Premier Post (with trepidation)

On a day too beautiful to be sitting in my study, I am plunging into a new form of electronic communication.

It is both exciting, daunting and a little sad. Sad because it seems that too much of today's communication is more virtual than real. When you are walking through a meadow talking on your cell phone, you are not really in the meadow. You are bound to miss the sudden scurries of small creatures and the wildflowers too timid to stand in the sunshine.

We have become dependent on cyberspace and forgotten how much we can learn by actually being wherever we are and talking to people in the same room and time.

Still, when my computer fails, I feel isolated from the entire world. I know the world lives and breathes outside of my study.  But I rely on cyber-connections -- the emails from Chicago and Cape Town and Colorado Springs.

And now, today, for the first time, my very own blog.

Feel free to ease me into this, to welcome and reassure me. And to remind me that connections, in any form, are essential.