Fit For A Museum

Harken back to mid-1984, in San Francisco.

Cupertino, in nearby Santa Clara County, is abuzz with new-fangled products coming out of its most prominent resident, Apple Computer.

Yes, Apple then was the flavor of the day for an entire valley that was going ape on technology. The entire Silicon Valley was in frenetic state singularly focused on emerging technologies related to the new product called personal computers.

And San Francisco, the populous and wealthiest core of all this, becomes the made-to-order market for these new-fangled tools. While consumer interests ran high for these never-before seen and experienced tools, retail sales were not really that impressive. Primarily because retail prices were not that great.

At that time, an IBM PCjr and Compaq Plus were selling at price ranges of US$4 to 5K. Now, add a couple of thousand dollars to those prices and one could own a brand-new compact car, comparatively speaking.










Under that rather forgettable market, retail stores selling computers were not going gangbusters and their numbers could be counted in one hand. As a matter of fact there were only about 3 big retailers in the San Francisco area, all aggressively engaging in enticing price reduction offers to prod anemic sales.

Anyway, on that same year, the family bought its first computer, an Apple IIc, which including necessary peripherals, software, and warranties divested the family coffers of over US2, 000. It was not top of the line, because that would have been the Apple Macintosh which carried a total price tag of almost US4, 000.

Now, what tremendous stuff did this new invention have or could do to justify carrying a price tag of about a third of a new car?

The Apple IIc was cryptically described thus, “includes 128K, one internal disk drive, printer/modem adapter, monitor IIc”.

To a typical computer user in the 21st century that meant, that it did not have a hard disk so one had to boot the operating system (DOS) from a disk, the internal disk drive was for a floppy disk, and the 128K signified that it could only hold and process that much at any given time, the rest will have to come from other disks.

But that was computing heaven then. Imagine being able to do Basic programming on it. And play those unbelievable games, shooting down spaceships and keeping scores. And create those intricate graphics? No doubt, countless hours were logged to learn about and enjoy the immense capabilities of that little box. Countless floppies were accumulated, some for saving files and others, mostly for applications that could be used for the computer.

Unfortunately, its effective life span was very limited. By the 90s, the powerful PCs had taken over and blazed a trail that left many of their precursors lying supine, obsolete, and inutile by the wayside.


Now, the entire bundle sits idly displayed inside an empty guest room, mute testimony to a forgotten past which goes back about 20 years. And for IT technology, much too long, much like dating back to the age of the Cro-Magnons.

But Apple’s progeny is doing a lot better. Its newest versions (like the MacBook) are even selling at prices way above those of its rivals, the IBM-compatibles, err, the PCs.

Religiosity From The Past (Part Two)

Following up on the initial entry which was about my maternal grandmother, continuing to rummage through the remaining stowed items in the new house has unraveled yet another interesting remnant from the past. This time an old devotional/prayer book owned by my late mother, again written in the language of her milieu, Spanish, and made in Germany. I had asked the wife how this new find got into our possession, but immediately recalled that my mother had lived with us here in the US for about 10 years prior to spending her remaining years in the old homeland. Then it dawned on me that among the few things that she brought from the old country were the prayer books, rosary, and novenas that were her constant and ever dependable companions.

Following closely in the religious observance footsteps of my grandmother, my mother was also very diligent in her practice, spending whatever little chore-free time she could set aside for prayers and rites she had learned from her immediate forebears. And like many of her contemporaries she had mastered the difficult but delicate art of completely shutting out the rest of the world when into pious prayers and rites. Unlike many of us who are quite unable to singularly focus or hold our attention span for any length of time, her generation had the almost uncanny abilities to elevate their harried consciousness into some kind of altered state when deep in prayer. Even when the entire family was huddled together in deferential kneeling position during communal prayers at home. Almost trance-like, they might mumble through all the repetitious prayers in the rosary, the novenas, or the endless litanies of God and the saints. And while the oral or mental praying itself may have slipped into sub-consciousness, it was unmistakable that they had attained a higher level of existence that in our faith suggests to us that they had communed in unity with whatever inscrutable force may be present out there, beyond the superficial grasp of our everyday consciousness and reality.