Hurricane Sandy, Meeting Katie Couric and The Blog Makeover
This has been a whirlwind week with the unprecedented devastation to life and property that swept over the east coast of the United States. My heart goes out to all whose lives were touched by Hurricane Sandy. It seems like the upheaval in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and other areas of the region won’t be reversed any time soon. An enormous amount of resources will be required for rebuilding efforts, as well as the ongoing commitment of citizens and elected officials from coast to coast.
The only upside of this disaster was the outpouring of love, concern, and support for victims, expressed by friends and strangers. Although I didn’t experience the disruption and hardship that many others living in New York felt directly, I received heartfelt calls and emails from friends as far away as Italy and Mexico expressing their love and genuine concern.
The Friendship Blog Gets a Makeover
For many months, I’ve been working with my awesome (and patient) web designer Laura E. Kelly to migrate The Friendship Blog from a platform on Drupal to one on WordPress, which hopefully will be easier for me to manage and for you to access.
The old website celebrated a fifth birthday last May, which is equivalent to eons in blog years. I wanted to bring the site up-to-date and make the rich archives of information more searchable and better organized. We are still working on some of the functionality of the site (especially the searchbar) but thought it was ready to go live. I hope that you find it appealing and easy to use.
A Chat with Katie Couric
A few days ago, I had the opportunity to sit down with talk show host Katie Couric to chat about “unfriending.” Meeting Katie was fun; she’s as warm and intelligent as she appears to be on screen. The tape of that event went live on ABC/Yahoo just yesterday. (You can go to ABC/Yahoo to watch the tape on “how to unfriend” or launch it from the sidebar on the Home Page here.)
If you are new to the site or haven’t visited for a while, I hope you’ll poke around and check out the new features and let me know what you think. I truly appreciate the contributions that readers have made over the years by sharing their experiences, and providing support and advice to others. You’ve helped make this award-winning site one of the highest-trafficked friendship destinations on the Internet.
As devastating as Hurricane Sandy was, from my vantage point as The Friendship Doctor, I couldn’t help but think it also stands as one more example of the importance of friendships in helping us get through the unexpected traumas of various sorts we all face from time to time.
Category: MAKING FRIENDS
Interesting insight. I found myself reconnecting with several friends who live in NY/NJ after the hurricane. I just wanted to know they were alright and then we were able to catch up (mostly via FB since many of them couldn’t call out on their phones quite yet).
And I second vida–the redesign looks great
I LOVE the redesign! It’s absolutely gorgeous and makes it even easier to read all of your wonderful advice.