Those Bus Riding, Plugged In, Finger Tapping Twenty Somethings

reading & emailing

ear buds in

blackberrying  and i-tuning

I just couldn't resist it the other day on the bus into work; just about everyone sitting near me was either plugged into I-tunes or sending messages on their smartphones or doing both at the same time. These fellow passengers were all in their twenties or so, and kept themselves very busy with these wondrous technology gadgets.  So I just had to photograph them, surreptitiously, despite the loud clicking shutter sound my "feature phone" makes when I snap a photo on that cell phone. They were so absorbed in what they were doing or had ear plug buds in that they never heard what I was doing using what to me is a wondrous technology gadget. I think it just amazing that I can take photos on a "phone" and then send them, through the air (!), to an email address and use them later, such as in this blog!  I could say how I can remember when we had a phone installed in our house, and shared "a party line" (not what you think!) and then when transistor radios came out they were so tiny you could put them in your bag but I would really be dating meself and besides, that's boring. Although, I do like the look of stunned disbelief on the young people's faces at work when us over 50's reminisce about copying documents on mimeo machines (remember the manual crank!) and hiring messengers on bikes to take letters across town (there's a buggy whip bizniss!) or having someone answer the phone who wrote down caller's messages on little pink pieces of paper from preprinted phone pads that were put in your message box with a metal clip (that was email then!). Not to mention, of course, sending a roll of film off to be developed and asking for one week expedited prints! Ha ha. How it all changes, but you know, people don't change much!

GIrl Calling

The Dinner Horn (Blowing the Horn at Seaside), 1870, oil on canvas

              At a recent visit to the National Gallery of Art I stumbled into viewing this image of a a girl calling on a horn painted by Winslow Homer. I found it wonderfully sweet and strange all at the same time. The subject matter is so dated that I wonder if YOUNG PEOPLE today really know what this is about or do they think it is some quaint summer picnic thing or do they realize that on a farm -- where nearly everyone was living in the 1870s -- everyone who was out harvesting or working the land would be called in for dinner by someone blowing on a horn. These days if everyone wants to get together to eat it's by Email, or an Evite invitation or a call on cell phones or something. Who's got a horn in their house now? Who would think to Get On The Horn and call someone to come and eat together. I do recall living in the old country and hearing people use "the horn" metaphor for making a phone call, as in "get them on the horn" but I think that referred to an early telephone mouthpiece which was shaped like, well, a horn.  Maybe that phone mouthpiece was based on a common everyday farmhouse object like the horn blown to get the farm workers in for dinner. The second name for this image, "blowing the horn at seaside," seems like someone tried to re-label it. The provenance story says the first owner paid $150 for it but you can be sure that the Mellons, who own it now, paid a lot more. Who would think that a somewhat romanticized depiction of a farm girl executing a normal everyday chore would be worth so much a hundred years later? Maybe this delightful little painting reminds us that it is the everyday things that take place that are the valuable things if we could just see them in that light..