tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20417751.post1056980235842571860..comments2024-01-22T18:22:29.391-08:00Comments on hedera's corner: Life in a Cityhederahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01696592301686568456noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20417751.post-28255526784188028852013-03-19T21:30:32.178-07:002013-03-19T21:30:32.178-07:00Curtis, it really is a different world, but it isn...Curtis, it really is a different world, but it isn't that different. When I was a child, we knew the people in a couple of houses on either side of us, and that was it. Right now I'm on at least casual chatting terms with everyone on my (much smaller) block. (I'd have said "almost everyone," but the unsociable guy in the corner house has moved out.) I think what we've really lost is the time to socialize, and that's mainly because women now work. When we were growing up, <i>most</i> mothers stayed home; they knew the neighbors because they were all home all day, and the kids went to the same school.<br /><br />Yeah, it's been fifty years. Scary, isn't it?<br /><br />D.B., I didn't see an earpiece, but as I think back, I'm not sure I ever saw her left ear, so your diagnosis could be right! But even if she was on the phone, her facial expression and gestures suggested she was looking at a person she was addressing.hederahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01696592301686568456noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20417751.post-87180054966445181362013-03-15T00:12:20.779-07:002013-03-15T00:12:20.779-07:00I was at a restaurant having breakfast with my mom...I was at a restaurant having breakfast with my mom after one of her appointments a few years ago when I noticed a woman sitting alone at a table having an animated and intense conversation with herself. Only when she got up to leave did I notice the earpiece phone she was wearing.D.B. Echohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01797128570217627410noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20417751.post-25826392771436643142013-03-07T01:58:41.002-08:002013-03-07T01:58:41.002-08:00Since we both grew up in a relatively small town, ...Since we both grew up in a relatively small town, I think I know what you're getting at. In a small town, it's much more likely that if you go out, or are walking on the street, you'll see someone you know.<br /><br />Lately, I've been going over my past. With Google-maps, you can browse almost any street in America--and other parts of the world as well. I can literally walk down the streets of my childhood and young adulthood, confirming addresses, and seeing how change has transformed the world I once knew. <br /><br />I was a paperboy for four years as a boy, and there were over a hundred customers on my route. I got to know every one of them. It was like an expanded family of people in the neighborhood, whose lives and destinies I followed. Then there were the people I knew in school. Some of the parents knew my parents, and that too was a kind of intimate extended family, of sorts. <br /><br />In the world I live in now, this seems very unlikely. We don't even know our neighbors, and most of them seem to feel this is just fine, thank-you very much.<br /><br />Have we lost something? Are we, as a people, becoming increasingly insular and isolated, despite all these communication devices. There are many people who believe that we are. <br /><br />Or perhaps I'm just being nostalgic about growing up in a small town full of immigrants (from the Midwest, the South, and points in the Pacific) in the 1950's and 1960's. <br /><br />Has it really been half a century since then?<br /><br />What an astonishing development! Curtis Favillehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06213075853354387634noreply@blogger.com