WHATEVER BEGINS ALSO ENDS
- Seneca
“The future is something which everyone reaches at the rate of sixty minutes an hour whatever he does, whoever he is.” C.S. Lewis
On this New Year’s Eve I reflect as I am wont to do about the past year, the past ten, twenty. I do not celebrate the new year in; I am wary of it. I offer a contemplative wave good-bye to the one departing. I knew it well.
Time. It marches onward at a disciplined, unrelenting pace. We may think that it “just flew by”. Or, perhaps, it just “drags on and on”. As time does, indeed, march on, many cultural practices and societal icons appear or disappear – are sometimes missed greatly or are never thought of as they are trod upon and slip quietly into the past.
In the first decade of the 21st century we have experienced the ebb and flow of practices and icons lost or introduced.
Newspapers are being trod upon by the march of progress. Have you noticed how thin they are compared to the 1990’s? Have you seen how sparse their classified sections are? Advertising is the name of the money game with newspapers. With a huge percentage of their income usurped by the web, newspapers are fighting not only monetary loss but also societal change as more and more people get their news on television or on line. A long-time newspaper reader, this writer could never have imagined reading the news electronically. But I do.
Remember the dial-up internet portals? Inexpensive but oh, so slow. I could no longer abide waiting, watching as the document I was downloading from a given site appeared line by line e – v – e – r s - o s – l – o – w – l - y. Sign me up, Comcast!
Encyclopedias! Those twenty or thirty volume compilations of vast knowledge that had to be updated with an additional yearly volume. They looked good in the den’s book case. They also gave the message that your family was educated, and if you didn’t know an answer, you would quickly look it up from one volume or another. Did you know that the word google is now an accepted verb in the English language? Now if you display encyclopedias on your bookshelf, it is an indication that you are not technically savvy and that time is passing you by. Anachronism!
This writer remembers 78 rpm brittle plastic records that played scratchy music, one song per side, and they broke easily. As time passed, they morphed into smaller 45 rpm discs, still one song per side, with a big hole in the middle. Along came the 33 1/3 rpm “albums” that were quite a bit larger with a small hole in the middle. They had several songs on each side. Then came CD’s. It seemed they would rule the recorded music world for a long, long time. Wrong! Apple’s Steven Jobs created a process where we can download music song by song for approximately one dollar per song, and we don’t have to purchase those others that took up recording space but had little success in the music world. Now, CD’s are commonly found at tag sales, another casualty of the march of time.
Cell phones have totally and fully barged their way into our worlds. Small and handy, they are becoming ever more sophisticated. The iphone, arguably at the pinnacle of sophistication, seems like it can hardly be improved upon and that it will rule its world for a long, long time. You and I know better.
A casualty of the cell phone revolution is the old, dependable, hard-wired home telephone. Wired into most every room, it sits silently on table, counter, or bedside. Mute testimony to progress on the march.
When was the last time you had a roll of film developed or loaded a roll into a film camera? I can’t remember. I don’t even know where to find my film cameras. Did I donate them to some needy organization? I hope so, Otherwise, they’ll end up in a land fill for study by some future generation. “What is that?” they may say.
My fingers no longer do the walking. The yellow pages are passe’. The books too large and the print too small. Save a forest! They’re gone!
Who uses a fax machine anymore? They’re still around, but if you can send a PDF electronically, who needs to have it copied at one station and downloaded and printed at another before it ends up on your desk? Forget it. Outdated technology. Gone.
Time changes everything, but there is something about us that is always surprised by change.
I don’t know about you, but I haven’t handwritten a letter in years and years. With my poor handwriting, that’s really a good thing. I’ll write thank-you’s or invitations, but letters? email!
Take a look at the automotive industry. Goodbye Pontiac, Hummer, Saab, Saturn, Plymouth. The entire Chrysler Corporation is on the brink of extinction. Stardom in classical car shows, ready to join so many others including Hudson, Packard, Studebaker, - I’ve owned each of these in their time.
Of course, that raises the question about yours truly! Franklin Roosevelt is my favorite politician. I heard Truman speak on his famous 1948 whistle stop campaign. In 1946 I saluted Eisenhower; he saluted right back. I stood next to JFK in 1960 and George McGovern in 1972. I had a diploma handed to me by Gerald Ford in 1977. I’ve met Joe Leiberman, twice, and John McCain in 2008.
This year we lost many icons from many fields of endeavor including Ted Kennedy, Dom DiMaggio, Paul Newman, Walter Cronkite, and John Updike. I think I'll take my temperature.
We think that life has an inexhaustible supply of days. But things happen only a certain number of times, and not many times really. How much more will I remember a time of my youth, a time so very much a part of me that I cannot conceive of life without it? It once seemed so limitless! Amazing!
