Category — Microblog Mondays

Not sure what #MicroblogMondays is? Read the inaugural post which explains the idea and how you can participate too.

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I love Fathom Events, and we see a bunch of National Theater Live shows every year. It makes London theater accessible for people outside London—it’s a brilliant idea. During the lockdown, National Theater Live streamed a show every week on YouTube. 16 weeks. 16 shows. I didn’t watch even one.

The Atlantic recently had an article about how to build that feeling of community from afar. Reading it, I realized what was missing for me with the NT Lives. When I see a Fathom Event in the theater, I’m seeing it with people. If they had set it up as a limited viewing similar to real theater—going live at a set time, not recorded, behind a paywall—so you knew other people were watching at the same time, you would have felt like you were seeing it with people. But being able to tune in at any point during the week and watch it without knowing if anyone else was on at the same time felt lonely. What made things easier also made things less enticing.

I think it’s still possible to build that same feeling of community from afar, but it has to happen in real time with everyone on together. It’s the difference between tweeting during the debates (knowing you’re seeing them with everyone else and talking about it in real time) vs. reading about the debates the next morning in the newspaper. One is a community experience. One is just imparting information.

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Are you also doing #MicroblogMondays? Add your link below. The list will be open until Tuesday morning. Link to the post itself, not your blog URL. (Don’t know what that means? Please read the three rules on this post to understand the difference between a permalink to a post and a blog’s main URL.) Only personal blogs can be added to the list. I will remove any posts that are connected to businesses or are sponsored post.

Not sure what #MicroblogMondays is? Read the inaugural post which explains the idea and how you can participate too.

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We’re going to do a channel island trip in the future (my plan is to ultimately hit every weather station named in the Shipping Forecast, but that’s a post for another day), so I read the tourism posts from Guernsey and Sark.

Guernsey wrote recently about the tradition of hedge veg stalls, which are small, unmanned boxes that people set up near the road where they can sell extra vegetables from their garden or crafts or books. It’s done on an honour system; you drop the coins in a box and take what you need.

We have them around our town, too, though we don’t call them hedge veg. And they almost always sell either eggs or vegetables. Every once in a while, you’ll see one selling plants, and, of course, there are Little Free Libraries, but this sounds like a fun way to get creative and make a small amount of money at the same time.

If I lived on Guernsey, I would fill my hedge veg stall with cookies and copies of a serial story.

How about you?

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Are you also doing #MicroblogMondays? Add your link below. The list will be open until Tuesday morning. Link to the post itself, not your blog URL. (Don’t know what that means? Please read the three rules on this post to understand the difference between a permalink to a post and a blog’s main URL.) Only personal blogs can be added to the list. I will remove any posts that are connected to businesses or are sponsored post.

Not sure what #MicroblogMondays is? Read the inaugural post which explains the idea and how you can participate too.

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In July 1983—37 years ago—two artists decided to live 24/7 8 feet apart, connected by a piece of rope at their waist. The only other rule of the project was that they couldn’t touch. 8 feet apart, never alone, and no touching the other person, though it’s clear from images that they touched other people during that time.

It’s interesting to read about the performance art piece now because while we’re not joined at the waist, I have spent over four months with the same three people. While we have the ability to leave one another, we tend to gravitate to the same rooms, sometimes all at the same time. So we’ll all end up on our bed, talking. Or sitting in the kitchen. Or playing with Linus in the living room.

I go through waves when I need alone time, and waves where I am completely fine with the fact that our world has become so small.

How are you doing?

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Are you also doing #MicroblogMondays? Add your link below. The list will be open until Tuesday morning. Link to the post itself, not your blog URL. (Don’t know what that means? Please read the three rules on this post to understand the difference between a permalink to a post and a blog’s main URL.) Only personal blogs can be added to the list. I will remove any posts that are connected to businesses or are sponsored post.

Not sure what #MicroblogMondays is? Read the inaugural post which explains the idea and how you can participate too.

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Erin McKeown wrote in her latest newsletter about an experiment she did with Instagram. She started only posting images where she was in the photo. So sunset photos, but only if the sunset was behind her. River photos, but only if she was by the river.

She writes: “Posts with my face in them are seen by an average of 5 times more people than posts without my face in them.” She explains how this impacts what she wants to say, especially her anti-racist work. And I’m sure it’s true for the Instagram algorithm—this isn’t the first time I’ve heard this fact. But I don’t follow people on Instagram. I mostly only follow places. And I only like/bookmark images that do not have people in them. (With the exception of nieces and nephews because they’re adorable.)

It’s a photo site, so it’s an interesting question: What type of photos interest us? Clearly, in my feed, it’s only places I’ve been and places I want to go. What do you look at in your feed?

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Are you also doing #MicroblogMondays? Add your link below. The list will be open until Tuesday morning. Link to the post itself, not your blog URL. (Don’t know what that means? Please read the three rules on this post to understand the difference between a permalink to a post and a blog’s main URL.) Only personal blogs can be added to the list. I will remove any posts that are connected to businesses or are sponsored post.

Not sure what #MicroblogMondays is? Read the inaugural post which explains the idea and how you can participate too.

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ChickieNob and I have started our own mocktail hour. The boys are not into our concoctions or ruining their appetite for dinner. But we are working our way through several bottles of Torani syrups and seltzer.

The best combinations so far have been chocolate-covered raspberries (splash of raspberry syrup, splash of chocolate syrup, dilute with seltzer) and coconut-lime spritz (splash of coconut syrup, a twist of real lime, dilute with seltzer). We put out olives or crackers or cherries and pretend we have all the time in the world before I begin making dinner. We are so fancy.

Though we never want to eat dinner because we’re full of seltzer. The boys may be on to something.

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Are you also doing #MicroblogMondays? Add your link below. The list will be open until Tuesday morning. Link to the post itself, not your blog URL. (Don’t know what that means? Please read the three rules on this post to understand the difference between a permalink to a post and a blog’s main URL.) Only personal blogs can be added to the list. I will remove any posts that are connected to businesses or are sponsored post.