Updates will be sporadic for the next few days, as I’m flying back to Boston for the 4th of July holiday (redeye flight tomorrow night, hence the title of this piece). I’ll probably sneak one update in later in the week, but I hope to mostly be enjoying the heat, humidity and sun that I’ve so far managed to escape in Seattle this summer.
I had dinner with our dear friend Shel and her folks tonight. They’re visiting her in Portland, having flown out this morning from Poquoson, Virginia. Exciting news from Poquoson–apparently they’ve put a sewer system in now. Too bad–as they say, it used to be “where the effluent met the affluent”…
I tried to talk Shel into starting up one of these sites (by the way, have I mentioned you too can have your own weblog, entirely edited through your browser, at www.manilasites.com?), but over dinner wasn’t able to get quite worked up enough about it to convince her. I guess the only thing I can say is to point to the web site of Justin Hall, which remains unparalleled in my experience.
Justin’s been writing an online diary since he was a callow youth at Swarthmore back in 1994, and has faithfully posted every joyous and painful (and sometimes explicit, so be warned) detail of his life since then at his site, Links from the Underground. In a way, you might say Justin is to blame for my site and others like it. But at the same time, his words from 1995 still ring true, even after the DotBomb.
For him, and for me, it’s about getting humanity onto the web before it’s so choked with commerce, official TV show fan sites, technical support knowledge bases, and pop-under ads that it becomes just another worthless sewer of data without information, communication without listeners, words and images without soul.