We had a meaningful moment the other day, and while
we tend to avoid meaning like the plague, this one
was so profound, even we could not ignore it.
It had to do with a mother in search of her daughter.
A woman came to the Village this week, looking
for access to the internet. She was clearly determined,
and happy to pay the minimal access fee we charge for
sitting down to a souped-up pentium that's hard-wired to the
net.
Like many of the folks who come for access, she was
looking for one thing, and we hope that she finds it.
She is looking for her daughter, Mandy, whom she gave
up for adoption nearly eighteen years ago. Turns out
there is a wide network of parents seeking children,
and children seeking parents, and the web is an ideal
place for them to find one another.
She'd seen the website on the CBS Program, 48-Hours,
and found it within a few minutes of searching, although
she had never seen the internet before.
It's fortunate for her that she did. By the following day,
the site was apparently so swamped that it was no longer
responding; the result, we assume, of the national television
exposure.
But there were lots of kids, and lots of moms, and enough
hope there, we thought, to give her some of her own. Other
folks who were there, some more experienced, were glad to
help her when she had a question, especially when they
learned the object her quest.
Indeed, it is that, in fact the site profiled on
48 Hours is called
Birthquest, and is sponsored by Visionquest International.
There are times here at the Internet Mash Unit
that we get a little jaded, from the phone-calls and
the questions, the endless questions that we answer.
So it was good to have something meaningful clobber us
on the heads and shout "WAKE UP !! THIS IS WORTHWHILE !!"
since we sometimes tend to forget that.
We'll try to keep her in mind.
May 19, 1996 Charles Paparella All Rights Reserved