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Monday, October 23, 2006
Promises of fall are beginning to be whispered here in the land of one-and-a-half seasons. Okay, so we're a month late, but I'll take it. The electric bill this month was half of the month before, and last night we slept with the windows open and didn't feel the need to close up the house and turn on the air conditioning this morning. Good thing, because we've had the A/C repairman out here six, count 'em SIX times since the spring. We realize that the downstairs unit, not quite five years old, is on its last legs and will require a multi-thousand dollar investment next year, so we're hoping to limp through the rest of whatever heat is left this year while we re-group and plan for that major inconvenience.
I've locked the doors on my other blog and started moving some of the "furniture" over here in preparation for the arrival of my new design. Scroll down the sidebar to find some of my favorite things.
Speaking of favorites, I've always derived a moderate amount of pleasure from watching politics. It's a great study in human nature, as well as an opportunity to test my powers of prediction. What I *didn't* need was to hear this morning of another way to indulge my interest...Here is something that could easily pull me in and tempt me to give up cooking, teaching, cleaning, and anything else non-essential :-) If you're a news or politics "junkie," go have a look. But be careful. Fantasy Congress - Where People Play Politics!
I'm sure I'm dating myself, but it gave me a twinge of sadness this morning to hear of the death of Jane Wyatt, aka Margaret Anderson on Father Knows Best, at age 96. Unlike many of my generation, I have a supreme appreciation for this show and others of the Ozzie and Harriet genre. It seems it's rather cool these days to show a rather embarrassed disdain for the old sitcoms that portrayed a happy nuclear family and pretend that they were merely a figment of the 50's imagination. Not so. It's the world I lived in and there were many, many families I knew that looked and operated much like the Andersons. And even if there hadn't been, the perfect family as fantasy was great entertainment. What many forget is how often these families portrayed themselves as IMperfect and fragile. No, not as in Desperate Housewives, but as in the kinds of dilemmas my family found ourselves in every day. We didn't always get ours wrapped up in thirty minutes, of course, but watching a family who managed to didn't make us disillusioned or envious or unrealistic. Revisionist history says we were all hoodwinked into thinking this is the way all families were. I knew better even then, and still relished the model. Anyway, farewell Margaret, and thank you...
I've locked the doors on my other blog and started moving some of the "furniture" over here in preparation for the arrival of my new design. Scroll down the sidebar to find some of my favorite things.
Speaking of favorites, I've always derived a moderate amount of pleasure from watching politics. It's a great study in human nature, as well as an opportunity to test my powers of prediction. What I *didn't* need was to hear this morning of another way to indulge my interest...Here is something that could easily pull me in and tempt me to give up cooking, teaching, cleaning, and anything else non-essential :-) If you're a news or politics "junkie," go have a look. But be careful. Fantasy Congress - Where People Play Politics!
I'm sure I'm dating myself, but it gave me a twinge of sadness this morning to hear of the death of Jane Wyatt, aka Margaret Anderson on Father Knows Best, at age 96. Unlike many of my generation, I have a supreme appreciation for this show and others of the Ozzie and Harriet genre. It seems it's rather cool these days to show a rather embarrassed disdain for the old sitcoms that portrayed a happy nuclear family and pretend that they were merely a figment of the 50's imagination. Not so. It's the world I lived in and there were many, many families I knew that looked and operated much like the Andersons. And even if there hadn't been, the perfect family as fantasy was great entertainment. What many forget is how often these families portrayed themselves as IMperfect and fragile. No, not as in Desperate Housewives, but as in the kinds of dilemmas my family found ourselves in every day. We didn't always get ours wrapped up in thirty minutes, of course, but watching a family who managed to didn't make us disillusioned or envious or unrealistic. Revisionist history says we were all hoodwinked into thinking this is the way all families were. I knew better even then, and still relished the model. Anyway, farewell Margaret, and thank you...
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