Style reflects the value systems and cultures of eras and people. It is the imagery that expresses with the left brain that intellectualism of the right brain that Cambridge is so obsessed with. Great style is timeless and grounded in something far more embedded in who and what we are than the fleeting wisps of fashion.
More likely Henrietta thought it would just be cool to celebrate the most quotidian of necessities as provided by the City. Nothing says living in a bubble better than what issues from Henrietta Davis. Enough said. No one living in Cambridge is unaware of being in a bubble. Here in Lower Merion Township my representative is a Republican tool. Here, I stand a fair chance of having my puny little vote count for something.
At the least I can look at passersby and know that I will be canceling the vote of one of them. I made a big move recently. Actually it was a series of moves, some large, some small, all adding up in the end to one mammoth relocation.
I lived in the Boston area, more or less, for 48 years, and at one location, a condo, in Cambridge for over 26 years the longest continuous single home of my life.
As of the middle of February, officially, as it was the day that ownership changed hands on my new home, I am now a resident of Pennsylvania, just outside of the city of Philadelphia. I have not been entirely covert about this change of venue, and what I already and more and more rapidly think of as home.
Rather, I have alluded to it. One of my two blogs in particular, but both of them in general, used to be peppered with personal details in the essays I posted regularly.
I fully expected that it was mainly people who knew me personally who paid the most attention to these outpourings, and so I had little to hide. I was completely discrete about certain things.
For one, the short list of things that most people do not care to air in public. Domestic strife, financial status, sexual proclivities and activities. For six long years and then for the years thereafter, I also was fairly mum about the health of my late wife, and the progress of her ailments and their treatment.
For one, despite the profound impact on my life, and experienced in that circumscribed context by no one but me, it seemed these matters were the substance of her life, and her business. Discretion is not the better part of valor. The change in accounting for those parts of my life that I made the stuff of my poor attempts at literary output came more or less with the initiation, a choice I made, into participation in Facebook. Previously I enjoyed, or perhaps suffered the delusion of having, control over what I said to the world at large in such a public place as an electronic communications network that is truly global and ubiquitous.
What I have found, in the five years since becoming a Facebook subscriber, is I have become increasingly uneasy about this sharing of what are to me intimate parts of my life. There is no law, not even a natural law as far as that goes, in terms of how I believe these things to be in life as we know it, that compels me to reveal anything except I suppose under pain of torture or the insidious ways of being treated with truth-baring drug treatments to another living soul.
True or not is of no consequence whatsoever, because on the Web, everything is true and it is the kind of truth that never dies, even if it is, in substance and meaning, wholly and utterly false. Worse, because it is in the way of these things on the Internet, that there is always the potential that any single datum, any fact, any image will be seen, eventually, by everyone.
Hence the practice persisted into my use of the Facebook, and the trouble began almost immediately. Those whom I count among true friends, who I knew before Facebook and I will continue to know for the rest of my life, inclusive of certain of those relationships formed since whatever exact date it was I subscribed to Facebook I am sure they could tell me that date; I refuse to look it up… some things are just not important even to someone as neurotically punctilious about so-called facts as I also, of course, know me.
There have been two results. One is what I have already alluded to in this essay. I have become more circumspect, more private, in a way that has spilled over into my personal life, dealing with people generally, so that in one-on-one encounters with old friends there has been increasingly larger and larger ground to cover in terms of filling them in on what has occurred in my life since my last encounter. Two is that I have had to forge a zig-zag path through the intricacies of Facebook postings and status updates.
And of course, I have become, uncharacteristically, wary of saying what I know is deeply contrary or provocative to the like-minded. I always write or post something with the hope, but no expectation whatsoever, of a response. It rarely happens, that is, the live communication between humans, one of whom is me. I have virtually ceased having what had been an incredibly rich, active, and dense correspondence with a variety of correspondents, mainly on email, but also, mirabile dictu, using pen and ink on real paper, made from rag or wood pulp.
I was reminded of all this, this former life, for life it was, a soubriquet I cannot assign to Facebook relations. They are something, but they are not life for me. They may be for every one of the other individuals of which my Facebook Friends list now consists. But they are not for me. I was reminded of all this mainly because I am unpacking the literally tons of belongings that had to be hauled from New England to very near the city line of Philadelphia. Among the artifacts and objects thereby revealed—sometimes, it truly seems like a dig and I have unearthed some treasure, an archaeological find from the ancient history of the civilization I know as myself—was an ancient laptop, a Power Book G3, last used a decade ago, and first put into active service in I looked at the email client I used then and perused some of the individual messages.
As it was me writing, those I sent were of unusual length, in words, even for the circle of people with whom I corresponded back then.
I was a member of at least two listservs, those hoary precursors to the phenomenon that has evolved into the present form of Facebook, except then the list usually consisted of about people on the forums I attended. I formed friendships, real ones, thereby, some of which I retain and cherish to this day, and, as had always been my propensity throughout my life, thereby enlarged the circle of people I could count on to be engaging in a meaningful and substantive way, even if our relations never evolved beyond intellectual kinship.
As for close friends, even those who, back in those days, lived nearby the closest of them moved away long before it ever would have occurred to me to re-locate myself, and perhaps that is another causal factor in the chain of reasons or the nexus of conditions that have left me where you find me here, trying to account for what you have found , we wrote regularly, sometimes daily, exchanging links and quips and jokes and personal anecdotes, plans for meetings, assignations, mutual attendance of cultural or social events.
Even as we wended our daily way through our obligations, writing and staying in touch even from our work desks. Facebook only reminds me, more and more poignantly, nay, painfully, of what I miss. I know friendship. Friendship is a friend of mine. And Facebook, you are not friendship. Facebook is no substitute for me for what I describe for a broad matrix of reasons, none of them noteworthy enough to single out and not all of them important enough to analyze.
I leave that to the sociologists and behavioral economists who at least can make a living, even if they eventually never make sense, of it. It is difficult to learn Italian. It is more difficult to be a mother. However, you can't hide the pride in your voice when you describe Davin's budding radicalism.
Even in Italian! We look forward to more submissions from our State-side subscriber base. I am getting a lot, but a special page in English would make it "pui chiaro" and add a pat on the back for my self esteem and those "hvem kanskje vaer fluene i andre spraak, men ikke italiensk.
Especially when the bambini are grown and flown away! Hilsen fra BarbiQ. The people living in ZIP code are primarily white. The number of young adults is extremely large while the number of people in their late 20s to early 40s is extremely large. There are also an extremely large number of single adults and an extremely small number of families. The percentage of children under 18 living in the ZIP code is extremely small compared to other areas of the country.
ZIP code has a small percentage of vacancies. The Census also indicates that there are one or more nursing homes and universities nearby. The majority of household are rented. Homes in ZIP code were primarily built in or earlier. It is also extremely high compared to nearby ZIP codes. So you are less likely to find inexpensive homes in Rentals in are most commonly 1 bedrooms.
Prices for rental property include ZIP code apartments, townhouses, and homes that are primary residences. It is also compared to nearby ZIP codes. So is likely to be one of the nicer parts of town with a more affluent demographic. ZIP is unusual in that "Bicycle, Walked, or Other Means" is the most frequent method of transportation to work instead of vehicles.
ZIP code uses public transportation to get to work more than almost anywhere in the country.
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