The Sign Says It

With my only child now at college, and with so much now undefined and thus unscripted, I find that several extra hours seem to creep into every day. The mornings aren't punctuated by that mad school rush. I don't spend the afternoons plopped across a couch, listening to my son's artful stories. I don't sneak out while the dinner is cooking to replenish the just zested-through snacks.

In fact, during the last three weeks, I've hardly bought any snacks.

I've never had time—never enough time. And now, all of a sudden, here time is.

So that I am reading more, and therefore knowing more. I am stopping on stories I might not have seen just a few weeks ago, and today I stopped, while reading the New York Times, to read Alex Williams' moving story about the young mother and blogger who literally fell from the sky in an airplane accident and today lies in a hospital ICU, burned over most of her body, mummied over with bandages, and fighting for her life. Her husband was with her in the plane, and he, badly injured, lies near. Their four young children wait at home.

The story was a tribute of sorts to this young woman, Stephanie Nielson. But it was a tribute, most of all, to the community of bloggers, the majority of whom had never met this woman, who have come together to raise money by many means and to set free balloons full of well wishes from places as distant as Australia and Guam. These are people who read Stephanie's blog. Who came to know her in that way. And to care.

If you are ever asked, as I have been asked, whether the communities we create about ourselves with our machines matter, if such communities are real, I am thinking today that Stephanie Nielson's story answers that question. For real.

http://nieniedialogues.blogspot.com/