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Family embraces Internet power

Multiple generations have dinner together though states apart. It's a World Wide Web.

By MICHELLE MILLER
Published April 4, 2007

ADVERTISEMENT [Times photo: Julia Kumari Drapkin] David Warren, 12, listens to a joke told by friends and family members who live in the Atlanta area and Rhode Island during the Warren family Passover Seder in Hudson. A free computer conference call using the Skype communications system allowed the Warren family to celebrate the Passover Seder in three different locations.

HUDSON

Judith Warren answered the door Monday evening wearing a lilac blouse and black slacks, and issuing a warning to her guests to be careful not to trip over the computer speaker wires that stretched from her office to the dining room.

Three of her grown children were carrying on a conversation from three different locations via a free computer conference call using the Skype communication system.

Someone asked if Warren's youngest son, Neil, 46, who lives in Connecticut, had arrived at his 53-year-old brother Jerry's home in Rhode Island.

Not yet.

Then there was some discussion over who would win the $10 bet over the NCAA championship basketball game that night.

The melding of technology and tradition brought Warren, her family and some dear friends together to celebrate the Passover seder - even though they set their formal tables in three different dining rooms in West Greenwich, R.I., Marietta, Ga., and Warren's Beacon Woods home.

"We've tried to have Passover," said Warren, 72. "Sometimes I'm at one of their homes. Sometimes they're at my home. This year we promised that we'd all be here."

At 10 minutes till 6, Neil Warren arrived in Rhode Island and family and friends, totaling 20 in all, sat down at their respective tables and began the Passover celebration. Everyone took turns reading the biblical passages and hymns from the Passover Haggadah.

That family gathering would not have been possible if Warren had not embraced technology.

"People my age aren't usually interested in getting on the Internet," said Warren, who in her younger years was a homemaker and ballroom dance teacher in Brooklyn, N.Y. She taught elementary school after the family moved to North Carolina and before she and her husband, Daniel, relocated to Florida.

"Since my husband passed away three years ago it's like having another person in my house," said Warren, who has done some dating through Internet dating services and now makes all her own greeting cards.

Of course it was her children - Neil Warren and Jill Pearson - who got her into the whole computer conference call thing in the first place.

"I think it's gotten us all closer," said Pearson, 51. "With this we talk all the time."

"We live all over the place and can't always be together for things like Passover, which I consider a family event," said Jerry Warren, who, along with his siblings, keeps tabs on his mom via Skype about two or three times a week. "This is the next best thing. It's different than talking on the phone. ... It's almost like the person's right there in the room with you."

Michele Miller can be reached in west Pasco at 869-6251 or toll free at 1-800-333-7505. Her e-mail is miller@sptimes.com

Fast Facts:

On the Web

For information about Skype, an Internet communication systems that offers both free downloads and paid services, go to Skype.com.

[Last modified April 3, 2007, 21:53:17]