Well, they say music is going to disappear, like books. Well, not music, of course, but the traditional ways of acquiring it and listening to it. Actually, the music industry is way ahead of the book publishing industry. It has gone through its crises and its purveyors and creators have learned that they have to give a little to get, eventually, a lot. When we were married we enjoyed one of Bill's first acquisitions, a radio-record-player console - does anyone remember those things that looked like a real piece of furniture, designed something like a coffin with nice handles/ hardware? It boasted continuous play: the record player dropped the next record down to be played, although record manufacturers didn't know that, so that you got side 3, not 2, and so on, for a long time. I used to play records - 33 1/3 rpm, Broadway shows - while I ironed. Those were in the days before Perma-Press. The first thing I bought with the first money I earned by writing was an electric mangle because I liked ironed sheets and - can you believe it? - tea towels. I had an aunt who used to iron diapers!!! I digress; this is about music. Yes, well, we had babies, four of them, and we couldn't afford to buy music, not for a long time. I missed too much to catch up, so I hung back with Vivaldi and Smetana et al. I am still interested in Broadway and now I usually get the Tony Award musical winners. I am a case of arrested development: I stopped at CDs. I don't understand iTunes. But then, I don't like ear buds. (Is that what they're called?) I have never liked wall-to-wall sound inside my head. It's too invasive. I have read of writers who like to write to music but I find that hard to believe. What happens to the inner dialogue with that kind of interference? Music should be pervasive, not invasive, but it's not going to disappear. That's all I can say about that.

Next on the list of things that are going to disappear in my/your lifetime: the land-line telephone. Now that's going to be trouble for me to cope with, even to write about. My landline is my lifeline. I have encountered cellphones but I'm not handy or happy with them. I was the first person I knew to get an "amigo" way back (I returned to Toronto over ten years ago) when I lived on the shore of a Muskoka lake in one of about ten dwellings occupied year-round and I faced a 2 1/2 hour drive to Toronto on a road that was wiped out by white-outs during the winter months. I realized the hazards of walking alone with my dog or of driving alone on that highway and got a cellphone so I could call for help in case of an emergency. I never had such an emergency, BTW, and I didn't use the phone for chat. Later, in the city, I got another phone for dog-walking. But I found the keys too small for my thick fingers and I don't have the dextrous opposable thumbs that kids today have developed with all their practice on video games. I let the (devious) contract run out and got a stripped-down cell phone with big numbers. I use it when I go away somewhere to write rather than rely on a possible landline. Soon I am going to have to face a cellphone full time when I go off on another writing retreat, so it's a good thing I am considering the demise of landlines now. I guess I'm going to have to rely on a cellphone while I'm away. I don't know what to say. A phone is a phone, good for swift communication and information, but I understand certain people's need for further expression. In my day, and in my children's day, phones were for talking, a lot of talking,so much so that a children's telephone with a separate number was allotted to me and my brother and later, when I had a family, to my children. My grandchildren have permanent cellphone numbers so that they can move often, which they do, and still be on call. I guess really mobile people should have permanent numbers assigned to them. Maybe some day babies will have a number tattooed on their heels so they can be tracked for life - not unlike the GPS microchips some dogs have installed by their watchful owners. Area codes would be tricky in the case of a world traveller- I mean how much space is there on a heel for a world number? But those are cellphone problems. What about the landline? I guess I've just skirted the problem. If you move around a lot, a landline is not for you. See, I'm not only sedentary, I'm stationary, so I'm easy. I'm as close as your telephone.