Click to see my original turkey vulture photograph
I’m no different than many people who are following sensible precautions to avoid getting or transmitting Covid. Not having a partner makes it worse. I am bored.
My typical day begins around 4:00 AM when the dogs insist I get up no matter how badly I want to keep sleeping. I often have an idea for a hopefully original topic to write about to post on Daily Kos, at least I try to be original (you can be the judge of that). If I do have an idea I make some coffee and write it up. I sometimes spend a lot of time photoshopping an illustration for the story. That’s more fun than writing a story which has to make sense and be grammatical and has to pass muster with the readers who love to correct my errors.
If I come up blank I watch MSNBC and I look at my go-to Internet news websites. Sorry Daily Kos, you are down the list after The Washington Post, NY Times, HUFFPOST, and even RawStory which breaks stories minute by minute with brief summaries of articles published elsewhere. I often come up with a topic from the news about which I think I can offer something of a different perspective.
Once I post a story on Daily Kos I check back periodically to look at the comments and respond to some of them.
By mid-morning I may continue watching something on streaming video that I’ve been following like the additive nighttime soap Nashville with it’s 124 hour long episodes. That kept me going for for a couple of weeks. If I’m not into a series I usually try to find something on Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, or Acorn to watch.
At around 11:30 I make myself some lunch from my cache of groceries ordered delivered from a local grocery store as I check in with MSNBC and RawStory to see if there’s been breaking news.
I may watch TV until about 2 PM and then I get drowsy and take a nap for an hour and more often than not have a dream that either entertains, saddens, or scares the crap out of me. Sleep provides me with my own streaming videos in dreams. Unlike television they always have a personal message they are sending me.
When I wake up if it isn’t raining I take my Westies Mac and Duff, for a walk around the campus of the senior community on Oregon’s Willamette River where I live. (Click here to enlarge photo)
Once back from my post-nap walk I repeat my morning ritual until it’s time to eat again. Rarely I actually cook a meal more or less from scratch. So far the most complicated meal I’ve made is meatloaf. Sometimes I broil a burger in the oven. Often I just nuke a frozen meal. Sometimes I’m not hungry, for example last night I just had a bagel, cream cheese, and sliced salmon for dinner.
My evenings are devoted to diverting and amusing myself by watching television until I get too tired to keep my eyes open. I usually check in to see what’s on MSNBC but usually I lose interest and go back to entertainment shows. Between seven and eight I go to bed and try to stay awake until nine by watching MSNBC or find something else to watch on my little bedroom TV.
Unlike most Daily Kos readers I am fairly active on social media. I sometimes post something on Twitter where once in awhile a tweet like this will get between 500 and 1000 impressions. It’s not lost on me that more people see my tweets with a very few exceptions, will ever see anything I post here. I sometimes participate in a comment thread on John Gartner’s Duty to Warn Facebook group.
I have my own open Facebook page but it hasn’t led to much commenting even though it is followed by 288 people.
A couple of days ago I thought I'd try something new. Facebook has three types of groups anyone can open. One is entirely public. You can find mine if you belong to Facebook. There are two other types of Facebook groups. One is private and closed. It can be found if you know how to look for it but members, posts, and comments can't be seen. All you can see is the group description. Membership has to be by the invitation of the administrator or by request with the administrator’s approval. The other is a secret group. Only members can see it so obviously it is by invitation only.
I was so bored that I...
thought "what the hell" I'd start a simple private group and I invited some of the people whose names I recognized who were “friends” on my open Facebook group. So far I’ve invited 66 people out of those 288 people. Five people have joined so far.
I named the group The Turkey Vulture Private Discussion Group. If anyone who is on Facebook types just the word “turkey” (see image) in the search they will find it on the dropdown list.
This is how I described my new Facebook group :
It is named for the turkey vultures which I see riding the thermals above the Willamette River near Portland, Oregon where I live.
Some may think the turkey vulture is ugly. Actually if you appreciate how it flies it is beautiful.
Sure it is a scavenger and feeds almost exclusively on carrion, otherwise known as dead meat. Look on the bright side. Unlike birds like crows which will eat anything dead or alive, or the eagle which is a predator, the turkey vulture isn't a killer.
It finds its food using its keen eyes and sense of smell, flying low enough to detect the gasses produced by the beginnings of the process of decay in dead animals. In flight, it uses thermals to move through the air, flapping its wings infrequently. It roosts in large community groups.
This group is for people who want to post on any subject but mostly on politics, culture, and society and don't want their posts or comments to be seen by the general public.
The Poll:
I put a poll on a long time ago which I can’t find but I recall that very few Kos readers used social media. I wonder if that has changed since the pandemic.