Touchless

Wow, abundant typos here. I can see how a swipe-n-slide lifestyle makes one's fingers flabby. Clearly I need more typing practice.

Typed on a noisy, oily, fingerprinted, wonderful Montgomery Ward Signature 513 (Brother), c. 1966

Call Me (Maybe)

Typed on a Smith-Corona Silent-Super

Doomsday in 2012?

Whereupon I strap on the sandwich board and declare:

The End is Nigh!

No, not that kind of doomsday, although if you work for one of the institutions represented above, it probably feels like it. Once-mighty Kodak is now suffering the indignity of seeing its stock trade for less than a dollar per share, with the ravening wolves of bankruptcy snarling just outside its doors. The U.S. Postal Service offered to delay closure of large parts of its infrastructure until the end May, but it's clear that volume has dropped well below its capacity, never to return. And the newspaper industry continues to consolidate, restructure, reduce, and combine in an attempt to remain relevant in a world where nearly everyone carries a fully-connected two-way computer in their pockets.

As a photographer in a line of photographers, I'm sad to see Kodak being steamrolled by history. The silver film can up there belonged to my late grandfather, an ad man by trade, decades before Don Draper and friends made it cool. (Grandpa worked on the Westinghouse campaign, and others I don't recall.) Losing Kodak is losing a part of that connection to the hours spent under the dim red safety lights in his basement darkroom, watching images magically appear on paper, surrounded by amber bottles of mysterious liquids and yellow packets of dry chemicals. At least Fuji still seems to be in the film business, and there is a manufacturing outfit in eastern Europe that is still making film, but the loss of Kodak is truly the passing of a great American success story.

As a retronaut and sporadic letter-writer, I'm sad to see the post office falling away, becoming a niche service that even people like me only mainly use once a year for sending Christmas cards and packages. Unless SOPA passes and drives us all back to pre-Internet times and technology -- and boy, is the Typosphere ready for that eventuality -- I see the end times for the good old USPS coming sooner than they'd like, and later than is practical. I'd better write some more letters and use up those stamps.

As a reader, the loss of the newspaper should hit me the hardest, but as I picked up our paper this morning in the driveway, half-soaked because it slipped out of its protective bag and into the rain, I realized that we're only getting it for two things these days: comics and coupons. I'd like to say I'm reading it for news, but everything there is a day old at least. "Local" news has all but disappeared in the wake of our own paper's many mergers: shown in the photo is the Business "section", which is a huge misnomer, as it is simply one page of newsprint, folded into half. Four pages, and the last page is taken up by a 3/4 sized advertisement. Our delivery person is an anonymous stranger that drives up and down the neighborhood at 5:45 am each day, after having driven thirty miles or so from his home for the privilege of peppering our suburban neighborhood with a bundle of advertisements insulating yesterday's news.

So where is the bold, beautiful tomorrow?

To be completely honest, I think it's in our hands. Literally. Mike Speegle is off making his writing dream happen by just doing it, publishing his own book, and damn those writing-program naysayers. Typosphere godmother Cheryl Lowry is working for a certain large seller-of-everything-under-the-sun, and leveraging her writing skills and 'net savvy into some sort of position that requires her to carry about numerous cool toys. Rob Bowker is sending hand-typed letters to any and all takers, bringing back the lost art and simple joy of a handmade message (and maybe introducing a new generation to the idea.)

And, oh yes, there's that little "Occupy" movement that the kids are so het up about. Whether you see this as citizen democracy or hippie rabble, it's the same thing -- individuals trying to jump in and do something, make a change, with their hands and voices and actions.

Dissolving old institutions, and trying on new ones. Smaller, localized, and independent. Kodak's demise doesn't come at the cost of photography, citizen journalism brings an immediacy and intimacy that the printed page cannot, and the mail? Unless it's a letter from a pen pal, 90% of what I get in my mailbox goes right into the recycling bin.

Maybe it's time to bring back the Pony Express? I bet my newspaper carrier would be up for it. I have a sandwich board here that says he's going to be out of a job soon.

Twit

So I've gone and signed up with Twitter, solely to throw a vote or two in the Shorty Awards for best Twitter feed (I'm hooked on MarsRovers.) I still don't Get It Fully, as the kind of people with which I exchange messages don't have hyper-developed thumbs from life on a smart phone's keypad. I know this has been brought up before within our circle, but being neither a celebrity in need of ego boosting nor a robotic probe in need of Congressional funding, I don't see what normal mortals use the service for.

It's been pointed out that once upon a time, in select parts of the world, mail service was far more frequent than today, providing an analog (or analogue) for email. I refuse to believe this is like tweeting -- mail is a personal one-to-one correspondence with no length limits, Twitter is a simulcast of tiny info-bursts, with no clear recipient in mind. I'm just now realizing the brilliance of the service's name, as wandering through the site brings to mind the cacophony of tromping through an exotic bird enclosure, with each brightly-plumed resident trying to out-shout the others in search of a mate. Maybe I'm looking at Twitter all wrong. Maybe I should be using this a a means to disseminate my DNA, if you know what I mean. My wife may take issue, though.

A little quick searching makes it appear that the "hashtag" #typosphere is previously unknown on the service. (A search of #typewriter finds many a keycutter, I don't recommend hunting there if you're squeamish or prone to anger. Sadly, I'm both.) I'm certainly not one to encourage a me-too attitude -- just because I'm jumping off a bridge doesn't mean you should do it -- but if you're already out there in the jungle amid all the other twits, give a shout to #typosphere and maybe we'll all land in the same friendly tree.

Going (going, gone) postal

I think we're due for another "sign of the times" downer post. Lots of news swirling about the U.S. postal service this week, and none of it very promising for us lunatics who still get unnaturally excited about pens and paper and film in this brave new digital world.

• First, word that the USPS is considering petitioning to deliver mail only five days per week instead of the currently mandated six, the other no-mail day being determined according to traffic analysis. Bad news if your birthday falls on a Tuesday, as that has been cited as a particularly slow day. No cards for you!


• Next, delivery routes are being consolidated, too. If this was last summer, you could probably blame fuel prices for the hit, but now it's the good old recession to blame. Don't worry, gas prices will go back up this year, and we'll be able to drag the old scapegoat back out of the pen.
  


• Finally, in anticipation of this year's first-class stamp rate increase, word that the classic coin-operated stamp machines are going the way of, well, anything coin-operated really. Citing expense of maintenance and general lack of interest from the public, they're being phased out in favor of the high-tech stamp-and-ship-and-weigh machine that's always out of order. I smell a collecting opportunity here, folks. Who will be the first to rescue one of these old machines and creatively repurpose it? (Olivander, I'm looking in your direction.) I'm thinking it's a short hop from stamp machine to coin-op gum dispenser.

The grand irony, of course, is that I was just reading a Consumer Reports article (in a paper magazine, delivered in the mail) about how the USPS has the best deal going in terms of overnight shipment, better than the commercial carriers by far. Commercial carriers aren't saddled with declining interest in their main service -- door to door mail delivery -- with a revenue stream that's rapidly drying up -- advertising and catalogs.

Have a swell day!