As long as I’ve been hanging around with nerds, which is long before it’s been cool, we’ve gone through a pecking-order ritual of saying when  each one of us first got on the internet.

Young nerds would not have been old enough to experience the internet before it became the World Wide Web. I got on it when it was the pure and true ascii waste land. I talk about it a little here.

Before our phones held pictures, they carried our words. The internet found a way to carry data using modems. 14.4 and 28.8 and 56K before we got our broadband sorted out.

I am thinking back a little further though. Do you remember what the two T’s in AT&T stand for? Telephone and TELEGRAPH.

Back in the reign of Queen Victoria some engineers started stringing wires. It’s still called ‘laying cable.’ Before these wires connected the far reaches of this island nation, carrying coded messages (dah dit dah) the fastest way people sent messages was through signal fires.

Signal fires. Like in the Lord of the Rings. It was not that long ago. It was so recently that we were so far apart.

But the telecommunications technology of signal fires couldn’t reach as far as America. My home country was separated from England. People had to carry letters on ships and trust that they would get there in time or at all.

…until…

(and it happened faster than it had a right to)

The hyper fast communication of telegraphs became so important that the Victorian engineers were compelled to find a way to connect it across the oceans.

We revere our engineers now. Bill Gates is a celebrity, and the whole world knows and mourns Steve Jobs. The ones who brought our friends and family as close as our pockets, these we honor and admire.

The Victorians revered their engineering visionaries too. For basically the same reasons. Friends were down the street, with the telegraph.

So the fantastic inventors and engineers that made the railways and ships and telecommunication systems were respected and listened to.

It was kind of an accident that the ship which lay the first successful transatlantic cable was used. Isambard Brunel, the one responsible for it, did not start out as a ship biuilder.

He build railways. HIS way. He started the Great Western railway company, after riding on the railways then available in Britain. He declared the standard gauge rail was too cramped. In visionary engineer style, he re-engineered it to double in width.

Nerds know what I mean: PROPRIETARY STANDARDS.

So he had to create his own train locomotives and cars and tracks. But he did it. The Great Western was very popular even with it’s limited range.

Having conquered the railways, he wanted to conquer shipbuilding. He built…

(what else?)

The Great Western ship, the largest ship of it’s time, steam AND sail powered, to get to America and back.

Then he had to do it again, making a ship that was bigger still, the Great Eastern, which was meant to travel all the way to Australia without refueling.

It was the end of Brunel, literally. He died right after it was done. Young, like Steve Jobs.

The Great Eastern was not a success as a passenger ship. It would not be interesting to me if it had been.

In the end, this largest of all ships laid cable. It laid the first successful transatlantic cable. It was slow painstaking work to drop a thick cable down to the bottom of the ocean so that in the end it would carry a circuit, and more importantly, an intelligible morse code signal.

-.-. — -.. .

That is a giant step for humankind. Thanks, Brunel. Even if that’s not what you meant to happen.

Her friend betrayed her on Friday.

“Mommy, Amelia wouldn’t play with me. She decided that should would play with Sophia. Max told me.”

This is bad. Amelia had been her best for the last several weeks.

“Did she tell you why?”

“She wouldn’t talk to me. Max told me. So I went over to her and sang her a song.”

“You sang to her?”

“It was a very long song, filled with all the sadness that was in my heart. She tipped my bucket.”

Tipping her bucket means that her heart was broken.

“Then I asked her if she heard my song. She said she didn’t, and that she was going to play with Sophia now.”

I suspect that Veronica sang an impromptu song with all her thoughts and feelings sung in it. I suspect she was near but not close to her former best friend, and that she was not singing very loudly.

I love this girl, who chooses to sing her broken heart like a solo greek chorus on the playground.

She did not cry, she did not hit or get angry.

She sang her a song filled with all the sadness in her heart.

We had dinner at judy’s house and then decided to walk the dogs.

Of course Veronica wanted to go on all the lawns and investigate everywhere.

everywhere.

I told her to stay on the sidewalk.

She fell behind in a funk. After a moment she came up to me to say “mommy I know you think you’re a queen but it’s no fun only walk on the sidewalk I don’t think that’s right at all.

After a moment she came up to me to say “mommy I know you think you’re a queen but it’s no fun only walk on the sidewalk I don’t think that’s right at all.

“Do you think daddy would agree with you?”

!yes I do

On the Russian American School of Tomorrow Blog:

I just heard a wise man say:

There are people right now who don’t know you exist. But if you do the work to share your work with them, they will be so grateful.

I know there are people who need to read The Russian American School of Tomorrow. I know this is a life changing book. I hope to find a way to share this book with as much love as I put into writing it.

Love

Honesty

Truth

Transparency

Vulnerability

THis is not the time to shy away from the top of the mountain. There is no way out but through.

So I better get to work.

I wonder if all memoirists have this? Some people from my past have read my book and now we have to really go over it.

I talked about it. In The Russian American School of Tomorrow I talked about what was happening in a real way.

I didn’t talk about it then, Not while it was happening. And never to people I was casually aquainted with.

But now, I am opening myself to go over it. With the people who know the names of the names I changed in the story.

It’s uncomfortable.

But it’s good I think. And maybe I will have more good friends by the end than I had at the beginning.

I read book about it.

Aisha Tyler talks about self-inflicted wounds.

And I’m not willing. I do not walk up to that chance. I skirt and plan and avoid.

I don’t want to get hurt. I don’t want to be out of control. I want to be sure of every step before I take it.

And then.

Someone asked me, “Are you willing to be out of control?”

That’s an easy form of risk. And risk is where the reward happens.

I wonder if I can draw my eyes away from the memory of the scene of the accident.

It was a long time ago. And maybe this time there will not be an accident, but only a miracle.

Yeah. Peter had to step out of the boat.

That was a lot of crazy.

How crazy am I willing to be?

maybe i’ll start with a little. And work my way up.

One of my friends who works in the entertainment industry was telling me about a time when she first moved to L.A. A friend of hers from out of town came to visit and they decided to go watch the red carpet for the grammies.

She wouldn’t have chosen to go if her friend hadn’t been all excited to go.

“Your out-of-town friend was excited to see all the glamour of Hollywood? To see all the movie stars, huh?”

She made a face and said she regretted going. “I didn’t think it would make me feel so much like they were stars and I was NOT.”

There are superstars everywhere you look. Every time I turn around I am running into the same people getting interviewed or quoted.

I dig Steve Jobs, Seth Godin and Mark Twain. But I get inspired by my own little collection of wise people.

As I crawl around the internet, I find this and that link and then I find someone I to follow for a long time.

Sometimes they are famous. Sometimes they are not.

Sometimes I have no idea if anybody else anywhere knows about my favorites.

I’ve decided to start championing the people that matter to me. It makes me feel special for discovering them, and like I get to give a gift to all my friends and followers of a new discovery.

The popular people can keep saying their popular stuff. I’ve never hung out with the popular kids.

I have spent some time talking with people who were there. It’s not easy. I myself, even after I wrote this book, have trouble reading it.

I don’t want to go back to the scene of the accident.

I was talking with an old friend. She was there. She witnessed a lot of it.

True, she didn’t know all of the story. She had her own scenes she was dealing with.

So when I said somethign she said, “Wait, what? I don’t think I knew about that.”

And I had to explain.

Quickly. About people we knew differently.

And there it is. The part two. Is it my sequel? Or the sequel of all of us?

And it doesn’t end so pretty. How can I write an open-ended sequel? There should be some sense of ending.

That’s the trouble with true stories. They don’t end. They just kind of rest.

[this is cross-posted here]

twisted up over a percieved slight
A rudeness

Why didn’t I handle it different..
Better..?
Scorch the earth to prove I am not to be
TRIFLED with.

In the light of the next morning
I can see the light between the shadows
Maybe it’s not what I thought

Perhaps it was better
to keep my peace

Last night I dreamed that an old flame had come back to me. He was dying, and he realized that he really had missed out by not being with me back when.

All my love for him came rushing back. I am happily married, and he is (in real life) married too. But somehow, I was ready and it was just understood that I would be in his life and his lover before he died.

He finally recognized how he felt about me , and admitted to himself that his feelings and my feelings were undeniable.

It took a brush with death for him to realize I am perfect for him.

And somehow I had propped the door of my heart open the whole time. We held hands, and he was weak and sick on his bed, but I was going to be with him.

Somehow it all made sense. I started to wake up a bit, and think about how I couldn’t do this to my husband, still convinced that I would.

There is a lot of psychological meaning in this. I am not sure what, but the dream is still with me.

I’m so grateful to my husband. I would not want to leave him for anybody.