RT @mergyeugnau

It's a day of technological "firsts" here at elle est belle la seine la seine elle est belle. Earlier, I hosted quite a diverse crowd for the premiere of live blogging, as I tiptoed through the tulips of refilling scads of medications -- online!

As Walter used to say: "and you were there."

Hard as it is to believe, what you are about to read almost eclipses that achievement.

This post marks the occasion of the first blog entry derived from a Tweet.

Here it is:

mergyeugnau This makes me tear up w/ joy RT @meara76: RT @NPRPictureShowBiggest, Tallest Tree Photo Ever http://su.pr/1EJPgS That is one BIG Tree!

If you've not been deflowered by tweetering twits, or twittering tweets -- whatever -- a minute of unpacking the message might be in order.

"mergyeugnau" is the screenname of the author of the tweet. We are "following" each other, meaning that we've got sort of a hitchcockian Rear Window set up going. According to her public Twitter profile, her name is Deborah and she lives in Tehran. In the brief history of our Following Fellowship, I have found her to be an insightful, if occasionally snarky, person.

Occasional snarkiness is a good thing, of course. Anyway, if Twitter is of interest, you might consider reading some of her observations.

RT @meara76: RT @NPRPictureShow -- "RT" refers to a ReTweet. You are rebroadcasting to the tweeting community something that you find worthy of another look. The user names after the ReTweet equate to the requisite hat tip of acknowledgement. Of course, problems arise when the alloted 140 characters start to erode before you've even gotten to the heart of the message.

mergyeugnau has a good eye. Not only does she manage to make TWO ReTweets, she also succeeds in a pre-ReTweet remark ("This makes me tear up w/joy"). This is proof positive of mastery. Not even meara's exultant "[t]hat is one BIG Tree!" gets lost.

So, are we all on the same page?

Finally, we get a link to an outside article from the NPR blog, The Picture Show and certainly, by now, you've both a headache and rancid body odor.

If the link appears odd to you, as in shorter than usual, this is another function of the limited space for tweets. I use a very helpful site called bit.ly, "a simple url shortener." Go ahead, give it a try.

And there are more tweet-enhancing sites and endless widgets and rapidly expanding means of meta-communication.

Most of the time, of course, it's a bunch of jabber, as not too many people have anything new to say. Hence the inordinate amount of time spent trying to say it new, while saving space.

mergyeugnau, being a good egg, passes on something lovely:

Biggest, Tallest Tree Photo Ever
By Claire O'Neill

National Geographic photographer Michael Nichols is one of the world's foremost wildlife photographers. But he recently said that he'd happily spend the rest of his life photographing trees. Of course, the folks over at National Geographic would almost certainly never hear of it. Nichols' newfound love developed after a serious, yearlong relationship with redwoods. [cont.]