Day 24,376: Parting with Old Technology While Avoiding the Cold
There’s nothing like sleeping in one’s own bed, but sometimes I find myself in other beds in the house either due to the cold outside or a cold inside. If it’s very windy and cold outside, we retreat to the third floor bedroom where the heat always rises and stays. If my husband has a cold inside, I retreat to another bedroom to avoid getting his cold. This month, it was combination of both types of colds that drove me to the upstairs guest bedroom where I came face to face with my need to double down on my Swedish cleaning efforts particularly with my collectibles,
Here’s what I collect: books and portfolio work of past career assignments. Of course, these are impossible to part with. One never knows when one needs a reference for a new project and it’s in a book read years ago, or when a sample of a project long completed can help visualize a problem with a current project. Since I no longer remember half of the projects I’ve completed in life, they also serve as reminders of some fun times and successes achieved way too long ago.
I decided to give it a college dropout try and opened one drawer filled with cassette tapes that no longer even have companion tape recorders. I figured they were music tapes and could easily be thrown out given the world of streaming music including the classic oldies, but to my surprise, they were old demos of commercial spots largely from my days in North Jersey Media.
The Record and Herald News have long been sold to Gannett. The ad agencies are also now sold or folded with retired executives and it is only I would ever care to listen to the spots for old time sake if I even had a tape recorder. I lined them up and took a picture.
One Drawer Down
The old me might have tried to transcribe the tapes. It would have taken days of time and for what purpose? The new me put them in the trash.
I rarely do radio spots anymore having moved my allegiance to podcasts, social media ads, and all things digital. Years ago, we coveted buying 60 second spots. If I can even be convinced to invest in radio, I’ll purchase 10 and 30 second second spots as no one has the patience to listen to anything more than a few seconds.
The marketing field has changed. The media has changed, and I’ve changed too. I may restock the guest room drawer with something, or nothing. An empty drawer has some appeal, especially in a guest room. It might encourage someone to unpack a bit more and stay a bit longer. If it’s a guest rather than a tape from my past, that would be a real treat.
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Focus on Gun Sanity: Here’s a new term rearing up around the country – 2nd Amendment Sanctuary Counties. Just this past week, Cape May County, NJ was one of the most recent to declare itself a gun sanctuary county. If the resolution had been to make it a bird sanctuary or butterfly sanctuary county, I’m willing to bet it would have taken months of deliberation rather than the quick one meeting that occurred. Part of the effort is likely in anticipation of a political rally coming into the county and part is to follow a new trend of rural counties bucking blue state initiatives in state capitals. Read up on it. It’s the latest marketing turn of a phrase where the same people who would find sanctuary cities bad are rallying around sanctuary counties.
The Crone Diary 