You need a name, or two.

My class description in the Osher catalog includes an instruction to come to the first class with a name for your blog and be prepared to write. When you sign up for a new blog they tell you to select a name that will be descriptive of your content; not something like “My Blog.” The name of your blog should tell something about you, and I think it should be distinctive, preferably unique. I googled the name of my first blog, “fat-old-artist” with quotation marks around the name, and found nothing else using that phrase. I thought I was being funny, but found out the name had a dark side. I neglected to google the words separately, or I would have found out there are a large number of sites that come up, many of them concerned with p*o*r*n*o*g*raphy. Given our obsessions with thin and young this came as a big surprise. By the way, the asterisks are to keep search engines from finding the word, I hope. The spam gets annoying and a little scary.

I changed the name of the blog to Studio Ruthe, which actually solved the problem, but fat-old-artist remains in the URL, the address of the blog. This brings up the second name–the one that appears as part of your URL. From my not so happy experience I recommend that this should not be the same as the blog name. There is actually a third possible name–the domain name that I will not discuss unless one of my students raises the question; I think it can only add another layer of confusion.

One of my favorite pairs of names was created by my artist friend Sandy Blanc. She calls her blog “Color Me Blanc” and her URL is http://sandrab1.wordpress.com/. She got off to a great start with a page of collage techniques and several good posts; I wish she would add to it more often.

I think every elder should have a blog. I see it as a way to fight the cloak of invisibility that envelops us as we age. It is a testament to our enduring curiosity, interests, opinions and activities. More to come.