Julie Pippert: Using My Words

I have recently been thinking about the pros and cons of blogs, chatrooms, Facebook and Twitter. What need does each fulfill? What need does each block? After some contemplation, which those of you who know me well enough to know was very deep indeed, I decided that the ability to converse in a back and forth manner was a big pro of Twitter, but the ability to converse at length and with thought was a big pro of chatrooms and blogs. So...I'm endeavoring, in my own way, to create the best of all possible worlds, and allow conversation and thought to mate on my blog. Bear with me as I try this out and refine it as I go. Feel free to make suggestions and thanks for participating. Meaningful Conversations 1: Tribe, Phalanx, Marketing, and the Internet Yesterday, on Twitter, someone (and I'm sorry I forget who) linked to a video of Seth Godin talking about tribes. Then, today Sarah of Slouching Mom selected phalanx (def.: noun, 1. any closely grouped mass of people: a solid phalan...

I remember my Valentine's Day childhood parties well, even though these days it seems like a hundred years ago. I went to a lot of different elementary schools so the parties are distinct, rather than a blur of similarity of places and people. There were a lot of common points, though, regardless of place. We'd sit at our desks---the old-fashioned kind (now) with the wood top, attached by a metal bar to the hard, slick wood seat (one size fits all, hard for smaller bottoms). The cubby was underneath the seat, so children's heads tended to bob down as if going under water to get a fresh pencil. We'd have ants in our pants, the teacher would say, because not one of us could sit still. Every now and again a child, usually a boy, would explode up from his desk, no longer able to sit at all, and the teacher, resigned to this sort of thing, would say something like, "Mark...Mark, what are you doing up?" And poor Mark, a victim of a heady case of excitement beyond hi...