Day: January 15, 2014

WORD A WEEK PHOTOGRAPHS – WAITING

From Word a Week Photographs, this week’s one word challenge is WAITING.

And here, from the Worcester branch of Massachusetts’ Registry of Motor Vehicles, the final statement in waiting.

Waiting at the Registry of Motor Vehicles

WHY I DON’T LOVE CELL PHONES

Everyone loves their cell phone except me, or anyway that’s how it feels. I know there are other people like me who are not enchanted with the technology, but it’s dreadfully unfashionable to express an anti-cell phone opinion.

I am not a fan. It’s not because I’m stodgy and old, though I’m probably both those things among many others. It’s because they are good for almost everything except their original purpose. Making phone calls. The audio quality is pathetic. They disconnect randomly and often. I need reading glasses to see anything on the screen. I could forgive everything else if I could make a phone call — or receive one — and know I’d be able to communicate with the other party with a reasonable likelihood of staying connected all the way to the end of the call while hearing and being heard.

iphone-whiteIronically, our old cell phones, the big klutzy brick like ones we had back in the 90s, were better telephones than the iPhone or any other phone you can get now. They connected, stayed connected. You could hear the person on the other end and they could hear you. The batteries lasted for days, not hours and you could get a signal anywhere. You could have conversations that didn’t include a single “can you hear me?” How amazing is that?

Today’s phones are miniature entertainment centers. But I don’t need an entertainment center. I need a portable telephone. So I can talk to people when I’m away from home. Is that too much to ask?

As for taking pictures on my phone, why? I carry a compact point and shoot wherever I go. It has a superzoom and takes high quality pictures. I like cameras. I have a lot of them. I don’t need my phone to be a camera. Or a movie theater. Or to listen to music. The whole “listening to music on your cell” is weird to me. The speakers are so tinny, why would you want to use them for music? I need a telephone.

I know the younger generations would rather text, but they were born with pointy little thumbs. Alas, but I have big, cumbersome, slow thumbs designed for grasping tools, an advanced monkey version of thumbs.

So I don’t like cell phones, or more accurately, I don’t like the cell phones they make these days. They are light, small and totally adorable.  And useless for making phone calls. Which is the only use I have for them. For everything else, I have computers, cameras, readers, GPS, radios, CD players. DVD players, televisions and little music players.

Does anyone actually use their cell phone to call anyone anymore? Just wondering.

WORCESTER STREETS

Worcester tenement

Our nearest city is Worcester. It’s an old city with enough grit to be interesting. This part of town is one of the oldest and architecturally more interesting — to me — than the newer areas. Also, the vintage hot dog restaurant with its huge dripping neon sign is a wonderful place for a photographer.

WHAT A GUY! DAN BROWN’S INFERNO

Dan Brown’s Inferno is a page turner. The author has created a highly successful formula for his best sellers. They are entertaining, fast-paced. Inferno is no exception. In this adventure sent in Italy and loosely following stuff drawn from Dante Alighieri’s Inferno, he offers readers a sense of inclusion, as if we are all reading something that contains Truth and Meaning, but without requiring we perform any real mental exercise.

It’s a formula that works. Inferno — all 560 pages — whisks you along while feeding you tantalizing tidbits of apparently arcane knowledge. You feel you’ve been let into an exclusive club and taught the secret handshake.

Cover of "The Inferno (Barnes & Noble Cla...

As with all of Brown’s novels, Robert Langdon — my pick for The Most Interesting Man in the World — is hired (hijacked?) to unravel a mystery wrapped in an enigma, to follow a trail, find and stop a catastrophe on which the fate of humankind hinges. Which is what he does in every book in which he appears. There is (of course) a beautiful woman of mystery. In this case, two. There are dangerous men of questionable loyalties, dreams and visions of death and plague. There is the inevitable evil genius who has constructed a terrible mechanism of ultimate destruction (or is it?) and the clock is ticking.

Only Robert Langdon, of all the professors in all the universities in all the world could possibly unravel the knot. This is made more difficult because, for much of the book, Dr. Langdon is suffering from amnesia and doesn’t remember several critical days and events. Not that this will stop the intrepid professor.

It’s almost as good as a trip to Italy, without the expense and stress of physical travel. Whatever Dan Brown may lack as an author, he has a remarkable gift for description. He brings his locations alive. You see them through his eyes in all their glory and it is, in my opinion, what raises his books above the ordinary and makes them memorable. You probably only remember the outline of the plots, but you remember the places because he describes them so vividly.

It’s something of a scavenger hunt. Langdon and his companion(s) follow the bread crumbs (clues) to the ultimate destination. Will he get there in time? Can he stop it from doing the evil thing the madman who set it in motion planned?

Titans and other giants are imprisoned in Hell...

There’s a bit of a surprise ending to the book. A few extra plot twists leave the story wide open for a sequel. Inferno is a much better story than The Lost Symbol (probably because Florence trumps Washington DC) though he has not topped The DaVinci Code. As far as stories, got, Angels and Demons (the book, not the movie) was almost as silly as Harrison Ford surviving a nuclear explosion by locking himself in an old refrigerator. Nothing will ever top the nuke vs. the refrigerator for the “surely you don’t expect me to believe that” medal … but Langdon’s parachute jump using his jacket comes pretty close. He didn’t even sprain an ankle. What a guy!

If you examine it closely, you will notice more than a few parts don’t make sense, but it’s fiction. Do not take it seriously. If you read it just for fun and don’t think too hard, you’ll enjoy it. Not only is Dan Brown the master of non sequitur, but his hero, Robert Langdon makes leaps of logic that go far beyond impressive, They are absolutely psychic. The cherry on top is Langdon does most of this while suffering from amnesia! Again all I can say is, what a guy!

It’s not great literature — maybe not even good literature — but it is great recreation. It’s all action, sexy without anyone having sex, no small achievement. And, if there’s a trip to Florence in your future, it’s a must-read. It’s better than any guide-book.

Inferno is available in bookstores everywhere and of course on Audible.com and Kindle. I listened to it as an audiobook and it was excellent, so if you prefer listening, this is a good one.

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GRABBING A BITE OF AMERICAN PIE

In a hot dog joint in Worcester, the family dines together. American style. Plus, for your enjoyment, one of rock and roll’s great songs – Don McClean’s American Pie.

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