Blogging: The Wide-Leg Jeans of the Internet
I started the original Chronicle of Wasted Time sometime around 2008 when blogging was all the rage and artists were encouraged to join the blogosphere to promote ourselves and sell our art. But The Chronicle was never just about art. It was also about my attempts to run a small-scale mixed farm with my husband—and the often hilarious chaos that came from living with livestock. So hilarious, in fact, that these blog posts led to a multi-year stint writing a humor column for a farming magazine.
Eventually, social media made blogging obsolete. I stopped writing and deleted The Chronicle. Now, everything has come full circle and blogging is back. I’ve realized how much I’ve missed long-form writing and deeply regret deleting The Chronicle—much like I regret sending my favorite wide-leg jeans to the secondhand store, thinking, Well, those will never be in again.
BOY WAS I WRONG.
This new version of The Chronicle will focus primarily on art, with very little about farming. As we approach sixty, we no longer have the strength to wrangle sheep or the patience to tolerate the screeching of Guinea fowl. Instead, we’re channeling our energy into establishing a serious center for contemporary art in a small rural community. That said, I have no doubt we’ll still find ourselves in all sorts of accidentally hilarious situations—because, well, that’s just how we roll.
About the Name of This Blog
When I was about eleven, I was given an ancient, blue cloth-bound copy of The Oxford Book of English Verse. Because I was a weird kid, I actually read it.
I especially loved the poems by Shakespeare, particularly Sonnet 106:
When in the chronicle of wasted time
I see descriptions of the fairest wights,
And beauty making beautiful old rhyme
In praise of ladies dead and lovely knights,
Then, in the blazon of sweet beauty's best,
Of hand, of foot, of lip, of eye, of brow,
I see their antique pen would have express'd
Even such a beauty as you master now.
So all their praises are but prophecies
Of this our time, all you prefiguring;
And, for they look'd but with divining eyes,
They had not skill enough your worth to sing:
For we, which now behold these present days,
Have eyes to wonder, but lack tongues to praise.
The "lovely knights" bit cracked me up because it made me think of this:
Monty Python was another area of expertise I had as an eleven-year-old. I committed Sonnet 106 to memory much as I did entire Monty Python routines—which, I’m sorry to say, I also performed on stage.
Shakespeare and Monty Python shaped my worldview early on, and that pretty much explains everything.
