Tweet, tweet…
Twitter, that font of 140-character updates, assertions, musings, and forwarded links, has its fans (“revolutionizing journalism”) and it’s detractors (“who cares?”)… but even if one stipulates to Twitter’s ultimate place in the technosphere, one observes that getting there is a heuristic process…
Consider, for example, the postings collected at OverSharers, e.g,
and at TweetingTooHard, e.g.,
(Yes, it’s that John Mayer…)
With thanks to reader PR (and to his brother, WR) for the tip, your correspondent notes that (Roughly) Daily can be followed on Twitter here :)
As we fiddle on the frontier, we might recall that it was on this date in 1843 that a thousand pioneers left Elm Grove (near Independence), Missouri in the first major wagon train on the Oregon Trail, a massive caravan, 1,000 settlers and 1,000 head of cattle. Known as the “Great Emigration,” the expedition came two years after the first modest party of settlers made the long, overland journey to Oregon. The giant wagon train finally arrived in October, completing the 2,000-mile journey from Missouri in five months.
In the next year, four more wagon trains made the journey, and in 1845 more than 3,000 emigrants used the Oregon Trail. But with the advent of the railroads, travel along the trail gradually declined; and the route was finally abandoned in the 1870s.
