Web Log for 4.15.26

And what some readers have been waiting for...a link!

Family Nags 

On his new Substack, Garrison Keillor posted his very first "Note" to the site's social page, calling attention to a full-length blog post about a handwritten letter from a departed aunt. 

His fans, mostly baby-boomers or older, didn't whine about being neglected by the young the way some older people did when I was "the young." (Most older people I knew were not withering away in assisted care places, back then, but they'd sit in their own homes, in their own gardens, and carry on as if they were--as if they weren't able to get out and enjoy the weather all by themselves. We should appreciate what we have.) But a few plangent notes were struck. Someone's young relatives wouldn't be able to read cursive. (We should all try to write letters that will make people WANT to learn to read cursive, or whatever some of us call what we do to a helpless piece of paper.)  Someone's young relative had stopped speaking to person because they disagreed about a politician. (What is wrong with a person who lets a politician come between person and per relatives?) 

Then there's this...

https://writinginnorthnorfolk.com/2017/04/15/a-walk-on-the-cutting-edge/

I am aware that some people still use phones and, for them, a phone conversation may be the way they visit their elders, who may be Peace Corps volunteers in Lebanon or who knows what. But I hope the behavior described in this poem has gone completely extinct by now.

There were times, when I had elders I visited often, when they'd take a phone call from some other elder I did not visit often, and make it a three-way (or more-way) conversation. There were times when I'd check my cell phone and say "There's my car pool!" and text "OK" before picking up my coat and saying goodbye. 

But generally, I would recommend to "the young" that, when visiting people who don't neglect you in favor of a blinking box, those who still use phones shut them off for the duration. Or pick up a call and say with dignity, "I'm at my grandmother's house. I'll call you back," and switch off the phone.