Thursday, February 2, 2012

My reflection, is it my dad's fault?

For my reflection on this class and my entry into the art and science of blogging, I would like to express gratitude for the challenge. It is always good to express gratitude, it always good, to see something that at first seems undoable or in the case of this class. At first,I must tell you, I was intimidated by the electronic two-step I needed to learn how to do to begin blogging. It was a cobweb shaker, I have some computer skills. I e-mail, I do research, type papers, use a flash drive. Heck,I even had a Face Book account for a minute. (It died from non use). Each of these.... ,the things that have required me to stretch my e-skills, I have met these things with a chip on my shoulder. I didn't want to be so negative and I don't know why this is, I don't know why I am such a troglodyte in this one area. I love the world I do, I love it's vast diversity, diversity of and in people,landscape, geology,geography the endless variety of nature, all the universe, an unwinding fractal.

       Why is it then that I am so silly when it comes to computers and all the things they can do? I don't think I view the world generally as if from the curmudgeon's perspective. I like new things, change is good, I embrace the growth that goes along with change. My fear here is echoed when I consider a memory I cherish.

       My father, now a light somewhere, had a VCR, and a television and an old school antenna strapped to his brick chimney. The challenge for my depression era father was to summon enough patience to switch out the antenna cable from the back of his the TV, and plug in the VCR cable. This was only done when my mother, a light now too, wanted to watch a movie (only British drama and murder mysteries, David Niven, Rex Harrison, and some times, after a drop, Richard Burton or Richard Harris). The movies came from the Bert's Gas and Movie just off Hwy. 49 in the small town in which they lived. At Bert's they would argue over their selection(s) before long my dad would yield and to home would come ( for three nights, four if you rented on a Tuesdays) David, Rex,Richard and Richard and all their Gentlemanly brethren for the weekend.

     During the preceding dinner, my father could be sensed to be anxious and even more cranky than usual.  He rarely took more than one glass of wine during his meals. On movie night,however, the consumption would double. The after dinner smoke, more robustly inhaled . It was movie night, so by 8:30 when he called to duty, to The Switching Of The Cables, he was a nervous wreck. This was technology and he was required to master it. He had mastered his rifle and survived WWII, he has fathered four boys,had a career,a home, and all the fruits of a life well lived. With my mother settled in her rocking nest with knitting to hand ,my father would begin. His first step would be to move our TV ,maple cabinet and all to one side, so he could get at it's innards. Then with  bi-focals pushed up to forehead level, he would click on the flash light and ponder both the antenna cable and the backs of  VCR ,TV and their accompanying cables.He had resisted the my mother's suggestion that he color code each cable with tape "they have lots of colors at the Western Auto" she told him. "Too much trouble" was his reply. After a contemplative moment, he would unscrew the antenna cable,this accomplished, he would wait a  further moment to consider his next move.Then he would find the loose VCR cables and because he had waited he would ,as the process would go, forget which went where. This is the stage where my mother would become extra interested in her knitting. She knew what would happen next. She could set her watch by it. My dad, now solidly on the road to paralyzing vexation, would try to put the out- put plug into the receiver of the same designation,and the input plug  would go....you can guess the rest. The struggle would last 10-15 minutes, my father doggedly putting in plugs, pulling out other plugs, turning our TV to see the expected visage of one of the Richards only to be foiled again, and again. The ensuing anger calling for a smoke break on the porch to think things through and get a clearer picture of the task at hand. Meanwhile my mother ever diligent, had finishing the arms of my Aunt  Pat's birthday sweater.

   After, pitching his Camel filterless into the swimming pool, he would begin anew, glasses up, flashlight on, plugs in hand. My mother new better than to offer advice or encouragement.She actually had not been a knitter before we got the VCR, but somewhere along the way she decided that,as her mental health was at stake, she needed to something while my dad did battle with electronic demons of his generation. By this point the evening, often, approaching 9:00, (code for bed time), hung by the thinnest thread of luck. Patience, any semblance of organization along with my father's command of gentle English, had dissolved under the thermite of my father's frustration.With the unspoken threat of my mother's retiring for the night, my father would gird the tatters of his focus and give it one more try....once more into the breach, to quote a Richard.He would place all the plugs in the right places, turn the TV to it's best vantage and sink, exhausted, onto his side of the couch. The movie would, at long last, blaze before them, my mother appreciative of the technicolor gentlemen in their Saville Road suits, but even more, if in secret,loving the perseverance of another sort of gentleman and that  he would spend time in his idea of hell so that she could watch
a movie with a David a Rex or one of the Richards.

       So, I guess I am my father's son when it comes to electronic technologies. I must ,by his example, persevere,and with luck gain the rewards one gets from accepting a challenge.

 I don't know if I have satisfied the requirements of this course, I feel I have tried and have learned a lesson or two, one about mastering technology, and the further lesson of trying when I am not sure what to do next. Till next time.
 

3 comments:

  1. Great reflection on integrating technology with blogs. It's amazing how computers have integrated into our lives.

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  2. In some ways I'm surprised that we are still talking about the impact of computers much as the impact of horseless carriages were discussed in the 30's (speculation on my part) when computers have already impacted essentially every aspect of our lives for a couple decades now. Perhaps because a car is a car is a car but a computer is something new everyday.

    It is hard to not be influenced by our environment and the Jones next door, but I will preach until the day I become a mere light that you must be who you are and not what others expect. Did you achieve from these last two weeks something worthwhile?

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  3. It's like riding a bike....when you first try it you're unsure, its difficult and complicated. The further we work on it the easier it becomes and the more we learn from it. I absolutely love computers, I work with computer coding, social media networking, and marketing but I had never once tried to create a blog until this class. I absolutely love it and enjoy it fully. It's much different than Facebook because the topics we discuss are all related. It's definitely not like Twitter because you don't have constant updates about who ate what, where people went, etc. Keep on blogging, who knows what you might learn from it :)

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