Hello Reader,
Got warm fuzzy comment?
Just as modern readers may enjoy a two page “flash fiction” as much as a normal short story, so too may I offer a careful web comment as if it were a “flash essay.” Hence my best writing is often my comments on other people’s blogs. Queerly, I never make copies for myself as souvenirs, instead, I let all my darlings rush away like sparkling salmon in the stream.
Recently another-commenter replied to my comment. This time with a difference: He took my words and made a poem!
The blog was by novelist John Scalzi, called Whatever. Scalzi’s post was entitled Behold My Drinks Fridge (August 29, 2019) It included a photograph of his second refrigerator being turned into a “beer cooler.” There were—get this—scores and scores of comments in the thread. My first comment is below. My second comment was a short one: “As of Saturday midmorning…” and then just before I hit the “post” button, I hit the “return” key to add:
“Strange: Nobody’s written a poem yet.”
As for ‘no poem,’ a couple comments later were my own words, sent back to me:
QUOTE
Kevin McLeod Bailey says:
Sean:
Are you sure?
As of
Saturday midmorning
I count
125 comments
about
a humble refrigerator
With all
due respect to world peace
sometimes
the simple pleasures
are what
we talk about.
UNQUOTE
Now, that’s a warm fuzzy.
Say, dear reader, as salmon swim away in the stream, in case you’re curious, my first comment was:
QUOTE
Sean Crawford says:
Nostalgia: Only a few years ago, as a tourist, I visited a regional dump serving three towns, it was just like the dump of my childhood (In the city we use garbage cans) Chatting with the old gate shack guy, he explained that a fellow comes around with a rod to suck out the (R-14?) from all the refrigerators, as an environmental thing, protecting the ozone layer.
In my own big city dump, the young guy at the gate won’t let you in unless your vehicle has a load to drop off. Those are his orders.
As for refrigerators, sometimes, like Philip K. Dick reaching for a light bulb string that isn’t there, I wait for my refrigerator to go click when I close the door. But no, it’s all magnets now. As a boy our fridge had a round plastic handle on the inside, (cool!) so a trapped child could get back out.
Here on the Great Plains, nearly all my city’s streets were laid down after ice boxes were no longer needed. A fellow in my toastmasters club did a speech explaining the new fangled technology behind his modern “beer cooler.”
UNQUOTE
EPILOGUE
Regarding comments being read, and being Noticed:
Recently (September 2019) I sent an e-mail to a world famous blogger, Derek Sivers.
You may wonder:
If Derek gets hundreds of comments for most of his posts, (sometimes six or seven hundred)
then is there any use in commenting? Would he ever notice little-old-me or you?
Sure he would. I e-mailed Derek, to warn that his mass mail out wasn’t reaching everyone. Part of his reply included:
“…Good to hear from you. Thanks again for your comments on the blog. I see and appreciate them all. :-)”
I guess the overall lesson for today’s post, coming from a poet-commenter and a big blogger, is that everything we do gets noticed, at some level.
Sean Crawford
On the romantic rolling prairie,
September 2019,
Posted April 2020
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