BS: Odd perspectives in time

Subject: BS: Odd perspectives in time
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 17 Dec 12 - 07:06 AM

A long life [I am 80] can bring some odd time phenomena into perspective. For instance: my father was born [1901] before Orville & Wilbur Wright got Kitty Hawk off the ground [1903]. Look how aviation has progressed, from Kitty Hawk to Space Travel, in just the two generations represented by my father and me. I was alive [b1932] at the same time as Alice Liddell, Lewis Carroll's original Wonderland and Looking-Glass Alice [d1933].

And I recall reading somewhere that Balzac's first mistress was born in the 18th Century. His last died in 1930.

Who else finds these temporal overlaps and anomalies as interesting as I do, or can find any further examples?

~Michael~

Subject: RE: BS: Odd perspectives in time
From: Sandra in Sydney
Date: 17 Dec 12 - 07:27 AM

In the 70s & 80s I had a friend who was born just before WW1. Her grandfather was one of the first free settlers in Australia, arriving in 1793, 5 years after the First fleet arrived in Sydney Cove in 1788.

I started work in 1970 & 3 years later worked with colleagues who created punch cards used by The Computer at Head Office. Around 10 years later we got a Word Processor in our area, & a few years later a PC!!! Lucky us. I also remember Pagers & early mobile (cell) phones.

Last week I saw a toy mobile phone for babies. It was made of plastic & was about iPhone size buy fatter & parents could record a message for baby to listen to!

sandra

Subject: RE: BS: Odd perspectives in time
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 17 Dec 12 - 09:53 AM

Lovely examples, Sandra.

I have remembered a bit more accurately about Balzac, as mentioned in OP. His first mistress had been, of all things, Lady-in-Waiting to Marie Antoinette. His last survived until 1930!

~M~

Subject: RE: BS: Odd perspectives in time
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 17 Dec 12 - 12:32 PM

Have you ever worked out that on the day you were born, a man aged 80 must have died somewhere? And on the day that he was born, a man of 80 must have died.

It only takes 13 men to get you well back before the Norman Conquest.

Subject: RE: BS: Odd perspectives in time
From: Newport Boy
Date: 17 Dec 12 - 04:55 PM

I think you'd need a woman or so (at least if you wanted to get from then to now)!

Phil

Subject: RE: BS: Odd perspectives in time
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 17 Dec 12 - 05:16 PM

The male embraces the female, as they say!

Sir Hans Kornberg, who used to be Master of my old college, Christ's College, Cambridge (still academically active as Professor at Boston University), was born in Germany in 1928. He told me once that, when he was a child, his grandfather told him that his father remembered, when he was a small child, having been held up to watch Napoleon ride by.

~M~

Subject: RE: BS: Odd perspectives in time
From: Will Fly
Date: 17 Dec 12 - 05:39 PM

I don't remember my maternal great-grandfather, because he was born in 1843 and died in 1912, but I can remember his son, my maternal grandfather, who was born in 1878. But I DO recall my maternal grandfather telling me stories of his father a Suffolk blacksmith. I was about 5 at the time and my grandfather would have been about 70 or so.

My grandfather was working in the Beccles ropeyards as a rigging sorter when he was 13. When he was old enough he went to sea, staying at sea for a large part of his life as a fisherman, among other things. He sailed before the mast, on collier brigs bringing coal from Tyneside to Great Yarmouth. In 1914 he joined the RAMC, being deemed too short-sighted to be in a fighting unit, and sailed on the maiden voyage of the HMHS (His Majesty's Hospital ship) Britannic from Liverpool to Mudros in the Aegean. He was on the beaches at Gallipoli, bringing back wounded men. Luckily for him, he left the Britannic before that ship - sister ship to the Titanic - was hit by a mine in the Aegean.

All of this, and more, he told me before he died in 1953. I just wish he'd told me more of his father the blacksmith, born in Spixworth, Norfolk, in 1843. What a span that is - from 1843 to 2012 - and how much has happened in the span of just 4 generations in my own family...

Subject: RE: BS: Odd perspectives in time
From: Bill D
Date: 17 Dec 12 - 05:41 PM

Yep... I have mused on this many times.

At ónly'73, I remember little tube radios ...and no turn signal on cars. You stuck one arm out the window.
I remember my mother crying at the death of FDR. And my father, who was born in 1907, recalls the first car in his little town of Lost Springs, Kansas.... it was a White Steamer owned by the doctor.

I have a letter from my grandfather to my grandmother in 1901, worrying that he might have trouble getting 20 miles to pick her up in a few days, as it had been raining and it was so muddy that he'd need 6 horses to pull the wagon.

   And very few of the drugs we use now existed when I started school in 1945.

And unbelievable, imaginary technology we chuckled over in the Dick Tracy comic strip..(wrist radios...etc) have been FAR surpassed.

Subject: RE: BS: Odd perspectives in time
From: Will Fly
Date: 17 Dec 12 - 05:51 PM

Here's the text of a letter written by William Remmington of Frettenham, Norfolk, to his brother-in-law Edward Broughton in Canada in 1837. (Edward is the brother of a maternal ancestor of mine). Edward and his family emigrated as part of the huge migration of East Anglian labourers to the "colonies" in the 1830s - after the Captain Swing riots and the changes to the Poor Law. Fascinating reading...

From: Frettenham, January 13th 1837
Norwich, January 14th, 1837
Forwarded January 16th, 1837
To: Edward Broughton Chinguacousy
No 5 First Concession Center Road
near Toronto City Upper Canada        

Frettenham January 13th, 1837

Dear Daughter & Son in Law and Grand Children this com with our Kind Love to you All hopin to find you all in good Helth as it Leave all of our Family at Pressent Thanks Be To God for it; we Received your Letter on the 5 Day of November with the gratest of Joy & Pleashure we was to Hare you Landed with so Little Sickness & Troble and Glad to Hare you are so comfortable in a Forigen Land; we hare so maney Diffren Accounts from Amarak we now not hoo to beelieve; we are sattisfied By your Kind Letter that there is a Livein In Amaraca with Industrea Pray excuse my not written Before, ware a yong man a son of Mr. Hall Frettenham is over he Say that he Live About 30 miles Throm Toronto Sity his Father is Steward for Sem one I waited for his Return, hee too not Return Before the Spring your Brother William Wife was confined on the 17 of October with Daughter & is very well thank God, I am sorry to say that we hare no good better account for Industris People that thare was wen you Left England, the workhouses are altred & Divided as to sepperate the man from his wife & the Boys from the girls that make Things very on Pleasand we hope for Better times by God now wen we shall see them, sister Mary is Removit to Lyng with Mr. Evans & Susan & Hannah is in Norwich & your Uncle Richard & Cozin was at St. Faiths Fair & Desire Thair Love to you all & John Desires his Love to you & you may expect to see him if hee can get over your Uncle Henry & wife & Family To all well & send thar Love to you all & give our Respects to all that enquire for us if you Please, John Friah has Bin at New York he give a very good accont of that plase he has a Brother in Law & sister & family thate thay are Carpenters we may say that a grate maney People will go from Horstead & Cottishall with Friah in the spring His Brother James & Family from Hainford has mad up his mind to see New York Dear Daughter your Mother was a Little on easy about you be heareing so many diffret accounts, after shee see Mr. Myath she was more sattisfied he say you was the First woman that wen on Bord the ship & you was in good spirits as ever hee see you Shee often Talk about you & children & husban, thank God shee is more comfortable than you may I maen by heareing so maney different Tales about Amaraca; grann send her Love to you all yer sister Hannah Perticular wish to have a Lock of your hair & wish to hare if thare is either Church or Chapple & Perticular if thare is a school for the children She was very sorry you forget to Leave her a Lock of Hair & shee excuse it considorin the maney thoughts you had about such a Fatagen journey as you had to go threw with Shee was glad to see your Letter & find you so Comfortable sittuated shee send Kisses to the dear children we has had a very Rough & Severe Christmas the Different Parishes has Ben oblieg to clare the Roed in Different Places the Coatches & Males ware oblieged to Return to London on Account of the Large Drifts of snow; we has not had so much snow for 23 years Past I wish to now the Perticulars of the Winter in your Part of Amaraca Dear Daughter wright to me as soon as it is convenient, the Perticulars of your Part, of the Harvest & Winter seasen your Mother see Mrses Blake about a fortnight back Shee was well as useual Mrses Ducn & Husband & Fammily ar as well as useual & all Desire thair Love to All, your unkel Henry & Wife & Fammily say that thay will com to New York in the Spring if thay can settle About the House & shop; All the Neibor & Frinds send thair Respects to you all So No more at this time from your Loveing Father & Mother Wm & Christain Remmington Dear Sister Pray send us every Particular abought amarace Pray send us word houw they dress in amarace and what faishon Pray send us word what Caps they were and what thar gowns are made of and send us word what you give per Stone for flower and wether ther be enny flowers in amarace Dear Sister we often think of you and husban and Dear Children & was sorry to hare your Dear little Christianna was so ill on her journey but was glad to hair her so well wen we received your letter Pray let us heare from you as sune you can for we think long to hear from you again ann baby is girl child and it name is Christianna they send there Kind love to you all Dear sister kiss my little William and Christianna for me Mr. Taylor is dade and was bered 27th of Dcer at Humford Dear sister we hard the ship was lost that you sailed in we hard the ship tacked and were oblidge to go on shore to be repeared we hared thar were 9 children lost goen Amerace so my love to you and your husband and dear children so i remain your ever loveing sister Christianna Remminton Pray send us word wether your house is all on one floor and wether ther be enny apples in amarace and tell William that his little bird is alive and sining.

Pray send word if you Remove so thay may have written to find you thay will stay in New York for a Time.

Subject: RE: BS: Odd perspectives in time
From: Jim Dixon
Date: 18 Dec 12 - 09:23 AM

I'm "only 65" but my father was born in 1899. Yes, he was 48 when I was born and my mother was 34.

My father narrowly escaped having to fight in both world wars.

During WW1, he received a draft notice telling him when and where to report. Then there was an influenza outbreak in the camp he was supposed to go to, so he received a second order canceling the first. Before they could figure out where to send him instead, the war ended, so he never had to serve.

He was drafted again in WW2 when he was over 40, and went through basic training. He said "it like to killed me" trying to keep up with the younger men. Then the army decided it had been a mistake to draft men that old, so it released the ones who had jobs in "essential industries." [I just looked it up: "On 5 December 1942 a presidential executive order changed the age range for the draft from 21-45 to 18-38."] My father had worked for a railroad, which was classified as an "essential industry." Apparently it didn't matter that he was only a window-washer in the office building in downtown St. Louis (or he may have been promoted to janitor by that point; I don't know when that happened). So he returned to his civilian job.

My father grew up on a farm in western Kentucky, and plowed with a mule. He remembered when the first motorcar passed through that area. It had been printed in the local newspaper that a car was going to drive down a certain road on a certain date and time, so the whole family turned out to watch it go by.

My father died in 1985, a few months short of his 86th birthday. My mother died in 2010 at age 96. I'm counting on those "good genes" to keep me going a while longer, although my lifestyle is working against it.

Subject: RE: BS: Odd perspectives in time
From: Bee-dubya-ell
Date: 18 Dec 12 - 09:59 AM

I don't think of cars built during the 1950s and 1960s as being that terribly old. Heck, I still see one or two cruising down the road almost every day. But those cars are as old or older now than the very first Model-Ts were when they, the 50s and 60s models, were new. I grew up during those two decades and Model-Ts were already pieces of antiquity!

Subject: RE: BS: Odd perspectives in time
From: Newport Boy
Date: 18 Dec 12 - 12:44 PM

Interesting, Jim. My father was born in 1901 and also just escaped fighting in both wars. A misplaced patriotism led him to volunteer in 1916, but his age was spotted and he was sent home. In 1939, he again volunteered but was told he was more use where he was, as a roll-turner in a steelworks.

My grandfather (also a roll-turner) moved from Staffordshire to South Wales in 1905, when Nettlefolds expanded the steelworks at Rogerstone. The newcomers didn't get on with the local beers and arranged for a weekly delivery of their choice from Burton upon Trent (about 120 miles). Mr Google says it takes about 2:20 hours, but I don't think the horse-drawn dray would manage that. My father said the trip was a full 6-day week for the draymen.

Phil

Subject: RE: BS: Odd perspectives in time
From: Charmion
Date: 18 Dec 12 - 01:07 PM

When I was a child, more than 50 years ago, our next-door neighbour in the village drove a pickup truck that started life, circa 1930, as a Model A Ford. Mr Boyd, a retired farmer, used to pick me up in that old truck and take me wherever I wanted to go when he saw me walking on the road, and on one of those trips he told me about the very first time he saw an aircraft: a Curtiss Jenny that buzzed his family's barn. It probably took off from Rockcliffe, east of Ottawa, which was one of exactly two aerodromes possessed by the then newly formed Royal Canadian Air Force.

Subject: RE: BS: Odd perspectives in time
From: Little Hawk
Date: 18 Dec 12 - 02:03 PM

Chongo claims to have been born in the early 1920s, and to have arrived in the USA during the early 30s. This would make him about 100 years old now, and still going strong. He also claims to have personally known or met people like Primo Carnera, Humphrey Bogart, Joe Louis, Sonny Liston, Marlene Dietrich, Errol Flynn, Johnny Weismuller, and a great many others of similar stature. He says he once shot off the end of a cigar that Clint Eastwood had clenched in his jaws. Why? Because Eastwood had done the same to the cigar Chongo was smoking that night. They had drinks afterward, and have been friends ever since.

He does not claim to have ever met the Beatles.

Subject: RE: BS: Odd perspectives in time
From: Ebbie
Date: 18 Dec 12 - 02:24 PM

I once sat down and tried to list all the inventions and innovations since I was born in 1935 and that are in common use today. I gave it up- there are too many.

By far the most of them stem from the last 30 years or so.

Subject: RE: BS: Odd perspectives in time
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 18 Dec 12 - 02:28 PM

I don't see how even Chongo or LH can calculate that someone born in early 1920s would now be about 100. Reckon it up on your 20 fingers again, Chong.

Or were you trying obliquely to justify my choice of title for the thread?

Subject: RE: BS: Odd perspectives in time
From: GUEST,Chongo Chimp
Date: 18 Dec 12 - 02:35 PM

He was probably tired or was just typin' too fast and didn't notice the error. I was born in 1921. I am now 91 years old. Feelin' great! ;-D Anything else ya want to know?

- Chongo

Subject: RE: BS: Odd perspectives in time
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 18 Dec 12 - 02:49 PM

Yes, please, oh mighty Chongo. What please is the answer to Life, the Universe and Everything. I know you will agree with me that that other fellow got it wrong.

~M~

Subject: RE: BS: Odd perspectives in time
From: Rumncoke
Date: 18 Dec 12 - 02:51 PM

When I went to Grammar school I opted for science subjects and was taught to use a sliderule - which I still have, along with several more complex ones.

It is handy as it never needs new batteries, but the younger people are puzzled by it.

My grandfather was called up for the Great war, but he was so small that he was sent home again. He was the only young man in the village for years.

Subject: RE: BS: Odd perspectives in time
From: JennieG
Date: 18 Dec 12 - 03:11 PM

Interesting thread!

Himself's grandfather was born in 1849, and Himself was born exactly 95 years later. They never met which is a shame, because the grandfather, Adolphus, was a sailor......sailed on square-rigged ships, and would have had many tales to tell. When Adolphus was 61 he retired from work, and his retirement certificate in the family papers indicates that he retired to get married. He married a 30YO woman and they had two children, a boy and a girl; the girl was Himself's mother, 31 years later. There is a photo taken of him with his little daughter who looks about 2-3YO, and he has a white hair and a long white beard half-way down his chest.

Cheers
JennieG

Subject: RE: BS: Odd perspectives in time
From: GUEST,Chongo Chimp
Date: 18 Dec 12 - 03:21 PM

"the answer to Life, the Universe and Everything"?

Well, here's yer answer, MtheGM. It is a different answer for everyone, see? Cos everyone is unique and different. People got different destinies and different things they gotta do to advance to the next stage they are goin' to. So one person's answer might not be the next person's answer. You gotta find yer own answer for Life, the Universe, and Everything. Ain't no one else can do it for you.

Get to it.

- Chongo

Subject: RE: BS: Odd perspectives in time
From: GUEST,Eliza
Date: 18 Dec 12 - 05:09 PM

My grandfather had his thumb shot off in the Great War. He was a Geordie from North Shields. I often went up there with my parents to stay. There was a Victorian coal range for cooking, and a scullery, no electricity.   He told me he'd sucked his thumb too much and sucked it away. He took me down to the quay (I was quite small) and I remember all the fishing boats bringing in herring. Also all the cranes on the Tyne, unloading and loading goods. All gone now. My father used to tell me about his early years driving a pony and trap delivering groceries. My mother told how she was one of an enormous family in Ireland, and the priest brought her some old boots to wear. They were too tight and her mother told her to wee in them! How times have changed, and mainly for the better for most folk.

Subject: RE: BS: Odd perspectives in time
From: Will Fly
Date: 18 Dec 12 - 06:03 PM

Eliza, my grandfather also used to walk me round the harbour at Lowestoft while the herring boats were in - steam up, ready to go out straightaway. All the captains and crews new him, and it was a hive of bustling activity.

All long gone, and Lowestoft harbour is empty now.

Subject: RE: BS: Odd perspectives in time
From: GUEST,Eliza
Date: 18 Dec 12 - 06:11 PM

Will, did you used to eat herrings? They were very good, quite oily and lots of flavour. I don't think there aren't any left in the sea now! By the way, my grandfather used to take me into his local pub, thick with smoke, and men in cloth caps with the odd whippet. They spoke in unintelligible Geordie, but I was encouraged to try and sing Bladen Races for them. I was four years old and more than willing to give it a go. I was sat on the bar next to some huge, shiny brass pint-pullers and warbled away in my Middlesex accent. Roars of laughter all round, I was delighted. Did you ever see the fish women, Will, gutting the herring on the quayside in Lowestoft and packing them into barrels? They were from Aberdeen I think.

Subject: RE: BS: Odd perspectives in time
From: Bill D
Date: 18 Dec 12 - 06:39 PM

Absolute info on the Meaning of Life

more to come... there seem to be other takes on it all.

Subject: RE: BS: Odd perspectives in time
From: GUEST,Chongo Chimp
Date: 18 Dec 12 - 07:48 PM

Like I said...everyone's got their own answer to what the meaning of life is. They just make it up as they go along. And some change their minds frequently about it. That's cos they got free will. The thing about free will is...it opens up a lotta possibilities, but they don't amount to much if ya never give any of 'em a serious try. To make pretty much no decisions at all in yer life is also a decision...of sorts...and it leads to a downward spiral. It is basically a resignation from all the interesting job possibilities you been offered in life. In that situation one can fairly safely assume that you basically don't really want to be here or you just don't have the energy to bother, I guess. I seen a few Chimps like that, but not many. Them kind usually got ate by a leopard pretty early on. I seen a lotta people like that. They wait around for other people to make their decisions for them...or for life to force them to make a decision of their own. Kinda like a dog layin' on the rug...

- Chongo

Subject: RE: BS: Odd perspectives in time
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 19 Dec 12 - 12:17 AM

Oh yes. Cranes on the Tyne; Lowestoft Harbour. In the mid-late 50s I worked for a firm in Eastcheap that shipped canned goods; would spend hours writing out Delivery Orders for goods lying in bond at St Katharine's Dock, Tower Wharf, Millwall Dock, Shadwell Dock, East India Dock, Coldharbour Dock, Coe Dock, Canary Wharf... -- lying all along the Thames from Shadwell to Deptford, Isle of Dogs, Wapping, Limehouse, Poplar, Rotherhithe...

What now? Not a wharf or a quay or a warehouse left. TheDome/O2Arena. Canary Wharf Tower. Upmarket housing developments for the affluent young...

~M~

Subject: RE: BS: Odd perspectives in time
From: banjoman
Date: 19 Dec 12 - 05:27 AM

I vaguely recall the street party at the end of WW2 and being told at school that men will never go into space.Its now over 60 years since I rode on the last Tram in Liverpool and riding on the Overhead Railway to see the Empress of Canada on fire in Gladstone Dock.
Telephone boxes that worked and shops that stayed open till late and sold everthing you wanted.

Subject: RE: BS: Odd perspectives in time
From: GUEST,Eliza
Date: 19 Dec 12 - 05:43 AM

I would say that folk of our generation have seen the most changes in the world around us than any generation before us. I remember my young pupils being horrified and disbelieving when I told them we had no TV , no fridge, telephone, car, etc etc.
Michael, we were taken by our school as ten year-olds on a coach to see the London docks. We were herded onto (I think) HMS Daffodil for a tour of the river. I remember a forest of cranes, and huge ships docked everywhere. The dockside buildings and warehouses were black with smoke and pollution. There were barges, tugs, the river was swarming. (I was horribly sick, first on the coach and then on the boat. I never did travel well!)

Subject: RE: BS: Odd perspectives in time
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 19 Dec 12 - 06:21 AM

Eliza ~~ No tv indeed. When my late wife Valerie, during a brief spell as a teacher, reminisced that there was no television service at all during WWii, one girl asked in tones of horror, "Then what did you do at Christmas?" Sad!

I remember as a child being driven past the ruins of the Crystal Palace, which had just spectacularly and newsworthily burnt down over several days. For some reason I found this spectacle terribly alarming, and had nightmares about it for weeks.

~M~

Subject: RE: BS: Odd perspectives in time
From: Pete Jennings
Date: 19 Dec 12 - 08:20 AM

As a toddler in Ashington, Northumberland, I can remember the day shift miners coming home in the late afternoon covered in black coal dust. No pithead showers in those days and no bathroom at home. They would have a bath in a tin tub, laboriously filled from kettles, in front of the fireplace.

The miners' rented houses didn't get bathrooms until the 1960s, when the backyards were converted and made into part of the houses, just a few years before Neil Armstrong walked on the Moon.

Subject: RE: BS: Odd perspectives in time
From: Will Fly
Date: 19 Dec 12 - 08:42 AM

Did you ever see the fish women, Will, gutting the herring on the quayside in Lowestoft and packing them into barrels?

Oh yes indeed. Many of the women used to walk to and from the harbour wearing a pinney with a pocket in the front which contained knitting. They were incredibly fast knitters, pushing the wool over the end of the right-hand needle with their forefinger and not holding either needle under their arms. I think most of the women were probably local Lowestoft folk, though it's possible that some may have come from further north. I'm talking late '40s/early '50s here.

My mum could knit like that - fascinating to watch - while listening to the radio, reading a book and carrying on a conversation. Multitasking, eh?

When my grandfather was too old to go to sea, he worked as a packer in the fish market.

On my father's side of the blanket, my paternal grandfather was a fitter in a huge locomotive works in the Lancashire town of Horwich. Worked there all his life from the age of 13. I remember being taken around it as a small boy. His father - my paternal great-grandfather - was a locomotive driver working on the north-west route and driving for the Royal Scot class. Again, all locomotive industry in Lancashire has long gone and where the once massive works was is now a public park. I took my 11-plus exam at the Victorian Mechanics' Institute across the road. Anyone else remember mechanics' institutes? Great institutions in the education of working class folk.

Subject: RE: BS: Odd perspectives in time
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 19 Dec 12 - 09:39 AM

My first wife Valerie's father was a Forest Of Dean miner whose daily work & hip-bath before the fire resembled Pete's above.

Once during a supervision with the egregious Q D [Queenie] Leavis, while Valerie was a mature student at Cambridge, she replied to QDL's asserion that D H Lawrence shouldn't have been so picky but should have embraced the ways and culture of his 'organic community' roots: "Not always all it's cracked up to be. I grew up in a house with no bathroom and no sanitation indoors, and when my father came home from a day's work at the pit he had to make do with a hip bath in front of the fire."

"Nonsense, dear!" replied Queenie. "You're much too young."

~M~

Subject: RE: BS: Odd perspectives in time
From: Pete Jennings
Date: 19 Dec 12 - 09:57 AM

My wife Judi's first few years in the 1950s (in the Midlands) were spent in a house with no bathroom and no indoor toilet (chemical version at the bottom of the garden). Less than sixty years on we live in a house that has four loos (built like that - no subsequent extensions or alterations)...and a lot of new houses these days have both a bathroom and an en-suite.

That's change, in many ways.

Subject: RE: BS: Odd perspectives in time
From: GUEST,Eliza
Date: 19 Dec 12 - 11:07 AM

My Ivorian husband's first 40 years were spent in a cardboard-and-tin shack with a hole in the ground outside for a toilet, one communal tap down the road and cooking on charcoal fires. When he arrived here he had to be shown how to use a loo. He was fascinated by flushing toilets and taps with hot and cold water, electric cooker and kettle and his favourite, a vaccuum cleaner. And that's in this day and age.

Subject: RE: BS: Odd perspectives in time
From: Mrrzy
Date: 19 Dec 12 - 04:39 PM

I had a cousin (to be pedantically precise, paternal parallel first cousin three times removed) who was so old, his parents had lived through the Civil War. He could tell *second-hand* Civil War stories, in MY lifetime.

And anybody who thinks the 60's were a long time ago is a lot younger than I am. When I hear young(er) people talk about times that seem so far away to them, then find out they're talking about when I was their age (or even, gasp, in my 40's!), I have (a little) readjusting to do.

Subject: RE: BS: Odd perspectives in time
From: Ebbie
Date: 19 Dec 12 - 10:33 PM

Eliza, ain't love grand! When I worked as a tutor, one of my students was a Navajo from Arizona who had never learned to read or write English.

He and his wife had met in Arizona in a tour where he had guided a group to visit the Anasazi ruins. His wife was/is a college counselor with a doctorate.

Their marriage is now well into its 15th year. They are fun to watch together.

Subject: RE: BS: Odd perspectives in time
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 27 Sep 15 - 03:57 AM

A different bit of time-perspective, synchronicity, or whatever, has just come back to me of a different sort. If we accept the generally accepted chronology for two separate historical events that it is pretty well now agreed were based on fact, tho much mytholgised by tradition over the years, I find it fascinating that Agamemnon and all his Grecian allies would have been setting out for the ten-year siege of Troy at about the same time as Moses was leading the Children of Israel out of bondage in Egypt, to cross the Red Sea & wander for 40 years before settling in the Promised Land.

≈M≈

(Drift: re the plethora of threads re the Israeli-Arab stuff & all that: why did that stupid deity tell the Israelites to turn left when they got across? If he had only said turn right, there wouldn't be all the current controversy, & the Israelis would have all that bloody oil!)

Subject: RE: BS: Odd perspectives in time
From: DMcG
Date: 27 Sep 15 - 07:11 AM

I forget which book it is, but in one of the Opie books (or perhaps Katherine Briggs) there is a paragraph or two headed "Folk memory of Oliver Cromwell" which is something like an aged gent telling the collector they remember their grandfather being told by his grandfather that Oliver Cromwell stopped by that gate."

Subject: RE: BS: Odd perspectives in time
From: akenaton
Date: 27 Sep 15 - 08:25 AM

Being interested in art and art history I always had a liking for the work of JMW Turner, especially the atmospheric study of the "Fighting Temeraire".

A few years ago I had cause to look up my family genealogy and to my amazement found that my Great great grandfather had been an AB on that very ship. My great grandfather followed him into the Royal Navy on sailing warships.

Subject: RE: BS: Odd perspectives in time
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 27 Sep 15 - 09:51 AM

Amazing, Ake. Did your great great grandfather actually serve at Trafalgar, where the ship was engaged, or later before her celebrated destruction in 1838? A wonderful piece of distinguished family history, anyhow!

≈M≈

Subject: RE: BS: Odd perspectives in time
From: akenaton
Date: 27 Sep 15 - 10:16 AM

Don't know M just found his record and the ships he sailed in, think there were five in all.   Thanks anyway :0)

I'm fortunate to have quite an unusual name which means genealogy tracing is relatively easy.

Subject: RE: BS: Odd perspectives in time
From: Lighter
Date: 27 Sep 15 - 10:16 AM

I knew several World War I veterans when I was a boy.

The most interesting was a neighbor who had joined the US Navy in 1917.

He learned basic seamanship in the sloop-of-war Constellation, launched in 1854.

It was maintained as a naval training ship at Newport, R.I., till 1933.

Subject: RE: BS: Odd perspectives in time
From: Bill D
Date: 27 Sep 15 - 10:38 AM

I am always amused when someone or some group presents a selection of songs designated "the oldies".... right now meaning The Beatles and Elvis.

My response is always.. "In my crowd, 'oldies' refers to songs before 1800 or so." (and I have to prove that Scarborough Fair did not start just waaaayyy back in the 20 century.)

Subject: RE: BS: Odd perspectives in time
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 27 Sep 15 - 11:53 AM

I remember that one of the Beeb Radio 2 pop programmes that would play in offices &c where I did vacation jobs in my teaching days would play all the latest chart stuff, trying to win audiences back from the offshore pirate stations like Radio Caroline; but every now & then would come on a portentous musical chorus intro which sang, in Mid-Atlantic tones, ♫'Remember this golden clee-assic'♫; and they would play a # which had dropped out of the charts maybe all of 5 or six weeks before!

≈M≈

Subject: RE: BS: Odd perspectives in time
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 27 Sep 15 - 12:07 PM

I remember (mid 1950s) running or cycling to school along roads with very little traffic.

I remember, as a teenager (mid-1960s), cycling from Peterborough to Hunstanton (Norfolk coast) in a day; 52 miles there, 52 miles back. I would, of course, be incapable of doing it now and any teenager who made the attempt would probably be killed by the relentless traffic on the A47.

When I moved to Manchester, in the early 1970s, I soon discovered the Mersey Valley - which runs east to west through South Manchester. At that time it still had a rich flora and I spent many happy Sunday afternoons botanising. But, alas, just a few years before I arrived, the M60 motorway had been driven through the Valley. Over the last few decades many habitats have been so contaminated with NOx gases (topical!) that nettles and docks are now the commonest plants.

Many historic town centres, that I once knew, are now mere 'traffic islands' and the trade has been sucked out of them by massive, out-of-town shopping centres.

We have, and will continue, to pay an enormous price for the 'privilege' of driving everywhere by car and subordinating the places we live to the internal combustion engine - and that doesn't even take into account the looming catastrophe of irreversible climate change.

I had the terrible insight the other day that, in my lifetime (I'm 67), 'progress' has been abandoned and replaced by environmental destruction for profit! The changes that I have witnessed, in my lifetime, have been so rapid and so dramatic that the planet probably can't cope. Remember that my lifetime (and your lifetime) is a mere infinitesimal fraction of a 'cosmic eye-blink'!

Subject: RE: BS: Odd perspectives in time
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 27 Sep 15 - 12:28 PM

Kitty Hawk was the place, not the plane.

In the late 1970s I was in Connecticut visiting with my great aunt (born 1887). We were seated in her front room in opposite chairs, both reading, when she asked what my book was. I think I was reading Jude the Obscure and answered that it was a novel by Thomas Hardy. Her response was "he's that British fellow, isn't he?" like he was contemporary. And then I realized that she was in her 40s when he died, so he probably felt that way to her.

Albert Einstein was still alive when I was born. A.A. Milne (Winnie the Pooh), Bertolt Brecht, H.L. Mencken, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Colette, Arturo Toscanini, Villa-Lobos, Charles Ives, James Hilton, Thomas Mann, Erich von Stroheim, were all alive in my lifetime. The flip side of that is that some people who died very near to when I was born are still such icons that it doesn't seem like they've been gone nearly 60 years: James Dean, Charlie Parker, Frida Kahlo, Jackson Pollock, Diego Rivera, Christian Dior, Ritchie Valens, Buddy Holly, Billie Holiday, were so forward looking, so on the forward edge of a movement, or had such robust estates that their names stayed prominent for years, many even today.

Subject: RE: BS: Odd perspectives in time
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 27 Sep 15 - 01:38 PM

My first memory of a public event is of the death of George V -- I remember my mother telling me that the King was very ill and would die soon. I remember the Abdication Crisis very clearly. The Coronation of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth (aka now The Late Queen Mother) took place on my 5th birthday, 12 May 1937; my parents went to watch the procession and I was left to my own devices to play with all my presents, which I do not remember troubling me in the least.

Some things haven't changed; but more have. Louis MacNeice's well-known lines from his Autumn Journal, "It was all so unimaginably different, And all so long ago", actually refer to slavery in the ancient world; but they also serve to sum up a lot of my memories.
≈M≈

Subject: RE: BS: Odd perspectives in time
From: Jack Campin
Date: 27 Sep 15 - 02:27 PM

The Anzac Day parade in New Zealand when I was a kid had the veterans marching in order of the wars they'd fought in, oldest war first. The leaders were veterans of the Boer War.

I once saw a newspaper clipping with a photo of my mother's father and a few other men from his family. The caption said they'd worked at the same factory (Siemens in Woolwich) for 200 years between them.

I attended a few courses taught (long after his retirement) by H.G. Forder at Auckland University.

http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Biographies/Forder.html

One of them was on general relativity. Forder was already teaching and researching mathematics when Einstein first published about the theory. It made the course fairly difficult because Forder didn't see much point in modernizing Einstein's way of doing it, he thought it was just fine the way it was. He used to end each lecture saying "If I'm still alive next week, we'll cover..."

Subject: RE: BS: Odd perspectives in time
From: Lighter
Date: 27 Sep 15 - 02:29 PM

Yeah, they do things differently in the past.

My grandmother recalled President McKinley's assassination in 1901 and the Wright Brothers flight in 1903: "We all thought it was a toy. What good was it?"

She also said it was tough to cross the streets in NYC in those long dresses because of all the horse "manure" in the 1890s - and later.