On the phone

One of my American friends told me her daughter said, "hey, Mom, look!  That person is talking on the phone on the sidewalk!"  My friend figured, well, yeah, so does everyone.  But no, her daughter meant on this:

A payphone booth!  Very few of these are left in urban America.
Like this, the cover of my Iphone.  I had lunch with a law professor who was unfamiliar with the image.  Not Andy Warhol's but the phone itself.  "What's that?"

I was recollecting what it used to be like to travel here (and elsewhere in the pre capital-D-Development days) and how "calling home" was a big, big deal.  You could put in a request at the hotel desk and then once the international line had been reached they'd call you downstairs to take your call.  You had to set aside the morning to get it done.   Just a long, slow, static-filled, crackly sounding, underwater voice, "Hi Mom!"  And you had to wait to hear back because if you started saying something when  Mom was responding back, you'd cut her off.  It was a one-way street back then.  And now:  Skype; Facetime; Vonage.  And grandma has an Ipad.