Old Technology

Dear Diary,

I had to take a break from all the weather related posts for a little stroll down memory lane.  This photograph of me was taken around 1953.  Dad was trying to record my Shirley Temple curls  but it is the old television, our first television, that really fascinates me now.

I thought it was pure magic back then.  We would open the little doors and patiently wait as the set warmed up and the image would slowly materialize before our eyes.  Only two stations back then, channel 4 and 5 and for most of the day it was just the test pattern on the screen.

Beginning in 1956, the television event of the year was the annual broadcast of The Wizard of Oz with Judy Garland, usually on a Sunday night.  My mother would make a big bowl of popcorn and I would sit transfixed throughout the show.  Now, I still love to watch the 1939 movie but I look at as a chronicle of pilgrimage and transformation.  It has much to teach us even 75 years later but despite my more cerebral viewing of it today it still retains its sense of magic for me.

Now, technology changes minute to minute and the little girls of today, with or without curls, stand in front of 60" flat screens.  We have lost our sense of awe.  The wonder and magic of technology is lost for our sophisticated youth.  Perhaps that is a good thing but deep down inside I know it really isn't.