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Carol H Tucker
Passionate about knowledge management and organizational development, expert in loan servicing, virtual world denizen and community facilitator, and a DISNEY fan
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Be warned:in this very rich environment where you can immerse yourself so completely, your emotions will become engaged -- and not everyone is cognizant of that. Among the many excellent features of SL, there is no auto-return on hearts, so be wary of where your's wanders...
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back in the day....
Today is the 6th day of the 42nd week, the 21st day of the 10th month, the 295th day of 2016, and:
- Apple Day
- Babbling Day [if you babble, you may be a blatherskite]
- Celebration of the Mind Day
- Count Your Buttons Day
- Garbanzo Bean Day
- Global Iodine Deficiency Disorders Prevention Day
- International Day of the Nacho
- National Mammography Day
- National Pharmacy Buyer Day
- National Pumpkin Cheesecake Day
- Reptile Awareness Day
- World Student Day
On this day: In 1096 a Seljuk Turkish army fought off the People's Army of the West [part of the People's Crusade -- AKA the Peasants' Crusade, Paupers' Crusade or the Popular Crusade -- led by Peter the Hermit]. In 1879 Thomas Edison invented the first commercially practical incandescent light bulb. In 1940 the first edition of the Ernest Hemingway novel For Whom the Bell Tolls was published. In 1959, in New York City, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, opened to the public. In 1983 the metre was defined at the seventeenth General Conference on Weights and Measures as the distance light travels in a vacuum in 1/299,792,458 of a second. In 2005 images of the dwarf planet Eris were taken and subsequently used in documenting its discovery.
Now and then, I will reminisce about things “back in the day”. sometimes with wistful nostalgia, sometimes with wonder at what we didn’t know we didn’t know. It usually is a little twitch that happens when I read something that makes me think…..
Like reading about the dinosaur tracks and now fossil remains found in Denali Park – I remember when dinosaurs were all thought to be cold-blooded, and slow lumbering creatures that couldn’t possibly live in colder climes. Like reading about the fault lines and fractures that run beneath the earth, even hereabouts. Earthquakes in Maryland! Who’d a thought? We were taught the Piedmont Plateau was rock solid and terra firma. Speaking of terra firma, the whole idea of plate tectonics is pretty new – it is so different than visualizing the continents as islands floating around on a sea of magma. And the ancestry of mankind doesn’t proceed in a straight line anymore like we were taught because we never learned about the other species of humans
And then there is the vocabulary shifts. Remember when gay meant happy and queer meant odd? And Dick was a perfectly acceptable and often used nickname for anyone named Richard? And calling a spade a spade meant you were playing cards? And if you told someone they looked comfortable, you weren’t making a snarky comment?
Let’s talk about women’s clothing for a moment. If you were in a business and at a level where you were competing with men, you used to have to wear “the uniform” -- dark suit, white blouse, little scarf tie at your neck, 2” pumps and stockings. No pants, no flat shoes or open toes, no bare legs, no bright colors. Can’t say I am at all sorry to see that change!
And our expectations of work was equally different – find a job and stay there, give your employer loyalty, rise in the ranks and then retire with a gold watch and a pension. Doctors still made house calls if you were sick enough, teachers were someone you were slightly afraid of, and old people [which meant anyone doddering about after the age of 50] were to be placated. And someone who worked as a machinist or a steel-worker could make more than an office worker – pencil pushers were not terribly respected and no one wanted to grow up to be one.
I used to love listening to the stories Grandmom Hughes and Grandmom Riley would tell of when they were young, some of what happened to them sounded so alien to me, like having to leave school after the 8th grade and go to work in a factory. Right now the oldest person in the world is currently 117 years old, the last person left alive who was born in the 19th century. I would love to sit down with her, hear about the changes she has seen! Not the big things, but the little ones, like not having to wear corsets anymore. Someday perhaps my granddaughters will listen to my stories, just shaking their heads as I start “back in the day…..”
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