Doctor Daisy

Like Rebecca Traister, the author of this Salon piece on Hillary v Chris Matthews, I too am not a Hillary supporter. But last night I was glad she proved the pundits wrong. I don’t have cable but, surprise surprise, I read the play-by-plays on what they were saying about her on Twitter.

As a woman wants to be taken seriously, I was annoyed at how the final word on Hillary the other night at the debate was about her wardrobe. But I also didn’t like her girly response to the likability question, “Well, that hurts my feelings…” I haven’t seen the video of her tearing up, but that’s no reason why people, even her fellow opponents, should gang up on her.

The Salon essay is great, so I won’t blather on anymore. Go read it and let me know what you think.

See also the links Jill points us to in her post on the matter.

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I’ve not been on Twitter a week yet but have become a fan of how immediate the information shared is. I’ve also become quite fanatical about reading and clicking on the links mentioned in everyone’s 140-character posts. Perhaps it’s because I’ve chosen extremely interesting and tech-savvy people to follow?

Sadly, though, we have lost one of our own. I wasn’t reading ashPEAmama’s updates, but found out that she died in a car accident from Susan Reynolds, herself a woman coping with breast cancer. BTW: You must check out Susan’s blog, Boobs On Ice™ as well as this Washington Post article about her online efforts and web community.
As Susan “tweeted” earlier: “Twitter again shows the potential to make lightning fast connections & do good in ways unheard of until now.”

Below is the link to donate to Ashley’s memory. She was a young mother of 2 who, as evident by this page of her final Twitter postings, was so happy her LSU Tigers won the other night.

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joining another site that prompts me to write in shorter spurts than this blog.

First it was delicious, where I don’t have to write anything at all, just tag. Then it was Facebook with its status updates. And now I’m talking about Twitter, which asks me to answer “What are you doing?” in 140 characters or less.

I didn’t really get why anyone would join, especially since I’m not one to text a lot. Then the Iowa caucuses happened and I could see firsthand how instant information from a variety of voices and witnesses was much more powerful than the cable news guys. This piece on techPresident.com called it:

Post-macaca, predictions abounded of citizens armed with camera phones bringing us live coverage of everything. It hasn’t happened… yet… but we saw a glimpse of the future tonight in Iowa. Perhaps the era of blogs and YouTube is giving way to the age of Twitter and UStream

Might this be the way we go? I can already tell that students might like it more than blogging because of its chatty nature, but then what would the lesson in writing be? Getting your point across in 140 characters or less? More than anything, their tech literacy practices would be pushed to new levels due to the need to shorten links [thank you tinyurl.com], navigate across tabs, and actually sit still at a computer and hit refresh in order to check for replies so they may fully contribute to a conversation. Interesting possibilities…

On a more personal note, I wonder what it would have been like to have a Twitter account last week when I was at MLA? Would I have updated my status after each interview? I guess we’ll never know…until I get [fingers crossed] campus visits

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