Since we’re being given Purell left and right, check out this information from a QU Prof:

MyQ

My brain is in overload. One blogger commented on her inability to decide – I’m right there. So here are some ideas bouncing in my head and giving me a thumping headache.

1. A web site dedicated to my family, the  Navarro family of San Jose, Calif. I have 51 first cousins from my mother’s parents, not including the living relatives from my grandparent’s siblings (including my grandmothers brothers). One of my aunts is a great, great, great grandmother. We have a family reunion every year and I have been suckered into writing our little annual newsletter, which includes photos from the party, as well as accomplishments, trips and milestones from family members. It’s a way to keep our family members–some who live in Mexico, Germany, Italy and Dubai–in touch. I’d like to turn that into a web site (with access by permission only). This year I videotaped the party, and lots of my relatives  would love to post some of their videos and link their  personal web sites. Selfishly, I do the newsletter and I want to do this website because I one day want to write a story about our family history, likely a fiction work. Hearing their stories, getting to know relatives through the things they do and the places they go and how they grew up, gives me insight into people who share my blood.

Alex as a child

2. I am worried about childhood obesity. I was never a skinny kid (see photo).  I never had video games and I was forced to play kickball with the neighbors in the middle of our street and I had to climb trees to pick peaches and figs for my snacks and I had to run, skip and jump in every game we played and still, I was pudgy (still am!). Today, I make my own bad choices. That’s not true for kids, who have parents who do the food shopping and make the meals. I’d like to create a website that collects some of the best information for parents. There’s a lot of information out there, such as Childhood Obesity and Avoiding childhood obesity. It would be good to have a place that provides information in plain language and that also tackles real-life challenges. I’d like to include information that takes a realistic approach to changing behaviors that will help kids live healthier lives and possibly provide a forum for teachers, as well as young people. We can include videos of fun workouts, cooking examples, links to counselors. I want this to make it easy to be healthy, because today, if it ain’t easy, it ain’t going to  happen.

3. I would love to create a web site dedicated to swapping books. yes, I know they already exist, but I still think it’s a good idea. Particularly one that is local. I don’t want to send my books to California to get one from Texas. We can also add an online book club. Move over Oprah.

4.Ok, last one. i’d like to create a web page for a business that writes profiles and family histories. The business would create something written, or a dvd of photos along with an audio. It would be a good gift idea for weddings. Lots of people create those self-published books of photos and videos, but not everyone has the words to express him- or herself.

This recent  CNN story on its privacy changes reminded me of how much information lives out there, online. When I stop and think about it, yes I know exactly how much information exists, from government records to my own Facebook account. But I don’t think about it. Does it make me more understood? More vulnerable? More liked? More hated? More seen? More invisible? All of the above?

Vannevar Bush’s article “As We May Think” gave a review of some of the development of communication technologies, from not only the perspective of a scientist, but also of someone who is living in 1945. What I found interesting was his foreshadowing of society’s present modes of communication, and the need to create more advanced modes and the expectation that we would. More important was the author’s assumption that “man’s spirit should be elevated if he can better review his shady past and analyze more completely and objectively his present problems.”

Today, we have at our fingertips a great deal of information about the past. And we have ample opportunity to contribute our own perspectives in this history through a variety of mediums—from the blog post to the opinion call to CNN. But from my perspective, the more access people have, the less likely they are to delve into the virtual mountains of information that exists. Instead, we often press forward, blindly, destine not to learn from past instances as we grapple with modern dilemmas. This is not to say that people don’t want to reflect on what has happen. The problem is two-fold.

First, we have far too much information to sift through, and more specifically, we have too much unsubstantiated opinion to evaluate in order understand the past. We now have scholars focused on very narrow topics of study, because of the abundance of information that exists on any given topic. Let’s add the increased ability for people who may or may not have expertise—from those who write editorials and blogs to those who write letters to the editors or electronic comments at the bottom of articles or blogs. And of course, myriad commentators fill the airwaves with their “expertise.” Conversations about health care reform, for example, are a tangled web of misunderstanding and misinformation, on all sides of the debate, with strings of facts loosely woven through the text and dialogues. The language of what is being proposed is available online. It has been included in articles. A copy can be accessed by mail. Yet, fear swirls around this issue and when a commentator said that the plans would force grandma to die, many people took this to be truth.

Second, we are expected to know, understand and do more with all of this information. The media needs to provide information quickly, we need to absorb it quickly and history and context of any given subject seems to take a back seat to speed.

I recall one of my first jobs in journalism, our morgue of articles was a series of file cabinets with paper clippings sorted by subject. Articles two years and older were on microfilm, which was organized by date. We had a part-time secretary who cut the clips and filed them. Then, reporters prayed that whoever used the file last had actually returned it or they would go searching people’s desks to find missing clippings. We would have to trek to the library, sift through the historical society papers, and sometimes send for books. And we relied on talking to people. But those conversations gave us perspective that was relevant to our readers.

By the time I left news, I was working for a newspaper that had an elaborate electronic database that stretched several decades. The paper had four full-time librarians and access to newspapers from across the globe, which included reports, graphs and images. Often, local readers would have a much broader perspective of how this one issue fit in the larger national and sometimes international context. We also were expected to produce more stories and file them online. A day was becoming far too long to wait for news. When we did publish it was expected to be bigger and better than what was appearing on television. But sometimes, I felt as if we were losing sight of the importance of the local, more personal perspective. It’s a fine line. We were so eager to get a perspective from an “expert,” that we forgot to focus on how this national issue affected our local constituents?

In the future, perhaps we will not need any mode of communication and we will be able to, as was done in science fiction television shows such as Star Trek, share information telepathically. I joke. No matter what mode of communication is in vogue, we still need to understand the importance of the content and its context.

I never make a good first impression. Now that I’ve set the bar low, let me introduce myself. I’m a native Californian who grew up with a goal of becoming Wonder Woman. Don’t laugh, I haven’t given up on the dream.

I fell in love with storytelling at an early age, but almost every English teacher I had frowned at the thought of me writing and kindly pointed me in the direction of math and science careers. (Note that I said I fell in love with storytelling, not writing. I can count the books I owned as a child on one hand.) One teacher, who was not so kind, said I was a horrible writer and had never had a student so unskilled with words.

So, I became a writer. More specifically, I became a journalist. And they were right. I was a horrible writer. What they didn’t take into consideration, however, was that I work hard. What I don’t have in skill I make up in effort. That is pretty much how I’ve reached most of my accomplishments in life. I am no “natural” at anything. I completed a marathon a few years ago with Team in Training. To give you an idea of where I began, when I arrived at the orientation one of the participants directed me to the heart attack survivor’s group down the hall. But I crossed the finish line—eventually.

Since I couldn’t write, I began my career in marketing, and later, with a little bit more education, I suckered small newspapers into hiring me. I hop-scotched across Connecticut working in news. After a few years, I leaped to the West Coast for a job and to be near my family, only to return for a relationship. My mother totals 21 addresses for me since I graduated from high school. What can I say? I like to wander. In the past year, I’ve wandered through six countries and Tibet, where I met many interesting people. I love meeting new people, and I especially like to hear their stories. And fortunately, they always seem to share them with me. But I’m pretty sure it’s not because I leave a good first impression.