High Tech/ High Touch
An article in the WSJ entitled, "The First Online War Honors Fallen
Troops with Web Tributes" caught my eye this morning. I thought it was
going to be about blogging and although it mentions military blogs it is really about the power of the web to immerse us totally in the reality of events by giving us access to the people experiencing it, who touch us so deeply that we become emotional participants, rather than spectators in these events.
It is one thing to read about the number of casualties in the war in Iraq (2,000 as of last week). The article mentions web sites that show maps of where the dead soldiers are from, and web sites that "sort" them by age, but the emotional engagement really begins on the sites that show their faces. We can, of course become engaged in this manner by reading magazines, newspapers, and watching TV. But, as the WSJ says,
"If you want to have your heart not just touched but ripped apart, visit the Moving Tributes section of Legacy.com, a Web business that hopes to become a national online clearinghouse for obituaries… is a free service that allows families
and friends of dead soldiers to create short multimedia memorials… {and} narrate a
personal remembrance"
The result is not just photos of the dead soldiers, but you are sharing the "the living room photo albums of lives ending early." Emerson wrote, Genius is saying what is in your heart because it is in everyone’s heart." Visit this site, you will feel what is in the hearts of these families…in your heart. High tech/high touch.
Technorati Tags: Iraq_war, web, emotions
Happy Birthday Mom!!
My mother turned 93 years old today….she’s the one in the middle with every hair in place, fresh lipstick and manicure. My sister and I never say we hope we look that good when we are her age…we have never been as together as she is. I know, Susie, speak for myself!
Doris Wild Helmering is Blogging!
I am excited to note that Doris Wild Helmering has a blog. Doris, has a busy private therapy and coaching practice here in St. Louis and is a nationally recognized expert on relationships. She is a prolific author, on-air therapist, and frequent radio and TV guest….yes, Oprah, CNN, Goodmorning America and she has even offered advice to Roseanne about controlling anger. Check out her blog….I am sure she will have a lot to say!
In Case of Emergency
As the finger pointing continues over Hurricane Katrina along with the cries for leadership a thought occured to me while listening to the Head of my youngest son’s school today welcome two families from New Orleans who had moved in with relatives here in St. Louis and had enrolled their children in school. The school had an emergency phone number and a plan developed after September 11th. I wondered how many parents sitting in the room knew what that number was or had it written down….on easily accessible, old fashioned paper. The school had sent it to us numerous times along with "the plan". But like the exit maps on the back of hotel doors and the location of emergency exits on airplanes, in movie theaters, or a fire escape plan from our own homes , it wasn’t top of mind enough to be of much use in case of an emergency. And the finger pointing and calls for leadership should really begin with ourselves.
Back in 1980, some of you may recall there was a fire in the MGM Grand Hotel early one morning. Eighty four people died and 675 people were injured. There were no sprinkler system in the hotel, there was complete chaos as people awoke to discover the inferno around them; they jumped to their deaths, doors locked preventing escape.
Not Your Parent’s Cliff Notes
School starts on Monday for my 7th grader which means the summer long countdown to finish the math packet and the summer reading books is about to end…ready or not. It our house it seems not to matter if we actually start early in the summer or late, it just wouldn’t seem like the last weekend of summer if we weren’t still trying to complete it before M-O-N-D-A-Y! To complicate our lives even more, we just got a puppy. So, the other night a frantic call from our house to a friend’s house regarding a puppy crisis found their household in the middle of a summer reading crisis. A quick swap…help me solve the puppy problem and I will help you solve the reading problem. Google, the source of most if not all of life’s problems revealed, PinkMonkey.com. No need to leave the comfort of your own crisis, Pink Monkey had the book in question, the information was FREE and instantly available and they promised hundreds of other titles. You have to pay to download. I was ready to completely write off Cliff Notes, my own personal long time friend and constant companion during junior high and high school as being as dated as the library card catalog when I decided to Google, Cliff Notes. Sorry, Cliff Notes…you too are instantly available on line.
And now for the real question: Are many blogs just like Cliff Notes? You don’t read the story, you read about the story…over and over and over again. I think bloggers should at least add a personal comment or two when they post a "new flash" quickly excerpted from someone else’s blog or the morning news…otherwise what’s the point? What do you think?
Andy Milonakis
My kids and I have several TV shows that we watch together with some regularity but with no particular rhyme or reason. I will confess them now: Roseanne and Murphy Brown on Nick@Night and Saturday Night Live. I never watched Roseanne when it was on prime time and Murphy Brown I never missed. Saturday Night Live and I go waaay back together although there were many seasons that were just plain b-a-d. My kids and I have found the last several seasons really funny. Go figure!
Now this post is about Andy Milonakis who I know nothing about other than one day my youngest son, Sam was watching him and I stopped because Andy was singing a song with a cutout pancake on his head…for whatever reason I found him hysterically funny. Andy is a very funny guy if you like his humor. We have been watching ever since….actually Sam was watching before as was my older son Forrest. Now, we all love Andy! I am not sure why.
Andy is in Wikipedia. Andy has a blog. Andy gets mentioned on other blogs. Andy is in USA Today. Andy is everywhere. What do you think?
Not Sure What The Heavy Traffic at This Site Means
My mother is elderly….she would not be happy if I mentioned her exact age but it is impressive. Equally impressive is the number of times (and the number of illnesses) she has bounced back from like a human Energizer Bunny.
She has Multiple Sclerosis, and she might very well be the oldest person alive with MS. MS has not been the direct cause of any of her life threatening illnesses…MS robbed her of probably her most precious possessions, her mobility and independence. She was 81 before the fall that fractured her hip necessitated giving up her car keys and her house keys.
Each time she has become seriously ill she begins a review of her wishes with the same introduction, "Marianne, please don’t be sentimental" and then proceeds to list how she would like her earthly departure to be handled. The first item on the list is always a reminder about her living will. Through the years, as she has survived most of her friends and family, the list of funeral wishes gets shorter and shorter. The last crisis was in January and at that time she crossed the funeral itself off the list.
My usual response is to get very sentimental and to make my own list: Have I told her how much I really admire her strength and downright bravery? How much I will miss her? And most recently I have added , how much it has meant to me that she has, at her age, helped me, at my age, survive the past year and a half of warfare that my ex-husband has waged and how much I hope that she will be around to be re-paid. I resolve to write what I have begun to call a living eulogy. But as I mentioned, she is the Energizer Bunny and before my resolve turns into a second paragraph, she gets well.
Earlier tonight, I Googled the term "living eulogy" and the expected suspects appeared: how to write an eulogy ebooks, grief counseling, funeral homes and the most intriguing link of all? www.deathclock.com. But wait, there’s more…at first try a message appeared that said traffic was too heavy and directed me to another "mirror" site. Well, it must be all the rage to count down the seconds to ones death. Yes, that is what is available on DeathClock. I tried again later and was able to determine that I will die on February 3, 2032. The site begins a countdown to the expected date in seconds…I am not sure what we are supposed to do with that information other than to start counting along.
Hello…RFID: We CAN Keep Track of Sexual Predators
As I listen to the media and the politicians discuss "keeping track" of sexual predators in light of the most recent tragedies of Jessica Lunsford and then Shasta and Dylan Groene using language that essentially says, too bad so sad…we can’t keep track of them, I wonder why? Why we don’t seem to want to keep track of them?
Here is one example of this nonsense from Fox News:
"U.S. Rep. Ted Poe, R-Texas, is trying to push
a bill through Congress that would help keep better track of convicted
sex offenders. The Child Predator Act of
2005 would, among other things, require states to specify that a
convicted predator must report a change of address within 10 days after
the change of address takes effect. The law would also require that
offenders notify schools, public housing and at least two media outlets
of their whereabouts. Penalties for not complying with the law could
mean up to two years in prison or hefty fines, according to the
legislation."
The bill also calls on the FBI to set up an Internet site that includes a recent photograph and address of child predators.
Ok, so these known repeat criminals who prey on our children are supposed to tell us who they are and where they are and if they don’t they could go back to jail for up to two years or receive a "hefty fine"???? Huh? Don’t they usually "tell us" by striking again??? And aren’t they considered "untreatable"??
It is completely mystifiying to me that we act so incredibly stupid about this….the technolocy most certainly exists to keep track of these criminals….we can keep track of our tools through RFID technology, WalMart can manage their inventory through RFID technology and we can use microships for our lost pets.
So, why is it we can keep track of sexual predators? And the same for restraining orders…why is a restraining order issued for an abuser as if that alone will eliminate the risk. The families of those murdered under retraining orders wonder that also.
We have the technology…WHY don’t we use it?
Fat Cat
We have two cats, we were supposed to have one. Last summer we adopted a 13 month old part Maine Coon Cat named Michelle whose name was immediately changed by my sons to Tiger. They insisted she looked like a Tiger. She was meant to be a kind of starter pet….the kids really wanted a dog but being unconvinced by their promises to take care of a dog, I agreed to start with a lower maintenance cat. Not that I had ever had a cat before, or had ever met a cat that I especially liked, or in fact didn’t love dogs…it just seemed that at this time and place, a cat sounded like it made sense for us.
Well, Tiger apparently felt otherwise. She departed out the front door after she had been with us for about two weeks. We searched, put up "Lost Cat" signs but no Tiger. My younger son was heartbroken so we adopted a 9 week old kitten who was promptly named Tiger, Jr and called TJ. About a month later, our next door neighbor called and said that she thought our cat was living in her back yard and in fact she was. Her extended visit next door remains as mysterious as her departure but that is why we now have two cats. Two cats who seem to despise each other.
TJ, the kitten, grew up this past year….and then started to blow up. He kept getting fatter and fatter until the only way to describe him was FAT. Sweet, lovable, adorable, but a chow hound. Well…I wish that was where the story ended…but although we were concerned with his ever increasing girth as well as his newly lethargic lifestyle it was more in the context of discussing the fact that he was fat versus the harm in his being so fat. But then he started making these strange choking sounds every once in a while…we took him to the vet. The verdict…a very fat cat with a heart condition. TJ is now officially on a diet…prescription weight loss food and vets orders to lose 7 pounds. 7 pounds, you ask? Yes, it is a whole lot of weight. And TJ does not like his diet. He sits by his bowl and cries. We all feel bad for him. But, we adore our cats (who would have guessed) and we don’t want to lose him. So, we pat his head and tell him it is for his own good. Poor TJ.
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