The times in which we live

Each of us is a product of the times in which we live. As I do the research for this trip to Northern New Mexico I become more and more aware of this.

I was born into a world just beginning to fill with technological wonders. My family’s mobility was made possible by the automobile. The television brought information directly and rapidly into our home, whether we lived in a trailer or a house. Friends and relatives were just a phone call away.

In reality, I never felt true need. There has always been enough, enough food, shelter and clothing. If there wasn’t enough it could easily be found, either through the state, the church, charities, or family and friends. The few times I have gone hungry it has been by choice and pride, not by necessity.

As I read about O’Keeffe I realize the differences in our worlds. She was born in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin in 1887. Her family moved first to Williamsburg and then to Charlottesville, but I have to remember that these moves took place before the interstate highway system latticed this country coast to coast.

The differences are certainly not just material or physical. In 1918, when Georgia O’Keeffe was teaching in Canyon, Texas, women did not have the right to vote. Don’t even ask about birth control or whether she was pro-choice or anti-abortion. These weren’t matters to be mentioned in polite society. Women’s rights were a controversial issue that landed more than a few suffragettes in jail.

Pause for a moment and imagine no telephones interrupting or intruding, not at home, not during dinner, not in a theatre. No cell phones ringing in purses and pockets. No folks walking around looking like escapees from some rubber room as they gesture and talk animatedly into the cyborg earpiece only barely visible except for the occasional blink of blue light through their hair.

Imagine writing letters that would take days, even weeks to reach their destination, rather than calling or firing off an e-mail or a text message. Imagine communicating with well chosen words painstakingly committed to paper by hand. If “absence makes the heart grow fonder” and “familiarity breeds contempt”, how would your relationships be altered if you could only be with your friends and loved ones when you were present in the same physical space?

Imagine no monkey chatter from the television, radio or whatever other device you use to keep you company and run distraction. Imagine being able to be truly alone without having to go somewhere far away.

Imagine music without amplification. No leakage from the earbuds of some person nearby who is working on their future deafness. Imagine only being able to hear music performed by real live people on acoustic instruments. You might even imagine making music yourself, maybe with your friends.


Imagine quiet. Remember after 9/11 when the sky was still and silent rather than full of metal birds full of people. Expand that quiet. Expand it into silence, no freeway roar, no car alarms, no booming bass beat rattling the windows, no air conditioner hum.

Once several years back I was privileged to go to a retreat center out in the hill country of central Texas. It took over twenty-four hours for me to realize that the sound that I was hearing was the absence of all the constant droning of city life. I was able to hear silence. I had a similar experience on my first Fund for Teachers Fellowship when I was in Venice. Something felt lacking and I only finally realized what it was after walking the streets and alleys for several hours – there were no automobiles, no trucks, no motorcycles. I sat on a bench near my hotel in the evening and listened to the sounds of Venice. It was wonderful.

I could go on and on. I passed the half century mark a couple of years back so all I have to do is remember. Maybe you can join me in remembering.

Remember small neighborhood stores before the day of shopping malls and big box stores? Remember slowing down in the summer? Remember open windows and shades closed against noon day heat? Remember the coolness of air blown over a shallow tray of water by an oscillating fan, the fan that your mother swore would chop off your fingers? Remember singing into that same fan, amusing yourself on a summer’s afternoon with the way it chopped up the sound of your voice? Remember letting the seasons touch you, really feeling the changes in the air?

Remember eating foods in their seasons? Oranges were special in the winter because they really were special. Remember when going out and having a burger at the local burger joint was a real treat that happened once in a blue moon rather than some way to shut the kids up on the way home? Remember when having a soda was a luxury? Do you remember back before we super-sized everything?

I’m not a Luddite. I own all the modern conveniences that I can possibly afford. I drool over the latest technology, but I have to tell you that I am looking forward to this summer. I’m looking forward to trying to experience as much as I can the way that Georgia O’Keeffe experienced it in 1929, but the highways I drive will be different from the dirt roads that she took and I think I’ll enjoy the road music I’ve been loading into my iPod.