As “Tiresias instructs Odysseus that, before he can go home, he must take his oar and walk inland until someone mistakes it for a winnowing fan—a tool for winnowing grain—and asks him what it is. In other words, as soon as he’s gone to a place where people don’t know what an oar is, then he’s gone far enough” (https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2015/05). This is interpreted as Odysseus needing to make one last sacrifice to the gods to make amends. I would do this with a smartphone, not to make a sacrifice to the true God but to show there is no place that a person will not know what a smart phone is.
On vicarage, I preached at Jesus Lutheran Church of the Deaf in Austin, Texas. Till then, I didn’t realize how isolated deaf people are much more so than blind people. With age, I’ve discovered how isolated just being hard of hearing can make you. They warn you about this.
“They” being old people doctors and agencies. As we start to lose our hearing, we have people repeat things. Then, since you can only say “what” so many times, you start pretending like you heard what they said. This will progress so that you’re missing so much of what’s really being said that people will stop talking to you. Your bubble of people grows smaller and smaller. “They” say this creeping isolating and cutting off can lead to dementia.
I don’t know about that. I do know that I am hard of hearing digitally speaking. I’m only finding out piecemeal just how isolated I’ve become. Books I’m listening to while I walk are usually nonfiction. Lost in the Valley of Death is about the gone-missing internet phenome, Justin Alexander. Never heard of him. I heard on sports radio the sportscaster use this phrase: “He was like a weasel on a woodpecker. That’s real thing. Look it up.” Continue reading →
