Tag Archives: hi-tech

Free speech, not free Wifi

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Jack and I didn’t “lock” our wireless Internet the first three years we had it in the bookstore. We felt open-handed, generous, as though we were offering something to the community.

The lady who rented the house across the street said she could use it if she sat in the near right corner of her upstairs bedroom. A guy in a red Toyota pulled up about once a week, 7:30 a.m. (One subzero winter’s day Jack went out and asked if he wanted coffee, but he just thanked us for having wifi available. He was a contractor staying in a rented house for six months.)

About two months ago, after a series of difficulties getting online and a strange warning message that we better stop posting copyrighted material of a dubious nature, Jack did some cyber-digging. And found… well, a porn cache, and someone’s footprint. I don’t get tech stuff, but there’d been numerous (as in six hours a night for seven nights running) uses of our wireless on places that don’t really respect women for our minds.

OK, time to create a password. And then, about two weeks ago, the phone rang. On a Sunday afternoon. A young male voice on the other end asked if we were “bookshopwifi.”

I motioned to Jack to pick up the other receiver, and said, “Why yes, we are. How can I help?”

“I need your password. I’ve got a school assignment due tomorrow and I’m only half done. I was using bookshopwifi but now it’s asking for a password. It didn’t do that before.”

“Which medical school are you attending?” I asked. “Or is it art classes, studying the female form?”

On the phone, I swear I heard the child blink. Then he decided I was the idiot, and tried again.

“I have to finish my assignment. What’s your password?”

“We locked our account because someone was using it to surf porn.”

A pause. “Porn is protected as free speech,” said the voice, rather hopefully.

Jack couldn’t help himself. He burst out laughing.

Being a college professor, I wanted to impart some wisdom to this poor misguided child, but words failed me. I started laughing, too. Yeah, I missed a chance to offer insight and turn his life around. But our wifi is clean. Let us know if you want to use it.

Yarn Techie

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You know the saying, “Use your friends wisely?” I have this friend, Chelsie…

Jack and I were proud of building a Facebook page for our bookshop. We felt social media-accomplished, slick even, when we added news about my forthcoming book on independent bookstores. But when St. Martin’s Press started saying things like “you need a Twitter presence” and “what about hits from YouTube,” a sinking feeling formed in our guts.

I’d never tweeted anyone in my life; I was raised in a respectable, Southern family.

Enter Chelsie. Twentyish with a Master’s Degree in something to do with computers, she has luminous dark eyes as big as the Earth, and a dancer’s body. Men breathe hard when Chelsie wafts into a room. Plus she’s really, really smart.

Chelsie likes fashion, and cats, and anything to do with computers.

I like cats….

Chelsie offered to help – or maybe I coerced her; it’s all a bit hazy – and soon I was tweeting away, presided over a newly revamped blog, and had an Author page on Facebook connected to Goodreads, Pinterest, Youtube, Flickr and a bunch of other stuff I’d never heard of. When I inherited an iPad, she married it to my laptop with a few flicks of her long red fingernails across the keyboard.

The coolest thing about Chelsie is that she gives instruction tailored to my needs: “OK, here’s the ‘on’ switch,” is her standard opening line.

In appreciation, we try to return favors. See, Jack and I are totally the people you want to know when the apocalypse hits; we can make shoes and furniture, plus Jack is a wonderful singer, so we’re good face-to-face company.

But in a world hurtling through techspace at the speed of human thumbs on a keypad,  our skills are old-fashioned. Our tech queen is a thoroughly modern Chelsie, capable of bringing down a developing nation’s government with her blackberry if she chose. I am VERY glad Chelsie is on our side instead of Amazon’s; she could get anything she wanted online in five seconds or less, but supports local shopping–and independent bookstores in particular.

So Jack made her Indian curry, we sent tomatoes from the garden, and finally, inspired by hot pink yarn found in my stash (how did THAT get in there?!) I made her one of those all-the-rage curly scarves.

Jack photographed it modeled by Val-kyttie, bookshop manager. Chelsie tweeted a pic of herself in the scarf, but I don’t know how to get it off Instagram. (One step at a time….)


 (This was made from eyeballing one a friend brought to the shop’s Needlework Night. Chain 150 LOOSELY with an I hook using standard weight yarn; turn, chain 4, dc in fourth ch from hook, [dc, ch 1] 4 times in same ch, then [dc, ch 1] 5 times in each chain across; turn, chain 4, [dc, ch 1] in each dc across; do not turn, sc in each stitch around for a nice finished edge.)