This longform blog, prairiemary.blogspot.com, ambles along attempting to sort out patterns in ecologies and theories, research and experience, mostly just to see where they go — for the pleasure of it. In the first part of my almost two decades of sitting at this keyboard I've spent the time writing a book about Bob Scriver, a teacher, musician, and sculptor of Western people and animals with roots in Canada. Though I was with Bob, married to him, and with many pre-existing commonalities, I was too different to continue with him, though I went on loving him. The book, “Bronze Inside and Out,” was published by the University of Calgary Press in 2007.
What I’m sneaking up on is a question about who reads this blog. The only analytic I use is “clustrmaps.com" plus what shows up in the software of “blogger”. I haven’t added software for subscription feeds but 27 folks figured out how to subscribe anyway. 2 subscribers have died, but there seems to be no mechanism for removing their names. No one is blocked.
My own email is often “blocked” or “blacked out” by others, purportedly because I have at least one friend who lives in a narrow canyon where he can only use email through a satellite feed. That satellite feed is blocked, so my friend is, so I am. My local provider 3rivers.net contracts with Barracuda to protect their subscribers from hacking and obscenity. It’s Barracuda who messes with my emails. barracuda.com. My idea of "obscene"is extremely narrow.
According to clustrmaps.com, in the last month I had 44,594 hits from the US; 8,158 from China; 7,746 from Russia; 3,508 from Ukraine. France “hit” 5,554 times; German 5,753; United Kingdom 4,441; Canada 4,372. I have no idea what this means. Since the info may identify the source town, I can guess who some of these people are: many are former parishioners from my ten year career as a Unitarian minister. Locals suggest that people around the world are always interested in cowboys and that’s why I get “hits.” (I don't post much about cowboys.) My family is somewhat dispersed and rarely reads this blog.
Like many other people, my relatives subscribe to YouTube. When I question them about why they accept the documented exposure to data-reaping, use of content without permission including photos, and so on, they go blank. I left Facebook when years ago they eliminated months and months of work done by an art-based group with whom I was working at the time. Facebook gave no reason.
I subscribe to Twitter in order to announce the subject of each post on prairiemary.blogspot.com . Also, I’m following the work of Paul Seesequasis on photos of northern indigenous people as far up as the Inuit and as far south as the Blackfeet here where I am. Sometimes I’m able to identify individuals or comment on what they are doing. I belong to a number of organizations and subscribe specifically to medical and environmental newsletters.
In the last year the usual number of hits I get is around 500. But then I began to see spikes as high as 1,000, which at first seem linked to “hot topics.” Recently there was a spike over 6,000. What did it mean? Have I gone viral? The next day it all went back down to about 500, which is high for the Christmas season. When people get busy, they don’t read blogs, esp. not long-form (over 1,000 words daily).
I have a little difficulty following the acronyms and punning names for internet and computer concepts. (I just found out what a "milkshake duck" is.) We are living in a metaphorical age more than ever before because there is so much new knowledge. Part of the problem is grasping the concepts that have acquired neologisms because they were neo-concepts. This turns out to be true of the spear-point ideas of history, science, and about how the brain works. They extend far out beyond human knowledge of any previous time. In fact, the new pressing knowledge is that of how little we really know, but how much it's all connected. I’m seeing that the younger people are not more informed than they used to be, because they lose info out the back as they accept it from the front. (Time as a physical progression. Digestion.)
Sitting in the back bedroom of a collapsing old house in a struggling small town on the high prairie scoured by high winds and scalded by strong sun, I have access to resources worldwide and awareness of layers and diasporas of people I would in reality be shut out of and afraid to interact with. My age, gender, economic class, are invisible online. They are misleading when visible. The data-gathering services — who promise to expose “everything” about a person — and the genealogy services — that charge a fee for connecting people with the same family provenance according to both data and testimony — are interesting resources, but full of gaps, mistakes, and mixed motives. Even the genome investigations that have been taken as solid evidence in CSI shows, as though they were fingerprints, turn out to be complex and full of unpredictability. Epigenomes. Chimeras. Methylation.
So much of our political trouble right now is related to the human craving for Truth, not meaning factual but meaning unchangingness, dependability, something to build on. Some of us begin to understand that there is no bedrock to human thought. Where you get to depends on where you start from. But everyone has the choice to begin again.
“According to Richard Firth Green, the meaning of "truth" changed during the reign of Richard II of England in the late 14th century. Before then, "trouthe" was an ethical concept that resided within individuals, i.e., integrity and dependability. Afterwards, "truth" became an objective reality that existed outside of ourselves, which could be discerned by unbiased observers.
“Interestingly, Green never claimed that an unbiased observer actually existed.”
Dr. Packer is reflecting on the difficulties of understanding Russian doping that has taken their contestants out of the Olympics. Everywhere, “trouthe” is challenged. In the background as I write, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein is being grilled in an attempt to accuse/defend Mueller as he investigates Russian plots with US help. Not far away Donald Trump Jr. was being questioned for 9 hours. Late last night the "true" characters of leaders in Alabama led voters to make a surprising choice. It turns out they are still able to discern scribes and pharisees. And Mueller is not a milkshake duck.
What does this have to do with my blogging? What I began as the searching for the “trouthe” of persons and social events, has turned into an instrument of personal revelation about my own character and life. That’s religious but not institutional. There’s not much time left for me to do much about it except make notes. I witnessed. Now I testify.
But was this 6,000 “hit” spike of readers something I should note? Is this microphone on?
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