Playing Pieces

I was talking to someone about games and mentioned my old Monopoly game has wooden playing pieces, not the metal ones. She, being much younger than me, had never heard of such a thing. I love that old game. I loved playing Monopoly when I was growing up and I always preferred playing the tall, ivory colored piece. I told my acquaintance I would take a photo of the old playing pieces to show her, then figured, why not share them here, too, partly because they're cool and I wonder if anyone else knows or remembers them and partly because I haven't posted here in a while. So, here they are in all their glory.

Wood Monopoly Playing Pieces on a Monopoly Game Board

~~~o0o~~~

Man from UNCLE

The Man from UNCLE premiered 49 years ago. I've been reminded of this by a friend posting about it on Facebook. Normally, I wouldn't make note of an anniversary not divisible by 5, but I thought I'd share my comments here, especially in light of the fact that a Man from UNCLE movie is currently in production.

I watched the second half of that first episode of The Man from UNCLE. And the second half of the rest of the episodes until they moved it to a different night. Because back then, primetime started at 7:30pm. The Man from UNCLE (MFU) came on at 8pm, but another show, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, started at 7:30. My father, a former Navy man, wanted to watch the show with the submarine and we had only 1 TV. I can't be too upset with my father, though. He was also a space buff, so when Star Trek started, he decided that's what we were going to watch. And in checking IMDB, not always the most reliable source, I see different dates for MFU and Voyage.... If not Voyage, then what was on opposite MFU? I've been remembering it for nearly 50 years now as Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. hmmmm......

I also have to admit that at first, MFU was just another show for me. I loved it, but I also loved every other action/adventure show I got to watch. I was a very big fan of 77 Sunset Strip and a show that a lot of people don't remember, The Roaring 20s. I hated going to bed at 10pm. The best shows were on at 10, like The Fugitive (if my memory is serving me correctly). I wanted to watch the shows my parents were watching.

My father didn't control the TV in the earlier hours. Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea and Star Trek (do I really need to provide a link for this?) were the exceptions. I became a fan of Voyage, too. My sister, with the earliest bedtime, got to choose until 9pm, her bedtime, on most nights. Then I got to choose from 9-10, when I had to go to bed, and my parents then watched what they wanted. There were plenty of arguments until 9pm. How I got to watch the second half of MFU, and then the whole show is beyond me. She didn't watch it, so there must not have been anything else on she wanted to watch.

What made MFU stand out for me was Illya. As David McCallum's role as Illya increased, so did my love for the show. I was only 11 when it first came on, and I went through puberty with that show. But while I playacted some UNCLE with a friend in junior high, my first fan stories were other shows, and I wrote only a few things.

I never wrote in to the show. I didn't have friends who watched the show until my second year of junior high, midway through the series. I really had no idea it was anything more than another show with a popular actor who made it into the teen magazines. Star Trek was the show that did that for me because it was everywhere, in newspapers and magazines. But when I think of Man from UNCLE, I'm transported back to that time. I hope the upcoming movie is good.


~~~o0o~~~

Astronomical

Okay, this works.

You Are Astronomy

This world is not enough for you... literally. You can't help but wonder about what else is out there. You're the type of person who believes that anything is possible, and you'd like to prove it. You are also quite philosophical. You spend a lot of time wondering about our place in the world, how the universe was started, and what the future holds. You may not ever get all the answers you seek, and that's fine with you. Questioning is part of the journey.

What Field of Science Are You?

Blogthings: Take a Quiz. Annoy Your Friends.

Had today off, but it was nasty most of the day -- it cleared up in time for the sun to set -- so I stayed home and watched the DVDs of my father's home movies (hubby had converted them from tapes to DVDs for me). A lot of memories there.

Feeling: blah

~~~o0o~~~
Technorati Tags: quizzes

Memory Lane

I was reminded about an old toy and an old game today when I read about a store in NYC called Alphaville. I took a peek at their online offerings and found a couple of things that really took me back. I'd forgotten all about Lie Detector from Mattel. I loved the artwork on the suspect/witness cards. I did figure out how things worked, but that didn't detract from the fun.

The second item was a toy I remembered but haven't been able to remember the name of: Block City. I didn't know from Legos (I'm not even sure when those came out). I built houses with Block City. Not very versatile, but it kept me busy. This link will probably vanish once they sell the item.

More toy memories as I remember them! What about you? What do you remember playing with?

Feeling: nostalgic

~~~o0o~~~
Technorati Tags: toys

1969

It was a magic year.The Jets won the Super Bowl, though I didn't follow football back then. Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the moon, which had my parents and I (I don't think my sister cared much) enthralled in front of the TV. There was a big rock concert in upstate New York called Woodstock. And the Mets, improbably won the World Series. Last night, hubby and I went to Citi Field for a game (the Mets lost) and an opening ceremony honoring the 1969 team. Most of them attended and Tom Seaver spoke on behalf of his teammates. He wasn't nicknamed Tom Terrific and The Franchise for nothing. It was very cool.



Feeling: okay, but have been better

~~~o0o~~~
Technorati Tags: baseball

Nostalgia Tour

The MTA here in NYC was running a train made up of old subway cars on Sundays during the holiday season and today was the last day, so hubby and I rode it to the end of its short line and back. There was a smell to the old cars I remember from my childhood in the '50s and '60s, and as soon as I stepped into the train, there was the smell and it was just as I remembered.

We also checked on the progress of Citi Field, to be the new home of the NY Mets in 2009. It's really looking like a ballpark now.

Feeling:

~~~o0o~~~
Technorati Tags: trains

Short Weekend

Worked yesterday. Watched TV Land's "That Girl" marathon last night, part of today, and tonight, with a break to watch "Dexter," which left off at a real juicy part. I can't wait til next week. Meanwhile, I've been enjoying the trip back in time via "That Girl." It's been fun, especially because I remember more than I thought. And I got to see the episode with Marlo Thomas' sister Terre as a nun, brother Tony, and cameo appearance by their father, Danny, as a priest! The fashions might be out-of-date, but the comedy still makes me laugh.

Feeling:

~~~o0o~~~
Technorati Tags: tv

The Man from UNCLE

The Man From UNCLE will probably always be my favorite TV show, not for itself, but for what it did for me. I was 11 when it first aired and went through puberty with it. I formed an emotional attachment to the show and Illya Kuryakin/David McCallum (I adored David McCallum and didn't appreciate Robert Vaughn who played Napoleon Solo until I was much older) and still get a thrill when I see McCallum in something. I saw him in three not very good plays here in NYC specifically because he was in the cast. I got his autograph after one of them.

And the show got me started writing fiction — fan fiction, more than a decade before I ever heard the term — because it was cancelled and I wanted more adventures. And I wrote fan stories for other shows, too. My best friend in junior and senior high and I became friends because we both loved Man From UNCLE (MFU) and The Monkees.

I bought the books, and spent a few bucks tracking down the last 3 (fairly rare next to the earlier ones because fewer were printed). I bought the digest-size magazines that featured a MFU story every issue. I was an UNCLE junkie and I still have the books and mags. The lunchbox, with intact thermos, came after the show was off the air for a number of years. I'd never gotten media tie-in lunchboxes when I was a kid. But when I saw the set at a Creation (science fiction and comic books) fan convention in the late-'70s for a reasonable price (meaning, I had enough cash left to buy it), I had to have it.

I did buy a crudely-built, homemade "pen communicator" at a con and played with it endlessly. It was the show I missed more than any other (tho now there are many others I miss as much or more), cancelled as part of the backlash against TV shows in the mid-to-late-'60s. By then, after 3 1/2 seasons on the air, Napoleon and Illya became iconic characters and it didn't matter that Illya's name was misspelled (it should've had one L only).

In 1980, I discovered my then-best friend had also grown up a MFU fan. She said she'd read MFU stories if I wrote them. At that point, I hadn't written fiction for nearly 10 years, but with the promise of an audience, albeit of one, I took the bait and wrote five. She read and liked them and when she found out about fanzines, she gave me the info, I got the stories published, and was soon doing my own zines. I really believe that if it weren't for that, I wouldn't be writing original fiction now and I wouldn't be finishing the draft of my first novel (not a spy story, as one might expect, but science fiction tho with an element of suspense).

And I met my best friend of the past nearly 20 years because she wrote me a letter of comment (LoC) after reading my MFU fan fic stories. We became fast friends and collaborators and go to fan conventions together to this day.

So I can honestly say that The Man From UNCLE had a positive and longlasting effect on my life. And how many folks can say that about a TV show.

Feeling:

man from uncle

Chanukah Traditions

T'is the season and all that, or close enough, so this reposting is almost timely.

I've been thinking about the Shelly Family Chanukah traditions.

Our traditions are effectively dead now. My father and I agreed to no longer exchange gifts for birthdays and Chanukah and my sister agreed to the same (hubby and I will still give her children presents). After all, gift-giving when you're in your 50s, as I am, kind of loses meaning, especially when it becomes more chore than fun. I love shopping for my closest friends. I love finding things I know they'll love. But my family? We'd slowly gotten to the point where we were exchanging gift cards and that just seemed silly.

The traditions started to lose steam after my mother died and my father remarried. His new wife and her three daughters had their own traditions. So we'd gather for the family Chanukah party with all the gifts piled up and someone would then hand them out, usually one of the 9 kids (not mine, because hubby and I don't have any) once they were old enough for the responsibility. A gift orgy ensued with wrapping paper flying around the den.

I always held the gifts I was giving to my father, sister, stepmother, nice, and nephew aside and after the feeding frenzy at the gift trough, I gave my father and stepmother their gifts, then found time alone with my sister and her kids (our hubbies usually made themselves scarce) and we exchanged gifts.

That's how we used to do it. Me, my sister (3 years younger than I am), our mother and father, gathered in the den, each with our bags of brightly wrapped presents to give out, one at a time. It wasn't as much about the gifts as it was about the giving, me to you, you to me. My mother would carefully remove the paper from the boxes and fold it neatly for future reuse, to be stored in a bag on a shelf in the garage.

My mother was a sneaky sort, too. Pre-giving traditions included my sister checking out the house to find where all the gifts were hidden, then showing me what she'd find. She was also and still is a whiz when it comes to picking up a box and guessing what's inside. She's hard to fool. Not that my mother didn't try.

Sometimes, my mother got sneaky with the giving. One year, when I must've been 7 or 8, she snuck our gifts into our bedrooms, not aware I was awake and pretending to be asleep (I confided this to her years later). And so, after she was done and in bed, herself, I got up and played with the Tiny Tears Doll with Playpen and fingered the keys of my Eminee Organ, then pretended to be surprised by them magically having appeared in my room when I woke up.

The best, though, was the money she would hide in the gifts. I can still picture the night, when my sister was in her mid-teens, and we were opening gifts in the kitchen. She was trying on her new bathrobe and a twenty dollar bill went flying out of a sleeve. There was another in a pocket. And I had to admire Mom's skill in steam opening a box of Mallomars (our favorite cookie), slipping a couple of twenties inside, then resealing the box so there was no hint it had been opened already. To say I was surprised when I opened it would be an understatement.

She died 23 years ago. The holidays just haven't been the same after that.

Feeling:

Chanukah

Summers and Summer Camp

Somehow, we got to discussing summer camp on an AOL writers message board. It started with camp songs and morphed into talking about camp. So I thought I'd talk about my summer camp experiences here.

The first camp I went to, when I was 9 or 10 was in the Rockaways. Spartan Day Camp was run by a family that was rather strict. My group of kids (all girls) loved our counselor who was fired after a couple of weeks for, we found out, being too friendly with some of the girls. Fear of lesbianism, or rumors of lesbianism reared its ugly head. The old hag who took over with our group after that kind of sucked the fun out of things.

The following summer, my parents sent me to camp run through a YM&YWHA. It was another day camp and we got driven out to Wyandanch, Long Island where the Y had property on a big, long hill. We did campouts and crafting and there was a pool. I got to suck at lots of new things: Archery, swimming, hiking... I spent a lot of time ducking yellow jackets. Once each month, we had a sleepover and learned ghost stories.

After two years of this, I went to a specialized day camp at the same place, but with emphasis on arts and crafts. There were 3 counselors for about 20 of us and we worked with papier mache, sculpting (my artist figure blew up in the kilm along with many other pieces when someone else forgot to leave a big enough air hole (I know mine was fine). I concentrated on crafts, while other kids concentrated on the sciences and the rest focused on drama and singing, putting on plays and such. I still recall sneaking in reading comic books in my sleeping bag by flashlight (and handing out comics to the other kids) until I found a daddy long legs sharing the sleeping bag with me and my subsequent scream woke the counselors and ended the reading session.

The following year, I went to a camp the Y ran called Teen Trips. We got to go somewhere different each day, and on Fridays, we stayed in the Y and did indoor activities. We went to parks and the beach. We went to see "Carmen" and to a couple of Broadway plays: "It's a Bird, It's a Plane, It's Superman" (starring Jack Cassidy, Linda Lavin, and someone named Bob Holliday or some such as Superman) and "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum" (long after the original cast left). We drove into NJ to go to Palisades Amusement Park, then sat in the bus in the parking lot for over an hour while phone calls were made to allow us in. It seems we needed an interstate commerce permit. We had a sleepover in the Y's sleepover camp grounds in the Catskills where I learned how to row. We sang songs. We had fun. And our counselor, Natalie, was only a few years older and other than keeping an eye on us, was almost a friend. She really was one of us.

Someone on the message board said he couldn't understand why kids would want to go to camp with kids they didn't know when staying home and doing whatever they want was so much better. What follows is part of my answer.

For me, it was a way to start fresh, with kids who didn't know they were supposed to tease me unmercifully the way the kids in school did — who had been mostly the same kids in my class from 2nd grade thru 6 and half of those were in my junior high classes. I was one of only a couple of kids wearing glasses in kindergarten and the "four eyes" name, among others, stuck. The camp kids were nice enough to call me Shelly.

And since my father could only get a week or two off each summer for family trips (long car trips that I'll always remember and will blog about them here later), and my mother didn't drive, camp was my one way out of a rather boring neighborhood in the middle of nowhere aka south Queens. We couldn't even swim in the bay cuz it was so polluted. Raw sewage as I recall. It's protected and cleaned up now. Or so they say. They closed our movie theater — something about it being owned by the mob, I believe — and it was a 10 min bus ride to the next nearest theater.

The highlight of a lazy summer day was to go to Heller's Drug Store to see if they got any new comic books in. Or maybe over to the pizza place to watch the pizza maker toss pie dough. It became a rather famous pizza place, unfortunately, for a very wrong reason. If other kids were around, we played stoop ball or punch ball. Winter was better. We could go sledding in the ditch on the corner, until they filled it in and put four houses up in its place. I think that was the year they put in sewers, which meant no punch ball for about 5 or 6 months while a trench ran the length of the street. Or for thrills, I could play with the girl across the street who was 2 years younger than me and was an accomplished thief by age 7 and tried to intoduce me to the joys of sniffing glue.

Geez, that neighborhood was boring. Camp was mostly a positive experience and I had fun, once I got past my natural shyness and the fact that I had to get up way too early to be picked up by the camp bus. I lived one block from school, so I wasn't used to catching a bus. But looking back, I'm glad for the experience.

Feeling:

summer camp

Pen Pals

When I was growing up, I wanted a penpal. They sounded so cool. I loved getting mail — still do — and with a penpal, I would be guaranteed a letter from somewhere in the world at least once every few weeks.

In 9th grade, I met W. We sat next to each other in home room and became friends because we both loved The Man From UNCLE and The Monkees. Our love for The Monkees worked out nicely, because she was enamored of Peter Tork and I was in youthful lust with Mickey Dolenz, so there was no competition, unlike UNCLE where we both adored David McCallum. And I soon learned, W had that magic entity: a penpal.

Her penpal was in Japan and a couple years older than we were because she had to get a penpal who was old enough to have studied English. I don't know where she'd found her penpal. I didn't know where anyone found penpals at that point in my life, back before the internet brought the worold into our dens and living rooms and offices and bedrooms, which was why I didn't have one of my own. So I asked W if she could ask her penpal if she had a friend who wanted an American penpal. And that's how I came to start a correspondence with Keiko, who was 16 to my 14, a relationship that lasted nearly 4 years (but I'm not really sure how long because it was a long time ago and I didn't save her letters). I still remember Keiko's full name and address. She lived in Osaka and her address had such a pretty rhythm that it became imbedded in my brain synapses for all time.

It was fun getting her meticulously written letters on thin paper so fragile I handled them carefully so they wouldn't tear. My father explained that the cost of postage to send mail overseas was so high that people in other countries usually used thin paper to keep the weight, and therefore the cost of mailing, down. I wrote back on stationery I bought for the occasion. In a pinch, I used looseleaf paper. We even exchanged photos and the two she sent me of herself, a couple of years apart, are still in one of my photo albums.

The best part was exchanging culture via gifts. We clearly had different interests and needs. I asked for anything Japanese, things I wouldn't readily find in the United States. She asked for teen magazines, specifically ones that had articles on the Beatles, but other pop stars in music and TV were fine, too. I bought extra copies of 16 Magazine, which I also got for myself, and issues of Tiger Beat, which I didn't read, myself, sending them to her as if they were care packages. She sent me a pair of handpainted, carved wood dolls, pictured here, a set of pressed flower bookmarks that I still have somewhere, and a pack of postcards from her ski trip up in Japan's mountains. I think I got the better part of the deal. I still have my early taste of Japanese culture and I'm sure those magazines, printed on cheap newsprint, are long gone from her collection.

I wonder, especially if she has no reminders, unless she saved my photo, if she remembers her American penpal. I sure remember her. And I wonder sometimes, what happened to her. What she did with her life. If she's still alive and well. We lost touch when she graduated school and moved on to more adult pursuits, but she'll always be in my memories, a pleasant part of my teen years.

Feeling:

penpals

Hot Chocolate and English Muffins

Another reposting. I'm almost through with these. Hope folks aren't getting bored.

I'm sitting here drinking a yummy hot chocolate and munching on a toasted English muffin with butter and grape jelly and thinking of what I should reminisce about and the memories of sitting in coffeeshops eating the same snack come to mind. On days in my teens and twenties when I was out shopping with friends or my mother, when we'd stop to eat, I would either have a burger, fries, and chocolate malted, or, if I wasn't that hungry, I'd snack on the aforementioned English muffin and either a malted or hot chocolate, depending on the time of year. Comfort food.

I love to shop, but the actual purchasing of things is not required. Shopping was a social event, like going to the movies, only we could talk the entire time. We'd try on clothes and comment on how each other looked. When I went shopping with friends, we'd make a pact that we each had to buy somethin, anything, before we went home. Which is why I ended up with a fairly extensive collection of costume jewelry, though I often was able to find a record or book I really wanted, too. There was a lot of kidding around and then making a lot of noise with girlish laugher as the three or four or five of us descended on a coffeeshop, usually a Chock Full of Nuts, and made the older folks there nervous at seeing so many teens invading their space.

When I was shopping with my mother, however, it meant quality time. We talked and caught up with things (I'd already moved out on my own by then). If I bought clothes, I knew they looked good on me. My mother was my best critic and would tell me honestly if something looked good on me or not. And then we'd stop for something to eat and continue to talk about the important and not so important things in our lives.

Nowadays, I shop with my best friend when we get the chance to visit or by myself. And when I'm by myself, I take the ghosts of the past with me. My mother is usually there, looking over my shoulder as I try on skirts or sweater tops or jeans, giving me her assessment, and as she was when she was alive, she's always right.

Feeling:

memories

Sugar Cookies and My Grandmother

My father's father was a baker (I had a butcher and a baker for grandfathers!), but my mother's mother was pretty good in the kitchen with both cooking and baking and one of her specialties was sugar cookies. My father has been cleaning out his garage and came upon the rolling pin in the above photo and gave it to me. This was the very rolling pin my grandmother used and the one I used when I helped her make cookies.

They weren't drop cookies which are what my chocolate chip cookies are (Joy of Cooking recipe). We'd roll out the dough, then use cookie cutters for the shapes. For the sugar cookies, that meant round. The topping was a mix of sugar, cinnamon, and chopped nuts, but because I don't like nuts and never have, my grandmother made a small mixing bowl's worth of nutless topping, so there were always at least a half dozen cookies just for me.

My grandmother, a follower of the "pinch of this, pinch of that" school of baking, never wrote down her recipes, which I assume came from her mother back in the "old country" (Ukraine). For a while after my grandmother died, my mother, sister, and I were on a hunt for a recipe that would match those cookies. One of my mother's friends had one that came close, but something about the dough tasted different. Maybe the missing ingredient was my grandmother.

Feeling:

memories

Where I Grew Up

I'd posted this before, but not with the text. I think you can get maps like this on Google now, too.

This is an aerial map of where I grew up in south Queens, NY. The x is the house I lived in from age 5 to 16 and the z is my elementary school.
This map is from a few years ago, so things are a bit different than they were back in the '60s (well, from 1958 - 1969) when we lived in this neighborhood. Half my block was a big ditch until the mid-60s, when they filled it in and put up 4 houses. That was when they put the sewers in. Before that, we had to make do with the septic tanks under the front lawns.

Before they filled in the ditch, we kids used it for sledding in the winter. It was just the right steepness for us when we were still fairly young (and short). Sometimes, water pooled at the bottom and if we got lucky, it froze, giving us a decent size "pond" to skate on if we took turns. And if we didn't mind sticks and branches poking through. The body of water to the left of my house is a canal (called a basin) that empties into the Gateway National Park, which wasn't a park back then, just plain old, polluted Jamaica Bay. It leads out into the Atlantic. To the right, out of the picture, was the old town neighborhood, with houses on stilts over another section of the bay, hardly the image people have when they think of New York City. I haven't been there in years, though the last time, I saw chain stores down the main drag instead of the little restaurants and shops, many of which catered to fisherman and were little more than shacks. I think the bowling alley is still there, also out of the photo, but to the left.

Back then, my neighborhood was mostly a five block radius; I never got this sort of perspective on it. Pretty cool to now be able to put it in its full context.

Feeling:

memories

Laundry and Checkerboard Cakes

I know those things don't sound like they have anything in common, but they're the two things I can remember my sister and me doing in a mostly cooperative manner. She might be nearly 3 years younger than I am, but she's long acted as if she were the older sister. And we fought all the time. Our mother once told me that if one of us said "day," the other would say "night." Yet on two occasions, we set aside (most of) the bickering, during our teens, to do something constructive together.

Laundry. Our mother was a stay-at-home mom before the SAHM acronym was even a germ of a concept. Almost everyone's mother was home in those days. Rare was the mother who worked outside the home during the day. And while our mother did try to teach us some domestic skills, I for one resisted the teachings. I hated cleaning my room and I loathed dusting. The only time I willingly dusted was when my sister wrote her name in the dust on my dresser. But there we were one afternoon, home alone, in our mid-teens, thinking we'd surprise our parents by doing the laundry.

Maybe we just didn't follow the directions carefully or maybe there wasn't clear instructions on how to measure the detergent, and I don't recall anything telling us what to do if we used too much, but there we were, in a panic, bailing out the overflowing suds coming out from the toploading washing machine's lid. Good thing our parents found the incident amusing when they got home.

Baking. My paternal grandfather was a baker. He worked for a big kosher baking outfit in Brooklyn that supplied small bakeries in NYC. His specialty was breads, but every week or two, he'd bring us cakes and cookies along with breads and bagels and bialys. And one of my favorite items in those care packages was the checkerboard cakes. The little yellow and chocolate squares fascinated me and one evening, again when we were home alone, my sister and I decided to make one.

We'd baked before, from mixes, making yummy Duncan Hines chocolate cakes topped with creamy Duncan Hines or Pillsbury icing. We'd even managed to make brownies and cupcakes from mixes. So how hard could it be to adapt a mix for chocolate cake and one for yellow cake and make a checkerboard concoction. Damned impossible if you don't have the right equipment, which we not only didn't have, but didn't know we needed. Layering posed enough of a challenge, let alone the jam between the squares. What we ended up with was the messiest marble cake ever created. Tasted pretty good, though. And again, our parents, especially our father, found the whole thing amusing when they got home and saw what we'd been up to. We did have to clean the mess in the kitchen ourselves, however.

My sister has gone on to become rather adept in the kitchen, especially with baking, and her husband is into the culinary arts, too, though neither is an expert. Me? I do make one thing from scratch: chocolate chip cookies. Yum. But for all other baked goods, there's got to be a mix involved somewhere.

Feeling:

memories

Computers

From April 2005.

I think about this a lot. How much tech has changed over the nearly 52 years I've been alive. The topic first came to mind a few years ago when I realized/discovered I had staff young enough to not know what life was like BC (before computers). Talk about an eye opener. I can still see the dead-eyed stare from a young woman born after 1980 when I told her I studied Fortran in college and learned out to keypunch. She then rushed off to her cubicle to look up "keypunch" online.

My first encounter with computers was at the 1964-65 World's Fair in NYC when we were able to get printouts from Univac. I got a biographical sketch of Abraham Lincoln. I was thrilled.

In 1969, my senior year in high school, instead of advanced algebra/trig, I took a new class called Computer Math. We learned to program something like looked like a desktop calculator (I don't know if calculators even existed yet and I sure hadn't seen one) on steroid. It was programmed with strings of pairs of letters and numbers that included some symbols that now look like ASCII. It could do math functions and we programmed it to generate Fibonacci numbers.

We also had a larger device that could do big (ie, wide) printouts of such things as programmed blackjack games. It could play up to 6 or so hands at a time. It also had lights blinking on its face so we could watch it break the programming code into binary.

The best part of the class was the visit to nearby Aqueduct Racetrack which was computerized. The computer took up an entire, large room in the basement and we were given sample punch cards as souvenirs. They were punched to say Welcome, and the class and school name.

By the time I was studying psych in college, computers were a big deal. Hunter College didn't have its own, but paid for time on the mainframe at SUNY Albany. I took Fortran in 1973 because it was the programming language of the social sciences and after punching my program cards, I had to hand them in for transmission upstate, then pick up my printout the next day, only to discover sometimes, that I'd mispunched a card on line 82 of 160 and the program bombed and I had to repunch the card, resubmit, then wait another day to see if the program worked so I could hand in my assignment. The professor was from India and hard to understand. It's amazing I completed that class and got my assignments in, even if often they were a day or two late.

I didn't continue with Fortran and by the time I was in library school in 1978 and working in Columbia U's library, computerized circulation systems were coming into vogue. I got to work on CU's batch system. Then I went to work, in 1981, in a big urban library system that was first exploring computerization. Over the next decade, the library automated, got the first PCs (well, Apples) for public use, and new hubby and I got our first PC in 1985, the year we were married. I had asked for it in lieu of an engagement ring. An IBM PC bumped up to an AT, it lasted 5 years. Hubby knew BASIC, a language I'd never heard of, and programmed the thing to have a menu in DOS. I loved that thing, and it's successors.

By the time the early '90s rolled around, Gopher and Archie and Veronica and a host of other cool names were being bandied about along with the brave new world of the Internet. I was lost. The seminar I took at work didn't help clear things up. Then, in Dec. 1995, we got a new PC with enough memory to load AOL. And I discovered cyberland. The World Wide Web came into my life a few years later.

And now here I am, with a website and a dozen blogs, revising html in my primitive fashion, working on the library's website and creating and maintaining the library's own blog. When I look back, I am stunned by how fast and by how much my life has changed because of computers, things that no one in my life could imagine back in 1953 when I was born, things that no one when I was growing up could imagine being part of our everyday lives, at work and at home, getting smaller and smaller.

Just a few weekends ago, I sat in the lobby of a hotel in Baltimore, my laptop chugging away, catching a WiFi wave while I happily surfed the web. Can life get cooler than this? Probably. And I can't wait to see what's next.

Addenda: I majored in psych, ended up becoming a librarian, want to be a writer, and never really knew what I wanted to do with my life. I just fell into things, knew after college that I liked jobs that had to do with books. But I think if I was starting out today, in college now, I'd study web design and computer graphics. Back in the '60s, I couldn't see how I could make a living with art and the options for women, even the encouragement of women to go into certain professions, was lacking. And of course, web design was beyond science fiction. At least, I get to enjoy it as a hobby.

Feeling:

technology

Nostalgia Meme

Was going to hold off reposting any more of these tonight, then thought, what the hell. So, here's another.

I created this and posted the questions here, but I don't think I originally posted the answers here, so here they are. And new readers can answer, too. And I did what I was too lazy to do before, put them in chronological order.

It's said that some events get burned into our memories and we forever recall where we were when we heard the news about them. So, where were you when...

1. Alan Shepard became the first American in space?

Apparently, 5/5/61 was a Friday. I don't recall what time of day, but I seem to recall watching this on TV with my parents. I was a few weeks shy of 8. If it was during the day, I should've been in school and my father working, in which case we watched it later on the news. Or I'm mixing it up with the first chimp in space launch. I remember watching that with my parents.

2. John Kennedy was killed?

11/22/63. I was 10, in school, 5th grade. It was open school week and we had mothers sitting in the back of the classroom. The TV was on, tuned to the education channel's current events for students show (or maybe it was the French instruction show; I don't recall for sure). A newscaster broke in during after a break and broke the news to us. I didn't know how to react, but a bunch of girls went to the bathroom to cry, so I went with them. In a time of shelter drills, it was a rather surreal day.

3. Martin Luther King, Jr. was killed?

4/4/68. I was still 14 (my birthday is in late May). This is the uh, somewhat embarrassing one. My parents and sister had gone out shopping, running errands, whatever. I stayed home. I went to the bathroom and brought my transistor radio with me so I wouldn't miss a moment of WABC's rock 'n' roll music. A news bulletin came on while I was, uh, doing my business. As soon as I was finished, I rushed out to turn on the TV. When my parents and sister got home, I told them the horrible news. I felt oddly pleased that I had a scoop. Odd that I never seriously considered a career in journalism, given how much I enjoyed knowing something first.

4. Robert Kennedy was killed?

6/6/68. I was 15. I was watching the news coverage of his campaign appearance with my parents and we saw it happen. Chilling.

5. Neil Armstrong took that first step on the moon?

7/20/69. I was 16. What an exciting week. My father's a space buff and I caught the bug early. I guess my sister was in her room, but I spent most of the night sitting on the floor at the foot of my parents bed, while they sat in bed and the three of us watched on their small B&W TV. In my bedroom, I had the microphone of my tape recorder poised next to the speaker of my radio, recording the historic moment. Like an idiot, I kept running into my bedroom to provide my own commentary on the tape. My only excuse is that I was a bit revved up.

6. John Lennon was killed?

12/8/80. I was 27. This is the odd one. I was home, probably reading, watching TV, relaxing before bed. A friend whose hubby was a deputy DA called me to tell me her hubby had been told to go over to the Dakota because John Lennon had been killed. So I heard the news from her about 10 minutes before it was on the TV news.

7. Ronald Reagan was shot?

3/30/81. I was 27 and working in the Bronx as an indexer. We had no real contact with the outside world. The father of one of my supervisors called to tell her the news and we went a bit nuts looking for a radio. Her father called back with updates a few times before we had to leave for the day.

8. The Berlin Wall came down?

11/9/89. I was 36. Married now. The events leading up to the wall coming down had me and others full of anticipation. I saw it on the news that night and could feel the jubilation of the people there.

9. The US invaded Iraq the first time?

1/17/91. I was 37. That's the date I found, but I thought it was the day before. At any rate, I was at a community board meeting to talk about the benefits of libraries during the public session (anyone can have 2 minutes to talk). I knew the attack was coming, but someone announced it just before the public session started and they voted to end the meeting after the public session.

10. The US was attacked on 9/11/01?

I was 48. I was already at work and one of my staff came in and said she just saw a plane hit the World Trade Center. Our library is about 35-40 blocks north of where the WTC was located and we had a clear view down 6th Avenue of the towers. There was never any doubt in my mind that it was a terrorist attack. The only thing that surprised me was that it was jets, not a small plane, and that there had been two of them. When we heard about the Pentagon and the missing plane, which later crashed, I felt a terror that dissipated, but didn't leave for nearly 2 years.

We were a polling place for the NY primary, and I was grateful for the police officer on duty. The primary was called off and he left soon after. We were able to get a newscast on the TV and all gathered around the set on the first floor to watch the events unfold. We never opened for service that day, and as soon as there were reports of trains running, we started to leave. It took me three hours to get home instead of my usual hour and I had to take a different series of trains. One is elevated and I could see the smoke from the towers from the window. I could also see it from my bedroom window which overlooks Manhattan to the west.


Feeling:

memes

Nostalgia Tour

Another one from last June.

My best friend in junior and senior high and I lost touch after college and a couple of years ago, 25 years since we'd last talked, she emailed me. Ah, the wonders of the internet, and Google. We had a reunion, in a diner not far from where I'm living now and spent hours catching up. We've been in touch via email since. Today, she drove down from CT and we took a nostalgia tour, to the elementary schools we each attended, to our junior and senior high schools, and to our former homes. And it's got me in a nostalgic mood.

Howard Beach is in south Queens, NY, on Jamaica Bay, not too far west of JFK International Airport. It was Idelwild Airport back then, when were growing up. I just finished looking around the official HB site's message boards and have been reminded of a lot of things. Unfortunately, I didn't recognize any of the names of folks posting. But the photos in the history section, showing the swamp and beach land where now there are houses and businesses, gives a good feel for how much this neighborhood has changed. I guess I lived there in its transition period. Built up but no big chains, except for the White Castle that's still over by the high school.

My old neighborhood looks so different now. New Park Pizza is still there, but the Cross Bay Lanes bowling alley is gone. Waldbaum's supermarket moved across the boulevard and everything's been built up so much on Cross Bay Blvd that I don't recognize it, anymore, and I can't tell where anything used to be.

There was the Big BowWow food place where we went with our mothers after each school year to celebrate a good report card. There was the small kiddie amusement park, Ditillio's, owned by my first grade teacher and her husband. There was Heller's Drugstore where I bought my Spalding balls and other necessities of childhood. There was the ditch at the corner where we used to go sledding until they filled it in in the mid-'60s and put up 4 houses. I remember when they put in the sewers (it was septic tanks til then) in '64 or '65. I remember a house we were all convinced was haunted and the little terror of a Chihuahua that lived next to the grade school and terrorized me for years whenever I walked past. There was the old HB movie theater that showed serials, travelogues, and short subjects before they got to the movies and they had raffles, too. I saw "Psycho" and "Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte" there, and many other wonderufl movies. There was the old Howard Beach Jewish Center in an old house with a veranda and more memories than I can name.

The photos, from the top: Entrances to my elementary school. Third photo is the rear of the school where the playground was and where we entered.

Next is the house I grew up in. I lived there from 1958-1969 (age 5-16). There was no deck. There were 3 short trees (more like large bushes) under the window, instead. The windows have been changed and the doors are different now, too. The brick walk used to be plain old concrete. We played stoopball against those brick steps. That white fence is new. We had a chain link fence and gate along the side.

The junior high we went to is next. It was a fairly new school back then. And below that is the high school. I don't recall the lawn looking that nice

Feeling:

hometowns

My Father

My father will be 80 in January, so while the original post was for Father's Day, it's always appropriate.

Monday, June 06, 2005
Earliest Memories for Father's Day
I had a nice phone call with my father tonight and something he said got me remembering a few things from the past, the only two things we did together, just the two of us, before my sister was old enough for such family outings and my mother stayed home with her.

My earliest memory dates back to when I was 2 1/2, when my mother was pregnant with my sister. We were at a bungalow in the Catskills and, though I've seen the old home movies enough to reinforce any memory, there's one bit of memory that didn't come from the movies. I remember the sheer terror I felt when I was placed on a tree branch for a photo.

But the memories that inspired this post came when I was 5, shortly after we moved into our first house, the summer before I started kindergarten (and I well recall the terror of my first day of school, crying the whole block to the elementary school, not wanting my mother to leave me there). One night, my father took me to Rockaway Beach, to the boardwalk, to see the fireworks. And I recall going with him to see "The Shaggy Dog" and we bought two wind-up shaggy dog toys, one for me and one for my sister. He was amazed that I remembered those times, but for me, I can't imagine not remembering the special times I spent with "Daddy."

I wasn't the tomboy my sister was. I couldn't play ball with him and I wasn't thrilled with his stamp collecting hobby. He did take me, just me, to stamp shows, where I was bored (I would enjoy them more now that stamps have gotten so cool looking). I remember him taking pulling us on our sled and when we all made snow angels in the back yard. And I remember his putting stinging methiolate on my scraped knees (my mother favored the milder mercurochrome) and heating needles to pry splinters from my fingers, and even finding ways to yank loose baby teeth from my gums. I grew up thinking there wasn't anything he couldn't do. He was physically strong and could open any can or jar, nevermind that he was the one who'd tightened them so only he could open them.

He wasn't an easy person to be close to back then, before my mother got sick and he learned to express his feelings. He was and remains, though, the strongest man I know emotionally. He's always been a social person, a people person, something I wish I was more of. And I craved his time and attention and hated when he spent time with my sister instead of me. I'm glad I got to tell him how much I love him and how much I cherished those early memories.

So, Dad, though you have no idea what a blog is, this entry's for you.

Feeling:

fathers

The Toys that Define Us

This reposting of Retro-Spective's entries (I'm working backward) is actually inspiring me to add to some of them, especially this one. Only the first paragraph was originally posted. And while I said I'd do the reposting slowly, and while I tend to be fairly patient, I do have this need to get things done streak in me, so I hope to get everything over here by tonight or tomorrow so I can cross it off my To Do list.

I finally wised up and realized I could Google for the toy that's been driving me crazy for years. When I was a little girl, I had a diver who floated up from the bottom of a tub of water via baking soda power. I've hunted antique stores high and low for one of these divers and the best I got was "Yeah, I remember those. No, we don't have any." But here are a bunch, and I don't recall which one I had, though I do recall my diver had a single tank on his back. The site looks like a lot of fun for my fellow baby boomers looking for a bit of playful nostalgia.

So of course, that has me thinking about favorite toys. I loved my Slinky, metal, of course. It made the greatest noise going down the brick steps of the stoop in the front of our house and on the tiled stairs leading down to the basement. I had a plastic (reds and blacks, as I recall) Jacob's Ladder, though I didn't know what it was called back then. There was Silly Putty and Jacks and Pick-Up Stix, too, but I also found household items fun to play with, especially my parents' collection of glass swizzle sticks. I hope my father still has them; they're probably collectors' items now.

I had a pink Spalding ball of course, to play stoop ball and punch ball with (punch ball was a challenge because we used manhole covers and car bumpers for bases and it wasn't unusual for third base to drive off in the middle of a game). See Streetplay for info.

I had dolls, too, Tiny Tears and Chatty Cathy, and of course, Barbies. I had the black haired, ponytail Barbie with the black and white swimsuit and blond Ken with actual fuzzy hair in a crewcut. They were the old type, the type that should never have gone swimming in chlorinated water. But I took them into the pool with me and their fingers eventually eroded enough to fall off. I had blonde Midge and redheaded Alan (he of the plastic hair), and Barbie's sister, Skipper, too, and Midge and Alan still adorn my shelves. Skipper apparently skipped during our move back in '69.

And I had a little homemaker set, with a stove that had a crank. And when you turned the crank, sparks would shoot out of the "burners." I'm thinking that this toy would never pass muster by today's standards, but back when I was 5, this was pretty uh, hot stuff.

Feeling:

memories
toys