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    Home » The Plain Columns » The Amish Editor

    Monday Musings: 5 Things My Daughter Will Miss...

    Published: Feb 3, 2014 · Updated: Feb 2, 2021 by Kevin Williams | 3 Comments

    Daily discoveries are the occupation of a four month old. As a parent, it’s reliving the excitement as I watch our daughter, Aster, “discover” things as mundane as her toes (which she now realizes she can put in her mouth) and more exciting stuff like the colorful wrapping on a gift. Aster likes to watch Rachel cook in the kitchen, watching mesmerized by the sights, sounds and smells of colorful veggies being diced and chopped or dough being kneaded.  Everything is newly minted fresh for her.

    Aster watched excitedly (it doesn’t take much to excite a 4-month old) as I applied stamps to some cards Rachel was mailing out. Come to think of it, they weren’t exactly stamps. They were postage meter tapes spit out by the automated machine in the lobby of the USPS. No pretty tulips or birds on these, just black and white postage tape. I found myself saying to her “Not sure whether you’ll ever do this Aster, but I’m mailing cards.”
    Let’s say real memory starts at age 10. Of course, most of us have plenty of memories before then. I do. But they are fuzzy. So for the sake of convenience, let’s say life begins at 10. Using that nice round number I find myself contemplating things Aster may never remember or experience.  These are my bold predictions, actually, they aren't so bold, because they are happening as we speak.
    MAILING A LETTER – RIP MR. MCFEELY - Ah, how I loved the show Mr. Rogers as a kid. And a frequent visitor to the show as Mr. McFeeley, the “speedy delivery” postman. But kids won’t know who that even is a generation from now. In the past 10 years the USPS’s mail volume has been eviscerated by electronic bill pay, Facebook, and texts. Why send Aunt Gladys a birthday card when you can just post a meme to her wall, text her, or Skype? The need for daily mail has sunk so far so fast I can’t imagine 10 years from now mail being a meaningful part of most people’s lives.

    A-S-T-E-R: Well, it’s 5 letters, I think Aster will be able to master that. But will she ever need to? Sure, she’ll need to know how to spell her name, but hand-write it? Were it not for the personal journal/diary I keep for myself, I’m not sure I’d pick up an actual pen much more than once a month. Again, texting and keyboarding seems to have put the once ubiquitous pen on the ropes.

    PERSONAL CHECKS: Okay, this one I am pretty convinced about. I doubt Aster will ever own a checkbook or affix her name to a personal check. More and more businesses are dumping the old paper standby. Even among the last hold-outs, The Amish, debit cards connected to a checking account are gaining rapidly in popularity.

    CABLE FRUSTRATIONS: Good riddance. This is something Aster won't experience but she won’t miss. My first memories of cable TV revolve around clunky boxes with buttons. This is one (thank you, Wikipedia) like my grandma had on a table by her favorite chair for most of my childhood. Our part of Ohio had one of the first cable systems in the nation, a local outfit called Miami Valley Cable. And I think at its peak maybe there were 40 channels. Our friends in Columbus subscribed to an exciting, fledgling service called QUBE which made Miami Valley Cable’s offerings look sparse. But today with streaming content and a la carte options available in such diverse places as YouTube, Netflix, and even Amazon, the cable industry is a dinosaur, a bloated brontosaurus in danger of collapsing under its own weight, not nimble enough to survive in a changing world.  Many friends are "cutting the cable cord" in the same way people cut the land-lines to phones several years ago. This trend will only accelerate.
    NEWSPAPERS: By the time Aster is 10, the daily newspaper will be something found lining boxes in the attic or coloring the memories of tales told to her by her daddy. Perhaps more than most people, I love newspapers; but love won’t keep us together. Love  didn’t with Captain and Tennile and  it won’t with papers. There simply is little reason for them in a world where real-time news is digested with a quick click on the eco-friendly confines of a screen. The paper part will die, but the New York Times and others will live online.
    I was going to include a fax machine on this list, but I don’t even use those any more. They are already essentially gone, replaced by the photographic click of a phone and an instant jpeg. Phones connected to the wall with a cord.  Those almost made my list too, but those are already mostly gone.
    Anything that I’ve missed that are a daily part of our lives now but won’t be a scant 10 years from now?

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    About Kevin Williams

    Hi, my name is Kevin Williams and I am owner of Oasis Newsfeatures and editor of The Amish Cook newspaper column.

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    Comments

    1. Kentucky Lady 717

      February 03, 2014 at 12:45 pm

      This is a great posting today Kevin....love hearing about ASTER....can we see a picture of her now that she is 4 mos. old ?
      I think all of us on here would love to see more pictures of her.....she sounds so sweet and you are so right about all the things you said.....you need to take a picture of her the next time you go to the post office with her and put that in her journal that you're keeping for her....she will love going back and looking at all her baby pictures and all the places you took her and then you can explain what the post office was 🙂 I really don't think the post office will be gone entirely......just fewer of them maybe....with the price of postage going up, who can afford it ???? I never could see why they have to make all these large postage stamps anyway....who cares about the people they put on there anyways ? You can see that online....and they would be using less paper, less ink...less everything.....just use the flag stamp.....we all know what that means.....and most of us don't even look at the stamps when we rec. a letter/bills anyway.....I don't care to see a wolf or some person on a stamp that maybe I don't even know.....keep it simple and cheap......this is a pet peeve of mine.....I am sure I am not the only one who feels like this.....I'd like to save my extra pennies to buy something I can either eat or keep......who wants to keep these stamps ?????
      Even tho I do have a lot of stamps I collected over the yrs. when I worked and my grandkids could care less about them.....now what do I do with all these stamps????? Do you collect stamps and would you like these ? Seems they are just taking up space in my garage......some may be worth money sometimes.....but I am sure not in my lifetime or even my kids or grandkids.....just sayin.................................

      Reply
    2. Rebecca Wellington

      February 03, 2014 at 1:07 pm

      I love hearing about Aster. Babies and children are so much fun. Becky

      Reply
    3. Cheryl

      February 03, 2014 at 1:07 pm

      I was and still a stamp collector.........when I am finally not around I won't really care what my nieces and nephews
      do with those guys.....but I have to admit.....still a fun hobby.....even tho a bit pricey.....
      ...I agree...take lots of snapshots of your daughter.......especially in the post office ...grocery
      store.....so on and so forth! don't forget the parks......
      I had one of those cable boxes.......back in the 80's.....especially when cable was under $10.00!
      have a good week....

      Reply

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    Kevin Williams - The Amish Editor Amish Cook Column

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    Welcome to Amish365, where I share my knowledge of Amish cooking and culture! I’ve spent almost three decades exploring Amish settlements and kitchens from Maine to Montana and almost everywhere in between. I’ll occasionally throw in stories of my travels, journalism adventures (I’m a Pulitzer prize-nominated journalist), fascination with grocery stores and Kmarts, and much more!

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