Musings

The Spirit of Meldrim Thomson

Having been a hard core political junkie most of my life (an affliction that is diminishing with time and distance from Mordor), one of my favorite political figures of modern times was Meldrim Thomson.  He was the crusty governor of New Hampshire who was in office while I matriculated as a PolySci/EconHist student during my first attempt to get through college.  Thomson was, by all accounts, a congenial man who was either principled or retrograde depending, I suppose, on whether or not you shared his perspective on things.  There was a tale circulating during his career that in response to an accusation that his “attitudes were from the 19th century” he retorted that the critic was two centuries too late.  I admired that about him.

Flash forward to a couple weeks ago.  We were in Costco with our daughter who has been urging us to join modernity for some while now, and it was time to discard our vintage flip-phones and get “smart” phones.  Given our desire for a navigating device to travel with us and a tool that could actually read text messages from iPhones (our vintage phones would not), we finally relented.  It was difficult as there was some residual emotional attachment to the old technology.  Besides, it worked well on the wagon train and still made phone calls when we wanted, more or less.

So now we are part of Modernity, an uncomfortable position given how much of it I am at war with.  But, both daughters assured us that it would revolutionize our lives, and, “Besides Daddy, you can Instagram and Tweet!”   My interest in becoming a twit is in the negative integer range, but all my woodworking friends tell me that I “have to Instagram.”

We’ll see about that.

But for now, there is no communication technology revolution in my life.  I had no cell service at the cabin or barn before, I still have no cell service.  And now I guess I have to learn about this Instagram thing.

Harumpf.