As I was monitoring Tweets during President Obama’s town hall in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, today I was very happy to see that my friend Jim Long, an ace NBC cameraman and new media visionary, was covering the event.  “@LenEdgerly is IN THE HOUSE here in Portsmouth!!! (I’m behind the cuts riser)” came across my Tweetie iPhone app, and afterward in the hallway of Portsmouth High School we spotted each other in meatspace.  Jim was about to film NBC’s White House correspondent, Chuck Todd, whom I’ve always admired, so my wife and I had a chance to meet Chuck.  I hoped Mr. Todd didn’t realize that I had been the cheeky guy in line to enter the school who had yelled, “Hey, Chuck Todd!” as he was climbing a hill to interview demonstrators, prompting him to turn around with a startled wave to no one in particular.

Jim asked if Darlene and I could follow him and Chuck past a woman guarding another hallway, but she denied the request. We waited for him in the main hallway and had a brief reunion afterward.  As @newmediajim on Twitter, Jim has 30,000-plus followers who love his Tweets from all over the world.  He confided that it was interesting to hang out in central Texas during the last administration, but that he is looking forward to 10 days of POTUS watching on Martha’s Vinyard soon.

I first met Jim in person two years ago when I did a two-part video portrait of him for my Video Pod Chronicles.  He was covering President Bush during a tete-a-tete with burgers at Kennebunkport with the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy.  I was terrifically impressed at how Jim was straddling the worlds of new and old media, and I still am.  “He’s such a nice guy,” my wife said on the bus afterward.  What she’d noticed is a quality which makes Jim Long so successful as a big time news cameraman. He meets every person and event with boyish but smart enthusiasm, in addition to deep professional talent and experience in the medium of video.  We had an amazing time at the town hall.  Our impromptu meetup with @newmediajim was the perfect punctuation mark for a great day.

My friend Mary Anderson is 83 years old, and I had occasion to drive her and a another friend, Nancy, from Denver to the Limon Correctional Facility yesterday evening to participate in a program for offenders.  In Limon, we had time for a quick supper at Denny‘s before heading over to the prison, and this gave me a chance to demonstrate Twitter to Mary on my iPhone.  To say she was skeptical is to  exaggerate her openness to the whole thing.

I began in the usual way, Twittering the following message:

Showing my 83-year-old friend Mary how Twitter works at Denny’s. Please say Hi…

Before our grilled cheese sandwich, shrimp salad, and meatloaf had arrived, the replies began showing up in Tweetie on my iPhone. Teeg was first up, with a simple “Hi Mary! ” Then came a chorus of tweets, a sample of which I read to Mary in our booth:

goldiekatsu – Say hi to Mary for me.

mjmontagne – Hello Mary and welcome to Twitter! My name is Matt and I’m “Tweeting” from my home here in Menlo Park, CA.

atlas100 – Hi Mary. This is fun huh?

RickWolff – Hello to Mary! Denny’s, eh? Avoid any food with the word “slam” in the name.

Jim_OConnell Hi Mary! Order the onion rings!

hollyhock100 – Hi Mary! After you’ve mastered Twitter get yourself a Facebook page. If my 85-year-old Mum can do it-so can you!

Otir – Hi Mary! It works very easily

abrahamlloyd – Hey Mary — welcome to the Twittersphere. Can you put up a picture of you and @lenedgerly ?

I thought Abraham had a great idea, and Nancy took the above photo with my iPhone 3GS.  Once it was up via Twitpic, the tweets just kept on coming:

mjmontagne – after you get her going on Twitter, what’s next?? Perhaps a Kindle DX for Mary? Great photo!

roxannedarling – Not only Hi to Mary, but Aloha too!

JBMONCO – Nice pic. Maroon color is good on Mary

jimhill – Hi Mary. Skip the Grand Salm at Denny’s!

CathleenRitt – Is the picture of and Mary at Denny’s in support of @ChrisBrogan taking his kids to McDonald’s? It’s a great pic either way

abrahamlloyd – You two look great!

stevegarfield – Say to Mary for me and have her read my mom’s blog. @milliegarfield

I didn’t make a Twitter convert of Mary, but she said she’d been following Twitter’s role in the Iran protests, and she really liked the compliment directed at her maroon sweatshirt.  She was humoring me.  We were having a great time.  But soon it was time to pay the check and drive to the edge of town where a partial rainbow had formed over the stark, squat buildings of the state prison.  Once past the security desk, wearing our red visitor badges, we passed through high gates and rolls of concertina wire and were met with the incongruous sight of little brown bunnies hopping along the grass on the walkway to the visitors’ area.

Mary has been driving the 90 miles to and from Limon to help put on programs for offenders ever since the prison opened in 1992.  The regular group of six men showed up for the meeting, and we all had a chance to participate.  When it was Mary’s turn to speak, I watched the faces of the guys, young and old, lifers and who knows?  They sat across a table from a very small woman with snow-white hair and a smile that came from inside.  I wish you could have seen the depth of their listening to her, and how she listened back.

I’m well into the book my friend Tom recommended in Casper, and I’ve begun daily 45-minute workouts as prescribed. Another piece of the book’s thesis is to commit, to engage, to participate in the lives of others.  Mary Anderson is Exhibits A through Z on the benefits of this kind of commitment.  She talks of the offenders she’s come to know over the years as if they’re family.  She gets angry when things go poorly, and she can’t understand why more people don’t volunteer for the programs which Colorado’s Department of Corrections enable to come into the prisons.

As I sat at the table listening to Mary during the meeting, I tried to imagine myself 25 years hence and hoped I’d see a little old guy with a head of snow-white hair, toting the latest pocket tech gizmo and caring about something strongly enough to fight for it and to drive for hours to make it happen.

Mary doesn’t need Twitter to connect. She was a good sport, putting up with a dollop of Twitter attention. I want to thank my Twitter friends who responded with such warmth to my invitation.  I had a ball.

I’m trying out SlideShare on the PowerPoint presentation I gave on May 19, 2009 for Board and staff of the Hawai’i State Foundation on Culture and the Arts.

By a circuitous route, Keith found me some time ago, asking for ideas on how to use the Internet to promote his art, and we’ve been in touch from time to time. I’ve seldom seen someone take to these social network waters as enthusiastically as Keith has. Much of his forward motion and growing network comes from his generosity, which I certainly felt today. Good on ya, friend!

The angling scene is from Keith’s Flickr site, which also has fine photos of his woodworking creations.

This morning, searching on my name at Twittermap, I found that two Twitterers had posted positive thoughts for a seat. One is a guy named Joe, Twitter name taoofjoe, a reference to his internet- and tech-savvy blog, The Tao of Joe. Like me, he divides his time between the Mountain and Eastern time zones, in his case Boulder and Nags Head, N.C. The other positive Twitterer was bowbrick, a London internet exec named Steve Bowbrick who also has a compelling blog named bowblog blah blah blah. I found Steve’s post today on Tony Blair’s exit fascinating, especially his suggestion that Sarkozy may be the next 21st century politician to match Blair’s eerie political powers.

To me, this is Twitter at its best: 140-character connections making me feel the world is a friendlier place than I knew, leading to my discovery of two smart people writing well about topics that fascinate me. How cool is that?