Just turned on the television, and it looks as though Armageddon has been avoided. My tv still works.
The Digital TV switchover has been sitting out there for years now. A year ago, television stations went frantic in trying to convince millions of Americans to race out for special receivers and converter boxes to avoid a blank television on February 17. A few weeks ago, Congress and the President even changed the law to delay the mandated shut-off date for broadcasting on analog. The stations in my market went ahead with the switchover today anyways. I doubt many noticed.
More than half of Americans have cable and aren’t affected. And even more have bought a television recently enough to catch the digital signals without a special piece of equipment. How many Americans might be affected? 14 percent. If they all have really old TVs. Leave No Television View Behind. (They might start reading.)
Lots of fear, because without urgency I might miss my third-rate newscast. DTV-2K. Hype overblown.
We missed a great chance to stimulate the economy today because of months and months (and months) of breathless DTV hype. We should have had broadcasting television stations make the change without any announcements. Then we might have had hundreds of thousands of Americans scrambling for new televisions today and placing calls to repairmen. The result would have been a huge spending spree and millions of dollars of retail purchases. Could have started an economic turnaround if somebody would have thought it out. Instead, those millions of purchases were spread out over 12 months – diluting their impact and leaving us to wait for small tax refunds, rebates, and reductions.
I knew it would happen. Spurred by my time volunteering with the Lackawanna Historical Society and my frustration at the state of the worn house where I live, I did some research on the neighborhood’s history.
I hadn’t delved into the history before because it isn’t the type of neighborhood I see myself settling in. I’m in a temporary residence during a transition in my life. My wife and I are getting established as a couple, and we’re developing a plan for what we want to carve out of our life together. This home is four walls that we’ll spend a few years in. Four walls where we’ll map out plans, prepare for the future, and begin our next steps. We rent a half of a house, and it’s a house to set a future rather than to study the past.
But it isn’t insulated, which is cold in the winter. And the pipes don’t always drain. They need to be replaced. The kitchen linoleum is peeling. The house is painted a horrible pink. But at least it’s faded and peeling. Almost all of the paint will be gone in another year. I don’t know it’s kept in this shape.
So one Saturday not long ago, I visited the historical society and began to search the old street directories and city maps. The house first appears in 1911 as the residence of a bartender. (It isn’t listed in the 1910 census.) There are only a few other houses on the block in the 1918 map. Turns out our neighborhood is Fairview Park, which sounds much nicer than it looks now. Most of the lots along the street are undeveloped lots (Fairview Park Land Company-owned. I wonder where the name comes from…).
The Bellevue Breaker was nearby as were some railyards for the DL&W. “You’re living in the heart of Wales over there. You know that, don’t you,” the society’s director offered after a quick scan of the surnames in 1915 directory.
So before coming inside today, I stood on the front porch shaking against the cold. I looked past the barely-running cars on the street, the deteriorating gutters, the missing shingles, the broken sidewalks, the flaking paint of the surrounding houses. There’s a nice view of South Side down the street. Between the neighbors’ houses, there’s a better view of downtown with the Hill and Green Ridge in the distance. For a few minutes, I could picture a different city, one in its prime while the neighborhood was still young.
