| By Marilyn Brant | August 17, 2009 |
On a recent trip to New England, I had the pleasure of visiting a fascinating historical site called Old Sturbridge Village. It’s a living museum in the middle of Massachusetts, showcasing the life and times of a rural town circa 1830. There are homes, shops, churches/meeting house, a country school, a bank and authentically restored buildings like the carding mill, the pottery house and the blacksmith shop…all with helpful “workers” inside, dressed in p
eriod clothing, who were happy to explain about their jobs.
My son — an avid coin collector — was intuitively drawn to the bank and their display of money. My husband — a teacher — loved visiting the old school and found the work of the cooper particularly interesting. For my part, being a writer, I couldn’t get enough of the printing office, with its enormous printing press and all the nifty little accoutrements needed to make books at that time.
I’ve seen a printing press in use before, but it had been some years ago and certainly not since I’d had articles or books in print myself. Standing in that tiny building, though, I couldn’t help but imagine the labor-intensive process it took to bring an entire novel into being. I thought of all the books scattered and piled throughout our house…and how I so often take for granted the relative ease of book production in our modern world. Seeing the way the printer demonstrated the inking of the meticulously typeset letters, the way he pressed a large, fresh sheet of paper onto them and, then, pulled off the paper and hung it on a line to dry…well, it impressed upon me (yeah, bad pun intended) that the effort involved in the creation and sharing of stories was hardly a leisurely activity. That every single step took determination and diligence. Sweat and patience. What might, at first, appear to be a rote act, I soon came to look upon as a form of meditation. It made me wonder how many of the printers felt the same way.
During our visit to the site, I also found myself appreciating something even simpler: Just being able to compare and contrast the way jobs were performed in the past with the way they are today. We’re expected to get much more done in much less time now than ever before in history. Observing the mindful manner of printing production in action helped me — at least for a moment — take a step back and recognized the true awesomeness of the task and what those early printers were able to achieve…all of it without the benefit of automation, computer technology or even much work space.
We have so many high-tech gadgets at our disposal these days — cell phones, wireless Internet, TiVo, digital cameras, iPods, BlackBerry-like instruments that do everything for you but floss your teeth — are there any “old” systems that you remember with fondness and a touch of sentimentality now? Like making phone calls on a dial telephone? Or watching a live TV broadcast on a black-and-white set? Or writing a letter (with a pen and without emoticons) that required an actual postage stamp and a week’s time to reach its destination?
And do you believe, when we lived in a world with less microchip technology, that we had more time to relax…to think…to do the things we loved…or less??
August 17th, 2009 at 8:46 am
Amazing, isn’t it Marilyn? I remember when I got my first microwave, I was amazed by how fast I could heat up leftovers. Now I stand in front of the dang thing, tapping my foot, saying, “Come on . . . come on, already!”
August 17th, 2009 at 9:40 am
LOL, Laurie! Exactly… I remember our first microwave, too, from when I was in high school. My mom esp. loved it–it revolutionized the way she made dinner. For awhile, when my son was little, we didn’t have a microwave, and it was strange to have to rely on our oven for heating everything. Someone came over to our house and wanted to warm up a baby bottle, and so I pulled out a saucepan, filled it with water and put it on the stovetop…she looked at me, stunned, and said, “You’re kidding, right?”
.
August 17th, 2009 at 9:58 am
Great post, Marilyn.
I don’t know about anyone else, but it seems that all these labor saving devices have actually made things more difficult in many ways. Planning over the long haul seems to have gone the way of the dinosaur; everyone wants everything done yesterday. Saving for something? Why? Isn’t that what they made credit cards for? (And I grew up before Visa and Mastercard and remember “Bankamericard” being something rich people had!)
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not into contemplating nature while doing the dishes, so don’t take my dishwasher, but I do still hang sheets (they smell so good off the line) and make bread (yes, I have a bread maker. No, I don’t use it.) and do a dozen other things the way my mom taught me. It’s down time. Think time. Gather myself and plan time.
And Write time; time to work through that plot problem or smooth a major character wrinkle.
Technology is wonderful in so many ways (going back to the typewriter would kill me about now), but it also deludes us into thinking we are super heroes, able to do a thousand things in the time it used to take to do one. And I’m sure, somewhere, there’s a drug to make us feel a whole lot better about being frazzled by our own expectations.
It’s no wonder people burn-out so soon these days.
August 17th, 2009 at 10:52 am
P.S. Baking bread is a great stress reliever–all that pounding and kneading. When the kids were younger and my sweetie saw me baking bread, he knew somebody was in trouble. Baking bread can save a life–or three.
August 17th, 2009 at 11:28 am
Beautiful post, Marilyn! The printing press is one of the single most important players in world history (protestant reformation, anyone??). Thanks for giving it a turn in the spotlight.
I remember my mother sitting at the kitchen table once a month and tackling family finances with a plug-in calculator. It was the size of a dinner plate and could add, subtract, multiple and divide. A far cry from the TI-84 graphing calculator we just purchased for our sixth grader! Peace!
August 17th, 2009 at 11:32 am
There are some things I don’t want to live without–computers, mobile phones (especially when I’m not with my kids, I want people to be able to reach me at all times if necessary)…and definitely my dishwasher, LOL. But I do think technology has gone overboard in some ways…or rather, the way people use it. Texting while driving? Tweeting every second of your day, posting your every move on YouTube, and watching entire movies on a cell phone screen? Eh…I think the world would be just fine without any of that.
August 17th, 2009 at 11:49 am
Hi Maryilyn!
It sounds like you had a great time! I had a similar experience at the print shop in Williamsburg, VA. I was there with 2 writer friends. We were plotting our novella, The Diamonds of Welbourne Manor. We spent a LONG time in the print shop, asking tons of questions, and that’s where I decided that the hero of my story in the novella was going to be a caricaturist!
As for technology–it’s a love/hate thing for me too. The world is changing fast. Sometimes I just want it to slow down too. But I have to say I’d hate to give up my cell phone. The internet too. But so far I’ve managed to keep them separate! I think I like it that way!
August 17th, 2009 at 1:25 pm
Interesting discussion, Marilyn, and what seems really weird to me is that it’s only going to get worse…or better depending on how you look at it. People have been trying to make time-saving devices for hundreds of years and they have succeeded in so many ways, giving us more time to do more things, which only makes us busier and busier. Kids couldn’t play two different sports back in my day because it wasn’t feasible…but with transportation and everything that’s offered kids at school, they now play two sports and an instrument while we try to write, read, spend time with our kids, travel, cook, take the kids to too many functions and stay sane. I wonder when we will be able to look at the thin metal band on our wrist and tell it to beam us to the mall. Zap! We’re shopping. Zap! We’re at the kid’s soccer game. Zap! We’re back home zapping dinner in the microwave and eating alone and thinking about the good ol’ days when we all sat down at the table together and talked about our day. ha!
And I’m with all of you…I would hate to give up the microwave or my car or my computer. The cell phone I still don’t like. It rings too often.:)
August 17th, 2009 at 2:19 pm
I’ve visited places like this before. They’re very cool indeed.
I don’t miss dialing a rotary phone, LOL! I don’t miss black and white TV and only 2 channels at all. Okay, I probably read more then, but we didn’t have colour TV until I was 15 of 16. My dad refused to buy one until our old TV crapped out, and it refused to die.
I think the question about relaxation time is difficult to answer, because we relax differently now. I know for a fact that I read more before hundreds of TV channels and the ‘Net. I also think I slept more! But, um, as teenagers we had more opportunity to get into trouble, because there wasn’t something keeping us home, like video games. .
Cell phones can drive me crazy. I don’t use mine much, frankly only got it on a share program with my dh. He uses his a ton for work. I use mine so little that it’s not worth it to stay in the program. I’m cancelling as soon as he decides what he wants his new program to be.
August 17th, 2009 at 2:35 pm
I don’t know if we had more time to relax and do the things we loved in earlier times, just because back then it was harder to take care of the basics. (I’m all for my dishwasher, my washing machine & dryer, and my convection oven. I like being able to buy soap and clothing, rather than having to make them myself! Etc.)
But I do think that we’re too connected these days. Thanks to smart phones and Blackberries, it’s easy to stay connected 24/7, even when we shouldn’t. We check email and send text messages on weekends, on vacations, in the wee hours of the night. I think more and more employers today are demanding 24/7 commitment, and in a bad economy, people aren’t going to risk their jobs by arguing about it. I’ve also read that people are afraid to take vacations right now, for fear they won’t have jobs when they come back.
August 17th, 2009 at 3:18 pm
Thanks for the trip back in time, Marilyn
I actually remember a monstrously large radio my grandfather had in his house when I was little. He’d listened to music on it every day since the war. Nothing compares to the way old music sounded coming from those cabinet speakers. Not clear like today, but textured and authentic and wonderful.
Great post!
August 17th, 2009 at 5:27 pm
I am almost positive I was at this same village in MA Marilyn. It was wonderful!
I miss the art of letter writing. I have been tracing my Irish roots and recently traced a family line forward to relatives living in Ireland. My only means of communicating with them was to write a letter cuz I had their address. At first I typed the letter and then I thought, how impersonal is that? So I rewrote the letter by hand. It ended up being like 7 pages of stationary one side. And let me tell you, finding stationary nowadays is not an easy task. I went to 5 stores searching for stationary and finally found some at Barnes and Noble! It was crazy. But nobody writes letters anymore.
I have been writing back and forth with this relative for several months now and am throughly enjoying it. It was precisely how our ancestors corresponded 100 years ago when her grandpa remained in Ireland while his brother, my ggrandpa came to the new world!
As much as I love e-mail, I think it’s sad that letter writing has become almost extinct.
Beth
August 17th, 2009 at 5:43 pm
Gwynlyn~I have never tried to bake bread, but you’ve given me several excellent reasons to do so!
As for the typewriter, yeah… I loved the clickety-clack sound of it, but I wouldn’t want to live without my word-processing programs now.
Shelley~Oh, yeah — I remember those huge calculators! And I just got one of the new calculators for our son, too (incoming 5th gr.), which can do all kinds of nifty things in an amazingly small space. Here’s hoping our kids do well in math this year.
Avery~I’ve grown pretty attached to my dishwasher, too.
The texting (and even cell-phone talking) while driving *really* bothers me. People are so distracted on the road, it’s almost impossible for me to relax when driving anymore. Maybe this is in part because I live in the suburbs of a huge city, but every intersection and every turn seems more dangerous to me now, and over half the drivers I see at stoplights are on their cells.
Deb~Williamsburg is great, isn’t it? I’ve visited there only twice and both times just for a day, but I was fascinated by their little shops and all the history. What a fabulous place to plot out a story!!
August 17th, 2009 at 5:49 pm
What a neat place to visit, Marilyn! Thanks for sharing! My hubby loves music and is a huge audio guy, so he still has a turntable (very modern looking – it’s only about ten years old) that we use occasionally to listen to those things called records.
When I was younger it was called a record player by the way, not a turntable. And now that I think about it, my dad liked to collect things and my mom’s still got a victrola, I think it’s called.
August 17th, 2009 at 6:15 pm
LOL, Theresa! I’m kind of afraid someone is actually going to come up with those “Zap!” wristbands, and then we’ll be expected to do *even more* in 24 hours than we are now… Crazy what we all try to cram into a day, isn’t it?
Cindy~I’m not much of a cell-phone person either. I *have* one, but I’ve gone several days in a row without making a single call on it. At most, I’ll talk to 2-3 people. Of course, everyone in my life knows to just email me — that they’d have a better chance of reaching me online than any other way — so I’m not nearly as “unplugged” as I’d like to be.
Laura~I really think you’re right about people being afraid to step away from the technology. Even in the publishing world there’s this increasing expectation of needing to blog everywhere, tweet everything, make “friends” on every single possible social networking site… Some people may love doing it — for me, more often than not, it’s draining and really fractures my ability to concentrate. But, unless we all just refused to participate, we’re expected to keep up. Sigh.
L.A.~I think I told you once that my husband collects antique telephones and radios — all of them work. Sometimes he’ll listen to baseball games on this huge old Zenith (it’s as big as an end table and very heavy!) just because he likes the sound and, I think, because it reminds him of listening to games with his dad as a kid.
Beth~Oh!! I really miss letter-writing, too. I used to *love* going into shops and choosing paper, pretty envelopes, wax for seals… I still have a lot of that stuff and rarely get to use it (hey, maybe we can be penpals!
) I do keep in touch with a lovely older lady I met when I was in Australia. She’s in her eighties and doesn’t use computers, so I just love when one of her handwritten notes arrives in my mailbox. How wonderful — and exciting — it must be finding out about your Irish relatives/ancestors this way!
August 17th, 2009 at 6:21 pm
A record player, Robin!! Can I come over and listen, too, please?! I’ve got a stack of old records in a box in the garage somewhere… I know I can hear all those old songs on YouTube or I could download them to my iPod, but — as L.A. was saying about the old radio — that scratchiness of sound was part of the experience and it made it more authentic somehow. Makes me smile just thinking about it.
August 17th, 2009 at 7:19 pm
What a great trip. Is this where Sturbridge Yankee Workshop is located. (I get their catalogue http://www.sturbridgeyankee.com )
August 17th, 2009 at 7:29 pm
Tina~what a lovely catalogue! I just clicked through a few pages on the site (thanks for the link!) and I’m going to look at more tonight… Their street address is listed as Portland, Maine, so it’s not located in Sturbridge, MA. Maybe they took the name from there, though?
August 18th, 2009 at 12:39 pm
Marilyn that truly was like a trip back in time. What a wonderful experience and I thank you for sharing.
It is amazing when you consider just how far we’ve come as an industrial/technological society. All these things that are meant to speed things up and increase our freedom seem to have the opposite effect. Although it is a great convenience to be available and accessible at any moment, we seem to spend more time chained to our Blackberry devices, laptops or wireless gadgets. So, it’s not like leaving for relaxation at all, is it?
Thanks for the tour.
August 18th, 2009 at 1:42 pm
Pamala, thank you. I, too, love the accessibility of information and communication, but the being “chained” to those same devices wears me out… The cell phone, the internet, etc. become yet another required check-in activity in my day. More of them get added, fewer of them get taken away. When will it stop?
August 18th, 2009 at 3:15 pm
When I worked at Office Max about 10 years ago, a customer called for a Smith Corona ribbon. The 19 year old girl working with me said, “What’s Smith Corona?” and I felt so old.
August 18th, 2009 at 9:13 pm
Pamela, ACK!!!!! (I’m right there with ya, babe.)