Modern times ...

Sometimes the modern world confounds me. What now? The internet connection at our downtown Little Rock condo quit working after a spell of bad weather. I know what the problem is. It’s happened twice before. There’s a remote box about two blocks from our building that has something to do with our service. For some reason, a wire gets tangled and has to be restored.

Back in the 70s, when I got married, all you would have had to do was call a number that clearly identified the company responsible. A nice operator, who was only few blocks away, probably, would have cheerfully set an appointment with a repair man. Yes, a “man.” Women didn’t evolve far enough to repair electronics until much later. Everyone knows that.

Anyway, the technician would have arrived at appointed time, fixed the problem, and the Internet would have been restored. Well, not the Internet, but the Princess phone, the state-of-the art in home communications at that time. Ours, the phone, was white, a compromise. Don’t ask.

Fast forward. Let’s look at the one-page manual they left with the router. Oh, no problem. Here’s a web site to go to if your Internet quits working. I’ve foiled this ruse, though. Sometime in the past, I filched a phone number from an unsuspecting technician. All I have to do is call India and get this process started. I’ll talk to a nice woman or man who learned English easily with the aid of Rosetta Stone software, the professional version. They will speak quickly with a soft, low voice at the same volume as the phone's background noise, so as not to alarm or insult senior citizens. They will assure me that the problem is the router and they will send me a new one. That will only take a week and a trip to UPS to return the perfectly good one, but hell, I’ll have a new router.

Another three-hour conversation will finally convince the next technician that the problem was not the router but some mysterious and wicked Karma that only a qualified technician can thwart.

Now, we’re getting somewhere. Mysteriously, the contact assigns me an appointment with the tech person. Routing the appointment process from Little Rock to India and back saves someone some time and money, but not me. Anyway, a specific time is set for “Operation Fix-a-Wire.” He will arrive precisely between 8:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m. Should she or he inform me of his impending arrival by phone or Internet?

I’ll say I think the phone might be better.

Wait, wait, it’s not over. The tech will refuse to accept my diagnosis until a two-hour battle with an antique contact board has ended in total defeat. Finally, finally, she or he will motor the two blocks over and fix the wire.

Halleluiah!

I’d sure miss the cute puppy pictures and the personal insults and hatred, but sometimes I think I might be happier without so many modern conveniences.

The blessings of civility ...

So-called social media gets to be a little more than I can stomach from time to time. I still go back to it, though. I’ve found too many lost friends and comrades therein. I’ve re-established ties with relatives I haven’t heard from in years and made friends with some I barely knew. Sadly, I’ve found that some contacts, on both sides of the political spectrum, whom I thought were kind and gentle like the best of Christians, have what I call an “abscess on their soul.” Fortunately, they are somewhat outweighed by what I call my “Brothers and Sisters of the Beatitudes.”

What’s happened to us? There is a lot of hate boiling on the Internet these days. It can’t be good for us in the long run. Can’t we accomplish more and better things as friends, rather than enemies? Sometimes, I think of a city for which I worked years ago as a consulting city planner. It was in the process of shifting from one political party to another. I had a chance to watch the transition.

It was a fairly benign process. I don’t recall that it affected the condition of the city at all. Government at the most basic “grass-roots” level must avoid the pitfalls of prejudice and the passions of political partisanship that can plague us if it is to survive. I, being wiser then, played my cards carefully. Members of both parties felt I was one of them. I didn’t make any attempt to dissuade them. We all concentrated in making the city and its neighborhoods better. I still maintain friends there and I think the city is a better place to live because we dodged controversy.

Maybe it was easier to do that back in that day. It proved to be a lucky time for me. It comprised an eight-year period of peace and prosperity which we may never see again. It also coincided with my peak earning years. As a result, I became financially secure and a slightly well-regarded fish in a very small, but wonderful, pond. I attribute some, if not much, of my success to keeping my political views to myself.

“Ah, but I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now…”

- Bob Dyan: My Back Pages.

Peace ...all it takes is
a good pal, and
a change of perspective