Arriving at the Digital Ellis Island

Here I am, a curmudgeon, according to friends and family, at age 51 arriving via the cybersea at the digital Ellis Island, a digital immigrant in a world of digital natives at the gateway to the blogosphere. Like my forefathers who stepped forth on the actual Ellis Island, I disembark with a mixture of fear, and excitement. Are the streets of the blogging world really paved in gold? I doubt it. I doubt it just about as much as I doubt I will ever lose my immigrant's accent when operating in the cyber world. My certainty in this is borne from a myriad of experiences ranging from being told by my children that the only cellular phone I could ever truly hope to master was the Jitterbug, to sitting in an Army Reserve information technology briefing in which I was only able to understand about one in every four words. If I maintain that 25% success rate, it doesn't bode well for this entire endeavor. But, since I am possessed of a modicum of courage, a dash of pluck and a boatload of curmudgeonliness, I shall (to quote Chief Dan George in the Outlaw Josey Wales) "endeavor to persevere".



Why blog though? A good question and one which has occurred to more than one person in my life. The underlying thought behind the question is best summed up by my wife, who when I told her I was starting a blog asked " what on earth do you have to write about?" The answer, simply put is anything and everything. All of those niggling thoughts and questions that pop up during long drives or right before I doze off to sleep and that lay in the back of my mind, itching like an earwig from Night Gallery, looking for a way out. Now, in " A Curmudgeon's Views" they have found daylight. Interspersed along with them can be all of my curmudgeonly opinions, and there is no shortage of them, on arts, politics, law, cooking and whatever else strikes my fancy.



So here I go stepping off the gangplank of pen and paper into this brave new world of the blogosphere. Wish me luck I'll need it.