I enjoyed those glimpses into Ron's life, ting_tong.
If Ron never wanted that sort of thing seen, he never would have set up the account and presented those broadly varied photos from his past.
I truly believe the exposure will not bother him, wazza and truebrit. But you guys of course likely do not have a similar family photo album that is publicly online.
I actually have a rather extensive one.
However, I know you both are not critiquing Ron or anyone else for that ─ you are just speaking for yourselves. And fair play.
What would have probably flustered or hurt Ron is any negative commentary on his family, or his relationship with them; even if he was a fierce character.
People can be unbelievably hurtful while hiding behind their keyboards ─ and the distancing this affords. Just about every one of the same Web-snipers that love engaging in that sort of thing wouldn't dare tender the same damaging barbs if it had to be done to the victim's face.
No one who has gone to the vulnerable and selfless effort of opening up some of their past through a visual medium like an online photo album merits the heartless shredding that some gonad-shriveled trolls cannot seem to resist indulging themselves in.
And that declaration is most definitely not entirely inspired by the drinks I've had this evening...although it has undeniably contributed.
I just felt like putting all of that out there in case somebody felt like trashing any of that visual record of Ron's on Flickr.
Apart from photo albums, I also have a blog that I commenced over eight years ago. I use it to whine and bitch about family life and just about anything else.
Well, back in (June?) 2012, someone sent me this anonymous note by post, believe it or not:
It almost shut me down ─ I considered dropping right out of blogging. it very much hurt.
But I ultimately decided to keep on with it. The pricks out there don't need to tune in ─ I don't put myself on the Web for them. Ultimately, I am blogging for me.
I had a journal that I kept for quite a few years beginning back in, I think, September 1973. It was just before I turned 24 years old the following month.
It's no small diary or book ─ it's more than a dozen of those Duo-Tang folders or covers, and each are packed tight with as many sheets of lined foolscap paper as could be fitted into those covers.
I'm no one. Whatever happened to me over the course of the years that the journal collection may have talked about is never going to matter to anyone after I am gone.
I have no children, after all. The insignificant events of my life will never matter to anyone.
But I started my blog in September (oddly enough, just like my journal) 2008 because insignificant as my existence is, at least whatever I leave there will perhaps remain ─ unlike the degrading paper journal of my young adulthood.
Actually, in September 2014, I began typing out a matching day from 41 years before that was taken from the beginnings of my journal, and I have more-or-less continued to do so. I am up to January 1976 now.
So some of that old history of mine is also getting preserved, I suppose ─ boring as blazes as it usually is.
Of course, I hardly expect to still be alive to get to the end of that recorded journal ─ my online blog will stop before I come anywhere near getting it all recorded in my blog.
Man! I have to quit posting stuff when I've had some drinks ─ I get far too carried away.
I was merely trying to explain that for some of us, longevity online is all there is ever going to be. I have no son or daughter ─ everything concerning me will be lost once I am...done.
So I do not mind having online photo albums and the like.
What I do not need is some sniping coward ripping into some aspect of my life ─ that is not why I have it out there.
However, it is blatantly obvious to me that many other people do not feel this drive to record themselves online ─ and neither would I, if I had ever been blessed with children to whom I could have shared my past.
Anyway, I had best wrap this up. Methinks a mouse that I have set a live trap for is possibly taking the bait ─ the bugger seems to have moved itself in around Christmas.
I apologize if I got too boring...but you didn't need to keep reading!