Racing Towards Obsolescence

Racing Towards Obsolescence

By Ruth Lampert
October 7, 2011

I thought I had said my last farewell to the Time Lady, but earlier today I noticed that the clock on my living room shelf showed a slightly different time than the one in the kitchen. From the depths of fond memory came a voice I thought was long-stilled:
“I’ll check it out with the Time Lady.”

My official eulogy to this gracious creature was in a blog two years ago, but as with anything/anyone well-loved, memories surface unexpectedly. I was still smiling in fond remembrance when I went to unplug my cell phone from the charging connection, and another unbidden thought surfaced:
“Am I the only person in the civilized world whose cell phone does not include a camera?”

And of course from that it was but a little skip to sweet memories of Photography Back Then. I’m talking about my childhood which is way, way, way, way back. Photography meant taking photos of the family - professional photography was categorized as “Art” in my mind, and in fact it still is.

Our family pictures were not “candid.” They were planned and orchestrated. The first thing to be considered was who stood where. While our dad was alive, most family shots show him and Mother standing in the back row, then older sister Cine and older brother Bob in front of them, and me (“the baby,”) in the first row. (Who took those pictures of all five of us? A neighbor? A relative????)

Later, there were other poses, but indeed we posed, sometimes sitting on the lawn. (Always outdoors, of course. If you don’t understand why, you are considerably younger than I am.),

Part of the ritual was taking the film to the drugstore to be developed, picking up the yellow envelope days later (or was it a week?) and excitedly looking through the shots to see which ones had “come out really good.”

And later, the thrill of “instant” photography, which Wikipedia (how long before that word is drenched in nostalgia?) tells me, was founded by the Polaroid Corporation in 1937 by Edwin H. Land and “reached the market in 1948 and continued to be the company’s flagship product line until the February 2008 decision to cease all production…”

And you don’t have to be very old to remember sitting on your grandma’s couch and looking through all those albums of all those aunts and uncles and cousins….
O.K, enough of that. Fast forward past all the amazing technological wonders including, I am pleased to note: Blogs!

And they are changing I feel it coming. Nostalgia marches on.

Meanwhile: Tony, what time do you have?