks through both rooms a day gave me a connection to them and made me see how they could be nicer.

It’s funny. How we live in a house. How we live, period. It changes. There are times we appreciate different things. Times we have hopes and ambitions. Times we abandon them.

Among the books in my bed, are two (sometimes three) that I write in. One is nicely made, bound book with writing prompts, 100 of them, one per page of nicely ruled light green paper. I’ve had it for a while, years in fact. I started and quit and started and quit and now I’d like to finish it. Today I wrote in it. I was going to tell you what I wrote, but I can’t remember.

Another book is one of premiums Wisconsin Public Radio sent me, a set of nicely bound little notebooks . They sent me half a dozen, they must like me too. I have one here on the kitchen table. It has pale green cover and a Wisconsin Publie Radio chain of logos each in a circle, top to bottom, a sailboat on a lake, a home with a tree, a forest, a farm with a silo, a cityscape.... and the words: Inspired Informed Connected

The one in my bed is for letters. Dave Ramsy acolyte John Deloney is always having people write letters - to themselves in the past and in the future, to family members, to lost loves, to just about anyone. Most he says not to send, sometimes he tells you to read the letter to the person… so I suppose it’s not like a bomb in their lives. So I’ve written to my dead relatives, to my old school teachers, to famous people I admire, to my authors at their desks in the afterlife signing copy and copy of their books.

One of the troubles with my handwritten stuff is that it gets so hard to read. Sometimes I try and it becomes a lesson in decoding - like the spies we wish we were. Often context helps, and I always feel good when I figure out a hard word.

I have written millions of words. I’ve typed and scratched and scribbled. I’ve gotten satisfaction from the act of stringing words together. If it’s gone, it’s gone. We live in the moment. In this eternal moment. It’s good that it will not come again.

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It’s a gray day. If yesterday got to 80 I didn’t experience it, I stayed in the house and my houses among other things holds temperatures - it takes it a few days to get hot or cold when the weather changes. It’s insulated with time.

Jim’s gone to town to bring home a load of hay from the hay auction. There seems to be a surplus of hay this year for unknowable reasons. Ed the Herford bull has been free ranging. He is a sweete creature. Some of his first babies should be popping out soon. Maybe some of the black white face cows will have red babies. I like red babies. I smile as I type those words.

Have a good day my friends. Life is a gift. Or is it? Maybe it’s something we purchase. Still maybe even more we should appreciate it.

Would be nice if I could clear off the table.

Bye, for now.