It is definitely winter here, at least for a few days. I have a winter picture to post but Blogger is having issues with uploading pictures so it will not appear here. I understand why bears hibernate in the winter, I've been off the last week and just hibernated indoors sewing, knitting, and reading.
The reading has been related to my next class which starts on Monday. I'm delighted because it is American Literature but sad because most of my remaining classes are all business related. I've always loved to read and seeing a syllabus that pretty much says read this and write this was pure joy!
One of the first week's readings was Washington Irving's Rip Van Winkle. Strangely, I don't ever remember reading this story. Maybe I did, but I just don't think I did either. I do remember seeing a cartoon version that featured Mr. Magoo (remember him, ha ha) when I was about 7 or 8. Sad, isn't it that I relate a classic story to a cartoon. I can now say that I have read the actual story. It is well written, easy to read and enjoyable. I have often been really tired and wished that I could lay down and just sleep for a long, long time like Rip did! His world had changed while he slept after his encounter with the Old Dutch men playing nine-pins. But he slips easily into the new world and again finds himself as well liked as before, especially since his nagging wife is no more.
My thoughts turned to thinking back twenty years in our current world. What if I had fallen asleep in 1993 and woke up today? In 1993 cell phones were big, heavy devices that we carried around in a bag and they were just a phone, nothing else. If you had a PC it ran on DOS, I think. I think lap tops were just coming out and the Internet was still a novelty. I had a Sony Walkman, you either listened to the radio or a cassette tape (CDs were just coming out, too). Many of the stores that I frequented at that time are now long gone. Dress styles have defintely changed. Writing a check for a meal or a puchase was still commonplace, debit cards weren't accepted in many places. September 11, 2001 would have changed the world, too. I won't even go into the current budget deficit and how different that was twenty years ago. On second thought I don't think I want to sleep that long, too much change in our world!
It is winter, time to curl up and read and escape into the world of the written word.
You made me smile this morning. Yes indeed, my first mobile phone probably weighed 10 pounds, and was the size of a diaper bag and only worked plugged into the cigarette lighter in the car. My second one was a tiny little thing--only weighed about 5 pounds and was the size of a milk carton. It could hold a brief charge, so you could have access to the phone for about 30 minutes without it being plugged in. I got my first lap top in 1994!
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