A fish in Facebrook



I am reading Ted Bishop's Ink: Culture, Wonder, And Our Relationship with the Written Word. I am trying not to read it too quickly. I don't think there's a sequel to dive into next. So, I use my computer as a kind of teacher's internet assistant. When Hongwu is mentioned, I check out the emperor's Wikipedia page. When a willow tree in the wind is likened to a writing brush, I head for Google Images to look at a willow tree.

But I don't always get where I am going. I get lured this way and that. On the way to the willow I fell into Facebrook. In rough order of encounter, I:

  • saw that my friend Rosa gave a clown face to my Facebook post last night on the changing colours of traffic lights, 
  • looked at Keith's nature photography from the Upper Peninsula, 
  • monitored a debate about the mixture of musicians at Folk Fest workshops, 
  • learned that my friend Michelle went to Ikea on Thursday, a trip immortalized by a Facebook-generated video, 
  • learned my friend John needs a youth ticket for today's Folk Fest. Considered reminding him that he is an adult. Pictured him groaning. Backspace, backspace, 
  • crossed wordplay swords with my friend Bill over his interpretation of a Katy Perry lyric about popsicles, 
  • took a jab at my friend Large for seemingly (7am) already being in the Folk Fest beer garden, 
  • and on and on through birthday reminders, birthday thankyous, kids to camp, kids painting, and a dude who used an app to apply moose antlers onto his head. 
Click, click, click. A Keystroke XL Pipeline streaming me here and there, to people dear to me and to videos about making videos for business alike. Then I wrote a email of thanks to PG for the gift of Ink. And then into this blog. 

And, now, finally, back to the willow. 

But not quite, because the word willow reminded me of A-weema-weh, a-weema-weh which I sang to get Shelagh's attention in the Humanities Centre (just down the hall from the classroom Professor Bishop taught us expository writing) one post-Dewey's visit. I went to Youtube to play it, but the price of admission was a 30-second Italian Hero panini ad from Subway, so I just sang it out loud instead. 

Now, the willow.





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