Domain Names, Websites, Blogging and Social Networking: The Beast That Taunts Me

I was driving through Colorado with a friend back in 1994 in the middle of the winter and we stopped at a friends place to see his wild peacocks and beautiful view from his handmade outhouse styled as a thrown overlooking mountainous majesty. And sure enough, those crazy birds with their shrill ca-caws, came right up to thy throne as I gazed from upon. Pretty birds…

This rugged hermit was of immediate interest to me and his very rustic living situation was one of curiosity. He pumped water in his kitchen on a hand pump from an old well on his property. The whole house was heated by a central fireplace and very old, rundown and quite charming. He used to make belt buckles, pipes and jewelry out of elk horns, and he sat me down that first day in a chair made out of a strange tubular leather-like medium that turned out to be bull penises.

That last observation has no other connection to this story than my need to share it with you.

Now the outdoor plumbing was the hardest for me to fathom, and the pretty birds made it a bit better as long as it was light out..

This wonderful character lived an interesting life and spent most of his time alone, with a cat, hardly ever seeing another human being, and he had a more active social life than anyone I knew! He had internet, a devise, and the brains to use that crazy big box and make it connect to some magic signal in the sky.

I started trying to print everything of interest I found, not immediately realizing how unnecessary making copies was NOW that all this information was available, and it was all right there, at my disposal!

I looked up furnace design, environmental alternative building, other glassblowers!

I graduated college in 1990 and had no practical skill in computers at all. Never used one to study and no one I knew did. In ’91 or ’92 I bought my Domain name not knowing what a domain name was, just was told to do so by the wonderful website guru Joni at the NY Renaissance faire in Tuxedo NY. Joni built my first website and what a trauma that was. And expensive! I couldn’t change a thing without requesting every little detail and hoping she had the time to update, which she didn’t, because it was a nightmare!

So here I was, visiting peacocks and a cock and horn artist, in the mountains chopping wood for enough heat to get by till morning, ironically having a very progressive lesson in the vast web of everything.

Since that trip I have been trying to really understand the act of social networking to advance business and connect with other artists and buyers. And I never would have guessed the day I got my first flip phone in New York City that I’d actually have a use for a camera in my phone, let alone the ability to connect to the vast web.

Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, mating sites, it’s all there inter webbed and its only been 25 years since that trip, in which I took home elk items, the inspiration for a series of wild peacock pieces, and an understanding of the internet.

So no more excuses, I am doing the social thing but I am overwhelmed with the dense block folk my age sometimes suffer. It actually hurts sometimes to figure out website programming and I can’t seem to catalog, as easy as youth, my daily progress.

But I try, I tweet, Instagram and blog and it’s an amazing world right in the palm of my hand, so none of us are really alone and always inter-webbed. And I lost track of that hermit in the woods, but he’s probably part of the matrix by now.

Thanks for reading