My First Entry

[rusty_t]

Long... Long ago Live Journal was a big part of my social engagement online. I can even remember posting on LJ about how I made a MySpace page, it's been that long. Over the years I used it less and less, and every time I returned in an attempt to rekindle my presence on the platform, it seemed the page drifted more and more from what I remembered it being. This wasn't just nostalgia clouding my mind, it was the altering of features, removal of others, and a long, slow transformation that seemed to have made the LJ of today a totally separate entity than it once was. On top of that many of the people and communities I used to know were gone or long-inactive. As I sadly moped through the ruins of LJ, poking at it to see if it was even worth my time anymore, I saw an entry from someone mentioning this site, which I had not heard of before. After reading up on it a bit it seemed that it could possibly be what I was looking for, and after signing up and fleshing out my profile a bit, I can say this is really starting to feel like 2004 all over again, in a good way. A bit quiet here though, but maybe I'm just not looking in the right places.

Well, here it is, my first entry. Hopefully more will follow after I browse through what this site has to offer and what communities are active. I miss the genuine engagement between people that LJ used to offer, and I hope I may rediscover it here.

~Rusty

Comments

[ride_4ever]

Hello! I am here via seeing your comments on the December points post, about how you hadn't known of Dreamwidth until recently. LJ was my fannish home for so many years until so many people and entire comms disappeared. I am one of many, many former LJers who now make Dreamwidth our fannish home. I think you will be happy with Dreamwidth.

[rusty_t]

Thanks for welcoming me, and for being my very first interaction on this site. I'm looking forward to seeing what awaits.

[ride_4ever]

I just checked out your website and I see that one of your books is in the library where I worrk (I am a Collection Management Librarian at a public library). It's the one you did for the "Images of America" series.

[rusty_t]

Small world! The book about the Greystone Park hospital, correct? Writing that was a form of therapy for us, as we were very involved in the (failed) fight to save that building.

[ride_4ever]

Yes, the book about the Greystone Park Hospital. At least, although you could not save the building in 2015, you got the photos.

We don't have your Antiquity Echoes: a Photographed Tour of Abandoned America at my specific library, but we do have it in the library system of which my library is a member.

(I did some urbex when I lived in Peoria, Illinois while I was at college in the mid-to-late 1970s...wish I'd thought to take photos back then.)

[rusty_t]

I have a friend who also started exploring in the 70s, and still does to this day. He runs a site called 'Modern Ruins' (https://modern-ruins.com/). He tells me stories about boating out to the abandoned Ellis Island and all sorts of other adventures from decades ago.