Meta Blog II: I'm Back!
When I tried to write my last blog on July 2, I was sabotaged twice. First, I hit a key on my laptop, and the paragraph I had written disappeared. Then I rewrote that paragraph, saved it, and just as I was finishing the blog, I hit another (or maybe the same) key, and the whole blog disappeared, including that first supposedly saved paragraph. I suspect the Russians who don't like what I'm saying about their American President are hacking my computer. My first annoyed reaction was to quit blogging on the Goodreads site after almost four years. But I like blogging on Goodreads, so I decided to take a month-long vacation (even opinion writers take vacations) and begin anew during my four-year anniversary month.
It didn't take me long to figure out how to avoid losing my whole blog. I will publish the first paragraph and then edit the published blog, saving paragraphs as I finish them. Take that, Russians! A couple of my followers suggested that I write the blog on Microsoft, Microword, or whatever and then copy and paste it onto Goodreads. They forgot that Mary don't know nothing about copying and pasting. I am probably the least technologically literate social media commentator sounding off anywhere. It's almost as absurd that I have an increasingly high profile on social media as it is that Donald Trump is sitting in the White House posing as our President.
When I wrote my first "meta blog" almost three years ago, I was announcing that after a year of posting once a week, I was switching to every other week because I didn't want to run out of topics and because I had found another source for my lessons and rantings--Google+. I have still not run out of topics and have found two more sites where I can share my opinions--Facebook and Twitter. I was already a new Facebook user when I started posting on Goodreads in August, 2013, but since Trump transformed from a reality star to a politician, I've joined several groups where I can share political and socio-economic opinions. However, Twitter is now my favorite site for spontaneous rants. Just as I initially resisted joining Facebook, my initial response to Twitter was, "I can't say anything in 140 characters." I wasn't aware that I could launch a twitter storm, hurling as many as a dozen tweets at unsuspecting politicians and journalists before they knew what hit them. I also didn't realize that Twitter could serve the same role for social media commentators that poetry serves for writers of prose--help them learn to make every word count. Although I can still be verbose in blogs and occasional Facebook or Google+ posts, I am better able to write brief letters to editors or comments on corporate Internet sites because of my experiences on Twitter.
During the month that I was on vacation from Goodreads, I tweeted a few times, but only one topic set me off enough to make me wish I was blogging. It's an old topic that I wrote about in both of my books--OJ! I couldn't believe that not only the cable stations but ABC covered his parole hearing live. After tweeting ABC and then a USA Today journalist who claimed we were all still fascinated by OJ (I not only included him in my books but had followed the trial very carefully in 1995, and yet I forgot about the parole hearing until I saw it on television) about the media's obsession with OJ, I wrote a brief statement on Google+. I asked the members of a black Google+ community if they thought the media would be so obsessed with OJ if the two victims he was tried for murdering were black. I then told them to answer two questions before they answered that one. 1) Can you name the man who murdered Michael Jordan's father when Michael was still the most famous athlete in America? 2) Can you name the man who killed superstar singer/actress Jennifer Hudson's three family members?
As I continue blogging on Goodreads, I will occasionally discuss books that I've read, comment on topics that affect us all, like aging, caring for sick relatives, dealing with sleazy business people on the telephone and in person, and trying to prevent Trump from driving us all as crazy as he is, but my focus will probably be on race for the next few years. It is another topic that affects us all, but some of us are more affected than others, and those of us who have been forced to think about it and deal with it must continue to remind those who haven't what time it is. Fasten your seatbelts, Goodreads followers (and Russians), this is going to be a racy blog.
It didn't take me long to figure out how to avoid losing my whole blog. I will publish the first paragraph and then edit the published blog, saving paragraphs as I finish them. Take that, Russians! A couple of my followers suggested that I write the blog on Microsoft, Microword, or whatever and then copy and paste it onto Goodreads. They forgot that Mary don't know nothing about copying and pasting. I am probably the least technologically literate social media commentator sounding off anywhere. It's almost as absurd that I have an increasingly high profile on social media as it is that Donald Trump is sitting in the White House posing as our President.
When I wrote my first "meta blog" almost three years ago, I was announcing that after a year of posting once a week, I was switching to every other week because I didn't want to run out of topics and because I had found another source for my lessons and rantings--Google+. I have still not run out of topics and have found two more sites where I can share my opinions--Facebook and Twitter. I was already a new Facebook user when I started posting on Goodreads in August, 2013, but since Trump transformed from a reality star to a politician, I've joined several groups where I can share political and socio-economic opinions. However, Twitter is now my favorite site for spontaneous rants. Just as I initially resisted joining Facebook, my initial response to Twitter was, "I can't say anything in 140 characters." I wasn't aware that I could launch a twitter storm, hurling as many as a dozen tweets at unsuspecting politicians and journalists before they knew what hit them. I also didn't realize that Twitter could serve the same role for social media commentators that poetry serves for writers of prose--help them learn to make every word count. Although I can still be verbose in blogs and occasional Facebook or Google+ posts, I am better able to write brief letters to editors or comments on corporate Internet sites because of my experiences on Twitter.
During the month that I was on vacation from Goodreads, I tweeted a few times, but only one topic set me off enough to make me wish I was blogging. It's an old topic that I wrote about in both of my books--OJ! I couldn't believe that not only the cable stations but ABC covered his parole hearing live. After tweeting ABC and then a USA Today journalist who claimed we were all still fascinated by OJ (I not only included him in my books but had followed the trial very carefully in 1995, and yet I forgot about the parole hearing until I saw it on television) about the media's obsession with OJ, I wrote a brief statement on Google+. I asked the members of a black Google+ community if they thought the media would be so obsessed with OJ if the two victims he was tried for murdering were black. I then told them to answer two questions before they answered that one. 1) Can you name the man who murdered Michael Jordan's father when Michael was still the most famous athlete in America? 2) Can you name the man who killed superstar singer/actress Jennifer Hudson's three family members?
As I continue blogging on Goodreads, I will occasionally discuss books that I've read, comment on topics that affect us all, like aging, caring for sick relatives, dealing with sleazy business people on the telephone and in person, and trying to prevent Trump from driving us all as crazy as he is, but my focus will probably be on race for the next few years. It is another topic that affects us all, but some of us are more affected than others, and those of us who have been forced to think about it and deal with it must continue to remind those who haven't what time it is. Fasten your seatbelts, Goodreads followers (and Russians), this is going to be a racy blog.
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