Last Days of Newbury

My father is an amateur radio operator. For hours on weekends he will go into his Ham Shack – a fully custom-built shielded room on the first floor of my parents’ house – and will speak with people around the globe using the magic of the airwaves. It's been something of a disappointment to him that very few youth (including his own children or grandkids) have picked up the hobby. In fact amateur radio operators are a vanishing breed, and few youth enter the hobby anymore. 

Why would you want to?  Radio used to give you the ability to talk to people around the world, but you can do that on Facebook now (and on blogs, for that matter).  Why learn Morse code, when you can use the computer to do translation into any language, and send your message instantly around the world.

And yet my Father and his friends continue connect on a scratchy, odd-sounding conversation every week, using technology that requires the skills and ear of a virtuoso to make it work.  This is his community, and his shared experience. 

So much of getting older seems to be saying goodbye to things that we cared about, and the things that we cherish that used to be an everyday occurrence, and things that have made our lives richer.  Maybe these are getting replaced with other things that people after us will see as life enriching, but I don't know.

Newbury comics on Needham Street will be closing in a week or two. The rent was simply too much for them to afford, and with most music, books and movies being available online now, the number of people going in and out of the store has been declining. So it is with other kinds of stores that have enriched my life over the years, including but not limited to music stores, hobby shops, and bookstores. 

What I hope we don't do is find ourselves five and 10 years down the line, wondering what happened to all these places that enriched our lives, then opened our eyes and art years, and our minds to art, into creativity, into the ways that we could view our world beyond what we could experience in our own communities. These stores provided the gateway. 

Ironically, I was at Newbury Comics today to purchase a DVD copy of Dave Grohl’s documentary Sound City – A story of a recording studio that has now closed due to the fact that music is a troubled industry, and is now just as commonly recorded and digitally “corrected” on laptops as much as in a studio.  (It’s doubly painfully ironic, as I originally watched the movie on my iPad.) 

Certainly the Internet provides a creative gateway now, but it's different.  It's individualized, compartmentalized, and isolating. The beautiful paradox of a retail music, book, hobby or similar specialty store is that it brought people together in order to show them an experience outside of their own community through thoughts, music. The Internet doesn't allow for that kind of interaction it is exactly the same time you explore. It is not a shared experience. It is not a community experience.

Normally, I would throw in a “shop local” plea right about here.  Without sounding overly dramatic, maybe I should throw in a plea that we figure out how to save our own ability to relate to each other, and to imagine together. 

Chris Steele is a husband and a father of 2 children in the Newton Public School system.  He is also an economic and community development consultant as well as an activist and volunteer.  You can contact him at steelch@yahoo.com