60 Years Are Too Many: When The Old Ways Are Actually Cooler But My Brain Still Skips Around.

 3 July 2026

        While I wonder at congress' inability to physically move and form a human chain in front of 100 year old cherry trees, and can't understand how being against Israel's bullying make someone an anti semite, and listen to CPR and mourn so much fire in my state, I am heartened by a small blip.

        Ya gotta take the delights even when they're small.

        I hear Gen Z is dialing it back-pun intended;ditching iPhones and social media for flip phones. I wish I could take credit for this, as a person who has taught high schoolers how to dial old rotary phones for many years. The trend includes many who are getting "into" old school photography---buying Canons and sending film off for developing. I actually know of one 18 year old doing this, and a kid on the musical had an old polaroid. Deeeeelightful.

        As someone who was dragged kicking and screaming into the digital age; someone who sitll refuses to put apps on her phone. I refuse to attach my school's email to my phone. Someone who does not use instant messenger on facebook any more because they want a PIN and I don't think I should have to do that. I am someone who will go to the bank to make deposits and use the ATM to deliberately use cash. Someone who has analog clocks and my dad's analog watch. 

        Someone who is addicted to facebook.

        Which I am not going to get on at all today. I've done it for 24 hours before, I can do it again. I can find my news--Meidas Touch and Aaron Parnas---on my computer, and I'm currently listening to morning addition on NPR. I long for a newspaper dropped on my driveway.

        I doubt this little spark of interest in old school photography and phones will translate into a beautiful wave of anti tech sentiment. But if it did, I would be delighted. I would not be one of the New Leaders, there are others more staunch than I about turntables and radios with batteries and VCR's. Yet I would definitely rejoice, as I would take their interest as younger people as a positive sign that All Is Not Lost. I would celebrate by waving my old red slider phone that I was forced to give up when the slider broke, and they stopped making them!

        I still need to follow through and figure out how to get a land line again.

        I have some great old typewriters in the props closet, I just need to clean one up and buy a ribbon. Doesn't Jeff Goldblum restore old typewriters? What a cool hobby.

        I'd love a real homecoming parade with actual floats.

        I am dreading the new tech they're installing in the theatre. Apparently we're getting a tablet to control the fly system. That'll go well. It works in professional theatre because they get superior equipment with appropriate support. We get whatever they have the most of, or misordered and have an overstock. That is how every theatre in Aurora got the same light board that was intended to be for DJ's. To be fair, once I learned the thing it was fabulous-really user friendly and easy peasy to set cues.

        When we did Earnest at Littleton, the light designer found an old fixture with gel rotators and worked tirelessly to make it work. It added to the steampunk vibe on the show. We were both pretty jazzed about it.

         There are a stack of old instruments on the second floor of the Kennedy cat, but I am not qualified to sort through it and figure out how to use it. Especially if we're going to all LED color changers now. No room for anything cool old school. 

            I've done my share of creative lighting. Borrowing light trees for side light. Building footlights-which I do not take credit for I supplied the materials and said "I want footlights" and the kid made it happen. I lit NYC behind the window of Odd Couple this fall with two floor lamps with blue bulbs and one sourcie par with a blue gel. Kennedy has zero trees. I had trees at Hinkley and Littleton and used the heck of out of them, because schools don't have side light fixtures. They like to claim that they do because they mount trees in the house on both sides of the house, but those only throw the the apron and people are stupid.

            I know just enough about lighting to sound like I know about lighting.

            I am the kid that would hold a clear jug of colored water in front of a spot light for effect. I like old school. 

            I am heartened by the news that others younger than myself feel as I do about old stuff. I switched from NPR to 93.3, and I am loving having a radio in my house. I love local.

            Sometimes writing is truly just a journal. But I'll hit "publish" anyway, because that's part of the ritual.