I am not a big coffee drinker but Joyce’s Java look appealing even to me. The Coloradoan tells the story of an offline social network where folks gathered to buy coffee, talk and forms relationships. Some folks even met and married! Joyce will be closing her doors this week.
Sadly the comments under the story suggest Joyce is closing her doors because she lost her lease due a large bookstore moving in with its own generic community coffee stand.
Let’s all join together in a big network and sing in virtual harmony an ode to OneWebDay, coming September 22. A VC suggests that “It’s like earth day in that there will be celebrations of the web taking place all over the world.” Not sure if anything is going down in K-town but there’s a big shindig in NYC.
“I’ve heard of Alex Presley, but I wouldn’t know any of his music.” Sister Mary Pia
A longtime resident of Hollywood, Sister Mary Pia lives completely separated from this “Babylon of the USA.” She spends her days cloistered away in prayer at the Monastery of the Angels. Having entered the novitiate in 1950, she completely missed the rock-and-roll revolution: not to mention other earth-shattering culture shifts.
This little piece on the Monastery of the Angels in today’s NY Times sheds light on a population that lives separated from the cultural overdrive that most of us experience on a minute-by-minute basis. I find it refreshing to encounter folks who choose to live intentionally as opposed to living driven. While I may not take to the cloistered life (although it can be deeply appealing), I can learn from their simplicity and willingness not to give into the “needs” of our current cultural fixations.
In one of Van Gogh’s most productive creative periods, he was exchanging letters with a friend. Apparently the interaction spurred his creativity. As I’ve studied creativity and community over the years, I’ve noticed that relationships can be helpful for spurring new ideas, encouraging
An online expression of this tendency is surfacing in some of the online communities. 
Jeong-Hyn Lim (photo by Seokyong Lee for The New York Times)
The New York Times today tells the story of a young guitarist whose identity remained in shadows until now. He had uploaded a video of himself playing the guitar and soon it was a web world phenomenon. Not only was everyone talking about it, everyone was trying to duplicate it. In the process, musicians were exchanging ideas about technique, and helping one another improve their skills.
This type of trend shines positive light on the possibilities of online interaction.
In Andrei Tarkovsky’s beautiful film Nostalghia, a Russian poet is seeking inspiration in Italy. In the midst of his creative struggles, he longs, aches for the homeland. He is homesick. The question is, “Where is home?” He may be longing for something much deeper than a city, a street or an address.
Ronald Rolheiser offers a Chestertonian meditation on the question of home, that I found inspiring.
Home is a place in the heart, not a bloodline, building, city or ethnicity. Home is that deep, fragile place where we hold and guard what’s most precious to us. It’s that place where, in some dark way, we remember that once, before we came to awareness, we were caressed by hands far gentler than any we’ve met in this life and where we were once kissed by a truth and a beauty so perfect that they are now the unconscious standard by which we measure everything. Home is where things “ring true,” where what’s most precious to us is cherished, the place of tender conscience, of intimacy.
Here’s a family safe social networking site called Famster. The whole thing is in flash. I think the interface actually looks pretty cool.
The development of social networks for older Americans continues. In addition to the memories sites I mentioned the other day, there is now an adult version on MySpace.
US News and World Report presents an interesting introduction to Eons, a 50+ social networking community for baby boomers and above. This is a total lifestyle community that provides information on health, money, relationships, goals and even obituaries. It also gives the member an opportunity to build a lifemap of memories and pictures. Plus it has an interesting search feature, cRANKy returns top four pages based on Eons member rankings.
Thanks to e-Fluentials for the tip.
Update: The more I think about these online community/social networking sites, I see the natural development for some of these sites is to mashup with sites like meetup, so that you have a hybrid between online and offline community. The interesting thing about sites like eons or ourstory or families is that people can create photo albums and story journals. This is very similar to the scrapbooking phenomenon that is so big in the nation. Scrapbooking combines preserving memories with community, so that people gather in small groups to talk, tell stories and put their scrapbooks together. I see the same potential for some of these sites focused on memory sharing and connecting.
Whereas MySpace focuses on the youth culture, now there multiple layers of social networking sites focusing on various niches. E-fluentials pointed me to a group of sites now emerging directed at connecting families and giving families a place to tell their story (OurStory, Families, Jotspot). I think this could take off. My dad wanted to write a memoir and then said he rather create an interactive website about his life. Something like these could facilitate that.
While I am fascinated by online communities, I am more interested in face-to-face lived communities. While there is an ache in many hearts for actual community and intimate relationships, we live in ways that counteract such desires. But some people are trying to change the coldness of dead city space into lived places.
Thomas Merton once said “”A city is something you do with space. A city is made up of rooms, buildings, streets. It is a crowd of occupied spaces. The character of the city is set by the way the rooms are lived in, the way the buildings are lived in, and what goes on in the streets. The street can be inhabited if the people on it begin to make their life credible by changing their environment. Living is more than submission; it is creation. We can begin now to change this street and this city. We will begin to discover our power to transform our world.”
The Project for Public Places sent out an interesting article today about some Zealous Nuts who are transforming their public places. Knoxville has a few folks who have been visioning a new South Waterfront. The city recently got on board and it looks like some exciting things may happen there.
Several trends have converged in the new Tribewanted timeshare. Appealing to the strong drive for social connecting this timeshare is about joining a tribe, a community. At the same time, this offers an eco-friendly vacation, and there’s opportunity for public service. Looks interesting, similar in some ways to the popularity of mission trips for adults. In many churches adults forgo the yearly vacation to go to some remote region and help build a school, houses, and/or set up medical clinics. (Some adult missions include The Bridge, Experience Mission, Missions to Mexico)
If you want to join the tribe, you better sign up! Only 5,000 slots. Thanks to Iconoculture for the Tribewanted tip.
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