Welcome Home Again
Once again, the Survivors from Open Salon are being thrown back out into the wilderness again.
Moving yet again raises the question of where to move to. There are a couple of pages on Facebook, such as Orphans of Open Salon, that have tried to pick up the slack (pun intended), but I was one of the moderators on that page and I haven’t seen a request for admission in years. I just checked, and the last time anyone posted on The Orphans of Open Salon was more than a year ago, when I was soliciting permission to post comments made by Open Salon members on Sagemerlin’s poetry posts. I believe there is another offshoot out there someplace, but I don’t even recall the name of that one.
This is going to be a painful time for those of you who have been regulars here. (It took me a very long time to recover from losing my community on Open Salon.)
I want to respect that….but I also have a potential solution. I have been working on developing a new website for quite awhile now, and maybe it’s just a coincidence, but it is just about ready to be unleashed on the world. It’s not even open for business yet but the site is 99.5% complete and it is in full working order.
It’s called BindleSnitch.com, and it has been designed to be a collectively owned and operated websites where the contributors will get a percentage of the net profits (if any) generated by the site in direct proportion to the number of views their articles earn….but I’m not going to give you a sales pitch. It is what it is. Just visit the website and read the ABOUT US section if you want to know more.
In the meantime, however, I have actually gone ahead and created a private page on this website for orphans of Open Salon. This page is only accessible with this link: bindlesnitch.com/ salon/.
Caveats: When you visit this page, you will see Most Popular Posts on the left, Most Recent Posts in the Middle and Most Recent Comments on the right. The popularity of a post is determined by the number of comments it receives, not the number of views. The comments section on the right isn’t really working properly. It is jury rigged right now. If you want it, that can be done. I do not presently have a tool that will allow you to import posts but I am sure I can work that up if it is wanted.
I realize from my own experience curating my Open Salon posts that the comments are precious…but I don’t think I can pull bulk comments into this page. If you want to preserve your entire posts with comments, I strongly recommend that you use Evernote, which will capture your posts and all of the associated comments. It’s a tedious process, but it will capture the entire page as it now exists. I believe that it costs $10 a month and that includes lifetime storage (as long as you keep paying them.) It is well worth the price.
However, BindleSnitch is a completely free, fully-functional website inside a website that you can use right now. All you have to do is sign up for BindleSnitch and start using it. It doesn’t cost me anything to do this, and I am not making anything off it. Consider it a gift from an old Open Salon member.
Before I forget, once you have joined BindleSnitch, go to the MEMBERS tab on the main menu and select MY PROFILE. This is the access point to a hidden sub-system that provides the same essential functionality that FaceBook offers, with the ability to set up private groups (and I can set up a private group just for Salon member), private chats, and group discussions. You could in fact use this system and not even bother with the Salon page that I have already set up.
Since I am starting to get up in years, I have already made provisions for the continuation of the website after I shuffle off the stage. My partner, Robert Pannier, is around 20 years younger than I am and he will be around to provide support after I have ridden off into the sunset. (Do not be alarmed. I expect to be around for awhile…but one never knows.)
The thing about this offer is that we won’t even notice that you’re using the site. We’ve designed it to be a self-managing system. It could go on forever as long as someone pays the hosting bills and since we have other sites on the same account, that’s a given.
Have fun with it. We do, every day.
05/28/2019 @ 1:29 pm
This is a test to determine whether this plug in actually sorts comments by the page on which the category is posted. I have my doubts.
05/28/2019 @ 4:54 pm
Are old Open Salon bloggers/OurSalon lurkers welcome to join and read?
05/29/2019 @ 12:21 pm
Anne, absolutely. You may not remember this but I tried to buy Open Salon when Salon decided to pull the plug. I wanted to make it a cooperative business, which is what we are going to do with BindleSnitch. You have to enroll as a member of BindleSnitch in order to use the Your Salon section, but anyone can join. The more the merrier. (Oh, right. I was sagemerlin on OS)
06/23/2019 @ 12:42 am
Still trying to post here. I’ve got a couple of drafts, they actually have different titles but identical content, and I can’t get them to publish. I’m able to comment at this point, though. Once I learn how to post I’ll be able to complete my transition.
06/26/2019 @ 9:44 am
You might need to do an updated post on Our Salon. I posted this morning for the second time (apparently the only blogger to do so with the possible exception of you) and, for the first time, the process was almost straightforward. You follow the instructions, the necessary windows and links are all now on the page, and you have a button that shows up and says PUBLISH.
Can you tell me how to delete a draft? I have a duplicate of my first post under another title I don’t want to keep.
01/11/2020 @ 7:20 pm
SHOUT!
An entire generation over the hill and down stream…
Sure sugar: must the sound track employ Roy Orbison’s greatest?
05/31/2020 @ 4:58 am
[Alan: maybe it is time for a hootenanny]
Comment by J.P. Hart on June 29, 2017 at 10:34am
Delete Vomit
Several truncated entries already this morning essentially referencing David Brin’s CONTRARY BRIN and on-going descriptors of hearing Peter, Paul and Mary Travers
Mary Travers
American Singer-Songwriter
And on-going Bradford Beach descriptions which included “Why don’t you take a picture!’ by a wet sand power-walking woman wearing just enough saying over her shoulder in a Celtic broag: euphonious, and continuous near-euphoric deep breathing RELAXATION (true: covered with oil) detail BEYOND mine make believe prowess as a ‘descriptor scribe’ of all the families with their bags of goodies, umbrellas, plaid blankets; how the Coast Guard chopper lumbers low just over the giant granite breakwater rock, green bottle beers
in Yeti coolers, my those zooms of that pink supersonic Frisbee kicking ?microbiol? dust and the sparkle of near microscopic silver/ruby what-must-have-been-wine glass bits as seen through opaque shades, wind filtered floppy sunhats straw, canvass, teen-angers in finish line sprints cascading splash-flashes in arm-stretched dives, ancient half shells: ribbed radius* like braille footnotes of glaciers long ago.
And you. So far away. I called hey! motioned but needed to keep typing toward FULL CADENCE faster and yeah lyrical almost touching the brass ring of ‘One Warm Saturday’ (you know, Dylan Thomas ‘ . . . always suffered; and lost . . .’).
Earlier there’d been a turkey Sepulcher with four-foot tattered wing swooping then at once higher than magic some eye-in-the-sky powerful observer climbing immense as what you might define as a dark angel. And last evening just before the rain a hawk as glanced through the sunroof free as a bird road-centered perfectly clawed.
Up atop that telephone line a whole yard high unless she was an owl eerily observant, patient.
I’d a fare up from O’Hare. Upon the frontage road holy-smoke Desiree a snapping tortoise sun shower basking or dead and I ought ‘had parked, idled and soccer- kicked nudged & swooshed it over to the culvert and cattails but opted to swerve the yellow wire thinking it was a dead rodent. No harm no foul, no severed digits.
I’d lightening northbound and 0 so dark already just a day or sole beyond all that time in a bottle glory of 21 June.
Barbarously wind shear and bushels like half drum rain deluged from the west, east, clashing horizontally and an entire sea-weight straight down immediately impinging any-all windshield wiper utility – too00 dangerous to stop, t00oo dangerous to keep on going all the way down Attica from 76 mph to 30 flasher buttons and luminous white shoulder line glint ooo0ooo close to those upfront anachronistically
tractor trailer *red*amber*red* flashers but dem-dare over the wheel~ well~ water forcing us to near stasis all doughhough I am acCELLerating with the quads fully singin’
‘When the Bullet Hits the Bone’.
12:34 CST 29 JUNE 2017
jpHart
(beneath Hoan Bridge,
MKE barrel fire LO;}
Sea of LOVE
/Aqua/Minnehaha/
Still My Guitar
*radii