Frosh Produce

One of the really weird things about the internet is that it makes you so much more accessible to others. So, every so often, I hear from someone I knew from college, high school, or even junior high. I remember reading an essay by Kurt Vonnegut, where he explained that when he was on the road and in a hotel room in another town, he'd take out the phone book and look up old friends to see if they were there, and call people up.

But we have the whole world in our hands nowadays, just by going online, and this allows us to get back in touch with people that we long ago lost touch with. What's even weirder is that my generation, maybe along with generation X, will be the only ones to experience this phenomenon. The generation coming of age now, which includes my son, will never lose touch with one another in the first place. The links will always be in place, ready and available whenever anyone feels the need to actually send a message. And one of the basic rules of media ecology is that The Medium Motivates the Content, so they all will be messaging each other, whether they have any need to or anything much to say, or not. And they'll all be blogging for each other, too.

Be that as it may, an old friend from freshman year at Cornell University named Dan Glassman, who I have not heard from since graduation in 1978, has sent me an e-mail, and included a photo taken of the guys on our wing of the 4th floor of our freshman dorm, U Hall 5 (a very inspiring name, not quite up to Slaughterhouse 5, but one that says, keep on truckin' 'cause you may not be back next semester). This was the fall of 1974, I believe. And in case you are uncertain, I'm the one in the back with the beard. Hairstyles were just beginning to transition from wild in the streets to keeping it long but styled. I was a bit slow on the uptake myself.





Well, anyway, there you have it. It's not a pretty picture, but we let it all hang out here on Blog Time Passing. Now, I have to respond to Dan, and let him know about this blog post. And I'll leave these guys standing here, in the eternal now of cybertime. Say cheese, fellas, and when no one is looking at this page, the beer's on me (don't worry, the drinking age was 18 back then, although I was 17, actually, but I wasn't carded very often at all).