While vacationing on Salt Spring Island this past summer we were just wondering through town and came across this old timer. Such a simple car when you look at it from a mechanical perspective with no computers, very little wiring, basic comforts but an abundance of style from a different era.
Unlike our modern vehicles this one you can actually fix with a wrench. Imagine that, no computer plugged in to tell you what's right and wrong, just good-old-fashion cognitive problem solving. Only in a place like Salt Spring can you so readily observe the poles of our society noticeably come together. Islanders seem to be caught between these shifting poles as they struggle to keep things they way they are while they incorporate progress. Small things for us big city dwellers can become significant social debates, like should we have cell phone coverage or should we increase the ease of access to the island, and now that I'm here I don't want the population to grow. Some people just want thing to remain the way they were when they arrived and this is true of many things for us bi-peds. Inevitably change does work its way into our lives, homes, networks, language, society...
Places like islands however offer an opportunity to observe more acutely what we all experience in society as we try to hang on to the past, live in the present and welcome the future. Thank you to the Salt Springs of the world for the opportunity to observe, contemplate and internalize what I am actually living every day at home without noticing.
All that from a single picture of an "Old Timer."
Today's Soup.
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