THEHEYDAY.COM
So I was going to write this great long post all about this sweet new Australian Baha’i Youth portal with its news, reviews, resources and more. I mean, come on, they even have their own shop (well, almost… but they have links to other baha’i shops for now). I’d really love to rave a little more about it, but I’m just too busy enjoying it myself. So why don’t you check it out for yourselves, I’ve got some reading to do.
January 20th, 2006 at 3:27 am
It seems to me that this Australian site, THEHEYDAY.COM, has a variety of sub-sites to cater to: (a) the happenings in each of the states of Australia, (b) a range of relevant topics for Baha’is and non-Baha’is in the forum section and (c) writing, arts and service sectors. There’s a monthly feature and more. This site is certainly useful to a writer like me. I will place my further reasons in a wider context in the following prose-poem:
____________________________
PUBLISHED AT LAST
Yesterday while on the internet I discovered that if I typed my name, Ron Price, into the Google search box or, indeed, the search box of any one of a number of other search engines and then typed some subject like history, sociology, media studies, film studies, among a host of other topics/subjects–and then clicked the right/defined spot, a number of websites would appear, listing ten per page, with my writing located at several dozen sub-sites. There were literally dozens of search engines, dozens of subjects and dozens of sites where my writing could be located in this way. I tried the following subjects with much success: ancient history, jobs, poetry, autobiography, literature, psychology, religion, philosophy, Baha’i, Emily Dickinson, Edward Gibbon, Arnold Toynbee, inter alia. The list seemed to be just about endless.
It was not so much getting my name into internet lights that turned me on, although writers like to be read, just like talkers like to have someone to talk to. After four years of posting my writings on the internet under many headings and at many sites, in addition to those above, I have ‘published’ enough to satisfy whatever desires I have ever possessed in this connection, in relation to fame and renown and publicizing my writings—measured in 1000s of nanoseconds. Like some vast directory, file, archive or library, my writings could be easily located in bite-size, accessible, chunks. After 20 years(1981-2001) of trying unsuccessfully to get publishers to place my ideas under a hard cover and after 40 years of writing(1959-1999: age 15 to 55) with little publishing success, here was my writing spread out all over the world wide web.
But most importantly I found a vehicle for teaching the Cause, a vehicle which was open, receptive, challenging, varied, provided honest feedback and gave me literally hundreds of people every day to engage with in a more meaty dialogue than I could ever find in my suburban world. After fifty years of waiting for a receptive audience(1953-2003), one finally has come my way. -Ron Price, Pioneering Over Four Epochs, January 20th 2006.
It’s all very autobiographical,
but the way I’ve set it all out
allows for generalizable,
theoretical, expositions,
of doctrine and teachings
in a personalized, subjectized,
individualized perspective—-
not at all suitable to autobiography
according to Roy Pascal one the major
theorists of autobiography in my time.1
There is a desire for exaltation
here, an exaltation of an Idea
and the magnification of the station
of a new, emerging, world Idea.
Some call that idea: Baha’i
but it has infinite forms, shapes,
channels & manifestations.
1. Roy Pascal, Design and Truth in Autobiography, Harvard UP, Cambridge Mass., 1960, p.182.
-Ron Price October 3rd 2005
January 20th, 2006 at 3:38 am
After writing the above piece a few minutes ago, I would like to add that in Australia there are an increasing number of sites for Baha’is to engage with other Baha’is and people from many religious, ethnic, cultural, social, intellectual and age-range backgrounds. THEHEYDAY.COM is just one of these sites. But it is one of the better organized, easy to follow and aesthetically pleasing sites.
This site is light in tone and humorous in style, qualities so essential for an Australian culture which is cynical beneath surface, skeptical about the serious things, but honest and practical with an important contribution to make in our increasingly global society. After several months on the internet hustings, this site looks like it is off to a good start. I wish the organizers of this site well in their efforts to serve the Baha’i community and Australian society as a whole.