Connecting and re-connecting in the Electronic age.

In my very early childhood, my family was one of the first in our Bronx apartment building to have a black and white television set. It stood about three and a half feet tall, or at least it seemed to.  the screen was 15 inches wide and ten inches high.  It was a real novelty and I can remember many neighbors stopping by to watch shows on it.  One evening in particular stood out in a striking way.  It was a live feed from the California coast and it showed the Pacific Ocean crashing against a rocky outcropping. My Grandmother who lived with us who was born in 1886 kept repeating over and over again, " I can't believe I am finally seeing the other ocean." ( We lived in New York City, so going to the beach on the Atlantic Ocean was always a summertime event.)    

Years later when we moved into our house in Brooklyn, that same Grandmother was dumbstruck as she watched a man walk on the moon in real time. "I never thought I would see that", she said over and over again. She had lived through a lot in her years: World War I, Spanish Influenza Epidemic, Great Depression, World War II, election and later assassination of John Kennedy, the first Roman Catholic president,  Vietnam War, Watergate, Nixon's resignation...lots of stuff, yet these two events truly struck her with awe and wonder.
So, I wondered, what events in my lifetime have caused me to stop and wondered about the awesomeness of it all. There certainly are many things to choose from that have come along from the mid twentieth century into the early twenty-first. Pac-Man, desk top computers, tape decks, VCR's, and palm pilots, these all seemed to be long lived necessary inventions, but alas, they were all replaced by more and more efficient and , in most cases, smaller silenter and sleeker replacements, many of which were themselves were replaced in their turn.


So, I have wracked my brain for sometime now and have decided on two that have had an enduring effect on my life: the internet and unlocking the genetic code of DNA for a very related reason: connections and reconnections.

Through the internet, I have been able to reconnect with old friends and family embers not only across the country, but across continents. Friends who are living in England, South Africa and other far-flung countries are easily within reach on any kinds of social media.  We see photos of children and grandchildren, we get to share vacations, holidays and special family events that we are unable to attend in person. Friends and relatives on the west coast respond to notes from other friends across the Atlantic in Europe and beyond. We can follow the politician machinations of nations around the world with a simple click of the cursor.  This can be, as many will attest, both fascinating and frustrating...think about the current situation here in the US surrounding the presidential races.
The internet has made it possible for me to connect with paternal cousins in places as far as Ireland and as close as the Bronx.                                                                

The other development has to be breaking the DNA code.  This has lead to many marvelous medical miracles.  In my own family it made it possible to decode the gene known as Brac-1 which is a marker for cancer. Now, my paternal familial line provides a very cancer-ridden gene pool in which we swim. My paternal grandmother, tow paternal aunts, and one paternal cousin succumbed to breast cancer or its complications. Two of my sisters are breast cancer survivors, sue to the miracle of genetic testing.

Now, I challenge you to think about what are the two or three inventions/movements/research that have changed your life as well.  Just email me, I am interested in seeing what others think.