Author: Michael Janairo
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#518Day is already becoming a thing!
The background is a photo I took during “S(around)ound” at the Gasholder Building in Troy in 2012, led my Michael Oatman’s Production, Installation, and Performance class at RPI. It’s great to see that people are already touting #518Day on social media (here and here) — and other media!
#518Day is a way for arts groups, venues, makers, and their fans and friends to celebrate the vibrant arts communities of the 518 area code on May 18 (5/18). Most people will take to social media — Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and more — to send messages of support and to promote their own art, activities, and events.
You can see the latest tweets here.
Check out the Facebook event page here.
Part of my thinking behind #518Day is my belief in the democratic possibilities of social media for positive change. Most social media is free to sign up, though using it does require time and the ability to answer this question: What do I post?
The latest #518Day posts on Twitter (as of noon, Monday, May 16, 2016) #518Day gives everyone an answer, and an excuse to post something, and the chance to have their message amplified as people “like” and “retweet” and “regram” their posts. For example, I plan on retweeting to my Twitter followers and liking on Facebook and Instagram as many of the #518Day posts I come across. With the Tang’s social media accounts, I plan on promoting our current exhibitions and upcoming events.
In many social media allows for an organic way for the 518 region to identify itself because it is decentralized and open to all. Who knows, maybe we’ll get at least 518 tweets and posts!
I’ve heard from people who are getting ready, planning their Tweet, Instagram and Facebook strategies.
I’ve put some links to how to schedule Facebook posts on a Facebook Page, and tweets using TweetDeck here. https://michaeljanairo.com/join-the-celebration-of-518day/
Another tool that can be useful to schedule social media is Hootsuite. I use a free Hootsuite account both personally and where I work at the Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery. Here’s a quick start guide: https://help.hootsuite.com/hc/en-us/articles/204598140-Quick-start-guide
What are you doing to prepare for #518Day?
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#tbt Remember this Classic desktop image?
1.1, Copyright 1998 Christopher Johnson
Mac OS 9.2.1Does anyone still use this?
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I just pre-ordered Chuck Kinder’s Silver Ghost
Outlaw. Writer. Professor.
Chuck Kinder was my professor at the University of Pittsburgh’s MFA program. Like many of his students, I benefited greatly from his imaginative approach to writing, the often imaginative worlds opened up by his constant question: “What if?”
In an exciting turn of events, his 1978 novel “The Silver Ghost” is coming back into print through the work of Braddock Avenue Books where one of the publishers just so happens to be another one of Chuck Kinder’s former students, Jeffrey Condon.
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Book review: “Honeymooners: A Cautionary Tale” by Chuck Kinder
This review first appeared in the Albany Times Union (August 11, 2001)Hilarious, loving characters in ‘Honeymooners’
Chuck Kinder’s first novel since “The Silver Ghost,” in 1978, “Honeymooners: A Cautionary Tale” ($24; Farrar, Straus and Giroux; 358 pages), is a hilarious, yet unflinching, eyes-against-the-windshield journey through years of booze, drugs, sex, friendships, lies and betrayals in the lives of a pair of promising young writers.
The freewheeling 1970s that Kinder recreates, mostly in the San Francisco Bay area, belong within the literary tradition of the moveable feast Hemingway created out of Paris in the ’20s. Kinder’s writers, Ralph Crawford and Jim Stark, live “like bold outlaw authors on the lam from that gloomy tedium called ordinary life.” Kinder both celebrates and sends up their bravura and recklessness.
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A new story published by We Love Books & Company
Thanks to Ray Ortali for publishing my latest short story, Auntie Lovely Says Goodbye, in his eMagazine, We Love Books & Company, which you can download here.
