Bloom County Hospital

Click to enlarge: One of Berk Breathed's best, a "Bloom County" Sunday strip on hunting liberals. I read Bloom County every day and felt its departure as keenly as I did Calvin's and Hobbes', which is to say, I miss them.

People will look at you funny for no other reason than because you believe something they don't, often applying a thin veneer of "I thought you were smarter than that."

I once frequented electronic BBS's (bulletin boards) in the days of 300 baud modems and Internet over telephone lines. (If you don't know what a BBS is, think of it as big IM site in which you used a monitor and keyboard instead of a smart phone[1]. They were essentially chat rooms and file sharing communities).

So one day I arrive at new BBS, log in, and someone asks me where I spend most of my online time. I reply "Bloom County Hospital," which was a BBS run by a Christian guy in town (Glenn Morton I think was his name). It was up 24/7, well-maintained, and a gateway to Fidonet.[2] Glenn's religion had nothing to do with it initially, though once I discovered he was a Christian, we became friends while he lived in town.

So the fellow I'd just replied to responds, "Oh, one of _those_" (with underscores, which in BBS days meant italics).

I asked him what he meant. He hemmed and hawed and I eventually gave the impression that Bloom County was for losers.

I don't tell this story to make a point or prove something; you either care or don't already.

I share it because this space is occasionally nothing more than my autobiography and I'm leaving a bit of digital DNA for those that might care someday, a long time from now, when no one is around to talk about electronic bulletin boards.


[2013-03-22]

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[1]
I used the free BlueWave reader which let you download your messages, read and reply offline, then connect and upload. In those days, your connection was a telephone land line, and most folks used the same line for data and talking, so you had to log on, get your mail, and log off, so you didn't tie up the line.

Imagine that.

I also paid for and used a very nice program called WinQWK. Electronic BBS's used the QWK mail packet format for exchanging messages. WinQWK was an excellent reader and had many of the features you still find in use today in programs like Outlook.

[2]
Fidonet allowed email traffic to and from the Internet. With the right configuration and a few dollars to Glenn (because the gateway cost him money), I was able to use WinQWK to send Internet email.

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