Today on FB I ran across a mention of a "wind phone" that was recently installed in Joshua Tree, in memory of two teenagers, Ruby and Hart Campbell, 17 and 14, killed in 2019 in a car crash. The memorial was created by their parents, who were also in the accident but survived. Unimaginable.
As it appears, it is a telephone, but unattached to any wires, so unworkable in the strict sense. As the parents, Gail Lerner and Colin Campbell, explain, the original wind phone "was created in Japan [in 2010] by Itaru Sasaki while he was grieving his cousin who died of cancer. He bought an old-fashioned phone booth, set it up in his garden, and installed an obsolete rotary phone that was not connected to . . . any 'earthly system.' He called it Kaze no Denwa (風の電話), which translates as the Wind Phone. Using it, Itaru felt a continued connection to his cousin and found comfort and solace amid his grief." Here is Sasaki's original:
"Because my thoughts couldn't be relayed over a regular phone line," Sasaki said, "I wanted them to be carried on the wind." After the Fukushima earthquake, Sasaki opened the wind phone to the general public, and it saw regular use. The original booth was replaced with a sturdier aluminum one in 2018.
The concept has been re-created in various places over the years. And now, in Joshua Tree. I'd love to go visit it next time I'm down there. The coordinates may be 34° 07'22.4"N 116° 15'58.8"W (or try 34.122889, –116.266333). As Colin puts it in his Instagram post on the new installation, "Anyone in grief can visit, sit down in the privacy of the vast desert, pick up the rotary phone and call their loved one via the cosmic connection."
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