Returning to the more pleasant topic of things that have disappeared from common use, I remember carbon paper. It is difficult to remember back before Xerox machines or the ability to save, store and print documents at will. The only way you could make a copy of something was to insert a piece of carbon paper between your first piece of paper and the second piece. Then you had to carefully keep everything together as you threaded the trio into your typewriter. When you struck the typewriter key with enough force, the carbon paper transferred a bit of black ink to the underneath sheet while the top sheet got the ink from the inked ribbon.

If this sounds tedious, it was. However, it was a vast improvement over the century before. If you have read Melville’s story “Bartleby the Scrivener,” you will know that lawyers and other paper heavy professions hired men(not women)to hand copy each document that needed to be duplicated. This was the tradition that had come down through centuries. While printing presses allowed multiple copies to be made of books–a vast improvement over hand copying each book–it was of no use for making one copy of a will or deed.

Carbon paper was as messy as it sounds. It also was of no use in correcting errors. Even if you could use White-Out to correct errors on the original page, you had to repeat the correction on the carbon copy. Now I guess it is a novelty item. It is still for sale I learned when reading about it. But in my college days it was a necessity. A dirty necessity, but needed nonetheless.

When I was a child, June 14 was celebrated as Flag Day, and I remembered that this morning when I noticed the date. I was very murky about what that day was supposed to celebrate, and I am quite sure I was never taught its significance. Researching it now, it apparently was to note the adoption of the first flag for the United States by the Second Continental Congress on June 14, 1777. That was a little premature, since the Revolutionary War didn’t end until 1783, but they were optimistic enough to design a flag.

Unfortunately, many people have confused caring about the country with carrying about the flag. That led to outrage in my college years when protestors set fire to flags. People were also appalled by pants being patched with flag patches. My country’s leader is almost apoplectic about athletes not standing as the national anthem is sung while looking at the flag. Some say that old flags can’t be discarded but must be ceremonially buried. There are organizations in the United States that will collect old flags and ceremonially destroy them for you.

To me a flag is a symbol, not the thing itself. Much more disrespect is shown to the values of the United States daily by our leader than is ever shown when a flag is discarded. Locking up refugee children apart from their parents, for instance, is a grave demonstration of disrespect. Flying an American flag over the lockup doesn’t bless the actions.

To the extent that the flag reminds Americans of the ideals of democracy, I am glad to fly one from my front porch and I do. But don’t think I expect you to genuflect before it. It is just a symbol, not the real truth of freedom. Kneeling during a flag ceremony is a genuine act of freedom for an American. And it is done respectfully, in silence with a bowed head of mourning. Because like those first designers of the flag they are protesting against repressive government actions. Not the British this time, but their own leaders who sometimes act without justice under the banner of the flag.

Smoking was ordinary in the 1960’s and 70’s, but apparently sales showed that not enough women were smoking. The tobacco company began a campaign designed to appeal to women. Supposedly. The early ads showed women in the early 20th century being chastised for smoking. Now, apparently, women had “come a long way, baby” and could smoke just as freely as men.

This ad is clearly trying to attract another market segment, black women. This woman is meant, I suppose, to represent a very strong rebellious woman, with an Afro and Afro-centric colors of clothing. This ad probably ran in Ebony or Jet, rather than in women’s magazines such as Good Housekeeping. Ads were still drastically segregated, and people of color were not seen in ads for “general (i.e. white) audiences.” But that’s another post!

I never took up smoking because of a childhood deep inhalation of a neighbor’s cigarette when I was six. I promptly threw up, curing me forever of any desire to smoke. But most of my friends smoked. Cafes, restaurants and bars were thick with smoke. To be an intellectual almost demanded that you smoke. No one except the tobacco companies knew that cigarettes were both addictive and lethal.

Today I cringe as I think about both the ad campaign with its patronizing use of the word “baby” and the emphysema and lung cancer rampant in people my age. But we didn’t know about the danger in the smoke. And it hurt us.

I have spent my life collaborating with others. That is probably a result of living with five other people with a small hot water heater! At any rate, I have learned that other people have needs and ideas and that life goes better if we coordinate. Even though I might have thought my long bath was more important than every other family member’s, I still limited my soaks and showers.

The United States is plagued right now by a “leader” who has no interest in working with others. Worse still, he feels the need to demean and bully anyone who has a need that conflicts with his own. Not the nation’s, mind you, but his own. And his primary need is to be left standing alone, talking to himself, deciding things himself and then being endlessly praised.

I am reminded of the children’s game Farmer in the Dell. In that circle song, the farmer chooses a wife, the wife a child, the child a nurse, the nurse a dog, the dog a cat, the cat a mouse and the mouse the cheese. But the cheese is left standing alone. That’s how I envision the leader of the United States. Alone.

It’s a terrible way to live, and he is unfortunately trying to take as many people as possible to his dark isolated corner of the world. May we join together to demonstrate a different view of life. May we continue to speak truth to power. May we continue to combat lies with truth. May Donald Trump have a spiritual awakening that allows others to enter his cold, lonely prison of self.

My siblings and I loved to play all kinds of card games. They all had specific rules that we agreed, even if begrudgingly, to follow. One game, however, was a practical joke which we never tired of playing on each other and other kids: 52 Card Pickup. Quite simply, one asked “do you want to play 52 Card Pickup?” The unsuspecting child would say, “sure.” Then the jokester would throw all the cards in the air shouting: “52 Card Pickup” and walk away laughing.

I have refrained from political commentary for a long time on this blog. However, after watching Donald Trump basically play 52 Card Pickup with the heads of state gathered in Canada for a meeting, I had to say something. Donald Trump does not know how to play with others. He is not interested in the rules. He is not even interested in looking back after he throws the deck in the air. He expects that the rest of the world will pick up after him.

To all my readers in Canada, Germany, France, and England, please know that a majority of Americans are appalled at the behavior of Donald Trump. He only knows how to disrupt, not build. We will find a way through this and hope that you will find a way to let us work with you again.

For some reason yesterday I began to tell my husband about “pigeonhole parking.” He had never heard of it, so perhaps it was a West Coast phenomenon. My siblings and I begged my mother to put the car in the contraption pictured above when we went downtown to shop. In fact, if you look at the far right stack of cars, the second one from the top looks a lot like what we called the b-mobile, our Ford station wagon.

You drove up to the lot and centered your car on an elevator like platform. Then the attendant maneuvered your car up to a height with an available parking slot. Then he drove the car into the slot and brought the empty elevator down for the next customer. When you went to get your car, you would look up until you found it and then point it out to the attendant. Then he reversed the process, bringing your car safely back down.

I am not sure why we were so fascinated by the mechanism. However, it was a very popular parking fixture, and toy makers even chimed in with miniature versions.

They never really caught on, I guess. While they conserved space on land, they were terribly inefficient, particularly if several people wanted to leave at one time. But while the lot pictured above was around, we loved it.

Along with my posts about the time I was growing up in the 1950’s and 60’s I thought I would begin to weave in occasional post about things we didn’t know. After all, what you don’t know can hurt you. And some of these things definitely did.

All of my friends were Caucasian, and we all understood that we were to spend the summer getting very very tan. The way to achieve this was to spend long hours lying outside, preferable next to a swimming pool, soaking up the rays. My friends all championed the liberal application of baby oil to speed up the process.

What saved me from the cancer effects of this lengthy unprotected sun exposure was my restlessness. I couldn’t take the boredom of lying there. Soaking up sun didn’t seem very interesting. Instead, I spent a lot of time actually swimming and riding my bicycle. No one ever thought of, mentioned or used sunscreen. After all, the point was to get total sun exposure.

At 71, I have brown spots on the tops of my cheeks. These were the places that got the most exposure to the sun when I was riding my bike. My generation is plagued with all kinds of skin damage from those years. Some women have skin that resembles some kind of reptile, although they also smoked. Smoking will be a later post.

Now as we watch our children slather our grandchildren with sunscreen, cloth them in sun shielding garments and caution them to avoid too much sun, I realize how much times have changed. Maybe future dermatologists won’t be as busy as those today. Right now any young dermatologist has more work than she can handle. Thanks to what we didn’t know.

When I was born, my parents learned that I was a girl after I emerged into the hospital room. Until then, while they had to guess. Early shower gifts were in pastel green, yellow and white, colors considered neutral and appropriate for each gender. In 1975, when my daughter was born, the doctor(based on nothing)had assured me that the baby was a boy. Accordingly, we named him Leon James. Fortunately, our shower gifts were also pastel green, yellow and white. I had painted the nursery yellow. We were ready for whoever was born. To my surprise, it was a she, and we had to quickly find another name.

By the time my grandchildren were born in 2007 and 2009, high resolution ultrasound images made it possible to see who was going to be born. The surprise was gone and shower gifts could be geared accordingly. Now couples have to choose to remain ignorant of the gender by asking to not be told.

The suspense that used to be associated with the actual birth has been transferred in some instances to a “gender reveal party.” These are elaborate affairs where friends and family gather after the ultrasound has revealed the news to the parents. Then some gimmick such as a blue or pink cake is sliced open to the oohs of the guests. I have seen examples of blue or pink confetti being sprayed as the announcement.

It is somewhat ironic that all this hoopla is going on at the same time that parts of the culture are debating the very definition of gender. There is cisgender, transgender, and gender neutral being discussed in the news. So it may be back to green, yellow and white clothing again.

All I know is that I miss the suspense of guessing the sex of the expected baby. I miss all the ways of telling a woman who she was expecting from where the baby was carried to holding a string and seeing which way it moved. It was a source of endless discussion and a great opportunity for betting. The old way was a lot more fun than any gender reveal party.

I was 13 when the first shopping center was built in Portland. It was a completely new concept and drew large crowds, including my family. Until then, there were two ways to purchase clothing and household goods. We could order them from the Sears or Montgomery Wards catalogs, or we could go DOWNTOWN. All the major stores were downtown, along with smaller shops such as jewelers. Shopping took most of a Saturday, tromping from store to store. Stores would deliver your packages so you didn’t have to haul them around with you.

The Lloyd Center opened across the river from downtown Portland. It had rows of stores in a large grid with open walkways. You parked in a large lot and then strolled the traffic free lanes. They advertised that “it never rains at the Lloyd Center” because the walks were covered. This was a direct jab at the downtown merchants who had to deal with Portland’s rainy climate with only awnings to protect shoppers.

The Lloyd Center has gone through many iterations since 1960. It has been enclosed, then opened up again. But now it is one of many “shopping malls,” a term that still makes me cringe when I hear it. While most of those are enclosed, they seem to be losing out to a “new” concept called “lifestyle malls.” These turn out to be strips of stores outdoors with music playing out of speakers disguised as planters.

And then, in some kind of ultimate irony, people are back ordering things, though now it is from on-line sites instead of paper catalogs. And many small towns are revitalizing Main Streets to the excitement of young people who are discovering the delight of DOWNTOWN.

Points if you can identify the objects above. Years before the invention of blow dryers and circular hair brushes, rollers were the only way to achieve curly hair. My hair was stick straight in a time when poofy hair was in style. The solution was to roll up damp hair on these objects and sleep on them. They were wire spheres filled with sharp nylon spikes to catch the hair. They were held in place by the little white rods.

That looks like it would hurt. Yup! Got that right. Besides the pain of the nylon spikes, the white rods had a tendency to move in the night and end up poking me in the ear. And these were relatively small for the hair style I was after. I also tried ones twice this diameter, but they proved impossible to sleep on.

But it was all worth it right? Well, no. Despite the fact that I religiously bought the 25 cent little booklets at the checkout stand which showed me the pattern to use with the rollers, my actual hair never came up even close to the pictures. In fact, the actual result looked like

The next year I decided to grow my hair out straight and long. Fortunately in time that became the style.