No More Pencils, No More Books... Makes Nostalgia

Borders will be gone by the end of September.  It makes me sadder than you can imagine.  The demise of the book store chain, and the only one in our locale, is one more example of how much my reality of living is giving way to a future that confounds and confuses me.

How long will it be before kids ask, "What's a book?"  It's already a question being asked about newspapers.  When a book like Emus Loose in Egnar by Judy Muller, is reviewed in  The Wall Street Journal, you know the written word is in trouble.  It touts the the value of small town journalism as a mirror of our communities, something missing from the urban dailies these days.  It also is a hint to me that they are a fast disappearing part of Americana.  Like the book.

More and more you see pushes for more online classes.  That means fewer teachers and certainly, in this age of electronics, fewer pencils.

I find myself longing for my own version of a reality show.  Life as it was when I was growing up.  Those things that we took for granted that the youth of the future will know nothing about.  The soda fountain.  The land line telephone.  The party line!  Remember that?

A time when you didn't lock your house and weren't wary of walking through a parking lot alone.  Or down your street at night.

Family dinners on Sundays after church.  The family at the dining room table every night for dinner.  When families actually knew one another and had time for one another.

When we talked to one another rather than tweet.  I've  often commented  about how my Mom would talk of having lived in the good old days.  Well, there was some good and some not so but it surely was different.

I suppose if it weren't for phenomenons like Facebook and Twitter people like me wouldn't be rambling about things that were and are no more.  Nothing now but memories. Nostalgia.

I can't help but wonder what those memories will be like in the future.  There was something warm and tangible about the time in which I grew up.  I don't see it now.  Less and less human contact.  I don't want to follow the Presidential campaign on Twitter or Facebook.  I want to be able to look a person in the eye and get a sense of who they really are beyond a manufactured image.

What will be will be I suppose.  I think this modern age is dismissive and cold and uncomfortable.  I'm feeling disenfranchised.  I'm understanding how my Mom felt.  That's a red flag for sure.  I'm old.

I try to keep up with the times. I expect more than is to be given so I no longer expect much.  The one thing I will ask, however, is please don't take away my newspaper or my books.  There is a lot of life to be lived through them you can't get anywhere else!