Sunday, April 10, 2011

Reach out and touch someone


Sitting here on the patio,this beautiful Sunday , I am reading a book by Rabbi Daniel Lapin called Thought Tools.

I enjoy his writings.

He also has a radio show which I sometimes am able to catch, but not lately.

I guess it's my way of Sunday Soul Searching, Meditiaion, Revalation, or what ever you may call it.

I like to reflect on things on Sunday for some reason, not that I don't do it during the week now and then , it just seems that Sunday is better suited for.

Sitting on the patio, I hear less traffic on the road, the stereo is playing Deuter or perhaps George Winston....mellow music for Sunday.

I enjoy mellow music for some reason, especially on Sundays.

Anyway, one of the chapters the good ole Rabbi is talking about is how we communicate. Which made me stop and think that it wasn't to long ago that Sundays were made for communicating with family and friends.

There were multitude of advertisements on radio and TV to reach out and touch someone. It was cheaper to call long distance on Sundays and Holidays.

I remember family waiting for Sundays to call relatives. It's wasn't that long ago that phone calls were very expensive.
Remember person to person calls?

One of the tricks we use to use to let someone know that we had either arrived at a destination or that everything was OK was to call for ourselves person to person through the operator, You would call your home, one of your family would answer and the operator would allow the caller to hear you either ask for yourself or tell the answering party who you would want to talk to.

When the other family member would say that the person wasn't there, you would hear their voice, they would hear your voice asking for, and saying that you would try later.

Kind of a real cheap way of letting them know things were ok.

Now there is no need to do that because phone calls are relatively cheap, pennies per minute.
Sundays were families days.

One more hour of reading, then finish up some projects, and enjoy the rest of this super Sunday.
And we'll reach out and call some friends NOB for some gossip.

11 comments:

JerryL said...

I remember walking down to the Rexhall drug store to use their phone booth, because our road didn't have phone lines yet.
Yep, I can't remember how many times I called home with the person to person rouse.

Steve Cotton said...

Thanks for the idea. I think I will call my family up north.

norm said...

Skype is pretty cool for getting together long distance. It makes a world of difference when you can see the person or people your talking to. And it's free.

Calypso said...

Yup been there done that - now I hear Carlos Slim is charging for cell phone calls you do not even answer??? The times are changing - but there is always the Internet ;-)

Tancho said...

Jerry, so many people don't even know the sound of a phone ringing, let alone the old party line setups...seems like it was just yesterday to me.
You are a lucky fellow Steve to have family to call, take the opportunity!
Norm, I haven't checked into to Skype, simply because some of the people we call don't have or understand what a computer or keyboard is capable of doing..you know the real old generation....
Calypso, time to delete lots of people than never answer...Charging for an attempted call? Pretty crafty.

Anonymous said...

Person-to-person calls. Man, I haven't thought about that in quite a spell.

And I would not have figured you for a Deuter guy. I really like him.

Calypso: I doubt TelCel is charging for calls you don't answer. If anything new is happening, I'd bet that they're charging the caller for calls that go unanswered. Different thing. The other would be totally off the wall.

-- Felipe

norm said...

The Skype was easy to set-up: a little $10 video and audio pick-up, the Skype software was free and the e-mail "numbers" of your friends and family. I even have my parents and grandparents ringing me up when they see me online. ( I did go to their homes, set them up and show them how to use it)Now my favorite uncle: "@#@!%$# that computer" so it's the phone for him.
When I am out of the country, I send an e-mail before I plan on calling and set up a time that I will be calling so they will have their computer booted up. Not so unlike the old days when we would have a set time for those special phone calls.

Dan in NC said...

Tancho, I was ticked off when pay phones went from 5 & 10 cents to a quarter for 3min calls - and did NOT give change when you only talked briefly. Now I travel with my Magicjack, a laptop, and headset. Sit down in a WiFi area, and place calls like I was next door to the house - from Europe or Latin America! Calling in-country is very cheap - usually 2 cents a minute or less. Love that stupid little blue box!
Cheers!
Dan in NC

Don Cuevas said...

Skype is great, but it depends on a working Internet connection. Ours was out of service from approximately early Sunday morning (like about 3:00 a.m.) until sometime yesterday. I couldn't make my customary Sunday morning call to my family back in New Jersey.

Somewhat later, I did get to call them on my iPod Touch, from the free wi-fi at La Surtidora, on Pátzcuaro's Plaza Grande.

It worked fine, except that just as I was "dialing", a roving group of musicians came in and started to play next to our table. I escaped into the corridor around the corner, and was able to speak briefly with my sister.

Our Internet connection is working again, at least in normal fashion, from about 9 p.m. to 9 a.m.

Saludos,
Don Cuevas

Tancho said...

Norm, I will have to try Skype especially since I have a built in camera on my laptop. Hopefully the people on the other end do too.
Dan, I bought a magic jack for my wife to take down to Honduras, it has been ok, about half the time you can only hear half the conversation for some reason, but for the price half is good.
Sr.Cuevas, no internet,eh? How could you survive? If you didn't live in the middle of the sticks you could have reliable connections like the rest of the world.....
I didn't know that they had wifi, I have seen several locked systems on my Iphone, I guess I will have to find out what the password is....

Calypso said...

Felipe - Since I do not have a cell phone, I can only report what I have seen on the news and read on forums. Apparently it is an unanswered texting scam of some sort:

http://www.vivaveracruz.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1660