Dear God

No, not Dear God, as in what the hey!

Dear God: as in, the salutation of a letter.

Yes I am writing as letter to my putative maker and yes, I know I’ve trumpeted loud and long my belief that such an entity is…well…not so much an entity as a legend to which I don’t personally subscribe. Please just stand by and we’ll see if you think the salutation is appropriate once you’ve read what follows.

I’m railing at the unfairness of progress. Again. To me, not all progress is progressive. There are things being shoved aside in the name of progress that shouldn’t and they shouldn’t for the best of all possible reasons – a lot of them are things to which I’ve grown accustomed. My comfort zone is being discomfited.

They don’t make film for my camera any more. Yes, I know if you look really hard and know someone you can come up with a few outdated rolls of zillion speed film. I would not know how to use zillion speed film if it was fresh. But I always liked film and while I confess I haven’t used it in a couple years (okay, so maybe more like a decade), relying as I do on digital imagery for my photographic needs, I’m distressed to find that Kodak et al have abandoned this vestige of my past. What if I ever want to, you know, buy their film again? Which I probably won’t but that’s not the point, is it?

There seems to be a paucity of carbon paper, as well. I always hated using carbon paper because it would slip around on me or a corner would fold over and then you were screwed and frequently lost half a page of typing. But that doesn’t mean I’m ready for the world to be carbonless! Sheesh!

Speaking of typing, I recently overheard a conversation wherein two of our company’s young staff members were commenting about the typewriter we keep in a closet and wondering what it could ever be used for. Not that they didn’t understand that it was once useful, but rather that they could not imagine it ever being useful again. Hmmph! I still have a typewriter of mine own. It’s an eighty year old antique but it still works, after a fashion, and who knows when I might need a typewriter.

Keeping on in the (semi) publishing vein, newspapers are soon to bite the dust and I do seriously lament their passing. Of course, I don’t lament it enough to subscribe to the Times.

75 watt incandescent bulbs bit the dust when they became illegal to produce almost a year ago. Why, I ask? They were the most useful wattage. And I would have written a strongly worded letter to the legistalture had I noticed in time which I did not because I’ve been using more modern lamps for years but still, that’s no reason to STOP MAKING THEM!!!

Transistor radios are no longer… Aw, never mind, you can have that one. I heart my iPod.

All of these things were really useful and could be again if only we would make a few minor adjustments. Like stop using computers. Except of course for this one because typing nine iterations of a 330-page novel was a big pain long before I had the beginnings of arthritis in the old digits. (Yes, I really did that.)

I don’t know whom to see about making progress more palatable for people like me. Far as I can tell, there’s no Ministry of Slowing Stuff Down to be contacted. I considered joining the Society for Creative Anachronism but then I realized they want to bring back a time when neither self-propelled lawn mowers nor good, cheap chocolate were generally available. Luddites!

I want the world to revolve around my comfort zone. So I’m going to ask God to put in the fix. And don’t snort at me. People petition His Imaginariness for things much sillier than my need to be comfortable. Sports requests. Pleading for bigger boobs, smaller ears, a good outcome on a test for which one failed to actually, you know, study…the list is truly infinite.

I want to live in the Land of Plenty. A place where things remain available not because I need them now but because I grew up comfortably ensconced in a world in which these things were available. But I’m not really sure what these things that I need restored to currency might be, so I’m calling on the services of an entity who sees all and knows all.

It seems to me that “Dear God” is perfectly appropriate. I could as easily have wished upon a star or simply started with “I hope…” but I chose Dear God. And let’s face it – you read this far so who’s to say I was wrong?