I’ll be on site doing training as of 7am this morning, which means no internet access (and I don’t have dialup configured on the reinstalled laptop anyway). I plan on updating later this afternoon, either from work or at home, but I’ll also be mowing the backyard and getting the house ready for Friday night guests.

It’s been a crazy couple of days, and I want to thank everyone who’s stopped by and spent time here. I said a few weeks ago that I’ve rarely felt more connected to the internet as an actual community than I have recently; forget the chat rooms and pop-up windows, I’m talking about simple email — as much as I felt connected before, I feel very thankful for this medium of communication as we try to locate friends and loved ones.

Some things will fade away into the background hum of everyday existence, but I think things have changed this week. Good AND bad. Positive AND negative. The negative: violence will beget violence, very likely, and who’s to say how many days or years it will be before we feel like things are back to ‘normal’? Won’t ‘normal’ have changed by then?

The positive: the internet isn’t about commerce, it’s about communication — I’ve said that before, and we (as a nation and a generation) have proven it this week. We have come together, and while entropy and human nature will demand that these ties eventually loosen, in the end I think we will be closer to each other.

We have been given a chance at a national identity again, something we must treasure, because it was bought at such a dear price.