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Carol H Tucker
Passionate about knowledge management and organizational development, expert in loan servicing, virtual world denizen and community facilitator, and a DISNEY fan
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beladona Memorial
Be warned:in this very rich environment where you can immerse yourself so completely, your emotions will become engaged -- and not everyone is cognizant of that. Among the many excellent features of SL, there is no auto-return on hearts, so be wary of where your's wanders...
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shooting the breeze
Today is the 5th day of the 31st week, the 4th day of the 8th month, the 217th day of 2016 [with only 142 shopping days left before Christmas], and: - Feast Day of Saint Sithney, patron saint of mad dogs [no word on the Englishmen who go out in the noonday sun are covered too]
- Hooray for Kids Day
- National Chocolate Chip Cookie Day
- National IPA Day or India Pale Ale Beer Day
- National White Wine Day
- Single Working Women's Day
- Social Security Day
- US Coast Guard Day -- a newly passed tariff act created the Revenue Cutter Service (the forerunner of the United States Coast Guard) in 1790
In 367, at the age of 8, Gratian, son of Roman Emperor Valentinian I, was named co-Augustus by his father. In 1693 it is traditionally thought that Dom Perignon "invented" champagne -- or at least developed the techniques used to perfect sparkling wine. In 1789, in France, members of the National Constituent Assembly took an oath to end feudalism and abandon their privileges [however feudalism lingered on in parts of Central and Eastern Europe as late as the 1850s and Russia didn't abolish serfdom until 1861]. In 1902 the Greenwich foot tunnel under the River Thames opened. In 1906 Central railway station in Sydney opened. In 1944 a tip from a Dutch informer leads the Gestapo to a sealed-off area in an Amsterdam warehouse, where they find and arrest Anne Frank, her family, and four others. In 2007 NASA's Phoenix spacecraft was launched.
A couple of days ago I wanted to make plans with a friend I have known for decades – we had started in email but it just seemed that we wanted to go over different options and considerations that were too complicated to keep writing. Without thinking about it much, before I called? I not only checked via IM what would be a convenient time, I verified if she preferred the land line or the cell phone. It isn’t just my friends, I check with my kids before I interrupt their lives with a phone call – in this day of texts, IMs and email it would appear that the phone call has become as demanding and intrusive as “just dropping by” was back in the day. How did that happen? And why?
It has been a long time since folks just sauntered over to a neighbor’s house and plopped down on the porch to chat a spell, or a friend decided while they were out on a drive that they would pop in to talk and maybe play some cards. I was there at times when folks would just pop in and I remember that easy sense of camaraderie. My grandmothers had friends and socializing like that; especially around the holidays, and they always had goodies on hand for entertaining and snacking. My parents did not but many of their contemporaries still had some of those easy-going, casual visitors. I did not – not even when I was a homeowner rather than a renter – and didn’t just stop by even with family very often, but there were times when we arranged get-togethers that weren’t quite parties but just a dinner and a visit. But the phone? I would and did call often – just picked it up and called back then. If the party on the other end couldn’t talk right that moment, they told me that they would get back later [and they usually did], but it was a casual reaching out to chat, not a planned call. Of course back in the day, it wasn’t a phone that was on your person wherever you are, it was sitting on a table in a room of your house [you might have one in the kitchen or upstairs in the bedroom too] and you may or may not have a phone answering machine that would let someone know you weren’t going to pick up
I’m not quite sure when that changed – was when the phone became more important to us than our wallet or maybe when we started cutting the cord and dispensing with land lines? I’m not quite sure it has changed for everyone or not – after all, I did lose a couple of years of easy converse after the cone of silence descended when Frank died. But it appears to me the phone has become “push” technology now, whereas the written message or text is considered less invasive and therefore politer and more respectful. As for visitors? Why decorate for the holidays, or even keep it straight, when you are the only person who ever sees your place? When did the boundaries around our personal and family spaces become so…. Set? Firm? Obvious? Defined? Exclusive?
I guess you could make a case for tech keeping us apart. On the other hand, the ability to drop a quick note to someone and have them respond in a couple of sentences over a variety of social media and varying platforms [including “worlds”] has made keeping in touch much easier and more consistent, neh? But sometimes? As much as I love my 2nd Life, I wish I could just sit on a front porch on a glider like Grandmom used to and have someone meander by to shoot the breeze for a little while, visit for a bit …..
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