Hello world! (From the IndieWeb)

“I have come to believe over and over again that what is most important to me must be spoken, made verbal and shared, even at the risk of having it bruised or misunderstood….we fear the visibility without which we cannot truly live….Without community, there is no liberation.”

Audrey Lorde, The Transformation of Silence into Language

My first blog was started in the year 2003 – documenting my bicycle commuting adventures from New Cumberland PA, across the Susquehanna, into downtown Harrisburg across the street from the state capital building. The blog, by the creative name of “Bicycle Commuting Now”, as it was hosted on the BlogSpot platform, I’ve just now discovered is still live on the web at http://bicyclecommutingnow.blogspot.com/

Diving into a personal website as part of the IndieWeb – a people-focused alternative to the “corporate web”. Why IndieWeb? “Our online content and identities are becoming more important and sometimes even critical to our lives. Neither are secure in the hands of random ephemeral startups or big silos. We should be the holders of our online presence.”

• Identity and Recognition
• Control and agency
• Reclaim your attention and focus
• Better UI and UX
• Freedom
• More empowering
• More author centric
• More robust
• Reach more people
• Emotional Support
• Learn as you go
• Avoiding Problems
• Unreliability
• Identity loss
• Site loss
• Censorship
• Content theft
• Content And Identity Abuse
• Personalization/filter bubble
• Negative community
• Content lockdown
• Loss of Income

Read more about each of these items at https://indieweb.org/why

A post I enjoyed about why we should each have our own website by Jamie Tanna at https://www.jvt.me/posts/2019/07/22/why-website/

And lastly, from LitHub – “The Courage to Write: On the Radical Generosity of Letting Yourself Be Seen” by Robin Marie MacArthur at https://lithub.com/the-courage-to-write-on-the-radical-generosity-of-letting-yourself-be-seen particularly for referencing Audre Lorde’s essay “The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action” where she shares “I have come to believe over and over again that what is most important to me must be spoken, made verbal and shared, even at the risk of having it bruised or misunderstood….we fear the visibility without which we cannot truly live….Without community, there is no liberation.”