Friend or Fiend?

Did you ever notice that there's only one letter dividing friend from fiend? My 8th grade students find this interesting as do I.

Friends or "Friends"?

Well, the last I checked a friend was someone with whom I had a fairly intimate relationship. You know, the person I shared my thoughts, hopes, dreams, and fears with. Normally, we did this over the phone or while taking a walk or over dinner or maybe even while our children played at the park. Usually though, it was a fairly private conversation filled with sharing ideas and perhaps even a prayer said in support of each other.

How did we move from a few close friends to hundreds of "friends" on our Facebook page? Are they all really our friends? Do all of these people truly care about each other or have we just become that nosy? And what has brought us to such a state that we want to know so much about so many people?

I often wonder if we will see a spike in depression - "Wow, look at how cool that person is - look at their amazing accomplishments, their family, their 100's more friends than mine"

I guess it leaves me in the antiquated category since I still prefer my close circle of friends who share food, faith, and fun with me on a personal level, and thus I have pared down my own Facebook to include only family, and I will say it's ever so nice to work on getting reaquainted with those far-flung cousins and aunts!

Thoughts anyone?

Go outside and play!

I'm delighted to say that I've noticed that children seem to be reemerging from the enclosed walls of their homes and are engaged in outdoor play. For the past several years I've walked, biked and driven my way around towns noticing the lack of children at play. Swing sets sat abandoned, the only motion offered by passing breezes, sidewalks were bare of chalked hop-hotch, lawns languished sans footpaths and body imprints, even driveways lacked the toppled bikes and tossed aside jumpropes and skateboards.

Lately though I've noted a return of children - hoola-hooping, hide-n-seeking, tree climbing, bike riding and running across lawns - Ah, they're finally back. I wonder if our slowing economy is literally bringing the children back to the great outdoors and to the world of imagination. Perhaps mom and dad are finally stating they can't afford all the electronic gadgets and games and are saying, "Go outside and play!"  Or is it that people are simply tired of that computer, t.v. or phone screen and are embracing the realness of true life and living?

Whatever the case may be, I'm glad to see the children playing again. Now go outside and play!

Cell Communication or Communication Cell?

Gone are the days when I left the house and was completely unavailable to others, that is unless I physically turn off or silence my cell phone. And, now if I so choose, I can even be reached via e-mail, twitter, facebook, and who knows whatever other programs that follow me through my day. Freedom or confinement? Communication or entrapment?

It seems that the walls of the world are rapidly closing in, similar to those of Poe's pit.

People are running about in a fevered frenzy seeking to connect themselves, not with the connective filiment of Whitman's spider, but the cellular commincator. How might a Whitman poem read in today's society?

An impatient and often demanding tweet
I mark'd how, to explore the engorged surrounding,
It launched data, data, data out of itself;
Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them.

And you, O my Soul, where you stand, walk, or drive,
Surrounded, surrounded, in measurless oceans of information,
Ceaselessly musing, imposing, tossing, ---seeking attention
to FEEL connected.
This age of "communication" leaves very little time to ponder life's conundrums, much less soul search the connectiveness to the universe.
My advice: Unplug