by Oxpictus

Created on: December 27, 2008

If your family is typical, members are spread all over the country and abroad. The current economy is really not conducive to additional expenses of travel and accommodations. Travel is costly, and hours spent in the airport terminal can be a very bad experience for families with young children or the elderly, who cannot stand for hours on end. Even the most carefully scheduled vacation can change at a moment's notice, due to one's work or a sudden family illness.

Yet, we don't want to lose touch. Being with family is like having a touchstone to your past, and to the generations before you. A family reunion would be nice, but where? When? How? Who puts up the deposit for the hall, selects and pays for the caterer, etc.?

The most ideal place for a family reunion is on line. Yes, I know, you dash off a note or request a recipe from your Aunt Mary now and again, but that quick and casual contact is not quite the idea.

A website could be obtained, and everyone could post their information, greetings and love notes at whatever time they chose. This could be ongoing, so that the Family Website was a bulletin board, the headquarters for family information. Each branch of the family could check the website whenever they wanted, and maybe post later, when they had time to scan photos, or programs from school events in which their child was a participant.

Each family could select photos taken throughout the previous 12 months, add some descriptive text; small videos of 2 or 3 minutes for each family member could be put together; each person could write something, share certain moments that were special. A certain day could be designated as a "Communication Day", perhaps a Sunday afternoon, when you could blog one another, catch up on the week's activities.

I know an ongoing, on line reunion is not like being there in person. For our present economy, this is an alternative to extra expenses, or to simply not attending. There may be some people in the family that do not use a computer, but perhaps they can share information with a family member who does, and can scan photos and written text from those folks.

In today's busy world, keeping in touch is more important than ever. It is altogether too easy to get caught up in making a living and caring for family. Your family is your own personal community.

We should make use of our computer to make sure we do keep in touch with family. And, until we can attend a family reunion by saying, "Scotty, beam me to the reunion" an Internet reunion is quite sensible.

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