Reconnecting with Old Friends

And a Few Updates to Casey/Artandcolour

Early 1980s—Nancy and Bill, Dodge Dart and a pretty kitty.

Joining Facebook recently, I've digitally reconnected with several friends from my past, and it's not at all as dirty as that sounds, lol. It's fascinating the way Facebook works, and all social media I s'pose, in that it really emphasizes the "web" in World-Wide-Web. As far as finding old friends, you "friend" one person, who then puts you in touch with another friend from your past, and next thing you know you're zooming along in a flying Delorean back to your childhood.

An example of this is Nancy Evans Wolff, above, with her husband Bill. I've known Nancy since she moved to Guilford in 3rd grade. I've known Bill since high school. We've spent time together in Vermont, Maine and Nantucket and we formed a little cooking club back in the early 1980s. We traveled to Germany together on an exchange trip for our high school German class, and I was a groomsman in their wedding. But times change, of course. They moved away after their marriage, had four children—two daughters and two sons—and while I heard snippets of how they were doing through the intervening thirty years or so, we really didn't connect again at all. That is, until the past few weeks when I joined Facebook as I mentioned above.

Well, as it turns out, and I'm not at all surprised, Nancy is a blogger, too! She writes a column for Prudent Living Magazine, a Vermont-based quarterly magazine dedicated to green home renovations, alternative energy solutions, gardening tips and health information. According to the magazine's website, it's about "living smart, using resources wisely, preserving good health and safeguarding the planet." Nancy and Bill live in a passive-solar house they themselves built in 2000, garden extensively, keep a well-stocked pantry, and enjoy watching their electric meter spin backwards, lol! Nancy's blog has recipes, house-hold tips, gardening advice and personal anecdotes, and you can really learn new and useful ideas with each post. We certainly made some awesome meals "back in the day" and the whole idea of "prudent living" is just exactly right for today.

I hope all of my readers check out Nancy's well-written blog and, especially, enjoy her recipes. This girl can cook, lol! 

• Nancy's blog. On the Homefront—Prudent Living website, click here. The newest post is a recipe for her Mom's Corn Chowder, followed by Storing Coffee and Starting Seeds Inside among many, many others. On the left side of her page, you'll find all of Nancy's archived blogposts. 
• My loyal readers may also find Nancy's blog in my Blogroll, on the right side of my blog under Prudent Living On the Homefront
• Prudent Living Magazine website, here. It's free pdf download, and really worth the fifteen seconds it takes to register!

Updates to Casey/Artandcolour

• Sharp-eyed readers will notice I recently added "Share" capabilities to my posts in my two blogs, located at the bottom of each post. This makes it easy-peasy to share my blogposts on Facebook, Google+, Twitter and other Blogger sites, as well as making it easier to E-mail posts. Please feel free to now share away with your family and friends.
• Just this week, I've done away with the need for typed "captchas" to post comments. Blogger had made them more difficult and tedious, in my opinion, and I rarely had to delete an spam comments anyway. So far, so good. I've had three e-mail notifications of spam comments since the change, but when I've gone to those posts to delete them, I can't see the comments. Perhaps Blogger is somehow deleting them, perhaps as the blog "owner" I can't see them. If any of my dear readers every see a spam comment, please let me know. I'll leave the "captchas" off as long as the spam doesn't become unmanageable. I'd like more comments and more interaction, not less, but we certainly don't need to find links to Russian mail order brides, cheap Viagra or what-have-you!
• As I mentioned in this post, I've recently joined the rest of the world on Facebook. I don't have a specific Casey/Artandcolour page, or Casey/ArtandcolourCars page yet, but I have a personal page for my oh-so-radical politics and like-minded friends, lol. I link back to my blogs, and post historical photos and remembrances of my town. I've found good music there, interesting stories and remembrances, and the aforementioned old friends. Come join me if you'd like, Casey Shain on Facebook.