My neighborhood is now pretty much suburbanized but 40 or 50 years ago, it was strictly rural. And there are still pockets in my area where rural property still exists. I don't have to go too far to find horses and sheep and goats and chickens and roosters. That's right - roosters. Every morning about a half before sunrise I am awakened by the sound of a crowing rooster telling everyone within ear shot that it is time to get up. I don't need an alarm clock to get up and get ready for work but the stupid rooster doesn't take a day off so I hear the same crowing on Saturdays, Sundays, holidays, he doesn't even care if its raining.
Fast forward to 7:00am. While I find some aspects of social media (i.e. Facebook, Twitter, Google+, etc.) troubling and I'm a very distant social media participant mainly because I do not understand all the ins and outs of them, I do subscribe to a few Twitter feeds. I have my Twitter feeds (text message to my cell phone) silent between the hours 11:00pm and 7am. I learned my lesson about silencing texts very early on when I was getting text messages from Twitter at 1am in the morning from some dufus standing in line for the Matterhorn. So my first Twitter text of the day, just like a rooster crowing, arrives at 7:00am and it is always from the Disneyland Resort, a feed I subscribe to. The message is always the same - "Good morning from the Disneyland Resort - Today's hours........". So my first message of the day from the outside world of Twitter is always a greeting from Disneyland with the day's park hours. I start my day with at least a bit of a connection at the park even though I'm hundreds of miles away.
You can get pretty quick with the delete finger Twitter, a lot of what I get is just nonsense. But there is something about special about that Disneyland message. On any given day, I always know when the park opens and closes. There is something reassuring about that.
