Case-Notes from the Artsy Asylum

Real People Feel Pained as Virtual Drawbridge Goes Up

The 3-d web and Virtual Worlds are - I contend - the future of communication and a big part of community as we connect with wider and wider diverse groups of people. But there are glitches.

If truth be told there's more than one glitch.

The Disney folks have discovered that.

Or should have.

The Wall Street Journal sums the situation up neatly when it points out that "For Walt Disney Co., the task of opening a virtual version of Disneyland on the Web was relatively easy. Closing it, though, is proving to be quite a bit more difficult, thanks to the wrath of obsessive fans of Disney's theme parks."

It started with the launch, in 2005, of the free online game Virtual Magic Kingdom, based on the design and feel of the real world Disneyland park.

Fans wanting to visit Tomorrowland or princesses in catles were able to do just that in virtual reality through avatars they created. Plus the Kingdom gave visitors - or did until tomorrow - lots of opportunity to interact with others who share an interest in Disney and online virtual reality games.Players, participants, or those who WSJ calls "Disney's notoriously obsessive fans" were quickly hooked and Disney bragged that over a million avatars had been created.

ChipIn To Help Cancer, Fire, Robbery Victim and His Family

I'll let Dr Michelle Calabretta tell this story because she's on the scene at the hospital in Houston and tells of the family and the situation so well.

"One of our patients, a resident here in Houston with Stage 4 cancer, arrived for treatment last week and mentioned that he lost everything in a house fire.

To make matters worse what he and his family did salvage from the fire they left in their car, which was broken into while staying at a hotel.

He is a lovely man whom we all adore and my coworkers are trying to raise some money to help him rebuild.

You can imagine how hard it is to deal with cancer when you have all of your comforts, but now this man truly needs our help.

I am creating a ChipIn widget page until Friday May 23. If you are moved to help this man and his family please consider donating whatever you can manage.

We will pool all the funds and get a Visa gift card that they can spend on whatever they need."
                                    May 16 3:24pm

 

I hope you will toss in a as much as you can to help the staff at M.D.Anderson Cancer Center do what we can to help this family rebuild their lives.

They will see him this Friday for his regular appointment and I along with the staff there hope to be able to provide the family with the basis for some renewed hope.

Show You Love Your Mother and Other Mothers

Not much more for me to say except making sure mom does this is your number one priority. If you don't know my story check out Boobs On Ice, I was in a nearly zero risk category and was diagnosed in December with a 5 cm tentacled mass of invasive form of breast cancer.

Meaning that anything can happen to any of us and even I can have a tumor speed through tissue then rank borderline between stages 2 and 3.of a 4 level disease..

Showing one or more of these images on your blog and encouraging others to do so it as well costs you nothing and could - and will - mean much to many.

What Do You Do With Links?

What do Gartner, Social Networks, Twitter, New Media, Soup.io and Friendfeed share?

The answer is that they share room here and on my radar for today but throwing a list of links at you is not my style. Beyond this idea not being on my radar it's more like I hope that there are better ways of dealing with links I might want to suggest to someone.

Instead of sticking random lists of links in this - or other - blogs, mainly I

• Write something about the item, then post it to this blog or the cancer-related Boobs on Ice depending on the topic

• Use friend-feed to share stuff that passes through my line of sight and catches my eye

• Tweet why I'm dropping the link in the tweetstream

• Rely on soup to collect my own non-twitter content and then add bits and pieces I'd like to keep on my own radar to look at later

But today the call of these two screamed out at me and I don't want to opine at length. Thus random links:

• Analysts Highlight 10 Things Retailers Should Know About Social Networks,  Gartner Says Social Networks Are Attracting Too Much Traffic for Retailers to Igno

• Reuters sees Twitter as a breaking news tool: New Media File

Did it save me time? No - because I wound up writing about what I do with links. Typical.

Walled Communications: Who Am I Here?

After writing here and on twitter about my granddaughter who was in the hospital in Pediatric Intensive Care. I got wonderful feedback and very supportive comments.

Following up, the diagnosis is that Emma has Wolff-Parkinson-White Syndrome which causes her heart to beat erratically from time to time. She has been stabilized on beta blockers and will be closely monitored. Thanks for asking and for caring.

There's a lot in life that's not easily classifiable

The reason I touch on this again is that we're people after all, and we - not to mention life - do not fit easily into nice little cubbyholes. At least my life never has.

In the late fifties I was asking neighborhood kids to find out whose mom would pay a quarter a week for me to teach them some basic baton lessons in my side yard. Was I having neighborhood conversations, kid conversations, business conversations?

I didn't pay any attention. I was helping someone else, helping myself, learning abut life, having fun, getting to know someone better and exploring, Communicating. Creating. Dreaming.

It was all about people and interacting and life.

Later I sold art to and created logos for people I knew. Then they would tell other people and I'd often meet and network with or do work for them. Or I'd meet someone at my date's golf tournament, my son's soccer game, on a PTA Board, and make a new contact.

Were these business connections? Friendships? Mom-connections? Consulting connections? Art connections?

I didn't know and I still don't.

In my world the topics of people and interaction and connecting and community do not have barriers between then. It seems artificial to act as if there are.

Yes, I hear the grumbling. "she tweets about her cancer treatments, not information we need," "there are thousands of babies sick right now."

Fact is though that not talking about new baby issues in a blog that is after all about life and the connections and relationships we make - and whatever else this blog is about - seems as artificial as only interacting with Second Life people in Second Life, or not mentioning my cat or my artwork or whatever else affects mine - or someone else's life.

And I think we learn something about business through learning about living, and learn something about community by caring about our neighbors' babies. And the list could go on.

The aspects of many of our lives are as permeable as those membranes we did experiments on in biology class.

Hard wiring, life-view, whatever you want to call it, that's how it works for me to function effectively in the world. I can't dissect myself into multiple little pieces.

Starting Boobs on Ice was an attempt to deal with my cancer experience but even that spills over in spite of my efforts. Magpie Genes is specifically as an outlet for my art pieces but there's some osmosis there too.

So it's OK for other people to have different guidelines for themselves and their blogs? Are they better compartmentalizers?

Totally! But I'm just too all over the place interest and life-wise to manage it myself. Let's face it. I couldn't if I wanted to.

I'm glad you're willing to put up with it.

Baby Emma Needs Your Prayers

 My friends who have tuned into my twitter stream tonight have heard that my granddaughter. little Emma born April21, has been admitted to the hospital tonight and is in the PICU being treated for a heart rhythm problem.

First signs in Emma's case were: fussiness and not nursing well. Not too worrisome, this progressed to panting and lips turning blue. An emergency run to he hospital was in order.

Initial indications from pediatricians and an echocardiogram are that there is a problem with SVT, but no indication as to the cause. Emma is on IVs, oxygen and is still nursing (thank you God and Kerry, my daughter and Emma's mom)

Speaking of God 

God knows I don't want to become an expert in one more disease! But one takes what's served and my approach is to deal with it.My initial tendency to research is probably stronger than my need for sleep.

Interesting note:

• I was also diagnosed with SVT in my forties and take beta blockers to keep it reasonably controlled
• My 28 year old son was told last week that he was suffering from SVT, perhaps caused by suspected pericarditis. 
• And not to be left out, my husband has an implanted device because during diagnostic surgery a few years ago his SVT was determined to be life threatening.
• Nobody has once mentioned the possibility of anything genetic in all these visits with medical professionals

St Jude Medical has a section on treatment that's somewhat informative I may be doing a lot of reading tonight..I'll tweet updates as I know them

            
       

                  Click here to download this factsheet in PDF form

"Supraventricular tachycardia (SVT). SVT is a broad term that includes many forms of arrhythmia originating above the ventricles (supraventricular). SVTs usually cause a burst of rapid heartbeats that begin and end suddenly and can last from seconds to hours. These often start when the electrical impulse from a premature heartbeat begins to circle repeatedly through an extra pathway. SVT may cause your heart to beat 160 to 200 times a minute."  http://www.mayoclinic.com

ooVoo Means Community, Connection, Conversation, Comedy and Cause

It started on February 10th, which happened to be my sixtieth birthday and about sixty days since my cancer diagnosis. It was a hard time. But it was also My ooVoo Day which actually turned out to be ooVoo Week

I spent six hours interacting in six way on-screen conversations with the great people who read my blogs and tweets and it was more fun than a barrel of monkeys even before I ooVooed with Joe Jaffe who entertains while conversing.

What can I possibly write about what ooVoo, Crayon, Scott Monty, and their Big Idea meant to me? I can say: Community, Connection, Conversation, Comedy, and Commitment to a Cause. But the video says the rest.

During that week bloggers ooVooed with friends and fans. It was amazing. Then as if we hadn't already had enough fun, to thank bloggers hosting chats ooVoo donated an unbelievable $30,000 to the Frozen Pea Fund Fund established to support Cancer awareness, research and education.

This donation was made in honor of blogger and cancer patient who happened to be...me! . Although I could not be there, my husband and our daughter Bill and Kate Reynolds were part of a check presentation ceremony to the Frozen Pea Fund at Blogger Social in New York in April.

And not to sit on their laurels, ooVoo is right there in the community, making connections and planning more opportunities to connect. As we find ourself in election year, next up in June is a Political Edition of My ooVoo Day With.

I can't wait to see the momocrats in action.And who will take them on? Is there an opening for a new group called republidads in the making? Trust ooVoo to provide a forum for them if there is. 

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Dont want to miss it? Go to http://www.oovoo.com/ to download ooVoo