How Far

On many mornings I wake up brimming with ideas for an entry, writing the words in my mind before opening my eyes.  There are days I actually make notes on a theme, a word, a title.  And then there are times when I sit in front of a blank page and my mind is just as empty.  This is one of those times.  I thought perhaps to write of the pleasure I take when a guest tells me how peaceful they find it here, how their stresses drain away.  Opening a new tab on the computer, I looked up the poem written at the base of the Statue of Liberty; "Give me your tired...."  It seemed fitting for the subject.  And then my mind took off in a different direction.

The Dewey Decimal System was as much a part of my growing up as learning to read.  Cabinet makers must have a lot of time on their hands now that they no longer make those wooden banks of drawers made specifically to fit index cards for libraries.  Research for a term paper meant hours if not days in the library, flipping through cards, locating the books, trying to find the exact reference needed for the theme.  I took a course on journalistic law and spent many nights in the law library looking up precedents.

With the advent of the computer and the Internet, all that has changed.  Now it requires a few keystrokes and the world is at our fingertips.  Still in my bathrobe in the comfort of my room, I could access the Statue of Liberty quote in seconds.  Hearing gunshots in the early dawn, I just checked the opening dates for deer season.  Back in the day when I was required to take a much-hated class in Data Processing, it meant hours of keypunching thousands of cards to feed to a room-sized computer.  Years later, I bought an early home PC to use for word processing, wondering how it could be used for anything else.  Now it seems nearly everyone has a computer, a SmartPhone, a laptop, an iPad.  How far we've come.