Reasons to Love the Internet

#2 reason to love the internet: pictures, music, video, art, voices... (Oh wait; that's lots of reasons!)

History, Geography, Technology

an Australian mom wrote:

I still remember asking my social studies teacher if we could do American history as it really interested me, but he said only if we get time...which of course we didn't. Still that year I read Bury my heart at Wounded Knee...and you know i remember more about that book than my SS lessons LOL. I think all kids are the same:)
Luna

Then, as I grew up I became interested in the real life history of the Wild West, the true stories (or true-ish, depending on who was telling the story!). And no chance of any of that finding its way into my school classroom either. British history was it.

Not so long ago, I spent a very informative half an hour or so with my son at the official Texas Rangers website (the law enforcement agency not the baseball club) because we had been discussing the design of the weapons in the shoot 'em up videogames he likes to play - and which guns are real guns and which are made up - and I'd mentioned that I loved the design of the Colt 1851 Navy pistol (as used by Clint Eastwood in The Good, The Bad and The Ugly which we'd watched not long before), so I googled it, found a page at the Texas Rangers site and we stayed to have a look around.

Shortly afterwards, I watched Kevin Costner's Wyatt Earp movie. I was curious about how historically accurate the movie was and that led me to 'The Old West' at a website called Legends of America (www.legendsofamerica.com) — "Travel, History, Old West, Route 66, Ghost Towns, Treasure Tales & More!" I spent almost three hours there the day I found it and still visit from time to time.

Another time, a couple of years ago, I watched the Second World War movie The Battle of the Bulge. I was pretty sure some liberties had been taken with the story, so I googled it and found a website - don't recall now what it was called - that had been created by some guy in America who had actually been there. It included a critique of the Battle of the Bulge movie that told me everything I needed to know about the (numerous) discrepancies between the dramatised account and the actual events. And there was a whole lot more. The website was a huge, huge collection of real life stories, photos and maps related to the battle that this guy had painstakingly put together over the space of years. I was so moved by it, I emailed the guy to thank him for all his work.

I love all that. The internet is a dream come true for people of my generation (I'm a 'child of the 1950s') - for those of us who wanted to know but had no way of knowing. I've never been better educated in my life than I have been over the past eight years. And the best thing of all is that I get to choose what's important to me and what isn't. That's priceless.

Bob

Sandra response to Bob:
The first TV show I ever watched in my life was an episode of The Cisco Kid.

Cisco and Pancho! I remember them vaguely. Same days I was wathing "Whirlybird," and thinking yeah, I could fly a helicopter, easy. I must've been five. I was in Texas. Not much better for learning American history than Australia is, I think. In Texas, they teach Texas history. Over, and over, and over.

I've lived in New Mexico since I was six, but we visited relatives. Ignorant, alcoholic relatives on one side, and easy-going non- ignorant non-alcoholic but too religious relatives on the other side. Mamaw had a storm cellar just like the one in The Wizard of Oz. They had used it many times. I used to want to play down there every time I went, until they reminded me (every time) there were very likely snakes and spiders. Oh yeah.

Wagon Train is the reason I stopped taking piano lessons. I didn't want to miss Wagon Train. My last name was Adams and the wagonmaster was Adams, I think I remember.

Then, as I grew up I became interested in the real life history of the Wild West, the true stories (or true-ish, depending on who was telling the story!). And no chance of any of that finding its way into my school classroom either. British history was it.

I'm a big Anglophile, and the first time I was in England I hit a lot of bookstores. There was a postal strike and the two boxes of books I shipped home went into the brink somewhere. But I remember being impressed and embarrassed that their kids' histories of the north American native tribes were WAY better than anything I'd seen in the U.S. The history the Brits get of the U.S. and Canada is what the Canadians and Americans would do well to have (and probably the Canadians have always had it).

There are book publishing and sales realities that are a mystery to me, but we have a hard time getting books from the U.K.

The website was a huge, huge collection of real life stories, photos and maps related to the battle that this guy had painstakingly put together over the space of years. I was so moved by it, I emailed the guy to thank him for all his work.

I love all that. The internet is a dream come true for people of my generation (I'm a 'child of the 1950s') - for those of us who wanted to know but had no way of knowing.

YES!!! I got a nice note from a guy who found my page on my pump organ, and I added it there just Tuesday: /organ

I sent him a note:

THANK YOU!!
I love these little stories that tie all kinds of people and places and times together.

And he opted to leave his name on it.

Sandra

Sandra Dodd
Date: November 12, 2007 1:17:43 PM MST
To: AlwaysLearning@yg...
Subject: I *LOVE* the internet

I love the internet, I love my website, I love history, and I love the future.

Robyn Coburn wrote something once about her dad, who was a professional juggler. I put it on a webpage, as a connection from another juggling page I had, and linked it to the page where I collect and link some of the best of what Robyn has written.

On Robyn's article "The Beautiful Park," I had an e-mail link so that people could contact her for reprinting it. It's wonderful.

Luckily for me, that link was outdated. (It's fixed now.)

But luckily for me, Robyn and a guy in England whose name I don't know, my address worked fine and I could contact Robyn.

Oh, and I love cellphones. I tried to call Robyn, called her husband James who gave me the house phone number (I had saved cellphone numbers from when I picked them up at the train station when they came to Albuquerque for the Live and Learn conference)... and I know I still haven't gotten to the point, but that's part of what enables the excitement, is the very many things that led up to it, most of which we'll never even know.

So I could talk to Robyn quickly; that was cool.

Here's the e-mail I got:

=====================================

Hello Sandra,

I sent this email to Robyn at the address for her I found on your website, but it bounced. If you have a more up-to-date email address for her, please could you forward it on to her?

Thank you,
Void

Begin forwarded message:
From: The Void <......
Date: 12 November 2007 18:25:53 GMT
To: dezigna@(the wrong address)
Subject: Elimar: a video

Hello Robyn,

I found your address after searching google for "Elimar juggler". A friend passed on a VHS to me with this video clip on it:
http://www.juggling.tv/vaults/view_video.php?viewkey=18cc9daa29cf58af7a00 [It's not there anymore, but was for a long time! This is what I don't love about the internet... :-)]

I thought you would like to see it.

Best regards,
Void

==================================================

Robyn had NO video images of her father. She has very few photos. She was a little choked up and a lot happy.

You can get to all the other links referenced above from this, and see the video clips too:

/jugglingrobyn

The only link that comes up right now if you google Elimar juggler is that page. the only applicable link, I meant
Soon, the other page will show as well.

I'm giddy. This is very exciting.

Sandra

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