It Was Fun While It Lasted

Can it be that just a week ago I sat here going on and on about the wonders of technology and wirelessness and Oh-how-did-I-ever-get-along-without-it?

And yet, here I am, back at square one, the provider having failed on its end, and leaving me without access to my expensive DSL account.

The experience taught me a lot about how folks can get themselves in a bind getting used to something biggerbetterfastermore. I was totally frustrated, not only because solving technology problems doesn't come easily to me, but because I was paying for a service that my kids and I could not use.

The question is whether the quality of our life was really any better. To be sure, I miss FolkAlley, but I have the folk show on WKSU (if I can tolerate the long-winded set breaks with the host's personal stories about every artist). I also miss being able to listen to a clip at breakneck speed. And my kids miss there few games. The phone line wasn't tied up, either, but no one really calls on that line; I just received a long distance bill that totaled $11 for the last YEAR.

Good thing I didn't trash my dial-up just yet. I was worried about having access to my email here and at work, and I would have missed blogging. But I had this before. Just not at the speed of bluegrass.

Not too long ago I pulled the plug on the other 50 some channels I never watch and that my kids don't really need. So some of the appeal lay in access to some of that now absent material on the Web. But just the other night my son spent about a half an hour tracing stories related to the discovery of a sarcophagus under a church in the UK. That was on MSNBC and he could do that on here.

Today I received a membership solicitation from the Cleveland Museum of Art, to which I'm going to respond. We are members of a number of cultural institutions in the area, because it's good to have a place to get away to for a little brain juice. If I took all the money I put into those institutions that give so much back to us, and put it toward some electronic toy, I wouldn't even have enough to buy a fancy new Wii or Playstation.

I guess it's always good to assess what we're doing. It took me a really long time to make the switch to a new level of internet access that worked for one week. If I were the kind of person to take other people's money for stuff that didn't work, I wouldn't have to dream about a new Gibson mando, now, would I?

So it's an opportunity to be reminded that simple is good. I probably need to get out some of my other cds per a comment about variety from Mister B and revive some of my other musical loves over a couple games of Scrabble or Blokus with the kids. Dial down, tune out, new connection.

Fine Times at Our House
(Tune from the Hammons Family in West Virginia; this is a field recording. I first heard this tune on a recording called Starch & Iron by Rayna Gellert and Susie Goehring and you'll be hearing more about that soon.)