Fire and Gasoline OR Facebook and Politics

This is the first election that I have lived through on Facebook and I’m ready to run for cover. My newsfeed is so full of political postings and opinions that all the fact checkers would have to work six hundred hours a week just to sort the mess out. I’ve been foolish enough to be sucked into the drama, and then I declared my Facebook page a political free zone. I joined Facebook to keep up with people, more family than anything else, but I never saw this mess coming.

Here’s the deal, freedom of speech is a right afforded to all of us, but for goodness sake, does it have to be so hateful? Both sides are absolutely full of it, and I’m almost ashamed for the behavior of some individuals who post what they post. The name calling, the accusations that someone is an idiot or worse for what they believe is NOT a debate. It’s insulting and belittling. Sure, some are funny. The best news feed I read had a rant running a mile long on both sides when someone popped up and posted “Let’s talk about religion!”

My Daddy used to tell me “You should never talk religion and politics,” and I now understand what he meant by that. You can’t bludgeon someone over and over with the same hate speech and expect them to come over to your way of viewing things. They may be brain damaged after the fact, but they will forever see you in a different light. The other thing I’ve noticed is people forget who they have on their friend’s lists. Some have expressed hateful views about Catholics, Mexicans, Jews, and Muslims on their pages, and then they wonder why they get dropped as friends. Let’s face it folks, there is a time and a place for political pontification, but I doubt it’s for Facebook. It can’t be a debate with no give and take. It’s not an opinion when you express hate over one group or another, and when you disrespect one, you disrespect all.

I respect everyone’s right to pick whatever political party they wish and to vote in that direction. I do not however, feel respect when people belittle others for not sharing the same political views that they have. You can’t call someone a right wing religious zealot nut or a left wing commie pig and expect to have an intelligent debate.  Anyway, that’s my political rant for the day….unless you want to talk about religion.

The Eyes of the Beholder

One recent muggy summer evening I came home from a scrape-your-back- side-hard day at work to see an inbox message on Facebook: “I’m talking junk about you online here. Check out Safety Cab University.”

I froze for a Nano-second. What could my friend Chuck, be writing about me? I’m a beyond-middle-age woman (unless I live to be 104 years-old), with two children, a hubby, a spastic dog and a mortgage. What’s to write about? But you know me, curiosity won out and I keyed the words Safety Cab University into the search box on Facebook. By the time I finished reading, I was in tears, happy, memory-embraced tears. I saw my past self in a way that I would have never envisioned. This is the “junk” he wrote about me.

“She was beautiful, and crying in my back seat. I don't remember what had her so upset, but I asked her if she wanted to talk about it. She did.

Therapy at $1.20 per mile. That's what cab drivers do. Part of the job.

She talked of matters dear to her heart, and even though she was crying, she was SO beautiful. When we got to her destination, we sat a few minutes more talking about it, although for the life of me I don't remember now what it was.

She was so beautiful, and I was a young single guy with a few bucks, a cool apartment, and an elderly Pontiac convertible. I wasn't ugly; I looked pretty good actually, and my mother taught me to dress well. I asked her if she wanted to go out some time and talk some more.

She did.

We dated for a year or two, and I love her to this day. She is among my favorite Facebook friends. I should point out though; the guy she did marry a few years later is much bigger than me. He is a Facebook friend too, but I don't think I am saying anything here he hasn't known for years.

She was in my back seat, and crying, and she was SO beautiful.”

I was undone. I stepped away from the computer and muttered to myself, “Silly jerk. I never knew.”  I didn’t know, and it was a kindness beyond description that he had written those words.

He doesn’t know that while he was not the love of my life, I loved him. I hope you blush Chuck, because no words will ever convey what a buck-twenty a mile therapy did for me. I was a bit lost. My father had died a few years before and my beautiful Mama and I were at an impasse. We didn’t get along. I was young and headstrong and unable to understand what my mother had lost. I didn’t know what I wanted to do, or what I wanted to be. I felt, overly dramatic I’m sure, that I was useless. On top of that, the man-child I had pinned my hopes on had become less than. He would offer advice the likes of; I needed to lose weight, I should wear a better bra (I swear to the heavens this is true.). He stated, “Why should we hold hands all the time, we’ve been dating forever,” and the real kicker was when he said I should get over the loss of my father. So I became a real witch. Not his fault, just my choice of reaction, which wasn’t pretty.

So into a cab I went one evening, never expecting the kindness of a stranger. It happened like he said. He asked me out, and I said sure. Our first date was wonderful. He came to pick me up at the appointed time, but our home was built like a fortress, back when walls were a foot and a half deep, and I never heard him knock. He went down the street to a pay phone and called me, telling me to answer the door. I rushed out the front door of the house and met him halfway on the sidewalk where he picked me up and twirled me around. We walked back to his Pontiac convertible, top down, and went to The Jade Garden on Hillsborough Street in Raleigh. During the course of dinner, the wine bottle fell over and half a bottle’s contents wound up soaking his pant-leg. He commented that the rest of him was fine but, “Now my leg is drunk!”  He made me laugh. He made me comfortable in my own skin.

After dinner we went to Pullen Park for a walk around the lake. We talked and laughed, and talked some more. At one point we climbed the stairs that led to a platform overlooking the park. He stood there, addressing a phantom crowd. “I’m overwhelmed you have all come to see me.” He continued on, and that’s when I stood beside him and started to pantomime doing sign language, as if to translate for the ghostly crowd below. He laughed so hard. It was a belly laugh worthy of award. He took me home, top down, wind weaving its fingers through our hair. A peck goodnight and he was gone. We dated a while, and I’d be a liar if I didn’t admit that it was a worthy adventure.

It’s a kind of blessing after all these many years, to be able to look back and tell my younger self that life was good. You come through sadness and challenge and along the way meet those who make your life richer for their having been there. Sometimes it takes ages to understand, and to see oneself in the eyes of others. Thank you my dear friend for showing me what you saw. I love you back, and you know it. By the way, the husband approved.

(Chuck Morton is a talented musician and writer. He has witty narratives of his adventures in a cab on Facebook. Check out Safety Cab University and click like, because I think you will.)

Someone Is Watching You!

I am a good citizen, and I know I am. I do not litter the roads or sidewalks, I keep within the law, and I will always help people out when they need it. However, just lately being a good citizen has taken on a new perspective in my neighborhood, leaving me to question the so-called helpful acts of some.

The neighborhood, situated around a renowned golf course, is middle-class America at its best. Neat houses of substantial sizes with well-tended lawns line paved sidewalks. You hardly ever see junk cars and never see sofas on the porch, only tasteful rocking chairs synonymous with the South. Nevertheless, with that said, it has its other issues – namely the ‘We are Watching You Patrol’.

Big brother has nothing on these folks. It all started with a neighborhood Facebook page. The original idea, I suppose, was to help us network, swap ideas, advertise items for sale, and any other everyday business. At first it worked, that was until the issue of speeding and stop signs came up.

Speeding is a problem, I totally agree and I will admit I have myself received one speeding ticket. I was in the common situation of kids screaming in the back seat whilst I was trying to get them to school. My concentration slacked for a moment and my foot hit the pedal, hard. Within seconds, Mr. Policeman was there, lights flashing and a severe face. I paid the price. Well, the price of asking an attorney to claim instrument failure, as is common here in the USA. I learned my lesson and am very careful now. 

I got off lightly I think, especially compared to what happened to some neighbors of mine. A while back, a few interfering, oops sorry, well-meaning residents decided it was a good idea to name and shame individuals who they thought were speeding. Each day one or two people in particular would plaster descriptions better than a police APB all over the Facebook page. Nothing was sacred, hair color, sex, estimate of age, car type, car color, and license number. Thankfully, we didn’t learn if they were caught picking their noses or the color of their underwear but it was heading that way. 

It didn’t stop at drivers. The conversations moved onto pedestrians who walked on the road, school bus drivers who did not stop properly at stop signs, nothing and no-one was exempt. 

At one stage, an individual described how they followed a person out of the neighborhood and along the highway. We learned that the girl in question was talking on her cell phone, her exact speed, and which direction she turned at a traffic light some 3 miles away. Could this be stalking? If not it seems close, well I think so.

The whole situation went on for a couple of weeks until one day the do-gooders took one-step too far. They named a private license plate, which described the name of its owner. What ensued I could only describe as defamation. A long dialogue started with more people looking and reporting on the so-called culprit. It culminated with one person insisting and I quote “****** must be stopped!”

Thankfully, others and I decided enough was enough and posted our disagreement with the whole episode. I mean, unless these people are saints, they would do well to remember their glass houses are as fragile as the next. The persecutors defended themselves, stating it was for the good of the neighborhood, but did concede and agreed to stop. 

I am all for neighborhood watch and looking out for each other but starting a witch-hunt should not be part of the agenda. We are not in Nazi Europe, just small town America, and those people would do well to remember it!

Don't Fear the Click

First, let me say, I am not Steven Jobs. Technology has never provided me with a living. But I do dearly love the stuff, and I play with it. I've never had the fear of the click. You know, the fear that if I click on this or that it'll be similar to pressing the infamous red button and launch every nuclear missile possible at my computer rendering my pc, well, let's just say in need of Viagra.


So I'm pretty quick to click on stuff and make changes to software. And I don't think there's a platform out there that changes as often as Facebook. Mark Zuckerberg (on a side note, my spell check thinks I spelled his last name wrong and suggested Tinkerbell as a correction...just saying) is desperately in need of a chill pill. All the Facebook changes can be a bit much to keep up with and I've noticed a lot of people on Facebook with settings that I'm not sure they are aware of. Did you really mean to share with the public your frustration with your family or your job? Umm, maybe not. How about your location? Do you really want your teenage daughter posting showing that she's sitting in Timbuktoo, Wisconsin? Are you aware that your cover photo on the new Timeline is public and there is no way to change that setting?


So I thought that I would use this blog to point out just a few settings in Facebook that I consider to be dangerous, and how to reset them. I check the Facebook settings for all four of us in our family and I change any privacy settings that concern me. These are my easy to do, top three:


First, look at your statuses. Do you see the little gray icon on the same line as the Like, and Comment? If the little gray icon shows the earth, then that's who you just shared it with...yep, anybody on planet earth who is connected to the internet...even my Momma...soon as she remembers how to turn on that &*(*& laptop. Soooo, you might want to change this before telling people that your boss is a jerk who keeps picking his nose at your desk. To change that:


At the top of Facebook, spot your name. Beside it see the word Home, beside that will be a downward facing arrow. If you click on that you will see a drop down menu. Choose Privacy Settings. Now look at the  section titled, Control Your Default Privacy. Mine is set for Friends Only. If a friend of a friend wants to see my posts, they should send me a Friend Request. Public is self explanatory. The custom one can be set for even more privacy. If you set your default, you can always change it on individual statuses. But you have now avoided the infamous, "drunk posting" going out to the world.


Let me point out something about the cover photo on the new Timeline feature on Facebook. IT'S PUBLIC and you can't change it. So if you have children on Facebook, you might want to check what they are using as their cover picture, and you might not want to use that family picture as your own cover photo. I don't want the world snagging that picture. I currently have an ECU picture. Before that it was a picture of the geese on the golf course. The world does not need another picture of my family... In particular if you are young and foolish  fun, you might not want the picture of you chugging at the bar set as your cover photo, especially if you expect your parent to continue to fund your college education.


Finally, the one that really scares me is location. If you need to know my location then you also need to be a) married to me or b) my child or c) bringing me my real, ready to spend lottery check. Other then that... So when I realized that my location was on there when I posted a status - big yuck. This one is tricky because it hides in plain sight. When you are posting a status, if you see your location in that little box at the bottom, hover over it and click the x that appears. No longer will your location post on every status. You can always add it back later...not sure why you would want to...but that's up to you.


OK - that's it for this blog. Hope it helps, and remember, don't fear the click! 

Destinations Unknown

I’m considering running to the hills the first time I hear “New Year’s Resolution.” I’m a non-believer of the New Year’s Resolution, or NYR, as I’ve never really known anyone who succeeded in completing a resolution. If you’re out there somewhere, my hat’s off to you. I myself have never achieved the NYR. Oh, I’ve made plenty of them, but they never seemed to happen within the year I make them.

The year I resolved to go to Spain and actually had my passport renewed, our son arrived. Spain hit the back burner but that’s okay. My son is more vibrant than Catalonia's sky, and maybe I can make the trip with both my children one day. I won’t count the years, yes, plural, that I vowed to lose weight. The last time I made that resolution I spent five months of the year on steroids. Bet ya can’t guess what that does to a waist line. I’ve vowed to get my house in order, only to realize that’s impossible with a teen and a toddler. I promised to write more, only to discover Facebook. I promised to quit smoking only to get scared enough to stop nowhere near the New Year. Honestly, I think resolutions are a great concept, but the reality is that we resolve to do something when we are finally committed to reach a goal.

For some, the NYR is a possible target, for others, a pipe dream, for me? I’m going to try something new. I think that this year I’m going to work on waking up every day (beats the alternative) with a decent attitude. I’m going to try to be the best me I can and to make decisions based on what is best for me and my family. When I fall down or fall short (and you can bet I will), I promise not to beat myself up and that I will treat myself as my friends treat me. Oh they’ll tell me when I mess up, but they lift me up and get me back on the road, loving unconditionally. It’s not so much a resolution that I’m working on, as it is a way of life. May we all find what we need, appreciate what we have, travel the unknown enjoying the destination, and may we all have a very Happy New Year!

Three Apples

On Wednesday, October 5, 2011, every news organization was reporting of the death of Steve Jobs, the co-founder of Apple and the mastermind behind the iPod, iTunes, iPad and iPhones. The President of the United States even commented on his death saying “The world has lost a visionary, and there may be no greater tribute to Steve’s success than the fact that much of the world learned of his passing on a device he invented.”  My own husband told me about Steve Jobs passing away after he read it on his iPhone.

I’m one of those people that I consider “technically challenged.” I don’t care much for a lot of what modern technology has brought us. I don’t like to talk on the phone while I drive, while I’m shopping or while I’m trying on clothes in a store. There have been several times when I’ve said “Pardon me?” to the lady in the next dressing room because I thought she was speaking to me, when she was on her cell phone. Some of the technology leaves me feeling intruded upon. There are nonsensical text messages that for some reason, others expect me to answer immediately, regardless of the fact that I’m elbow deep in dish detergent. That said, I’d still be lost without these modern conveniences.

My iPod is my therapy, my juke box, and my entire collection of what soothes or moves me. I have the iPod Classic and it has 160 GB, that means that I have room for up to 40,000 songs, 200 videos or 25,000 photos. Hmmm, maybe I’m learning about all this technology anyway. At night, when I head to bed, I grab our iPad and either read myself to sleep, or watch something on Netflix. When I had surgery to remove a tumor last year, the iPad saved me from the never ending mundane of the hospital bed. I think I watched around 25 episodes of “The Tudors” and found myself lost in a world of magnificent costumes and bloody Henry the Eight’s lust. With that iPad, I wasn’t in an institutional grey-white room with alarms and 5am interns barging in on the little sleep I got. The iPad saved my sanity during that period of time.

I didn’t know Mr. Jobs. There are many reports that, where he excelled as an innovator and visionary in technology, he had short comings in dealing with the people around him. In spite of that, he did more for many, making the information hiway hand held, giving us music on the go that could fit in a small pocket, phones that help one navigate through life, and showed us that a dream could become a vision for the masses. No, I didn’t know Mr. Jobs, but I can walk into a room and tell you who is benefiting from his vision. I saw a quote on Facebook the other day (on the iPad, of course), that said “There have been three apples that have changed the world. Eve’s, Newton’s, and Steve Jobs’.” With that, Goodnight Mr. Jobs, and I thank you.

Travelling, Gaby Style.

Two years ago I invited three of my best friends to come with me and celebrate my 50^th birthday. While they were (and yeah, still are) very dear to me, they had never met each other. I was a little worried as to whether or not they would get along, but with mature (of the mind) ladies, I should have left my concerns at the curb. Who would have thought that two years later the four of us would be celebrating our one year anniversary of 4gaby.com?  The journey from that day forward has been nothing short of wondrous.

We weathered each other through death, illness, insecurities, child-rearing guilt, and gut-wrenching worry. We’ve reached goals we never would have dreamed, held each other’s hands and lifted each other up, all without expecting anything in return. Friendship, golden and solid was the gift we gave each other, unexpected. On a moment’s notice we can pick up the phone and call each other with anything from questions on graphics to begging for sanity. We’ve Skyped and griped, discovering that at our tender age technology can be our friend, even when we’ve (okay, mostly me) been dragged, kicking and virtually screaming into Twitter, Facebook, and now Google +.  There is no age limit on learning or supporting one another. As we head down the road on the double-decker bus for our second year, I can’t help but wonder what will be next. We’re growing, learning, and understanding what a sisterhood can be, all the while bringing to the table our own uniqueness.   

Thank you all for letting us share with you, for allowing us into your homes and offices, and for helping us to grow. Your support is our success. What more could four women ask for? Well, you know me, I can always think of something!

Oh Dear Facebook, Dear Facebook

Dear Facebook,

Once upon a time you were my dear friend. When I was finally convinced to go on a blind date with you, I found that you were easier to make out with than a one night stand (disclaimer - not that I would know about that – I’m going with how they look in the movies, and it makes for a good line there). I loved how easy it was to see and “talk” to friends and reconnect with old ones. I looked to you for a break - maybe I had just enough time for a cup of coffee and a chat and there you were - friendly and easy to get along with. But then you changed. You became that complicated, demanding friend who wanted to monopolize my time, and wanted me all to herself; the one who could never take no for an answer, and any conversation takes forever to navigate. I am no longer happy with my “friend.” If I want someone to tell me who I should be interested in, I’ll go back to junior high school, and if I want to hear that I'm stupid for being interested in things you think I should have no interest in, I'll talk to my teenagers.

Now you have these “algorithms” that tell me who to see and interact with, a ticker constantly yelling at me, "look at me" (geez, I already had toddlers), and I see that a “timeline” is in my future. Mark Zuckerberg, 27 in all his adolescent wisdom (hey, to me he’s still an adolescent) has said, “It’s your whole life….it’s so simple.” Dude – the people who need to know about my whole life already do know about my whole life. Not everybody in the world needs to know about my whole life and honestly, I don’t need nor have the time to know about theirs either. 

Mark thinks there is a lack of integrity in having two lives – the one for work and the one outside of work. Personally I don’t see the problem. When I was a financial geek at a major corporation, those people didn’t give a flip about my taste in music, which I found out one year when young (I think I was around, say, 27), and I changed my voice-mail to MC Hammer's, "Pray" at year end financial closing of the books. Some people were not amused. Could I control costs…now that was important.  And they definitely didn’t want to see the pictures of my babies’ ad nauseum the way my close family and friends care to (or pretend to so that I will reciprocate the pretense).

I’m just not a fan of the changes. Clean it up and simplify, please. Because right now…Google+ is starting to look good to me. 

Sincerely,

Facebook user 345,667,899