Workaday Workhorses

Collectors and hobbyists spend a lot of time coveting the objects of their passions, but it occurred to me that the items I actually use and depend on the most are the most humble.

Aside from my car and computer, they are a Sansa Clip mp3 player and an old Sony Sony Psyc Atrac 3:

That's an old JCPenney MCS Series TV and oscilloscope under the Sony. It was the first TV I bought with my own money. And my pipes. I used to smoke, but no longer. The white one is a meerschaum from Turkey given to me by my brother Tom upon one of his returns from overseas while he was in the Marines. (That’s a close-up at the top of this post.)

Both devices have been 100% reliable; they're rugged, turn on and off every day when I ask them to, and do what they're designed to do. (The Sony came with a remote; I use it like most people use a TV, same batteries I put in 8 years ago or so. The Sansa remembers where I left off for as many books as I'm listening to; no apps, no iTunes.)

There are no long lines at Best Buy when a new Sansa comes out. There are few that care about a reliable radio.[1]

That's how it is with the best technology. It works its way through a useful life and is discarded in massive numbers. Not until they are unearthed a thousand years hence will someone say "Holy cow, that society must have had a bunch of these in every home."

The concept extends to other things, of course, most notably people. Few of us pause to consider the people that empty our trash, clean our bathrooms, pave our roads, police our streets, teach our children, grow and pick our vegetables, stock our grocery stores, clean and clothe and house the destitute. They occupy most of the plots in our graveyards and will be the ones a thousand years hence that will tell the story of how our age treated the masses that did most of the working and paying and living and dying.

Gray's "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" captures this better than I ever could; one of the pieces that compelled me to change majors in college. Read Gray’s Elegy here . (The wisdom of that choice is open to debate, but I was an atrocious physicist.)

In those days there was no Internet, just libraries. I photocopied it from the Calvin College library in it's original 18th Century type face, bound it and carried it with me through my undergrad years.

The impact of the right words at the right time is no trivial thing.

[1]
Some do, thankfully. Check out Herculodge  for daily radio conversation by collectors for collectors about collecting.

Started: 2012-05-16