We attended a family reunion over the weekend. I realized while I was there, that I've been attending family reunions at this site for about 30 years now. We haven't been to a reunion since we moved to Massachusetts. It brought back a lot of memories, especially to see my little boys now doing the kinds of things that I did there when I was younger: learn how to bait a hook and how to build a fire. It was wonderful to see everyone and to share a few special hours together.
The reunions are held at a place called the Timber Pasture, about half way between Greenville and Donnellson. My first memories of going there are unclear on the details of the site itself, but it was largely unimproved at that time: it was simply a bit of overgrown pasture where you would drive up and camp. A trailer was parked there after the first year or so, and for many years, but there was no electricity or running water. To get there was an exciting drive across a hayfield. The last is still true: we drove straight across the winrows of hay to reach the Timber Pasture, but when we got there, the grass was mowed, there were lights, and a darling little cabin with electricity and running water.
There is an empoundment at the Timber Pasture that is stocked with fish. The kids mostly caught bluegill, but we saw a variety of others including a giant white catfish. The kids called him "Ol' Whitey". When the line broke on one of the rods, they suspected Ol' Whitey or maybe another catfish had bitten through the line. You could see him out there, swimming lazily, patrolling the pond from end to end.
We saw a lot of other wildlife too. A killdeer's nest by the side of the road had been marked with an orange flag by a thoughtful roadside mower. The speckled eggs blended in perfectly with the gravel at the side of the road. The boys found, what at first they thought was a cray-fish, but which turned out to be a mole cricket, in the sand by the pond. A red-headed woodpecker looked dressed too fancy for everyday wear. The bluebirds were a delight.
Going to sleep in the tent at night, there was more to be heard than could be seen: The close-by noises of the insects buzzing against the tent... The background of cricket frogs punctuated by periodic bellows of the bullfrog... The coyotes that would start yipping and howling a few minutes before the sounds of a distant train could be heard. The owl and the whip-poor-will singing a duet... In the morning, a whole different community was out: The background cacophony of the birds... The snort of a deer... The lowing of the cattle... The sound of the coffee percolator.
For awhile now, I've heard Joseph Duemer wants "
a tool that let me easily pull together posts from different writers, preferably in chronological order". That sounds like a threaded newsreader to me. Usenet was a lot more useful for managing discussions than blogs are. I started thinking about this after reading this article which has an interesting coding scheme for blog-postings. Postings can be opinions, reactions, summations, or votes. Opinions initiate threads and invite reactions (that contest points) or summations (that reference a group of postings). Votes express or withold support of more substantive postings. The main difference between the structure of blogging and other kinds of discussions seem to be the votes. Votes (non-substantive reiterations) are quickly shouted down in discussions or mailing lists, but in blogging, they play the role of recruiting people to an on-going discussion. The key issue is that, with a blog, people are not participating in a forum, but simply writing their own idiosyncratic articles that are more-or-less closely linked to all sorts of different communities of other people. It's like Usenet without the newsgroups. Or, rather, it's an author-centric Usenet. I still don't know how to build a threaded blog newsreader, though.
This is just a reminder that if there are two people in the world with a weird idea, the internet will help them discover each other and write a FAQ about it.