As I write these words, in mid-February, it’s been six weeks since the West Midwood e-mail discussion group got underway. In this day and age, that’s practically two careers and a few bail-outs already, so I thought I’d take a nostalgic look back at some of the highlights, lowlights and trends we have observed so far.
First, 97 e-mail addresses participate, a fair sampling, but nowhere near the number of residences here. If you don’t have access, read the President’s Message in this issue or just send an e-mail to joe@enright.com or argyleheights@gmail.com asking to join. So far, 17 of the 97 subscribers have posted messages and many more have commented on those posts. The posting that garnered the most replies was the one that somebody started on New Year’s Day about re-naming West Midwood as Argyle Heights. 40 outraged citizens responded and search parties were launched but thanks to an alert neighbor’s tip, the author was able to slip away into the night again. “Patronizing Local Merchants” by Alison Morea resulted in 24 messages about local eateries but mostly about Hot Bagels in Newkirk Plaza. Tamara Hartman’s February 10th inquiry about the new construction at Newkirk Plaza generated 16 replies, and replies to the replies, etc. “The FDC Dinner” on March 12th honoring Len and Carole Grau and Al and Alison’s Midwood Martial Arts, announced by Linda Howell, led to eight replies. And “Mulchfest” by Linda Howell elicited seven comments about mulch, which I thought frankly was a little bit too sexy for a neighborhood e-mail group.
All in all, there has been an average of one new conversation every couple of days and as you can see, the topics that most energize recipients are about our neighborhood or mulch. This is fortunate because the discussion group is titled “West Midwood OnLine”. Imagine the disappointment if we talked about Soho all the time. Staying this focused does not always happen. I once belonged to a Yahoo group called “Space Aliens Are Taking Over New Hampshire” and the discussion kept veering off kilter into things like why the Aztecs invented the vacation. Which would lead others to insist that it was really the Incas or that prehistoric dogs flew space ships. So, despite the absence of any regular reporting about things happening in our neck of the woods, at least we now have a way we can share news and events right away AND THEN GOSSIP ABOUT THEM as long as we want. We are truly blessed. And for this we all have Linda Howell, our community president, to thank, who insisted I do it or else she would let people know about that Soho discussion group I started about zombies.
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