My family loves to talk. At the dinner table, no topic was inappropriate. Religion, politics, current events, were all discussed with our voices growing louder and vying for attention. My mother, however, was better at the one-on-one than the public discourse and was a great oral storyteller. She used to tell us stories from her own life – almost as parables – to teach us lessons about life. She was and has always been an avid reader, but grew up in an age (she went to elementary school in the 1930’s and 1940’s) when memorization was an important part of the learning process. Her favorite story was about a crazy teacher who tried to get the students to memorize Joyce Kilmer’s poem, “Trees.” She recently recalled that memory again, adding that she only discovered recently that Joyce Kilmer was a man and that made her think differently about the poem after all these years. My mother is a product of Chicago Public Schools when some teachers were kept on the job long after they became obsolete. The crazy Kilmer-loving teacher used to tolerate students throwing erasers at her and walked around with chalk marks on her back. Another teacher gave the students work sheets to do all day while he sat at the front of the room and worked on his novel. Even with that kind of distressing education in her background, my mother is a lifelong learner and lover of the written word. She refuses, however, to get a computer, even as we try to convince her that e-mail and Facebook would be a wonderful way for her to keep in better touch with her five children and nine grandchildren. She fears new media. For communication, she likes to say, “just give me some lavender scented stationary and an indigo blue fountain pen. That’s my favorite form of communication.” Oddly, my mother did jump on to cell phone technology early on and bought me my first cell phone and cell phone package when, as a new divorcee in the late 90’s, I was heading into DeKalb alone at night while going back to school for my teacher certification. This jumping on board, I believe, had more to do with her worries about safety than her wish to become more technologically advanced. Many of my introductions to new technology had practical beginnings.
My father was more the type to want what’s new in the gadget world, even as he holds on to what is good about the old. This may be why I am also like this. I have a “make new friends but keep the old” philosophy when it comes to new technology. It took until this year to decide to give up a land line phone, but I had a “dial” princess phone by my bedside table until then. I just bought a laptop computer this year but still have a fairly old desktop one in my home office that I still use. I also still own an IBM Selectric Typewriter and ribbon in which to use it if I wish. The home I share with my boyfriend proudly displays his grandmother’s old Underwood manual typewriter in his office. And, although I own and use an I-pod, I not only have a hard time giving up listening to CD’s, I also still own a turntable and listen to vinyl 45’s and 33-1/3’s and sometimes even listen to cassettes on my cassette player. (How tedious, to have to wait for the rewind!) I was also the very last to jump on the CD technology in the 80's, combing the record stores for the last of their vinyl -- lamenting the disappperance of it all -- but getting some great bargains as they liquidated their stock! However, much as I realize the old music technology is impractical, and takes up way too much space, it is hard to give up the memories these old friends give me in the scratch and pop of the needle hitting the groove. When I think of technological literacy in terms of my father, it is all about music. My father was a classical music aficionado. When I was still in elementary school, and already a promising violinist in 3rd grade, my father and I used to sit in his den and listen on his impressive stereo system to variety of classical composers. He taught me early on about the differences between the Baroque, Romantic, and Classical age and how to discern a Beethoven piece from a Bach or a Bruckner. I developed a keen auditory-based imagination when picturing in my mind the dramatic stories of Prokofiev’s “Peter and the Wolf,” or Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries” or Mussorgsky’s “Pictures in an Exhibition,” while the music blasted through the house. My father’s impressive stereo system in those days of the seventies consisted of huge speakers and many components like graphic equalizers. This may also be where my fear of technology and gadgets comes from. My father, bless his heart, wanted me to be a great violinist and appreciate classical music, but, to him, women needed to stay away from all kinds of mechanical equipment – including cars! This extended to his strict admonition that none of us touch his stereo equipment. We were allowed to use the old turntable attached to an old radio component from the 1950’s, but the lights and knobs, the woofers and tweeters of his convoluted system was considered just too complicated for my feeble female mind. Although an I-pod owner now, my father still listens to music on behemoth stereo equipment and still owns a turntable that can accommodate his old 78 rpm records – works of art that came in huge book-like volumes to accommodate many heavy black records in brown sleeves, with compelling paintings on the covers and extensive liner notes. To him, it’s great to have new conveniences when listening to music, but it is hard to replace the quality and style of his old collection.
Here is a young picture of my father and my grandfather. My Dad is on the right:
Please also enjoy the old 60's cartoon version of "Peter and the Wolf."
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