Snow: Then and Now

When I was a child, piles of plowed snow were called snowbanks, and where I grew up, snowbanks were big.  Not big like cars, but big like garages.  In the Berkshires, snowbanks were mountainous and they transformed the landscape for all children.  Piles of snow amassed into snow forts and snow forts morphed into snow castles, and snow castles meant playing "King of the Castle."  I was king once, but my two older brothers managed to dethrone me by mounting the snowbank on my blindside, hog tying me with my own scarf, and tossing me into the nearest snowdrift.  It was the best!  We loved winter and we cherished our snowbanks.

Nowadays, I find myself spending too much time indoors when it snows.  I guess one might say that my snowbanks have been replaced by computer banks.  If you are unfamiliar with the term, "computer banks," then I'll just say this.  To accomplish early calculations with computers, mountains of electronic machinery were assembled in enormous rooms, and still the processing power of these "computer banks" could not hold a candle to today's most inexpensive handheld calculator.  But in the last half century, with the invention of micro circuitry and the computer chip, computer banks evolved into desktops, and those into laptops, and those into handhelds.

As I sit here, there is competition for my attention, and I can't keep my eyes on the computer screen.  The snowstorm outside my window is unleashing fat flakes falling fast and furious.  If I'm lucky, this snowfall will start accumulating and I'll get the chance to see real snowbanks again.  Who knows?  Maybe I'll challenge my own children to a good game of King of the Castle; I'm sure my two college age sons would be glad to team up and toss me in a snowdrift, for old time's sake.  Fortunately, my daughter won't be part of that armed assault.  She's staying after school to build snow forts with her friends.  Thank God for childhood! 

But if I had to guess, I'll probably not go outside today.  I have lots of interesting things to do inside as well.  Fortunately, technology's progress is much like this snowstorm.  Our rate of progress has accumulated into mountains of access that provides us with a tremendous view of the world.  I am standing on top of a unique bank of information and resources.  And with an inexpensive computer and access to the Internet, any one of us can climb high, see the horizon of the world's knowledge from new vantage points, and be Kings of the Castle.  Just be sure to get some exercise now and then, and keep your thoughts in the real world, just so you don't get blindsided.

Photographs: Then & Now

A needle in a haystack.  One in a million.  The perfect storm.  Of all the gin joints in all the towns, in all the world, she has to walk into mine.  What are the odds that before you die, you'll hold in your hand that one perfect photograph that triggers the perfect rush of sentimental memories that last a lifetime?  Luckily I beat those odds and I have one of those photos.  If you own a digital camera, you probably do too.

For those of us who are parents, we are lucky enough to live two lifetimes.  We have our own memories as children, and then we live through our own children's memories.  I have few precious photographs from my childhood, no film footage at all, and as for video technology, well that hadn't been invented yet.  I miss my childhood.  I remember being happy, but I yearn  for photographs that will transport me back in time.  Every once in a while, I crave for visual evidential reminders of how happy I was back then.  Of all the gin joints in all the towns, ours didn't have any digital cameras.

Nowadays, with the likes of Facebook and Flickr, our digital images populate and repopulate the worlds of our families, our friends and our acquaintances.  Our personal libraries of digital photographs overflow.  And this worries me.  In a world of abundance, things lose value.  Although we have become a society immersed in digital images, let us remember that these digital memories are not a cheap commodity. 

I am not a professional photographer, and my camera is old and outdated; but it is digital and that makes all the difference in the world.  The laws of mathematics are quite wonderful, and odds are if you take enough photographs, the likelihood is that you too will eventually have hanging on your wall that one shot, that one moment in time, that represents all that is good and right in your world.  As parents from the baby boom generation living in this modern digital world, how lucky are we to be given a second chance.  Cherish these swelling numbers of photographs sitting on your hard drives, and don't take them for granted.

Dickens: Then & Now

I have fond memories of Sunday afternoons in the 1960's.  One day a week I had the television all to myself for a few good hours while mom cooked Sunday dinner.  Dad rarely watched TV except for the Lawrence Welk Show on Saturday nights.  My five siblings simply didn't like the fact that we had only one channel to watch, and Sunday afternoons were reruns of classic movies based on the novels of Charles Dickens.  Great Expectations was always my favorite.

One couch, one easy-chair, one TV and me.  The television screen was tiny, trivial is size, and the picture was snowy.  We say "snowy" but it's not because I was watching A Christmas Carol.  A snowy picture meant that the video signal was weak or disrupted by changes in the weather.  Such inconsistencies created wrestling matches between the gray-scaled Pip and the pulsating cloud of interference on the TV screen.  I was destined to leave the comfort of my chair to play referee by jiggling the antenna and flip-flopping the bunny ears.  With enough technique and determination, Miss Havisham's wrinkled face would become distinguishable and Estella's arrogant voice could be heard once the static in the sound diminished to a trickle.

I loved those movies and I loved those afternoons.  Nowadays, I have the entire collection of Dickens novels available on my Kindle, and my subscription to Netflix allows me instant gratification when I'm in the mood for a BBC classic on any afternoon of my choosing.  And yet, I think I appreciated Dickens more when I had to work for that pleasure.  In the 1960's, when the Ghost of Christmas Present said, "Come and get to know me better," I did so by moving off my chair to fix the reception so I could get to know him better.