CAN WE TALK? Increasingly when it comes to pleasant and productive social phone conversations, the answer is no.

Flashback to pre-cellphone, pre-answering-machine, pre-call-waiting,pre-email days. You want to plan an event, swap information, or just say hello, with a friend or social acquaintance. You intended conversation partner (hereafter 'target') at home on his only phone, which is hard-wired to the phone network. If you reached him and he was free to talk you maybe made that date, learned something, got reacquainted or whatever. And heard each other clearly all the while! If you got a busy signal or no answer you just tried later. Alas, new echnologies designed to aid communication have actually interfered with this simple and productive scenario.

#1 Answering machines: The first in series of communication impediments, the answering machine may actually save the day (see later).

#2 Call waiting. It is really annoying to finally get hold of someone only to have them cut out to take a call-waiting call. And the second caller might prefer to just get a busy signal and try later than hear "I'm on another call, can you hang on?"

#3 Email. While great for broadcasting information, it has had the effect of discouraging actual conversation. It's so easy just to shoot some text down the line and obligate the target. A call is a courtesy that is especially appropriate when you are

    * asking a favor
    * requesting information
    * making or breaking a social engagement, or
    * bringing up a matter which requires some discussion.

#4 Cell phones. A great convenience for calling when away from you regular phone, or connecting with someone where a rendezvous has gone awry. But cells present us several impediments to best social communication. The worst situation is when people you usually converse with on the phone no longer have a home landline. So one does not know whether, when they answer, they are at home or out and about and quite possibly not well situated to having that social conversation you were seeking. Or assuming some physical risk by
talking at all, such as when driving. The effect is often a greater reluctance to call, thus diminishing further social communication.

Suggestions:

>Even if you have cell, maintain a real landline phone at home, and encourage people to try that first.  And take comfort in that when you dial 911 you will get the local fire or police, not a state trooper! And if you have moved from another state, get a local cell phone number so your callers have to call long distance.

>Take a pass on call waiting.

>Make your calls from your landline as a first option.

>If your intended conversation partner also has a real (landline) phone, try that number first.

>Before sending that email on a strictly non-urgent social item or something that needs discussion, consider actually calling your target when it is quite possible that you can reach them. The quality of the exchange will likely be both more informative and enjoyable. And you might be able to "close the deal" in that conversation rather than in several back and forth emails.

>If your target is not home and you have something useful to say that can't wait too long (like "there's a party tonight at...") the message you leave on their answering machine will probably easier to retrieve and more fulsome that your email text. And no spell check is necessary!

>If you want to weed out telemarketers or other undesirable calls, get caller ID rather than screen via the answering machine, which practice is moderately rude to callers from whom you do want to hear.

>Set your answering machine to kick in after enough rings to have a change to pick up first (unless caller id has spotted an unwanted caller, of course).

Happy conversing!

Thurman

P.S. Oh, yes. My home phone number is 781-388-9386. Call me anytime!

If a republic is a government ruled by law and the laws are made by representatives elected by the citizens, then  after May 16th, 2004 we can no longer say that  the Commonwealth of Massachusetts is a republic. This is the date by which the Supreme Judicial Court (SJC), under  South African-born Margaret Marshall, ordered the General Court (GC, the state legislature)  to have legalized homosexual marriage.  Leaving aside for the moment the Supreme nonsense of this idea, the very act of a court ordering a law made is totally out of bounds in a republic where legislation is the duty and power of an elected legislature, whose members are subject  to a vote of the people.  Did our ancestors not  launch a revolution to ensure representation?

The GC made no such law, but it failed to set the Court straight by removing the four judges voting for this travesty under Article 8 of the Massachusetts Constitution, a provision written in by John Adams, who knew how arrogant appointed judges might become.  The lack of a law should have been the end of this unrepublican grab for power by the judiciary, but for the actions of our wimp governor, flip-flop Mitt "finger-to-the wind" Romney.   Whether from not reading carefully the November 14, 2003 decision, stupidity, or conerened about not losing any future voting bloc, Romney decided on his own to implement homosexual marriage (which is still not legal in Mass, as evidenced by attempts each year in the G.C. to legalize it).  Romney should have led in this area, by pointing out  how out of bounds the  SJC was, ignoring the decision, and by working with the GC for a bill of removal of the four judges. But no, Mitt buckled completely and gave Margaret and her three partners in their new dictatorship everything they wanted.

So today, we have a combination of the two branches of government not concerned with making laws having made one anyway, the people be dammed. To add insult to injury, the GC in July 2007 refused to permit the voters to vote on a constitutional amendment referendum supported by 170K voters to define marriage in Mass.  in its traditional manner. Surely we cannot call this state a republic anymore.  Massachussians concerned with the damage this decision has done and in doing something to restore common sense, representative government and rights of the people should join  MassResistance. (http://www.massresistance.org).

Q.     HOW MANY LIBERALS DOES IT TAKE TO CHANGE A LIGHT BULB?

A.     SEVEN


One to file an environmental impact statement.

One to write their congressperson to work for "Bulbicare" so that everyone can
have equal access to light bulbs.

One to complain that the bulb is and energy-waisting incandescent
  and go and exchange it for a compact energy-saving florescent

One to actually change the bulb.

One to correctly recycle the dead bulb.

One to go get another bulb and change it a second time because the first changer broke it.

One to describe the whole experience on a moveon.org blog.

ROMNEY? BEWARE!

Conservatives outside Massachusetts: don't be fooled by finger-to-the-wind Mit Romney, the govenor who brought homosexual marriage to my state.   For an explanation see   http://massresistance.org/docs/marriage/romney/record/.

And if you thought that John Kerry was a flip-flopper, take this quiz on Romney's various positions on
social issues over his career at http://www.massresistance.org/romney/quiz/MittRomney20.pdf