NO SHARING! Really.
When I was in high school I worked in the mall at Souper Salad. One of our jobs was to bust people who tried to share their order for the all-you-can-eat salad bar.
Hell, they were warned. The sign said “NO SHARING.”
Our media-technology marketplace has effectively become one big no-sharing-salad-bar.
We no longer share a phone in our home. We each have one.
I think its been a decade since I have said the phrase, “Hi, is Jim there?” or “Could you please leave him a message?” You either reach Jim or you don’t. Its certain and requires no social skills or encountering potential strangers, annoying roommates, or prying parents in the process. And you don’t have to rely on others to help you, only a machine.
I recently learned that even if I have my very own cell phone, if I get an iPad, I have to get another one for that, to use it like a phone. What? What? What! Another stingy money-grab for these cellular companies.
Again, NO SHARING!
You used to make share-able mix tapes. Ok, I wont go there. You’ve heard it before and still you love your iTunes downloads that are only allowed on just a few of your machines.
ONE LOCAL SHARING CENTER NOW CLOSING
A local sign of the end of sharing, is the closing of our beloved bookstore, Phoenix Books, Lambertville, NJ. This is just years after our video store closed in 2009 (see my 2009 Letter to the Editor on this pasted below). Phoenix was dusty and kind of a rabbit warren of treasures, but also a place that required all kinds of sharing: of space, books, and conversation with strangers or staff.
CATCHING BUTTERFLIES @ RETRO-SCOPE.ORG: NEW HOPE CELEBRATES PRIDE 2013
For the past seven months my company, ScullyOne Productions, has been working on a project to identify and preserve LGBT history in New Hope, PA, sponsored by New Hope Celebrates (NHC). The long-term vision is to create a museum/community center in town. Short term, and what we produced for NHC, is an online archive where anyone can contribute their memories, stories, and videos to the collection: www.Retro-Scope.org, and a set of exhibitions from the collection for Pride week, May 10-19, 2013.
Before I go on with the bidness here, allow me to really show my hand.
Dance break.
Cue the music.
Do the happy dance…and allow me to sing, “I believe in life after love!”
Total honesty, bias betrayed: I loved the idea. This one was not “just business.” It was personal.
Read MoreThe Wizzard of New Hope
Originally published, July 20, 2012 on BUCKS LIFE
Local reporting is nearly nonexistent these days. Though, “personal reporting,” as I like to call it—Facebook status updates, Tweeting and the like—is running rampant. The most interesting of it borders on mundane, and yet the majority of us are completely absorbed.
The Facebook page titled “New Hope PA,” however, is drawing lots of attention—well over 10,000 “likes” and counting—while saying something worthwhile and filling a growing void in the process. Charlie Sahner, the page’s founder and administrator, is consistently engaging large chunks of his audience in zoning debates, news of local store and restaurant successes and failures and even real-time reports, like when the Friday night-fireworks were halted after a couple rounds in early July.
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