So...the potential impending demise of LJ (I know, there are still some peope on staff, and there have been no formal announcements, but sometimes the writing just feels like its on the wall) combined with my increased level of busy-ness has led me to the decision to eliminate both my LJ and Twitter accounts. I may also close out both of my accounts on blogger.com, neither of which I've posted to in months. There's just not enough time in the day to update all of the sites, and with the amount of overlap between those who Twit and those who FB and those who LJ and those who blog, it makes no sense to post the same thing in 4 different places just to catch the few stragglers on each. So, I'm consolidating everything into Facebook, where I can journal a la LJ, status update a la Twitter, and also post events, join groups, etc.

This leads to me to soul-searching point, though. As most of you know, I've never used any filters or locked down any of my online stuff. I believe that any expectation of privacy on the Internet is fool's fodder, and that our ability to "secure" our information is tenuous at best. Plus, filters have always felt dishonest to me, in some strange way. Facebook, however, is much less anonymous than the rest of the sites, and so the question becomes, do I:

A) let everyone see everything - which has always been the case on "anonymous" sites;
B) create groups and filters on FB so that I can control who sees what; or
C) unfriend certain people on FB.

I'm leaning toward the last option. I've already been through 2 rounds of FB un-friending. Sometimes I just look at my FB friend list and ask myself "Would I want to go to lunch/dinner/movies with just this person? Would I invite him/her to my house for coffee or a glass of wine?"  If the answer is "no," then I have to wonder why I'm granting access to my daily status/events/activities online. 

I mean, in real life you are not required to be friends with everyone you meet at a party, you are not required to call everyone you've ever met everyday and ask "what are you doing right now?"....yet on the Internet there seems to be this different expectation. As if, because it's more impersonal, there are different standards in terms of what you consider a "friend" to be. I think sometimes its so easy for people to get into a strange popularity competition, to "collect" online friends. I get it, in a sense. It's an ego boost to log into FB and see "100/200/300 friends." Don't get me wrong -  I love to be social. I love to organize events and go to things and be out in the world, and talk to strangers and meet new people. All of that is great. But I don't need to call them all my friends. Honestly, I can't always find enough time for my close friends...I certainly can't give 100+ people enough of myself in any way, shape or form to really be a friend to them, and vice versa. At least, not by my definition of the word, which involves trust and kinship and give-and-take, and shared experience (which now seems to be confused with shared interests, like being fans of the Daily Show or liking swiss cheese).

Yet, there is another side of expanded online cirles to which I'm not entirely oblivious, which is that sometimes friendship can blossom (or re-blossom) out of online interactions. Maybe a door is opened that wouldn't have otherwise.

Hmmm. These are things I'll have to ponder in the coming months. For now, I'm going to use LJBook to back up my entries, and keep all the privacy setting on FB the same as they've always been. For any of you with whom I'm not already FB friends (which is only a couple people, I think), I'm there (Jennifer Carman).

I've never been a real advocate of online networking sites, but I have in recent months become a great fan of Facebook. I encourage anyone who's not on it to try it. (There's a lot that's F-ed up about it, too, but they seem to be making strides in terms of enabling users to customize their experience and filter who sees what.)

Thanks to all who have taken the time to read my various BS over the past 12 months, and for all of your comments. Hopefully I catch you on the FB side!!!

( Check out today's tweets, if you wanna... )

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( Check out today's tweets, if you wanna... )

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Went to see Milk last night. Gus Van Sant can sometimes lose control of his movies, but I think that he was masterful here. I remember seeing the candlelight vigil on the news when Harvey Milk died. All those people lining the streets of San Francisco. I was too young to know the political turmoil happening at the time, but I'll never forget that image. Having since seen footage of Harvey Milk, I think that Sean Penn was spot on. It would have been easy to deliver a caricature of a man who was in real life sometimes over the top, but Penn is appropriately restrained when needed.

It struck me that 1978, when Milk was assasinated, wasn't really all that long ago. In some ways it seems like a lifetime, especially for those of us who were just kids when he died. But while there have been gains since his death, there's still a pretty highly accepted level of bigotry toward the GLBT community. When you hear the venom and hatred people spewed during Milk's hey-day, you realize that it hasn't stopped at all - it's the same venom that Palin and the Pope and the Prop 8 backers are spewing today.

Today, I was talking with my oldest sister about it. A converted Catholic (when she got married), this year she boycotted Christmas Eve mass. It was the first time she missed one since she converted 28 years ago. Having heard the Pope's end of the year address, in which he stated that "saving humanity from homosexual or transsexual behaviour is just as important as saving the rainforest from destruction," she's decided essentially that Pope Benedict is the straw that broke the camel's back, and that she can not be a party to his bigotry and backward thinking.

I was reminded in that instant that when I was a kid, this same sister gave up a room home to a lesbian couple who, having decided to come out, had found themselves out on the streets. And that my mom would often invite her co-worker Michael, a post-op transexual, to dinner because she had very few people that would accept her. Despite some of the conservative leanings of some of my family, I feel lucky to have been raised with such a sense of inclusion, and the real belief that we're all entitled to be treated with respect. I hope that I'm passing that lesson on to Jared.

Milk won his seat on a platform of hope. He fought battles that he rarely expected to win, and to his own surprise ended up winning the most important battle of all. I hope that we don't forget the lessons he taught, lessons about the power of our voices and our involvement, and that the erosion of any group's civil rights is a gateway to the erosion of everyone's civil rights.

I sense that, even though Obama won the election, we're entering a precarious moment in the American story, one in which perhaps the most dangerous conservative backlash yet is brewing. I hope that it will be staunchly met, and finally squelched, with the same humanist determination that Milk was able to inspire.

I have to post two things today, because bedtime came before I was able to post yesterday....

7. Yesterday I was grateful for my family. They're crazy, and they drive me crazy, but despite differences in age (my siblings range in age from 52 to 47, and then there's me) and lifestyle they keep my grounded. There's always a sense of home when we're together, and I feel like all the recent changes in my life have helped me to appreciate them all the more, and see how much I've missed them over the past years.

8. Today I'm grateful for my job. Might sound strange, but...it's a job that I enjoy, and that enables me to do many of the things that I do best. It provides me with flexibility that I need to be the best mom I can and excellent healthcare coverage so that I don't have to worry about medicines or doctor visits or my family's health. I get to be downtown, something I had been missing, and work (and sometimes play) with a lot of great people.

6. Today I'm grateful for Jared. He's such a great kid. Scratch that, young man. His adaptability, wit, perceptiveness, and charisma make me proud. I feel lucky to be his mom.

5. Today I'm grateful for the strength of my relationship with Ben. I'm not sure that words can describe how much he means to me, and how lucky I feel to have found someone that enables me to be more alive and completely me than I ever thought was possible.

4. Today I'm grateful for my soon-to-be in laws. They've really welcomed me and Jared, and made us feel a part of the family.

3. Today I'm grateful for the 24-hour CVS pharmacy. Without it, there would have been no way to refill my asthma inhaler, and the family would have spent our first Christmas Eve together in the emergency room. A story to be told for years, to be sure, but I'll settle for the more low key option of a simple dinner at home and finishing unpacking the kitchen items in preparation for Christmas breakfast.

2. I'm grateful to have had such a warm and welcoming roof over our heads for the last 12 months. Tonight I say goodbye to the house on Cambourne. Under its roof, a new love bloomed full, a teenager blossomed, and a four-legged family member took root. In many ways I never fully settled in, but in other ways it was more a home than I've ever known. I was lucky to have found it, and hope that it is as kind to its next family.