Contributed by Stella Coraggio
Life has been busy in this first chapter, and I am forced to keep up with or rebel against the increasingly intrusive technology. Those are my choices. Let it control and roll over me by force or rebel against it. I’ve chosen the latter and I’m slowing this freight train down. Like everything in life, good and bad has come from it but in our personal lives, we're missing out on the authentic moments. There is a sweet, slow, good life that is disappearing.
So far, I've had a boatload of fun performing on stage in bands since I was a 16-year-old in Chicago, had a memorable summer stint as a ranch horse guide in the Colorado Rockies, attained a college education and slipped the surly bonds as a pilot flying along the Salinas river and around the highest North American Peak. I've lived on the beach on the California coast and in a cabin along a Carmel Valley creek hunting for crawdads and barreling down roads on a kickstart Honda 250. I have run a flight business or two, and I've been partner to raising confident boys to be good, thoughtful guys.
Now to my point. Most of that was accomplished without the assistance of Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and all the other portals to enlightenment offered by the uninvited and opinionated masses. I'm not angry or bitter, I just suddenly remembered something this morning. Shall I risk saying it? Is it time for an introspective looksie from the outside despite the tree-huggin', global heatin’, controversy out there?…
Here it is. I like paper. And no, the claim that I am allegedly contributing to the demise and well-being of trees is not lost on me. I like trees too. It’s a dilemma. Here's why I like paper. I like paper because every morning, my dogs and I walk down to the bottom of our gravel hill and retrieve the newspaper for my 98-year-old very independent mom living next door to us. Every morning she sits down to her cup of tea and toast to read that ever-diminishing newspaper. She has been doing that as far back as I can remember. It was consistent and grounding and the one daily thing I could count on.
You know what I mean? There’s that one thing that you didn't know would be a thing until after you didn't have that thing anymore? I can see her sitting every evening in her comfortable shiny faux-leather dark brown chair with the family dog at her feet after her nine-to-five work day while all the chaos of single-handedly raising five kids and life marched along.
Here's the other thing. I like trees too. I like trees because while she was reading that tree-killing paper, my friends and I would climb branches to the garage roof, compliments of our back-yard cherry tree. I can still see that first crooked branch and me jumping up and grabbing at it, sometimes two or three tries. I was barely able to wrap my tom-boyish dirty hands around it as I pulled myself upward, swinging and gaining momentum to curl my bare feet around that upper stump, hoisting myself to the thinner branches and climbing higher through the cherry blossoms. Plucking and eating cherries along the way, I'd finally reach the destination and jump onto the hot summer roof with my neighborhood friends in tow. I cherish all those memories, secret teenage conversations, first kisses, and suntans that this tree provided us. We would hang out there talking about everything and nothing laying on our towels and relishing the warm summer sweet cherries we shared from our tin kitchen colander. It was a slow-paced, protected, cocooned life in the heart of the south-side Chicago suburbs. My grandpa built the house and planted the cherry tree and a peach tree which never really produced edible peaches. Those peaches served as little fuzz-covered weapons to throw at the passing boys down on the side street.
All this was happening while my mom read the evening paper. Admittedly, I’m not claiming that the news was shrouded in rose colored glasses because, I mean, C’mon… it was Chicago news. but the delivery was a slower process. This is my point and the dilemma. I think our brains and emotions are meant for that slower life. She had time to soak it in, sleep on it, and discuss it the next day or even all week long maybe with my older siblings or her sisters or brothers living on the other side of town. It wasn't the fast-paced, zippity zap disappearing computer news of five minutes ago. I admit that the technological advancements are absolutely amazing to me but in our personal lives, this is all spiraling uncontrollably too much too fast. I tried it and I could do without it unless of course, I'd like to know what's going on in my friends and families lives.
So, in conclusion, I like paper and I like trees. I'm starting my own revolution. It's time to climb slow and easy back down that tree one branch at a time and find balance, get on solid ground. Let's face it. Computers do more damage than we had planned on anyway using reems of disposed, shredded paper than we planned on with all the printing and overpriced plastic ink cartridges. As for the news. These rapidly changing "breaking stories" on-screen media-driven moments seem to be begging for a break from the resulting harsh exhaustive repetition. I see proof of that desire to slow down from my boys in their 20s and 30s when we hang out for a few hours or talk on the actual phone with words.
So, I for one am taking the plunge, or maybe just a small dip. I think it's time to read something on paper, eat cherries, and take time to throw some peaches.