My 500th post

I wish I could say that I saw this coming--that I had planned something extraordinarly insightful to share with you on this, my 500th post. But the truth is, I was planning to upload a YouTube video of something that a few of you may have already seen--a video talking about the rapid rise and spread of mass media and communication technology, especially as it has created the current global information network as we now know it (and, I think, consciously or unconsciously tapping into our fears about China and India becoming dominant global powers, in terms of sheer numbers and in terms of mass brain power).

So when I went to log-in and saw that I had written 499 posts and this was going to be my 500th, I thought that it was a milestone worth noting.

[pause for deep thoughts to percolate and spill over to convey the profound wisdom I want to share at this moment]

OK, I got nothing.

Well, almost nothing.

I must admit that I am considered a late adapter, technologically speaking. I have never been on the front lines of any new technology trend.

[Aside: Heck, we may as well dispense with the "technology" part--I think the only thing I can claim as being ahead of the populist curve was my discovery via a college roommate and cousin in Toronto of the first Bare Naked Ladies album, so when they hit BIG TIME in the U.S. in the mid-1990s, I could claim that I'd been listening to them for YEARS (OK, maybe just 3) before everyone else.]

I was late to Facebook, and to this day I do not really check it regularly or do anything with it aside from add and ignore friend requests (my philosophy is that if I weren't ever really friends with you in high school why are we pretending to be friends now?). I don't have a MySpace page; I've never purchased anything on eBay; and I neither twitter nor send text messages (although I do receive them, reluctantly--at one point I had the text message functioning turned off, but I must admit that there are times when I can see text messaging coming in handy, so I had it turned back on, but again, mostly to be on the receiving rather than sending end).

I wouldn't say I'm a luddite or a techno-phobe. I think in some ways I'm an old-fashioned gal who prefers to read with a book in her hand outdoors, although I admit that sometimes I'm plugged into my iPod while doing this and listening to podcasts I've downloaded from various websites. And I have a few stations on Pandora that I'm fond of listening to as I work on my laptop computer.

And of course blogging--I thought it was a silly, egotistical exercise in narcissism when I first heard about it back in the day (which would have been about 6-7 years ago). And I couldn't understand the attraction and could never imagine I'd ever be reading blogs let alone BLOGGING--I mean really, what kind of verb is "to blog"! RIDICULOUS.

Of course, I have since eaten my words. 500 times over. But I think what attracts me to blogging is, in some senses, still old-fashioned. Which is the writing. I like the writing--the communication of ideas. What this blog and the blogs I read facilitates are conversations with folks I would not have access to in my normal everyday life. And for me, especially, because I am invested in investigating issues of race and racism and in working on being an anti-racist educator, this medium has been ideal for putting my thoughts out there and hearing others in return.

So thank you, dear reader. Whether you are coming to this site for the first time or were there in the early days of my single and double digit posts, I appreciate knowing that I'm not just writing into a void but am writing to engage in smart conversations with a variety of people who both disagree and agree or push back against the things I'm saying.

And finally, here's that YouTube video I talked about at the top of this post: