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I haven't posted here for a while, being a shy person, but realized today that anything I wanted to say from my experience would be as relevant as some other stuff that has been appearing on PIEnet. So here goes. If we are, as Janet Paterson has said, a cyber-family (a view I don't subscribe to), we have the dysfunctional qualities as well as the enduring, nurturing characteristics. Look at how we can drive each other nuts! And in the next breath be there to support and encourage, then again to yell and rant. We aren't a family so much as a consciousness with murmurings, occasional coherent thoughts, lots of tangents, dreams, and nightmares. Our ideas float around, interesting, provocative, insightful, or boring and redundant. BarbM populates her messages with stage directions to add relief to the text. But no matter how many parentheses we type, it's not a hug. And I've never met ANY of the other people on the list, which torpedoes the family metaphor for me. We are, after all, still incarnated in bodies. The bodies, and their decline, is what brings this particular group together. But even though I don't think we're a family, I value the list in a weird way that I can't really put my finger on. Maybe it's just that it's there if I need it that is reassuring, and that other people are out there struggling with the same issues that face me and my family. Rick Hermann Bellingham, Washington, one of the less hot places in the U.S.