Front Porch: Stefanie Pettit considers smartphone knowing it would put history at her fingertips

Today – June 29 – is the date in 2007 that Apple released its first generation iPhone – and, boy, have it and other smartphones exploded since.

I mention this for two reasons – first, because I still don’t have a smartphone but am on the cusp of getting one. Probably. And the other reason is June 29. More on that second thing in a moment.

Here I am happily living my life with an old flip phone, which I rarely use, except when I travel. It often sits in my purse all lonely and abandoned for weeks at a time, slowly losing its charge. If someone leaves a message on my cell, but I didn’t hear the phone ring, which is quite possible since my purse isn’t by my side 24/7, then it could be close to forever (in today’s communication terms) before I get it.

I use my landline for my work and general phone calling and am not particularly interested in getting calls when I’m out and about, except for emergencies, of course. But the tide is turning.

My cellphone doesn’t let me know that a text has been sent, and I can only receive the first couple of words anyhow, so texting is kind of a bust. Everybody who still wants to reach me (and I suspect the number is dwindling) wants to send a text. Mostly I don’t care, but it is affecting communications with my sons. About that, I care.

Plus there are some apps that are intriguing. I am thinking of taking the plunge, but for some perverse reason, I keep resisting. I think I know why. If there is anything that drives me crazy it’s being with someone who is trying to show me a photo on her phone but can’t find it.

After scrolling and scrolling, I hear: “Wait, I know it’s here somewhere. Oh, it must be further back than I thought. Wait, wait, I’ve almost got it. No, that’s something else. I thought that was it. Oh, but look, here’s that photo of [insert name of dog/cat] that time he ate the spinach and had green poop …” It goes on and on until my eyes roll back in my head.

I will not become that person.

Now for the June 29 thing. From time to time I like to look at a particular day on the calendar to find out what might be interesting about it. It’s a thing I do, perhaps in lieu of playing with my phone. Most any day can have an interesting story to tell.

On this day in 1613 Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre in London burned down. In 1949 South Africa instituted its policy of apartheid, forbidding marriage between blacks and whites. Isabel Peron was sworn in as Argentina’s first female president in 1974. Patrick Henry became governor of Virginia in 1776. And in 1964 America’s Civil Rights Act was passed.

There were some notable deaths on this day in history – like poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning in 1861, actress and sex symbol Jayne Mansfield in 1967 and singer/actress Rosemary Clooney in 2002.

It is National Camera Day and National Waffle Iron Day. And also National Mud Day, a day created in Nepal to enrich the lives of 58 orphans by getting them outdoors to enjoy the environment and splashing around in the mud. It became an “official” day at a World Forum in 2009, sponsored by the World Forum Foundation. Really.

And there were some famous births on this date – Stokely Carmichael in 1941, for example. But my favorite celebrity born today is Antoine de Saint-Exupery, author of one of my most cherished books of all time, “The Little Prince,” who graced the planet with his arrival in 1900.

There is so much to know about him, and I have refreshed my knowledge about this Frenchman who won the U.S. National Book award; flew airmail routes in Europe, Africa and South America before WWII; joined the French Air Force in the war; lobbied America to join the war against Germany; flew with the Free French Air Force in North Africa and disappeared on a reconnaissance mission in July 1944. He had once crash landed in Libya in 1935 (possibly the historical backstory for the setting of “The Little Prince”), one of several such experiences, and when he returned to flying late in the war could not even dress himself in his own flight suit or turn his head leftward to check for enemy aircraft due to previous crash injuries. But yet he flew.

What a man. Once I decided to mention him here, I went home and did research on my desktop computer in my office. I probably could have found all the information earlier if only I had a smartphone.

Hmm …