A Year Ago April

In April of last year I was immersed in a painting for my friend’s 10th wedding anniversary. I really wanted to be able to show off the end result, and really had no way to do so. My website was seriously out of date, and reconfiguring it was likely to be a Herculean task. I didn’t even know what I needed to know.
I did not blog, nor did I know what a ‘blog roll’ was. (I did know that blogs were often a good source of various kinds of information.) I was not on facebook. I did not ‘tweet’ but I had spent some time on Twitter trying to figure it out. I did not know what a tiny URL or a bit.ly was. I did not know how to Share or AddThis. I had seen videos on You Tube, but didn’t realize you could collect them all in your own little ‘channel’. I had tried flickr, but wasn’t really aware of its possibilities.
In June of 2009 the Grand Experiment began with this blog. I intended to highlight artwork other than my paintings while researching new website possibilities. I joined facebook, and figured that out, sorta. I got an Open ID. I started tweeting as ‘moonflowrstudio’ (had to leave a vowel out due to character limits).(Ironically, there's no limit to the characters you can find there). I read blogs and tutorials on building websites. I downloaded software. I investigated limitless possibilities.
It took 3 serious failures, but I did manage to launch a new moonflowerstudio site in October. There are still things to tweak, but all in all, I am proud of it. When I step back and survey the little ‘moon-i-verse’ I have put together I find myself pondering. Where do I go from here…?
Ancora Imparo: I am still learning...
…I don’t have to decide for now…it's Saturday

Hanging Out Laundry

I’ve heard some sort of negative comments about tweets and twittering. It seems silly to some; ‘who cares if you’re making a grilled cheese sandwich or watching re-runs on television?’ It is apparently without merit to share the mundane. But every since I first heard about twitter, my first thought was about laundry. Back in the day, when dryers were a luxury, people would ‘hang out’-literally. It could be a family chore, with the little ones handing out the clothespins. It could become social on some windy days, when everyone and their Aunt Petunia was taking advantage of blustery fluffing. Some greetings or small exchanges about the weather had the potential to become full blown conversations. Sometimes it may be gossip, or swapping helpful household hints or it could be just a neighborly chat. Yes, it was a break in the chores routine. I think it was also a break from the confines of being a solitary housekeeper. In a household of children, no matter how precious they might be, a chat with another parent was well, fresh air.
I don’t remember the last time I ‘hung out’, do you? Everyone is so busy, and even with every technology to make our lives easier, we don’t seem to have time for each other. I think we need companionship on many levels, from the most complicated relationships to the most mundane exchange of pleasantries. So why not use some of that technology to tweet? Quite frankly, the world might be a better place if everyone just said hi to each other. My only problem is (obviously) staying under the character limit. I appear to have something in common with Mark Twain who said, ‘The difference between the right word and almost the right word is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug’.

The Alphabet Song

Okay, I admit to using clip art, 'cuz i don't have a qwerty typewriter handy that I could take a digital picture of (and then digitally alter in Photoshop). I also wanted to make this quick. Like THAT'S gonnna happen.

I just noticed that there are the same number of letters in the word twitter as there are in the word lexicon. Isn't that ironic?

I don't think I'm gonna be very good at tweeting. As the child of two English majors, I was raised to be verbose. I remember as part of my rebellious adolesence, my father accused me of being vociferous. I had to go look it up before I could feel guilty.