Overheard in 1974 - Scientists are out for the buck

As usual, the typos and grammar are the authors.

The author is in his 70s:

The buck comes between the doctors and the patients. They provide synthetics because they are cheaper and make more money for the docs. The common cold has been a fine source of income for the medicine man for many years and he isn't about to let lose of it. Far too much of this "scientific" materialis subdued or covered by convention or the dollar sign so much of it can be taken with that proverbial grain of salt.

The messing up of our ecology by so called scientific men has also done much to dull the publics faith in scientific endevor. Ponder the friction between the various factions about the danger of weedacides and pestacides and the pollution of our land water and air. Here again the "buck" makes more decisions than good sense. Any poison that will kill insects and other so called pests will also be detrimental to man. How can all of these men who call themselves scientists view all of this pollution and not say it is bad. The more I see of people who have been abused by the bad decisions of the AMA and FDA the less respect I have for them.

Almost overheard in 1954

I was reading through a subset of the current batch of letters and had almost settled on something until I read the following from March 16, 1954:

The radio just announced that the Bevitron has been completed.

My first reaction was "Jeez, that sounds like a bad 50s science fiction device". Then I looked it up and what it actually was was the Bevatron...specifically designed to accelerate protons to sufficient energy to create antiprotons, and verify the particle-antiparticle symmetry of nature, then only strongly suspected. The antiproton was indeed discovered there in 1955, and resulted in the 1959 Nobel Prize in physics for Emilio Segrè and Owen Chamberlain. Basically, it was the ancestor of our very own Large Hadron Collider.

And, what was the reaction of the average person in the street? Apparently, pretty much the same reaction as people had to the LHC: OMG, something awful will happen.

Undoubtedly it can bring much potential knowledge, but all it makes me think of is now they'll build bigger and better bombs.

It's such a cliché, but really it's true. The more things change, the more things stay the same.

Overheard from 1954 & beyond: a love story

(Identifying information has been redacted. But, as near as I can figure, the young woman starts out in her VERY early 20s. Spelling & grammar is as is. And, guess what happened between 1955 and 1956.)

1954:

Xxxx Xxxxx came home from Yyyyyy and is living in NY for a few years before he goes back. I saw him a few times but when I realized that he loved me I explained to him gently as I could that I was fond of him but could not be involved with him and was therefore breaking up the relationship so that he would not be hurt any more deeply that necessary. Cause if continued I would just hurt him more later. I did not let him leave till he understood why I did this, and though it was a sad evening I felt better later though.

1954 (3 weeks later):

Friday I will go out with Xxxx Xxxxx. He called Sunday and I am definitely in a mood to be cherished. I don't think I'm yet ready for the relationship I'm looking for and it begins to appear senseless to deny myself pleasant, if incomplete, companionship for now.

1955 (2.5 months later):

I'm slowly disentangling myself from my relationship with Xxxx, for our new relationship seems to be at a standstill, since he doesn't accept my logic for not wanting to continue, I am simply seeing him less and less frequently because I don't want to hurt him, but I do feel that my needs have changed & I am not at all desirous of being dependant on him. I am a person on my own & have finally conquered lonliness & am free to choose my own happiness & to give of myself without fear. I can decide where I want to be & why and not be afraid of other people's reactions. Still, during the time when I wanted to be dominated he fulfilled my needs & as so I feel that I must be fair to him too.

1956 (1.5 years later):

Two weeks from today I'll be married. I'm excited & happy & have no qualms or reservations. I feel that soon I'll be legalizing a relationship, the depth and fulness of which has been actuality for a long time. I'm happy and feel very womanly.

And, finally...1956 (2 weeks later):

Here it is the night before the wedding and I have such mixed feelings. mainly of course I happy, excited, content & impatient but also there is the knowledge that this is the goodby to my childhood, tomorrow I officially become woman & wife and part of a [unreadable word] new focal point of life.

Who's Peter this time?

Since I once again spent the weekend sorting out & hauling down stuff from my parent's house, I haven't yet had the time to dig through the motherload of letters from which I was going to pull excerpts for the blog.

But, one of the things I discovered was a card game called Showbiz Shuffle. Now between my vocation and my avocation, it was a given that I was going to take this. On the box, it is described as follows: "Collect actors and directors, then combine them with stunts, special effects or other pluses to make the biggest box office hits".

I started flipping through the cards and was mostly just amused by them. I was amused at cards such as the below just because:

Then I was amused by cards such as:

At least a third of the people cards are caricatures of recognizable people. I suspect that more are, but I just don't know the faces well enough to recognize them.

Then I came across the following and stopped dead:

One of the people I enjoy following on twitter is Peter Sagal, the host of the totally fabulous NPR radio program Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me. I immediately went to his twitter page to see if I was hallucinating...and, no, not really:

Overheard from 1990

Today begins the first of excerpts from letters from the past. Some may be from the near past, some may be from the middle of the last century. Others from points before or after. A couple of things they will have in common:

1. There will be background information to the best of my ability, but no identifying information. I have no idea of whether or not some of these people are alive or dead. And, for purposes of what this will be, identity should not matter.

2. These slices of life will, for the most part, either human interest and/or something that interests/amuses me. Occasionally, they will be commentary on the state of the world such as this first one (largely because it was the first one I found that immediately called out to me). Tomorrow, I will be digging into the motherload of correspondence.

============

Sent by a soldier in November 1990 stationed somewhere in the Middle East waiting for what would become the Gulf War.

One of the things I meant to say in my last letter was that I am much more understanding now of how much the Vietnam soldier went through. I know that I haven't experienced the combat aspects yet, but I've faced everything that leads up to combat. Also, if things keep going the way they are now, I'll have the combat patch before I go home.

Speaking of going home, it's beginning to look a lot like Easter. If we do go to war, it will probably be between New Year's and Ramadan. The war will probably last about a month and Ft. Bragg units will be the first home after that. If we don't go in, then I'm almost certain that the Ft. Bragg units will be rotated home during Ramadan. After all, VII Corps in [sic] enough to defend Saudi Arabia during the summer. My money, though, says that this whole thing will be resolved by Ramadan.

Glimpses of the Past

While cleaning out closets in my parents' home, my daughter and I ran across just over a dozen newspapers laying on a top shelf..

For a third of them, the Civil War had ended less than 50 years previously and they had yet to see a world war.

Half of them celebrated the end of "The war to end all wars", the Great Stock Market Crash was still a 1/2 dozen years away, and Hitler would not be a citizen of Germany for another 10.

The remaining three celebrate other moments in our past.

I've decided that this blog will show little, if ever, seen slices of history. They will for the most part be human interest.

But, we begin with these newspapers. The images below are quick photos we took with out cell phone cameras. It is our intent to gently photograph each newspaper so that they can be read and enjoyed..this will take some time as they are in somewhat fragile shape.

Aberdeen Daily American - October 14, 1899

The Daily Mirror - June 21, 1911

The Daily Mirror - June 23, 1911

The Daily Mirror - February 12, 1913

The Daily Mirror - June 7, 1916

The Daily Sketch - February 16, 1918

Aberdeen Daily American - November 11, 1918

The Daily Mirror - November 12, 1918

The Daily Sketch - November 12, 1918

The Daily Sketch - July 21, 1919

The Daily Mirror - November 27, 1920

The Daily Mirror - February 28, 1922

The Daily Sketch - March 21, 1922

Los Angeles Examiner - May 7, 1945

New York Times - July 21, 1969

New York Times Special Supplement - August 3, 1969

Of Tires and Donuts

At one point today, I thought that the most stressful thing this evening was going to be coughing non-stop through rehearsal. Who knew that I would have come to look upon this vile anticipation with wistfullness.

Somewhere around 5:30pm, I got a call from my son. The sight of his phone number in my caller i.d. filled me with dread. Normally, the reverse would have been true. However, in this instance, I knew that he and his posse were driving back from Florida where they had spent a fabulous couple of days at Universal and Harry Potter land (or whatever it's called). The fact that he was calling me in mid-drive filled me with foreboding.

"Hi. When I drive the car fast, the car makes a weird bumping and when I drive slowly, it still makes it, but not as badly."

I knew that he had neglected getting his oil changed before the trip and I mentally assigned the knocking to this. I advised him to stop and check his oil levels. This seemed to be the case as his call 20 minutes into rehearsal confirmed. But, they were parked by the side of the road and it was still running and it was quiet but it had made a funny noise. They started it up when I said that it might take a while for the oil to completely relubricate..

A little while later, came another call. (Really good thing I have a minor part in this show.) Funny thing, but the tire had exploded. It seems that the bumpetyn bump of the car had been the tire in the process of going bad., but none of them had ever been in a car with a bad tire before. BUT, I had made sure that my kid knew how to change a tire. At this point, I think I will allow the text message I sent to my sister take over.

"The bumpety thumpetty turned out not to be the oil...which WAS low. It turned out to be the tire going bad and then it exploded. So, they managed to put the donut on and because none of those children had ever apparently been in the vicinity of a flat tire, it never occurred to any of them that just because the tire was bad and unrepairable...that they might...oh...need the tim. So they left the whole thing by the side of the road in the dark in southern South Carolina when they went on their merry way."

They drove along for another 45 minutes til they found someplace open that might be able to sell them a new tire. It was at this point that I became aware of the whole rim debacle and I explained in not quite the most patient of tones that it was going to cost probably $450 to replace a rim and a tire if they could even find a rim that quickly (bear in mind that we are talking the Wednesday before Thanksgiving Day). I was just a little irked because a) I couldn't fathom not realizing they would need the rim and b) feeling helpless because I'm 600 miles away.

The dude told them that he couldn't put a full sized tire on a donut rim and that the donut tire was apparently fine. At this point, I'm sure my child was feeling guilty and the 4 of them piled back into the station wagon and backtracked with flashlights and the kind of enthusiasm only a roadtrip can engender in search of the missing rim. They did find it and tossed it into the back of the wagon.

At this point they were 240 miles away from their overnight destination and reckon that because they are going to drive the thrice-recommended 50 mph that they ought to arrive at some 4 in the morning. Wednesday morning, The Boy plans on getting to Wal-Mart at the instance they open and replace the donut and then they will continue their drive on the busiest travel day of the year.

I guess the lesson is this: each one of these kids are knowledgeable, intelligent college seniors, but the event was out of their respective experiences so they dealt with it...incorrectly. It's one of those things that's hard to anticipate. How do you tell someone all the potential ramifications of a situation if they a) don't occur to you because they seem obvious or b)you fear the Look of Extreme Patience. Do your best to prep your kids for life, but be prepared for them to look at life from a different angle than you.

However, at some point, he will be home and we will have Thanksgiving Dinner and we will all be thankful that we are together.