Are there some things you pine
for and wish had never gone out of fashion? Are there businesses or places that
no longer exist that you wish could still be with us?
Life marches forward and
as it progresses to creating new trends, fun things, cool styles, or
interesting places, it leaves behind a cemetery of mourned experiences.
At some point in life,
you miss more than what you have, where your past seems to dwarf your future,
when you feel you have less than before and little promise of gaining any of it
back or little help in finding solace in
what’s supplanted it .
I guess this is what you
call aging. It's not just one age, but their attitude. Will you look back at
life and wonder why it all changed, not realizing that the whole time things
changed and allowed for your vibrant experiences to happen? Will you appreciate
whatever moment you are in, not feeling tired or bound to how things used to
be, accepting the flow of change, and even embracing the future?
Let's Bring Back, by Lesley M.M. Blume, shares over 1500 or so things
-- and a few people – that the author wished were still with us. Some of these
items just seemed like things that one wants to protect because they are
familiar but truthfully not any better than what replaced them. Other items seem
to reflect a bygone era that mythologically was awesome, though somehow its shortcomings
are not so well remembered.
Perhaps it was a tradeoff,
that in order for things to exist -- on the positive side back then – there had
to be a bunch of negative things. The same may be true of today.
Sure we’d like to think
of a time when life was simpler and people respected each other more, but these
days were also filled with killer diseases far worse than corona, daily threats
of violence, and fewer protections from natural disasters. Today's world allows
for faster, wider reaching ways to communicate, but that same technology
isolates us and does not nurture or value people actually meeting with each
other—or observing silence, our surroundings or our thoughts.
So, is there an ideal
time we want to be living in? It's not the things that make up an era or that
make it worth living in. No, it is how we do things that make any era or place
worth living through.
Blume’s encyclopedia of
forgotten yet delightful items from times gone by is an interesting look at
things the author felt a personal connection to. Some of them overlapped with
things I'd welcome back as well. As noted in the book, not all of the listed items
are extinct, but they clearly play a reduced role in our lives and have fallen
out of fashion’s favor. Lesley dusts off the delights of generations past and
helps us rediscover what fascinated millions of people who also are no longer
with us.
Lesley starts off the
book by proclaiming “we're absolutely drowning in newest, latest, faster, and
disposable.” But in society’s pursuit to be more efficient and productive, have
we lost something?
“Yet the benefits of
today's uber-connectedness come at a price,” says Lesley. “Modern living is
increasingly about convenience, often leaving behind the pleasure of
ornamentation and ceremony. As many of us are discovering, efficiency and
quality of life are not necessarily synonymous. New products and diversions
whiz through our lives at lightning speed; as we discard objects and
occupations to make room for them, we often don't fully realize what we’ve given up until it’s too late (like the concept
of privacy, for example -- along with privacy’s two cousins, mystery and
elegance.”
What are some of the
things Leslie laments the near or full disappearance of? Here are several dozen
items to chew on
·
At-home doctor visits
·
Attention spans
·
The barter system
·
Black velvet chokers
·
Bridge (the game)
·
Boudoirs
·
Buttonhole lapel flowers
·
Card cataloga in
libraries
·
Scrapbooks
·
Corsets
·
Elevator operators
·
Encyclopedia sets
·
Film
·
Grandfather clocks
·
Handwritten thank-you
note
·
Hula hoops
·
Laundry chutes
·
Lockets
·
Longhand
·
Love letters
·
Lunchtime cocktails
·
Neck scarves
·
Parasol's
·
Polka dots
·
Quills and ink
·
Radio dramas
·
Satin pajamas
·
Sealing wax
·
Sepia toned photographs
·
Souvenir camera view
Finders
·
Suspenders
·
Three-piece suits
·
Typewriters
·
The Ziegfeld Follies
The author also misses
table manners, Yogisms, and evening news sign-offs such as Walter Cronkite’s “And
that's the way it is.” Also missed: hats (not baseball caps), hobbies (and not
extracurricular activities), imperfect smiles, and true journalism. Bizarrely,
Lesley misses mashers -- also known as womanizers -- and picnics in graveyards.
At the age of 53 I
already missed her and things that disappeared a quiet weekend from their heyday.
Even in my lifetime I have already witnessed the:
·
Peak of coin collecting
·
Height of baseball card
collecting
·
Demise of family TV
viewing of family dramas
·
Weakened state of
magazine and newspaper publishing.
·
Shuddering as many
bookstores.
·
Huge decrease in
movie-going attendance.
·
Diminishing societal
respect for marriage.
·
Reduction of baseball as
being America's pastime.
·
Disappearance of variety
shows from TV.
But, gladly, I have also
seen positive changes. Women have a lot more power and overt acts of racism,
however present, are way down. Cars don't break down like they used to. TVs are
bigger and better. Roads are safer and more car friendly. The Internet, for all
of its drawbacks, is amazing.
Things come and go, with
reason, so we have to make the most of whatever is available to us, even if
it's just a memory.
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