Chatting Over the Fence or A Thousand Miles

That Wills sure is dashing, and I suppose Kate is pretty enough, as perfect brunette women go. All I could think of is what Di would have thought and how proud she’d be.  Hey, I am gay, you know. I didn’t stay up all night watching the royal wedding, but I did watch some of the documentaries before and after.

One of the commentators commented that this generation of royals is more “in touch” than previous ones because of social networking. I guess that’s true, if you consider social networking being in touch.

In the old days, so it is supposed, people spent more time with friends and family and less time on the computer. You'd discuss the news of the day over the family dinner, swap events with a neighbor over the fence, and wave to passersby as you sat on the porch.

With increased urbanization and greater mobility, families are further away and neighbors are, likely as not, strangers. Yet we are just as human as we were before, with that need to reach out and be connected. We've just replaced the porch with Tweeter and the fence with Facebook. We still wave to people. They're just possibly thousands of miles away and the wave is electronic.

It's interesting to see how differently people approach Facebook. Some, of course, resist the trend steadfastly and refuse to sign up. Presumably they’ve found life satisfying enough without being connected to all their elementary school friends.

Some people on Facebook don't seem to log in, ever. Don’t they get lonely? Some don't include a picture of themselves. Other’s should find a different picture.

Some don't understand that posting a note on someone's wall is not private - friends of friends can see what they're saying.

Some post every detail of their lives. Every date, sneeze, and meal are recorded for the world to see. Larry in Pittsburgh never shares a deep thought, but I know that he had broccoli for dinner.

Some people don't tell you the important events in their lives, but go on endlessly about their cats. Yes, I am one of those. But my cats really are terribly fascinating and everyone should be aware of the amazing and cute things they do.

Common postings on Facebook include, yes, pets; politics; comments wishing people wouldn't put political comments on Facebook; kids; travels; weather; sports; and Jesus.

And lots of posts are about really ordinary things, but ordinary things that are interesting because you know the people (or some of them) and you can relate to what they're doing. I loved learning that Linda, a woman I knew in high school, now lives with her family in the old Johnson house down the street from where I grew up. I think it's interesting when Phil describes his bike rides in the snow or what his kids did in church that week. I enjoy Chuck's casual references to places in Omaha where I used to live. If it weren't for Facebook, I would have never learned that my niece was sick last year. I wouldn't know how much snow my sister was getting up in her Wyoming mountain home.

You might argue that social networking is shallow, that it keeps a distance between people. True, 400 Facebook friends are not the same as 400 close friends. But who has 400 close friends? My close friends are friends in real life and on Facebook. I don't see any problem with that. And Facebook is a good way to discuss the latest antics of my cats. And I really do want to know what Kenny, in New York, thinks about Kate’s stunning dress.

When Nature Calls I Have an Answer

Back when the century turned, I purchased a little two man tent. Optimistic as that sounds, there were never any other men in it. Just me and a sleeping bag. And a very upset stomach.

When I was a kid I loved camping. My friend John and I would schlep out the big green canvas tent that was older than we were, set it up on the shores of Lake Minatare (home of the only lighthouse in Nebraska), eat bar-b-que potato chips, and revel in the sounds of the lapping waves which would sometimes creep closer over night as the water rose. I think part of the appeal then was sleeping away from home, independent if only for the night.

Things started to change when I went back country backpacking in Colorado with my brother. The mosquitoes were thick that year, and so tiny that they crawled through the tent’s mesh screens into our noses and ears. A planned week in the Mount Zirkel Wilderness turned into one miserable night plus a comparatively luxurious stay at the Motel 8 in Laramie on the way home. Now that was camping. Why didn’t we just go to Motel 8 in the first place?

As an adult, I tried camping again - with friends who went all out. There was a sleeping tent (for six) and a portable screened in day lounge gazebo. There were sleeping bags and auto-blow up air mattresses. A walk in (almost) cooler. A six-burner propane stove and roomy oven. Tarps on the ground. Skillets and pans of all types. Complete sets of flatware and nicer dishes than I had in my house at the time. Wash tubs. Portable food pantries (gotta get that food up there somehow). Large drinking water dispensers. Multiple director-style folding chairs with beverage holders. And every other gadget sold at REI.

It wasn't a campsite - it was a compound.

Anyone trying to get a feel for how the pioneers lived as they walked their wagons west would have to look somewhere else.  Of course, setting up and breaking camp took hours with all that stuff. I thought it would be quicker and easier to drive into town and go to a restaurant than to fire up the six-burner and unpack all that food, but I was overruled. So I pitched my little two-manner, spread out my sleeping bag on the hard ground, and pulled out my bag of chips.

I didn’t really enjoy myself, but I felt like I was supposed to. I mean what self-respecting Coloradoan doesn’t like camping?

There's just no getting around the fact that regardless of what you eat or how pretty the scenery is, nights get cold in the mountains. It's worse when there is something foreign living in your stomach and you have to repeatedly get up to go to the bathroom, as I did that summer night in Rocky Mountain National Park some 20 years ago. Mom and Dad offered to let me sleep in the motor home with them, but I had my little tent and by-golly, I was going to use it.

Trying to sleep while shivering is hard enough - but when nature calls the way it did that night, you really have to answer. I lost count of the number of times I unzipped the sleeping bag, scrambled for my shoes, unzipped the tent, ran to the facility which was not terribly close, ran back shivering, rezipped everything, and then did it all again about every 40 minutes until morning.

As a new day dawned and a bright sun rose into a crystal clear blue Rocky Mountain sky, I decided that the only camping I was ever going to do again was at the Estes Park Holiday Inn with a heated room and full indoor plumbing.

The two-man tent took a final trip to Goodwill. I have never again shivered the night away with only a thin piece of material between me and the sky.

Don't get me wrong - I love the mountains and being outside. This summer I’m going to visit as many of Colorado’s state parks as I can. I plan to hike, picnic, gaze at the stars, search for wildlife, lean over to get a closer look at flowers, and imagine what it was like in the world before cities and suburbs dominated everything.

But after a day of communing with nature, you'll find me curled up in a real bed with a bathroom nearby. I’ll use electricity to read a book, watch TV, use my laptop, and make coffee if I choose. For a special treat, I’ll haul out some bar-b-que potato chips. Now that’s what camping should taste like.

Entertechnology: A BillsWeek Rant

I've said it before and I'll say it again: we are living in the future.

For example, thanks to ever increasing technological advances, there are TOO many entertainment options.

What we can view, listen to, communicate on, and even read, are constantly expanding. Now we even carry our books around in thin little electronic conveyors of copy. No more lugging that tiresome thick paper volume around. All of this has no effect on quality. You can just as easily electronically access trash as classic literature.

 We are so spoiled. My sister has a subscription to the New York Times and doesn't even have to step out on the front porch to get it, let alone drive into town to buy it at the local bookstore like she used to. All she has to do is start the coffee and turn on her Kindle; no need to even don her slippers.

My Dad has a satellite dish with millions of channels plus Netflix, Xfinity, and I don't know what else. He has so much to watch, he barely has time to be a productive member of society. If he doesn't want to watch anything (say his eyes get tired), he can always listen to Pandora over his satellite system.

At the gym I can listen to my iPod or watch one of a dozen TV monitors tuned to the 24 hour news channels or ESPN. Some of the workout machines are affixed with their own private TV so I can watch the channel of my choice while working out.

Bars and restaurants all have multiple TVs playing around the joint.

I have almost as much entertechnology (new word I just coined for entertainment-technology) at my house. Now that I can watch favorite old TV shows on Hulu, I don't need to leave home for any reason. When I do go out, I have around 200 podcasts to listen to on my iPod (yes, I only have an iPod - it's soooo last decade). If I run out of those, I have hours and hours of music on the same little device. I am considering a long road trip just to listen to it all.

In the olden days, people sometimes left their homes to be entertained. You might actually go to a public place to be in the same room as the performers. Sometimes they played music. Sometimes they wore costumes and talked to each other, pretending to be someone else. The people watching would rapidly tap their hands together multiple times. It was called clapping. How quaint. Imagine having to leave your home to hear music or be otherwise entertained.

Now multiple individuals can be in the same room at home engaged in separate entertainments. During a quality visit with my dad recently, we both in the same room, simultaneously, headphones in ears, watched different movies on our separate computers.

Kids watch movies in the back of their minivans. Not poor kids though. They have to look out the window at the boring real world.

When I was a kid, a movie in the car was unthinkable. My sibs and I took turns choosing the radio station on long road trips. On late night family drives in the 70s, it was a treat to find an awesome AM rock radio station from Oklahoma City. That's right. KOMA out of OKC. I haven't checked but I'm sure that station is now a right wing sports talk mouthpiece.

Anyway, now each kid has their own iPod or whatever. Do they have some other way of practicing negotiation skills when they don't have to disagree over the radio station?

All this entertechnology is not perfect. I still have to get off the couch to switch my television from DVR to Roku. I can't use my wireless surround sound and my internet router at the same time because I guess they are on the same frequency and cancel each other out.

And on the subject of technology, my microwave is slower than the stovetop. My cell phone is not an i-anything and if it has applications, I sure don't know it and probably wouldn’t know what to do with it. My printer leaves inky blotches on what it prints, and does not double as a fax or a scanner. I have a digital camera, but no charger for it. And I HATE it when my phone beeps while I'm standing at the urinal.

How I long for the good old days when there were just three TV stations and an AM radio. Of course those days weren’t as simple as we remember: you had to get off the couch to change the station. How did we ever put up with that?