Change: It is constant

Star Beacon

July 13, 2008 09:55 pm

— Come writers and critics
Who prophesize with your pen
And keep your eyes wide
The chance won't come again
And don't speak too soon
For the wheel's still in spin
And there's no tellin' who
That it's namin'.
For the loser now
Will be later to win
For the times they are a-changin'.
Does it fit. May be.
Those words are from the great Bob Dylan song, “The Times They Are A-changin’” (1964) drifted at first like a soft mist. Then they became dark and ominous smoke, and finally they were a fire consuming a building in the Harbor.
OK, a little dramatic. It was all in my mind, but you get the drift. The times are a changin’. That is the constant: Change is always with us and that song has a way of taking up my mind when change comes to mind (hmmm a little redundant).
The Dylan song has been in my mind ever since I bumped into an Ashtabula County educator a couple weeks ago. It was Ashtabula Area City School Superintendent Joseph Donatone. He asked me what is becoming a very frequently asked question: “How are things at the newspaper?”
“Oh, not bad,” was my response. “We may be doing better than last year. But I am not sure what the future really holds for newspapers.”
Then I said to him we probably are in the midst of building our last schools as well. In fifty, perhaps a hundred years, students will not be going to schools as we know them.
He nodded with an air of agreement.
Schools and newspapers have been around since dirt, yet they are in danger of heading into history, or perhaps metamorphasizing into something very different than the institutions of this day.
OK, matter is neither created nor destroyed, but it does change shape. The matter of newspapers and schools will be here... in some form.
In 10 or 15 years the newspaper may be known as cybernews. In other words, news will no longer be on a piece of paper. Students probably will be home-schooled with all their courses on-line.
It is all about saving money. Isn’t it?
There are a lot of businesses and institutions facing
similar situations, just ask the record stores.
The raw materials once used for 78s. 45s, 33 1/3s (music records) are probably the components for orange barrels used to hold up traffic on our roads and vinyl siding on our homes. Records were replaced by reel-to-reel tapes, cassettes and 8-tracks. Most of those are gone because they were replaced by compact discs. I-pods and MP3 players are making short life of CDs, which means record stores are quickly being filed in the archives.
And remember VCRs? Try to find the tapes and places that sell them in your neighborhood. The VCRs are almost gone and so are many of the places that sold them. VCRs have been replaced by the DVDs and fewer places are selling them because NetFlix and pay-per-view movies via cable TV have made it easier and sometimes cheaper to do it through the mail or through your TV set.

It seems there is no business or profession immune from the computer or other late 20th century and early 21st century change agents.
Many of the tasks we found necessary to hire an attorney to do for us, can now be done on our own, such as drawing up wills or divorce and dissolution papers. You can take them over to the courts without having to pay an attorney $150 an hour.
On-line real estate services, such as realty.com, will some day end the need for real estate agents. The same things is happening in the auto business, as on-line services offer competitive prices without having to spend money for gasoline to go to a dealership. Just pick your car, pick your price and pick where you want it delivered.
So as one can see the times they are a changin’.

IN THE NEWSROOM the other day an odd topic of conversation surfaced. The question was asked, “What happened to Brylcreem?’
Remember: “Brylcreem — a Little Dab’ll Do Ya!” When I was a kid a lot of us were either putting Brylcreem or Vitalis on our hair? It gave our hair that wet, shiny look. Brylcreem sort of faded when guys decided to have the dry, natural look.
The guys that went for the dry look like me probably are thinking Brylcreem is history.
Wrong.
Brylcreem has had a comeback. The wet look is back for some .
So what is the moral of this story? Think cyclical and all things will return some day.
Frieder is editor of the Star Beacon and can be reached at nfeditor@suite224.net.

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