I actually contemplated creating such a group because I am a total garden weenie and always post garden minutia that may be too much even for my "Close Friends" list that I post to. So I jokingly suggested one day that I needed a "Secret Garden Weenies" group, and many of my Friends actually said, "Yes, I want to join!" So how would I go about creating such a group, in other words, how could I create a group that was secret and all those in the group knew it was secret but no one else knew it existed? And how could I add new members? My Facebook page is not very private, it is an iteration of my public persona, and I often invite people I network with personally or professionally to "friend" me. I post certain things only to a "Close Friends" list I made, but that is not the same as a "secret" group.

I am kind of surprised that it upsets people to see a profile photo that isn't a perfect likeness. I don't usually use photos of myself (hate them!) but on a rare occasion, I use a photo of me with one of my (now passed) dogs. It was from almost 20 yr ago but I love the photo and the memories it reflects. Otherwise, I use something seasonal, temporal or a character that reflects my current state of mind. I've used Hit Girl (from Kick-ass), David Bowie, a painting of Ganesha, Winnie the Pooh, and (currently) the Statue of Liberty. I doubt I'd post a bunch of photos of myself even if I was young, thin and hot. Some of my nieces use the silly filters that distort their faces-- or those that swap features with another person. It's all in good fun and they laugh a bunch while doing it. No harm there. We need more giggles in the world.

People have more discretionary income than they once did. When my parents and when I was looking at houses, one took what one got and made the best of it. I knew some pretty wealthy people and I can only remember one friend from when we lived in LA (she lived way up the hill in Beverly Hills) who remodeled her kitchen, and a friend in St Louis who had the world's smallest kitchen, 3 children and entertained and cooked nearly every single weekend. People just didn't spend money on such thing! They MADE them work! Now, a 5 year old kitchen in Darien CT is considered a "total gut job". I redid my kitchen of 32 years last year. Was it useable? Yes! Had I made it attractive? Yes? Could it be improved? Absolutely yes! And a new kitchen was on my bucket list, which at then age 72, seemed to have some "time relevance"! I have NO REGRETS! Moving my refrigerator made an enormous difference both in the function of the kitchen and in its appearance. When the main entrance into the kitchen feels "cramped" (because it IS cramped!", then that colors one's impression of the entire kitchen which was NOT cramped at all! Now, the kitchen appears quite spacious for an 11 x 15 ft kitchen! It has tons of counter space, good separation of work areas for multiple cooks, and the replacement of bottom cabinets with big drawers was worth doing even if everything else had worked perfectly. But redoing my kitchen was far from a "necessity". It was a luxury to which I treated myself and I have no regrets. I think at my age, I "earned" it by living for so many years with multiple kitchens that were anything but ideal. But even in them, I cooked fabulous meals and I never was beside myself every single time I went into my kitchen. It's all a mindset today.

Well if you look at what the fake accounts on FB were doing in the election, they were just posting negative rumor type things on both sides. They were "fake" in that the people were pretending to be groups that they were not, but do we really care or parse where our memes come from? I try but a lot of it is ubiquitous. The fact that folks got caught up in posting it says more about human nature than FB being responsible. Smear campaigns are as old as the hills. But the issue is, if you have your phone with you and are on social media 24/7, then just the atmosphere it creates in your life will influence you. The memes mostly stoked divisions, fear and hate in the populace, for both parties actually. This is an age old technique. Just repeat things in the background and folk will pick up on it as truth, whether they are paying much attention or not. Repeat a lie something like 19 times and folks will think it is the truth. So if you see it 19 times on a pamphlet, hear it in the halls of your high school, or have it pop up on your phone, it's pretty much the same as far as being bad. The difference is how intense and long lasting it is when it is on a device that you are attached to all day long. That's why I am torn. I want the pluses of having my device for positive communication, but want to weed out the negative. This is something my husband and I disagree on, I try to stamp out saying toxic things and having toxic thoughts and hearing toxic sounds that I don't want to influence my life in toxic ways. Hubs says, "oh come on, it's just a movie, or it's just a joke or it's just a tv show, etc." He denies being negatively influenced by watching and hearing angry people argue all day on TV. Hubs and I are basically on the same page with big political issues but not on the same page about how to speak and act and what kinds of atmosphere to immerse oneself in. I think that's because hubs grew up in a toxic home and then had a toxic first marriage. He learned to wall himself off from his surroundings. It's difficult to teach an old dog new tricks. Particularly if the dog doesn't want to learn. So a lot of the time I have to say, "Go ahead and listen or get involved in that, but leave me out of it." He does a lot of positive things too, so far the scale is far down on the positive end, although sometimes it wobbles. My best friend has a similar issue in her long marriage, she says, "Politically and socially we totally agree. But how to load the dishwasher, how often to clean the car, what time to leave for an event, and a thousand other daily tasks we disagree vehemently on." They have contrasting personal styles as do my husband and I, introvert/extrovert, etc. But then he's a contrarian and if I say he's one way, no matter what it is, he will deny it. He often argues he likes something one day and doesn't like it the next, I can't keep track sometimes! Deny or not, the marketers know a lot about how it works, the FB data miners were sophisticated enough to mine and parse information from FB accounts to figure out who was vulnerable to what messages. No different than FB figuring out which ads to show you or tv advertisers knowing who is watching what shows so they can sell air time to companies to advertise. The only difference is that FB did not pay very much attention to what folks were doing with what they sold them. Candidates want to speak with constituent groups and get their message out to them. But what about folks who want to poison the well? Negative campaigns work, spreading insinuating and biased disinformation works. That's the real kicker for me, how do I watch tv, use my phone and even pump gas for heaven's sake and not be bombarded by this stuff? How do I keep the good and weed out the bad? Every time I turn around, some type of haranguing media is on somewhere . . . The tv station doesn't refuse to air a political add because it is biased does it? And yet most people loathe having to listen to that stuff . . . and yet is persists because it works . . . agh!