Not All That Shines is Gold
Technology is wreaking havoc with our daily lives. Now, everything is on internet. Whatever we want to find out, we can click a few keys, and the information shows up on a screen. Even on our phones, if we so desire. The only obstruction is paywalls. There are some pages, especially newspapers, that allow only so many free articles a month. After that, pay up, same as if you received it physically at home. Even worse are those newspapers that now can't be seen in Europe because of the new privacy laws. Instead of adapting, they simply shut out the Continent. I take it they assume Europeans don't deserve a variety of information just because we don't want every Tom, Dick, and Harry to knock on our doors or look through our windows.
Our most read regional newspapers are still free online, though. We even have an app installed on our phones of one of them. Now, instead of heading down to the newsstand to buy a paper if we wish to read it, we pull it up on our phone. The result is that we don't have the mounting pile of newspapers at home anymore. Nor do I have the pleasure of reducing that mound by looking through headlines from over a year ago and remembering events that now seem to have occurred donkey's years ago. Of course, that meant that when I went to reduce the overflow, it would take me several hours.
When we used to buy the paper, after reading it, we would chuck it in the spot for the woodpile next to the wood stove. There, it was at hand for whatever else we might need it. If I wanted to put some glasses away, I would grab a newspaper to wrap them in. If I wanted to sop up something spilled on the floor, I would spread out a newspaper on it. If the wood stove acted up and started smoking when I lit it, I would burn some newspaper in the chimney flue to get it started. Clean newspaper would serve to clean windows. Any project involving glue or paint would be done on several pages of newsprint. We never went so far as to wrap hot chestnuts in it, like the chestnut vendor used to do (until E.U. regulations on food wrapping finally hit rural Galicia), but chestnuts, fish and other food have long known newsprint wrapping.
So now, we have less rubbish in the wood bin to clean out, but we have less newspaper to help out around the house. It's not true that day-old newspaper have no value. They have a myriad of different uses after yesterday's news story becomes today's jail sentence. Or release. Or clean-up. Or blizzard. Or hurricane. So, what will I burn when the stove prefers to send the smoke into the kitchen instead of up the chimney? What will I use when I need a sheet of newspaper for a project?
I suppose I'll have to go to a bar and ask for yesterday's newspaper once in a while. Technology is just fine, but using the web page of a newspaper for all the same uses as a physical newspaper is simply not possible. How can I absorb spilt milk with a computer screen? Ah, the quandaries of the modern age!
Our most read regional newspapers are still free online, though. We even have an app installed on our phones of one of them. Now, instead of heading down to the newsstand to buy a paper if we wish to read it, we pull it up on our phone. The result is that we don't have the mounting pile of newspapers at home anymore. Nor do I have the pleasure of reducing that mound by looking through headlines from over a year ago and remembering events that now seem to have occurred donkey's years ago. Of course, that meant that when I went to reduce the overflow, it would take me several hours.
When we used to buy the paper, after reading it, we would chuck it in the spot for the woodpile next to the wood stove. There, it was at hand for whatever else we might need it. If I wanted to put some glasses away, I would grab a newspaper to wrap them in. If I wanted to sop up something spilled on the floor, I would spread out a newspaper on it. If the wood stove acted up and started smoking when I lit it, I would burn some newspaper in the chimney flue to get it started. Clean newspaper would serve to clean windows. Any project involving glue or paint would be done on several pages of newsprint. We never went so far as to wrap hot chestnuts in it, like the chestnut vendor used to do (until E.U. regulations on food wrapping finally hit rural Galicia), but chestnuts, fish and other food have long known newsprint wrapping.
So now, we have less rubbish in the wood bin to clean out, but we have less newspaper to help out around the house. It's not true that day-old newspaper have no value. They have a myriad of different uses after yesterday's news story becomes today's jail sentence. Or release. Or clean-up. Or blizzard. Or hurricane. So, what will I burn when the stove prefers to send the smoke into the kitchen instead of up the chimney? What will I use when I need a sheet of newspaper for a project?
I suppose I'll have to go to a bar and ask for yesterday's newspaper once in a while. Technology is just fine, but using the web page of a newspaper for all the same uses as a physical newspaper is simply not possible. How can I absorb spilt milk with a computer screen? Ah, the quandaries of the modern age!
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