The last couple of weeks have been rough. My grandfather passed away, my aunt has had problems recovering from gastric bypass surgery, my younger son was diagnosed with pneumonia only hours after I got on a plane for California, and I’ve been hopelessly behind in grading, grant revisions, and other responsibilities. The weather in southern California was gray, rainy, and cold while we were there, and the clouds followed us home.
But things seem to be turning around this weekend. Spring is here in all its glory—blooming forsythia, kids racing along the sidewalk, neighbors appearing in their yards after months of hibernation. Alex is healthy again. I’m slowly but surely catching up on my work. I’m even finding time to delight in the wonders of blogaria’s writing again.
Today Gerald took the boys to a Rochester Red Wings’ baseball game. He called at 1:00pm from the stadium, saying that as they approached the box office, someone offered them three premium box seats. He called again at 1:25, to tell me that Alex had found the winning egg in the easter egg hunt, and would be throwing out the first pitch; they were calling me from the field. Wish I could be there to see his face right now.
Haven’t been doing much “professional” blogging recently, but that will be changing soon, I promise. Interesting things brewing on the social software front, some of which is already public, but some of which I’m sworn to (temporary) secrecy on. And while I won’t be at ETCON, I’m hoping that blogs and other tools will let me participate vicariously.
Now it’s off to the back deck, where the wonders of WiFi will keep me connected while I enjoy the warm breezes and try to get caught up with grading.
I’ve found myself drawn inexorably into the discussion on and around Jonathon Delacour’s blog on the topic of weblogs and “truth.” The thread started with Jonathon’s post “Alibis and consistent lies,” and travelled from blog to blog to blog. Jonathon ties the threads together nicely in his follow-up entries, particularly today’s “Art’s emotional charge” (in which he “outs” my lengthy comment to a previous post). He caps it off with the artful “Ceci n’est pas une blogue.”
Then today, Jill Walker wrote about a novel she’d just read:Yes, it can be read as a very thinly disguised account of the author’s relationship to the professor, but its factual accuracy (or lack of such) is irrelevant because the honesty here is of an altogether different nature. It is in the emotions portrayed: merciless love that shoves aside all normality, all sense, all expectations as to how we (women? mothers? people?) are supposed to behave. The extremity of it is terrifying and recognisable. I see it in myself and in my friends (calm, married women turn thirty and explode), though we pull back before we lose ourselves, only glimpsing the destructive potential of such obsession. The debate about this book has been symmetrically opposite to some of the recent complaints about truthfulness and blogs. The novel that is too close to reality is ridiculed and condemned. The blogger, on the other hand, is expected to adhere strictly to what actually happened.
I’m envious of the neatness with which she sums up what I more clumsily tried to say in my comment on Jonathon’s blog: “[I]ts factual accuracy (or lack of such) is irrelevant because the honesty here is of an altogether different nature.” Yes!
And like Jill, I have to wonder why it is that so many are so eager to hold blogging to a vastly different (and oh-so-literal) standard of honesty.
Where, really, do we begin to draw the line about what is honest and what is not? Is it a matter of degree? (For example, if I write that Gerald called here at 1:30pm, when in fact I know it was probably more like 1:25pm, is that dishonest?) Do lies of omission count? (For example, if one “blogging pioneer” fails to tell the world that she’s started a relationship with another “blogging pioneer,” is that dishonest?)
My husband has a long history of creating multiple personas in virtual communities (mailing lists, generally), specifically for the purpose of engaging himself in (often heated) debate over topics he feels are important. When we first “met” online, he was being attacked by a number of participants on a FidoNet echo for this practice (he wasn’t “caught”—he simply asked the group what they’d think if he’d been doing it) because of its dishonesty. At the time, I was surprised by the uproar—it really hadn’t occurred to me to take people’s online personas as absolute representations of their real-world selves.
There was a time in my life when I had a friend whom I trusted completely. But I didn’t believe everything he told me. I always sensed that the factual details of the things he was telling me were “off”—that he wasn’t exactly what he presented himself to be. But I still would have trusted him with my life. I didn’t need to know the “truth” about the details of his life to know the “truth” about the depth of his friendship and commitment.
Similarly, I don’t need to know the “truth” about Ikuko to know the “truth” about Jonathon.
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