The Internet I worked on in 1981

This article made me really smile! I worked at the Atlanta Journal and Constitution in 1981 on the Associated Press project putting this newspaper, and others were too [NYT etc.], onto CompuServe so people could read the newspaper over a computer. All my journalist buddies would walk by my office and say "No one will ever read a newspaper over a TV or computer!" Well, I guess they were wrong in spades.

If you click on the link you can watch a video about it back then:

The Internet In 1981 Was Just So Adorable

The Huffington Post  |  By Alexis Kleinman                            

Posted: 01/17/2014 2:27 pm EST  |  Updated: 01/17/2014 3:25 pm EST

"Imagine, if you will, sitting down to your morning coffee and turning on your home computer to read the day's newspaper."

So begins this adorable San Francisco newscast from 1981, chronicling how newspapers are starting to (gasp!) send newspapers over the Internet. Someone is even credited as a "home computer owner."

"Engineers now predict the day will come when we get all our newspapers and magazines by home computer, but that's a few years off," newscaster Steve Newman said.

Apparently it took more than two hours to get the whole newspaper to your computer over the phone. Never complain about your slow Internet again.

 

 

 

Gifting the earth

Opposite the sun

                                               with a warm light
                                          a new day gifts the earth.

 

Here is the moon this morning at the top of the hill behind my house - just starting to wane from a full moon.

Hand-sewing beautiful fabric into purses

 

I decided to look around for purses I made a few years back ... I loved hunting for fabric and sewing by hand. I lined them all and added special touches. I made about 15 of them, and I gave them to friends and family, it was fun. Here is one I still have - a simple purse about 10"x10".

Sixty diamond minutes

A poem I wrote in the 1970s ... about precious time and living in the moment.

Lost:
Somewhere between
Sunrise and sunset
Golden hours with
Sixty diamond minutes

No reward offered
For they are
Gone forever.

Serendipity and "listening to what you can leave out"

I was reading through pages in my blog today and saw that I quoted Miles Davis nearly a decade ago saying, "I always listen to what I can leave out." I see this as a healthy approach to daily living!

Below is a paragraph from The New York Times today that I saw right after I read my blog... what serendipity. Wikipedia says, "Serendipity means a "happy accident" or "pleasant surprise." Specifically, the accident of finding something good or useful while not specifically searching for it. The word has been voted one of the ten English words hardest to translate in June 2004 by a British translation company."

From the Times: "Miles Davis' trumpet solos, whether ruminating on a whispered ballad melody or jabbing against a beat, have been models for generations of jazz musicians. Other trumpeters play faster and higher, but more than in any technical feats Mr. Davis's influence lay in his phrasing and sense of space. "I always listen to what I can leave out," he would say."