FROM THE EDITOR

Everybody in town called my grandfather Geeze, short for Old Geezer. It was fitting; first, because he was an old geezer, and, second, as a gentle retribution for his habit of calling everyone by a name that he'd made up just for them. This was part of my gradfndfather's own lexicon and dialect, in which all "th" sounds were dropped and entire phrases like "thank you" became single words like "tattoo." People assumed this funny talk was how Geeze coped without the dentures he refused to wear. Really, I suspect, he just liked the sport of it.

In the world of Geeze, my name was Dut Guy, a name I shared with my twin. (When we were babies, he pointed first at me and then at my brother saying, "I can't tell Dut Guy from Dut Guy") At least my name was better than the neighbor's: Da Barrel Dat Walks Like A Man.
By the time I was five, Geeze was already a stooped over old man, retired but a workhorse just the same, always fixing something. He had been a carpenter all his life, and it bothered his moral code to find something in disrepair. It also bothered him to fetch his tools. But he didn't need to with a couple of Dut Guys running around. A typical conversation between Geeze and me:
"Hey Dut Guy, do you know what's a Phillips screwdriver?"

"Yes," I lied. (I never knew the tool he sent me after.) Still, I'd run to his basement workshop hoping by some magic to find whatever it was he'd sent me for in its place among his collection of neatly organized tools — all functional but none particularly new. (Somewhere he had an electric drill, but I admired more the wood drills that hung by pegs. I called them the doorknob twisters, because of the top handles that had been polished by the oils in his hands.)
On the day in question, I grabbed the first screwdriver I saw, a slotted screwdriver it turned out, and hoped for the best. When I presented it to him, Geeze, (as he always did), muttered something I can't print in a magazine and spat tobacco on the sidewalk. Then I retrieved a handful of screwdrivers and let him pick the Phillips, and finally he said, "Tattoo, tatto, Dut Guy. You're a good helper."

This issue of IP&R is about technological tools, some you use every day and some you may someday need. For example, for this issue's WebXtra Dean Comber writes about how districts may use blogs and other Web 2.0 features to advertise programming and help pass referenda. If you've got a demographic that won't spit tobacco at those efforts, then Web 2.0 might be a tool to use right now. Or else, maybe you'll wait until Web 2.0 fits your purpose. That message is echoed in Julie Drake's discussion of telephone technology (page 32). "Technology for technology sake is never the best option," she says. And that's a sentiment Geeze would agree with. Use the wood drill when the job requires the wood drill, but have that electric drill ready, because some day you'll need to bore into metal. My experience is that, on the whole, the professionals and commissioners at Illinois park, recreation and conservation agencies are unafraid of new technology and wise enough to embrace it, not when it is hip but whenever it best suits the job.

For that, I say, tattoo to you.

RODD WHELPLEY

Editor

www.ILparks.org November/December 2006 4