Blogging Along the Brandywine: Sallysaurus fossil found

 

It’s official. Mark the date.

My husband and I are fossils, dinosaurs. I’m not sure when it happened, but it came as a painful shock last week.

On Halloween day, Tom went out and bought himself a new car. A 2016, AWD, black, GMC Terrain. He had been thinking about it for a long time.

I was waiting at the door when he brought it home. Rear-vision camera, heated seats, fancy state of the art dashboard controls, its own 4G-LTE hotspot, forward collision alert, side blind-zone alert and so on. It looks like it could almost drive itself.

So being classic music aficionados and patrons of WRTI, I asked him, “Is the stereo system totally awesome?”

2016-gmc-terrain-mov-tech-substory-230x140-01Then he said it, “There’s no CD player”.

What? I could feel myself starting to hyperventilate and getting faint.

“Did they give you a massive discount for this egregious error, and when can they put one in at the shop,” I asked him.

So boys and girls…it’s not going to happen. And for all you fellow dinosaurs and Luddites, here’s the bad news.

As far back as 2010, an article in The Car Connection, Marty Padgett headlined, “We're Calling It: The In-Dash CD Player Dies in 2015”, and went on to explain, how the whole music industry was shifting from "hard" digital delivery to "soft" delivery through networks like iTunes and Pandora.

In 2013, J.D. Power and Associates released findings of a survey that found external devices such as iPods or smartphones had pulled even with CD players as listening devices in cars.

The December 2014 Consumer Reports stated, “Hyundai is moving away from embedded navigation in favor of a touch screen and controls optimized for smart-phone integration.”

Earlier this year, in his article in Wondering Sound, Marc Hogan wrote, “Get ready to say goodbye to those road trips spent revisiting old compact discs.” He goes on to say, “The clearest reason is in the numbers. Out of 257 million albums sold last year, 141 million were on CD, a 15 percent drop from 2013, according to Nielsen SoundScan.”

And along with the Hyundai — GMC, Ford, Chevrolet, Cadillac, Jeep and others — are all jumping on the bandwagon. The writing is on the wall.

As a teenager my dad took me to see Stanley Kubric’s now classic film, “2001 Space Odyssey.” Throughout the film, the eerie appearance of the shiny, black monolith, along with strains of Strauss’s “Thus Spake Zarathustra” always represented epic transitions in history. An iconic and much-viewed clip on YouTube is one such scene where the pre-historic ape-man has a bone in his hand and realizes it can be used as a tool. It’s a scene that still gives me the chills.

Somehow, I guess I just missed seeing that big, shiny, black obelisk.

And maybe I better bite the bullet and convert my computer to Windows 10 too.

It’s a cold world out there people!

* The opinions expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the ownership or management of Chadds Ford Live. We welcome opposing viewpoints. Readers may comment in the comments section or they may submit a Letter to the Editor to: editor@chaddsfordlive.com

About Sally Denk Hoey

Sally Denk Hoey, is a Gemini - one part music and one part history. She holds a masters degree cum laude from the School of Music at West Chester University. She taught 14 years in both public and private school. Her CD "Bard of the Brandywine" was critically received during her almost 30 years as a folk singer. She currently cantors masses at St Agnes Church in West Chester where she also performs with the select Motet Choir. A recognized historian, Sally serves as a judge-captain for the south-east Pennsylvania regionals of the National History Day Competition. She has served as president of the Brandywine Battlefield Park Associates as well as the Sanderson Museum in Chadds Ford where she now curates the violin collection. Sally re-enacted with the 43rd Regiment of Foot and the 2nd Pennsylvania Regiment for 19 years where she interpreted the role of a campfollower at encampments in Valley Forge, Williamsburg, Va., Monmouth, N.J. and Lexington and Concord, Mass. Sally is married to her college classmate, Thomas Hoey, otherwise known as "Mr. Sousa.”

1 Star2 Stars3 Stars4 Stars5 Stars (5 votes, average: 4.80 out of 5)
Loading...

Comments

comments

Leave a Reply