Birds are twittering and that is as it should be as I write this on my porch. Porches like this one in a little Texas town (you might know it was Texas just by that Dr. Pepper sign -- click photo to enlarge) draw you in. Porches, as I wrote in my last ramble, can be the first indication of hospitable inhabitants. I've been enjoying rocking on a porch in New Mexico but now I want to rock on a bit about lifestyles. Having a porch conversation is free. Sitting down for a relaxed chat is one of life's little important pleasures. Face time. Heart time. Soul time.
So, first about frugal living and how it can foster relationships. I was inspired to write about this after reading about how one Manhattanite is living a no impact lifestyle as fodder for a book he is writing. The NYTimes wrote about it, "If Al Gore is their Rachel Carson, blogalogs like Treehugger, grist.org and worldchanging.com are their Whole Earth catalogs." Frugal for Life is a blog that has a lot of tips for frugal living. Frugal tips at Grad Money [Matters] include 101 tips for frugal living, and frugal ways to spend time with friends. It was the last tip that reminded me of my grandmother's saying, "the best things in life are free" and how playing cards with friends, charades and hiking and walking are all ways of having quality time.
Twittering seems just stupid to me and is the utopia of frivolous attempts to foster closeness with others. It would top my list of silly time wasters. Twittering is a (new - only 60,000 users) form of brief text messaging (140 characters or less) that can be sent to a group via wireless for phone or IM social connecting. The Twitter website just won an SXSW web award and it is being written about by: BusinessWeek, SF Gate, Duct Tape Marketing, and Nicholas Carr, who writes, "Twitter wraps itself and its users in an infantile language. We're not adults having conversations, or even people sending messages. We're tweeters twittering tweets." I checked out Twittervision where one can see geographically where messages erupt, such as this one from Rufus in Baltimore: "I'm walking home from 7-11." Do we need to know this?
I am just not geeky enough to get this, I guess. Presidential candidate John Edwards is the Fifth-Ranked Twit, based on the number of followers. According to Twitterholics, the top geek twitters include: Dave Winer, Anil Dash, Robert Scoble and Joi Ito. Ito notes that young people want to be connected to their "Full-Time Intimate Community" (FTIC) which consists of 8 - 10 people and sending "state change" messages is how they mesh. I wonder if this status alert (twit-to-twits) is a meaningful thing.
Maybe as a mother I've heard enough mindless chatter to know what is important and not to peep about. Twittering seems ultra stupid to me. Who needs the ceaseless pitter-patter of chattering twits? If this could be combined with GPS tracking and know-as-I-want information to access (with permission), not continuous operational interruptional chatter, then maybe I see a purpose down the road and perhaps that is where we are headed. But for now?
No twit-head Cheers here.
That porch is just where I want to live! It is so lush there! I could imagine in the old days, families sat and rocked and darned and knitted and embroidered or whittled and chatted about the day's experiences or solved the world's problems. The problems must have seemed large, and we would probably consider them minutia now. Right now, I am focused having a "still mind"...peace, serenity, tranquility. We are so bombarded by stimuli on the outside and internal chatter on the inside. Wish I could sit on that porch and worry about the crops and chickens instead of bills !
Posted by: carron hardin | March 31, 2007 at 08:35 AM
Love your porch! I can imagine how peaceful it must be to sit there after supper for a chat with friends, or some quiet browsing/blogging, as a cool breeze blows, the birds twitter and the sun slides down in the horizon. Sigh!
Anyway, thanks for the mention about my blog.
Posted by: ispfmail | March 31, 2007 at 12:57 PM