Obsolete isn’t so bad
My dad and his girlfriend went back to California today. They were here for five days and we did a lot of the tourist things. In Seattle we went to the Space Needle, Pike’s Market, Ye Olde Curiosity Shop and rode the ferry to Bainbridge Island. We took a jaunt from Port Angeles to Victoria in British Columbia, Canada. My father had never been to Canada and we marveled at the beauty and granduer of Butchart Gardens. It was a fine five days and I think Annie and I did a fair job of entertaining Marv and Mary. They’re already planning another trip up to “God’s Country.”
I have been thinking about my blog and have tried to fit it in with all of the rest of the technological changes I have had to endure in my 51 years. Blogging really is obsolete. We don’t want to admit it but the Twitter is sending the blog the way of the pager. When I was a kid we had TV and that came in via an analog signal (also obsolete) so if you missed a program you had to wait for the rerun. There wasn’t cable (also going the way of the dinosaur) or Beta Maxes, VCR Players, Laser Disc Players (remember their 15 minutes of fame?) DVDs, Blu-Rays, TIVOS, Cell phones, I-Phones, Laptops, Home Computers, Floppy drives, hard drives, Zip Discs (another technology flash-in-the-pan) or WIFI. Life has changed.
I like to think about my grandmother. She was born in 1906 and died in 2005 at the ripe old age of 99. She saw Hailey’s Comet twice. I saw it with her in 1986. She had spied it out as a child in 1910. We went from horse and buggy to motorcar to airplanes to jets and then to the moon and beyond in her lifetime. But what about me? When I was born in 1958 there were only 48 states! The real change for me has been conveniences and creature comforts.
I remember when we got our first microwave oven. I refused to use an ATM for a year after they were commonplace. To this day I have not sent a text message. I got on the blog bandwagon and was replaced by a device that gives second to second updates. I just can’t compete with that. The question arises Should I care? My dad gave me the answer.
We did all of that fun stuff and the answer came on my pack porch. Amongst all of the hub-bub and sightseeing, our best times were drinking wine and watching the sunset. We didn’t need a twitter, a blog, the Internet or a pay for view event. We simply enjoyed the company and conversation as we looked over the Strait of Juan De Fuca. Life is good. We joked, talked of some serious things, and generally just relaxed. The digital world moved on without us and that was just fine.
One of the serious things was the passing of my father’s brother, Jerry Power. Jerry went home to be with Jesus last Friday, confessing Christ as his Lord mere hours before his death. For me, I’m glad that my beloved uncle is in glory; he suffers no longer. For my dad it is the loss of his younger brother, a man he loved very deeply. We told stories and drank a toast to this wonderful man who has gone the way of all the earth. His dear wife, Phylis, grieves for her best friend.
I suppose that it all fits together in some cosmic sort of miracle. I likened it to all of the lines drives a baseball player makes out on. Over a career they probably equal the bloop hits that just drop in for base hits. Like so many of life’s seeming unfairness, in the end, it’s probably a wash. Let this mad generation text, talk and generally become slaves to the need to have to be entertained every waking moment. I’ll sit on the back porch and enjoy a sunset with my dad in reverential silence. I guess I’m joining my predecessors in the category of being out of the mainstream. The funny thing is that I like it. Yes, I’m oblolete and obsolete isn’t so bad.