 |
|
|
|
|
 |
 |
|
||
 |
 |
|
||
|
||||
 |
|
|||
|
||||
|
||||
WebsNovember 16, 2006 Monday afternoon into Monday evening, all day Tuesday and well into Wednesday I almost wished I had a cell phone. An amazing team of amazing women came together and coalesced to look after Joan's three ponies and to relay information. Everyone had a cell phone except me. Joan's barn was built in the age of cell phones: it assumes that everyone has access to a cell and so doesn't have a landline.* If I needed to talk to anyone, the only alternatives were to walk up to the house and bother Jay or drive into town and use the pay phone at Alley's General Store. Fortunately the only time I needed to talk to anyone -- to ask Alexia or Angela a question about one of the ponies' medication -- Margaret was there with her cell phone. The urgency has passed. I know what I'm doing. Everyone else knows what they're doing. Quite a few of the people involved in looking after the ponies live in or frequent the immediate vicinity; they stop in when they pass by. We relay news, catch up. I'm back to being glad that I don't have a cell phone, glad that I don't have instant access to everyone and (especially) that everyone doesn't have instant access to me. But I've got a new respect for cell phones. Now they seem less the addiction of individuals who can't stand to be alone for a moment and more like, say, Morgana IV and my ISP, which enable me to ask questions of and tell stories to people in Canada, Australia, Britain, and all over the U.S. Morgana IV doesn't tap me on the shoulder or punch me in the nose when a new e-mail comes in. (Good thing: otherwise I'd have a bruised shoulder and a bloody nose.) I download e-mail at my leisure, and if my leisure doesn't come often enough I get inundated. I could ignore a cell phone till I felt like retrieving the messages. The question is whether, given my infinite capacity for procrastination, I would ignore the cell phone. But being part of a web is good. No question in my mind about that. Being able to do one's bit and have it join a web of other people doing their bits, with the result that a job gets done: this is good. December 2, 2006: I've since learned from Jay, Joan's husband, that the barn was built without a landline because when Joan was with the ponies, she wanted to be with the ponies, not on the phone. Just in case we needed another reason to miss Joan . . .
|
|
|||
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
 |
|
|||
 |
|
|||
Home - Writing - Editing - About Susanna - Bloggery - Articles - Poems - Contact Copyright ©
Susanna J. Sturgis. All rights reserved. |
||||