In the summer of 1986, my then-two-year-old daughter picked up a tick. There was this blood-bloated thing sucking on our baby's scalp, and we weren't quite sure how to go about getting it off. My wife, Judy, called the pediatrician. It was eleven o'clock in the evening. I logged onto the WELL. I got my answer online within minutes from a fellow with the improbable but genuine name of Flash Gordon, M.D. I had removed the tick by the time Judy got the callback from the pediatrician's office.

What amazed me wasn't just the speed with which we obtained precisely the information we needed to know, right when we needed to know it. It was also the immense inner sense of security that comes with discovering that real people--most of them parents, some of them nurses, doctors, and midwives--are available, around the clock, if you need them. There is a magic protective circle around the atmosphere of this particular conference. We're talking about our sons and daughters in this forum, not about our computers or our opinions about philosophy, and many of us feel that this tacit understanding sanctifies the virtual space. The atmosphere of the Parenting conference--the attitudes people exhibit to each other in the tone of what they say in public--is part of what continues to attract me. People who never have much to contribute in political debate, technical argument, or intellectual gamesmanship turn out to have a lot to say about raising children. People you knew as fierce, even nasty, intellectual opponents in other contexts give you emotional support on a deeper level, parent to parent, within the boundaries of Parenting, a small but warmly human corner of cyberspace. Here is a short list of examples from the hundreds of separate topics available for discussion in the Parenting conference. Each of these entries is the name of a conversation that includes scores or hundreds of individual contributions spread over a period of days or years, like a long, topical cocktail party you can rewind back to the beginning to find out who said what before you got there.

Great Expectations: You're Pregnant: Now What? Part III

What's Bad About Children's TV?

Movies: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

Initiations and Rites of Passage

Brand New Well Baby!!

How Does Being a Parent Change Your Life?

Tall Teenage Tales (cont.)

Guilt

MOTHERS

Vasectomy--Did It Hurt?

Introductions! Who Are We?

Fathers (Continued)

Books for Kids, Section Two

Gay and Lesbian Teenagers

Children and Spirituality

Great Parks for Kids

Quality Toys

Parenting in an Often-Violent World

Children's Radio Programming

New WELL Baby

Home Schooling

Newly Separated/Divorced Fathers

Another Well Baby--Carson Arrives in Seattle!

Single Parenting

Uncle Philcat's Back Fence: Gossip Here!

Embarrassing Moments

Kids and Death

All the Poop on Diapers

Pediatric Problems--Little Sicknesses and Sick

Little Ones

Talking with Kids About the Prospect of War

Dealing with Incest and Abuse

Other People's Children

When They're Crying

Pets for Kids



People who talk about a shared interest, albeit a deep one such as being a parent, don't often disclose enough about themselves as whole individuals online to inspire real trust in others. In the case of the subcommunity of the Parenting conference, a few dozen of us, scattered across the country, few of whom rarely if ever saw the others face-to-face, had a few years of minor crises to knit us together and prepare us for serious business when it came our way. Another several dozen read the conference regularly but contribute only when they have something important to add. Hundreds more every week read the conference without comment, except when something extraordinary happens. Jay Allison and his family live in Massachusetts. He and his wife are public-radio producers. I've never met any of them face-to-face, although I feel I know something powerful and intimate about the Allisons and have strong emotional ties to them. What follows are some of Jay's postings on the WELL: Woods Hole. Midnight. I am sitting in the dark of my daughter's room. Her monitor lights blink at me. The lights used to blink too brightly so I covered them with bits of bandage adhesive and now they flash faintly underneath, a persistent red and green, Lillie's heart and lungs. Above the monitor is her portable suction unit. In the glow of the flashlight I'm writing by, it looks like the plastic guts of a science-class human model, the tubes coiled around the power supply, the reservoir, the pump. Tina is upstairs trying to get some sleep. A baby monitor links our bedroom to Lillie's. It links our sleep to Lillie's too, and because our souls are linked to hers, we do not sleep well. I am naked. My stomach is full of beer. The flashlight rests on it, and the beam rises and falls with my breath. My daughter breathes through a white plastic tube inserted into a hole in her throat. She's fourteen months old. Sitting in front of our computers with our hearts racing and tears in our eyes, in Tokyo and Sacramento and Austin, we read about Lillie's croup, her tracheostomy, the days and nights at Massachusetts General Hospital, and now the vigil over Lillie's breathing and the watchful attention to the mechanical apparatus that kept her alive. It went on for days. Weeks. Lillie recovered, and relieved our anxieties about her vocal capabilities after all that time with a hole in her throat by saying the most extraordinary things, duly reported online by Jay. Later, writing in Whole Earth Review, Jay described the experience: Before this time, my computer screen had never been a place to go for solace. Far from it. But there it was. Those nights sitting up late with my daughter, I'd go to my computer, dial up the WELL, and ramble. I wrote about what was happening that night or that year. I didn't know anyone I was "talking" to. I had never laid eyes on them. At 3:00 a.m. my "real" friends were asleep, so I turned to this foreign, invisible community for support. The WELL was always awake. Any difficulty is harder to bear in isolation. There is nothing to measure against, to lean against. Typing out my journal entries into the computer and over the phone lines, I found fellowship and comfort in this unlikely medium. Over the years, despite the distances, those of us who made heart-to-heart contact via the Parenting conference began to meet face-to-face. The WELL's annual summer picnic in the San Francisco Bay area grew out of a face-to-face gathering that was originally organized in the Parenting conference. We had been involved in intense online conversations in this conference all year. When summer rolled around we started talking about doing something relaxing together, like bringing our kids somewhere for a barbecue. In typical WELL fashion, it quickly amplified to a WELLwide party hosted by the Parenting conference. Phil Catalfo reserved a picnic site and the use of a softball field in a public park. Parents talk about their kids online--what else?--and therefore we all already knew about my daughter Mamie and Philcat's son Gabe and Busy's son, the banjo player, but we had not seen many of them before. I remember that when I arrived at the park, Mamie and I recognized one particular group, out of the first half-dozen large parties of picnickers we saw in the distance. There was just something about the way they were all standing, talking with each other in knots of two or three, while the kids ran around the eucalyptus grove and found their way to the softball diamond. I remember playing on the same team with a fellow who never ceases to annoy me when he wrenches every conversation online around to a debate about libertarianism; I remember thinking, after we had darn near accomplished a double play together, that he wasn't such a bad guy. It was a normal American community picnic --people who value each other's company, getting together with their kids for softball and barbecue on a summer Sunday. It could have been any church group or PTA. In this case, it was the indisputably real-life part of a virtual community. The first Parenting conference picnic was such a success that it became an annual event, taking place around the summer solstice. And kids became a fixture at all the other WELL parties. Another ritual for parents and kids and friends of parents and kids started in the winter, not long after the picnic tradition began. For the past four or five years, in December, most of the conference participants within a hundred miles, and their little ones, show up in San Francisco for the annual Pickle Family Circus benefit and potluck. One of the directors of this small circus is a beloved and funny member of the WELL community; he arranges a special block of seats each year. After the circus is over and the rest of the audience has left, we treat the performers, the stagehands, and ourselves to a potluck feast. Albert Mitchell is an uncommonly fierce and stubborn fellow--many would say pugnacious--who argues his deeply felt principles in no uncertain terms. He can be abrasive, even frightening, in his intensity. He gets particularly riled up by certain topics--organized religion, taxation, and circumcision--but there are other ways to cross him and earn some public or private vituperation. I discovered that I could never again really be too frightened by Albert's fierce online persona--the widely known and sometimes feared "sofia"--after seeing him and his sweet daughter, Sofia, in her clown suit, at a Pickle potluck. He gave me a jar of honey from his own hive at that event, even though we had been shouting at each other online in ways that probably would have degenerated into fisticuffs face-to-face. At the Pickle Family Circus or the summer picnic, we were meeting in the sacred space of Parenting, not the bloody arenas of WELL policy or politics.

Leukemia

The Parenting conference had been crisis-tested along with the Allisons, and had undergone months of the little ups and downs with the kids that make up the normal daily history of any parent, when one of our most regular, most dear, most loquacious participants, Phil Catalfo, dropped a bombshell on us. Topic 349: Leukemia By: Phil Catalfo (philcat) on Wed, Jan 16, '91 404 responses so far <linked topic> I'd like to use this topic for discussing leukemia, the disease, both as it affects my family and what is known about it generally. We learned early last week that our son Gabriel, 7 (our middle child), has acute lymphocytic leukemia, aka ALL. I will be opening one or more additional topics to discuss the chronology of events, emotions and experiences stirred up by this newly central fact of our lives, and so on. (I'm also thinking of opening a topic expressly for everyone to send him get-well wishes.) I intend for this topic to focus on the disease itself--his diagnosis and progress, but also other cases we know about, resources (of all types) available, etc. etc. If Tina has no objection, I'd like to ask the hosts of the Health conf. to link any/all of these topics to their conf. I can't think offhand of where else might be appropriate, but I'm sure you'll all suggest away. The first thing I want to say, regardless of how it does or doesn't pertain to this particular topic, is that the support and love my family and I, and especially Gabe, have been receiving from the WELL, have been invaluable. This turns out to have a medical impact, which we'll discuss in good time, but I want to say out loud how much it's appreciated: infinitely. With that, I'll enter this, and return as soon as I can to say more about Gabe's case and what I've learned in the past week about this disease and what to do about it. 404 responses total. # 1: Nancy A. Pietrafesa (lapeche) Wed, Jan 16, '91 (17:21) Philcat, we're here and we're listening. We share your hope and a small part of your pain. Hang on. # 2: Tina Loney (onezie) Wed, Jan 16, '91 (19:09) Phil, I took the liberty of writing to flash (host of the Health conf) and telling him to link whichever of the three topics he feels appropriate. I very much look forward to you telling us all that you can/are able about Gabe. In the meanwhile, I'm thinking about Gabriel and your entire family. Seems I remember Gabe has quite a good Catalfic sense of humor, and I hope you're able to aid him in keeping that in top form. . . . Virtual hugs are *streaming* in his direction. . . . The Parenting regulars, who had spent hours in this conference trading quips and commiserating over the little ups and downs of life with children, chimed in with messages of support. One of them was a nurse. Individuals who had never contributed to the Parenting conference before entered the conversation, including a couple of doctors who helped Phil and the rest of us understand the daily reports about blood counts and other diagnostics and two other people who had firsthand knowledge, as patients suffering from blood disorders themselves. Over the weeks, we all became experts on blood disorders. We also understood how the blood donation system works, what Danny Thomas and his St. Jude Hospital had to do with Phil and Gabe, and how parents learn to be advocates for their children in the medical system without alienating the caregivers. Best of all, we learned that Gabe's illness went into remission after about a week of chemotherapy. With Gabe's remission, the community that had gathered around the leukemia topic redirected its attention to another part of the groupmind. Lhary, one of the people from outside the Parenting conference who had joined the discussion of leukemia because of the special knowledge he had to contribute, moved from the San Francisco area to Houston in order to have a months-long bone-marrow transplant procedure in an attempt to abate his own leukemia. He continued to log onto the WELL from his hospital room. The Catalfos and others got together and personally tie-dyed regulation lab coats and hospital gowns for Lhary to wear around the hospital corridors. Many people are alarmed by the very idea of a virtual community, fearing that it is another step in the wrong direction, substituting more technological ersatz for yet another natural resource or human freedom. These critics often voice their sadness at what people have been reduced to doing in a civilization that worships technology, decrying the circumstances that lead some people into such pathetically disconnected lives that they prefer to find their companions on the other side of a computer screen. There is a seed of truth in this fear, for virtual communities require more than words on a screen at some point if they intend to be other than ersatz. Some people--many people--don't do well in spontaneous spoken interaction, but turn out to have valuable contributions to make in a conversation in which they have time to think about what to say. These people, who might constitute a significant proportion of the population, can find written communication more authentic than the face-to-face kind. Who is to say that this preference for one mode of communication--informal written text--is somehow less authentically human than audible speech? Those who critique CMC because some people use it obsessively hit an important target, but miss a great deal more when they don't take into consideration people who use the medium for genuine human interaction. Those who find virtual communities cold places point at the limits of the technology, its most dangerous pitfalls, and we need to pay attention to those boundaries. But these critiques don't tell us how Philcat and Lhary and the Allisons and my own family could have found the community of support and information we found in the WELL when we needed it. And those of us who do find communion in cyberspace might do well to pay attention to the way the medium we love can be abused. Although dramatic incidents are what bring people together and stick in their memories, most of what goes on in the Parenting conference and most virtual communities is informal conversation and downright chitchat. The model of the WELL and other social clusters in cyberspace as "places" is one that naturally emerges whenever people who use this medium discuss the nature of the medium. In 1987, Stewart Brand quoted me in his book The Media Lab about what tempted me to log onto the WELL as often as I did: "There's always another mind there. It's like having the corner bar, complete with old buddies and delightful newcomers and new tools waiting to take home and fresh graffiti and letters, except instead of putting on my coat, shutting down the computer, and walking down to the corner, I just invoke my telecom program and there they are. It's a place." The existence of computer-linked communities was predicted twenty-five years ago by J. C. R. Licklider and Robert Taylor, research directors for the Department of Defense's Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), who set in motion the research that resulted in the creation of the first such community, the ARPANET: "What will on-line interactive communities be like?" Licklider and Taylor wrote in 1968: "In most fields they will consist of geographically separated members, sometimes grouped in small clusters and sometimes working individually. They will be communities not of common location, but of common interest. . . ." My friends and I sometimes believe we are part of the future that Licklider dreamed about, and we often can attest to the truth of his prediction that "life will be happier for the on-line individual because the people with whom one interacts most strongly will be selected more by commonality of interests and goals than by accidents of proximity." I still believe that, but I also know that life online has been unhappy at times, intensely so in some circumstances, because of words I've read on a screen. Participating in a virtual community has not solved all of life's problems for me, but it has served as an aid, a comfort, and an inspiration at times; at other times, it has been like an endless, ugly, long-simmering family brawl. I've changed my mind about a lot of aspects of the WELL over the years, but the sense of place is still as strong as ever. As Ray Oldenburg proposed in The Great Good Place, there are three essential places in people's lives : the place we live, the place we work, and the place we gather for conviviality. Although the casual conversation that takes place in cafes, beauty shops, pubs, and town squares is universally considered to be trivial, idle talk, Oldenburg makes the case that such places are where communities can come into being and continue to hold together. These are the unacknowledged agorae of modern life. When the automobilecentric, suburban, fast-food, shopping-mall way of life eliminated many of these "third places" from traditional towns and cities around the world, the social fabric of existing communities started shredding. Oldenburg explicitly put a name and conceptual framework on that phenomenon that every virtual communitarian knows instinctively, the power of informal public life: Third places exist on neutral ground and serve to level their guests to a condition of social equality. Within these places, conversation is the primary activity and the major vehicle for the display and appreciation of human personality and individuality. Third places are taken for granted and most have a low profile. Since the formal institutions of society make stronger claims on the individual, third places are normally open in the off hours, as well as at other times. The character of a third place is determined most of all by its regular clientele and is marked by a playful mood, which contrasts with people's more serious involvement in other spheres. Though a radically different kind of setting for a home, the third place is remarkably similar to a good home in the psychological comfort and support that it extends. Such are the characteristics of third places that appear to be universal and essential to a vital informal public life. . . . The problem of place in America manifests itself in a sorely deficient informal public life. The structure of shared experience beyond that offered by family, job, and passive consumerism is small and dwindling. The essential group experience is being replaced by the exaggerated self-consciousness of individuals. American life-styles, for all the material acquisition and the seeking after comforts and pleasures, are plagued by boredom, loneliness, alienation, and a high price tag. . . . Unlike many frontiers, that of the informal public life does not remain benign as it awaits development. It does not become easier to tame as technology evolves, as governmental bureaus and agencies multiply, or as population grows. It does not yield to the mere passage of time and a policy of letting the chips fall where they may as development proceeds in other areas of urban life. To the contrary, neglect of the informal public life can make a jungle of what had been a garden while, at the same time, diminishing the ability of people to cultivate it. It might not be the same kind of place that Oldenburg had in mind, but so many of his descriptions of third places could also describe the WELL. Perhaps cyberspace is one of the informal public places where people can rebuild the aspects of community that were lost when the malt shop became a mall. Or perhaps cyberspace is precisely the wrong place to look for the rebirth of community, offering not a tool for conviviality but a life-denying simulacrum of real passion and true commitment to one another. In either case, we need to find out soon. *** The feeling of logging into the WELL for just a minute or two, dozens of times a day, is very similar to the feeling of peeking into the caf‚, the pub, the common room, to see who's there, and whether you want to stay around for a chat. As social psychologist Sara Kiesler put it in an article about networks for Harvard Business Review: "One of the surprising properties of computing is that it is a social activity. Where I work, the most frequently run computer network program is the one called `Where' or `Finger' that finds other people who are logged onto the computer network." Because we cannot see one another in cyberspace, gender, age, national origin, and physical appearance are not apparent unless a person wants to make such characteristics public. People whose physical handicaps make it difficult to form new friendships find that virtual communities treat them as they always wanted to be treated--as thinkers and transmitters of ideas and feeling beings, not carnal vessels with a certain appearance and way of walking and talking (or not walking and not talking). One of the few things that enthusiastic members of virtual communities in Japan, England, France, and the United States all agree on is that expanding their circle of friends is one of the most important advantages of computer conferencing. CMC is a way to meet people, whether or not you feel the need to affiliate with them on a community level. It's a way of both making contact with and maintaining a distance from others. The way you meet people in cyberspace puts a different spin on affiliation: in traditional kinds of communities, we are accustomed to meeting people, then getting to know them; in virtual communities, you can get to know people and then choose to meet them. Affiliation also can be far more ephemeral in cyberspace because you can get to know people you might never meet on the physical plane. How does anybody find friends? In the traditional community, we search through our pool of neighbors and professional colleagues, of acquaintances and acquaintances of acquaintances, in order to find people who share our values and interests. We then exchange information about one another, disclose and discuss our mutual interests, and sometimes we become friends. In a virtual community we can go directly to the place where our favorite subjects are being discussed, then get acquainted with people who share our passions or who use words in a way we find attractive. In this sense, the topic is the address: you can't simply pick up a phone and ask to be connected with someone who wants to talk about Islamic art or California wine, or someone with a three-year-old daughter or a forty-year-old Hudson; you can, however, join a computer conference on any of those topics, then open a public or private correspondence with the previously unknown people you find there. Your chances of making friends are magnified by orders of magnitude over the old methods of finding a peer group. You can be fooled about people in cyberspace, behind the cloak of words. But that can be said about telephones or face-to-face communication as well; computer-mediated communications provide new ways to fool people, and the most obvious identity swindles will die out only when enough people learn to use the medium critically. In some ways, the medium will, by its nature, be forever biased toward certain kinds of obfuscation. It will also be a place that people often end up revealing themselves far more intimately than they would be inclined to do without the intermediation of screens and pseudonyms. The sense of communion I've experienced on the WELL is exemplified by the Parenting conference but far from limited to it. We began to realize in other conferences, facing other human issues, that we had the power not only to use words to share feelings and exchange helpful information, but to accomplish things in the real world.

Barn Raiser

The power of the WELL's community of users to accomplish things in the real world manifested itself dramatically when we outgrew our first computer. The computing engine that put-putted us around as a group of seven hundred users in 1985 was becoming inadequate for the three thousand users we had in 1988. Things started slowing down. You would type a letter on your keyboard and wait seconds for the letter to be displayed on your screen. It quickly became frustrating. Because we had such a large proportion of computer experts among the population, we knew that the only solution to the interminable system lag that made it agonizing to read and even more agonizing to write on the WELL's database was to move to more up-to-date hardware, better suited to keeping up with the communication tasks of a hive numbering in the thousands. But the WELL's managing director, Clifford Figallo, himself an active member of the WELL community, reported that the WELL as a business entity was unable to find the kind of financing we'd need to upgrade our system. That's when some of the armchair experts online started talking about their back-of-the-envelope calculations. If the hard-core users who had grown so irritated about the system's performance (but had realized that there was no place remotely like the WELL to turn to as an alternative) were willing to pay their next few months bills in advance, how much money would it take to buy the big iron? Half-seriously, Clifford Figallo named a figure. Within a few days, enough people had pledged hundreds of dollars each, thousands of dollars cumulatively, to get the show on the road. The checks arrived, the computer was purchased, the hardware was installed, and the database--the living heart of the community--was transferred to its new silicon body. After suffering through the last months of the Vax, the first months of our new computer, the Sequent, was like switching from a Schwinn to a Rolls. And we had flexed our first barn-raising muscles in a characteristically unorthodox way: here were the customers, and the producers of the value that the customers buy, raising money among themselves to loan the owners of the business so they could sell themselves more of each other. Casey's operation was another barn raising. This one was her idea. Casey was another WELL old-timer who had a job--freelance transcription and word processing services--that enabled her to work at home. Nobody ever doubts her intelligence, although her manner is often indelicate. The way she would say it, I'm sure, is that she has a "relatively low need for affiliation." The way others might say it is that Casey is a tough cookie. Casey, whose real name is Kathleen, needed an operation that she could almost, but not quite, afford; her ability to walk was at stake. So she put up $500 to have a poster of her own design printed. The poster showed the silhouette of a head, with the title "This Is Your Mind on the WELL," and the head was filled with words and phrases that WELL users would recognize. She offered copies for sale as a benefit for her operation at $30 each. She raised the money she needed. The most dramatic barn raising, however, was the saga of Elly, a shy and gentle and much-loved WELLite who left the virtual community, possibly forever, to travel to the farthest reaches of the Himalayas. Her saga, her crisis, and the WELL's response unfolded over period of months, and climaxed over a few intensely active days: Topic 198: News from Elly By: Averi Dunn (vaxen) on Wed, Aug 28, '91 263 responses so far <linked topic> This is the place to post any news which may come your way about Northbay's vacationing host, Elly van der Pas. # 1: Elly van der Pas (elly) Wed, Aug 28, '91 (18:03) Right now, I'm almost finished moving out of my house. Later tonight, I'm going to look at my stuff, and see if I have what I need for my trip, and maybe do last minute shopping tomorrow. Cleaning Friday. Gone Saturday to parts unknown. The plane leaves Monday morning. Phew! # 6: Averi Dunn (vaxen) Mon, Sep 23, '91 (18:44) I got another postcard from Elly on Saturday: 13 Sept Amsterdam So far, so good. The weather's been beautiful, and I've been riding all over by bike. Tomorrow I'm going to London for a few days, and then to Italy by train. Should be an adventure. I went to a piano concert last night with friends of a friend, and may be sailing today. Greetings to everyone. Elly # 22: Averi Dunn (vaxen) Thu, Nov 7, '91 (23:25) Well, Kim, you can post the parts that don't repeat. It's good to hear any news from Elly. And with that in mind I post the following from her-own-self: 27 Oct 1991 I got your letter from Sept 14 yesterday, forwarded from Italy. Apparently they were having a post office strike of something, because one of the workers drowned in the elevator. Anyway, they didn't process mail for at least a week, so I didn't get any letters. Anyway, you have no idea how weird it is to be sitting on a mountain in Kathmandu reading about AP2 and the WELL. Oh, I took a picture of the WELL coffee shop in London and sent it to the office. I hope they get it. I thought it was quite appropriate. Janey Fritsche showed up about a week ago, and then took off trekking. It was good to see her. My friend Peter will be here, too, in a few days, and I guess I'll come down off the mountain to spend some time renewing visas and stocking up for the month-long course. We have to stay put for that, and no mail, either, so this might be it for awhile. Happy Thanksgiving, Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year. They've just finished their big holiday here--everyone was off work for a week, and dressed in new clothes. The kids made huge bamboo swings and went out kite flying. I've been studying Dzogchen, which is like Tibetan Zen--meditating on the empty mind. Different from what I've done before. We stayed for awhile at a monastery way up in the hills, where there's an old abbot who specializes in pointing out the nature of the mind. It was rather an unusual opportunity. You guys are all asleep now, except maybe for you. It's 2 pm--too late for lunch and too early for tea. Just about bath time, though, because we have a solar heater on the roof. I'm taking all my baths now, because in a week, 300 people will come here for the course, and bathing will be a fond dream. Or showering, that is. Tell Brian and June and Josephine I said hi, and that I'm OK. I hope they got my card. I'll try to write, but don't know when I'll get time. Take care of yourself and be happy, Elly # 26: Averi Dunn (vaxen) Sat, Dec 28, '91 (01:26) The following are excerpts from a letter I received from Elly on Dec 21. ******** 7 Nov The course starts today so I'm incommunicado for a month. 13 Dec Hmmm. I guess I never finished this. Lots of things have happened since then. Mainly, I've become a nun. I sent details to Hank so he could post, because I have to write about 10 letters for Peter to take back when he goes. It's a little strange, but I feel really good about it, and I really feel it's the right move for me. Even Peter agrees. I never wanted to be a nun (at least not before now). I always felt a little sorry for the Catholic nuns. This is a little different, though--much more freedom. It's interesting to have short hair, though. I think I'll grow it out to about 3/4$S0.:-) PPS. My ordination name is Jigme Palmo: Glorious fearless woman (!!!?) ******** She also sent an address she can be reached at for the next six months. Drop me Email if you want it. So Elly had decided to become a Buddhist nun in Asia, and therefore threatened to pass into the annals of WELL legend. The topic stayed dormant for six months. In June, former neighbor Averi Dunn, who had been typing Elly's correspondence into the WELL, reported hearing that Elly had some kind of amoeba in her liver. At the end of July 1992, Flash Gordon reported that Elly was in a hospital in New Delhi. In a coma. She had severe hepatitis and reportedly suffered liver failure. If that report turned out to be true, Flash and the other doctors online agreed that the prognosis was not good. Within hours, people started doing things in half a dozen directions on their own initiative. The raw scope and diversity of the resources available to us by pooling our individual networks was astonishing. People who had medical connections in New Delhi were brought in; airline schedules and rates for medical evacuation were researched; a fund was started and contributions started arriving. Casey used the net to find a possible telecommunications site in New Delhi where they could relay information for Frank, Elly's ex-husband, who had flown to Asia to help with what was looking like a grave situation. After a tense few days, the news made its way through the network that she did have some liver function left and might need access to special blood-filtering equipment before she could be moved. Within hours, we knew how to get such medical equipment in New Delhi and whose name to mention. We knew whom to call, how to ask, what it cost, and how to transfer funds to get Elly delivered to a hospital in the San Francisco region. "It gives me goosebumps," reported Onezie, as the topic unfolded on the WELL. "This is love in action." Elly recovered enough strength to travel without medical evacuation. Her next message was direct, via the WELL: #270: Elly van der Pas (elly) Fri, Sep 11, '92 (16:03) Thanks to everyone for your generous WELLbeams, good wishes, prayers, advice, and contributions of green energy. The doctor thought the fast recovery was due to Actigall, but in fact it was due to beams, prayers, and pujas. He even said I might be able to go back to India in February or so.$SW-)

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