PHONE BOOKS & PHOTO ALBUMS IN THE LAND OF OZ

Where do you keep your most treasured possessions...?

Ancient kings had temples, early believers had tabernacles, and now modern man has computer files. But maybe it's all a lot simpler than any of those. Just maybe most of us still use old phone books and photo albums. Where we cherish most of the names and faces of those most important to us.

Chances are the phone book is tattered but nearby. The albums, on the other hand, may be pristine, but somewhere hardly as handy. We keep the first for use; the second for memories. And yet near or far, these small treasure troves house human wealth of inestimable value. Were a stranger to find them, they would have the first chapter to our biography.

What's interesting about the phone books is how many numbers and addresses keep changing over the years. The ultimate change, of course, when we reluctantly draw that line across the recently deceased. [Or not, if you decide they will always remain alive in your life].

What's interesting about the photo albums is how you and all those wonderful people inside there never ever change. [Sad to add that outside the covers, we and they are changing all the time]. But just so long as you and they remain tucked inside there, you my friend remain master of time, dictator of space, high priest of all that once was sweet and lovely and photograph-able. And no matter what anyone says, these remarkable blinks have been forever frozen in both place and time. For you to re-live with no more than the flip of a page.

Of course, if you are of the newer flashier generation who package your names and faces into your handy, portable, whatchamacallit... well, I suppose that really is the most efficient way to go. However, for those still old enough to prefer the palpable, you'll most likely find a tattered phone book somewhere in the kitchen, and a collection of photo albums somewhere in a closet.

Either way -- dowdy or digital -- these are the names and faces who remain close to our hearts. Hearts which, like the wise Wizard advised the hopeful Tin Man, "will never be perfect until they can be made unbreakable..."