Green Bank, a town without cellphones
I found this story fascinating: “I spent a week in a town without wifi or cell service. This is how I survived…”
Jorge Ramos and Dan Lieberman wrote, “This is because Green Bank sits at the very center of a 13,000 square-mile area known as the National Radio Quiet Zone, which is federally mandated to be free of electromagnetic signals. It has laws banning cell phone service, WiFi, and even radio, all in order to support the Green Bank Telescope –the world’s largest movable radio telescope– which enables radio astronomers to listen to sounds in outer space and collect data from the solar system.”
I had never heard of the National Quiet Zone in West Virginia, but it’s a town not too far from my tour mate, Peyton Totcherman’s home in Charlottesville!
It seems like this is a glimpse into a far past, but it was only two decades ago when this was reality. I didn’t have a cell phone in college, now I can’t live without it.
Yet, I’m finding there is a time and a place to operate like Green Bank in our lives: a self-imposed no cell, no wifi time:
- recording in the studio
- during writing sessions
- eating dinner with friends and family
- walking the dog through the woods
- visiting the farmer’s market
Now that I’m a dad, I’m even more concerned with how much screen time I’m using, the type of modeling I’m offering as a parent, if I’m being present with my child.
I love the irony of Ramos and Lieberman joking how they survived without wifi and cell service, when a whole town does 24 hours a day. I should be able disconnect more regularly, too. Can my relationships and productive time survive if I don’t’?
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