Granny, a Hawk, and the Web

This is the story of my granny, a hawk, and the fine art of settling a debate.

Who is this Granny character? She’s a chatty, charming octogenarian. She grew up on a farm (referred to as “The Ranch” in our family history), was a professional woman, and is now savoring the later years of her life from a lovely little country house in northern Sonoma County, California.

Granny’s experienced change of massive proportions during her lifetime: the discovery of the polio vaccine, the growth of television as a mass medium, cellular communications, and the rise of the internet. She takes each shift in stride, essentially making change itself a comfortable aspect of her life.

When she started using a fax machine in her home office, it was with an appreciation of the utility and convenience the device provided. My grandfather, on the other hand, initially resisted using original documents in the fax. He thought it borrowed technology from the Star Trek transporter, whisking the actual document off to distant locales via technology too advanced for the lay person to comprehend. Granny set him straight.

So we get to the heart of this story. Not too long ago, a hawk took up residence near Granny’s, patrolling the pasture for tasty rodent treats. Nobody could dispute its presence due to the piercing calls it made, though a debate raged over which kind of hawk this might be: red-tailed, red-shouldered, or something more esoteric? Granny knew, but others – all younger than she – insisted she was wrong, questioned her eyesight, and so forth. Such conversation has long been a staple in country kitchens, so folks settled in to haggle their way to an answer.

Never one to concede easily, Granny left the swirl of debate in the kitchen and quietly stepped into the adjacent home office. Seated in front of her handy iMac, she did a quick search on “red shouldered hawk call”, clicked through to the first search result, and played the sound file. Talking stopped in the kitchen as people wondered where the hawk was that it sounded so close… There was no question about it being the hawk in question.

Granny emerged from the office, grinning and content. Debate settled. Red shouldered hawk. Score one for the old lady and her technology.

I like the idea of embracing change, and I think of my granny when I find myself resisting it. I love that she figured out a foolproof way to support her claim, by switching the “defining sense” of identification from sight to hearing and using the internet to drive home her argument. I just hope I’m up to her standard when it comes to incorporating the utility and value new technology provides!