A few weeks ago, I joined the weird world of Facebook (which I usually mistype as "facebeek". What kind of site would that be?). Since I don't work at a computer all day anymore, I don't spend as much time looking for old friends and sending messages as I did when I started Myspace a few years back. It's pretty fun and, as I mentioned before, weird. Talk about a trip down memory lane. I have gotten back in touch with a few people from high school that I haven't talked to in almost two decades. Because you can check out peoples profiles once you are friends with them, it helps to avoid that awkwardness of conversation that can happen when you haven't talked to someone in 18 years or so. "So, how are you?" and "What have you been up to" are two inevitable questions that you tend to blurt out when first conversing with someone. If you haven't spoken with that someone in a long time, the questions seem kinda stupid as it would take a good long while to answer either one of them. Facebook helps fill in a few blanks before heading into some kind of regular communication.
I like going onto my home page when I first log in, so I can see what all of my 34 friends are doing without checking all of their individual profiles. I can see that my brother was laughing at old photos, or that my friend was surprised that she liked going to a Red Wings game or that my possible future sister-in-law wants to strangle her research advisers. Better yet, I get to comment on everything! Being prone to smart assery and two bittery, that is one of my favorite parts.
The downside is that you sometimes find out information that you don't know what to do with. One of my new Facebook friends is a woman I went to high school with and she is going through a devastating time with her newborn. It's a horrifying process to watch; she went from healthy and ready to deliver a week ago, to poor infant MRI results and very tough decision making. I have watched this process as she has been posting regular updates on her Facebook page. I'm embarrassed that I can't stop looking for updates, I'm totally drawn in. But I feel a little uneasy knowing intimate details about her life when I was more acquaintances with her in high school and it's been eons since we've even spoken. I feel like I shouldn't look, but how can I not? It's right there, she put it up on her profile right where all her friends can read it. It's also awkward that I get to see the outpouring of support too. It's heartwarming and wonderful, but still so personal.
It makes sense though. When you are going through a big life event like that, where things are changing many times a day, it seems logical to let everyone know in the simplest way possible. Updating on a site like Facebook seems smart from a time management standpoint. Still feels a little ooky to me. I don't know what to do. Do I comment? Do I just sit and watch? It's very peculiar and slightly upsetting.
Is this the future of our human relationships? Will we stop personal contact altogether and just send email and leave messages on social networking sites? I feel bad enough that I don't send letters anymore but I'll really miss talking on the phone and my all time favorite method of communication, rubber banding a note to a rock and throwing it through a window.
Monday, November 17, 2008
Thursday, November 06, 2008
Progressive Michigan?
Ever since I have moved back to the Midwest, I have been pining for the general liberal lean of the West Coast. Out there, having a nose piercing didn't raise the eyebrows of managers interviewing me for a job, neighbors of every color, culture, gender, religion and orientation greeted me at the food co-op. The weather is better in the winter out there and everyone seems to take it a little more easy and be a little more inclusive.
I am absolutely stunned that California's preposterous Proposition 8 managed to pass. I'm so very heartbroken. I sigh as gay rights takes another step backward into the shadows and hides from the bigotry of the religious right. Why in the world would someone put the rights of a minority to the vote of a majority? Can you imagine what would have happened if segregation was put on the ballot in the southern states? That would have been insane and unjust. Just like Prop 8 was insane and unjust.
It reminds me of a wonderful bumper sticker I saw years ago while driving around Denver. Denver and it's surrounding towns are home to some of the largest evangelical groups in the country, including Focus On The Family. While zooming through in I-70, I saw a red minivan with a bumper sticker that read "Focus on your own damn family". I thought that was perfect. Groups like F.O.F. tend to be far more concerned with what's going on in other people's reproductive organs, relationships and spiritual lives when they need to start minding their own damn business. I would never tell any evangelical that their religion is backward thinking bullshit and they can kindly stay the hell out of my world.
I heard that Prop 8 and others of it's ilk are there to "protect marriage". What does marriage need protection from? Perhaps the 60% of straight folks who seem to consistently fuck them up and end up divorced. How does a gay couple getting married make a straight couple any less married? How is the "threatened" straight, married couple even going to know that a gay couple has gotten married? Would there have been email blasts announcing all the gay weddings that happen each week and paranoid straight folks can sign up for the gay wedding newsletter over which to fret and pray? My apologies for being so sarcastic and dramatic, stupidity often brings that out in me.
Michigan, on the other hand, usually that bastion of bringing up the rear managed to pass a state wide medical marijuana proposition as well one allowing stem cell research. Go Team Mitten State! Both of these will be very good for the states economy which has been in recession for about 3-4 years. What's happening to the rest of the USA right now is what has been going on around here for some time. I'm really excited to see how this changes the local economical landscape in a state that has had it's financial backbone staked in noting but automotive for the last 60 years. Winds of change are blowing through the Great Lakes State and it's pretty exciting around here.
I am absolutely stunned that California's preposterous Proposition 8 managed to pass. I'm so very heartbroken. I sigh as gay rights takes another step backward into the shadows and hides from the bigotry of the religious right. Why in the world would someone put the rights of a minority to the vote of a majority? Can you imagine what would have happened if segregation was put on the ballot in the southern states? That would have been insane and unjust. Just like Prop 8 was insane and unjust.
It reminds me of a wonderful bumper sticker I saw years ago while driving around Denver. Denver and it's surrounding towns are home to some of the largest evangelical groups in the country, including Focus On The Family. While zooming through in I-70, I saw a red minivan with a bumper sticker that read "Focus on your own damn family". I thought that was perfect. Groups like F.O.F. tend to be far more concerned with what's going on in other people's reproductive organs, relationships and spiritual lives when they need to start minding their own damn business. I would never tell any evangelical that their religion is backward thinking bullshit and they can kindly stay the hell out of my world.
I heard that Prop 8 and others of it's ilk are there to "protect marriage". What does marriage need protection from? Perhaps the 60% of straight folks who seem to consistently fuck them up and end up divorced. How does a gay couple getting married make a straight couple any less married? How is the "threatened" straight, married couple even going to know that a gay couple has gotten married? Would there have been email blasts announcing all the gay weddings that happen each week and paranoid straight folks can sign up for the gay wedding newsletter over which to fret and pray? My apologies for being so sarcastic and dramatic, stupidity often brings that out in me.
Michigan, on the other hand, usually that bastion of bringing up the rear managed to pass a state wide medical marijuana proposition as well one allowing stem cell research. Go Team Mitten State! Both of these will be very good for the states economy which has been in recession for about 3-4 years. What's happening to the rest of the USA right now is what has been going on around here for some time. I'm really excited to see how this changes the local economical landscape in a state that has had it's financial backbone staked in noting but automotive for the last 60 years. Winds of change are blowing through the Great Lakes State and it's pretty exciting around here.
Spellchecking the Spellcheck
Now that Barack Obama is President-Elect, it's time for spellcheck on computers to include his name and stop trying to correct it. My computer keeps wanting to change his name to Barrack Obadiah.
Feeling Groovy
For the first time in my life, I volunteered for a political campaign this year. I liked Obama so much, I felt it was totally necessary to do what I could to make sure he landed in the White House. I revamped the filing system at the local Obama HQ, made phone calls to voters and helped the comfort squad feed the volunteers (my official title: "Food Lieutenant"). It was a great time and I came away feeling like I needed to do more, but then again chronic restlessness is my natural state.
A few days after Obama's big win and many other big victories (California's Prop 8 notwithstanding) I am soaking in the warm pool of accomplishment. I am feeling hopeful for the first time in almost a decade while at the same time, wondering (much like everyone else it seems) what is next. Obama's administration is being handed one dud of an economy, a very thin, holey fabric of foreign relations and many other situations in which he will have to prove himself worthy, some of which are based on old school ideas about people of certain skin colors.
On Tuesday night, I watched the returns while gnawing at my fingernails. I was a nervous wreck. I knew Obama would win, but I didn't know what kind of shenanigans might keep him from becoming president-elect. As a girl who had had her liberal heart broken more than once I was way past cautiously optimistic and somewhere around pessimistically keeping the faith. Over the last eight years, I have felt like the ideals that would move us forward as a country such as compassion, progressive inclusiveness and personal liberty, freedom and the pursuit of happiness were ideas to be hidden away. I couldn't make it in the corporate cutthroat, "Us" versus "Them", more for the most and less for the rest, suffer quietly and you won't be seen as unpatriotic world that was so quickly created by the current administration, I was drowning. Suffocating. I truly feel that we, as a country, as a people and as a planet's population can only truly move forward and survive if we work together. Now, I feel like lots of other people agree with me. It's quite a lovely feeling.
I didn't cry with joy like I thought I would when they called the presidency for Obama. I didn't cry when I'd heard that John McCain called to concede. I didn't cry during Obama's victory speech, even when it seemed that everybody else in the world was crying. Yesterday, I finally popped and burst into tears and you know what did it? The thing that sent me over the edge? I was watching a clip of Comedy Central's "Indecision 2008" and I started to cry as I watched Stephen Colbert struggle to keep his conservative character in tact while the real Stephen fought back tears when the election was called for Obama. For whatever reason, that did it for me and not only did I start to cry, I wasn't able to stop for a good long while. I'm still getting misty this morning when I realize that I can feel hopeful again. Oh hopeful heart, you may now come out of hiding.
The whole world has been moved by this and I can't wait to see what happens next.
A few days after Obama's big win and many other big victories (California's Prop 8 notwithstanding) I am soaking in the warm pool of accomplishment. I am feeling hopeful for the first time in almost a decade while at the same time, wondering (much like everyone else it seems) what is next. Obama's administration is being handed one dud of an economy, a very thin, holey fabric of foreign relations and many other situations in which he will have to prove himself worthy, some of which are based on old school ideas about people of certain skin colors.
On Tuesday night, I watched the returns while gnawing at my fingernails. I was a nervous wreck. I knew Obama would win, but I didn't know what kind of shenanigans might keep him from becoming president-elect. As a girl who had had her liberal heart broken more than once I was way past cautiously optimistic and somewhere around pessimistically keeping the faith. Over the last eight years, I have felt like the ideals that would move us forward as a country such as compassion, progressive inclusiveness and personal liberty, freedom and the pursuit of happiness were ideas to be hidden away. I couldn't make it in the corporate cutthroat, "Us" versus "Them", more for the most and less for the rest, suffer quietly and you won't be seen as unpatriotic world that was so quickly created by the current administration, I was drowning. Suffocating. I truly feel that we, as a country, as a people and as a planet's population can only truly move forward and survive if we work together. Now, I feel like lots of other people agree with me. It's quite a lovely feeling.
I didn't cry with joy like I thought I would when they called the presidency for Obama. I didn't cry when I'd heard that John McCain called to concede. I didn't cry during Obama's victory speech, even when it seemed that everybody else in the world was crying. Yesterday, I finally popped and burst into tears and you know what did it? The thing that sent me over the edge? I was watching a clip of Comedy Central's "Indecision 2008" and I started to cry as I watched Stephen Colbert struggle to keep his conservative character in tact while the real Stephen fought back tears when the election was called for Obama. For whatever reason, that did it for me and not only did I start to cry, I wasn't able to stop for a good long while. I'm still getting misty this morning when I realize that I can feel hopeful again. Oh hopeful heart, you may now come out of hiding.
The whole world has been moved by this and I can't wait to see what happens next.