Category Archives: Stories

Favorite Posting of the Week!

Here’s a wonderful Front Porch Forum posting from a senior citizen on the ONE East Neighborhood Forum.  She was stunned by the quickness and number of responses to her call for lawn help.  She’s full of gratitude for those around her who beautify the neighborhood.  She issues a safety reminder.  And, she offers a $100 reward for return of her lost hearing aids!  Read on to see what she was doing when she lost them!  -Michael

Wow. What a response to my mowing plea. The 1st one came in at about 1 AM. I am not a regular computer person yet so didn’t check my email until late in the day by which time someone had called me on the phone and then actually mowed my lawn. Thank you so much to the other 5 or 6 people who offered.

Thanks also to the people who plant flowers in the greenbelt and the ones who pick up trash, which I hope someday will be all of us all the time. My grandmother used to stoop over and pick up trash when I was a child and I would be mortified. Now I do it too.

I’m also grateful to the bikers who ride responsibly who mostly seem to be children. It must be hard to remember how quickly a bike can appear out of nowhere and how relatively slowly a car can respond.

I have another topic. Last night I lost one of my hearing aids. I was getting a ride home up North St.on the back of a motorcycle and it was in my left hand pocket. We rode from parking space in front of the brick houses on Elm St. on UU Church property to North St. and then up North St. to 447. There is a $100 reward. Thanks.

Online Community and Access

Some of our more internet-savvy Front Porch Forum subscribers get frustrated with the lack of features in our current offering. Some requests we get from this group are solid and sensible, while others stray into the bells and whistles category. Ultimately, satisfaction comes to these high-end folks when they adjust their expectations.

Front Porch Forum is a walk down a tree-lined village street vs. some other Web 2.0 sites that are more akin to navigating L.A.’s freeways during rush hour.

One of our long-running goals with this service has been to keep it so simple that anyone who uses the internet can participate… regardless of skill, operating system, connection speed, etc.

I was a little surprised today when Deb, a subscriber who has made great use of her neighborhood’s forum (found a lost dog, met people, raised a crowd of volunteers for a clean-up event, etc.) confessed today that she considers herself very much NOT a computer person. In fact, she has yet to successfully log into the member-only section of our site.

Wow! That’s exactly what we set out to do… reach people who care about their neighborhood, regardless of computer skill. Deb can send and receive email… so she can participate in her neighborhood forum… and she does just that in a big way. When I told her of our goal of wide access, regardless of computer know-how, she answered… “You are succeeding FAMOUSLY with that goal!!” Thanks Deb!