On New Electronics:

The old lady in me comes out to play when I take a look at new electronics. Not because they baffle me, but because I’m amazed at how the world has changed in my lifetime.

I come from a world of records and record players. 45’s, lp’s, and even 78’s. (Which stands for: 45 and 78 is the speed of the revolutions of the turn table the record is spinning at in a minute and lp stood for long playing which was at 33 1/ 3 speed.) My father had an old Edison Gramophone tube player in the basement when I was a kid. You hand cranked that one to power it.

I remember changing diamond tipped needles on my record player to get better sound out of my records. I remember putting a penny on the arm to help it over the skips and crying when they were scratched beyond use.

I’ve lived through and owned all the evolutions of personal music collections from records to the reel to reel tape players, 8 track tapes, cassette tapes and compact disks (or CD‘s).

I was out shopping yesterday and I picked up a small MP3 player. My first. It’s just 1GB, which translates to around 450 songs or a few hours of video on its tiny 1 3/ 8 inch or 3 1/ 2 cm screen. It is a no-name brand for $30’s at the dollar store.

This gadget has a rechargeable Lithium-polymer battery and comes with a cord to connect it to your computer and earbud headphones. There was also a bonus of free downloads, but I filled that sucker up to the top with music from my computer for the trip before Mountain Man could change into his dancing shoes. And I added a lanyard so it can hang around my neck in the car.

Times may have changed, but I’ll always have music at my finger tips. And I’m loving the space saved by these smaller and longer playing new electronics.