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Dr. Dirt
Feburary - March 2011

Disconnects of the Malcontent

- in which Dr. Dirt offers up even more cheesiness with his whine -

Judging from my recent installments here, I've become engulfed in a powerful maelstrom of the winter of my discontent, or more accurately, the whining of my malcontent. And it continues. Through the grapevine, I understand that NHLA for some time has been considering going digital with the Newsletter. Not really news, many organizations have eliminated print media for their member communications, and even national newspapers and magazines have moved rapidly in that direction (or have expired). And I must admit, information usually arrives faster and with more connectivity online. And signing up for events online is really easy (except when it's really, really, really not). And it saves paper.

The problem is, I no longer read the newsletters that are digital. Why is this? I thrive on information and on everything landscape, yet I've been ignoring the latest issues of a number of now-online sources. In part I think it's the speedy medium of email: too many stimuli coming in too fast. It requires a quick triage of "answer now" vs. "dump" vs. "later." Items such as newsletters get deposited in "later," indefinitely. And most emails are narrowly focused and easy to deal with, whereas digital newsletters are lengthy and require both a time commitment and some real thought. My inbox currently contains newsletters from a year ago. Older issues I've either moved to a folder for future reading (ha!), or deleted.

Call me a Luddite, but I find it hard to sit down with my computer and read through a monthly issue. I still need to carry an actual newsletter around with me and read it in pieces as I find the time - at lunch, over coffee, on the throne. I suppose I could do this with a laptop, but it's not as convenient, and, well, I won't. In another holdover from the age of paper, I often copy and file (in a four-drawer steel filing cabinet, no less) items that I might want to access again - articles, photos, upcoming events. Having hiked the paper trail for over sixty years, it's hard to merge fully onto the information highway.

I realize it's past time to transition if I have any intention of keeping up with the evolving (and I didn't say "progressing") world around me. People under twenty now spend an average of eight hours a day interfacing electronically. Email is considered archaic to the next generation, who instead use text messaging, instant messaging and tweets to engage the world. Friendships, romance, bullying, truth/fiction: all occur, via satellite, in 140-character modules. College roommates have feuds on cellphones while sitting in opposite corners of the same room. It's a new world, less brave than paradoxical: the connectedness of people who don't connect in person. From what I see and read, the upcoming generation is losing basic life skills - the social and practical and natural worlds in particular. I don't want to watch what happens when the grid goes down.

Yeah, yeah, just like the ancient Greeks, I'm bemoaning the state of today's youth: self-involved, antisocial, disrespectful, ignorant, unwashed, foul-mouthed, the end of civilization as we know it. It has always been thus.

On the upside, the human species is nothing if not adaptable. For example, in November (and contradicting everything I've written here), I bought a smart phone. Now I can open my email on a two-inch by three-inch screen and read those newsletters pretty much whenever and wherever I want. But I don't, and at least for this week, I won't. However, if I had bought an iPhone instead of an Android, I could buy an app that features all of Mike Dirr's Manual of Woody Landscape Plants and more: over 9000 plants, over 7000 photos, a database searchable by 72 plant variables. $14.99 from the iPhone store. Now that's progress!

\Dr. Dirt tweets the bird to John Hart, Professor of Horticultural Technology, Thompson School of Applied Science, University of New Hampshire, Durham.