Same As It Ever Was

Every summer for nearly a decade we have been fortunate enough to have friends who have invited us to join them at their beach place. They are very kind, inviting us for a weekend of conversation, good food and relaxation. The location has changed over time, and the weather dictates our exact schedule. But the basic outline of our getaway includes all the normal vacation to-do's: bike rides, barbecues and as much ice cream as we can stomach.

Of course, the main event, and one of the highlights of having a beach vacation at a beach house is you get to go to the beach. Every group that has a similar experience, be it family or friends, has their own set of rituals and rhythms involving what they bring and what they do, but it likely involves a subset of certain activities. Chairs, umbrellas and blankets are schlepped. Locations are scouted. Base camps are set up, and then the festivities commence. Those include people watching, dozing, walking to the water's edge to cool off, and jumping in the waves. Cold drinks and salty snacks are consumed, supplemented by trips to the snack bar for hot food and cold ices. If kids are involved there is likely a bucket and shovel component, be it to build a castle, dig a hole or bury a sibling. And perhaps highest on the list is sitting, staring at the ocean, doing nothing, and not feeling guilty about it. Rinse (quite literally) and repeat.

Our outing this year was no different. But as I looked around I was struck by the similarity to the same type of outing we had done more than a dozen years ago with other friends, the same as when we had visited relatives at the shore 15 and 20 years ago, and before that when we had rented assorted houses and taken our kids away for a week before school started. Come to think of it, it was the same when we were kids, and our parents did the same with us. Indeed, I suspect that with some very minor modifications, it was no different for them and their parents, and on and on back fifty and even a hundred years.

That's something you can't say about almost anything else. There is no space, no activity, no part of our lives that has remained essentially unchanged for a decade, let alone the last century. While the pandemic certainly had massive impacts, well before that things had changed and shifted, some faster than others, but unmistakably different. Work? Decentralized and remote to be sure, but driven by technology the workplace of today is unrecognizable from fifty years ago. School? Classrooms are still there, but teaching methods and modalities have evolved way past composition books and weekly readers. Transportation, entertainment, shopping: the list is endless and the changes mind boggling.

But the beach remains the same. There are of course cosmetic changes. Swimming "costumes," especially for women, have changed. Umbrella technology has advanced, branching beyond simple sunshades to entire cabanas that fit in a carry bag. Games have evolved, from simple throwing a ball to sand darts and paddle games and other bouncy things. But if you were to drop a turn-of-the-century person into the middle of Jones or Seaside or Rehoboth today, odds are the only thing that would make them feel out of sorts would be the bikinis.

As if to reinforce the static nature of the environment, where we were I noted a lifeguard standing up on his chair and signaling the next station. No walkie talkies or cell phones here, he was using flags to spell out something in semaphore like it was a naval exercise in 1922. I went over and asked if that's what he was indeed doing. "Yeah," he replied like I was an idiot, "beach semaphore." It's also worth noting he looked just as bored as lifeguards have for eternity, something else that hasn't changed.

Sometimes you need a simple place, one that you don't have to constantly adapt to. The shore in all its iterations provides that refuge. No new app, no new software, no battery that has to be charged. As simple as one of the characters in this summer's hit movie, "Barbie." As Ken says, "Yeah, because actually my job, it's just Beach."

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Marc Wollin of Bedford hates using anything above SPF 15. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, The Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/, as well as via Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

What Took You So Long?

Maybe you hit "Send" a minute ago. Maybe it was five. Maybe it was an hour or a day or a week. Makes no difference, the question remains the same: why haven't they responded? Don't they know that you have put your entire life on hold pending their reply? You could have moved on to other important things, like writing that proposal or making dinner or letting your girlfriend know that you will be wearing the blue dress this weekend. But no, there you are, tapping your fingers. The world might not have stopped spinning, but what happens next is your particular corner of the planet is on hold, pending your phone pinging.

That wait to complete a communication loop is an unfortunate corollary of having 24-hour access to virtually everyone all the time. After all, access is one thing; availability is another. Ever since phones were invented we have had the ability to at least try and contact someone whenever we wanted. However, there was no assurance that they would be in a position to be on the receiving end when we made the call. The remedy to that missed connection was simple: you hung up and tried again.

The invention of the answering machine changed that balance. No longer was the burden on the caller. Rather, they could leave a message, shifting the responsibility to continue the interaction from the caller to the callee. It was then incumbent on the second party to ring back the first to complete the exchange. But while it shifted the obligation from one side to the other, it also shifted control. Rather than responding in the moment, you could consider the request, formulate a response, or even delay calling back until circumstances or further information helped to dictate the reply.

The advent of different methods of communication didn't change that dynamic, it only gave it more avenues to play out. Additionally, this asynchronous interaction fostered an evolving set of metrics, determined by both modality and use case. Or as Diana Ross would have put it more simply, it's all about how you reach out and whom you are trying to touch.

Phone messages usually have the longest window. Whether it's a business-related call or a friend seeking to finalize arrangements for an upcoming get together, you have a solid day or three to respond without looking like you're hiding. And that's if anyone even leaves a message. Just as likely they will let it ring a few times, then hang up before it goes to voicemail and switch over to an alternate pathway. The one exception is mom: she will leave a message, and she will expect a call back before the sun next sets. 

Next up in the hierarchy (or down, depending on your point of view) is email. This has evolved to be for more formal back and forths, be it swapping recipes, detailing a weekend away or a proposal for a kitchen remodeling. In business the expectation of a response is 24 hours; with family and friends you probably have twice that. Any longer and things will likely escalate to the next avenue, with a terse "check your email.”

That next avenue (actually more of an expressway) has become the de facto default for many: the text in its various iterations, be it SMS, iMessage, Whatspp or other variant. Perhaps symptomatic of our society's wide craving for instant gratification, this is where we expect the fastest response time, with the relationship between the parties suggesting the expected speed of reply. If it's business related you have a day. If it's family you have the afternoon. If it's friends, you have 10 minutes. And with your best BFF's, the "Chinese Food Standard” applies: ready (or in this case respond) as soon as the phone is hung up.

As with many things, it's all about context. Were Einstein to tailor his famous explanation to the situation at hand, it might go like this: when the water is squirting out of the faucet and you have to wait for a call back from the plumber, every minute seems like an hour. But when your sister iMessages you demanding to know how come mom gave you her pearl earrings, every hour can seem like a minute. That's texting relativity.

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Marc Wollin of Bedford tries not to look at his phone every time it buzzes. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, The Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/, as well as via Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

Don't Fix That

If you are a parent, you are constantly imparting little bits of knowledge to your kids about how to make their way in the world. The hope is that by the time they get to be practicing adults they will have a reservoir of best practices that will carry them through life. Usually based on your own experiences and learnings, they run the gamut from theoretical to practical, from emotional to physical. It might be how to balance a checkbook or treat a spouse, how to make lasagna or fix a flat tire, how to pack a suitcase or water the plants. 

It starts as soon as they are born, as you first model behavior, then teach specific skills, then show by example and hope they pick up the cues. By the time they start to leave the nest you've pretty much done all you can do. Sure, there's the occasional call to mom or dad with specific queries, such as when to add bleach to the wash, or what that recipe was for hummus, or tell me again how to fix a leaky faucet. But usually offering unsolicited advice long distance is a fool's errand, likely met with bored affirmation meant to keep you placated, perhaps resembling how you treated your own parents. On top of that, the advent of the internet has meant there is another authoritative source for much of that same information, complete with diagrams and no war stories. 

Still, when one of our sons called home on a recent weekend, I felt I would be remiss if I didn't offer up one piece of advice that somehow escaped me over his more than three decades on this planet. To be truthful, I thought I was done with imparting life-lessons. I knew whatever I had told him to that point had either stuck or not, and he was doing just fine on his own. Still, I couldn't forgive myself if I didn't pass on an imperative. Whether or not he honored it going forward would be up to him, but at least I felt that I could live out my days knowing I had done my best.

As relatively new homeowners, he and his wife had spent the last year or so dealing with all the usual fun and games that come with being lords of your own domain. They were successful working their way through whatever challenges cropped up, certainly no better or worse than we did when we were in their shoes. But having just flaunted one of my own personal maxims, and paid the price dearly, I had to lay down one last relevant marker.

Never do home repairs on a Sunday morning.

We're not talking about changing a lightbulb or hanging a picture. We are talking anything that directly relates to your home's infrastructure, be it plumbing, electrical, or other things best handled by a skilled tradesman, but which seem like you could tackle on your own and save a few bucks. I know it's tempting to go at it on the weekend when you have the time and quiet to replace that light switch or deal with that drip. And I'm not saying you can't replace a leaky toilet valve or upgrade a thermostat on your own. It's just that no matter how simple it seems, the potential exists for it to go south. And if it does, and it will, getting help is that much more difficult and expensive on Saturday or Sunday.

In my case it simply involved turning off a toilet supply line. Simple, that is, until the valve broke off in my hand, spraying water everywhere. The only option was to shut off all the water and call a plumber. On a Sunday morning. At 830AM. On Father's Day. You would have thought that by now I would have known not to play with plumbing out of regular business hours. Obviously not.

Thankfully we got a guy relatively quickly and the problem was fixed, though it cost twice what it should have. So much for heeding my own advice. Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote "A man builds a fine house; and now he has a master, and a task for life: he is to furnish, watch, show it, and keep it in repair, the rest of his days." Right you are, Ralph. Just don't do it on a Sunday.

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Marc Wollin of Bedford hates plumbing. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, The Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/, as well as via Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

What to Watch/Listen/Read

One of the defining notes of our age is how everyone can be a publisher of content. No more being beholden to a major media conglomerate for our news, entertainment or reading material. With precious few limitations and restrictions, now literally anyone who has access to the internet can create programs or publications and make them available to any person to read, listen or watch. That's not lowering the barrier to entry, that's eliminating it.

That has meant that the supply side has exploded. Comparisons are hard to make as the landscape has so completely changed. But as a point of reference consider the shape of the television broadcast industry. As late as the mid 1970's, if you wanted to curl up and be a couch potato, your choices were one of three commercial networks plus what we now know as PBS. Added to that was a smattering of UHF and cable outlets with very limited reach, most of which were just rebroadcasting the major networks and producing almost no original programming. And of course, there was no internet. 

Fast forward to the present day and there are hundreds of channels and networks, including specialty providers like ESPN, Home Shopping Network and CNN, and boutique providers like Hulu, Netflix and BritBox. And that doesn't even count YouTube, where most of the content comes from individuals vs. companies. At last report there were more than 114 million YouTube channels. To that smorgasbord are added more than 150,0000 new videos every minute. At an average length of 4.4 minutes, that's around 330,000 new hours of content for you to watch every 60 minutes. If you started to watch just what is up there at this moment (putting aside that more is added every second), it would take 17,810 years to get through the current postings. Better make sure your phone is charged. 

It's the same for whatever medium you examine. Art, books, audio, poetry: with no gatekeepers needed, the deluge continues. There are sports, true crime, fan fiction and a host of others, not to mention virtually every sub-sub-sub genre of those you can think of. Most of these efforts garner audiences numbering in the single or double digits at best, with just a few breaking out to achieve widespread consumption. But that doesn't stop creators from putting them out there, and hoping their piece is the one that catches fire.

There are even new art forms that didn't exist a few years ago, let alone have a distribution platform. Up until about 2000, if you wanted to listen to a program that was audio-only, you turned on the radio. Then "podcasting" made an appearance, enabling users to download and listen to any show when they wanted. And today, according to podcastindex.org, there are north of 4 million audio-on-demand programs available for your aural pleasure. Indeed, someone (maybe you) is listening right now: as of 2023, 42% of Americans ages 12 and older have listened to a podcast in the past month, up three and a half times from 10 years ago.

While exact numbers are hard to come by as distribution is fragmented, the most popular programs garner huge audiences. The runaway leader is "The Joe Rogan Experience" with around 11 million downloads per episode, followed by "The Daily" from The New York Times and "This American Life," usually heard on National Public Radio. A good bit further down the list is "Weird Parents" featuring episodes like "Should You Let Your Kids Swear?", "Podcast But Outside" where the hosts set up in different locations and interview random strangers who walk by (and pay them a dollar for appearing), and "What Ever Happened to Pizza at McDonald's", a topic which requires so much explanation that they are currently breaking the 300 episode barrier. 

This all means that we have an embarrassment of riches as never before. Whether you want to read, listen or watch, your problem isn't having choices, it's making them. Thankfully you have nothing better to do, right? Which leads to the existential question: did we have so much free time with nothing to do that we created podcasts? Or did we have to create podcasts because we had so much free time and nothing to do? And if the answer is neither, then who is listening to all this stuff?

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Marc Wollin of Bedford can't take enough long walks to stay current on his feeds. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, The Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/, as well as via Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.