Six Degrees Of Conversation
Well, I was born in a small town
And I live in a small town
Probably die in a small town
Oh, those small communities—John Mellencamp
Earlier this year when I moved the blog to Eleventy, I mentioned that in putting together this most recent incarnation of things I’d used a longrunning Tumblr theme called Nyssa as its design base. It’s a theme I’d used more than once when I was using Tumblr for one thing or another, and as they say in real estate it has “good bones”.
At the time, I’d emailed the theme’s author to see about permission rights for such a remix, but then ran into a prior Q&A about that very thing and so just charged ahead and got to work with my modifications for use here.
Anh emailed a reply overnight; as it turns out, I’d used an old address not much in use anymore. No harm no foul, since she reiterated to me the previous permissions given to other people.
The funny thing, though, is that she notes coming across my blogging anniversary post in which among other things I responded to a particular blog challenge that had been making the rounds. Turns out, she’d responded to these, too. As I noted in my reply back, I guess I forget that even in 2025 the blogosphere is still kind of small. Or, perhaps it’d be more accurate to say that it’s small again, now that we’re past the Twitter-era explosion of content marketers who overwhelmed the form and drove so many people away from it.
I’m compelled also to note that her about page is based on the idea of having multiple versions of oneself, something I’ve written about here several times over the years—such as when I’d riffed on Rachel on her name, where you can probably find links to those several other times. I do wonder to what degree personal websites tend toward inevitably reaching certain subjects such as this, persons after all being stories which tell our selves over time.