THINGS THAT ARE SO MUCH EASIER TO BUY THESE DAYS:

Ear plugs
Gluten free foods
Vibrators (in your nearby drugstore probably!)
Machines to print out digital pics

THINGS HARD TO BUY

Record players
Books on cassette
Lemon-broiled tempeh

Hey, Barbara

Yes, I'm on Facebook. I deleted my Myspace page a little while ago. Facebook has helped me feel in touch with my niece and nephew who I haven't talked to since the lawsuit (the oldest kid just had her first baby and posted photos of baby Liam). I just sent a friend request to your hubbie. Damn, he has a lot of FB friends! I only have 49.

I get all sorts of interesting news and links and poems and recipes. One drawback is the games they have on there that your friends may become addicted to and post news of their winnings and losses on your Wall, Mafia Wars and FarmVille. I just learned how to hide results of the games! Hooray!

It seems like in every group of "older" people we end up in a discussion of Facebook. I don't get how some people can spend 3 hours signing up. It's so easy! Discussions of privacy always ensue, and then the obligatory discussion of wasting your precious time on computer sites. That last one I get but Facebook doesn't usually take much time. I can recommend it, I think!

Why do people (who should know better, people on NPR even) say "women's movement" when it should be women's LIBERATION movement? Or, if you can't say that many words, how about one fairly short one, feminism? They will say "civil rights movement" and "gay rights" but "women's movement"
sounds like someone is having trouble with their bowels. Are we so unconsciously uncomfortable with the concept of women having rights? Or just unaware of what the movement was actually called...it's like saying you like women's magazines. Are we talking Ms. or Glamour? There's a huge difference!

Just read The World Without Us by Alan Weisman, right on the heels of Blindness by Jose Saramago (Portuguese Nobel prize winner). It's a very interesting combo. In the latter all veneer of "civilization" drops right off when everyone is struck by the same ailment, blindness. Talk about a dog eat dog society! The book is fiction, of course, but makes you think about all our conventions we rely so much on that actually require a lot of "man" power: electricity, government, stores, plumbing, etc.
The World Without Us is an examination of how long it would take the earth to recover from the damage we have already done. He started with Chernobyl and what plants and species jumped in when the nuclear power plant was abandoned. He then extended it to the whole world! It is awesome. He covers everything, including subways (and how long it would take for them to collapse and get filled up with water--not long at all), bridges, cities, etc. In a way it feels good to think that the earth could survive us but of course at times it will take a very very long time: to recover from the chromium and lead we have left in the soil would take 70,000 years, for example. A guy at a party ventured forth a guess of 100 years. Ha! Only one person's lifetime! How naive. He really needs to read this book. We all do!

ANOTHER QUAGMIRE

Ah, the good old days! Not even 4,000 dead! And who is counting Iraqi lives? Not our usual media but only http://www.iraqbodycount.org/ and the current count is:
91,466-99,861 (a stunned silence)

Obama is great; it's so wonderful to have an intelligent person as the prez, and so cool that he is a person of color and has such a varied background.
But why does he want to send more troops to Afghanistan? Can we stop the Taliban? What is the goal? This worries me and others. From Alternet.org
Afghanistan is no longer a downward spiral, it has hit rock bottom. It is, as Bob Herbert put it in The New York Times this week, a total quagmire, one that we're up to our waists in thanks to Bush.
http://www.alternet.org/blogs/video/118732/we_can%27t_afford_to_sink_deeper_into_the_afghan_quagmire/

AM I JUST GETTING OLD OR WHAT?

These days when you hear someone saying "hello" in the park, chances are better that they are talking on their cell phone then that they are greeting you. And when they repeat it over and over you know it's a bad connection and you are so annoyed.

Our devices cut us off from communication with a person actually in front of you. When I'm walking in the park with my iPod I don't get greeted very often (okay, half the people walking are either on the phone or listening to something, just like me). It's so different when I am walking with a friend and smiling and talking--I get greeted constantly!

The isolation worries me. I have enough periods of isolation in my life, days when I don't work and might not talk to anyone all day except for "paper or plastic?" in the store, and here in Seattle I think there's now a law against plastic bags being given out by stores (or is that being contested).