Tess Wynn and Cindy Chambers have both followed my blog for some time, both of them are members of the Open Group at Bedlam Farm, both are strong, outspoken women with strong ideas, wonderful observers with a rich sense of humor and an awareness of the foibles, joys and turns of life. Perhaps part because both of them are nurses (Cindy, a psychiatric nurse, retired last year), they are direct and passionate about their life, families and work.
On the Open Group At Bedlam Farm, the creative arts group formed as part of my social media universe, Tess and Cindy have become very good friends, two of the personalities in that vibrant group that stand out. Tess has begun a wonderful new blog, she is a natural writer with a distinctive and powerful voice. Cindy is an animal lover and a shrewd and intuitive observer. I think the connection between these two is humor, a passion for life, a sense of some hurt and pain, and fierce loyalty to the things and people they love. They just seem to spark off of one another.
It was a wonder to be present when the two of them finally met yesterday at the Bedlam Farm Open House, I heard simultaneous shouts of “Tess!,” “Cindy” and saw the wondrous moment where a virtual community really comes to life – when people get to see, touch and feel the presence of one another beyond e-mail, messages and social media. The Internet is miraculous in its ability to bring people to one another, but there is not a substitute for human flesh and feeling. Tess and Cindy greeted one another the way photographers do when they see their favorite cameras.
This was really a remarkable moment, to have these two strong and wonderful women standing in my backyard. Tess really wanted to see Simon, CIndy has always been drawn to Frieda, she identifies with her in ways that become clear when you get to know her. I could see the long unrealized power of the virtual community, and also the power of the physical one as these two people transcended time, space and geography to come together. Cindy looked me in the eye and said “I love you, Jon,” in her very direct way, and then scolded me for writing that Simon was a “wussy” donkey. Don’t use that word, she said, it isn’t right, and I said I wouldn’t.
These two women have not only connected with one another, they have also connected with Maria, perhaps for the same reasons. A generation ago, I was a writer on Hotwired, one of the first blogs on the Internet, and I watched as the first idealistic bloggers recoiled in horror when the Internet was overwhelmed by angry and disturbed people who turned it’s open spaces into cesspools and by corporations who have taken over so much of the Internet and turned turned so much of it into a virtual shopping mall. Capitalism, it turns out, is more enduring and powerful than technology.
Tess and Cindy are more influential than they know, they return the blog and the idea of the virtual community to it’s original promise, they remind us that connection, not anger, argument, technology, money or shopping is the most powerful human impulse there is.