Where's the Next Shelter?

by Gary Sizer

We take phones for granted. Back home if you think of something or see something you want to share, you just do it. One person or a hundred, you can let them know almost instantly what you think, feel, or want. If you don’t get a signal you just wait a few minutes, at worst a couple hours. But now I might not be able to send this picture until tomorrow, or next week. By no means a crisis, but it was the most disconnected I’d felt since starting. And I liked it. It was more like independence than loneliness. I made a note to remember how it felt not to get that instant gratification. It’s amazing that a tiny metal box can give us the power to show distant loved ones an instant photo from where we are. The generation before mine would have expected flying cars before these Star Trek communicators. Yet here we are, yawning at pictures of cats while standing in line at the bank.