BS: These Are The Good Old Days

Subject: BS: These Are The Good Old Days
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 26 Jun 05 - 04:53 PM

A while back, I was listening to a group of people talking about how terrible life is these days. They complained about the music, and television, and all their other gripes and then started waxing about the good old days in the 40's and 50's. They were talking about the big band era, the wonderful movie stars and how cheap everything was in comparison to these days. I said, "Yeah, those were the good old days... remember the Holocaust and the Ku Kux Klan?"   "What a great time THAT was!" Maybe it because none of them was black or Jewish, but I think there's something deeper than that.
While it may be hard to comprehend, forty years from now, people are going to refer to these times as "the good old days." Ageing rappers will be going into nursing homes to do the old familiar rap music, grabbing a fist full of Depends in their hand when they grab their crotch. Britney Spears will be playing in Branson, Missouri to packed houses of people reminiscing about their lost youth. I'm almost getting misty eyed, even thinking about it. Darned near chokes me up. And Eminem will be the next Perry Como. I think it's called selective memory. The ugly stuff that didn't directly affect a person will be glossed over or forgotten completely.

Now, there's a good side to this, if I'm right. It's helpful to realize that despite our invasion of Iraq, our political frustrations and angers, the economy, the cost of gas and everything else, there really are "good" things about these days. They'll be the things that people wax nostalgic about 40 years from now.

Maybe it takes pre-hindsight to really see the presnt.

Jerry

Subject: RE: BS: These Are The Good Old Days
From: Ebbie
Date: 26 Jun 05 - 05:18 PM

"While it may be hard to comprehend, forty years from now, people are going to refer to these times as "the good old days." Ageing rappers will be going into nursing homes to do the old familiar rap music, grabbing a fist full of Depends in their hand when they grab their crotch. Britney Spears will be playing in Branson, Missouri to packed houses of people reminiscing about their lost youth. I'm almost getting misty eyed, even thinking about it. Darned near chokes me up. And Eminem will be the next Perry Como. I think it's called selective memory. The ugly stuff that didn't directly affect a person will be glossed over or forgotten completely." Jerry Rasmussen

And the women will have "tasteful" tattoos still gaudy and bright after 40 years hidden deep in wrinkles in their aged skinny bodies, except for faces still taut and shiny and unable to frown or to smile, and they will have scars from long-closed holes in their noses and lips and nipples... And memories. Ah, the memories. They will remember the glorious days when we kicked the shit out of little countries and won. They will ignore the evacuations of whole populations from areas that will have to be left alone for a thousand years. Who cares- we have lots left.

Ya think?? Will Dads will gather their children around the library table and chant rap together?

These are the good old days? Like you, Jerry, I lived through the 50s- I don't think there are any "good old days", except through the prism of our growing years.

Subject: RE: BS: These Are The Good Old Days
From: sixtieschick
Date: 26 Jun 05 - 05:29 PM

Dave Van Ronk commented in his book that everyone who came to Greenwicxh Village felt they got there ten years too late. Did you feel that way, Jerry?

Subject: RE: BS: These Are The Good Old Days
From: gnu
Date: 26 Jun 05 - 05:42 PM

Bet ya wish ya had some extra pre-hindsight now, huh, Jerry?

Subject: RE: BS: These Are The Good Old Days
From: khandu
Date: 26 Jun 05 - 06:03 PM

Since an event in 1992 changed my outlook on EVERYthing, I have tried to keep the perspective that these are the good old days, and this day in particular is the good old day. We believe, hope and look forward to tomorrow, which possibly will not exist for us. Today is what we have right now.

k

Subject: RE: BS: These Are The Good Old Days
From: Le Scaramouche
Date: 26 Jun 05 - 06:06 PM

It's so sad if what my generation will have to reminisce in old age about is Britney Spears.

Subject: RE: BS: These Are The Good Old Days
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 26 Jun 05 - 06:15 PM

Hey, Ebbie:

Ah,, the fifties. Poodle skirts and duck tail haircuts. Happy Days with the Fonz. You could still get cherry coke at the soda fountain then, and records still only cost a nickel on the jukebox. I think that we agree. Nostlagia has a way of overlooking all the God-awful stuff that us humans do to each other. That's why I think it's hard to see how people could wax nostalgic about these days. But, I think that they will.

Remember Vietnam and the civil rights movement? To some extent they've become oldies of their own, with their own soundtrack, and tie-dyed shirts at Walmart. There was nuthin good about the Viet Nam War or the hate crimes of those days, but even that seems to soften as the years go by.

And sixtieschick... No, I didn't feel that way at all. I felt like there was some sort of mystical convergence happening and I soaked it up. Appreciated the openness and excitement, and to a great extent, just lived in the moment. Dave was right, though. From 1960-64, everything was exploding in the Village, and I don't think that anyone who was there during that time was thinking to themselves "If only I had been here ten years ago." People who came in after most of the coffeee houses on McDougal and Bleeker Streets were closed and the places that were left had high cover charges understandably might have felt that way. But even then, there was still a collective of people and music that thrived... perhaps in smaller venues with smaller crowds. I went down to hear Tom Paxton in the 70's and it was great to hear him again. It was different... no question about that. Where I could hear him while nursing a cup of coffee with no cover charge at the Gaslight Cafe in the early 60's (and Dave too,)
I had to buy tickets a couple of hours in advance and go in for a "show".

I guess the point I'm trying to make, along with just asking questions, is that no matter how disgusted we get about the present, and how much it may become blurry and in slow-mo in the years to come, that doesn't mean that there aren't some things that are happening right now that we shouldn't appreciate. And not let them slip past us while we're angry about those things we should be angry about.

Gotta be a balance in here, somewhere..

Jerry

Subject: RE: BS: These Are The Good Old Days
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 26 Jun 05 - 06:19 PM

Hey, La Scaramouche... we had Fabian, Frankie Avalon and Bobby Rydell.
You can probably catch them at Branson, Missouri if you hurry.. :-)

You can always remember Nirvana, grunge and R.E.M. (all of whom I liked a lot.)

And this may be your last chance to catch the Stones before their final Walker Tour.. :-)

I can't get no medication...

Jerry

Subject: RE: BS: These Are The Good Old Days
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 26 Jun 05 - 06:22 PM

"Sing us one of the old songs Grandma".... Grandma gets up out of the chair, adopts a hunched position over the seat, looking coyly back over her shoulder....

" I love big butts and I cannot lie, you other mothers can't deny....!"

Can't wait for those days to come!

LTS

Subject: RE: BS: These Are The Good Old Days
From: sixtieschick
Date: 26 Jun 05 - 06:24 PM

Thanks for the answer, Jerry. It seemed like a cynical statement in the book--and Van Ronk was talking about looking back with nostalgia at the 40s and 50s in the Village.

There are certain places that are uniquely amazing during a short, magical time period. The convergence of factors that made them that way never come together again. Those who were fortunate enough to be present give a gift by becoming the storytellers for the rest of us.

Uh, what was this thread about? I'm just drifting and drifting, baby, like a ship out on the sea......

M.

Subject: RE: BS: These Are The Good Old Days
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 26 Jun 05 - 06:35 PM

This thread is about what we make it about, sixties chick. Life is complex.. too complex to merchandise at times. Most of us in here can look back at the Vietnam Era and the civil rights movements with painful memories, but be thankful that we were there for the "folk boom" that we mostly malign, these days.

Khandu is right. As best we can, we try to see the good in the present, so that it doesn't slip away or get taken for granted.

I wrote a song once, probably quoted the lines before in here in another thread: "The good old days are still to come, though the hard times are not over."

Despite all the things that get me angry today, I can travel pretty much anywhere in this country now with my wife, who is black. and be treated warmly, or at least respectfully. In the "good old days" of the fifties and sixties, I wouldn't have dared go back to my home town in Wisconsin with a black wife. Despite our capacity for screwing things up, sometimes things do get better..

Jerry

Subject: RE: BS: These Are The Good Old Days
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 26 Jun 05 - 06:51 PM

I can understand Dave, too. He was in the Village during the more Bohemian fifties where he could sneak in when he was underage to hear Billie Holliday. Perhaps Dave resented people coming down to the Village after those few years of excitement, and saying "there's nothing here anymore!" As the Village became even more of a tourist trap, there were an increasing number of people who came there to "see a hippie." I'm sure that Dave didn't appreciate that.

Pat Sky told me a story about Dave. Dave had come up to visit Pat in some small town in Massachusetts and they were at Pat's house one night. Dave was used to the life on the street in New York City, and he was completely bored, pacing back and forth in the room. He asked Pat "What is there to do in this town?" and Pat answered, "You're doing it.." At least that's the way I remember Pat telling it..

I don't think the Village ever lost its fascination in Dave's mind.

Jerry

Subject: RE: BS: These Are The Good Old Days
From: Le Scaramouche
Date: 26 Jun 05 - 06:51 PM

Yes, Nirvana and REM, grew up with those, so yeah. But Britney and Christina and Beyonce and MADONNA uuurgh.
Brother can't wait for the Stones show in Israel, early next year I think.

Subject: RE: BS: These Are The Good Old Days
From: Le Scaramouche
Date: 26 Jun 05 - 06:54 PM

I do believe in change, when it is needed, but not for the sake of change.
The Village Green Preservation Society sums it up best.

Subject: RE: BS: These Are The Good Old Days
From: Ebbie
Date: 26 Jun 05 - 07:06 PM

And there, I do agree with you, Jerry. Some things have gotten better, long overdue though they were. I remember a time in McMinnville, Oregon when ethnic Chinese were not allowed in town afte sunset. A few years later, my Chinese boss belonged to the local Chamber of Commerce and had a home in town.

When my family moved to Stuarts Draft, Virginia, blacks still stepped off a sidewalk in "respect" when a white woman came along, and they had a little side room to themselves at the Greyhound bus terminal. (I remember how horrified the good, Christian pastor's wife was when I, age 16, dried my hands on the 'colored help's' towel. Of course I knew it was Jim's towel but being from the West Coast I didn't begin to understand or accept the mores of my new culture. She literally wanted me to re-wash my hands and use "our" towel. I didn't.) Not many years later, there are many black cops and black-owned businesses in town and the 'Whites Only' and 'Colored Only' fountains and entrances are long gone.

Subject: RE: BS: These Are The Good Old Days
From: GUEST
Date: 26 Jun 05 - 07:11 PM

Yes, your youth is always your good old days. I can see Grandma 50 years from now having her piercings re-opened so she can wear the metal in her face that he first fell in love with. Maybe the short top showing the pierced navel and that expanse of belly down to the hipsters we all have to look at today will wobble the same as her puppy fat did!
( Does anyone else find this fashion difficult to cope with? Yesterday I saw a woman at least 8 months pregnant with the whole of her ditended stomach on public((any lower and it would have been pubic)) view)

Subject: RE: BS: These Are The Good Old Days
From: sixtieschick
Date: 26 Jun 05 - 07:12 PM

It makes me a bit crazy on the Left Coast to see what Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley and Haight Street in San Francisco have become. However, I hope never to become calcified and in my attitudes. Britney, Cristina, Justin and Beyonce aren't the only games in town.

It has ever been a small group of eccentrics (meaning, "off-center," I believe) who have kept creative expression alive. They are always around somewhere under the mainstream cultural radar, just as there were groups of people who flourished on Telegraph, the Haight, and in the Village for a few brief years before their way-out ways were co-opted, sanitized and commercialized.

Miriam

Subject: RE: BS: These Are The Good Old Days
From: khandu
Date: 26 Jun 05 - 09:20 PM

A friend and I were talking last week, and he mentioned to me that the old store building of Teoc, MS had finally fallen in. (It was the only building in Teoc except for a tractor shed!) He and I both bemoaned the old places we knew thirty -forty years ago crumbling and falling or being torn down. I mused that the reasons it distressed us so much was not only the loss of memorable places & things but also it was another sign that we are going to die. It struck us both as funny, but, alas, true!

It is odd that our walk in this world is simultaneously a "time of trouble" and the "good old days".

Life is a struggle and a pleasure, a worry and a treasure. I can see us, Jerry, in another, better realm, speaking of these "good old days"!

Ken

Subject: RE: BS: These Are The Good Old Days
From: beardedbruce
Date: 26 Jun 05 - 09:53 PM

"Life is a struggle and a pleasure, a worry and a treasure."



khandu, this phrase has made all the BS I have read through in the last year worthwhile. Thank you!

8-{E

Subject: RE: BS: These Are The Good Old Days
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 26 Jun 05 - 09:56 PM

Me too, Ken: Even in the darkest of days there is still beauty to be seen, even if we have to search for it.

As for the Village and Haight-Ashbury, and maybe a few years before that, even Harlem... The Village was an idea, as were the other two places. So were the street corners of Brooklyn when "every corner had a group. We sang Searchin' and Alley-Oop." Buildings get torn down, places like the Village and Haight-Ashbury may get co-opted for commercial purposes, but the ideas still live on. They will bloom again somewhere else, without warning. They bloomed in Seattle, when grunge was suddenly popular. Back in the days of "The Artist Formerly Known As Prince", Minneapolis was a center of creativity.

Who knows, creativity may be coming to a neighborhood near you one of these days... savor the moment, if you are fortunate enough to be there..

Jerry

Subject: RE: BS: These Are The Good Old Days
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 27 Jun 05 - 09:10 AM

Hey, Ken:

I think you've got it right. When an old building is torn down that is part of our memories of younger days, it may seem like part of us dies along with it. When my wife and I go back to my home town, she always marvels at how much of the structure of my childhood is still there... the house I was born in, my Grandparent's home, the schools I went to, the parks and most of the old buildings in the downtown area. Never mind that most of them are empty. At least they are there. My wife grew up in Brooklyn, and she was very upset many years ago when one of her sons wanted to go see her old neighborhood. Most of the buildings were gone, and her school which was new at the time was grafiti-covered and decrepit. She would prefer remembering it as it was. But in the long run, it's not the buildings that made the "good old days" be remembered as "good." It's what happened in the community. And that is something very different.

The buildings in Greenwich Village may not have changed that much. It's the community that lived there in the 40's through the 60's that people get nostalgic about. The same with Harlem, Seattle, or wherever a community of people came together where there was a creative explosion. Having experienced what happened in the Village in the early 60's and looking back, I think what made that time special was that people came together of one accord. Not that everyone was the same. It's not uniformity that creates that special magic that can nurture creativity. It is a common accord. And, its much more a positive belief in something than just a gathering of people who are against something. If it's just negative, I don't believe a real community arises. I think it takes being in common accord about a goal, or a belief that is the seeding ground for creativity. In the Village in the early 60's, and most likely in Haight-Ashbury, Seattle, Minneapolis and all the rest, there was an atmosphere of hope and encouragement. While egos still roamed the streets of the Village, there was genuine happiness when someone would be "discovered" and sign a recording contract. Perhaps even more important than that, most musicians were very generous and encouraging to people at open mike nights, whether the people were good or not. It's that positive energy that is the petri dish of creativity. I think that's why most of us were drawn to folk music... it was the sense of community as much as the music.

When I came to Mudcat, Rick Fielding was already on that slippery downhill slope that would eventually take him from us. I knew Rick before I knew Mudcat, and what really struck me was his generosity and humility. He was like a one-man community and his presence in here permeated the music and the BS threads. At times, there is that magical feeling of true community in here (despite those who claim that this place is nothing more than squiggly black lines on a computer screen.) Perhaps that is all Mudcat is for them, but that isn't true for most of us. There are times in here when we get a taste of what a true community is... one where people are encouraged, supported and appreciated. That happens, despite nary a building in here. When this place is a community, it's one that a bulldozer or boutique can't destroy. Only we can.

Good to see you in here, Ken. You always bring a lot with you.

Jerry

Subject: RE: BS: These Are The Good Old Days
From: sixtieschick
Date: 27 Jun 05 - 02:55 PM

Cheap rent and community efforts to make life without much money do-able in interesting places also has the effect of gathering creative people in one place at one time. The Haight was originally a run-down neighborhood near Golden Gate Park with fabulous Victorian houses that could be rented for a song. There was an unwritten law that you shared what you had with your tribe. The livin' was easier, and that left breathing room for creative energies to gather force and for people to inspire each other. Follow the lack of money, coupled with youthful optimism, and you'll often find creative, innovative communities.

M.

Subject: RE: BS: These Are The Good Old Days
From: Ebbie
Date: 27 Jun 05 - 03:39 PM

I like noting that optimist and to optimize have the same root. Optimize- to make it the best it can be.

What does the word 'pessimist' come from? Raining on one's parade? *G*

Subject: RE: BS: These Are The Good Old Days
From: Ebbie
Date: 27 Jun 05 - 03:41 PM

Sorry- wrong thread. How can I make that the best it can be? :)

Subject: RE: BS: These Are The Good Old Days
From: Pete Peterson
Date: 27 Jun 05 - 05:11 PM

My principal interest is the old country music of the 20s and 30s. One band I played in named itself the Golden Age Retrievers, bringing back the songs from the golden age of country music, before Bluegrass. I sure wish I had been born in my parents' generation and gotten to hear Charlie Poole, Uncle Dave Macon, the Carter Family, DaCosta Woltz and Frank Jenkins and Ben Jarrell. . . it would be very easy to go on.

AND YET. Even though I didn't get to meet them, I do get to hear their recordings, and make music with other friends who think the same way. Geoff Seitz titled one of his CDs "The good old days are here" -- the cover shows a trapper paddling down the Missouri, wearing the clothes of about 1800, with the Gateway Arch clearly visible in the distance.

   And if I had been born many years before I actually was, would have been dead at age 4 of scarlet fever & its complications, and would have had either a coronary or stroke, now controlled by statins and ACE inhibitors. . . so far so good.

   These ARE the good old days. But there's a lot to do to make it better

Subject: Lyr Add: SING ME THE OLD SONGS (Tommy Makem)
From: Rapparee
Date: 27 Jun 05 - 05:16 PM

Like the man said, "The good old days weren't."

SING ME THE OLD SONGS
- Words and music by Tommy Makem In 1977
Copyright 1977

I sit by my fire when the twilight falls softly
And all the sweet memories flow through my mind
I imagine I see, as the flames wave and flicker
The people and places that I've left behind

Chorus:
Sing me the old songs of laughter and pleasure
Sing me the old songs of sorrow and pain
Sing from the heart, sing of love without measure
The good times, the bad times, the sunshine, the rain

I hear an old song that keeps haunting me ever
The good times rush back with that well loved refrain
The sweet wine is flowing, the bright laughter ringing
And all the old friends gather 'round me again

Chorus

I remember the summers, the walks in the country
The long, quiet evenings, the smell of the hay
The touch of a hand and a smile that beguiled me
And told me of love that's still with me today

Chorus

Subject: RE: BS: These Are The Good Old Days
From: GUEST
Date: 27 Jun 05 - 05:37 PM

You Americans have always had it easy compared to us Brits. When I were a lad, in Merrie Englande, we all had diphtheria and lived in cardboard boxes (I might have nicked the last bit from M.Python - but you get the picture).
Actually, I really think that the modern world is crap - cheap, stupid and tawdry. Nothing is sacred and everything of value is sacrificed to the great god, PROFIT. This is no basis for a civilisation!

Subject: RE: BS: These Are The Good Old Days
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 27 Jun 05 - 06:11 PM

Hey, Pete:

If I had been born in my parent's generation I wouldn't a heard no one, in person. I lived in a small town and no one ever passed through on their way to something important and performed. Except for the 4H Fair, where they still get big name performers in an area that only seats three or four hundred people... Kenny Chesney three years ago, and they've had Merle Haggard, the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band and many others you'd recognize by name. Ironically, there weren't any big name acts passing through when I was growing up. The area where they have the concerts now was a D level minor leagu ball park and for the fair, they had horse pull contests..

My parents sure weren't walking around singing My Name Is Morgan, But It Ain't J.P. I don't know where your parents grew up, but mine would have no idea who you're talking about. Now, maybe Billy Murray or Sophie Tucker or the early Bing Crosby... :-)

Jerry

Subject: RE: BS: These Are The Good Old Days
From: Donuel
Date: 27 Jun 05 - 06:24 PM

Wish I had known Rick Fielding.

These are the good ol days. I am no longer in incredible pain. I have energy to have fun. The kids are young enough to still be ultra cute before the teenage years set in.

Subject: RE: BS: These Are The Good Old Days
From: Ron Davies
Date: 28 Jun 05 - 12:51 AM

Another thing about the "good old" 50's--over all the music there was a constant drumming of (likely!) danger of imminent nuclear annihilation. Particularly for anybody under 12, say, but aware of current events, this was a huge pre-occupation--and enforced by those famous air-raid drills (under your desk).

Subject: RE: BS: These Are The Good Old Days
From: Doug Chadwick
Date: 28 Jun 05 - 02:52 AM

I distinctly remember, in way back whenever it was, shaking my head in despair and telling someone that Abba songs would eventually become "golden oldies". Since then we have had Abba tribute bands and even a West End show dedicated to them.

My firm has an annual staff party and what do we get ..... ?


DC

Subject: RE: BS: These Are The Good Old Days
From: Wolfgang
Date: 28 Jun 05 - 07:05 AM

What makes the Goog Old Days the Good Old Days is that you only remember the good songs and forget all the others.

Why can't they just makes the present days already the Good Old Days by   playing already today only those songs people will remember fifty years on?

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: BS: These Are The Good Old Days
From: Rapparee
Date: 28 Jun 05 - 09:11 AM

Good old days??? The 1950s???

Not for me. Right off the bat, in 1950, my father died. My grandfather in 1953. My grandmother in 1957. My mother was always worried about money to feed, clothe, and house us. We kids were concerned about school and grades. One day our car was rear-ended by a cop in a Cadillac -- no money to fix it, and we breathed carbon monoxide for several months (which has made me a living CO detector). My mother got her foot caught in a power mover (used, we couldn't afford new stuff) and required aover a hundred stitches -- money for medical bills! My brother got rheumatic fever and it affected his heart -- medical bills.

Phooey on THOSE good old days!

Subject: RE: BS: These Are The Good Old Days
From: GUEST,Joe_F
Date: 28 Jun 05 - 09:58 AM

Ways in which life has gotten better in my lifetime (U.S., middle class, 1937-present):

1. More personal freedom. It is no longer such a big deal to be queer, wear nonstandard clothes, etc.

2. More convenient ways of handling money, if you have the money -- ATMs, credit cards, online banking, etc.

3. Plastic bags. It is much easier to store & carry almost everything than it was when I was little. Above all, I give them credit, by sealing garbage, for the near-disappearance of insects from respectable suburbs.

4. Decline of racism. It is sickening to remember how much more powerful it used to be, and how much it was taken for granted. A black & a white person can hold hands in public these days without being in danger of their lives; we think nothing of it.

5. The Internet.

Ways in which it has gotten worse:

1. Increasing prevalence of commercial entertainment and, within it, of mass entertainment. Increase in the reliance, in selling such entertainment, on base motives such as intergenerational malice & the fear of differing from one's neighbor. The transformation of popular music into a stylized, mechanized, commercialized tantrum.

2. Proliferation of promotion (industrialized harassment & insult) -- junk mail, telemarketing, spam, etc.

3. The drug counterrevolution. In 1970 it looked as if we might actually get rid of sumptuary law, but the bad guys won.

4. Decline of public transportation; increased dependence on cars.

--- Joe Fineman    [e-mail]

||: Abortion lowers the price of fornication; homosexuality lowers the price of fellatio. :||

Subject: RE: BS: These Are The Good Old Days
From: jacqui.c
Date: 28 Jun 05 - 11:37 AM

I've been thinking about this while reading this thread.

I would not want to go back to any other time in my life and do not regret the passing of any of the landmarks that I knew in earlier times. The past was not the 'Good Old Days' for me and the present is so much richer and better from my point of view.

I enjoy hearing the music that I knew from the sixties onward, but there are always so many new songs, particularly from the likes of Utah Phillips and Gordon Bok, that I am just finding out about and every day seems to bring a new discovery or a new friend in my adopted home.

Right now life is GOOD!

Subject: RE: BS: These Are The Good Old Days
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 28 Jun 05 - 12:29 PM

I'm with you, jacqui:

And from where I sit, tomorrow is looking even a little better. Being appreciative of what you had, have and are going to have makes all the difference.

"How many days slip away without notice?
How many friends have you lost on the way?
And how many good times are taken for granted.
And only remembered when they've passed away?"

Jerry

Subject: RE: BS: These Are The Good Old Days
From: Charmion
Date: 28 Jun 05 - 04:57 PM

I spent the 1970s on the cutting edge of social change, a most uncomfortable spot. Recruited into the Canadian Forces as one of about 2,000 women in the 98,000-strong Regular Force, I was constantly being told what women did not do or were not ever going to do. As female enrolment increased (a result of direct orders from Parliament), the rhetoric changed to "the first woman to" do whatever, from changing the tyres on a deuce-and-a-half to flying a CF-18 Hornet fighter. I sicked of the whole thing very quickly; military life from my point of view was hard labour for everyone, but too often women still had to do it in nylons.

(Did you ever notice that Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, but backwards and in high heels?)

Three weeks ago, a young woman with a ball cap and a pierced belly-button came to our house to do some landscaping, with a truckload of topsoil and flagstones, a little rotary power saw and a labourer. While he shovelled dirt, she cut the flagstones to size and built a raised bed supported by dry-stone walls lined with geo-textile. When she said frog, he jumped; she was definitely the skilled labour.

At 25 years old, she's read about the feminist movement of the 70s and 80s, but it means about as much to her as the co-education movement of the 1920s meant to me when I started university. It's history.

These are definitely better old days than the old days were.

Subject: RE: BS: These Are The Good Old Days
From: beardedbruce
Date: 28 Jun 05 - 05:06 PM

Wolfgang,

Can you send me the list?


8-{E

Subject: RE: BS: These Are The Good Old Days
From: semi-submersible
Date: 28 Jun 05 - 06:44 PM

Will those of us who live, look back to the "oughts" and the "teens," when nearly everyone here had a car, and you could just get in and drive as far as your wallet would allow? Remember when gas was just a few bucks a gallon, and we bought cheap toys from China and fresh produce from all over the world? Remember dollars being the only bottom line? Things were simple then.

Remember when kids from a whole town went to one big school, and didn't bring home anything deadlier than chicken pox? Remember when you went outdoors to enjoy sunshine and fresh air?

Remember when we worried about one endangered species at a time? When the world food supply could theoretically feed everyone, and if we tried we could save the Earth? When disasters happened somewhere else?


It can be painful to look ahead from the end of a golden age. On the other hand, this is the biggest challenge we've faced since the start of the last ice age. What songs will we sing about what we did in The Good Old Days? What parts of this age can be saved, and how?