Wicked Witch of the West by William Wallace Denslow

Last night there was (yet another) report on the news regarding cyberspace and our personal security – the do’s and don’ts of safeguarding oneself from unwanted and unknown intrusion, As is true with many such informative items, I was left with a sense of unease and the knee-jerk thought that it would be better to unplug and disengage.

Then… A few minutes past my first cup of coffee this morning, I was checking out the ‘current news’ on FaceBook and ran across a conversation between my son and a woman whose name I hadn’t thought of in years! She and Charlie were reminiscing that they had been one another’s “first best friend” and I was plummeted right back to 1962. We were in Castro Valley, California, in an Eichler house on Greenridge Avenue and these two new FB friends were skinny little six-year-olds playing in the empty lot across the way.

All those negative thoughts surrounding cyberanything flew off and disappeared in a haze of years and miles. More than fifty years and eight hundred miles gone. Poof! Just like that. So, I did what any addled oldster would do – I looked up the meaning of ‘cyberspace.’ I wanted it to say something about time and distance and magic. But, it was the same old definition: “the notional environment in which communication over computer networks occurs.” Boring! And not adequate in the least.

Too, I thought about my own re-connects with old classmates. And the interesting people I’ve ‘met’ through my blog and through social media contacts – descendants of Oysterville pioneers, distant relatives I’ve never before heard of, historians and genealogists with similar interests. To say nothing of the far-away sources I’ve contacted and the information I’ve been able to gather. Surely, ‘cyberspace’ is more than a ‘notional environment.’ Shouldn’t the word “magic” be in there somewhere?

And then my thoughts flew back to an anthropology class I took in college and I first came in contact with the notion that seeing the world in dichotomies is a cultural phenomenon. Yep. I get that. Glinda-the-Good and the Wicked-Witch-of-the-West were sisters, after all. And Cybermagic can be (no doubt) gray, in addition to white or black…

Time for that second cup of coffee.