Saturday, March 14, 2015

Saturday fun activity: Where IS this?


     The whole idea seems impossibly quaint, now. 
     There would be these little private rooms, these booths, scattered about in public spaces, so people who wanted to make a telephone call could go inside, and hide themselves away, and conduct their business without being overheard.  
     In private, as it were.
This one's in Michigan
     Now phone booths have vanished so completely that their disappearance isn't even noticed anymore forget about being mourned. You can't miss what you never knew existed. You rarely see even the half glassed-in booths that would be found on busy streets, never mind the full booth, with accordion door, I noticed, still, downtown, as it were, in the Upper Peninsula Michigan town of Ontonagpn. 
     Rarer still are fancy wooden booths, such as the ones above, with their own gold leaf numbers and yes, working telephones still inside. Think of them as the original phone case.
    I suppose the idea of privacy will go next. People all yabber away, oblivious to each other. Even cupping your hand around your mouth seems a needless nicety. You certainly wouldn't expect someone to step away, to suggest that their conversation isn't public information. Heck, everything is public information. Why be discreet  about something your going to post on four different forms of social media just as soon as you can? Just the thought of popping into a phone booth for some privacy while you klaxon your news to the world seems hopelessly convoluted. 
    But we still understand the rough outlines of privacy.  It doesn't puzzle us. Quite yet. Until that inevitable day, where did I see this quartet of ancient phone technology sarcophagi? 
     The winner will receive—speaking of old methods of communication—one of my hand-typeset blog posters, printed on century-old equipment at the famous Hatch Show Print shop in Nashville, Tennessee. Remember to post your guesses below. Good luck. 


7 comments:

  1. Replies
    1. That's it. Congrats. Send me your address, at dailysteinberg@gmail.com, and I'll mail you your poster.

      Delete
  2. I think they are in a hotel - the Palmer House?

    NW Pat Carey

    ReplyDelete
  3. Ya, I couldn't see the reflection in the glass on my phone. Now that I see the sofa I'm thinking one of the older Downtown Hotels. Drake, Palmer House, Hilton.
    Those aren't guesses.
    Unfair to others for me to make 4 guesses, all of which are probably wrong.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Darnit, one I knew (from one of the two times my kind was let into the august ULC).

    ReplyDelete
  5. Team Building Activities are stimulating problem-solving tasks designed to help group members develop their capacity to work effectively together. Many fun team building activities for work and initiative tasks are like kids games, others are novel, complex tasks.

    ReplyDelete

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