tl;dr!? Here on 2022 Vivacation, I find in the DRAFTS folder this forlorn post from 2021 captured a mood. Did I not have internet connection to push publish?

Today it leaves the island of unpublished posts. Enjoy!

Or not.

Last year [2020] our annual pilgrimage to the land of sky blue waters didn’t happen. The certainty of the COVID impact on travel arrangements and the knowledge that COVID lockdown escapees from the Twin Cities populated the area made it easy to sit it out.

Did the Donner party have such reservations before heading out?

Local statuary.

A check of the date of my last post indicates that I have taken quite a Viva-vacation from this blog. After blogging quite regularly for 4 years, I decided it might be good to take a blogging course. So I signed up and participated in Blogging I at Gotham Writers. And reading the course material and answering questions posed to the blogger (me), I discovered:

You can be an erstwhile blogger. Maybe you don’t post for a year. You’re a blogger. Maybe you post 5X a day. You’re a blogger.

I concluded I’m a blogger.

Who is your audience? The answer to this one is a little tricky.

I am mesmerized by street performers. On an international trip long ago in Venice, a street violinist played the theme from The Godfather as Mr. Viva, Frood, and I walked by and so he was rewarded with a few wim-wams of coinage.

Same trip. Rome. We watched a street artist use spray paint to create a colorful painting of the Coliseum. I was taken in by the artist’s flourish, speed and expertise — she knew her materials, she knew her audience, and she knew English, if I recall she was a student from NY traveling abroad for the summer — and as soon as I recognized the subject she was painting, she had a sale. A few wim-wams of the paper of the realm in exchange for a fresh, unique souvenir. And watching her work, I remember thinking taggers — graffiti artists — must work much the same way. Waiting for a train, I’m always amazed at the detail and artistry in graffiti. Banksy anyone? I digress.

And street corner preachers. Jed Smock comes to mind. Music and art, and train wrecks, but you can’t look away, you can’t stop listening, you can’t stop wondering why?

And so dear reader, if you’re still with me, I am my own best audience. You are welcome here for the ride, the entertainment, the push to examine the bird that currently holds our attention beyond the limits of the cage — oh we love our mixed metaphor!

I am the audience watching my little self stand on my orange crate in my little corner bull-horning away in this little corner of the internet.

Put your mask on before you help others with theirs. Self-serving is not selfish. You are welcome here.