I first wrote this blog post on February 28th. It was the post that I originally had planned for last Wednesday. But that was when all the blogging issues had finally gotten the better of me. The timeline of blogging woes began on the day I learned about Lawrence
Ferlinghetti's death. Ferlinghetti died in the night on February 22 and
I read the news on the morning of the 23rd which sent me on an internet
journey of nostalgia and shared grief. What I did not know was that
that was also the day that Firefox, my web browser, updated their
program. One of the new features was something called "Total Cookie
Protection" which they describe this way:
"Today we are pleased to announce Total Cookie Protection, a major privacy advance in Firefox built into ETP Strict Mode.
Total Cookie Protection confines cookies to the site where they were
created, which prevents tracking companies from using these cookies to
track your browsing from site to site."
The impact that had my
ability to stay logged in even on our own blog was crazy. It showed
some blogs I visit daily as not being safe. It showed some blogs that
said that I had approved cookies at that site. It was chaos. I don't
like my routines disrupted like this, not during a pandemic!! So, after
two weeks of this craziness, I reloaded my entire hard-drive files from a
backup dated February 13. And voila... everything was back to normal.
It's likely I could have just reverted to the previous Firefox
application without going fully nuclear, but I went nuclear instead.
LOL!
Here's the blog post I had planned to post two weeks ago, in memory of Lawrence Ferlinghetti.
The
best part of blogging is finding good, kindhearted, thoughtful people
all around the world. We read the words of people on our beautiful blue
planet. The ones who walk around in New Zealand or Australia. The ones
who walk around Trafalgar Square or New York City. The ones who walk
around in Florida or in Germany, Texas or North Carolina, Canada or
Maine, California, Georgia, Washington, or Arizona. They tell us their stories. They enrich
our lives. They remind us that we are all connected.
On the
day I read of Lawrence Ferlinghetti's passing I googled around trying to
remember if I had taken my parents to hear him read at the University
of Colorado in Boulder back in 1982. I remembered that I had taken them
to hear someone, but I couldn't remember who (it was Gary Snyder). So I
googled "Ferlinghetti Boulder." The second listing that came up was this
blog post
on a blog called The Daily Beat. I was blown away when I clicked the
link. There was a photo of the poster of The Jack Kerouac Conference,
the same poster that we have had hanging in every living room for the
past 39 years. I read the post and was so delighted to find another fan
of the Beat writers. I decided I had to email Rick Dale, the blogger.
We have been corresponding ever since. It is truly the best part of this
crazy interconnected world. Rick did a blog post about the first email I sent him.
I was so grateful that our virtual paths had crossed. I hope you'll read his post. Thank you, Rick!