Days of Yore: Going Postal

The days of the Pony Express, delivering mail by stagecoach, and the Wells Fargo Wagon were a good deal before my time. Even so, mail delivery has changed a lot in my lifetime.

Photo by Joanna Kosinska on Unsplash

When I was young, especially living in the Philippines and having family and friends in the US, mail was a lot slower than it is today. People mailing Christmas gifts to us had to mail it a couple months early if they wanted it to reach us on time. Consequently, we would often get Christmas gifts in January or February, or sometimes even later.

We sent letters in several ways:

• We would fold up the letter and place it in an envelope, licking the seal shut (which very rarely tasted good) and licking the stamps (again, not very delicious) to stick them to the envelope. We addressed the envelope.
• There were special envelopes that doubled as letters. We would write the letter on one side, then fold along the dotted lines, and fold special flaps over the top and sides and lick the seals shut. Then we would add stamps and address the side that was facing out. That saved paper.
• Postcards had a photo on one side and space for a short note, the address, and the stamp on the other side. You had to keep in mind that the note was visible for anyone to see, so best not to include information you didn't want the world to know.

We could also send packages, which typically required more postage. We would either put the item to send in a box and address the box, or wrap the item (or box) in paper and address that.

When ordering things by mail, we would fill out the order form that we got in the mail or in a magazine or by other means, and then mail it in. Sometimes that involved saving labels from cereal boxes to get the special prize that would be delivered sometime later. We had to wait for the order form to reach the place we were ordering from, and then for them to send the item that we ordered. When I was in the US in 3rd grade and 8th-12th grade, we got quarterly order sheets from Scholastic Book Club distributed at school, and we could order books. I loved getting those, as I enjoyed reading any chance I got. (One time in 8th grade I ordered a Where's Waldo? book which never arrived. I kept asking my teacher, "Where's Waldo?" when I wanted to check on the status. I never did get it. I don't recall if I got a refund. Most orders arrived fine, but that was an ironic one not to arrive.)

I attended 3rd grade in the US. I made new friends that year, and I was surprised after returning to the Philippines to receive a letter from Chris, one of my classmates in 3rd grade, and we became pen pals, regularly writing back and forth. Avis, another friend from 3rd grade, also became a pen pal when I was in the Philippines. She had Native American heritage, and she once sent me a dream catcher. I didn't know the significance of it at the time, but I thought it was very cool with the feather and everything. In high school in the US, our teacher was involved in a program to set up pen pals between France and the US. I signed up and was assigned a teen in Saint-Malo named Aurélien. He and I exchanged letters well after I graduated from high school. We shared about our respective cultures and other things. I practiced my French and he practiced his English. (I actually learned the English word "erudite" from him... I had to look it up when he used it in a letter to me! I'm sure he looked up the word érudit in his French-English dictionary and used the most similar translation.) When I studied in France in 1999, I was able to talk to him by phone, and I even visited Saint-Malo, but we unfortunately missed each other.

I got my first "electronic mail" (e-mail) address in high school (or it might have been 8th grade). That was exciting, especially since it was a brand new form of communication, and it was one way of "getting on the information superhighway." My first e-mail was with Juno.com. I would eventually stop using it due to excessive spam that far outnumbered the legitimate e-mails. (I also had an e-mail on my own domain, stevensauke.com, which I eventually deleted for the same reason.) I would get Hotmail later, and when Gmail was introduced, I got an e-mail with them when it was by invitation only. I also had e-mail addresses on my school's domain starting in high school, as well as a few others over the years.

E-mail sped up the ordering process. We still had to wait some time for the item to arrive, but we didn't have to wait for the order to reach the company. With the advent of online merchants, such as Amazon, it was even faster. Now (depending on what and where I'm ordering), I can sometimes order something and receive it the next day, or occasionally even the same day! Also, some things can now be downloaded rather than mailed. When writing a letter by e-mail, depending on how much the other person checks their e-mail, we can get a response within moments rather than months.

We have always received junk mail in the mailbox and spam in our inbox. Spam filters have come a long way and are now a lot better at filtering them out, but we still have to be careful, and we also have to check the spam folder from time to time in the event a legit e-mail was mistakenly filtered there.

Of course, no "Days of Yore" post would be complete without me pointing out that I do most of this now on my cell phone. My grandpa was amazed with how much I could do on my telephone! (I actually wrote his eulogy on my phone, read it from my phone, and designed the front of the program for his memorial on my phone because of our regular discussions about this. After the fact, I realized I should have mentioned that when sharing at the memorial.)

The Founder of His Freedom

I wrote this poem June 28, 2006 in memory of my Great-Uncle Spencer, my grandpa's youngest brother. We lost him to myelodisplastic syndrome, which is related to leukemia, where the bone marrow stops producing blood cells. He had a bone marrow transplant, which prolonged his life for a while. Having lost him shortly before Independence Day, it occurred to me he was celebrating with many of our Founding Fathers.

He lived in a nation founded on faith
Founded by men with God’s love in their hearts
And God’s freedom in their souls
He watched the fireworks each year
Telling of the freedom they bought
And of the sacrifices they made
That this nation might be free

Now he can enjoy Independence Day
With the founders of our nation’s freedom
What better way to celebrate
Than to feast with the men who signed the Declaration of Independence?

The illness took its toll
While his family watched and prayed
His dependence on the doctors and medicine grew
As God graciously prolonged his life
And the glimmer of freedom from the sickness grew
Until the day God set him free

This is his Independence Day
Forever free from the pain that tormented him
Now he can worship at the feet
Of the great Founder of his freedom

One day he gave his life to God
To the One who bought our freedom
And with His blood signed the ultimate Declaration of Independence from sin and death

Now he can stand alongside
The founders of our nation’s freedom
And bow before the great Founder of our freedom in Christ!
Who needs fireworks
When you can run into the dazzling brilliance
And with our founding fathers
Fall and worship our great Founding Father, the Founder of all our freedom?

Days of Yore: Books

To quote the grandfather in The Princess Bride, "When I was your age, television was called books."

When I was little, I loved reading books. I read every chance I got. In particular, I loved adventure books (still do) and mysteries. I read The Chronicles of Narnia multiple times. I read most of The Three Investigators books (3 series of them...one set when the main characters are in their preteens and early teens, the second series in a "Choose Your Own Adventure" format in between, and then a third series when they're in their later teens). The Chronicles of Prydain come to mind. As an adult, the Harry Potter, Percy Jackson, Heroes of Olympus and Kane Chronicles books joined the honored list, along with the Ranger's Apprentice books and sequel series. There were many other books that I loved to read, but those book franchises are what come to mind offhand. In fact, I loved reading so much as a kid that often when I got in trouble, my parents would ground me from reading for a few hours.

William Shakespeare's Star Wars Saga
by the great bard Ian Doescher
with bookends inspired by
the great bard JRR Tolkien

On long road trips growing up, my mom would read us books. At one point, someone sent us the audiobook of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe on cassette, and that was a new experience for me. I was expecting a somewhat dramatized reading of it with a full cast, and was surprised to hear one person reading the whole book, though he did a fantastic job.

They also had a genre called Choose Your Own Adventure that was popular for a while. Every time a character had to make a decision or there was some other "crossroads" in the story, it said something along the lines of "If you want this to happen, go to page 75. If you want that to happen, go to page 95." It made for interesting variations in the story. If I didn't like the way a story turned out, I generally went back until I found a path that turned out better. Come to think of it, it was a bit like a literary maze. Hmm, I never thought of it that way. (Insert lightbulb emoji here...I tried it and the emoji looked more like a tennis racket, so I'll leave that to your imagination.) 😀

At church when we sang hymns, we pulled out the hymnals in the back of the pews and turned to the song in question. It had basic sheet music for the hymns (there's one in the middle of the picture above, with a gray cover). In the 90s, we used a mixture of hymnals and songs with the lyrics on the overhead projector. Now we use PowerPoint. The hymnals are still in the back of the pews, but only rarely used.

In past years, it was common for families to have family Bibles, which were large and heavy, and had places to record birthdays, anniversaries, weddings, and more. We also had smaller Bibles we could carry with us. We often marked them up. They sometimes said that a mark of a healthy Christian is a worn-out Bible. Now I have a Bible app on my phone, which offers hundreds of versions and languages, as well as commentary, a Bible verse meme maker, and more. Easier to carry, and it offers more options, but you can't mark it up in the same way. You can also have virtual Bible studies with friends on the app.

Technically, the internet existed before I was born, but it didn't really become popular and public until I was a teenager in the early '90s. Until high school, research was done entirely by physical means. The closest I got to online research was using microfiche in the library to look up old news reports. They had the glossy black microfiche scans that we fed into the machine and read on the screen. (The print on the cards was tiny and too small to read without the help of the machine.) We had computer classes, but we saved our work on the individual computers and on floppy disks. If we wanted to work on it using a different computer, we had to insert the floppy and pull it up that way.

When we had to look up a word, we pulled out our dictionary. There were also special dictionaries for translating in other languages. If we needed synonyms, we would pull out the trusty thesaurus (which was a little more complicated to navigate than your average dictionary). Researching more complicated things, such as history, other cultures, and many other things, involved pulling out the encyclopedia (notably World Book and Encyclopedia Britannica). When we were younger, we also looked things up in the Childcraft encyclopedias for children. We could also look things up in newspapers and magazines, as well as autobiographies and other physical books. In school, I did many book reports, as well as reports on cultures such as Bolivia, Chad and Newfoundland. (I know there were others, but those are the ones that come to mind.)

When I was younger, some people generously gave me subscriptions to magazines like Ranger Rick and Clubhouse. I loved reading the Highlights magazine. When we got our Stars and Stripes newspaper in the Philippines, I would go straight to the comics section. I loved reading the comics, particularly Peanuts, Garfield, The Phantom, Prince Valiant, Cathy, BC, Family Circus, For Better or for Worse, Blondie, Dick Tracy, Calvin and Hobbes, multiple superhero comics, and others. Though I didn't see it in the newspaper when it was syndicated, I'm also a big fan of the Kim & Jason comic strip (though I might be a bit biased because the author is a dear friend...I've mentioned Jason on my blog before). I borrowed the Asterix and Tintin comic books from friends and read them voraciously. The Adventures of Tintin is still one of my favorite comic strips, and I now have the full collection.

When Amazon introduced the Kindle, I downloaded it on my cell phone and read books that way. The Kindle format all but eclipsed the physical books for me. It's much easier to carry a phone in my pocket with an entire library in it, than sometimes big and heavy books.

In more recent years, as I've gotten more busy with work and other things, I've done a lot of my reading with audiobooks. I find it helps to listen to them while I'm working (depending on what I'm doing), as it helps to focus my mind to keep it from wandering thanks to ADHD (which I wish I had known as a child that I had). On the other hand, some tasks require listening to music instead, as it can be distracting at times. I know, I'm sure everyone is shocked that yet another "Days of Yore" post ends with me pointing out that I do most of this on my cell phone now (although some of my audiobook listening is done on a computer).

Uncle Maynard

I wrote this poem September 28, 2000 in memory of my Great-Uncle Maynard, shortly after we lost him to cancer. A World War 2 veteran, he was honored by the navy at his burial with a 3-gun salute. He was a farmer in Montana for many years. This poem was printed in the program at his memorial.

I also mentioned him, though not by name, in my tribute to his dog Daisy the following year.

A lifetime of farming
A lifetime of joy and pain
A lifetime of gentleness and love
You made it through the Depression
You made it through the War
You made it through Y2K
You lived your life so well
You lived your life a child of God

Well done, Uncle Maynard!
You were an example to your family
An example to your friends
An example to all you met
I can almost hear God saying,
"Well done, My faithful son!"

What a relief to know your pain is gone!
I know you suffered so much
But I'm still sad that you are gone
I miss you, Uncle Maynard
I can't hold back my tears
There's a family here who misses you

But our sadness is tempered with joy
Joy to know we'll see you again
Joy to know you are healed
Joy to know your cancer is gone
Replaced by a dazzling robe
And a crown glittering with the jewels of Heaven

You are at peace
You are home
In the arms of our Great Father
Praising Him forevermore

Days of Yore: Photography

Photography has come a long way in my lifetime. The massive cameras that were on a tripod and required the photographer to go under a sheet (there's probably a better term for it) were before my time, but I have still seen a lot of change. Camera attachments (such as lenses) were often larger than they are today. We had to buy rolls of film to thread into the camera. (We used empty cylindrical film cartridge containers in the swimming unit in PE when we were learning to dive, and we had to retrieve them from the bottom of the pool.) 

Camera with negatives

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

There were several kinds of camera when I was younger, but most of them involved threading the film. After opening the camera and threading the film in, you had to close it, and it was very important not to open it again until the roll was done. Otherwise the film would be exposed to the light and the pictures would come out white, and depending on how exposed they were, sometimes blank. We called it overexposed. Different kinds of camera required different kinds of film. 35mm (millimeter) cameras needed to be threaded:

35mm film
Photo by Glenn Carstens-Peters on Unsplash

110 cameras (I had one) were cheaper than 35mm, and the pictures weren't as good quality, but they did not require threading. Their film cartridges looked like this:

110 film
Photo by Anonymus60
CC BY-SA 3.0 license

Each roll of film had a set number of pictures on it. In the above pictures, the 35mm film has 36 pictures on it and the 110 film has 24. Once you had taken a picture, you usually had to advance the camera to the next picture, and a number on the camera indicated how many pictures remained on the roll. When taking pictures, there were a few things to consider: Rolls of film cost money. Getting the pictures developed cost money. Was this subject really something we wanted to pay to have a print made? How many pictures were left on the roll? If we ran out of film before the day or event or adventure was done, we couldn't take any more pictures! We had to think twice before taking a picture. Most cameras did not give the option to view the picture, so you wouldn't know how it turned out until days or weeks later when you took the finished roll to the store or other place where they developed pictures.

We generally left the developing to the professionals, who did it in a darkroom, so called because it had to be dark in there to avoid exposing the pictures. They generally had just enough light so people could see what they were doing.

Once we got the pictures back, they came in an envelope of prints and negatives (picture of negatives at the top of this post). The prints were the picture on glossy photo paper. The negatives were strips of film with the pictures in inverted colors. If we wanted more copies at a later date, we could take the negatives in and have them make prints from the negatives.

Then there was the Polaroid. This camera did not involve threading film or even taking it in to be developed. You put the stiff photo sheet in, snapped the picture, and the camera spat the sheet out. The glossy part was generally gray at first. We usually shook them back and forth a bit to speed up the process, but the picture on the sheet gradually came into focus. Like the 110 pictures, they were not as good quality as the 35mm, but they were nice if you needed the picture right away. Polaroid photos also had paper around the glossy part so you could handwrite a caption if you wanted.

They also came out with disposable cameras. These were sealed shut, and came with the film in them. Once you finished the roll, you would take the whole camera in to get it developed. You got pictures back with negatives, but the camera could not be reused.

Panoramic cameras were pretty nifty. The resultant pictures were about the same height as regular prints, but about double the width. In landscape orientation, it was the photographic equivalent of the widescreen format in movies (or in portrait orientation, tall and thin). When I went to France in 1999, I went with a panoramic camera and a couple disposable ones. I need to go back now that I can take better quality pictures and don't have to conserve film!

William the Conqueror's castle in Falaise, France
Picture taken with my panoramic camera

When we got the pictures back, we either left them in the envelopes and took them out to look at them later, or we stored them in photo albums. Some albums had slots to put the pictures, and some had pages with transparent plastic over them. For those ones, you would peel back the transparent bit, put the pictures on the page, and put the plastic sheet back. It adhered to the page so the pictures wouldn't go anywhere, but was still easy to pull back to rearrange or add pictures (but you shouldn't do that too much because excessive unpeeling and re-peeling could make it less adhesive).

If you wanted to show pictures to a group, you could have slides made. They were small square representations of the picture (with the negative of that picture) that you could put in a slide projector. You arranged the pictures on the turntable on the projector in the order you wanted to show them, and then the light shone through the slide onto a screen. We used them a lot as missionaries when we travelled around to different churches in the US to report on our ministry in the Philippines.

A slide
Photo by Nathan Anderson on Unsplash

Another option for presentations was to print the picture on a transparency, the size and shape of a regular sheet of paper, but plastic and transparent. Transparencies could also accommodate text and anything else you wanted to put on them. We also used them in church to show the lyrics of worship songs and hymns on the big screen. To show them, we used an overhead projector, which had a flat table-like glass "stage" where you would put the transparency. The stage had light coming up from below it, which shone through the transparency, to the projector above, which in turn reflected and shone onto the screen. Another option, though not nearly as common, was the opaque projector. In that case, you could put a picture or book or whatever you wanted to project in the projector and it would be shown on the screen. Opaque projectors, as indicated in the title, did not require transparencies.

Digital cameras were pretty expensive at first. (The better quality ones still are.) They presented new benefits. No need for threading film, no risk of accidentally opening the camera too soon and exposing the film. Many (though not all) digital cameras gave the option of seeing how the picture turned out on a screen. You could still get prints made, but it was a different process than doing it from film. When shopping for digital cameras, we looked at the number of megapixels. More megapixels indicated better quality and more detail. Some digital cameras can also record video.

These days we have a lot more options than in the past. Overhead and opaque projectors are pretty much obsolete now, as we have PowerPoint and other computer programs and phone apps for presenting things digitally. Photoshop and similar programs offer more ways of editing pictures, improving the quality, combining multiple pictures into one, and more.  

I seem to be sensing a theme here, but as with previous subjects in this "Days of Yore" series, I don't generally use any of the above cameras. I use...you guessed it...my cell phone! Photo quality on cell phones has been steadily increasing, and since I love taking pictures, that's one thing I look for when buying one. Someday I hope to be able to afford a fancy digital camera to take even better quality pictures, but in the meantime, my phone takes impressive ones! As people continue to develop smart glasses, some of them also have the capability of taking pictures, though those are currently a bit controversial due to valid privacy concerns, and will need more development before I consider that seriously...but I'm excited about the possibilities!

Michael

I wrote this poem in May 1997 after attending the memorial service for 13-year-old Michael Morrison, who took a boat out May 3 of that year, and it likely capsized. As far as I know, his body was never found. I didn't know him personally and have not been able to find a picture of him for the purposes of this blog. The incident was in the news, and one of our local news anchors was at the service. The poem mentions memories that people shared at the memorial. It quotes Psalm 116:15, 55:22a and 1 Peter 5:7b. One of my favorite memories that people shared at the funeral (which the poem does not mention) was that most of his friends and classmates called him Seymour. His youth leader shared that he once asked Michael why they called him that, and he explained, "When I wear my glasses, I can see more." That's when I knew we could have been great friends.

Photo by Jeremy Bishop on Unsplash

The funeral's done
The media's gone
And here we are, left behind
With the memory of a boy:
A man of God

They said you were so wonderful
You used to cheer them up
With the story of a pickle chasing you
You loved them with all your heart
And prayed for them - your friends.

And Michael, I wish that I had known you
Your love for God shone through in what you did
In life, you glorified God
And now, you're in His arms forevermore.

Your friends are sad
There's a great big hole
In your school and in your church
But there you are
In the arms of Christ!

You are so much better off
No more colds or flu
No hypothermia
Only God's amazing grace!
Heaven has gained an outstanding soul!

And Michael, I wish that I had known you
Your love for God shone through in what you did
In life, you glorified God
And now, you're in His arms forevermore.

"Precious in the sight of the Lord
Is the death of His saints."
I can't imagine how elated God must be
He has brought another child to His eternal home
To everlasting reward!

"Cast all your cares on the Lord
And He will sustain you."
"For He cares for you."
I know that God will bring
Your friends and family through their grief!

And Michael, I wish that I had known you
Your love for God shone through in what you did
In life, you glorified God
And now, you're in His arms forevermore.

I did not know you very well
But I have heard that you loved God
You loved everyone you saw
You prayed for all your friends
That they would meet the Lord.

We could have been great friends
I wish I'd known you more
And enjoyed your brotherly love
I look forward to meeting you
In the everlasting arms of Christ!

And Michael, I'm glad that I will meet you
In the arms of our eternal God and King
On earth, you glorified God
Now you live in His loving arms forevermore.

Days of Yore: Video Recordings

When I was in elementary in the Philippines, we had a dedicated room for watching movies and documentaries. It was called the A/V Room, or Audiovisual Room. It had several devices depending on the equipment required for what we were watching. The big reel-to-reel projector involved large spools of film (like the ones in the picture below). It involved a certain amount of threading through the machine, and it was projected on a big screen. This was also how my grandparents did their home videos when my parents were young. I don't know how they were recorded as that was before my time, but they were still in use when I was little. While playing, the reel-to-reel made a fast-paced clicking noise (best way I can think of describing it) that you could hear the whole time. We were used to it, so it wasn't that disruptive. (It's actually a nostalgic sound for me.)

Photo by Alexander Vasilyev
Adobe Stock

The other device I remember in the A/V Room was the TV on a cart. I think it may have been on that (or there may have been a projector) that we watched in horror as the Challenger exploded in 1986. It was on that TV with a VCR (Video Cassette Recorder) that we watched Back to the Future when I was in 4th grade during a sleepover that my teacher put on. We brought sleeping bags and slept on the floor.

Video cassettes, or VHS tapes (Video Home System), were similar in concept and shape to the audio cassettes, but were larger. For the most part, they were black, though they occasionally came in other colors. The film inside was very similar to the way the film in the smaller cassettes was rolled. They fit into a slot in the VCR, which was connected to a TV. Unlike their smaller cousin, they were not double-sided, so you had to rewind when you were done. Video rental stores (such as Blockbuster) often had stickers on their videos that said, "Be kind. Rewind." Failing to rewind would put a damper on watching it again, though the next user could rewind it themselves. But if you're on a schedule, it's a pain to have to wait a few minutes while the video rewinds to the beginning!

They also had Betamax cassettes (Beta for short). They were similar to VHS, but a bit smaller (though still larger than the audio cassettes). There was a special player for them. I believe our A/V room was equipped to play both kinds of video cassettes. They weren't nearly as popular as VHS, however, and went obsolete much sooner.

VHS and Beta each had their own version of the video camera. The camera made further adjustments as other formats were introduced.

Following the success of the CD in the audio format, the DVD (Digital Video Disc) was introduced. It looked almost identical to the CD, though slightly thicker and a bit more durable. Any DVD player can typically play CDs as well, but not vice versa (an audio device kind of defeats the purpose of watching a movie). Unlike videos, DVDs did not need to be rewound, and they also allowed for navigation so you could skip straight to your favorite scene, or watch extras, such as documentaries on the making of the movie, blooper reels, sing-a-longs if the movie had songs, audio commentary by the filmmakers and/or cast, and other fun stuff.

VHS and DVD were divided into regions around the world. Region 1 videos and DVDs could only play on US and Canadian players. Region 2 included the UK and other countries. I believe there were 5 regions if I remember right. When I was studying French and wanted to watch the French versions of movies on VHS, I ordered them from Amazon.ca (Canada), because France was in a different region and wouldn't play on our VCRs. When A.R. Rahman and Värttinä's musical of Lord of the Rings (not to be confused with Peter Jackson's movies) came out in London, I couldn't wait for it to come out in the US, so ordered the cast recording from Amazon.co.uk. The CD worked great, but the accompanying DVD with pictures from the production did not work in our DVD player. To watch that, I had to play it on my laptop, which had a DVD-ROM. DVD-ROM and certain region-free players could play any format.

Sometime in there, the LaserDisc was introduced. It was never as popular as its counterparts, and it didn't last very long. We watched The Abyss in high school on a LaserDisc, and that's the only movie I remember watching in that format. It looked like a giant CD, but was about the size and shape of a vinyl record.

The Blu-Ray followed the DVD. Again, it looked almost identical to the DVD, but had more space and more options for extras, as well as better picture quality. Again, the typical Blu-Ray player can play a DVD or CD, but once again, not vice versa. The Blu-Ray does not have regions like the video and DVD, so it can be played on any Blu-Ray player.

Meanwhile, as the internet picked up steam, websites like YouTube and Vimeo offered ways of watching online. Depending on the web connection, these options involved a lot of buffering at times, though that has been gradually getting better so it doesn't happen now as much as it used to. Facebook, TikTok, Instagram and other social media sites have also added video-playing capability.

Netflix used to send DVDs that members could order and then mail back when they were done watching, similar to checking it out from a library. Due to the popularity of Netflix, among other factors, video stores like Blockbuster couldn't compete. There is now only one branch of Blockbuster left, in Oregon. As streaming from YouTube and other sites gained popularity, Netflix jumped on the bandwagon. Many studios have joined the fun, introducing their own streaming platforms, generally adding "Plus" or "Max" to their name. So now we have Disney+, AppleTV+, Paramount+, HBO Max, Hulu, Amazon Prime Video, and others. Some TV shows, such as The Chosen, have their own app.

As in my post on audio recordings, I now hardly use the other formats any more, as I can watch movies streaming on my cell phone and Kindle. It also streams to the TV.

Poema

I wrote this poem May 23, 2000 for my Spanish class in college. It's the only poem I've written in Spanish. The assignment was inspired by Jorge Luis Borges' poem Instantes. (I highly recommend reading his poem. It's deep and thought-provoking. The link takes you to his poem in English and Spanish.) Like Borges, we were to start our poem "Si pudiera vivir nuevamente mi vida, / en la próxima..." (If I could live my life anew, / in the next...) and then personalize it. It was an exercise in the conditional tense. (I majored in French in college. One of the requirements of the major was to study a year of another European language. I decided Spanish would be the most useful.)

I also translated my poem into English so people who don't speak Spanish can read it.

Image from: Kraken images

Si pudiera vivir nuevamente mi vida,
en la próxima cantaría más.
Desempeñaría en más de comedias musicales.
Aprendería muchas lenguas y hablaría a todo el mundo en su lengua nativa.
Cantaría también en estas lenguas.
Pero más importantemente, cantaría y alabaría más a Dios.
Usaría mi voz más para glorificar el Señor Jesucristo.
Con todas las lenguas que conocería, proclamaría el evangelio a todo el mundo.
Tendría más confianza para proclamar Dios al mundo.
Cuando pecaría, me arrepentiría inmediatemente.
Sería más contento porque glorificaría más a Dios.

Translation:

If I could life my life anew,
in the next, I would sing more
I would act in more musicals.
I would learn many languages and I would talk to everyone in their native language.
I would also sing in these languages.
But more importantly, I would sing and praise God more.
I would use my voice more to glorify the Lord Jesus Christ.
With all the languages I would know, I would proclaim the Gospel to everyone.
I would have more confidence to proclaim God to the world.
When I would sin, I would repent immediately.
I would be happier because I would glorify God more.

Days of Yore: Audio Recordings

Girl you know it's —
Girl you know it's —
Girl you know it's —

That was the beginning of the end for the popular band Milli Vanilli. As it would turn out, contrary to their claim in the song, it was NOT true. (I trust you read that last sentence in Morgan Freeman's voice.) We did not see the MTV broadcast where a hard drive issue caused the track to skip and repeat in the middle of the title phrase of the song "Girl You Know It's True," but it was big news in the Philippines, where we lived at the time. A technical glitch from a computer in 1989 exposed for the first time that the band was not singing, but was in fact lip syncing (though some had suspected it previous to that). As Rob Pilatus of the duo later remembered, it caused him to panic and he ran off the stage. He had to be coaxed into completing the concert. The irony of that happening on a song about how "you know it's true" is very interesting.

Though that example was due to a hard drive, the same thing happened with vinyl records sometimes when we would play them at home. The black vinyl disc would be playing the song "My Grandfather's Clock" until suddenly... "Ninety years without slumbering, tick tock — Ninety years without slumbering, tick tock — Ninety years without slumbering, tick tock — Ninety years without slumbering, tick tock —" That was when we knew we had to go move the needle because it was skipping due to a broken record. Records have been making a bit of a comeback in recent years, but they have not been nearly as popular as they were when I was young. When they were not skipping, they were great. They were double-sided, so once you reached the end of one side, you had to turn it over to listen to the rest.

Then there was the 8-track. It was a large rectangular cassette with a notch in the corner. We had an 8-track player in our car, and we would play music on long road trips. Ford began putting 8-track players in their cars in 1965, and music has been a regular feature in cars ever since.

8-track, cassette, record
Photo by Wynter, Adobe Stock

Once the 8-track started decreasing in popularity, the smaller cassette tape became more popular. Like records, they were double-sided and you had to flip them when one side ended to listen to the rest. Like 8-tracks, they had a long film on rollers inside the cassette. Sometimes the film would get tangled up in the tape recorder, and we had to untangle it and then roll it back into the cassette, using either our fingers or a pen or a pencil. Radios with tape recorders were also very handy for recording songs and other things on the radio so we could listen to them later. In the Philippines, they played "Good Morning" from the musicals Babes in Arms and Singin' in the Rain every morning at the same time, like clockwork. (I tried just now to find the specific arrangement they played, and didn't find it.) It always made us happy, so we recorded it. We recorded a bunch of the songs that they liked to play on the radio, such as "Put On a Happy Face" from Bye Bye Birdie, "Make Someone Happy" as sung by Jimmy Durante, and others. We could also record ourselves, speaking or singing into a microphone or into the tape recorder. After our car with the 8-track player, subsequent cars had cassette players. If you didn't play a cassette all the way through on both sides, it was necessary to rewind.

There were several different kinds of players to play cassettes. They were much more mobile than previous kinds of recordings. Boomboxes often had tape recorders. There were simple tape recorders that only played (and recorded) cassettes. Many radios accommodated them, as did cars. They even made Walkmen, which were small tape recorders you could carry with you and connect headphones. Star-Lord in Guardians of the Galaxy has one. The Walkman was very handy as you could carry it in your pocket (provided your pocket was big enough), and some had a clip so you could clip it to your belt.

Record, cassette, 8-track, CD, not to scale
(Note: They did not typically have smiley faces) 😀
Drawing by Steven Sauke, June 2022

In the 90s, we were introduced to a new kind of recording: the CD (compact disc). It looked a bit like a record, but was smaller and fit in a slot rather than setting it on the player like a record, though some CD players do allow you to place it on there, similar to a record, but then it retracts into the player to play the music. Also where the typical record is black (though they did come in other colors occasionally), the typical CD is silver and shiny. They are still relatively common today, though not nearly as common as they were in the 90s and early 2000s. Recent cars have had CD players rather than cassette players. 

Everything that could play a cassette eventually adapted to be able to play CDs. The Walkman turned into the Discman. The Discman was similarly handy, though harder to fit in my pocket because CDs are bigger in diameter than the cassette, albeit much thinner. Recording things on CDs was more complicated than doing it on cassettes, however.

As the early 2000s moved on, the iPod and Zune (and other brands of MP3 players) came out. iPod lasted longer than Zune, but they were pretty cool. I had a Zune for a while. Much smaller than your average Walkman, they had the music stored in them in MP3 format, which you could upload to it. They similarly had headphones attached.

These days, I hardly use any of those any more. I have music on my cell phone and computer, and can easily download it from Amazon and elsewhere and play it on any of my devices (computer, cell phone, Kindle). I have SiriusXM (and a CD player) in my car. Recordings have come a long way over the years.

The Parents of the Savior

Today is Ash Wednesday, which begins the season of Lent. Many Christians take this time to give something up as they prepare for Holy Week and Easter. I don't always do that, but I respect people who do. I think it is important to consider what Christ went through for us. I wrote this poem October 4, 2004, as I reflected on these things, and in particular, how it may have been for Mary and Joseph. The poem was also inspired by the songs "Mary, Did You Know?" by Mark Lowry, "Child of the Manger, Child of the Cross" by Craig Courtney, and "One Quiet Moment" by Bob Kauflin. These songs got me thinking more about how events throughout the Bible were connected.

Image by R. Gino Santa Maria
Adobe Stock

In a humble stable,
A young mother held her newborn baby in her arms
Did the joyful coos make her think
Of the same mouth speaking the stars into place?
Did she realize that the same lips
Spoke to Moses on the mountain
And did she know that one day
They would beg the Father to forgive His enemies?

In a foreign land,
A young couple taught their child how to walk
Did the crawling, toddling legs
Make them think of the same legs
Walking with Adam and Eve in the paradise of the garden?
Did they remember that those legs crushed the Tower of Babel
And that one day those ankles would be pierced
With long, cruel nails?

In a small village,
A father taught his son the art of carpentry
Did those little hands make him think
Of the same hands writing on tablets of stone
And on the wall of a palace?
Did he remember that those hands
Sprinkled manna over a desert
And that one day those wrists would be impaled
With nails bigger than the ones He was hammering into the wood?

Did they know that the back that dazzled Moses
Would one day be ruthlessly beaten
And forced to bear a heavy and slivery cross?
Did they realize that the breath that breathed life into Adam
And blew the waters of the Red Sea apart
Would one day breathe, "It is finished!" and slowly, painfully cease?

***

On a skull-shaped hill,
A mother watched her son die on a cross
She heard Him entrust her to the care of a friend
Did she know what she and her son's friend
Would find three days later?
Did she know that burial spices would be useless
And that her son would refuse to stay dead?

As she agonized over the suffering of her beloved son,
Did she know that the face so mangled and torn
Would so soon be glowing with life?
Did she know that those hands, dripping with blood,
Would so soon be raised in victory?

Did she realize that the love that saved the children of Israel

    The love that gave Jonah another chance
    The love that fed five thousand
    And brought the dead back to life --
Did she realize that that love led Him to pour out His wrath on Himself
To save her very soul?

Did she know that His death would be the shortest-lived death
And that by it He conquered death and sin
Once and for all?

That magnificent head is lifted on high
Crowned with glory and honor and splendor!
All hail the omnipotent King
Who was willing to give up His life and so conquer death
That we may reign forever as His beloved children!