It has been many years* since I cast a vote for the President-elect. I have watched my candidates concede, accepted that I was out of step with the electoral vote, and taken four more years of the other guy.
Not tonight. I am amazed and pleasantly stunned. Barack Obama is President-elect.
Incredible.
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*I voted for Clinton in ‘92 and ‘96 but was not elated to do so. The last eight years have been so bad that 1996 feels like it was many lifetimes ago.
I anticipated a long wait but waited only twelve minutes to vote this morning. The poll was crowded but the lines moved briskly and efficiently. People chatted with neighbors and caught up on their family news while we checked in and checked out. I went with a friend and we made the smart decision to park a few minutes away on a side street. Had we tried to park closer it would have taken as long to find a space as it did to vote.
Now comes the long wait. I’m hoping this is over before midnight.
I just visited Amazon.com and on the front page was an announcement about Amazon’s initiative with counter “wrap rage”–the frustration of struggling to open almost-impenetrable product packaging. Amazon is “working with leading manufacturers to deliver products inside smaller, easy-to-open, recyclable cardboard boxes with less packaging material (and no frustrating plastic clamshells or wire ties.”
Finally. Aside from the frustration and risk of physical harm involved in trying to open today’s packaging with scissors or razor knives, it is absurdly wasteful to purchase products wrapped in plastic armor.
I’ve lived in and around Boston for a long time but, until Friday, I had never seen Halloween on the Hill. On October Beacon Hill is transformed by spooky lighting, cobwebs, Jack-O-Lanterns glowing in Louisburg Square, and dummies hanging from lampposts into a giant haunted walk. Thousands of folks in costumes go from house to house, where residents sit on the their stoops or lean from service windows to pass out treats from large buckets. Barricades and police prevent automotive access from Mt. Vernon, Pinckney, and other streets and the mood is a stew of street fair, Mardi Gras, and old-fashioned trick-or-treating. Friday evening’s weather was particularly kind and the streets were crowded. A particularly large traffic jam formed on the corner of Louisburg Square and Pinckney Street where John Kerry greeted revelers on his stoop, under Theresa’s watchful eye. A strict one-candy-per-visitor was in effect at the Kerry’s, and they passed out the same “fun-sized” candy as everyone else, not full-sized bars. It’s expensive even with the mini-candy. Our friends spent hundreds of dollars on treats and still ran out around 7:30.
I have a Facebook account. I created the account about five or six years ago because I had read about Facebook while reading materials for my Internet law course. Social networking/Web 2.0 was the new thing and I wanted to understand it. Viewing the site required creating an account, limited at the time to those with .edu addresses. I looked at the site for 15 minutes, logged out, and didn’t look at it again until a student discovered my account and “friended” me. I responded affirmatively. Since I now had one friend I decided my presence should include more than my name so I posted a picture, added some personal information (including that I am married–in the civil sense, not the Facebook sense), and left it at that. I almost never used the site, viewing it only when a student stumbled across my profile and friended me. I always respond affirmatively if I know the student. I’ve never been comfortable browsing student profiles. It feels like wandering into the basement when teenagers are having a no-adults party. Things are going on that we shouldn’t share with each other.
Over the past few years Facebook has gone mainstream. You no longer need an .edu address to create an account. Legal periodicals discuss how lawyers are using Facebook for networking and advertising. Facebook: It’s not just for kids anymore! I, however, know very few adults with Facebook accounts so I continue to hold it at arms-length. Every semester a few more students add me to their friends roster, I visit once or twice, and I leave it alone.
A colleague mentioned this week that she had created a Facebook account and contacted me. I did not receive email notice of the contact so I checked the site to discover a pile of messages in my inbox dating back six months: friend requests, event invitations, requests for job recommendations, and other time-sensitive communication. Apparently, during one of Facebook’s many recent makeovers, my communication preference changed and I was no longer opted-in to receive site notifications. The result was six months of unanswered communication, although my failure to respond caused no terminal consequences.
Clearly, while my academic interests include the power and utility of social networking sites, my communication style is rooted in earlier technology. If getting messages requires that I walk past the kids partying in the basement, I’ll remain out of the loop.
*Everyone over a certain age, and those younger who know films of the 60s, will recognize the speaker and the source.
The Christian Science Monitor announced yesterday that it will abandon its daily print edition to offer daily coverage only online (Christian Science Monitor to exit daily print business). It is the first national newspaper to do so. This news comes a few days after the Boston Globe’s latest restyling, which simplified the layout and offloaded the fluff–entertainment, lifestyles, amusements, etc., all of which I read assiduously–to a daily magazine dubbed “g.” (”g?” I would understand “e” because the restyled Globe features four sections. Is it “g” as in “Gee, I wish more people bought the Globe?”, or “g” as in “the boston globe is now lower case and tomorrow will be even smaller?”)
Disappearing newspapers sadden me. My parents met while working at The Hartford Courant (”Older than the Nation, New as the News”). My father worked at the Courant for almost 50 years, save for his time in the Army Air Force in WWII. I learned to read from newspapers. My first job was delivering the Courant. I’ve subscribed to the Globe for my entire adult life and read it daily. Newspapers are in my DNA. Newspapers are symbols of community–there are Globe readers and there are Herald readers. Few people read both. Reading the Globe sports page–the best daily sports coverage in the U.S.–is an act of bonding, a celebration, a requiem. Newspapers represent competing voices in local and national conversations. Newspapers are pleasantly tactile, even if the ink stains one’s fingers. Newspapers start the fire in the hearth and house-train puppies.
Newspaper websites can be outstanding. I only read the Wall Street Journal online and the New York Times online every day but Sunday. Each uses the medium to take news delivery beyond the dimensions of print on paper, but try house-training a puppy with the your laptop and the NY Times website.
I understand the financial pressures that are driving newspapers into the electronic-only embrace, but we’re losing something in the process.
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