chew - the parasite

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In the mid-nineties my life literally changed when I went from cooking for homeless women to writing in this strange new language called HTML for the National Museum of American Art (Smithsonian American Art Museum, now). That is a story for another time. Today I'm writing about a group of people I worked with then who, together, created a "webzine" called "chew - the parasite." I met and have kept in sporadic touch with a few of these mavericks, all of whom have branched off into interesting lives.

One of the things each of us asked ourselves to write was our chew manifesto (image above). I think today, on November 15, it's interesting to go back and read this and see what applies to the present.

Anything here vibe with you? Let me know.

Another interesting outcome from this thing called the Internet is how I've grown alongside it. I still work on the web, serving as Head of Web and Digital Technology for the National Museum of African Art but back then, it truly was a wild west full of cowgirls and boys making things up as they went along, some of those ideas still appearing on todays web.

As lives branch away and we get older it seems to parallel the emergence of what is called Social Media. It's as though the people it evolved with, anticipating their needs, just abandoned it to a new generation of connection literates and their reality TV. Kids, who use these medias the way we make breakfast or put gas in our cars.

For those of us who have grown alongside the net we've been available when these new technologies talk to us. Case in point, a few months back I re-connected through Facebook with one of my best friends from the chew days. You know her as KellyGo.

Eh, seems the Manifesto does apply in some cases.