all the leaves are brown, and the sky is grey...

... and yes, I do wish I could be in California. Specifically, San Francisco.

Did you see Tom Brokaw's "1968" last night? 1968 was the year that taught me I was not a freak for being radical, political, feminist, poetic, musical, long-haired, scruffy, or any of the adjectives that still define me. I'm still the woman who worked for Eugene McCarthy, hung out in bookstores near Washington Square Park, protested the war, wrote bad poetry, ate no meat, braided her hair, and took refuge in needlework.

I'm also the woman whose depression already required drugs that had to come from a drugstore, and the woman who needed solitude as much as those pills. As then, as now. In fact, even the technology I now use to supplement ink and paper reflects who I was then, and now.

I have signed onto Second Life. It never would have occurred to me were it not for a library program I attended last week about Web 2.0. I was so intrigued that I decided to join to see the library presences there. There's even a Hogwarts library...

So yes, I joined SL for a purpose, but I strayed... as I would have in 1968, as I do now. I have wandered (or flown) lonely as a cloud to an exhibit of fractal art, to a store that gave me free purple sneakers, to Obama for President headquarters (where I received the t-shirt that my avatar is wearing), to Kucinich for President headquarters, to a tea shop, to a meditation garden, to a knitting store -- and to a Victorian village, where I ride a gilded carousel by moonlight.

• Digression: the woman who gave the presentation used "knitters knitting mittens" as a web niche, and not only knew about Ravelry, but knew it was still in Beta. I posted about the program on the librarian board at Ravelry. As if by wizardry, within a day or two, Ravelry had a new feature - you now can check the availability of knitting books at your local library.