high tech luddism

this househould of mine may be falling prey to some sort of pseudo-luddism, and i think i may be the source of it.

sort of weird, for a home with two computer geeks in it, and me earning my living as a programmer no less. but hear me out.

it's not just the fountain pens i got (although that's part of it, too); i think it goes back further than that. we've been looking for cast iron cookware for a while now, for instance, and just the other day replaced a teflon-coated pizza pan with a stainless steel one — only because we couldn't find a cast iron pizza pan. (i think it'd've weighed too much to be practical, anyway, even if somebody does make such a thing.)

and we bought a broom just yesterday, too. wooden handle, rattan (i think, or maybe corn husk) bristles — brand-new manufacture, but looks like it could've popped out of a time warp from the 1800's. we could have got a steel-handled thing with a recycled plastic brush, but we ended up with something much more archaic-looking.

i'm not entirely sure of the reasons for this, but perhaps a slight disillusionment with high tech is at fault. or maybe it's a kind of escapism, a wanting something different from what we spend our days surrounded by (and working with) as a way to get a break and relax a little.

i'll start worrying if and when i find myself lighting an oil lamp instead of flicking the electric light switch. that'd be going too far.

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