Yet Another Refugee from Livejournal

Back on March 18, I promised you [yet] another installment of my so-called "holiday newsletter."  I said that it would continue to talk about my interactions with people, moving the focus to social media (and Dreamwidth, in particular).  So here goes.

As it turns out, March 18 is not the date of my most recent journal entry before today's.  On May 13, I posted "Everybody wants a piece of me, I guess".  That's a silly title for a posting whose actual purpose was to let readers know that I had had hernia surgery two days earlier.

And that May 13 posting is a perfect example of what this journal entry is supposed to be about: how (e.g.) Dreamwidth could be an effective tool in strengthening the bonds between (e.g.) me and the people I care about.

You see, even for an extreme introvert like me, there are rather a lot of such people.  People who might like to know when I have something like a hernia operation.  Enough of them so that, in my weakened state two days after the surgery, it was not feasible to email, or call, all of them.

By posting it on Dreamwidth, I made it theoretically possible that they all would learn about it.  But of course that didn't actually happen; to the best of my knowledge, nobody actually found out about the surgery through that medium alone.  Why not?  Because very few people check my journal often enough for it to serve that purpose.

To the limited extent that that is anyone's "fault," it's mine.  The root problem is that I don't post often enough.

On the other hand, I might post more often if I knew that more people were checking.

So here's my plan: after posting this entry, I will begin a two-pronged effort.  An effort to post more often, and, concurrently, a "marketing" effort.  I will contact a collection of people who might be willing to experiment with checking my Dreamwidth more often … and who then might continue to do so, if I keep up my end of the bargain, and post more often—particularly, with "news items" that my friends and relatives might want to know.

My diabolical plan is more complicated than that.  But this journal entry is—as almost always—already quite long enough.  I will finish by inviting you, if you feel like it, to play a guessing game.  Namely, about the series of journal entries of which this one is the third: can you figure out what their content has to do with the phrase with which I titled them, namely, "Holiday Newsletter"?

So here I am again, to tell you about something that's been added to my "site" at The Well.  This time it's a story called "Missing Katie."

The story isn't brand-new: in fact, it was last revised in 2015.  If you've known me for a goodly while, you may already have read it.  But it hasn't been "publicly" available before.  That is, now, at long last, anyone can download a copy …

… provided, of course, that one knows that it's there.  But you do know that, don't you?

The title of the story has a double meaning: "A little girl is missing.  And her parents are missing her terribly."  That's from the "index page" which links to the story: https://people.well.com/user/edelsont/fiction-and-poetry/fiction/fic-index.html.

Katie's sudden absence gives her parents a shock, and also a puzzle.  But is the story a "mystery," in the genre-label sense?  The observable facts are strange, so much so that their first thought is that one or both of them must be crazy.

In time, an alternative hypothesis presents itself, one that seems to put them in "speculative fiction" territory.  It takes most of the story for them to flesh this theory out into something coherent, and to begin to experience it as real.

And as they do, you may continue to suspect that the parents were right the first time: they've gone crazy.  The reader isn't given any information that definitively answers this question.

Or at least, not until the last chapter.

Technical bits: the story is on the site in the form of a PDF file.  If you want to print it out, you'll need thirty-two sheets of paper.  If you'd like to jump straight to the story itself, the URL for that is https://people.well.com/user/edelsont/fiction-and-poetry/fiction/Missing-Katie.pdf.

I'd be most delighted if you read it.  But I won't be able actually to feel that delight unless I find out that you've read it.  A great way of letting me know would be to come back here afterwards, and post a comment to this journal entry.

I posted something earlier today in Dreamwidth's "talkpolitics community".  The subject line was "How to beat Trump, continued: don't neglect his incompetence", and you can find it at https://talkpolitics.dreamwidth.org/2131075.html.

The entry you are reading is a public service announcement, directed at those people who have been dragooned into following my journal, but are not otherwise involved with Dreamwidth.  It's just to let them know that the entry in "talkpolitics" is there.

And I have a dream.  I dream that some few, among that already distinguished population, will come to notice the many pleasures to be found in talkpolitics itself.  And dare I hope that one or two might, in the fullness of time, choose to become participants in that little (but global) community?

In the meantime, my apologies to those who had no need of this notification, since they are already part of the "talkpolitics" fraternity.