Ode to the Internet

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I am reelin' with a feelin' today. I have been WOWed. Thank you, precious wonderful internet.

What a magical, fantastic, amazing, miraculous, infinite, convenient place. It is as limitless as the universe and keeps growing every day. From the comfort of your own home, you are just one click away from pretty much anything that interests you. It's a powerful force that some use for evil but most use for good or benign purposes. I realize this isn't a shocking revelation to anyone who goes online, but still ....

We're planning a trip to Yosemite, so this morning: weather.com + click + Yosemite = we better bring our warmest coats because it's gonna be cold. Then I started playing some Facebook games and my mind wandered to some of my favorite writers. So I typed "Erica Jong" in the search box. Sure enough, I found a Facebook page and clicked to become a fan. I snooped around for a few minutes, checked out the the link to her website and to some blogs she'd written on Huffington Post. Cool. Read a little, learned a little. Similar results after doing a Facebook search for Stephen King. Then I searched for William Butler Yeats. OMG - jackpot! Somebody posted a link to an online Yeats exhibit from the National Library of Ireland (http://www.nli.ie/yeats/). I spent about an hour (without completing the tour) leisurely navigating my way through this amazing treasure trove of information and artifacts just as if I were* walking through a museum. Thank you National Library of Ireland (and Facebook link poster)! Super, unbelievably awesome and straight from the convenience of the comfiest chair in my house. Poor old libraries don't stand a chance!

Not that I don't like libraries; I do. I guess I'm old school (and thrifty) that way. I like to take my 7 year old son & we both get to borrow any books we like FOR FREE! It doesn't get much better than that. I'm curious about kindles & ipads but I don't have one (yet?) and regular old books are just fine by me. Books are either the original internet or the anti-internet: an information sharing device that is ancient in origin, extremely low tech, extremely portable, amazing in the wealth and breadth of information available, easy to use anytime, anywhere, and capable of reaching in and connecting to our deepest selves. Not too shabby! Anyway, my same said 7 year old son loves to play online games and watch funny things on UTube and will never understand how amazing and miraculous it is that he can do that because to him it's just normal everyday whatever.

I've read some articles about how someday soon textbooks will be a thing of the past and kids will read and do all their schoolwork on ipad-like devices. What a strange and wonderful world we live in. Can you imagine? What's next to amaze us - time travel? Free effective solar power? World Peace? The future is now, and so is the past, and it's a beautiful day, so have a great one and maybe go read a great book - or do a web search! Spectacular!

* PS - I also consulted the internet on the proper usage of "I was" versus "I were" for the above sentence & easily found a site (www.dailywritingtips.com) that addressed my question.

:)