Phone vexed

I was in the middle of that quaint old custom of reading the morning newspaper when the phone rang. I hoisted myself off the couch and shuffled to the next room to answer the ringing.

Receiver to my ear, I was greeted with silence as if something were being cued up. Then one of those computer-generated voices spoke in a slightly raspy, yet friendly tone:

“Hello. This call is experiencing difficulties. Thank you for your time. Good-bye.”

Hmmm.

How odd.

What “difficulties” might the automated “call” be experiencing? A damaged computer chip in its voice simulator? A lapse of computer memory about what it wanted to tell me?

Could this be serious? “Difficulties” carries a troubling, fill-in-the-blank vagueness. Airline passengers know the feeling when the pilot announces, “We are experiencing difficulties with engine number 3.”

Oh really?

Should I worry about phone computer difficulties? Was the intended message important? “Your credit card shows five purchases exceeding $1 million each. Please call 1 (800) XXX-XXXX to inform us whether the purchases were authorized by you.”

After imagining several similar scenarios, I clung to one part of the message as a sign of hope. The voice was grateful for my time. “Thank you for your time,” said the computer.

Perhaps time — my time — was all the computer needed to reboot or clear its memory or do whatever computers do with time when they are having “difficulties.”

Could time address the problem? For all of the changes we’ve seen, time remains the constant that cures all.

At least let's hope so.

When time itself "experiences difficulties," the very last message for eternity may be, "Thank you for your time. Good-bye."

Life on a Treadmill

On my treadmill runs, there comes the time when 19:42 appears on the timer.

The red digital numerals catch my eye.

1942

The year of my birth.

Perhaps all treadmill runners have the same experience of seeing their first year’s numbers glowing before them. And then the seconds tick on. Each second becomes a year gone.

They pass so quickly, those seconds.

Of course, when I reach 18 on the treadmill timeline, the number turns to 20:00. It's a bit jarring the first time it happens. A jolt. A trick in time.

I’d never thought of it before, but the seconds after that represent years in my adulthood. At 20:16, I’m a young father of 34 on the treadmill clock. The numbers are no longer recognizable as years. By the time it’s 2016, six years hence, Ill be 74.

So I have to think to count the treadmill’s second/years in my head. When the clock gets to 20:50, it will have logged a second for each of the 68 years in my life

A minute and eight seconds, 68 seconds, 68 years.

I stop paying attention when I get to 20:50. It's no longer the past. I return to my running. Into the unknown. I know I will lower the pace to an easy cool-down walk when I hit 30 minutes.

I will have earned it.

I’ll be 618 years old.

Blazer defeat wins back time

Part of me welcomed Houston's resounding defeat of the Blazers last night.

I was getting way too involved in the fortunes of the upstart home team. I had already reached the point of yelling at the screen. And I was referring to the Blazers as "we" and the Rockets as "they."

Dangerous signs.

Had the Trailblazers won the first round, I would have frittered away hours, days even, in front of the TV, hanging on every jump shot, dunk, steal and rebound.

So thanks, Blazers, for giving us back time. Who knows, I might use some to go out and shoot my own jump shots.

Or just smell the roses.

Committing Time

I’m recruiting new members to a non-profit board I’m on.

The process is a slow dance.

I invite my fellow board members to offer names of prospective candidates. Often this involves sending out “feelers” to see who’s interested.

Think, “dance card.”

Once the board agrees to the list (oh so easy!), I volunteer to make the invitation to the chosen. (Don’t ask why I volunteer, that comes later.)

The dance continues; the music changes.

I approach one person we’ve agreed on. Call him “Fred.”

I know Fred fairly well so I call to offer the invitation over the phone. I am met with: “Let’s sit down and talk about the time commitment.”

Fair enough. I can talk about time commitment easily enough, but why the “sitting down to talk” part?

Now THAT’S time commitment.

I don’t say it to Fred, but if he wants to hear about time commitment, I can do that on the phone and in one sentence. The commitment is two or three hours a month…unless you take on the task of recruiting board members and sitting down to talk about time commitment.

Anyway, I will have coffee with Fred to talk. It’s a pleasant task. I like coffee. I like Fred.

Still, it is an ironic time commitment.

And here a little inner voice says: LIFE is a time commitment.

OK, I say to the voice: To whom?

“Well,” says the voice, “if you were of a theistic mind, I’d pop in the all-purpose ‘God’ and be done with it.

“But because I am actually your own inner voice and, hence, presumably know you well (a BIG presumption), I’ll offer a tidy circular answer:

“You’ve made a ‘time commitment’ to life.

“Look around. At its most primitive, life — survival — demands a ‘time commitment’ to food, clothing, shelter. When you ‘free’ time (an odd, but valid concept), you commit it to other living organisms around us. Plants, animals, blog readers and Fred.

Reviewing this little exchange, the key term seems to be “freeing time,” which translates into “freeing life.”

In a word: Freedom.

Time commitments aren’t the question. Those are given. The question is what do we freely commit our time to.

It’s no small question. Come to think of it, it’s why Fred wanted to have coffee.

Wise man, that Fred. I hope I can get him on the board.

A Glimpse of the Place

When I become caught up in time, my time here, the urgency of it all, the self-importance, the folly, I look to the rivers, the hills, the mountains, the stars of the night.

They care not one iota for me and my causes. If they could laugh, they would. “Take a look, make yourself at home, find joy, dream, do what you must. But do not be deceived.

“Your time is a glimpse. A blink. Though you just arrived, you will be leaving soon. Others await their turns to look, to glimpse, to briefly be.”

Buying, selling and ignoring media time

I’m preparing to teach a class, “Mass Media and Society,” which I haven’t taught in, (could it be?) 35 years.

There have been a few changes in both media and society. I have work to do.

I’m considering a thematic thread built on the widely accepted notion that communication defines a culture.

The idea has taken me to Edward Hall’s work as well as that of the late James Carey.

I’ll return to them in future posts, but my recent thoughts have been about cultural definitions of time and how media contribute to them.

Networks “sell” and advertisers “buy” broadcast time. The economic model is an obvious extension of our being paid for the time we work. And like our pay, some time, “prime” time for instance, is more “valuable” than other time, depending on how many people have gathered around their TVs to watch.

Hence the need for audience "ratings."

Other media time is more valuable because of the “quality” the audience. The more money you have, the more valuable you are. (I did say this was about our culture, didn’t I?)

Then we have smut-free “family hour” and the Saturday morning cartoons packed with ads, and the “news hour.” Of course the news is always “up-to-the-minute” or “on the hour.”

We have 24-hour-news cycles, which presumably shouldn’t be confused with what some still call “days.”

So we live, and perceive significance, in lockstep with time as media shape it.

I frequently have my students take media fasts. No media for three days. Cold turkey!

They find the exercise either to be ecstasy (“I had the best conversation with my dad, EVER!) or utter agony (“I felt TOTALLY out of touch.”)

A better, more illuminating exercise might be to have them go on a timeless fast. To live a day without ever checking a clock or asking what time it is. To eat when they are hungry. Sleep when they are weary. Oh, and don’t watch TV, check the internet or listen to the radio.

The media are all of a “piece” — an artificial “time piece.”

Turning back the clock saves time

Here's to Christina Wall, the 32-year-old University of Michigan graduate student who is learning about the past by abandoning today's technology for that of 1949.

I was seven at the time and have vague recollections of the world that Wall has been sampling.

Like most families—and Christina—we didn't have a TV. I spent a lot of time outdoors in our northern Illinois town. Kicking tawny leaves in on crisp autumn days, trekking through knee-deep snow, getting soaked in spring's slush, playing pick-up on languid July days, and, in September, nimbly traipsing to school along the rail ties of the little-used trunk line behind our house.

No one told us to stay inside for our safety. The world wasn't seen as dangerous—except for the Communists, whom we had either "contained" or "exposed."

Reading Sunday's article about Wall, I was taken with, but not surprised by, one of her findings. Life without a TV, cell phone and computer has given her more time. "It's amazing. I literally feel like I have 40 hours in a day," she tells the reporter.

Forty hours may be a bit much, but try 30. By not being sucked into "screen time," she has regained six to eight hours each day. That works out to between three and four months each year.

You don't have to go retro to have the same feeling. I picked up at least three hours a day when I lowered my cable service to "basic" a couple of years ago. (I also saved about $30 a month.)

(A confession: The Red Electric doesn't exactly write itself each day; but I consider it time well spent. Kind of like kicking words instead of leaves.)

And then there is the liberating, even transforming, feeling you get by participating in TV Turn-off Week, which is coming up April 23 to 29.

One other part of Wall's experience (oddly enough chronicled on her web site) drew my attention. She's using a typewriter, but not just any typewriter. The photograph shows her with an Olivetti Lettera 32. She probably doesn't know it, but it was one of the best in its day. The only problem is that "its day" started in 1964, the year Olivetti introduced it. That's 15 years after Wall's targeted time. Still, the Lettera 32 is a great choice. I have a typewriter collection, and the Lettera 32 is among my favorites (see photo).

Oh, and that phone she is shown using is a Western Electric 500, which started production in 1954. In 1949, she likely would have been using a solid Western Electric 302, called a "Lucy" because of its prominent role on "I Love Lucy."

I have one of those too (seen here). It's mostly for old time's sake...and to listen to the dialer mechanically and methodically ratchet through the numbers.