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March, 2012
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March, 2012
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March, 2012: Update
FlakeHQ, I'm pleased to report, is
sticking around! (In my last update, December 2010,
below) I believed I would be shutting down the site this
coming April — but that's not going to happen, thanks to
a very generous hosting opportunity I'll explain further
in a few months.
For the indefinite future, FlakeHQ
will endure as a more-or-less static resource.
December, 2010: Last Update of FlakeHQ
I created this site in the Fall of 1996 in conjunction
with the publication of Flake: Confessions of a
Psoriatic. At the time my principal reason for
creating the site was to allow online sales of the book.
In spite of my initially selfish motives, I did always
harbor some hope that the site would turn into an online
community. It took about 10 years for the online
community to reach its peak at about 18,000 unique
visitors per month. But long before that peak I realized
Flake: Confessions sales were considerably less
consequential -- and less important to me, personally -- than the fun dialogue and learning that I
and others experienced through the site.
Fourteen years is a long life for a web site born in the
20th Century, managed by one person, and never "remade"
to reflect evolving trends and tastes in web sites at
large. In 1996, most people still accessed the Internet
via low-speed dial-up services -- that eliminated most
rich media. We hadn't yet decided the Web was all about
multimedia. Today the web really is all about
multimedia.
I know that producing a multimedia site is a demanding
task. The career change I negotiated in August and September and
the position I was given in October is oversight over a
large (college) web site. My office is across the hall
from a video studio, down the hall from a photographer's
pool, and my work on the web site is considered a part
of college "public relations." So far I'm having a
great, heady time. I'm engaged in the kind of work I
love, now sporting rich media I've long dreamed about.
But I can't manage that new job and continue producing
FlakeHQ.
Though there will be no more updates, I will keep the
lights on at the site for another year -- through April,
2012. Interviewees, article and creative writers may
want to download their pieces on the site. Others may
want to use the search feature to find and download
correspondence on issues of current or historical
interest. Also, I'm pushing for a downloadable version
of the Sheehan psoriasis poetry collection. There is
nothing else like it -- anywhere. Stay tuned for more
about this -- or, send me an email and I'll put you on a
list to get further word directly by email when/if the
collection becomes available as a single download.
Though I won't be publishing mail at FlakeHQ after this
update, I can still be reached by email using any of the
"send mail" links on FlakeHQ pages. After April
2012 that address won't work (it gets turned off at the
same time the site goes dark).
I plan to remain a part of the dialogue at PsorChat and
become more active on and through my Facebook page.
I started to list all the people who have made FlakeHQ
better than it could have been without their time and
attention, but the list got immediately out-of-hand. You
know who you are and I hope we'll stay in touch.
To all I conclude: This has truly been my pleasure and I
thank each and every one of you for sharing it with me.
-Ed
New In Flaker Creativity
Our
prolific, dependable and always inspiring poet laureate
makes her last contribution to FlakeHQ this month:
If I
Were is, at first read, a typical human reflection
on one's chronic misfortune; i.e., why do I have to
flake like this? In our mind we assign our condition
to several inanimate things around us -- a tree, a
house, a road, snow -- all things which, when their
surfaces are scarred, seem to get fixed. But the reader,
if not the author, asks the question: Which, then is
the natural state of things: flawless or flawed?
Download the complete Sherry Sheehan FlakeHQ Collection
here.
This is all 38 poems published by Sherry inside
FlakeHQ.com between 2001and 2010. The collection is
Adobe PDF format and prints nicely on 8.5"x11" paper. If
you do not have Adobe Reader,
download it here. Also included in the collection:
Foreword by Ed Dewke; Sherry's 2007 interview with Ed
Dewke; notes on Sherry and the artists whose paintings
are reproduced in some of the poems.
The Last Published Email
Exchange
My original intention was not to post
any email in this final update of FlakeHQ, but when
Sadie's Guilty Conscience piece came in last month I
knew it had to be "the closer" for FlakeHQ's
large body
of correspondence (almost 1400 correspondence exchanges
in the Archives).
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