Kickass high tech low tech

Kickass, the doorstop dog, sympathizes with the keeper in his fumbling efforts to stay relevant, sometimes by visiting old haunts where and when he was out there on the sharp edge of things.  Sometimes, however, he may wait too long between such keep-up visits like a recent one to the Memorial Union Rathskeller and the colored chairs on the terrace.

So how long do you stand to decipher a totally unfamiliar Langdon street parking system before somebody calls the cops and reports you for loitering.  Than at the Rat you once told them what you wanted to eat, they brought it to you and you paid them with cash and went out to those special terrace chairs and ate.  Not now: Stand in line–get one of those electric signal devices–stand in front of a space age drink dispenser looking at an ad display that turns out of be a touch screen, and some young man reaches over your shoulder and show you how it works—you carry your food out to the terrace where once there were a hundred chairs and now there must be a thousand.

But the lake view is the same, the terrace ambience hasn’t changed that much, and if you are in good company, which the keeper was, then the fumbling to keep up with tech details is not important. The delights of being alive are, in fact, gloriously low tech.