Last Call: Even in the Middle of Nowhere
Corry, John
by John Corry Even in the Middle of Nowhere Modika-diko, Lesotho IF YOU DRIVE VERY CAREFULLY, YOU MAY GET HERE in a 4x4 vehicle, but even so, it's chancy. The road is only two ruts in the dirt...
...All those trips, though, were before the one to Lesotho, where I got stuck in the middle of nowhere on the mountain near Modika-diko...
...a reputation for mild eccentricity has its uses...
...I was still making do with ballpoint pens (except when it rained, then you used pencils) and spiral notebooks...
...But I will tell you that years ago journalism went one way, while I went another...
...At the same time, I know that my inability or unwillingness to come to grips with computers has cost me...
...IT HAPPENED IN THE 197o's WHEN I WAS A New York Times reporter...
...Things, in fact, got worse...
...Therefore I do not send e-mail, and I do not cruise the Web, and I cannot even imagine shopping online...
...Computers caused the rift...
...MY TIME, I KNEW, WAS RUNNING OUT...
...Then you turned them over, and read their other sides...
...I wrote stories, most appropriately, I thought, on an old upright L.C...
...They do wonderful things, I know, and we are all the better for having them, but they have made me a stranger in my own society...
...It appears that nothing has changed in these mountains since the Basuto rolled boulders down their sides to discourage the invading British...
...I would think deep thoughts, and nurture my soul, and safe in the middle of nowhere, put technology far behind me...
...Obviously you could not do that on a computer...
...It was Windows for Dummies...
...But one rondavel had what appeared to be silver rectangles on its thatched roof, and when I got there I discovered they were solar panels, and that they powered an NEC laptop computer...
...letters, sentences, paragraphs, and eventually whole stories were engraved on sheets of paper...
...I told the man who tried to explain to me how this worked that I knew very little about computers, and when I did he gave me a book...
...There was no telling what you might find--possibly an old Broadway review, or an ad for a 1937 Buick, or a story about a headless corpse in Brooklyn...
...The road is only two ruts in the dirt to begin with, and sometimes it vanishes completely...
...an explanation would only be boring...
...Then one day a man in a short-sleeved shirt with ballpoint pens in the breast pocket showed up, and began talking about computers...
...Day by day more typewriters began to disappear from the Times until finally in that block-long newsroom mine was the only one left...
...Other mountains are all around you, and the silence is profound...
...You researched a story by calling for the appropriate file, and reading the clippings...
...I told him that you wrote by extending the left and right forefingers, and then bringing them down hard on metal typewriter keys...
...I am not particularly adventurous, and I do not romanticize African villages, but stuck on that mountain, I thought that when I got to Modikadiko, I might stay there...
...It fit in with the general dishabille of what was then the newsroom...
...But then the morgue was computerized, and that was gone, too...
...Time is suspended, and a fresh, clean world is as it should be...
...The old clippings were a serendipiter's delight...
...A few dozen stone huts, or rondavels, were scattered across a mountainside...
...One way or another, technology was defeating me, and I wondered if I would ever feel like a competent, practicing journalist again...
...They replaced it with a computer, and while I eventually, and grudgingly and painfully, learned the rudiments of using it, things were never the same...
...Soon he became a constant presence in the newsroom, and although I ignored him at first, in time he made me pay attention: He told me I would have to surrender my old Smith & Corona...
...Then under cover of darkness one night, an assistant managing editor told the maintenance men to remove it...
...REPORTERS were starting to carry tape recorders...
...The Times once had a wonderful morgue: millions of old newspaper clippings sorted out by topic, and collected in little accordion files...
...Never mind now the particulars about this...
...That puts me at a disadvantage...
...IN FACT, I DID...
...Then, when I was on my way again, and finally saw Modika-diko, it looked just as I had expected it to look...
...I WENT TO AFRICA, TO PLACES where I did not see computers, and where I could still cover stories with ballpoint pens and a spiral notebook...
...BUT IT WAS ALL OVER FOR ME AND MY Smith & Corona, of course...
...A bearded vulture may cruise overheard, but otherwise nothing moves...
...That has all changed, but never mind that now, either...
...90 May 2 o o o _9 The American Spectator...
...I still think of a computer as only a typewriter with lights...
...Even in my last incarnation at the Times, as a television critic, I never mastered a VCR...
...But I am a journalist, and while journalism is, and always has been, messy, unscientific, and imprecise, it is practiced these days on computers...
...Smith & Corona...
...It is not that I mind being thought of as mildly eccentric...
...Then you are stuck on a mountain in the middle of nowhere, although at lo,ooo feet this is glorious...
...But I said I could never do that, and patiently explained why...
...OR, TO BE PRECISE, I WOULD PUT COMPUTERS far behind me...
Vol. 33 • May 2000 • No. 4
