A Kind of Welcome

As many of my readers know, I'm 76 years old and getting older all the time. I was born in another century, and am a bit slow to catch up on new things like television, computers, the Internet, and blogging. My www.hipiers.com website is considered dowdy; I get constant offers to bring it up to snuff, but in my dotage I remain satisfied with its worn-shoe comfort. When you get to be my age you'll understand.

Now we have this new blogsite which, as I vaguely understand it will be a more personal exchange with my readers. Because I am on dial-up, and going online ties up my phone, I stay offline as much as possible. That means that we generally print out incoming email, I pencil answers, and my wife transcribes those answers and goes briefly online to send them out. This blogging may be similar; you should not expect responses in minutes or hours; days is more like it. Why don't we have broadband? Because the local phone service does not offer it here; we are in the physical and electronic backwoods, and too cheap to pay horrendously for it via satellite. We don't get satellite TV either, for the same reason. If this backwardness bothers you, maybe you should be-friend or be-fan a more contemporary writer. Frankly, I'd rather be writing my current novel instead of socializing. I will not be accepting puns or story ideas for Xanth here; you have to go to hipiers.com for that. But general discussion topics, opinionations, odd thoughts, yes.

As it is, I'm busy enough, as I make the meals, wash dishes, make beds, and accompany my wife on shopping, grocery, and doctor trips; our health as septuagenarians is not what it was in our youth, and she can't stay too long on her feet. Sometimes we use the wheelchair; as I put it, I love to push my wife around. Time is increasingly precious as we approach the end of our careers.

But for what it's worth, for those of you who favor even this grudging contact, welcome to my blogspot.