reconnected

It is good being reconnected with the outer world. I had a lot of emails to answer after my phone system was restored, and I was able to connect last night with the mother of one of our kids. I think I may have had a suggestion that she found valuable, but only time will tell. In any event, my phone call assured her that she is not alone and it was appreciated.

When the phone line goes down, I am reminded of how tenuous is my connection with people, even locals. A friend who lives only a dozen miles away had called several times the night before, and because the phone had appeared to him to have rung (it didn’t here), he had erroneously suspected that I was ignoring him. Had I not been able to walk to my neighbor’s (whose phone still worked), I would have been completely cut off, even from the phone company.

I dread the day that my phone line goes down for more than a day; the ensuing silence would at least be better than the navel-gazing that would probably follow without the intellectual inputs provided by the Internet.

Thank god for Wikipedia! I have a green-leather-bound Encyclopedia Britannica in storage, but I doubt that I will ever open it again.

۞

Groove of the Day

Listen to Blondie performing “Hanging on the Telephone”