Dear Biddy,

While my government’s actions leave me speechless, I am encouraged by the nonviolence in Hong Kong, sunsets and the trio of people, places and technology weaving together to connect me to past, present and future.

On Friday: I go to my local library on line and collect essays from Margaret Attwood after receiving an email from the library the book was ready and waiting for me. An hour earlier an SMS from a friend sends me a quote from Margaret about twitter. During the morning I receive private facebook messages from a relative by marriage I haven’t seen for more than a decade, in the flesh, and later in the day we sit in the sun with the octogenarian sulphur-crested cockatoo (he remembers from his childhood), laugh and reminiscence with his family over fading photographs from the last century. I book my dinner over facebook and collect from a couple who greet me like a treasured customer from the kitchen at the front of their seaside home. I watch the sunset to honour my Dad as it is his birthday and the prayer card for his funeral has a sunset. I notice a tweet from a mainstream TV evening news presenter of another sunset further north up the coast and send one back with the sunset I am watching. It is acknowledged and re-tweeted. I get a few more followers. Returning home emails waiting for me tell me news of progress on an international research project I’m doing, while a downloaded song provides a soundtrack and read about the post-its on the embassy from Chinese students in Australia. I trade a few direct messages with one of my offspring via twitter. I catch up on a couple of shows on iView. In between all this personal activity, I trade calls, emails and co-work on a shared platform to develop an event for the Changemakers Festival, (notice that my friend – who sent the SMS earlier in the day – is in their promo page!) pay my insurance for another event for the Festival, hear news of two more happy pregnancies (adding to one heard via facebook earlier in the week), collect posters for a Christmas concert co-designed and printed off around the corner with someone I didn’t talk to, listen to an audio file, upload photos from a consultation I did earlier in the week (a 600km round trip), update my work schedule and give thanks for this seamless pilgrimage.

People, places, technology.

Turn, turn, turn.

Revolution