Blogs Gone By

I cleaned out a piece of my desktop just now.  Not a big piece, or an intrusive piece, just a piece that has been nudging the edges of my consciousness every time I go to the Blogger Dashboard (the handy dandy place for all things The Burrow).  I'm mourning the losses.

The Dashboard is also the site for my Blog Roll Reading List.  Snippets of the most recent posts by the bloggers I follow show up right beneath the working buttons (new post, view blog, post list).  I'm always interested in what Ronni Bennett has to say over at Time Goes By, but I rarely saw her posts.  Instead, I was bombarded by daily, sometimes twice daily, pictures and references and verbiage from someone who no longer interested me at all. 

There's no reason to share the blog's URL; you might really like it and then wonder what's wrong with me.  It wasn't offensive or poorly written.  I was just done with it. 

Once I figured out how to hide it from the feed, I was a woman on a mission. I would hide the blogs I didn't want to see, and reacquaint myself with those I'd forgotten.  My mission led to many frowns.

Where was Joann Mannix, who wrote Laundry Hurts My Feelings? Her long-form stories made my sides ache from laughing, often laughing through my tears.  The title links you to the last post she wrote, a description of a parking lot misadventure that is humiliating and humbling and completely understandable.  She hasn't written anything else since last February.  I miss her.

Tied Up With a Black Velvet Ribbon was another favorite for a while.  When I clicked through to see what was happening, this is what appeared

http://tiedupwithablackvelvetband.blogspot.com/ It doesn't look like you have been invited to read this blog. If you think this is a mistake, you might want to contact the blog author and request an invitation.

Since I can't remember what I loved about it, I don't know what I'd say when requesting an invitation.  And, since I've never seen this kind of message before, I wonder if I'll be requesting permission to join a site of bondage fetishists ... or shopping fetishists ... or perhaps it's someone's personal journey, not to be shared at random with others.  In any event, I'm not pursuing the matter. 

There were a spate of ElderBlogs, found by linking to comments on The Burrow.  Most of them came when I was writing about G'ma.  Most of them are gone.  Well Aged with Some Marbling: the art of aging gracelessly , The Next Chapter, Gently Said ... I miss their take on adulthood.  I wonder what happened to them.  Did they grow tired of the experience?  If so, I wish they'd said goodbye.  Did they become ill?  I wish I'd known to send a note of encouragement.  Did they realize that they were leaving a hole in my life?  I hope so.

Not all of my favorites disappeared.  Done Nesting has migrated to Reason Creek, for reasons only its owner, Nancy Hill, can explain.  And explain them she did, at one of the Meet Ups she runs here in town.  We met face to face at my first BlogHer conference in San Diego; I keep up with her adventures here in town via her blog.  My friendships are crossing the line between cyber and real spaces.  It's interesting.

When I write about cyber friendships crossing into reality I must mention Nance at Mature Landscaping, whose life took over the time she used for writing.  She and JES at Running After My Hat and I had a mini-blog friendship going along quite nicely back in 2009 and '10.  We were cogitating plans to move our small readership numbers into the stratosphere when, as JES so elegantly put it, then, Damn, you go and get shot, girl!

Nance triangulated the Safeway, my house, and the hospital, realized I must have been the one who brought the child, and sent flowers to the hospital the very next day.  She'd never met me in person, yet she knew that I'd be there, doing that. The next time someone says that the interwebs are destroying human interactions, remind them of this, please. 

JES is still writing, and we three are still friends even though Nance has stopped taking fingers to keyboard.  I just wish I knew what happened to the rest of the gang.