Message in a Bottle

A transatlantic phone call recently brought rushing back to me all the childish pleasure of those sealed-note experiments. N. is a charming woman i "met" on a message board 2 years ago; many e-mails and several delightful packages later, she asked for my phone number, and at 8 a.m. my time, 2 p.m. hers, i was rewarded with the sound of her voice all the way from Paris. We talked for an hour about our lives - and i suppose this connection is what i secretly yearn for, otherwise why bother to post random thoughts on a message board?

Experiments have shown that infants who fail to receive empathic responses to their early communication attempts stop attempting to communicate and fail to thrive. i wonder how many new blogs will just shrivel up and die from lack of response?