). It doesn't really matter though, because pretend or not, I never find any mushrooms. Anyway, Mother's day being this weekend, I got to thinking about my parents, and all the changes in the world since their lifetimes (born at the dawn of the 20th Century). Well, when my dad was my age, or at least when he was 47 and died, he'd have been hiking these same hills with his fancy new RolleiFlex taking wildflower pictures.
I'm doing the same, only with a 'phone' that happens to take pictures. Only I am able to press a button and take an automatic panorama shot, or a different button and take a video with clear audio to accompany it.
While I am hiking, I am listening to an Oregon album on the same device. I spot a likely mushroom patch for next year, so I hit the GPS button then email the location to myself.
Like him, I am a physician, but instead of waiting to get home and find a penciled message beside the telephone, once again on the same device, I get a text from the answering service, and call an emergency room, again on the same device. Potentially bad news for a lovely patient I've known for two decades, so I call her to gently break the news we need to do some further testing. Before I make that call, I go sit in a deerstand my daughter used last year, just so I can focus and talk to her without distraction. I think I told her the news in such a way that she can still have a halfway enjoyable weekend. Then on the same device, I look up my nurse's phone number, and text her a reminder to check our fax machine at the office because I just got a CT scan faxed there I want to be sure to look at Monday.
I return to taking photographs and listening to Oregon, though a bit more somberly. I'm thankful that my Dad married a woman of incredible intelligence, impeccable honesty, and impressive artistry, who after his death, managed to raise decent kids despite living far below the 'poverty' line. She taught us what was important was relationships, and integrity, and spirituality, versus material things or social status. Nonetheless, I do enjoy my high-tech Droid, even though I realize it is just a thing.
As I sit on one of my favorite spots, and one I know my Dad liked as well, watching the sun set, I hope my Mom and Dad still exist in some form somewhere that perhaps they can vicariously enjoy some of these things, and contemplate the fact that although the technology is so incredibly more sophisticated, the core of what we do in life is unchanged. We care for our patients, enjoy the moments in between life's crises, and wonder at what nature provides for us.
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) or their walking and looking down at the screen. Even adults walk across the street without even looking for traffic cause their glued to that tiny little screen. My gosh, what in God's green earth is that important??? This technology has basically ruined the youth in this country since texting and tweeting have reduced their literacy/linguistic skills and levels to first graders. It seems like the majority of college students don't know how to write term papers or do proper research anymore because they just google things from wikipedia and cut and paste it into their term papers. IMO, this new technology was created just to further disrupt society and make people virtual mind kontrol slaves, especially the youth. They don't want individuals or independent thinkers but want everyone to think the same, like a hive mind mentality. 
They aren't too worried about us older folks cause we'll be dying off soon enough.
. You old fanny burbs are few and far between sometimes on obscure subject matter. 
