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]

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.