Maine news, sports, weather from Waterville Morning Sentinel

GEORGE SMITH: Technology has its place, but sometimes you can’t beat paper

Two weeks ago, my United Methodist Church in Kents Hill went paperless. Instead of the usual Sunday service bulletin, Chuck Baker projected the information onto the front wall of the sanctuary.

Pastor Karen Munson said it was an experiment. I hope so. I was pleased when the paper bulletins reappeared the following week.

I’m not a paperless advocate, and not simply because so many Mainers have good paying jobs making paper.

I just like to hold my reading material in my hands.

The tradition of plucking the newspaper out of my roadside box early every morning, and sitting by the kitchen window with a steaming cup of coffee to read the newspaper, is a very important part of my day. If the paper is late arriving, I’m all out of sorts.

Yes, I know I could go online and read most of it. Truth be told, I read other newspapers online. But I don’t enjoy that nearly as much as the newspaper in my hands first thing every morning.

Alas, most people don’t subscribe to newspapers these days, and a rather amazing technological revolution in the way people read and receive information has left me on the sidelines, the last contrarian.

I look around and see my friends with an astonishing array of gadgets. While the card file on my desk overflows with telephone numbers, others store all that info in their phones. While I still use a scheduling book, everyone else seems to have their schedule in a handheld device.

I’ve never gotten over the trauma of my first meeting in Gov. Angus King’s State House office, when 30 minutes into our discussion, his computer spoke to him from across the room, telling him that my appointment was over.

In order to launch my new writing career this fall, I’ve had to step it up, technologically speaking. Daughter Hilary helped me set up a new e-mail system and address, using gmail. I actually like it a lot. Apparently you can teach an old dog new tricks — if he has to know them to survive.

But I approached the task of creating my own website with trepidation. With Merrylyn Sawyer at the Sportsman’s Alliance of Maine, I’d spent nearly a year — and a whole lot of money — creating a new website for SAM and filling it with content.

I took my fears to Stephanie Koetzle and Kyle Hockmeyer of Fieldstone Media in Augusta. Kyle used to be the cameraman for my TV show “Wildfire,” and last year Linda and I sold Kyle and Stephanie a house lot in Mount Vernon, so it was natural to seek their advice about my website.

As luck would have it, Aaron Beauregard was Fieldstone’s computer geek, and a young man whom I got to know when he traveled to Quebec two years ago with Harry Vanderweide and me as the cameraman for a TV show we shot up there.

After an initial discussion of my project, Steph asked me to fill out a lengthy questionnaire, and then the real work began. Actually, Aaron’s work began. I was only along for the ride, answering an occasional question and reacting to the suggestions Aaron continuously shot my way.

To sum it all up, the website, www.georgesmithmaine.com, has features I never dreamed of, but which I love. And then came Aaron’s toughest challenge: teaching me how to load my content onto the site.

There is no way I can accurately describe my angst. But a miracle occurred, as Aaron not only took me through a training session in which the task of loading content appeared to be easy, but he also wrote the only manual I’ve ever gotten that I can actually understand.

Apparently he knew he was working with a person of very limited talent and zero interest in learning any new technology.

When I began writing this newspaper column 20 years ago, I wrote it longhand on a yellow legal pad, typed it on an electric typewriter, and drove it to the Kennebec Journal office in Augusta where someone retyped it.

Today, I bang it out on my laptop, wherever I happen to be, zip it to Augusta in some miraculous way via e-mail, and it’s easily inserted into your newspaper. It’s magic.

Just don’t ask me to explain it or understand it. It’s good enough for me that the final product is in the newspaper, which arrives in my Mount Vernon box by 5:30 a.m. every day.



George Smith is a writer and TV talk show host. He can be reached at 34 Blake Hill Road, Mount Vernon 04352, or georgesmithmaine@gmail.com. You can read more of Smith’s writings at www.georgesmithmaine.com.

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