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I learned from two Echomail conferences that were quite busy, and quite contentious to think about everything I thought I knew differently.  I read the arguments back and forth in Politics and the people arguing in there were not just democrats and republicans, but libertarians and socialists as well.  They would pick apart an issue, arguing back and forth.  I was very interested because on most issues of the day I had not been following or paying attention, as I was working and raising teens.  My daughter was not interested, and spent her time on the computer chatting with folks, or writing interactively with strangers, and discovering poetry.

I, on the other hand, learned what a logical fallacy is.  I then researched and discovered how many are constantly being used in these discussions.  I noticed, too, that while one side would argue facts and history, the other invariably seemed to twist, get emotional, or use ad hominem attacks to change the subject, or withdraw.  After a while, I was even able to discover that side was the left.  Libertarians came at everything from a much more even approach, and the right was very factual, and highly accurate, pointing out where language was being used to change a meaning of what was said, injecting adjectives where they were clearly leading.  Without those adjectives or adverbs, or without the inclusion of some phony motivation, “because” statements, things read completely differently.  I could read a clearly reported description on an event and form my own impression of what occurred, rather than having the writer tell me what to think about it.

Made a big impression on me.  I realized I wanted to know facts, and make up my own mind.  It was an eye opening experience, and I wish young folks had this chance today to wake up to how they are being manipulated by language.   We might all be happier as a result.

Controv was another conference in which flame wars were a constant daily occurrence.  Flame wars were interesting.  I could read for quite a while, get all sides of a hot issue or controversy, and sit back and make up my own mind who was making or forming the more sensible arguments.  It was an education.  Today, on places like twitter, everyone is so focused on having their say, they aren’t “listening.”  And following a discussion thread is close to impossible.

Yesterday, someone blocked me, and made a thread impossible to follow, as I had no idea what was being argued anymore.  And people jump in who weren’t involved, and you get lost.  Read a response, and have no idea what they are responding to, so why bother?

A real forum is a different story.  I like forums.  Freerepublic.com has been one of my favorite hangouts forever!

When I was young, and spending hours escaping into drawing, art to me was escape.  It was crafting my own version of what I wanted to be, what I wanted to see, how I wanted to look, and what I wanted to look at.  As I grew older, and raised a family, it all changed.  What I saw wasn’t anywhere near as important as the family.  What I wanted wasn’t important.  What I wanted to see wasn’t important.  What I was interested in didn’t seem to matter one bit.

There’s something about having a family, raising kids, that expands ones vision, makes the “I” so much smaller, makes the needs and wants of others so much more important.  It’s a growth experience for the parents, much more than even for the children.  You discover not just the word, humility, but the meaning.  You internalize it, and it becomes a part of you.

To truly care for others, to aid in their growth, to bring to others all the good you can find in you actually causes you to do just that, find good in you.  Create good in you.  Makes you realize how really unimportant things like fashion, and socializing, and all the assortment of extraneous activities we think are so important when we are young.  God is good.  And His creation and all the wonders of it are so much more important than “I” and anything I wanted or desired as a youngster.

Now, I am so grateful for the birds singing in the morning when my dog takes me out for a short walk.  The breeze in the trees, the shade they provide, and their incredible beauty I couldn’t even imagine capturing with paint.  The squirrels playing and working so hard for a bit of birdseed, the foxes that still come for breakfast!

The smell of coffee brewing, bacon cooking, the feeling of the comfy socks and shoes on my old achy feet, the cat I have to shoo off the keyboard and mouse…. these are the things of life that I have now.  The wonderful guy who has always provided for me for 60 years, and what do I feed him today!

You can draw pictures….or if a reader, like I am, you can find and see all sorts of magic and beauty in the written word.  There’s nothing like a good book that is so well crafted you can smell the setting, feel the breezes blowing, hear the birds all just because a great writer can paint much better pictures than I can, but with words that capture your very essence for a few days and take you from troubles to somewhere else.  Not just for an hour of someone else’s images, but for days of your very own.  Nothing like the inside of your own eyelids!  Really.

Writing, a greater art than drawing or painting, and music, now music is the ultimate.  Takes your soul and makes it dance, or float, or it can caress and soothe, depending on instrumentation, tempo, tune, rhythm.  Ah, yes.  So much better than just a drawing.

While perusing fidonet echomail conferences, I discovered something I though was of critical importance.  One side used primarily facts, history, and logic while the other side got all emotional, used feelings for arguments, and wound up calling names and ad hominem attacks as their technique for arguing politics.  Took me a while of reading to discover even what “ad hominem” meant, and I had to do research myself to see that the logic side was actually using facts and reason.  I found myself often on a side of a discussion I had no clue I would be on.  Who knew?

And someone posted a little test so you could find out just what your political ideology really was.  Where you really stood on political issues.

I wound up being conservative, leaning libertarian.  Who knew?

I didn’t even know what a libertarian was!  So, more research!

All told, it was a real learning experience.  What I learned besides the issues, was myself.  I learned about me.  I learned I wasn’t what I always thought I was.  It was an eye opener.  An education.  Well worth the time and effort.  Exploration!  We were on the cutting edge of online interaction, and all even before the internet!  Stunning.  Loved every minute!

So, someone mentioned on a BBS we visited, that we could download the software and install it, and set up our own Bulletin Board System, generally referred to as a BBS.  We found their file section, wherein they actually had files to share with others.  What a find!  We were excited!  There were files there that were incomprehensible to me, but I have this disease, curiosity, that just won’t quit, and apparently there is no cure.

Only a really good book will aid escape from curiosity disease.   There is no vaccine at all.

So, we downloaded and installed a simple Opus system.  And started it up, with the name, Scorpio Rising BBS, and the Sysop was my daughter, fictionally named Jennifer Juniper.  I was her Tech Support, Proud Mama.

So, conversation began.  Messages flew back and forth from anyone who called, and wrote something.  Some folks just “yelled” for someone to chat with, and JJ was usually available to chat for a while.  I oversaw this activity long enough to know she could and would conduct herself properly.  She made friends!  A few we still have today!  On facebook….   which didn’t exist back then.

After a bit, we got invited to join the FidoNet, and did so, gladly, although I cannot recall our node address.  It was just so long ago.

And we began to receive Echomail Conferences…..or whole lists of folks discussing any number of issues in depth, arguing and often getting quite contentious.

JJ and an online friend with a flair for poetry began writing poetry together, a few lines each, and were quite interested in the insights each brought to the topic, which constantly changed.  Fun years!

An adventure!  Something most folks just had no clue about, we were doing.  It was cutting edge stuff, and we were learning tons of stuff, often from 12 year old boys who used their computers for games.

Back in the late ’80’s folks would explore other peoples computers using dial up.  That means, your computer was connected to a phone line, with a phone number, and you could use a modem to call someone else’s computer and explore what they had to share.  It was a very new concept to this old gal, and I was intrigued, having only discovered computers at my husbands office, where I was the one to fire up the first in the place, figure out how to use it, and what it could do.  There, we were not connecting to anything at all.  Just software, and work.

However, the old Washington Post had a story about computer bulletin board systems, and modems, and calling around to other computers to see what they had.  They posted a list of about six or so local BBS systems, with the phone numbers, and I recall how excited I was by that!  Imagine, what kind of thing could I find on someone else’s computer?  That they would be willing to share?

Well, I told my husband, I wanted one of those things, a modem, for Christmas, and wanted it hooked up to my basement computer.  Well, it came, and my daughter and I started to call other computers to see what we could discover and learn.  An adventure had begun.  Such an exciting time!

Another of my early art adventures back when my kids were in high school, and I was attending the local community college will also always amuse.  I’d love to say I have pictures, and indeed, I do, but they are in .pdf format and won’t show well here.

I decided to do a large scale sculpture in my class, because they had all the needed equipment, and all I needed was some plywood, some fittings, and a way to protect the points of it.  The plan was to reproduce in plywood a much larger version of a smaller welded piece I’d done already.  I liked it, having gotten the idea from a dream of breaking pencils, and trying to put them back together.  Inspiration often comes in the middle of the night for art pieces.

I constructed the separate sections using the table saw, radial arm saw, and assembled some fittings, clamps, and welded some simple tips, so my plywood would not be sitting in muddy earth, rotting too quickly.

The day came to assemble it, and the guys all helped me carry the pieces out to the front of our class building, and we proceeded to assemble it.  It was one of the funniest days I spent over there.  Early ’80’s, and heck, I guess the guys never thought a girl could plan how to assemble a structure she planned and built herself.  Oh, no.  Four guys struggled away trying to put it together, and I was just in their way!  LOL!  After they struggled and threw up their hands, I stepped forward, and explained the process, piece by piece, and VOILA!  It was done!  I have pictures of the struggle that day to which I often refer when I want a good laugh.  But they are in .pdf format, and not good for this.

Here’s the finished piece.  It stood in front of that building for a while, and was entered into a juried show on the campus there.  The juror was Joan Mondale, wife of the Vice President, who was a patron and promoter of the arts while they were in Washington.  My piece was accepted, and a prominent spot in the center of the campus was chosen for it’s display.  On the day I took it there to assemble it, I had just the aid of my oldest daughter, and we had it together in less than half an hour.  A couple of the guys who had struggled so with it showed up when we finished it, and had a good laugh with us.

My Trag was in my back yard for many years after than, although I had to move it at one point, to satisfy the homeowners association.  When the plywood began to disintegrate inside the metal tips, I finally took it down, and to the dump.  I should have taken more pictures, I guess.

I think the last thing I did was back to painting, and just had to be my portrait of my glamorous sis.  Don’t recall doing anything after that, because computers got in my way.  🙂

I can hardly find it now, because the old eyeball tree is covered with God’s gift to us all, flowers!  A bush I cannot even identify has grown and almost completely covered it.  It’s still the only one in Reston, probably Virginia as well.  Why, maybe it’s the only one in the country!

My daughters both studied art, and both dabbled in Sculpture, as did I.  For many years, I’ve had family art adorning my living room walls, and floor, too, for that matter.  There was once a plaster seated nude, life size, right by my front window where we now place the Christmas tree each season.  I have a rather large perhaps 3.5 ft puzzle piece leaning against one wall as well.  The plaster nude is now defunct, as is my own sculptural adventure of 7 ft. in plywood which disintegrated after many years in the back yard.  Plywood just doesn’t last that long.

Self portraits are here as well, and a huge painting of one daughter painted by the other.  I like his room.  Spend lots of computer time in it reminding me of past interests.  Love of art is in me, and obviously in them as well.

The eyeball tree was a sculpture project.  An exploration into metal, and welding.  What a unique idea!  It’s rusty now, and the eyeballs have faded, but still stands there as a reminder of days past.

Scanning through the 17,000 pictures I have on this hard drive, I cannot find a picture of my eyeball tree, but I know it’s there somewhere.  So, the mama fox from two years ago, feeding her young on the run will have to do.

I know this isn’t an original thought, and I know someone else wrote about this just recently, because I saw it.  Every time I go out to walk the dog, or get in the car, I’m reminded.  Every time, I see it.  I feel it.

We all have needs, and yes, God provided for all our needs.  Food in abundance, ways to make shelters, others with which we can share our blessings, a variety of weather types to teach us to care for ourselves.

But God didn’t stop there.  All the plants He made could have reproduced without the glory of a flower, but He gave us a very special something!  Beauty!  He gave us a special blessing!  It cannot be called anything but a blessing!  A flower is a show, a gift only for our eyes, a glorious manifestation of God’s love for us.  There’s no other possible reason for them!  They are God’s gift for us every day!  And a constant reminder of blossoming of new life each spring.  Some glow with beauty all summer long, and some start again and bloom only in the fall seasons.

What a gift!  What a God we have!  If there’s any doubt in your heart of His love for us, understand flowers are for all of us!  The sinners and guilty, too, get this wonderful show, this manifestation of His love.

I’m not saying midnight, I’m saying mid night, because it’s way past midnight.  But I can’t sleep.  And I’m not plagued by nightmares or scary things at all.  I can’t sleep because I have memories that are just too precious and wonderful not to mention.

My first was such a wonderful thing, and would sit wherever I put her, not wiggle around, not fall over, just sit and look around her, with wonder and delight in her tiny face!  If close to something, like a vase with flowers, she would reach out her tiny hand and touch it, so gently, as though to sense it’s beauty and her expression was as though she absorbed it.

I almost lost her once.  Colic drops caused her to choke.  Ignorant and unknowing mother that I was, either instinct or God took over in that instance, and I grabbed her by the feet, and held her upside down, patting strongly on her back.  I’d say it was God telling this dumb inexperienced mom what to do, because those drops came shooting out, and she screamed.

I cried.  I have no idea why God was with me that day, because I hadn’t given Him a thought in years, and yet I know now, He was there for us both that day.  Words cannot begin to express how something like that can make you feel.  There’s no way to describe many of the events of simple motherhood that I’ve experienced.

Sometimes, the memories I have of them beginning to walk, run, read, sing, put their arms around my neck and call me “Mom” are so overwhelming, I realize that that is what makes me happy, and that is why I still love this old guy who provided for us throughout it all, who must have been sent by God.  How else could it have happened?  There really is a loving God for whom I am so very grateful everyday for the love and experiences I’ve had.

And grandma, now that’s too sweet to even begin to describe.