The rise of Fox News has slightly altered Calvin’s dynamic. Most people I run into today talk about political events, things that happened involving unrealistic Washington characters we will never meet.
Some people guess I must be American. I’ve been in Canada since I was 1 year old. My father is British, my mother, French, but growing up, there was virtually no Canadian tv programming. It was all American. It’s what we did as a family in the evening, watch tv.
I don’t have TV hook up and my friends and family go through withdrawal when they stay with me for a few days. And I cringe at their homes with it’s constant blaring and inane commercials – some leave it on all night!
It’s strips like today’s that show how prescient Watterson was, only now it’s computers. And now houses not only don’t have porches, they barely even have yards so people don’t have to come outside. Our homes have become bunkers with siding.
I earned enough from my two paper routes to buy myself a small B&W TV for my room. That was back in the sixties. That little thing continued to work until just a few years ago.
They actually are in the process of building a new “from scratch” neighborhood here based on a small town concept, with very small front yards, and front porches on all the houses, plus businesses mixed in, and a small town center in the middle, with retail shops and dining.
Hey, regarding you colorful stylus post yesterday, I am currently using a Shure cartridge with an elliptical stylus in the tone arm. It is similar to this:You must be an audiophile! I have a couple very close friends who have similar interests. I believe both are currently using Macintosh equipment. One used to work in radio back in the 70s, and retired as a broadcast engineer for Brown College here in the Twin Cities. Unlike me however, both have converted all their collections to digital. As one of them put it recently when I mentioned still refusing to convert to new technologies, “Oh yeah….those black round things that sounded scratchy….I have a vaguerecollection…..”
We were discussing Herb Alpert’s Whipped Cream And Other Delights album, which I have both on DC as well as vinyl.
My wife and I love to sit on our front porch, weather permitting. As I mentioned some time back, we have a fountain near where we sit, and the pleasant sound of water is, well, pleasant!
On more than one occasion, we are visited by little frogs who just sit there looking up at us for seemingly hours on end. I have no idea what is going through their tiny minds, but eventually they will turn and hop away off into the grass and disappear.
Of course it is Winter now, and in Minnesota it does get a bit chilly for us and likely the frogs as well…
When my sister and I were growing up, our home had one TV, and it was in what was called back then, the living room. The thought of kids having their own TV was pretty much unheard of even for middle class families like us. When we raised our daughters, neither had their own set. Our youngest is 33 now, so that explains a lot.
We did have a toy telephone set when we were growing up. It was made by Remco and similar to this:Times are different now…
Would love to have a front porch. In my mom’s over 50 neighborhood, there were no front porches so almost everyone would set up lawn chairs just inside their open garages.
When he was young, we refused to allow our son to have a TV in his room. But when he scrounged up some old computer parts and made his own (he was in middle school) we didn’t want to discourage ingenuity. We let him keep his TV, but put limits on when he could use it.His room was wired on a separate circuit. It only took a time or two of flipping the breaker to convince him we were serious.
@Gweedo – It’s legal here !!! – Murray@LeadingEdgeAudiophyles
There is little question you guys have some nice equipment (sic)! Our audio gear, which was purchased some time back, is upstairs and my wife uses it far more than me. In the video room, where we have multiple power recliners and where I spend most of the time when the weather doesn’t permit sitting outside on our front porch, is fairly basic and is mostly Panasonic; i.e., 60" Plasma flat screen, DVD & Blue Ray players, supported by a Denon AVR-1709 Surround Receiver pushing a Bose 7.1 Surround System all controlled by a Logitech remote. All this equipment was installed over the last 3 years by Best Buy Magnolia Home Theater.
Our Cadillacs also have Bose systems and seem to sound just fine, thank you.
interesting strip – brings inquisitive thoughts to my mind.WARNING – rambling thought pattern happening – WARNINGi have no front porch on my rambler. i live in a climate that is either too hot and humid or too cold and snowy to sit outside and have any level of comfort except for a couple of weeks a year. i live in a small city of less than 130,000 people and moved here from the Los Angeles area over 30 years ago.i know my neighbors for two houses down on both sides of me (i live in the middle of the block) as well as the three houses directly across the street from me by name and their children and have lived here longer than most. none of them have ‘sit out porches’ either. many of us stop and chat when we go for walks or when we do yard work or cross the street when we are out and ask how people are doing. if we see a change for good, we compliment, or bad we ask concerning the change – not out of nosiness but out of concern and a wish to help if needed. even the one neighbor who did not seem to like me for any other reason than my profession and always answered my inquiries with one syllable answers begin to talk to me on her own 4 years ago after working with my daughter for a year and finding out that her imagined ‘fears’ of me were not justified. all that to say – neighborliness like all relationships is an art that has to be practiced and worked on. it doesn’t ‘just happen’ because of a front porch or ‘not happen’ because of a lack of a front porch. i am pretty sure we all know that it is much easier to have a ‘relationship’ with someone you don’t have to interact with or someone who is pretend than with someone who might not think like you, act like you, vote like you, or even like the same colors you do. so i.m.h.o. it really is about how well we wish to work on and be intentional about relationships with others. again i.m.h.o. we lose out more, because we don’t wish to put in the time or are “too busy” to put in the time on a relationship, than we gain by not pursuing those maybe harder real life relationships. so thus we ‘conveniently’ know more about imaginary people in imaginary places reading imaginary scripts of supposed ‘reality’ than we do about the person that lives within our dwelling or within 50 feet of us outside our dwelling, because it is easier to be a technological voyeur than to have real time interaction. tv, internet, smart phones, and all the ‘modern’ technology that has come about in the later part of my years simply give us more ‘excuses’ not to have true relationships and may possibly even cause us to be more ‘afraid’ of our neighbors and ‘imagine’ more about them, good or bad, that may be false, because we are too busy with our ‘gadgets’ to find out what the truth really is.
rentier over 8 years ago
In the 60s and 70s parents didn’t allow it, but I don’t know, how they do nowadays!!
Yngvar Følling over 8 years ago
Nowadays, the kids may not have a TV in their room, but they do have an iPad which serves the same purpose.
blindavocado Premium Member over 8 years ago
Actually it is air conditioning that killed the front porch
Kind&Kinder over 8 years ago
Kids are raised with TV’s as babysitters. No winder they’re addicted and crave constant input. Many cyberaddicts had TV as a gateway drug.
flyertom over 8 years ago
My wife and I often sit on the big front porch of our house (built in 1923). The few people that pass by these days don’t speak English.
jbmlaw01 over 8 years ago
The rise of Fox News has slightly altered Calvin’s dynamic. Most people I run into today talk about political events, things that happened involving unrealistic Washington characters we will never meet.
Aaberon over 8 years ago
‘gobsmacked’: What a GREAT word; I may need to use that this week.
chovil over 8 years ago
Some people guess I must be American. I’ve been in Canada since I was 1 year old. My father is British, my mother, French, but growing up, there was virtually no Canadian tv programming. It was all American. It’s what we did as a family in the evening, watch tv.
jessegooddoggy over 8 years ago
I don’t have TV hook up and my friends and family go through withdrawal when they stay with me for a few days. And I cringe at their homes with it’s constant blaring and inane commercials – some leave it on all night!
Habogee over 8 years ago
I wonder why there are so many Luddites reading comics on their computers.
Laura Chapman Premium Member over 8 years ago
Shades of Fahrenheit 451!
Guilty Bystander over 8 years ago
It’s strips like today’s that show how prescient Watterson was, only now it’s computers. And now houses not only don’t have porches, they barely even have yards so people don’t have to come outside. Our homes have become bunkers with siding.
cubswin2016 over 8 years ago
If you put a tv in his room, you would never get him out of there although that might be a bad thing.
ChessPirate over 8 years ago
I earned enough from my two paper routes to buy myself a small B&W TV for my room. That was back in the sixties. That little thing continued to work until just a few years ago.
Carl R over 8 years ago
We have met the enemy, and he is us.
Carl R over 8 years ago
They actually are in the process of building a new “from scratch” neighborhood here based on a small town concept, with very small front yards, and front porches on all the houses, plus businesses mixed in, and a small town center in the middle, with retail shops and dining.
neverenoughgold over 8 years ago
Hey, regarding you colorful stylus post yesterday, I am currently using a Shure cartridge with an elliptical stylus in the tone arm. It is similar to this:You must be an audiophile! I have a couple very close friends who have similar interests. I believe both are currently using Macintosh equipment. One used to work in radio back in the 70s, and retired as a broadcast engineer for Brown College here in the Twin Cities. Unlike me however, both have converted all their collections to digital. As one of them put it recently when I mentioned still refusing to convert to new technologies, “Oh yeah….those black round things that sounded scratchy….I have a vaguerecollection…..”
We were discussing Herb Alpert’s Whipped Cream And Other Delights album, which I have both on DC as well as vinyl.
neverenoughgold over 8 years ago
My wife and I love to sit on our front porch, weather permitting. As I mentioned some time back, we have a fountain near where we sit, and the pleasant sound of water is, well, pleasant!
On more than one occasion, we are visited by little frogs who just sit there looking up at us for seemingly hours on end. I have no idea what is going through their tiny minds, but eventually they will turn and hop away off into the grass and disappear.
Of course it is Winter now, and in Minnesota it does get a bit chilly for us and likely the frogs as well…
neverenoughgold over 8 years ago
When my sister and I were growing up, our home had one TV, and it was in what was called back then, the living room. The thought of kids having their own TV was pretty much unheard of even for middle class families like us. When we raised our daughters, neither had their own set. Our youngest is 33 now, so that explains a lot.
We did have a toy telephone set when we were growing up. It was made by Remco and similar to this:Times are different now…
ellisaana Premium Member over 8 years ago
Would love to have a front porch. In my mom’s over 50 neighborhood, there were no front porches so almost everyone would set up lawn chairs just inside their open garages.
ellisaana Premium Member over 8 years ago
When he was young, we refused to allow our son to have a TV in his room. But when he scrounged up some old computer parts and made his own (he was in middle school) we didn’t want to discourage ingenuity. We let him keep his TV, but put limits on when he could use it.His room was wired on a separate circuit. It only took a time or two of flipping the breaker to convince him we were serious.
Number Three over 8 years ago
I’m getting a new flatscreen TV for Christmas. My old “Pacific” model won’t even switch on now.
But it lasted me a very long time, I mean YEARS!
xxx
KEA over 8 years ago
that’s been true of people in churches for millenia
Susie Derkins :D over 8 years ago
Don’t forget they come from real life Calvin.
neverenoughgold over 8 years ago
@Gweedo – It’s legal here !!! – Murray@LeadingEdgeAudiophyles
There is little question you guys have some nice equipment (sic)! Our audio gear, which was purchased some time back, is upstairs and my wife uses it far more than me. In the video room, where we have multiple power recliners and where I spend most of the time when the weather doesn’t permit sitting outside on our front porch, is fairly basic and is mostly Panasonic; i.e., 60" Plasma flat screen, DVD & Blue Ray players, supported by a Denon AVR-1709 Surround Receiver pushing a Bose 7.1 Surround System all controlled by a Logitech remote. All this equipment was installed over the last 3 years by Best Buy Magnolia Home Theater.
Our Cadillacs also have Bose systems and seem to sound just fine, thank you.
Saddenedby Premium Member over 8 years ago
interesting strip – brings inquisitive thoughts to my mind.WARNING – rambling thought pattern happening – WARNINGi have no front porch on my rambler. i live in a climate that is either too hot and humid or too cold and snowy to sit outside and have any level of comfort except for a couple of weeks a year. i live in a small city of less than 130,000 people and moved here from the Los Angeles area over 30 years ago.i know my neighbors for two houses down on both sides of me (i live in the middle of the block) as well as the three houses directly across the street from me by name and their children and have lived here longer than most. none of them have ‘sit out porches’ either. many of us stop and chat when we go for walks or when we do yard work or cross the street when we are out and ask how people are doing. if we see a change for good, we compliment, or bad we ask concerning the change – not out of nosiness but out of concern and a wish to help if needed. even the one neighbor who did not seem to like me for any other reason than my profession and always answered my inquiries with one syllable answers begin to talk to me on her own 4 years ago after working with my daughter for a year and finding out that her imagined ‘fears’ of me were not justified. all that to say – neighborliness like all relationships is an art that has to be practiced and worked on. it doesn’t ‘just happen’ because of a front porch or ‘not happen’ because of a lack of a front porch. i am pretty sure we all know that it is much easier to have a ‘relationship’ with someone you don’t have to interact with or someone who is pretend than with someone who might not think like you, act like you, vote like you, or even like the same colors you do. so i.m.h.o. it really is about how well we wish to work on and be intentional about relationships with others. again i.m.h.o. we lose out more, because we don’t wish to put in the time or are “too busy” to put in the time on a relationship, than we gain by not pursuing those maybe harder real life relationships. so thus we ‘conveniently’ know more about imaginary people in imaginary places reading imaginary scripts of supposed ‘reality’ than we do about the person that lives within our dwelling or within 50 feet of us outside our dwelling, because it is easier to be a technological voyeur than to have real time interaction. tv, internet, smart phones, and all the ‘modern’ technology that has come about in the later part of my years simply give us more ‘excuses’ not to have true relationships and may possibly even cause us to be more ‘afraid’ of our neighbors and ‘imagine’ more about them, good or bad, that may be false, because we are too busy with our ‘gadgets’ to find out what the truth really is.