Social Media, What is it good for?

There is a storm outside and there is a storm inside me. Everyday I log into social media sites much the way an addict practices addiction. Compulsively, with enthusiasm trailed by regret. More than a dozen times a day, I pick up my phone and make my way through my different accounts.

It's dark out all the time now, we've been through a tough fall, my husband getting used to a new job, all of us mourning the suicide of our daughters boyfriend, Paris on lock-down. White people are outraged. I watch it on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

News through the filter of Facebook is contrived, let alone the media itself is so very skewed by revenue. The honest truth is that I feel better when I avoid social media all together. When I can search out information on my own, read an article or two, not just skim the headlines in my feed. I'm doing it, you're doing it. We're selling ourselves short. Facebook makes us shallow and vain.

I think it's preferable to develop ones own opinions based on facts from multiple sources rather than from the biggest group think exercise ever. Somehow the Facebook algorithm only shares news about certain topics and this troubles me. I feel like difficult subjects are less likely to be seen. I posted a Guardian article this morning and didn't get a single like. Had I posted a photo of my daughter as a baby I would have received a lot. Facebook seems to train us to share certain content by rewarding us with likes.

It is better for me to do and keep doing, rather than do, broadcast, and then check-in relentlessly to see who has approved of my doings. It's a sad empty feeling and more and more I find myself staring longingly at my device, wishing for something to happen, instead of making something happen. Constantly comparing yourself to others can be destructive and time consuming.

Overall I am trying to check in less and when I have the urge to look at my phone that is a cue for me to refocus on my work or pick up my knitting or reading. Sometimes I succeed and other days I fail, some days I bargain.

Is it all bad? Personal development done privately in quiet spaces is ideal but one cannot ignore the aspirational qualities of social media, and like it or not it exists in our society. Does this make us falsely more cautious about how we represent ourselves, or do those representations stand up as a higher view of our selves, an ideal to work toward.

I hope for the latter.

I believe strongly in the importance of daily exercise. I walk 3 miles each day, up and down my rural road. I often record observations of those daily walks to use as markers to myself and also to help inspire others in their daily practice of movement. This is one of the positive aspects of a site like Instagram, building connection and community through the use of common hashtags. In this way we connect to others and this is beneficial for creatives I believe.

I live in a place of tremendous natural beauty, I enjoy documenting my surroundings. These photos are a record and also a clue to what I am reacting to in my environment and why. Occasionally I make a good picture and I genuinely want to share it with others whose opinion matters to me.

These days, I use Facebook less and less. I rarely type in a status update any longer for fear of the resulting sidebar ads. It's bad enough that my search histories reflect what appears in my news feed.  

Instagram is charming and easy and a picture is worth a thousand words. I find the feed inspiring and my own feed has become a great archive of my daily activities which I find useful for seeing my progress. Plus, I care about posting interesting well composed photos as a part of my #dailypractice. More and more I see social media as a great archive and record of my state of mind and that is actually a useful tool for me. I look back and see difficult moments represented in photos and written clues. When I first used Facebook I suppose I might have been more direct (although restrained, as I was trained to be in public) in my expression of my feelings about things that were happening in my life. Life changes of course and I can see how my relationship to social media as it develops as a norm within our culture is changing as well.  The creepy algorithm that directs what Facebook presents to me is troubling but I accept that it exists, so I use it cautiously.

There was a time I thought I could go without social media altogether but I must be honest, there is a tiny voice in me that wants to shout out to the other humans in the universe now and then, you never know what you will get back. The feeling of being connected to others is affirming. We are all going through similar life challenges.

Moderation and self reflection go a long way when faced with how to interact with social media. This experiment whose effects—developing for a decade now—will be felt and discussed for a long time. In my opinion it is an interesting tool but it's not the whole universe. Ok, better get this on Twitter...

Sketchbook Project Completed

 

The book is a journal of my daily walk. 

And what it feels like to be 49.

  

Thinking about the past.

Keeping an eye on nature.

 

Trying to stay grounded. 

What I think about when I walk.

And the things I see.  

 

And the way I have structured my life in an attempt to be creative. 

 

Front and back ready for packing. 

 

Ready for stamps!

Now that it is done, such as it is. I keep feeling like I want to look at it again and then I remember
it is packaged and going away. It's a strange sensation. Freeing perhaps. If you get a chance to
go and see it as it travels around the US, please let me know how it's behaving with the other
wee books.

Fuel

All summer long I meant to get firewood but then some other item would come up that needed resources thrown at it and here I am in the final days of November with no firewood. Not no firewood, but challenging firewood and I am in desperate need of uncomplicated firewood. I used to spend a lot of time cutting and splitting firewood and I was stronger 18yrs ago than I am today, this is the truth. I looked online for sellers and scoured the local boards at the grocery and feed-store. Nothing. I put a plea on Facebook and got nothing. My brother who lives in a similar way to me noted in the comments that he was working on next years firewood. He is the Ant to my Grasshopper. Inspired, I went out and chopped some wood I had had laying out in the open. It's wet but a few weeks under cover and it might be burnable. The cedar rounds were very dry after the long rainless summer we had. It's beautiful wood.

The work is hard. Swinging the maul overhead, letting it fall. Sometimes it pierces the wood exposing a clean fault and other times it bounces off in a spray of water. I worked for under an hour and noted how weak I felt. Certainly if I did this more often I would get stronger. After I had split a few wheelbarrow loads I went back to my desk and I must say the physical exertion really cleared my head. Later in the afternoon I walked to the back of the property and eye-balled some fallen trees that I could easily buck up, I also picked up an armload of twigs to burn. Big or small, it's all fuel. I spoke to my neighbor and he'll sell me some bucked up wood. Maple, I think he said. Hardwood. It won't be a pretty year for firewood but I think I will make it through.

Chicken Report

Last years meatbirds in their plastic kiddy pool.

The chickens need my attention. Now that we are fully submerged in fall and it is wet and getting wetter out, I can lose interest in the chickens. They stop laying and go to bed early. I am still feeding them, at pretty good expense; organic, non-gmo, soy free, whatever, food. And I am buying eggs from the grocery store. There are 6 hens at the moment. 3 are young and viable as layers, 3 are older and molting. I am thinking about butchering the non-laying members over the next little while and then in the spring get some new chicks to reinvigorate the flock. These old gals only lay for a few years and then you feed them and listen to them squawk for 4 more years all the while attracting raccoons, sucking back the feed and making it uncomfortable for the younger hens to relax and produce eggs. I like the idea of raising birds that are reasonable to eat after they are done laying and with that in mind keeping to a strict 2 yr rotation of laying and then butchering for food. Some old timer told me once they would kill the birds before winter so they didn't have to feed and care for them during the cold months, I can see why. I did sit with them awhile yesterday, thanksgiving and gave thanks to the silly 6 of them as they pecked around doing their little chicken dance. I cleaned their house, their water tubs and gave them a mountain of fresh straw in the outside cage since they would be contained there for the weekend.

One of the things I do like about keeping the chickens is the creation of the system I employ to take care of them. I want the whole operation to be efficient and easy to use and so I have tried to work toward that. My goal is to offer the chickens maximum comfort for a minimum effort on my part. So far it's worked out pretty well and now I want to work on making the output aspect of the operation more efficient. More eggs and a little meat now and then without too much work or worry. The trouble with raising the big bunch of meatbirds is that they need near constant attention, they are so programmed to eat they have to be fed twice a day and their cage has to be cleaned at least once a day. I cannot stress this enough. Meatbirds are disgusting shitting machines and unless you are keeping them in a pasture setting the pen must be cleaned and it is disgusting and interacting with the birds is grim as they are not a smart group. I prefer the idea of a few free-range chickens that lived like real chickens, laid a few eggs and then got stewed up one at time. This is how a farm wife would do it. I will devise a system for this operation next. The tools required to butcher a chicken are fairly straightforward, the only pieces I need are a propane burner and an over-sized scalding pot. I imagine you need an extra basin with warm water to aid in plucking. The nasty bits can be buried and turned into rich fertilizer in the garden. This seems doable to me.

I had a lovely conversation with one of my neighbors the day before Thanksgiving. He keeps horses and I found him out near the road with a bucket of apples and the 4 head of horses and 1 mule all standing around him eating from his hands as he passed each one an apple holding it tightly while they bit down into it, and then passing the remaining half to next waiting muzzle. We talked about the expense and care that goes into owning the horses, he pack rides with them several times a year around the state. He towed 25,000lbs of truck trailer and beast over the Washington Lookout Pass to ride for 2 days in Mazama with his daughter and some friends. He admitted is was expensive hard work but he said he got a lot out of it too, the pleasure of horses is incalculable. Watching him as we talked, the horses waiting in line around him based on rank, the mule licked salt near his feet. His red and white paint gelding was closest nuzzling his arm and neck, it was touching how he just let the horse gently explore him. No matter the size of the creature you look after it's a mutually beneficial experience. His horses, my chickens, the activity of care-taking gives us much more than rides and eggs. It keeps us moving in the world and conscious of life around us.

Taxidermy; The Agony and the Ecstasy

I finally got a call a few weeks ago from Ralph Akers letting me know that Oscar the Rooster was ready to come home. I was really excited. I have wanted a stuffed chicken ever since one of my students at Western designed a piece that featured her aunts collection of stuffed fowl. I had to have one of my own.

Fast forward to that day a few months back when Oscar jumped me for the last time and in a fit of PMS rage I called Ralph, who is coincidentally my neighbor, to come over and whack the bastard. We joked a lot about it afterwards. Mark claimed renewed respect for me and vowed never to really piss me off.

When I went into Ralph's place I was prepared to be wowed by what I saw but my excitement was replaced by something quite different. The bird I had loathed enough to sacrifice was not the example of taxidermy I had imagined. At least I was not having the reaction to him I had expected. I put on a brave face for Ralph and wrote the check, took Oscar home, put him in my office and left for Mark's for the weekend.

Don't get me wrong here, Ralph had done a great job. I was reacting to the way Oscar looked dead and stuffed. It was a bit creepy. Taxidermied animals who you did not know when they were alive are one thing. Animals you knew are quite another. What troubled me the most was Oscars comb, the red fleshy thing on his head. In life it was full and erect and bobbed a bit when he moved, now it was dry and pointy. I considered molding him one out of Fimo clay and attaching it with a chin strap. This idea got a few laughs but ultimately I felt like a shit for having this bird killed (by suffocation so as not to marr his fine body) and then paying a pretty good price to have him stuffed. I was experiencing terrible remorse for this act of pure bravado. It was a real slap down.

When I got back to my office after the weekend a few new realizations surfaced. Taxidermied animals smell slightly. Each time I opened the door to my office I was met with the reminder that a once living thing was now in a preserved state in my sacred workspace. Pearl, upon returning from my office one evening said the rooster freaked her out. He scared the heck out her while alive and was still doing it dead, great. Even the dog was disturbed by him. She would not lay down and relax because I had Oscar placed on a shelf above the couch where she normally sleeps while I work. I moved him to my work table where he was in my peripheral line of sight which made me want to constantly turn my head to see who was there, it spooked me. As the the week progressed Luna got a little bolder, running in and sniffing him, saying hello perhaps, and then settling on the couch. The cat sniffed around him quite a lot but kept a safe distance. I gave up thinking about the prosthetic comb.

By that Friday I decided I had better take a few pictures of Oscar for the blog. I was waiting for Mark to arrive so I took Oscar out on the porch of my office where the sun was setting and snapped a few pictures. In the process of doing this I had to look at him really closely and suddenly I fell in love with him. His feathers were so beautiful, vibrant and iridescent and his little glass eyes seemed alert and watchful. A stuffed Rooster is not a live Rooster and takes a little getting used to, I had to replace my previous knowledge of live Oscar with the new stuffed Oscar and honestly I like the stuffed Oscar much better now. What a relief.




Purchase the Letterpress Print that immortalizes this proud bird.