Subject: Be in the loop
Date: Tue, 20 Aug 2002 10:10:47 -0500
From: Todd Marshall
To: ALL

Hi Class,

No doubt about it ... the reunion was a huge success and that didn't happen by accident. Miss no opportunity to thank those who made it happen.

But also miss no opportunity to make the next one an even greater success. Three out of four of our fellow students did not attend.

Since planning on this reunion began I have been casually talking to my friends about reunions. Obviously they fall into two large classes... those who go, and those who don't go.

Those who go already know how much fun they can be and how they can provide that occasional grounding as life throws its endless series of curves.

For some who don't go, it is because they just don't hear about them. For this there is no excuse in this day and age. We must all redouble our efforts to locate our friends and help them "be in the loop". My colleges and fraternity never seem to have trouble finding me, even after moves to six different cities in seven years. So I know it can be done. The internet and email is the medium of choice. Folks ... it is now more essential to our lives than the telephone which was also once considered an extravagance. We must encourage our friends to adopt this technology as the necessity it has become. Encourage them to join this community.

A few of those who don't go would go if they didn't have something more important to attend to. I don't know about you guys, but I have spent my entire life getting ready to live. I've attended to things that are really not part of life while missing out on things which were ... all in the name of getting ready to live. I realize knowing this will not put an end to it. But for those who can plan and schedule their lives, we need to help them. We need to keep them in the loop and we need to keep the loop interesting. And when the loop calls for a gathering, they will then know and can plan accordingly.

With others who don't go, their absence seems to be deliberate. For many, high school was an experience they never want to relive. I suggest they should relive it for as we all have seen in the last month or so ... it really wasn't exactly as we perceived. We are now more mature and for some of us the hormones have finally settled down. We can see clearly now.

I would be astonished if of the 200 or so who didn't attend, they have not one friend in the 80 or so who did. You and I are that friend. When I put up the lost and found page (http://phs62.Withglee.com/Intranet/LostAndFound.htm) someone asked me if I was joking. I was not. I found Everett Lyons, one of my closest friends in high school using the links that are on that page. But I did a very bad thing. I expected someone else to contact him about the reunion and about this new electronic community we have in operation here. I don't know if anyone contacted him or not. But there is no excuse for my not contacting him. I have attempted to do so now and his voice mail and I had a nice chat.

There is a new game on the web (http://www.geocaching.com/) relating to GPS (Global Positioning Systems). These neat little devices allow you to locate yourself, or anything else, anywhere on the globe within a yard or so. The game is about hiding a cache and giving people clues to finding it. When they find the cache, they take something out and put something of their own in. And they report their findings. It could be a model for a reunion game. We have hidden some of our friends. We need to go find them. And when we do, we need to take something from them (like a lead to contacting one of the other 200), and we need to leave something with them (a link into this PHS62 community), and we need to report them into the group.

If we do just that, we will create a whole new problem for the next reunion ... finding a hall large enough.

Thanks for your friendships and another little tug back to ground.

/Todd