with hesitations, Cassi moves to Blogger

In the beginning was . . . .

. . . the Usenet. (I could go back further still, to punching cards to be read into an IBM mainframe computer that was "down" more than it was up, cost millions of dollars, and was less powerful than the $35 surplus store computer on my desk. But the Usenet is far enough.)

In those far-gone days, our dial-up connection (300 baud modem, as I recall) was metered. I carefully restricted on-line time to downloading what was desired in order to work with it offline, then uploading anything I wanted to contribute. It was a revelation, a feeling that still gives me shivers, to realize that there were people Out There who were as strange and geeky as I. I believe that this delight in connection with like-minded folk remains the driving force in a world of Facebook and Twitter and all the rest, including this venue, "Blogger."

Next came the Listservs, some of which continue. (I wonder; are there still people on the Usenet? It had the long-lost virtue of being thrifty with computer resources, both one's personal computer and the service providers and others who make it all happen).

I spent a lot of time on the Anglican-music list, and learned much from the fine people who posted there. I re-joined it for a while four or five years ago, but drifted away from it; I found that I was unwilling to wade through the e-mails, many of them simply one-sentence remarks with a thread of previous e-mails below (or worse, above).

For a couple of years around the turn of the millennium, I was almost entirely off-line. We had Internet connections neither at home nor at the church where I worked. My only contact with the on-line world was through an occasional session on a computer at the public library, and that had to be scheduled a week or so in advance because of the demand, or rather the lack of equipment -- one computer for public use, stuck off in a corner of the periodical room. I continued to have a Netscape e-mail address, and used the time mostly to catch up on it.

By the time I returned to the Net, it was all about the World Wide Web. About that time, the Peter Jackson movies on the Lord of the Rings were appearing. "I wonder if there is some online discussion about them somewhere?"

After marvelling at the answer to my question and after much thought and months of "lurking," I joined one of the discussion forums, "The One Ring Council," or "TORC" as everyone called it. It is still very much alive.

I spent many happy hours -- too many, perhaps -- over there, following every scrap of news about the movies and especially about Howard Shore's splendid music for them. I swapped recipes for Lembas; I expressed an unseemly amount of fannish appreciation for Miranda Otto (who portrayed Eowyn, and who swept me off my feet as thoroughly as Book-Eowyn had done when I was a teenager). I argued vehemently about politics, economics, the environment, Peak Oil, and occasionally religion in the "Halls of Manwë," their sub-forum for such matters, becoming pretty well-known there. I joined the "Followers of Eru," a group of Christians at TORC, and made some on-line friends who remain very important to me. I read some of the finest fan-fiction that I will likely ever encounter, some of it equal in its beauty and power to the work of JRRT himself.

I eventually figured out that life is too short to spend it re-hashing the movies, or even the books -- LOTR and the other works of Tolkien. It is definitely too short to spend on ultimately fruitless discussion of politics and the like. Still, my enjoyment of the Jackson movies was greatly enhanced by what I had learned on TORC. It was a treasure of great value to know that there are others Out There for whom Middle-Earth means as much as it does to me.

I carried away several things from those days, not least the idea of becoming friends with people whom I will never meet in this life. I learned to write. I learned to use the Internet's resources for research and lifelong learning by following the cues of the more learned people in Manwë and elsewhere. I learned how to hold my own in argument, and when to walk away. And I learned finally, with much error and backsliding, to put these online matters into perspective with Real Life.

What then? I flirted with other discussion forums, most notably a Joan of Arcadia forum which is now defunct. I wrote some fan-fiction over there -- my first attempts at fiction, and very instructive for me. I may post some of it here someday, since it is no longer anywhere on the Net.

By this time, it was the thing to have a Blog. The thought of having one, of being a "Blogger," repelled me. But one reason I had drifted away from TORC and especially the Followers of Eru is that I realized that it was not a place for me to say what I wanted to say. I looked around, and Live Journal seemed most fitting for what I wanted, so I started a LJ [Link removed 6/2012: I no longer want people poking around back there]

Shortly after I established my presence there with a free account, the Proprietors of Live Journal began nibbling away at the capabilities of said free accounts, in obvious hopes of squeezing money from the likes of me.

I am tired of not being able to cut-and-paste into a post, forcing me to write "on the fly" in the posting box. I am tired of not even having a "tool" header, allowing for italics or boldface or embedded links. And I am tired of the banner ads.

So, I am here.