Musings

It's a new adventure and I love adventures! This adventure is not going up the mountain to the top of the claim in the back of the truck, with the dynamite in the front, hanging on for dear life. This one doesn't involve gray roads that go to hashed roads, to no roads on road maps, but I'm sure there will some dirt involved, somewhere down the line. It doesn't involve taking the short cut that turns into a cow path then a gully wash and back to a cow path. But it is an adventure. And it probably requires taking the braces off my brain.

So, with one foot firmly in last century's technology I try to look toward the future and the technology coming for all of the most loved rug rats nipping at my heals. My grandmother didn't have running water in her farm house until the 1950's. Cousin Annie had a dirt floor in her kitchen in her house on Lake Quinult. But she had technology; an Underwood typewritter that was far beyond a pen and pencil. I grew up with a four party line (we were BIG stuff in our neighborhood, lots of people had 8 party lines for their telephones). I'm betting that there are a number of you who have no idea what I am talking about. Now my 89 year old mother only answers her landline phone about half the time , but she never misses hearing a call on my sister's cell phone, which she dearly loves.

Contrary to what you might think if you listened to the news about the state of our children, watching the little ones at the puppet show earlier this week still brought with it a roomful of laughs and giggles. No computer animation, just plain old hand puppets. They weren't bored, they loved every minute of it. Then they came into the library and someone immediatley sat down at the pre-school computer with their tiny little hands manipulating the mouse. By the time this group of kids are tweens (maybe even before) I bet many of them will have whatever comes after a blog of their own. For them it will be a piece of cake. And I will be trying to keep up with that change in technology. Still as we forge toward the new, we continue to embrace the old. So even though my daughter can get any recipe she needs off the Internet, the one she wants is the one out of my old cookbook, it is tried and true.

I will try to fold the new technology into the old somehow and keep learning for the sake of the children (oh and my brain too, they say it really does help keep us young). While I teach them how to do things the old ways, I suspect that they will teach me how to do some things the new way. The changes will engulf all of us, but a flower will still be a gift and each day will bring delight just there for the taking.