Posted on 11/24/2001 8:49:26 AM PST by Wright is right!
SOME THINGS YOU JUST DON'T WANT TO CHANGE
Michael Wright
No matter how hard technology tries, there are some things upon which it simply cannot improve. Yes, we can get just about any shred of information available from anywhere in the world right off the 'Net.
But there are some things I just don't want to get that way.
Take recipes, for example. A lot of good, serviceable (and occasionally unique) recipes appear in various newspapers. As an old kitchen hand, I can usually tell just by reading it exactly what a recipe will taste like without lifting a spoon. So when one of those appears, out come the scissors and the recipe gets taped to a card and saved. One of the great benefits of saving recipes this way is that you can instantly tell how long you've had one by how yellow the newsprint is. At my age, any time saved in not having to read something is a plus.
Or take newspaper columnists. We all have our favorites, and you can read pretty much any columnist with just a few clicks of the now-ubiquitous mouse. But, there are some columnists I'd prefer NOT to read over the 'Net.
Jay Cronley is one. He writes for the Tulsa World. He is also a part-time college professor, novelist with two books turned into movies, and, more importantly, a humorist. And he also loves dogs.
My mother, a retired school teacher who will turn 80 in May, lives in Tulsa and has for more than 35 years. During a visit to her about a decade ago, I remarked on one occasion that I enjoyed reading Jay Cronley's columns in the local paper. That's all I said. No discussion, just that his work was enjoyable to me. About two weeks later, back at home, the mailbox held one of her regular letters, but the envelope was thicker than usual. You don't need to be unusually prescient to guess than the fattening agent was a stack of Jay Cronley columns, each neatly clipped from the Tulsa paper. (The paper in question was, I think the afternoon Tribune which folded some time later - with Cronley being among the Trib employees absorbed by The World).
That pattern has continued over the years, even unto this day. She doesn't send every one of Jay's etudes, but most of them. And each is still neatly clipped from the Tulsa World and folded for easy reading. In fact, there's nothing more relaxing that sitting back on a rainy November Saturday morning and reading Cronley's beautifully-crafted nuggets that display the laconic manner of thought you'd find in a Mainer and the down-home word selection of an Okie. His style, by the way, has attracted a lot of attention - enough so that he was recently presented with a Hall Of Fame Honor by some Tulsa literary society that otherwise interests me so little I didn't bother to note their name.
Now, I COULD tell Mom that she no longer has to bother clipping Jay Cronley's columns out of the paper and sending them to me. After all, I COULD just read them on the Tulsa World's website. And Mom is busy enough as it is, being involved in a host of volunteer activities including that of an Airport Ambassador at Tulsa International.
But I don't want to tell her that - and never will.
Because I know that no matter what happens in Afghanistan or Lower Manhattan or Washington or anywhere else, for that matter - whatever happens in my business or personal life, no matter who wins the Super Bowl or loses big money on the stock market - Mom will still continue the rest of her life to clip and send me Jay Cronley's columns from The Tulsa World. As long as I get them, I'll know that all is right with the world.
And that's one thing I just don't want to change.
Michael
Michael
Michael
Things I don't want to change, ever:
Thanksgiving
Christmas Eve with all my family
Trick or treaters at my door at Halloween
Singing the Hallelujah Chorus at Easter
Grocery shopping on a rainy Saturday, taking the time to look at the abundance in this nation
Dogs
The local Kroger (closest to me) has the deserted look of a Kabul beauty shop this morning. You could fire howitzers thru there and not hit anyone. They're all elsewhere, frantically running from place to place, searching The Elusive X-box.
Thanks for popping by!
Michael
I prefer going in to the bank rather than using the drive through lane.
I am not Catholic, but Friday was always fish day growing up and it still is for me today. I really don't know I still observe that when even the Catholics don't. Maybe it is just that I like fish.
And I always stop for ice cream after taking my granddaughter for our Saturday afternoon swim that we have been doing for five years now. We have missed only about a dozen Saturdays and did skip ice cream once because of a discipline thing which has never come close to recurring.
Childish scrawlings on that thick paper proudly displayed on the icebox door.
First date traditions and summer evenings spent sitting on the stoop.
Jello and popcorn
How a newborn smells...
Harvest moons ... and walks 'neath them
Fathers and sons working on the car in the garage of a late and cold Autumn night ... with those bulbs encased in a cage illuminating their age-old, sometimes awkward and contentious dance which brings the boy to manhood ...
Ugly bride's maids dresses
Blue haired Grammas who make rhubarb pie...
4th of July parades and the sidewalks are lined with little kiddos, skinned knees and all ... watching the Old Veterans ... slow gate and all...
Tugboats and foghorns ~~~ which always sound like the first strain to all songs of Freedom ...
Mittens, rocking horses, harmonicas and farmers ...
Our National Anthem and our Flag
Our Constitution
That breathless moment when all try not to cry when Dad hands over his little girl to the new man in her life ....
Apples, small college dorm rooms, cookies sent by Mom and ~~~ echoing Miss Marple ... dogs.
*grins*
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