To the Band of Brothers: January 2, 2026

I remember the day our house got central air conditioning. I don’t know if we were early or late in the game of advanced cooling technology, but it didn’t matter because we got it. The lonely wall unit whose soothing hum rocked my brother and me to sleep every night was removed, and its lair was covered with cinder blocks. The greatest immediate advantage to our new prize was walking out of the shower without sweating. That’s right, there was no AC in the bathroom, so after showering, you stepped into a world of rabid humidity that rendered your bathing efforts seemingly useless. Putting on deodorant, combing your hair, or splashing cologne was better done in the cool climate of your room to avoid spending more time than you had to in the tiled sweatbox, which was the commode.

I know this sounds insane to your generation who has never experienced an interior space warmer than 70 degrees, but it’s true. While the state of Florida rightfully immortalizes Willis Carrier, the inventor of air conditioning, in Statuary Hall in the rotunda of the Capitol Building, Generation Alpha (those of you born in the early 2010s) probably wonders if it had been invented at all. It was. And after years of summer mission trips in the Dominican Republic working in villages with no electricity, I suggest we forget about a mere statue and propose the man’s cause for canonization.

There is so much wonder to be held with our modern world of technology. Do we lose appreciation for how things used to be? Just the other day, I expressed great frustration with a small dead zone in the back patio of my house where my iPhone can’t get a signal. Really? Frustration? How soon I forget the days when there were no cellphones. As a kid, there was one phone in our house, centrally located in the kitchen. No call was private because the phone was plugged into a wall outlet. The receiver was also strung up with a rubber-coated, coiled wire. After a few uses, it would get horribly tangled. It wasn’t until a good Samaritan, usually my father, would unplug the receiver, let it dangle down as it spun to unravelment, that the full length of the cord was restored.

How joyous was the day my brother and I got a phone in our room. It hung on a wall by the closet. I remember the receiver latched onto the side of a box adorned with a little corked bulletin board on the face. If the pen, which conveniently velcroed to the other side of the box, had not been removed, and the little note paper tacked to the board had not been discarded, you could take down a phone number being dictated by the other party on the line. Don’t be mistaken, a phone in your room did not provide much privacy. There was only one line and you shared it with everyone in the house. Anyone could pick up any phone in the house and listen to your entire conversation. Or, as my parents did often enough, tell you to get off the phone.

My, how times have changed. There is no question the world is a better place because we have moved on and technology has advanced as much as it has. Or has it? I don’t remember being worse off because I didn’t have the technology we have today. It was hours we spent playing outside with all our friends in the neighborhood. If my mother wanted to know where we were, all she had to do was walk down the block to see which yard had all the bikes thrown on the front lawn. There was no “track-my-kid” app. There was no choice but to take for granted her kids were okay. That time also forced us to hone our social skills. We had to make friends the hard way. If I wanted to know if a girl liked me, I asked. There was no “like” button to press. 

I was more patient. When I couldn’t remember the name of the actor who played Superman (Christopher Reeve) or the band that sang My Sharona (The Knack) or the year man first stepped on the moon (1969), I couldn’t immediately ask Siri. Instead, I had to wait until I was able to ask someone who did or looked it up in an encyclopedia. Just in case, an encyclopedia was a series of books (ours were blue) that alphabetically contained all the information any man, woman, or child would ever need to know. Newer information was followed up with an addendum you would buy at the end of the year.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not saying we need to shun the advances of science and put aside those tools that make life more convenient. Even now, I am writing this reflection on my laptop in the backyard. But as I sit here at the dawning of a new year, I realize we have lost a lot as we continue to trek into the future. You may argue those things lost are no longer that important, like the farmer who laments that young people no longer know how to churn butter. But unlike churning butter, some things are important. The ability to appreciate, basic social skills, and patience… those things are important and maybe a little more challenging to learn in such a technologically savvy environment. Hopefully, we can provide the opportunities to learn them.

Auspice Maria.