Greentown Abbey, the tongue-in-cheek name I have for my Dad's home, is a place I spend a great deal of time. I used to prior to COVID-19 entertain a visitor from Massachusetts or New York or New Jersey, friends of mine from work or causes with which I engaged online. But during COVID-19 we have not entertained guests. We have remained home for much of the time and usually only grocery shopping when we venture out.
Because of that an author/artist friend of mine, Jymi Cliche, has had two great ZOOM virtual salons or open mics, and they have been one on or for his birthday and one after but for the New Year's festivities. It is a great idea and if I had a more cohesive group of friends online I'd attempt my own ZOOM meeting. We have also a had smaller meeting with immediate family on ZOOM and that went well.
But of Greentown Abbey's friends and guests, what is it a set or a sect? It certainly is more of a set and the religious friends of Greentown Abbey have never visited here, they are too far away and are not able to travel.
So I once attempted a Go-To-Meeting group call among Saint Paul's Voice Centre supporters but it was thwarted by technological limitations and the transparency issues of the organization. I don't think I'd attempt that again. I don't have the same type of influence I once had in that regard.
I also attend Advisory Board meetings on ZOOM with the Department of Behavioral Health and Early Intervention of Wayne County online. I have attempted other advocacy and scholarly ZOOMs with some success. One was on poetry. Another on "Trump and Political Theology" was very timely given the crisis at the Capitol Building around the time of the electoral college certification of the Biden/Harris as President-Elect and Vice-President-Elect.
Yes, Greentown Abbey is decidedly more a set than a sect, and even my clergy friends are of their own denominations, giving rise to the need to name their association the Interfaith LGBTI Clergy Association, which is even comprised of lay faith leaders, advocates, activists, artists, and journalists, and other professionals.
As I watch, "Life in Squares" about the Bloomsbury Set, I find that we are not even really so close as to be a set, we are an association of online acquaintances. The closest friends i have had in life have passed on many of them. I am forty-six years of age and I have lost so many pieces of my heart and my soul that I feel like mourning is a part of my life now.
During COVID-19, you don't get to have coffee-clatches, and tea parties, dinner parties and so forth. Those things seem of another time now. I watch a lot of TV with my Dad and some of it without him during waking moment when he is asleep. The British dramas with their interpersonal and societal dramas are not always of interest to my Dad.
Facebook provides dialogues mostly surrounding polite concepts like cooking and TV and Film. But occasionally about, politics and art, or history, a chat occurs. I don't know what I would do without my social media as a way of keeping current and in touch with the world.
So of that set, the friends and followers, is it a set or sect, is it anything other than a online connection, well depends on whom you are referring, but in general the idea is that it is a social group, not even as intellectual as a set, and not as religious as a sect. In another time it may have developed to be more than that. In another time, I may have been more poetic, more artistic, less domestic, and less private, but as it stands, I am bound by my obligations to remain first and foremost a son. I've always been fond of my family, and they remain my first concern. So Greentown Abbey, it is home, as grand as it sounds, it is simple the place where heart and hearth are for this COVID-19 time being.
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