Where does the time go

I admit it, it's been weeks since I kept my readers () up to date on the happenings around 3D Radioland.

Although we've been plugging away at attracting business partners, working on our prototype, and just plain keeping our enthusiasm and the buzz going, all three of us have day jobs that demand plenty of attention.

If you'll indulge me, however, I'm going to do what, in my opinion, too many bloggers do -- shamelessly share the minutia of their lives. When I started this blog to chronicle the birth of a company I vowed I wouldn't stoop to personal laundry airing because, damn it, I'm a writer not a diarist.

But I realize at a certain level all these posts have been pretty personal, and no one has complained yet, so here's more.

During the past few weeks I've observed more than once the well-worn aphorism that the more things change the more they remain the same.

Monday evening the lovely gals of BWET gathered for our weekly salon in the back room of The Cup.

People were going around the table talking about how difficult is for them to fit into the techie world because it is so male dominated. Lack of respect, earning less than men for the same work, being in the minority, and so on.

The stories were familiar, as familiar as a bedtime story you heard as a child, told to your charges as a babysitter, rediscovered with your children, and shared with your grandchildren.

But it wasn't a gentle, soporific tale. It was a dreadful deja vu.

Listening to these cute, stylish, Macbook and iPhone toting girls, I could see, hear and smell (well, it might have more mind-altering substances, rather than fresh-roasted free-trade coffee) the discussions I vigorously participated in when I was a hip 20-something, what we called rap sessions and consciousness raising back in the day.

What happened to the all the groundwork laid by these women's mothers, grandmothers, aunts and older sisters? Where did the cultural, political, economic and policy changes we fought for disappear to? Why are young women still frustrated by the same issues (translated, of course, into 21st century terms)?

The experience resonated with something that had happened a few weeks before as I was walking through the physical therapy clinic. A woman called out "Jane!" I didn't respond, but got to work on that stubborn rotator cuff (ain't midlife grand?) Again, "Jane!" I turned around, seeing a peer working on a similar injury.

"I'm Caron. Who's Jane?"

"She's a real political go-getter around here," she replied, grimacing with effort.

"And you are?"

"Sara."

There was something about her that seemed familiar, so I blurted out, "Sara Davidson?"

I was right.

Sara Davidson is author of Loose Change, a story of how three women, based on Davidson and her friends, adjust to the tenor of the timultuous 1960s. I barely remember the book, and Davidson has gone onto many more things. But I recall that her protagonists dealt with similar issues to my BWET friends from within a naturally less technical framework.

All I can do is hope these women train their sons and daughters in a way that makes conversations like Monday nights anachronistic when they participate in the equivalent coffee klatsch years from now.