Color me embarrassed😳! It has been almost FIVE YEARS since my last post here. Let's see if I can get a start and continue on a regular basis.

My retail page has been mostly down for the past couple of years since I moved locations. I would love to have it get back in regular service. I have a format in mind to bring it slowly back to the back of the bus, but at least I would be on the bus.

If you have something you would like to hear about vintage stuff, things you remember seeing in Grandma's guest room, attic, Mom's old hope chest. Send me a picture and story of what you know and we will see if we can find out more information on it for you.

Love to hear from you!

More

I am sad to realize that it has been so long since I posted anything on this site. I think of thoughts all the time. Although the first of the year has come and gone I will post a resolution to try and pass along more regularly this year.

This morning, after several nights of rough sleep due to a noisy heat pump outside my window, I awoke, seemingly, more refreshed, definitely earlier than recent memory.  I am sitting in the living room in a mostly dark room contemplating the day. Another round of work. Life is boring. Don't get me wrong, I like living, considering the alternative, but I would like to think I should try harder to get more out of it.

The CD that Changed the World

Monday marks the 30th  anniversary of the 'invention' of the CD player and CD disks.

Sony (with assistance from Philips) is credited with the invention. Although there were several 'popular' artists of the time, BeeGees, Billy Joel, ABBA, were chosen to be recorded on CD, most of the earliest Compact Discs were of classical music. The theory was since the Compact Disc enhanced the sound of music (no pun intended), CD players were very expensive, over $700 (equivalent to $1400 in today's economy) and that lovers of classical music would be the most to appreciate the quality and to afford the new machines.

It is like many inventions original intended for one thing or group of people and an entirely different set of users would be the most prominent demographic.  For instance, recently, I discovered in my collection of goodies is a View Master Viewer. They were originally designed to be an alternative, or even a replacement, to post cards. The picture discs were originally of popular vacation and tourist spots like Grand Canyon and Yosemite. Now, yes, they still make them!, and in their hey-day, the discs turned into an entertainment for children. Cartoons, TV shows, Movies, and Disney, lots of Disney.

We used to have 'shows'. Create a marquis and have a marathon or a 'triple feature' with the projector. We would take turns  coming up with discs that had a common thread then show them. What fun it was to try and figure out the theme.

Fun times in the 70's were so much more tame for kids than they are now, aren't they? I think I like the decade I was a kid!

Too Long

It has been 3 MONTHS since I posted a blog entry...MAN, that is terrible. I am sorry I have been so lax in my duties keeping myself linking the present (tomorrow's present as well) to the past.

It has been a very busy 3 months for me...High time in the vacation rental business.  Also, over the summer I was able to sneak away with Mom to her 'adopted' Mom's family reunion in upstate New York. A nice time, but, Mom cut the vacation short by tripping and breaking her wrist and needing to get it set and cast back here at home. We also were encouraged by Auntie B to find new homes for her mother's doll collection.

To date, I have only been able to post a couple of dolls. Researching is very time consuming, educational and a little fun. I have also posted a few more coins from Dad's collection and a great remembrance from my past, a View Master View and Projector.

Also have done some updates on the visual aspect of HandMeDownHaven.com. Would love to know what you think. You can post your opinion anonymously on the webpage or comment here and let me know. Don't worry, I won't get my feelings hurt if you don't like it....too much!

Hope to see you again soon!

Distraction

It is so easy to become distracted these days. Television, with hundreds of channels to choose from not to mention the newest additions to the boob tube the streaming player. This little gadget adds the possibility of hundreds of different channels to watch hundreds of different movies and television shows from the past.  Then there is the internet. Social networking sites, news, weather, another outlet for television. Yes, the internet can be used for good, for research, but it is so easy to become distracted and slip into a gaming site.

Even as I sit here and write about distraction, a little green line appears under one of my sentences and distracts me. I try and ignore it, promising myself I can check into what this dreaded computer’s problem is when I finally get my point down on this virtual piece of paper, but, no, I can’t do it. I have to see what this silicon genius has to say. Slide the cursor, right click, fragment.  

Fragment. Argh, it did it again! Fragment. Well, honestly I don’t care if that particular sentence is a fragment. Fragmented sentences are a part of me. Sometimes I am a fragment. Sometimes my thoughts are fragments and that is what I wanted to impress upon my reader at the time.

Someday, computers will learn personalities of their users and accept the fact that sometimes grammatical errors, errors of other kinds, happen accidentally and sometimes on purpose. Of course, that may be impossible for a computer to actually understand that kind of a concept as, don’t they say, computers can only do as their programmer tells them to do when they are ‘born’. And many humans don’t even understand personalities.

Today the Space Shuttle Discovery took its last flight. The aged space vehicle flew piggy-back on a 747 from Cape Kennedy to Washington's Dulles International Airport where it will spend its retirement at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum's Udvar-Hazy Center adjacent to the Airport. Although I was unable to watch any leg of the flight in person, I was able to catch a snippet on the morning news before I came to work, and then, a few stills (link attached below) on CNN's website.

Back, what seems like forever ago, when the Space Shuttle Program was new I watched the first flight. It was eerily similar-a piggy-back ride on the back of a 747. I don't know if I watched this live or taped but I do remember being in my basement watching. It was a day off of school (summer?) and the kids in the neighborhood were beginning to gather in our back yard for some game or other. They knocked and peered in the sliding glass door that led from the family room to the stoop in the back yard urging me to come outside that games were about to begin. I told them "I'll be out later" I wanted to watch history.

In 1976 or '77, seeing that futuristic 'plane' atop a jumbo jet was awesome. It was shiny and new and inspirational. More than a generation later, you can see the scars on that grand old Shuttle. It earned a place in history. All of the Shuttles did. Enterprise. Columbia. Challenger. Discovery. Atlantis. 

My friend Grace was lucky enough to catch a glimpse of it from her home. I am jealous.

One of my history books was closed today with a little sadness in my heart. I hope the retirement of this program is not the history of space exploration in the future.

http://photoblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/04/17/11245919-discovery-space-shuttle-circles-the-sky-over-washington-on-last-voyage?lite