Thursday, June 30, 2016

Telephone Ahead



"You're off to a more pleasant trip when you telephone ahead.

A Long Distance call is the quickest, 
friendliest way to let folks know how you're coming
and when you'll arrive."

Bell Telephone System, 1955


Do you find this ad to be from another world? I do but I so well remember this world. Short-term memory being what it is, I probably remember it better than I do yesterday.

Young people today must think it was the Dark Ages, but I remember it as a happy time.

Long distance was a big deal, and an expensive one. And now there is no long distance, is there? Not when you use a device. How many people have dropped their land lines? We have.

Now, here's a question. Do you enjoy talking on the telephone anymore? Between emails (practically a thing of the past in itself), Facebook, FaceTime, texts, I rarely talk on the phone, not conversations anyway. When I do, it's almost like I'm tongue-tied. 

I wonder if face to face conversations will some day go that way too? 





Sunday, June 26, 2016

Pearl S. Buck -- Pluck the Flowers

[Woman's Home Companion, June 1956
photograph by Elliott Erwitt]


Pearl S. Buck

Born June 26, 1892

First American woman to win the Nobel Prize
for literature, 1938.

"The old deep sadness of life lay in the bottom of
her heart and she knew it was there,
but she would not allow herself to sink into it.

Out of the dark and sullen bottom of a lake
the lotus flowers bloomed upon its surface,
and she would pluck the flowers."


Happy Birthday to one of my favorite authors!

Isn't hers a magnificent face?