Iwas talking to Wayne Harris, the director of the Albemarle Economic Development Commission. We were talking about local economies and how folks are looking for tangibles; things like interacting with one another through commerce, or perhaps touchstones that have meaning like a handmade mug by a local artisan.

Those tangibles, if you stop and think about it, have meaning to us.

I was thinking about the tangibles when reporter Peter Williams brought a story from National Public Radio to my attention. The story is about how technology is taking “stuff” out of our lives.

It seems that in this age of digital technology, all of that stuff we once collected is now coming out of thin air. The stuff we need to enjoy books, films, music and the like is now limited to a tool such as a computer in its varied forms.

When I was a younger man the stuff that brought us music came in LP albums, cassette tapes and eventually CDs. And we had the stuff to play that music like turntables, Walkmans and CD players.

When Peter and I were talking about the diminishing stuff I commented that perhaps there might always be those “counter revolutionaries” who value the nostalgia of stuff. Perhaps there will always be those who would rather listen to the rougher, maybe even more pure, sounds that emanate from an LP.

Those albums, if you’re much younger than I, are large, black and round. On two sides they possess a number of tracks, a variety of songs that make up an entire collection of music by one performer or group. Music critics have lamented the age of digital music and the potential loss of albums. Albums by a single group of musicians collectively possess a singular idea recorded for the purpose of perhaps telling a story through music.

The Beatles certainly understood this and I wonder if they were all together today, how they would respond to the digital revolution. Of course there are plenty of people who have responded to it. They have created a niche market for LPs.

Recording studios have seen that there is enough enthusiasm for LPs that they record albums and sell them to this market. And turntables are readily available if you know where to look.

A friend of mine once called me after stopping at a yard sale. He said he was coming over and had something incredible to show me. In the back of his Jeep was a crate with 50 albums, all in mint condition, and all still in the heavy plastic that protected the artful jackets. They were classic albums, the music we enjoyed long ago.

He got online, ordered a turntable and soon we were listening to sounds that we had relegated to memory.

Those sounds and the vehicles that carried them were tangibles. They were something we could connect with and something we could look to when the desire hit us.

And the tangibles, well somehow they have more value. Seeing it, touching it, experiencing through multiple senses makes it more real, more, well, tangible.