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Fay, Valdosta, and E-mail

By Rose Stricker ( Contact )   August 26, 2008

Listening to CNN earlier this week, I heard an interview with a business owner in Valdosta, Georgia who spoke of the damage his building suffered when Fay moved through the area. The story caught my attention because I have a cousin in Valdosta. It's a rather small town, under 50,000 population, so I was concerned.

Even though I haven't seen this cousin in probably 20 years, I shot off an e-mail to ask if he and his family are alright. And his wife answered almost immediately that they'd had 12 inches of rain in 24 hours, and they lost power for about 10 hours. But, aside from flooded roads, they (and their properties) are just fine.

Without mass media, I'd have never known my relative's city suffered any damage to begin with. And without e-mail, it would have been days before I found out they were okay. It would have taken me at least a day to compose a letter and get it in the mail... not to mention trying to write a note to someone I hadn't seen in 20 years. With e-mail, a simple, “Hey, I heard the news. Are you okay?” did the trick just fine.

While I'm not fighting progress, there are plenty of advances I don't think I'll ever use. But, for the ones I do use, I am very thankful.

reader COMMENTS (2)
wjbecky
Aug 30, 2008 at 5:57 a.m.
Suggest removal

Hey! My brother lived there - he's in Andersonville now - also all good.

mguice
Aug 26, 2008 at 11:21 p.m.
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and because I created an Atom news feed at Google News to monitor the word "Valdosta" and then redirected the feed to Twitter Feed that posted it to Twitter, I was able to see this post on my FriendFeed account and read it.

Merrill Guice, Valdosta, GA
http://www.thedailyegg.net

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