Report from Chicagoland

We trekked to the Chicago area to attend a family (my second cousin-in-law) wedding and to visit long-time friends in the college town of Urbana. Lemme tell you, if there's gloom in nation, a pall on America's spirit, I didn't find it here. Folks are going about their business. They're making lives, working hard, and are hopeful for their kids and grandkids. They're glad for a light snow cover to make December feel like Christmas.

To be sure, we didn't initiate any conversations aobut politics with anyone outside of the decidedly liberal crowd at the taping of Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me!. We let people about work and families and the usual fare for people who'd just met.  The most serious social problem that I heard discussed came from one woman who told of neighborhood kids playing baseball in her driveway and denting her garage door.

[caption id="attachment_3029" align="alignleft" width="179" caption="A room with a view"][/caption]

The rehearsal dinner was in a restaurant in the back of a bowling alley. Several people at the lanes were wearing Bowling for Jesus shirts "because He died your pins."

It's true that Marshall Field's has been hollowed out and replaced by Macy's, that Dunkin' Donuts is bringing its alleged coffee to every street corner and gas station. There were few choices for breakfast near our hotel that's at the back of a large shopping mall that's in the middle of the carpet of suburbs. So we had our breakfast at IKEA and were very pleased. We ate lunch at the restaurant next to the Bass Pro Shop.

The people we spoke with were unfailingly polite as you'd expect. Their work was often in flux. The people getting married are in their mid-30s, late by the standards of previous generations, but common now. Housing prices are low, but credit is extremely tight, so attractive homes stay on the market for a long time. There weren't  a lot of little kids around, letting the four-year-old ring-bearer enjoy his day without competition.

We talked long enough to get beyond the introductory niceties. People didn't, of course, get to deep stories, but they did talk of their futures, what they liked and disliked about their jobs, what they did on weekends, and what they imagined for retirement. None of it was on hold until the 2012 election. None of it was about 99% or 1%. None of it was about class war or the war on Christmas or or who believed what. They talked about what they were doing and what they were gonna do.

If you read or watch or listen to the news, you might think that the fabric of the nation is irrecoverably split. The news spends too much time listening to itself.  Chicago may be divided, but it's between Cubs fans and White Sox fans, those who care or don't care that Theo Epstein might bring a World Series championship to Wrigley Field.

Facebook and class warfare

It's probably been years since you signed up for Facebook. You've forgotten what you had to go through. You've probably also had enough experience with online services to know what to ignore, how to switch between one website and another, and how to ignore ads.

Imagine, then, being in your retirement years and learning about Facebook as well as the web for the first time. I recently spent time a small group of people who were new to Facebook. They'd heard about it and were nervous, but willing to have a look.

We spent 10 minutes discussing why Facebook was requiring a complete birth date - day, month, and year - in order to create a new account.

I explained that the Facebook terms of service required that you created an account with your real and correct information. Part of the reason for requiring a true birth date was to enforce requirements for the minimum age (13). The group met the minimum age five-fold.

The people weren't vain about their ages. They just didn't like having to provide their birth dates. They were concerned about identity theft, even though they weren't quire sure what that meant or how it would happen.

"Can I use my son's birthday?" asked one. They didn't mind providing a date; they just didn't want it to be theirs.

One man signed up using his wife's birth date, knowing that, if he forgot that date, well, ....

Facebook has a minimalist explantion:

Facebook requires all users to provide their real date of birth to encourage authenticity and provide only age-appropriate access to content. You will be able to hide this information from your profile if you wish, and its use is governed by the Facebook Privacy Policy.

It's well known that a large number of children are using Facebook.While Facebook requires a birth date, it doesn't include any overt way of verifying it. (A father in Northern Ireland has brought suit against Facebook because his 12-year-old daughter has created an account. It's a long and somewhat complex story, as you might imagine.)

In sum, Facebook is requiring a piece of personal information, won't really explain why or what it will do with the information, and has a history of tolerating fake answers.

And that's just the beginning of the beginning. More questions.

What's this? Do I have to upload my email address book? No? OK. Skip this step.

I don't want to give this information. OK? Skip this step.

Do I have to put in a picture? Why? How do I do that? OK. Skip this step.

Then you wait for 10 or 15 minutes until the email confirmation shows up before you can confirm that the account is really yours. In the meantime, advertisements for dating services and time-wasting games are showing up on your page.
This is what 700 million people are excited about?
Meanwhile, Facebook is due to announced major new features and user interface changes at this week's developer conference. New features that include more music, news, and videos.
We know that Facebook's corporate DNA is in college or those who still think that they're in college. The unfriendly sign-up process, the nagging demands for more information, and the cacophony of features are making Facebook increasingly irrelevant to digital immigrants, those who come to web technologies later in life. I don't know if that's the plan, but it certainly is the effect.

Seeing ourselves in another's mirror

The occasion was the passing of my mother's cousin at age 94. He was my mother's father's sister's son. For most of the gathered, including Bill's four daughters, I'd not seen these folks for five to as much as 50 years.
I might not be thinking of myself as old. If, however, I haven't seen someone for 50 years, well, if it ain't old, it'll do until some other explanation comes along.
"We went straight from being children to being old," remarked one of my second cousins. "We skipped right over that growing-up part and becoming adults."
You have to let your vision relax a bit before you start to notice the family threads run through each of the faces. Listening, you hear the slight chop of a Finnish accent, even among the American-born. We swap memories of visits to this family's house, that family's farm, to the camp and sauna.
I have a scanned copy of a newspaper clipping of one girl who'd shot a deer. It was from the front page of the Gardner News. She called it her 15 minutes of fame. That was back in the 1950s. She lived a full and a good life, but that's what got her name and picture in the paper.


We jump past the old stuff and earnestly talk for a couple of hours about what's going on in our lives now. We learn of each other's talents, hopes, troubles, and fears and theirs sound like our own.
One has recently been sort of diagnosed as having MS, although it's not certain. "I think MS means 'Maybe Something.',"  There are stories of Alzheimer's, ALS, and  other afflictions. There are celebrations of good things in our lives, children and grandchildren, work and retirement, travel, and other fun stuff. The darker, awkward stories of divorce, depression, abortion, drug use, chronic unemployment, even those quickly get into the conversation because, well, frankly, because we don't have time to do otherwise. This is who we are, who we've become, and we need to know these things.
And then, just like that, the room was emptying. We promise that we'll stay in touch by email, Facebook, a phone call, a visit. (Several of the folks live right nearby.) We might even follow through on those promises. You know, though, how life gets full. A day becomes a week becomes a month becomes, well, you know.
We squeeze a half century of news into a couple of hours. Who are these people? How can I know them so well when, just a short while ago, we were introducing ourselves as though we were strangers?