Sidetracked Charley

  Thicke and I in happier times. Before the Cafe Canyon and Hermit Peak fire. Before we had to leave our happy home. Before Facebook once again banned us from communicating with our friends. Zuckerberg needs to change his policies and also care about the status of the people he hosts. At a time when it really matters that we connect he bans posts and connection. Facebook on the front lines of a fire, in an emergency is a necessity and he blocks communication. After a careful analysis of key words I have determined being thrown in Facebook jail is dependent on only one word with total disregard of context. I have been evacuated from my Black Lake home for my safety and exiled from my Facebook page because of Zuckerberg's community standards for one word used in a comment meant as a joke.

  Indian Summer always feels like extra time; a pause between summer and winter. Like spring fever it makes me lazy. I want to linger on the deck mostly cleared of deck chairs. I look at the hoses and think I need to get them rolled up and stored. But there is still time. I lie. Every day of sun is borrowed and so much remains to be done. The firewood has not been stacked. Not my job this year, part of the price, but if it does not get staked before winter it is me that has to dig it out from under the snow. I got the electric snow thrower ordered and assembled and sitting in the studio while I decide where to store it. If the wood was stacked it would be in the wood shed on the front row. I need to take care of the list. It is not like I have not been busy. Lots to do. Facebook gave me extra time by throwing me in jail for seven days. But it seemed to announce it was time to clean up my internet schedule. I deleted a lot of unused apps on my smart phone. Went through my photo file...

  I am in FaceBook Jail again. To be totally clear I do not belong to the Proud Boys, I did not storm the US Capital with a Confederate flag pole. But one time I typed Damn in a sentence. I am pretty sure since it was in response to my neighbor, the one who mistreats dogs it was her that complained. I assume that got me on some kid of FaceBook Naughty list because that was about the worst of any of my four sins. This time in response to a photo of a huge wasp/hornet next that took up a half of a large window I suggested I would just burn it down. If you have lived with those insects and are allergic to them you know how hard they are to get rid of. One neighbor of mine in NC tried a blow torch and almost burnt his house down. The sin of a century which got me tossed in jail before that was a comment about trading masks. I make masks. I think I was proposing I trade one of mine for one of hers she made. Different style. Absolutely no opportunity to explain myself. But God knows they...

  I had dreamed I had been once again unfairly thrown into the Gulag. Facebook's unfair detention system which allows you no voice to argue your true meaning behind a short sentence without a single cuss word which has been misinterpreted by its analog and adjudicated by its committee of governors. That same group which permitted the preparations for the January 6th insurrection. And which allowed the former guy all that hate and nonsense to spew across its platform for his entire term as or president. So I got up yesterday checked to see if I could find the obtuse declaration of my disgrace I had read in my dream and could not. Not unusual. I have been tossed into solitary confinement before without understanding just exactly why. I had a busy day creating for Fabric Arts by Jacqui . So didn't miss it at all until I wanted to post an image of my new creation. Then I got what I expected BLOCKED. Previous incarcerations have allowed me to find work arounds like Messenger. I coul...

  Beware the power of words. Especially the simple words. Because they are not simple. They allow for too much misinterpretation. Fuck was once a euphemism. Then it became the worst of things to say. And not it is believed to be the sign of a creative mind. My father believed it represented an impoverished mentality. One word. Four letters. What did you mean by using that word. I worked as a freelance writer and from time to time still do. I became familiar with the phrase of " what did you mean to say here ," used it seemed to frequently by editors. I learned to ask it of myself. I am also a reader and used that phrase on books I read. So many books and so little time so I learned to speed read. Does not allow time to ask that question often enough. There are authors I speed read for pure enjoyment and admire that they deliver lessons to me. Just been through a binge of J.A. Jance books. Then a pre-purchased Louise Penny book popped up. I do not speed read her. And especiall...

  These seem very dark times. Maybe it is because the Capital Insurrection of January 6, 2021 has not been addressed, or that Trump only got a two year suspension for using Facebook as a weapon, or that I just went through my third slap from Facebook for far less than any of Trump's minions did. Or that this morning as I tried to set up a new Facebook identity so my stalker cannot find me and failed. Or that so many of my liberal friends are in the same place. It almost seems that there is a new campaign being hatched on Facebook. All the Trump supporters are reporting liberals for violation of community standards to get them banned forever. And then Facebook will be a total Confederate organization! I think we need a place to escape to now. This instant before Facebook takes over the world. It already has its original platform and Instagram and messenger. The last two is where all us jailed members escape to but Facebook wants to marry them all together so at one stroke, with no e...

  Guess I am a repeat offender. This is the third time in Facebook Penalty Box. For those of you who have never been so punished let me say it seems so totally unfair. First time was because whoever reported me did not understand the placement of the apostrophe. I had it right so they should have been in jail because they had it wrong. Second time I pointed out that old white men were the cause of women's problems because they did not understand female anatomy. This time it was defending one neighbor over the abuse of another who has also abused me. I wrote it like a fable with no names, no dates, no specifics. No cuss words. I am pretty sure it was the witch (with a B) who reported me. I have blocked her from my page once before when she wrongly accused me of stealing her dog. I block several other people who she called to her defense on a community page which I left abruptly and will never go back to because of the abuse they rained upon me at her urging. When she discovered her ...

My birthday is coming up and Facebook is again urging me to have a fundraiser and beg all my friends to donate to it. What is it about Facebook and these fundraisers? What is in it for them. Or what is the advantage of me begging my friends to give money to my choice? Facebook does not match funds. Wouldn't that be nice. Two years ago I asked my friends to donate to Stray Hearts Animal Rescue in Taos and they did. I really am not sure that Stray Hearts got the money. No thank you note from them. Did Facebook receive that thank you? If they did they didn't thank me for making it possible. In that year I donated to a lot of my friends' causes. I gave to save the elephants in Africa, and the giraffes in zoos, and promote the cause of stopping climate change, as if that was possible. Then Corona virus hit and my studio was closed down. All the events which I used as a way to sell my wares were cancelled. My studio went to the dogs, literally. Art was deemed non-essential but an...

  Not gone away. Locked away. Not locked down for all that time. If varies with the numbers. Or now the colors. I think we were green but now are yellow. I remember all the colors after 9/11. That was based on security threat level. These are based on number of new Covid-19 cases. Does anyone care anymore? Or is it like the Texan who bought two of my photographic giclee prints on canvas, "People will do what they will do." That is certainly true in Texas. Trouble is they also do it in New Mexico regardless of what our color is at the moment. "One fish, two fish. Red fish, Blue fish," is that one of the Dr. Seuss books pulled by the family because of subliminal racism? And isn't racism in the eye of oppressed? And in this whole theme of lifting up the oppressed we seem to forget women still do not have equal rights, and in this year of Covid-19 they have lost the most jobs and their career paths to home school. The number counting, the locking away of our seniors...

  For absolutely everything from the Bible to women must cover their heads in synagogue and church. But men do not have to cover their heads in shame. And look at everything men have done!!!! I say we follow the lead of black women of the south and wear those hats with pride. Just do not go into those white men's churches, Girl. I have been put in 24 hour Facebook prison of shame because of something I posted which the white men didn't even read correctly. Maybe they cannot read. After all Facebook does not use Grammarly. My email uses Grammarly or something like it. And spell check. Facebook does not use spell check either. Facebook has no sense of correct grammar, or word use, or spelling. Think about it. They could get rid of their standards committee, which is too busy to hear my complaint about them doing wrong and ignoring 's, and just rely on two apps instead. Think about it. Look at who they finally banned from their site, Donald J. Trump, and his word usage, senten...

Studio Window I live in a rural area in northern New Mexico at the foot of the Sangre de Cristo mountains. We are surrounded by beauty and sometimes challenging canyons. We have no local television or radio or newspaper. For better or worse the internet and specifically Facebook has become our way of communicating about road closures, hazardous conditions on highways, school delays,  forest fire locations and evacuation orders, and even cell phone company collapses. And yesterday in the midst of one of our worst spring blizzards Facebook failed us. I quit Twitter because Trump took it over. And Google Plus quit us. Yesterday even cell phone service was iffy at best. Thankfully a friend stuck at the mouth of Coyote Canyon was able to reach me to ask to stay the night if the road crews got her and eight other cars pulled out of the drifts across the highway. It starts to seriously snow and all our snow tourists pack up and leave. And without Facebook there was no way to te...

Magique watching from a safe distance I am in introvert. Always have been though my mother just said I was shy. Dad was the one who told me how to pretend to be the extrovert. And I was enough of an actress to carry it off. For short periods of time. It is exhausting. And quite frankly, contraindicated for artists. My short withdrawal from Facebook made that all very clear. Facebook can be like endless games of solitaire - time wasting and mind numbing. And for reasons discussed in a previous blog I will probably always be there, but like Magique in the opening photo I am going to try and watch from a safe distance. Not easy for an addictive personality. I am too in love with words to ever reduce my expressions to emoji. Get used to it because the blogs are back. And like a recovering alcoholic walking through a bar I am not going to touch the drinks. So don't expect me to click an icon to acknowledge that I have seen your post. I will either consider it worthy of a commen...

Sometimes we are so involved in an activity, habit, addiction we lose why. What purpose does this serve in my life. What do I miss most? Friends. No, not the 460 Facebook credits me with. Friends in that particular context are those I have granted permission to see my posts. There is at least three I know are deceased but they pop up on shared memories from time to time. Like the memories of pets long gone they can bring tears to my eyes. Like life not all friends are missed. My father, during one of those dad and daughter dinners when I was in college, explained that if I, in my lifetime, had more than five friends I could count on in times of trouble I should consider myself very lucky. As I recall this dinner at a fine restaurant followed a major issue in the dorms. To me, at the time, it was a huge thing. My best friend got kicked out of college, I got put on restrictions, and the person causing it all declared victory but moved to another dormitory.  My father had been t...

Patchwork In the beginning of my participation on Facebook there was a limit to the number of characters in a status message. We were all thrilled when they relaxed that limit of 120 characters. But at the same time they eliminated the Note or Journal option. Some of us went back to other platforms to do our journals and then link them to our FB pages. Others made longer and longer status messages with no break for paragraphs (note there is a way to do that) which were difficult to read. Obviously FB wanted us to stay short and sweet so they introduced the special backgrounds which only work with 120 characters or less. I fell for it hook, line and sinker. I even spent inordinate amounts of time editing my message so it would fit in their arbitrary frame. I even discovered that you could push the limit by when you picked your colorful background. In short, I am good at playing to the stage presented. Then there were those cute little icons. Not just the thumbs up. We asked for ...

Part of the whole deadly triad of blaming others and impression management is campaigning for agreement. We are herd animals. Especially the extroverts among us. We are not comfortable being shunned or blocked of even not getting enough likes for our posts on social media. I call it the deadly triad because in just a few hours, thanks to Facebook and email, we can create opinions which once took months to spread by word of mouth and telephone. Thank heavens we have gotten beyond literal lynch mobs. But maybe what we have now is worse, because we do not even have to think about what we are doing when we post on social media. Nor can we take it back easily because once it is out there it is out there. And some organizations like the Right to Lifers who want to kill abortion doctors don't just shop for agreement but campaign for it. They post names and addresses and hit lists of those against what they believe on websites they manage. And they celebrate in a post when one of t...

I am an artist and a poet. I know how to manage impressions. I have also, in my somewhat checkered career, worked in advertising as a copy writer, been a free lance writer, a theatrical set and costume designer, and acted. You could say I have an advanced degree in impression management. But I seek to be very honest and up front in my personal life. Poetry, not so much. And while I am at times a real sucker for the narcissistic personality disorder in friends (more and more briefly friends) I am also really good at spotting bullshit. I am sure I could have put that more poetically.   There is currently a lot of impression management going on in my little town. And today that means you take it to the ethernet. Let me say that just because it was posted on Facebook does not make it gospel. It does not even have to make it close to the truth. Generally I just read these little mini-dramas and not like or comment. FB does not have a button for Liar or even Dislike so not likin...

It has been a dozen years since I began my first online journal on the now extinct Y!360. It was more than a blog and less than a chat room. And in spite of my proclamations to the contrary more than a social network. I made some long and fast friends and some not so fast as it were. And as Yahoo brought it to a close we followed each other to various other social platforms to stay connected. I came here because of its blog capacity and not its social networking. It took me a while to miss my ethernet friends that migrated to Multiply and then to Facebook grumbling all the way. I miss Y!360 still. It was a unique experiment and not everyone's cup of tea. But those of us that loved it have not been quite happy with anything else we find. And too many have learned to grumble all too well. When the dictators come out and think they can reshape the social platform and those on it I escape to the quiet of my forest - my blog - where I can do what it was I first sought the blogos...

The cat bench If there is a lesson to be learned from this 46 days of retreat it is that it isn't all about me. As an artist trying to make it through trying economic times I must admit I sometimes forget that. Especially in light of shameless self promotion. The new art market is the internet and it takes more than just a website. In fact websites may be going the way of the book store these days. Along with galleries and art fairs. What is hot in this day and ethernet age is Facebook, Twitter and blogs. And an artist needs all three and Google + I am not a tweet twit though I have a twitter account and post links to my blogs routinely. Blogspot makes that very easy. And also linking to Facebook and Google +. And the marketing gurus tell you that you must be active on all platforms to catch the attention of the art buyer. This has been one of my good weeks in that regard. I have sold two photographs on gallery wrap canvas largely because of my posts on my Facebook fa...

Window Pane Acid Trip by J. Binford-Bell Long time followers of my blogs will know I am not a religious person, but I like to think I am very spiritual. I think most artists are whether they know it or not. Life, however, can separate me from my spiritual connection with the universe and ergo the muse which directs my creativity. Life can be challenging and annoying and downright irritating at times. The month of February has been that in spades with slaving to get the apartment refurbished and cleaned, the dog issue which gets close to life and livelihood threatening, winter in general, and a dear friend facing the end of days for a loved one. Oh, and my sister running over her cell phone. What does all that have to do with the price of tea in China, you might ask? Well, it just seems that when I am most personally challenged and at a loss I am placed into a position where communication is sparse, difficult or nearly impossible. Get thee to a mountain top s...

In the early days of my involvement with what has become known as social media I was on Y!360 and we had a Movie Monday, Poetry Wednesday and Word Thursday. There was also a Song Saturday and Art Sunday. I forget what Tuesday was. I obviously did not participate. Friday was for Fotos. But even though this is Friday this is a Word Thursday. And do not try to look any of what follows up in your Websters. This is social media language though some of it began with our parents. First word is dear . Contrary to dictionary definitions I do not believe dear to be a term of endearment. When my mother used it I would have defined it as Stop it. Generally used just before my formal full, middle and last name was called into the conversation. As an adult I considered it a term of belittlement. On social media it is used to herald a comment which runs entirely contrary to yours. A polite form of the word idiot. Another term in social media is the non-comment just before a link. In short ...