Technology keeps changing & i can't keep up

Let me see, the movies my father took with his 16 mm motion picture camera  we transferred to Beta. At the time, people said, “Oh no, you don’t want to do Beta; do VHS.” Beta and VHS tapes are now, of course, both obsolete. So we then transferred them to DVDs, but within a year or two DVDs will be obsolete,  However, I’ve been told to add them to my computer now and then store them on a cloud. If the cloud doesn’t go away, I’ll still be able to watch them on my computer. But, I’d better hurry, my old computer may be left behind by my friends’ tablets and e-readers and then I won’t be able to access the cloud without a new computer. Something about beware the Tandy syndrome. And whatever happened to BASIC, FORTRAN and COBALT: but I was warned not to confuse COBALT with Open Cobalt. 

We have old DVDs and VCR tapes which we watch while we do the exercise bike. Someone was teasing us. “And how are you going to watch The Thin Man and Casablanca when your machine wears out? You know, Best Buy is not going to carry antiques for old goats forever?” We gave our friend a look. He said close your mouth and listen, “Streaming” He said it very slowly and continued just as slowly. He talked to me as if I were clueless. “Netflix is just one example. Get over it, your VCRs and DVDs are soooo yesterday. If you want media content stream it.”  

Now, I admit, when it comes to still photography, we’re really out to lunch. In the basement we have boxes and boxes filled with Kodak negatives, duplicates and the pics that didn’t make it into the albums. We’ll never throw them away, even though in some dark recess of our mind we know we’re never even going to look at them again and our kids will have to toss them. Upstairs, we have over two dozen albums. But of course we don’t use albums anymore, we’ve gone digital. So we store our pics the modern way on the computer. But who looks at pictures on the computer? Who says, “Let’s curl up on the couch and look at the pics on our laptop from our wedding, the kids weddings, our trips, and the b-day parties?” Nobody. So we started using Shutterfly. Now we make our own albums on the computer, email them to Shutterfly and they send them via snail mail almost instantaneously. 

We sometimes wonder what’s going to happen when Corporate America, in the name of efficiency , shuts down the USPS. How will the Internet deliver its products to customers’ homes? Are we going to have to pay $8 to have UPS deliver a letter size package?

But a friend said we’re just being cantankerous. “For god’s sake just spend a couple of bucks and get with it. Here’s the solution. I went to www.yellowpages .com, but you can go to the obsolete, soon to be history, print edition of the Yellow Pages and find:  “Don’t wait any longer to transfer your 8mm, 16mm, and Super 8 Film to DVD. Revive those precious memories to share with your family! We can transfer your VHS, VHS-C, Betamax, Hi-8, MiniDV, Video-8 and Digital 8 tapes to DVD. Preserve your home movies for the future. Don’t let your Slides, Negatives and Printed Photos sit in that box any longer. We can scan them at Digital Camera Quality.”

Let me see, we threw away my father’s old 78s. Bing Crosby. Bing who? Then later, we threw away our own, old 78s & 45s, Simon and Garfunkel, “Do you mean Paul Simon?”  Now our son-in-law is looking all over for what he calls vinyl. He claims, “It’s a richer tone.” We finally threw away the last of our eight tracks and reel to reels. We have yet to throw away all of our cassettes even though we don’t have a cassette player except in the old car. When we gave our kids CDs for the holidays they said a little too snarky for our taste: “Please no more CDs they’re so 20^th century.”  I asked them about their CDs & DVDs collections. They answered, “We never listen to them anymore, and we really don’t know what to do with them.” At one time, they bought a fancy, modern, sleek, brushed aluminum, floor to ceiling CD case. Now it sits in the back room, filled with beautiful CDs gathering dust. Another friend, just the other day, said pointing to a half dozen plastic milk crates filled with CDs and DVDs, “You want them? Take them, take all of them. I’ll help you load them into your car. Just get them out of my fricking house.” Déjà vu! He has a new device. It looks like a small radio and it has a little card. I was too embarrassed to ask him what it was. Somewhere in the back of one of the dresser drawers we still have an old walkman—it still works, good as new, even though we used it lots.

We were going to buy an mp 3 player, but then we found out that we would have to choose from Sony, Creative, SanDisk, Microsoft, Zune, iRiver, Archos, Samsung, and that we would need to buy speakers, chargers, cases, cables and connectors and get hooked up with Podcasts which is different from an iPad or an iPhone. We know they have classes for old duffers called intro to Facebook and advance Facebook; so they probably have classes on how to choose your mp3player. But it just seemed like TMI all over again.

            We asked a friend if you have the same recording in multiple formats which do you choose and why? Our friend, who still has his vinyl, his cassettes and his CDs, listens to You Tube. He bragged,” I can listen to anything and everything any time of the day or night. I can listen to something I don’t have and I can listen to something I do have without having to get up and hunt it down.” He brags about the quality of his sound system, but he listens to You Tube on his laptop. He says some day, I’ll hook it up.” It was my turn to smirk and roll my eyes.

Speakers?  People see our speakers and they roll their eyes. They get that patient, I’m trying to talk to a child voice and very softly say, “Small and at least three for authentic sound. And wires? Get rid of those wires. Haven’t you heard of wireless?” 

They tell us, “In the old days, I’d get up in the morning and I’d have to wait for the paper or run to the corner (later drive to the highway) and buy it. And, then, it would be full of all the old news that I saw last night on TV. (They must have missed the night that old Walter Cronkite said, “Before I say good night, I want you to know that everything that I have just said, the whole text, of this thirty minute newscast could fit on the front page of your daily newspaper.”)  Now, it is so cool. I get up, I boot up my tablet. I have instant access to every paper in the world. I read the NYT, the WSJ, the J-S, the T-H, and even the ( Chicago Trib)—all in less than half an hour. I could never do that in the old days. And then I’ve got NPR and MSNBC and U-Tube. And it’s all practically free.”

They think it is so cool, the on line paper even tells them what to read. The paper says, “We know what you like to read—sports and entertainment. So we’ve prepare a list of sports and entertainment stories for you. Please, don’t waste your time skimming and scanning the paper and getting sidetracked when something else catches your eye, just go straight to the good stuff. You’ll never have to look at a nasty old science story again.”

Surf the net. One of the great strengths of the internet is one can literally just go browsing and who knows what one might learn. One can type in Gettysburg and before you know it one is reading about the slaves’ role in the battle or about battle field aid stations. But studies show folks no longer surf. They don’t want to be bothered with different opinions and different points of view. They go straight to their favorite sites all bookmarked and conveniently wanting for them. Don’t dive, don’t go down deep into the water, don’t explore the reefs and currents, just  skim the surface and get ready to buy the next gadget, because as sure as GM created planned obsolescence, Apple has perfected it and another new gadget is coming our way as soon as they can get their work force to stop committing suicide. (Our computer’s spell check is so old that it thinks that Facebook is two words.

They tell us this is the information age and they’re right; we see it all around us. In the car, “Honey, I just got off the highway, I’ll be home in five.” At the super market, “I forgot, do you want the big box or the small box of detergent? What brand again?”  In the stadium “I’m at the game.  I just saw it. He hit it over the fence.” The important news is always right there streaming across the bottom of the screen: Packers win! Tigers slump! Bulls out! Sox Lose! Cardinals come from behind! Woods looks stronger! Vanessa’s bound to win!

When the pictures from Afghanistan went viral, we sighed. The story was treated as something new. And right away on TV, the internet and via Facebook and Tweeter the discussion was heated, not very learned, but heated. How can one be very learned in 140 characters?) Was there, will there be a serious discussion about torture? Not likely. SNL has already done a skit, Jay Leno has passed judgment and David Letterman got the best laugh. Someone says reread 1984, someone says read the Shock Doctrine. And someone asked, “Can I read it on my eBook while I’m waiting for the game?” No, tomorrow’s another day, another sound bite and another witty repartee. Someone said that the today’s kids are illiterate; boy he should’ve looked in the mirror.   

They asked us the other day about The Game. We asked, “What game?” Chuck watched his first and last Super Bowl forty years ago. They asked, “What about the commercials?” We explained that we haven’t had a working TV in over fifteen years.

They said, “Well what about Masterpiece Theatre? We said. “We have the book. We hold it in our hand. We sometimes pause and look off into the middle distance creating the scene in our mind’s eye.”

They sigh, they roll their eyes and give us a hopeless look, “But, that’s so yesterday.” We quote Thoreau. They give us the all-knowing smirk. 

Truth be told, maybe we’re just old. We asked a kid, he’s almost forty, did he have an iPhone and an iPod, or a Bluetooth and a Blackberry and did he download apps (and what does that mean?) and did he have an E-reader.  He answered, “For a long time, I had everything and I got it just as soon as it came out. I’d wait in line to buy the newest device. I got rid of my iPhone 4 for the 4s and now I should have the 5 but I don’t yet. I use to be up-to-date, but not anymore, I must be getting old, I can’t keep up. Now my wife she’s still into it. Anything new, she’s got to have it and right away.” If he can’t keep up, how can we be expected?

            Maybe people really do sit down and read 2, 4, 6, even 10 page stories and essays on line and then another and even a third. Maybe they do learn as much on line as anyone ever learned from newsprint and acid free paper and maybe they do go back and read last Sunday’s NY Times because they missed so much of it the first time round, but we doubt it.

Thoreau was better read than most people then and now. Books send by boat from England took two months and it took weeks to get back and forth to England but Emerson was better informed, read more and travelled more than many Twenty-first century Americans who brag about their very own Fantasy Baseball team.

We can’t keep up, but then neither can RMI.

Never Enough Time

If I had a little extra time, I liked to wander around the school and drop in and visit with my friends. School was my small town. I’d wander around. I’d chase a few kids to class; kick the smokers out of the boys’ washroom and double-check that nobody was sneaking in an unattended side door.

One of my buddies, a history teacher, is on hall guard. Like many of my friends, he doesn’t read. He’d say, “I do too. I read National Geographic and the Smithsonian. For a while, I even read American Heritage until it got too expensive.” I’d mess with him, “Too expensive, ten bucks, that’s chump change—you’re just too cheap. But, you’re right not to read that junk. Really, I don’t want you reading that crap. All about how wonderful the good old US of A is and look how many heroes we have and really what a great country we are and all of that.” And then I’d take off, before he had a chance to reply,” Oh, you English teachers, you don’t know shit.”

To be fair, he went to the first Earth Day Celebration in Chicago, in 1970, and tried to go every year and take his kids. And when we argued, I say, " OK, I have to give you points for Earth Day."

Back at the English office, I’d ask one of my friends, “James, what are you reading these days? He mumbles, “Student papers. I keep telling you; I don’t have time to read. I haven’t read anything since college. I read enough then and I don’t intend to read anything else now. Maybe, I’ll read something when I retire, but not now. Right now, tell me, how’s the next contract coming?”

But some of the teachers did read.  For some reason they never talked about it much. You could tell when occasionally a new book would slip into someone's classroom. A friend loved to teach 2001 A Space Odyssey, talk about sci-fi and how Arthur C. Clark was really a great philosopher. Another teacher, just as serious, taught This Little Light of Mine by Kay Mills. White or black, she was one of the few teachers who took black lit seriously. Because of her some of us taught not only A Raisin In the Sun, but Purlie Victorious and Day of Absence. But it seemed we never had time, either informally or at meetings, to talk about books. We talked about keeping track of books, buying books, storing books, getting the books back from the students, ordering replacement books, reviewing books, distributing the books, collecting the books and hoarding the books. Some loved anthologies and had their favorites. They wanted more and more of them. They just wanted to teach a particular book to a particular class the rest of their lives and they didn’t think that that was too much to ask.

I ran the bookroom. It was where the broken dreams went to die. There was a half set of an abridged version of the Count of Monte Christo, a tattered well-worn incomplete set of the Autobiography of Malcolm X and a half set of Houghton Mifflin’s Afro-American Literature: Drama, Poetry, Fiction and Nonfiction. Some wanted to build a curriculum based on these fine paperbacks, but the majority wanted their anthologies. The anthologies won. The familiar won over the new. In a way they were right. Who had the time or the inclination to give up their favorites for new preps and the unknown? There was never enough time amidst the confusion and chaos.

There were other reasons why there was no time. Many of the women, and even some men, had to rush home to take care of their own kids, fix supper, and help supervise homework, deliver one kid to violin and drop off another at soccer. Some teachers taught night school or took night classes themselves, taught summer school or took summer school classes. Some had part time businesses—they were house painters or pizza store owners. One worked a second job because he didn’t believe that women should work. If asked, he didn’t hesitate to say he believed for him and his family it was better that he worked two jobs so his wife could be home with the four kids. Others coached or were referees or chaperones. Others stopped at the tavern and not just on Fridays.

Some came early. All they wanted was peace and quiet—no distractions, no interruptions, just time to grade papers, prep, have a cigarette and think and finally to listen to the quiet. Sometimes, they’d hide out in an empty room.

And still others said, “Look, they pay me to come here and teach. They don’t pay me to work nights grading papers or doing mindless lesson plans. I have designed my day so I get it all done between eight and two forty five. If there’s more to do, it just does not get done. Unreasonable??  Not entirely. Another friend said, “You know, when I retired, I got my Sundays back. For thirty-five years, I worked at home every Sunday.” She went on, “I never realized the sacrifice I made. I used to save all my magazines and read them in the summer. It was the only time that I read. Now I can read the New Yorker when it comes and when my friends talk about a story I can say, oh yes I read that story and join the conversation.”

Some did find time to read. For a time Stephen King, John Grisham and Barbara Kingsolver were popular. Some liked Terry McMillan and the Anglophiles were reading John Mortimer for their English fix. Another, the same one who introduced us to Purlie Victorious, wanted us to read, and maybe teach April Sinclair’s Coffee Will Make You Black. Another teacher read and started teaching Toni Morrison’s Beloved. Her students loved it. She’d say, “You have to remember, if the author is black the students will stretch, even if it’s hard they’ll work at it. They want to understand black authors.”

We’re the generation that can do everything and we did it—job, kids, health club, jogging, gardening, gourmet cooking, a night life. We raised our kids, got divorced, cared for aging parents, buried our spouses and some snuck around. We bragged about our own kids without meaning to and sympathized with the parent that couldn’t brag about his teen. But the daily grind got to most of us over time. You could see it in the sag their bodies had by the end of the year. And we were jealous of the ones who looked cool, calm and collected in June. We envied them, but our envy was mixed with bafflement; we asked each other, “How do they do it?” We never learned their secret.  Didn’t they care, didn’t they have a little guilt gnawing away, wasn’t even some of everything just a bit overwhelming?

One friend said, “You know you have to pace yourself, not take everything too seriously. Remember, they’ll be gone and we’ll still be here. We have to take care of ourselves, the school and then the kids. It won’t work without us. We’re important too.” I never did figure out if he was right or not. I guess that was what you call the long view, when you’re in it for the long haul, the duration. The institutional view.

 I still don’t know.

        

It’s really a little city: The coffee shop

A big urban high school is like a little city.

In the good old days, in the morning, the teachers’ lunchroom was the corner coffee shop. Many of us drove 20 to 40 miles, one way, came from two states, dozens of suburban communities, the exurbs and from fiercely segregated Chicago neighborhoods, to get to school. So much for the neighborhood school concept.  So once we got there, we had to catch our breath and unwind. We loved to listen to the folks who drove in from the western suburbs complain about the Eisenhower Effect. Some of us would teasingly say, “Oh, you mean the Congress Expressway?”

At just the right time of day and the right time of year, the sun rising in the eastern sky could be blinding. One particular bright and sunny morning, a woman came in a little late (for coffee not for school) all out of breath; she had just driven through the Eisenhower Effect. She started to complain and was immediately cut off by one of our Miss-Know-It-All, “That’s what the visor is for my dear!” Just as she was about to launch into a long lecture about the sun and the planets, another teacher came in equally out of breath, interrupted everybody and started in about the sun, the back up and the near fender benders, the mess and the parking lot that the highway had just become. That completely shut up our one friend and redeemed our other friend who was about to wilt and everybody lived happily … until the next crisis.

 Plus, we needed to talk to a few adults before we started our day because once the bell sounded, we would be surrounded with students for the rest of the day. And most importantly, we genuinely liked each other. And we wanted to start our day on a high note: Forget about the traffic, forget about the little jerk in yesterday’s third period and for fifteen minutes or so just bask in the warmth and soft light of our camaraderie.

We liked each other in the same intense way a police officer likes and relies on his partner. It was a strange friendship. Often we only saw each for a few minutes in the morning. We seldom saw each other in the summer and once we retired, with a few exceptions, we never saw each other again. (Some of the retirees in our coffee group do meet once a year in September. They call themselves the Alumni Group).

The teachers would begin arriving about an hour before class. Some grabbed a quick cup and went upstairs to work, but a group of about thirty or so with a core group of about 25 regulars would have coffee and even breakfast every morning. Sometimes, ladies in the serving line would have something special for me. It doesn’t take much to be polite and sometimes the rewards for just being polite are wonderful.

If it was cold, wet, grey, ugly and raw outside, the students who were just like us and who had come to school early for a little food and human comfort, would be crammed together outside by the front door. At first,  they couldn’t get in and then they’d be let in and crowded together in the vestibule. Finally they’d be allowed to go and get breakfast and visit with their friends. Our day, in contrast to that of the students, got off to a much better start. And those of us who thought about the contrast and the unintended consequences quickly pushed those thoughts away.

We had all kinds of rules. Some tables: “Don’t bad mouth the students”, at others it was all sports, “the game” and of course at the adjoining table no sports. At our table, the culture lovers got to report on the Lyric, the CSO, the Goodman and eventually Steppenwolf. We talked politics, but not too much. No gossip—too many ears at the adjoining tables—too undignified, so out in the open so to speak. So the gossip was saved for later, the washrooms and the department offices when just the select were around. And then there was lots of gossip.

Those of us who bought the paper every day (and why wouldn’t you, it was only fifty cents) had to watch for the paper thieves. “Let me just check the scores.” And if you weren’t careful you’d never see your paper again. Some “Just want to borrow the crossword.” Say what? We bragged about our own kids (for a while the trip to visit college campuses was an important topic), talked a bit about our part-time jobs. And of course we were all experts on everything. 

There were no gays. There were, of course, but no one would ever mention them.  At one school, where I had worked there was a lesbian couple but they were so cool and everybody liked them so much that nobody ever said anything, period. It was the most strictly enforced taboo of all. Looking back, it was strange; all the teachers would be drinking coffee, looking at the paper, talking about last night’s performance of the Ring Cycle or “the game”. If it was Monday morning, we might be talking about our kids, our wives, our dates and what we did over the weekend. The gays would always join in and talk about their weekend, but they could never mention their dates, their lovers or their trip to Boystown.  If someone had said Boystown, most teachers would deny its existence (their eyes would tell you, you were breaking the taboo. We won’t be able to keep them in the closet if we admit that there is a closet) and some truthfully could claim that they never even heard of Boystown.

 One time, a male teacher was seen outside of school with a female student; he was transferred and his name disappeared from our collective memory. He was never mentioned again. But we could be nasty, petty and vicious. Two men who worked night school ate dinner together, between night school and day school, and the rumormongers spread dirt all over the school about them.

The white teachers sat at the white tables and the black teachers sat at the black tables. There were two black teachers who would have coffee and later in the day lunch with us. And there were two white teachers who would do the same. There was a wonderful teacher that we all loved, but a little spacey, and he would eat at any table with an empty seat and then he gave his full attention to his food. The table might as well have been empty.

And like a small town, not everyone was as friendly as the next guy. There were little groups throughout the building who hid out in little offices with a Mr. Coffee and a mini-fridge. The English department was so big thahalf the department could be downstairs, another third still on their way and still a small loyal band upstairs complaining that nobody understood the English teachers and their difficult task. Once they got to the English floor (their side of town), they stayed there all day.

In the lunchroom, the clock would be ticking away. It was almost time to go. Some folks would leave before the first bell. Maybe they had one last set of papers to record. Some liked to get to their room early, to set the tone, be a good example and all that.  When they outlawed smoking, some had to run out for one last drag before class. Someone had to go check: “Whose raft was it anyway? Did Huck find the raft or Jim? Where did it come from?” It was a minor point, but it was fun to get the students to double check or to reward a close reader.

The warning bell rang and in four minutes it would be another day.

Going out the door: “See you at lunch?”

If it was Friday, “Are you going to Jimmy’s for a pitcher?”