I first noticed a disturbance in the force at the start of the month. <\/p>\n
Not a full-on twitterite, I follow less than 100 @handles, however by the aggregation of mentions, retweets and metatweets it makes for a fairly steady stream of commentary. I can watch the flow like one would watch a busy streetcorner from a window above, every so often a face or snippet of conversation registering to my eye or ear as the crowd passes.<\/p>\n
Sometimes I would gaze through my twitter window hoping specifically to catch a certain character or other on their way past my vantage point. Happily I could reach out and rewind and fast-forward the stream, scanning it for insights or sometimes just for the assurance that my daughter or a friend was simply still there, still ranting or enthusing.<\/p>\n
Just as you might smile and wave at the barber on your way to the office, I made it a habit this summer to check every day to see how my friend @michaelocc<\/a> was getting on. Stricken with cancer, bedridden and often silenced by medications and procedures, he carried on a daily conversation with his family, friends, and the rest of the twitterverse. Occasionally I would say hello, more often I would quietly observe the heartwarming and uplifting banter he would trade with all comers. <\/p>\n When his feed fell silent last week, I feared the worst, and today I hear<\/a> from many grieving friends<\/a> and colleagues that indeed, Michael died last night. He was a giant of an imp of a man and I shared many a hearty laugh with him. We started our blogs one day apart from each other back in 2001 (his was first) and crossed paths many times. I shall miss him greatly.<\/p>\n As I watch the flow of my feed, the grieving and the fond memories of Michael rise above the hubbub. I know that these will become fewer and that they will fade into the daily hustle and bustle. Until then, I will cherish the opportunity I have to rewind the stream just one more time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I first noticed a disturbance in the force at the start of the month. Not a full-on twitterite, I follow less than 100 @handles, however by the aggregation of mentions, retweets and metatweets it makes for a fairly steady stream of commentary. I can watch the flow like one would watch a busy streetcorner from […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"activitypub_content_warning":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-868","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blather"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ashleyit.com\/blogs\/brentashley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/868","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ashleyit.com\/blogs\/brentashley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ashleyit.com\/blogs\/brentashley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ashleyit.com\/blogs\/brentashley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ashleyit.com\/blogs\/brentashley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=868"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/ashleyit.com\/blogs\/brentashley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/868\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":871,"href":"https:\/\/ashleyit.com\/blogs\/brentashley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/868\/revisions\/871"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ashleyit.com\/blogs\/brentashley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=868"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ashleyit.com\/blogs\/brentashley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=868"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ashleyit.com\/blogs\/brentashley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=868"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}