Operator, can you give me the number for 2014?
I’m on what I guess you’d call a Bizness Trip, some meeting over the mountains to see which is easier, moving those or my incalcitrant architect who wants my stained glass windows to go anywhere but in his. Frank Lloyd Wright spoiled these guys — they all think they’re geniuses and everything in their building should be designed only by them. My boy, in fact, wanted to redesign my proposal, but the art committee told him mine was their choice. Probably why they picked me in the first place…. So here we are once again, locked in mortal aesthetic combat. Swell. Welcome to the politics of public art.
50/50 he even shows up. He’s canceled or missed three out of the last four. If I owned a cellphone or had a laptop, I suppose I could receive a cancellation notification, let me know I might as well drive home and salvage one day at least. But I’m still living in mid- 20th century, I guess, and for the near term I’m willing to accept some consequences for my refusal to embrace instantaneous communication.
My cheap motel has made the assumption, since they don’t have a phone that can place anything but local calls, that we all carry cellphones now. I can, however, order delivery pizza. Try to find a public phone booth anymore. If you do, Sasquatch is probably using it as an office. I’m realizing as slow as I possibly can that the world moves on and doesn’t necessarily care if you come with it. Microsoft announced this week it would no longer support its old XP computers. I won’t call this planned obsolescence, but consumers sure need to plan on obsolescence. The future is rolling up the carpet, the sidewalks and all us pedestrians behind it.
It’s one thing to live in a museum of the mind, but I notice visiting hours are dwindling fast. Just like us docents…
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