Okay I know I am only almost-40 but I keep noticing changes in the world. Forget about things like not locking your house, or when Peters Drumstick hit $1.00 (I mean who would/could pay that much for an icecream!) and the good changes like blogging, but I guess I am talking about what I consider to be "heart and soul" differences.The latest, I noticed with great sadness, is the new phone book, dropped off last night. Again I have to give one of my early caveats and state that I would only use the paper phone book (maybe) once a year - I have the online version for everyday use - and in saying that I am acknowledging that for many they are outdated and nothing more than a doorstop. Actually, to digress a little, I had confirmation of this when I asked one of my lovelies (when I was working with the lovelies) to look something up and they didn't know what alphabetical order was, the difference between the white and yellow pages - the whole concept was very foreign.
But back to the latest phone book.
I remember when the release of the phone book was a big thing - not just because you got to lookup your own details and check their correctness - but because there was an annual competition to design the cover. Often they were bright and happy pictures done by small children or touristy shots but they were important, they were a part of our community, a part of us.
The latest one just has advertising material without even the pretense of pretending to be anything else. I wonder how many years it has been like this and I didn't notice - or has it been progressive salami-tactics?
Sigh, the world is a changing and sometimes I don't even notice until it is too late.
3 comments:
here in New Zealand, we still have a competition to design the cover. and lots of sports teams deliver the actual books as a fundraiser.
hope it doesn't change for a while.
send it my way and i'll recycle it under my mulch, thats where mine has gone, i wish you could elect to not have one, or better still have to go and collect it if you did want one, just such a waste of paper when info is available online :(
Amen Kyles! The one I especially hate is the edition they send out that is referred to as "the User-Friendly Phone Book". User friendly, Bah!! It is the most difficult phonebook to use I've ever come across in my life, and everyone I've ever talked to has the same opionion. I don't even take mine out of the wrapper, it goes straight to the heap.
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