“Rather than falling, night, to the watchful eye, rises. Emerging first in the valleys, shadows slowly ascend sloping hillsides.”
~ A. Roger Ekirch

Languid days float dreamily on summer breezes: early August brings cicada songs, hummingbirds at porch feeders, drifting lace spider webs, and a sense of a long good-bye in blue-tinged shadows. Summer storms wreak havoc on phones and electrical toys.
Up-the-street-neighbor Lloyd Thompson tells me his television was zapped during a recent storm, so I tell him about my answering machine/phone getting the same treatment. Snap, crackle, pop! I’d called to ask where I could get a scoop of gravel for the back drive after the gully-washer finished destroying it and the phone — Lloyd knows these things about scoops of gravel. After comparing commiserative notes on storm causalities, I admitted to Lloyd that I wasn’t exactly crying over the phone being fried. However, I have since replaced it, figuring some important message might be missed other than annoying telemarketers that ignore Do Not Call lists!
It does not take much to get me ranting about phones. Cell phones in particular: I have one, it is not my best friend. It rides with me on trips: mainly to beg AAA to come to the rescue. There are no bells and whistles on the thing: it does not dare tell me how to drive or do all the snazzy tricks that some smarter phones do. It is not something I want attached to my ear all day long. No: I do NOT want to share my dinner with the thing, or go to the bathroom with it, or take it to bed with me. Being the resident Saluda eccentric curmudgeon that I am, I grumpily declare that I do not love my cell phone. It is a necessary nuisance. I can’t even read the tiny print on the buttons. And no, I don’t want to text you. What does “gd 2 c u nx wk” mean anyway? Can’t people WRITE any more? Or look each other in the eye and have a real conversation?