The River City Singers

(Photo courtesy of Kathleen Daugherty.)

That's us, Harrisburg's newest choral group, the River City Singers.  I'm the big mook in the back in the pink shirt.

You might remember me saying that the only reason I am not able to leave Facebook completely is that I manage the choral group FB page.  It's part of my duties as Secretary of the organization, along with minutes of the board meeting, minutes of meetings of the general membership, and thank-you letters to donors.  The photo is from our most recent concert, which raised us $400.00.  That will buy sheet music as well as refill the scholarship fund.  (We are open to all, but if you can pay, we do have dues twice annually, spring and fall seasons, to help cover music and rental costs.  If you can't pay, you still sing with us; your dues come out of that aforementioned scholarship fund.)

It's a good bunch with a good mix of voices.  We actually have five baritones, three basses, six tenors, six altos and eight sopranos, which makes for a nice blend.  Our musical co-directors have decades of experience between them conducting choral groups.  They know their stuff.

Working for this bunch and promoting our agenda of "singing for those who have no voice" makes it worth being stuck in Facebook for a while longer.

Just To Clarify: A Facebook Departure Postscript

OK, a number of people have reacted negatively and strongly to my decision to leave Facebook.  The main reasons are that:  I should have known better; the fine print in the user agreements spelled out the potential data mining; I should have realized that when the product is "free" you are the product; and on and on and on, ad nauseam.

No.

Respectfully, no.

I did read all of those user agreements.  Which is why I never used either the Facebook app or the Messenger app.  Never.  I was never comfortable with giving those apps access to my contacts, to my phone records, or to my Friends List.  When I used Facebook at all, it was on my home computer, which uses a Virtual Private Network, using my Internet browser to access the Facebook website directly, or on the Internet browser on my smartphone, which was set up in similar fashion.  To repeat:  I never used the apps.  Never.

Likewise, I never signed up for, or played, Words With Friends, Farmville, Candy Crush, Mafia Wars, or any of the others.  The one bit of silliness I engaged in was Superpoke in my early Facebook days; and yes, I did throw the occasional sheep at a friend.  That was it.

To clarify, then -- this is why I left:  Despite my personal caution, my data was ripped out of Facebook because not all of my friends exercised the same level of paranoia.  I did not give anybody my permission to take, or to use, this data.  It was stolen, using my friends as a conduit and means of entry.  It was digital burglary.  (Originally, I wanted to use a different crime but then I realized how insensitive and triggering that was.  Nonetheless, the level of violation that I feel is comparable to how you feel when you come home to find your home burglarized.  Or worse.)

There is no way to be compensated for this.  I do not believe that either the apologies or the imminent safeguards promised by Facebook are sufficient.  So I chose to vote, as they say, with my feet.

I left.

I also want to be absolutely clear on something else :  I have absolutely no ill feelings towards any of my family or friends who may have been used to get to my data profile.  It is not their fault, any more than it would be their fault if my home was burglarized while they were holding on to a spare front door key.  The thieves didn't use their loaner key to rob me.  To continue that analogy, what the thieves did was to use a stolen address book to find out where I live.  The only person who bears the guilt and the blame is the burglar.

So I did what I would do in real life:  I have bolstered my security.  I haven't sold my house, but I got an unlisted number.

In other words, I left.

I hope that clears things up some.