what will i have seen by the time i'm 96?
Jerusalem twinkles in our eyes.
One year ago: Darin reads Cryptonomicon (which he recommends highly).
Two years ago: We visit Joshua Tree.
Today's news question:What did a disciplinary committee in Arkansas recommend recently should be done to a member of its Bar? And who is the lawyer in question?
(Don't send me your answers. This is just a little way to expand your horizons. Honest.)
The answer to yesterday's question: Sir John Gielgud, famed British thespian, died on Sunday. He was 96 years old.
"Wow," I said to Darin. "He was born in 1904. Imagine all the changes he saw in his lifetime."
"Change accelerates," said Darin. "So we're going through more rapid changes now. We're just not aware of them as they're happening. He probably wasn't aware of them while they were happening either."
I wonder. While lots has changed on the microlevel in my lifetime, I'm not quite sure if anything has happened on the macrolevel.
I started thinking back to my childhood, trying to remember how things were different. In terms of little things, tons has changed:
(The following list is not for the faint of heart. Especially my heart.)
- All phones were owned by the phone company.
- All phones were rotary. My mom had a special pen with a bulb at one end that was specially designed to hook into the holes on the dial. When you wanted to dial a radio station contest, you dialed in the first six numbers of the phone number and then waited for the sign, at which point you dialed the seventh number.
- There were no cell phones. Or faxes. Or computers. Well, there were computers, but they were giant room-sized machines with tapes running on them. And they were all plotting to take over the world. They did, of course, eventually succeed.
- Black-and-white TVs were common. I don't think there were any shows still being broadcast in b&w, but I saw plenty of television on that black-and-white set we had in the kitchen.
- The fancy gadget my Mom bought for the TV? A special cord that you plugged into the outlet in the wall, then you plugged the TV into the cord. The other end of the cord had a switch on it (that I remember being very hard to work). This cord allowed you to turn the TV on and off from a few feet away. This was the height of luxury.
- There were three networks. Plus PBS (though that's a latecomer, I understand). Plus maybe one or two syndicated channels in the area, which usually showed b&w movies. You could always watch your favorite show again in the summer, during reruns. There was no midseason.
- If you wanted to see a movie, you had to go to the theater. The only way to see it on TV was when it came to the Movie of the Week and had a ton of commercials.
- There was no cable TV.
- Cars only had AM radios. No, I'm not kidding.
- A million dollars was a lot of money.
- Communism was considered a huge threat. Summits between the President and the Premier of the Soviet Union were big news.
- There was a Soviet Union. They were considered our equal in every way.
- Japan made teeny tiny cars that were well-known to be unsafe. But they got great gas mileage.
- OPEC was a monolithic force. The Western World was at their mercy. We knew the names of Sheikhs.
- Before the airlines were deregulated, it was usually very expensive to fly. Most people did not fly to get to their destination.
- Inflation was a real threat. Inflation is when the prices of goods keep rising. We haven't had it much for the past decade.
- Something called "the money supply" would be reported on the evening news. My father tried to explain it to me but he gave up.
- Walter Cronkite was the most trusted man in America.
- Terrorism was very big. We worried about Black September, the IRA, the SLA. I remember being afraid of Patty Hearst (yes, she of the John Waters movies).
- I remember sitcom jokes about women not being able to get credit on their own, unless they were married and had husbands to co-sign.
- When you wanted to send someone mail, you had to write a letter on paper and send it in the mail.
- There was only one mail service. You sent it by the Post Office, or you didn't send it.
- There was only one phone company.
I can't pinpoint any macro changes in the culture. I guess there are quite a few that have passed me by: growing up under the shadow of AIDS. But there's been nothing like a world war. Or women getting the right to vote. Or cars redesigning the landscape. Or birth control.
The entire culture has shifted to being "market-driven" in the past twenty years; bowl games and stadiums did not have corporate logos on them. But that's not really quantifiable, is it?
Am I going to look back and see these massive changes that passed me by as they happened?
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Copyright 2000 Diane Patterson
Send comments and questions to diane@nobody-knows-anything.com