Another thing about Pinterest-- I think it changes our brains.

I can remember long afternoons on a blanket in the yard going through books I'd read, taking notes for an essay comparing themes or characters. At some point, while my kids were at school, I might drive over to the library to get more books and further my research.  Those days were delicious, underlining and writing notes and questions in the margins.

Around that time,  I also wanted to write a book called Women and Houses.  Fifteen or twenty books were splayed open to passages I'd found, all about the ways a house shaped a girl growing up, or about the kinds of spaces women created.  I read Carl Jung and copied paragraphs about the meanings of houses in dreams.  I found a quotation by Winston Churchill, "We shape our dwellings and then our dwellings shape us."

Those were the days!  Every discovery took time and legwork.  

Today I could ask Google to find me all that and she would do so in way less than a minute. 

There's something to be said for slow thinking.  Some kind of mental exercise is required for doing a search yourself. 

I may one day look back on the days I've cut down 34 x 46" sheets of paper with the same tinge of nostalgia.  

Social media has its place.  For me, on Facebook it's primarily a place to read the posts from members of the Handmade Book Club.  It would be virtually impossible to find even five book-makers in San Antonio; through the club, I can see what people all over the world are making.

Pinterest is particularly good at picking our brains and feeding us exactly what we want.  We can consume images like candy all day long.  Is it possible (probable even) that it encourages imitation?  (After you "pin" grids, you will get pages and pages of grids; somebody's copying somebody.)

Does it condition our brains to want a lot of everything fast, rather than slowing down and taking the time to find things in their original context?   How important is it that our posts get "liked" or followed? 

Back in the day (here I go again!) a whole town might get excited about a parade, a carnival, a circus, or a rodeo.  The air was electric with anticipation of what we might see together--acrobats, tigers, beauty queens, a rodeo clown. For weeks afterwards, we'd talk about it and relive the juiciest parts. 

If it was a movie we saw with friends--say The Sound of Music or Grease--we'd buy the soundtrack album and play it endlessly, together. 

Fast forward to the days social media: it isn't all that social at all.  Browsing Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest is solitary.  In years to come, I won't remember it.   I won't even remember it the next day.  

[P.S.  As for the book, Women and Houses, I made a mistake of telling a friend of mine (a writer in New York) about it.   Before the ink was dry in my notebooks, she'd published a book of essays by her writer friends (not including me) on the same subject.  It was deflating, but even more so because she had the temerity to dedicate her book to me!]