Simmering thoughts

[pecunium]

We're on "Wolff time" which means we won't be out until morning (we were supposed to be leaving not later than 1400 this afternoon).

Which let me stroll about the net.

I remember the Loma Prieta Quake. I know SF pretty well, so it was visceral, but removed.

The Northridge Quake. I joke that I slept through it. I was in Monterey at the time, studying Russian. We had the day off, and I spent the morning (having gotten a phone call at some hideous hour, telling me there had been a quake and everyone she knew I'd care about was OK. I went back to bed) staring at my city in tumbled ruin. It was visceral, but removed.

Hurricane Andrew. Removed.

A slew of minor, and not so minor disasters around the country and they rose to the level of concern. If I had friends in the area, I worried for them, but mostly figured they would be all right (the odds of any one person being in the few hundreds who die in such a thing being known to me, slim; and I know it).

That Tuesday.

It was visceral. Not so removed. The whole world seemed knocked about. I know a lot of people in New York. Some of whom worked, or lived, right near Ground Zero. I also have friends who might have been working in the Pentagon. It touched me directly as soon as I realised what was going on.

But this one. This one is personal. I have to look outside to remind myself the world isn't awash, and that I have no real worries.

Why?

The Net. The Net is why That Tuesday was so close to home. RASFF meant I knew, in a personal, if not personally met, way, a lot of people whom I cared about, who; in one way or another had touched me. People I care about. Since then Blogs have come to replace Usenet. pnh and tnh have Making Light where I did my first blogging, vicariously about being in Kuwait. It kept me in touch (as much as one can be kept in touch) with the outside world. It gave me warm fuzzies when Neil Gaiman said pleasant things about my writing.

Then I got a blog (blame libertango who thought my wartime writing ought to be published). Because of that I know people who lived in New Orleans. intelligentrix who gave me one set of insights, as she ranted and rambled about driving a cab. motel666 whom I didn't take to an Elvis Costello concert (because someone on my f-list wanted to see her get out some, and, as I recall, knew she had no way to get there, and likes Elvis Costello, but I didn't know anything about her). Instead, after we'd talked some, in comments back and forth, as such things go, I offered to take her to dinner when I was up helping libertango convalesce from his broken leg.

In a strange, and wonderful way LJ, and the blogosphere, has tied me to more of the world. It's made me more compassionate, which has made me more radical.

The world is a wonderful place, and I feel so much more connected to so much more of it now.

So, to all of you who make up "Blogistan" thanks.

Comments

[janetmiles.livejournal.com]

The Net. The Net is why That Tuesday was so close to home.

Ugol.