Friends of Narnia
Introducing the World of Hilarity patron chat
A little bit more information about the private, patrons-only Signal group I’ve been setting up in the last couple of days. This is the information page I send privately to patrons when they sign up to become monthly donors to Hilary White; Sacred Art and join the team for the Big Project, with the invitation link included.
The other day I went to see this:
And it occurred to me at last that I really do have something to offer paid subscribers: to come along on my adventures in Narnia.
In the last few days, a number of people kindly signed up to send monthly instalments to support me, the kitties and the work. Today I’m announcing an addition to World of Hilarity: a subscriber chat, Friends of Narnia, as a special feature for monthly subscribers and other clients, supporters and friends.
It crosses my mind that I live in this wonderful place and regularly go and see wonderful things. It’s not always suitable for a post to the bi-weekly newsletter, but it seems a shame to not share it all.
The other day a friend was up from Rome visiting and we went to the Narni museum. It was full of treasures and wonders and I took lots of photos:
A 4th c. BC Egyptian princess and her mummy case, brought to Narni by a 19th century millionaire gentleman adventurer, a real-life Jules Verne character; Roman family mortuary portraits; 700 thousand year old fossilized elephant tusks found in the local river valley; Bronze Age spear heads…
It’s just the sort of thing I’d love to share with like-minded people who might be as fascinated as I am with these things, but in a more personal and friendly sort of way than out loud on the site.
Only people specifically invited can join, so the guest list will be limited to monthly subscribers, commissioning clients and customers and people who support me regularly, the group of ladies who help with specialty art supplies and friends who have helped with sensible business advice and collaboration. In other words, a team and community who have helped make this project happen.
In a week or so we’re going to Florence to visit San Marco - the monastery where Fra Angelico lived and worked - and we will be taking a side trip up to Cortona to see his great masterwork, the Cortona Altarpiece:
Sign up and you can come along.
Why Signal instead of Substack?
I chose Signal instead of the built-in Substack app for two reasons:
Substack won’t let me set up a chat group that is exclusively for people I invite via email. It would only allow you to click either “paid subscribers” - which for reasons already gone into I can’t do yet - or send every chat message to the entire list of 917 free subscribers. But I can save this message in my Substack editing dashboard and send people “secret preview” links to it individually via email. So, I’m doing a work-around by using Signal. (If none of that made any sense to you, just ignore it. It’s not actually very important.)
Signal is well known as the most secure and private of the online chat-supporting platforms. From my previous life as a political journalist, I still have political, journalistic and diplomatic friends who I like to talk to but don’t trust Facebook or Twitter chat features. They recommended Signal as a place for online conversations that aren’t watched over by algorithms or censors. It’s as safe as it’s possible to be in these weird times, short of sending actual physical letters in the post.
It supports instant messaging, voice and video calls. It allows you to send text, voice notes, images, videos and other kinds of files. Signal-the-company does not receive any record of group memberships. It works by adding your phone number but only people in the group will see you, and lets you create a PIN so no one else can use your account.
Here’s how you can sign up:
You’ll need to download the Signal app onto your phone or device - including your computer. It works on both Apple and Android devices. The Signal system works on phone numbers instead of email to identify you. So you have to have an active smart phone.
Then with Signal open, click this link and it should open to the group page.
Signal Group invitation link -Subscribe monthly at Hilary White; Sacred art to join. (Green button above).This link should open Signal directly at the group and leave a message for me in the group to let you in, like a secret knock. If it doesn’t work, or doesn’t open Signal, let me know and we’ll try it again together.
Chats are sent via the app, not through email, so click to receive notifications so you don’t miss conversation as it happens.
If the link doesn’t work at first, bear with me; I’m new to this stuff too. We’ll figure it out.
Hi Hilary, on my feed here there is no green button to link to Signal. I wonder if it is me or others have the same problem