BONSAI TREES AND PRAYER VIGILS

DISPATCH ONE:

In Washington DC for the March For Our Lives tomorrow.  Over a million people are expected.  Groups of young people spent the day visiting their legislators and walking the mall, the city, the monuments.  I did a couple things that I needed to do to prepare:  visited ancient bonsai trees at the National Arboretum and attend a prayer vigil at the National Cathedral tonight.

The oldest tree in the collection was tended by the same family since 1625.  It survived the bombing in Hiroshima.  In 1976, it was given to the American people in honor of the bicentennial.  It is still thriving.  These little trees - so carefully tended - outlive the generations of those who care for them.  Like these ideals we struggle with - a world in which peace towards each other, rather than violence against one another - is the norm.

"We come here this evening to affirm that we are connected by an 'inescapable network of mutuality' and 'tied in a single garment of destiny.  And whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly'   it does not matter how large the city or how small the town -- trauma and sorrow claim far too many of our citizens.  For too long the tears of frightened children, the cries of inconsolable parents and the weariness of long-suffering neighborhoods have been ignored.  We declare on this day that our nation must turn from this patth of fear and destruction. 

With all who join us - in cities and towns across this land - we here this night proclaim together in one voice:

From so many heartbreaks comes forth a united commitment to go into the streets of our cities and towns and promote a way of peace and well-being for all people.  With compassion sown from the threads of sadness and horror, we will mend a nation tattered by gun violence and weave a new cloth of hope and peace."

 

The bonsais are a reminder of the careful tending we need to commit too - generation after generation.  The prayer vigil reminds me that it only works when we come together. 

Good night.

The Ecstacy of Communication -Implications in the Virtual World

Reading an article by Denise Carter from the UK. Trying to research how virtual communites impact not only students - but individuals in general. Set within the wider context of the Internet and society it investigates how geographically distant individuals are coming together to inhabit new kinds of social spaces or virtual communities. People 'live in' and 'construct' these new spaces in such a way as to suggest that the Internet is not a placeless cyberspace that is distinct and separate from the real world. Building on the work of other cyberethnographers, the author combines original ethnographic research in Cybercity, a Virtual Community, with face-to-face meetings to illustrate how, for many people, cyberspace is just another place to meet.

Second, she suggests that people in Cybercity are investing as much effort in maintaining relationships in cyberspace as in other social spaces. This analysis suggests that by extending traditional human relationships into Cybercity, they are widening their webs of relationships, not weakening them. Human relationships in cyberspace are formed and maintained in similar ways to those in wider society. Rather than being exotic and removed from real life, they are actually being assimilated into everyday life. Furthermore, they are often moved into other social settings, just as they are in offline life.

However, experience shows that they can harbor the same emotional issues that real-life relationships do - further implications ensue as a result of role playing and the "gaming" mentality of some of the inhabitants.

Issues to examine as more and more educational institutions have a presence on these communities.