Tuesday, June 30, 2009

New Beginnings (are there any other kind?)

The Upper Mississippi River has been flowing in about the same configuration as it does today, give or take a bit here and there, for the last 132,000 or so years, since the retreat of the Illinoian Glacier. Amazing how little yet how much have changed over such a long time.

And it was about 20 years ago (20 years ago March 13 to be exact), that Sir Timothy Berners-Lee invented this world-changing layer (the world wide web) on top of the Internet. Amazing how far it's come and what impact it's had in such a short time.

Now we bring the two elements together. The old Mississippi and a much younger medium will meet in this blog - mostly on and sometimes off - on a semi-routine, somewhat-regular basis, to muse on the happenings in the region and here in DC that might have an impact on that grand body of water and those who live, play and work on and nearby it.

This blog isn't the only place where you can find news from the Northeast-Midwest Institute on Upper Mississippi River Basin matters. There are our:
  • Old-fashioned website (http://nemw.org)
  • Facebook page (http://www.facebook.com/pages/Northeast-Midwest-Institute-Upper-Mississippi-River-Basin/123261105389)
  • Flickr photo site (http://www.flickr.com/photos/nemwinstitute_mississippi/)
And you can follow our tweets on Twitter, where we are @NEMWIUpperMiss

You know the drill. You can visit the sites, themselves. We can show up on your mobile device. We can stream to you RSS reader. And if you are really old fashioned, you can email me, Mark Gorman, at mgorman@nemw.org and get on a emailing notification list for our monthly "Upper Mississippi River Basin Update." See! We can be quaint as well as innovative!

Social networking only works if you are involved in it from that end, as well. So comment on the blogs, become a Facebook fan, send us your photos to add to our Flickr site, and tweet back at us, as we build a real and virtual new community to help the grand old River that we all know and love. - Mark Gorman