Friendship & Spam

From: Peter Corless [mailto:petercorless@mac.com]
Sent: Wednesday, September 03, 2008 3:41 PM
To: {a lot of people}
Subject: Fwd: Friendship Day

A Friendly Halloooo! Or a Social Experimentation in Spam.

You decide!

"Friends, Romans, Countrymen, lend me your ears!"

I come here to praise spam, not to bury it. This is Friendship week.

This letter can be taken in a few ways. As an example of the phenomenon of spam in our lives. Chain letters. Yet also, it shows the kind of networking that has become de rigeur and easily possible in our modern society.

Everyone in the list has been emailed by me in recent times. Friends I haven't spoken to in years. Sometimes decades, who I recently fell in touch with again. A few of you I met only once in my life, or we may even have yet to meet. Yet, for whatever reason I consider you all friends and good people to know.

Part of what I am doing these days for Global Understanding (globalunderstandinginstitute.org) is to make us mindful of what we can turn to in order to deal with the problems facing the world today.

Most central to my heart are my friends in life. "Mi familia" in spirit, as well as my blood relatives. That spirit of being brothers and sisters in the walk of life.

So when I got this message from a friend I hadn't spoken to in a while, I thought I'd pass it along. Copy-and-paste of the original sentiments sent up the chain.

Note that any claims of National Friendship Week are, to date, spurious. The claims go back well over a decade of spam-o-grams. It can be annoying if you want to be annoyed. It can be fun if you like to have fun. It can be a joke if you get the joke. Each week can be friendship week. Each day can be "friendship week." It is always friendship week.

My thanks for being my friend! Hope to see you sooner or later in life.

-Peter Corless.
650-906-3134

p.s. I was thinking of putting together an email update about what is going on in my life, tied into my blogs, my work and all I care about. Probably sent out once a week to once a month. If you want to remain on an actual mailing list, get back to me. If you specifically don't want to be on the mailing list, let me know. Regardless, I'd love to hear from you all! Enjoy the day!

[ Long happy hug-filled chain letter deleted for brevity and download speed. Let me know by email if you want a copy. ]