Channeling Ali

/ By / In / 24 Comments

My mother set tight limits on me when I was young. I was not trendy. I did not wear go-go boots, Mondrian dresses, Twiggy eyelashes. She didn’t let me pierce my ears when all my friends did. I did not have a blunt cut “Sassoon” hairstyle. I didn’t go ga-ga over the boy bands of the ’60s. Classical or Latin music was the currency of our household. My parents were never better together than when dancing the cha-cha.

I did love to play Hula Hoop in my driveway in Detroit and could swivel my hips, wearing my “pedal pushers”, with the best of them. That was about as “faddish” as I got as a kid.

In the summer of 1970, before heading off to Brandeis, I visited relatives in Cleveland and Toledo. My Aunt Stella was smitten with “Love Story” and had me read it while visiting her. I sobbed through it. The movie, starring Ali MacGraw and Ryan O’Neal, came out in late 1970, just as I came home for Christmas vacation from my first semester at Brandeis. Of course I went to see it and LOVED it. I flattered myself to think that perhaps, with my long dark hair, I looked a bit like Ali MacGraw (as if).

The scenes of the romantic leads frolicking in the snow near Harvard Square are iconic. She became famous for wearing a little crocheted hat. If I couldn’t be Ali, at least I could wear a hat like she wore.

While home for vacation, I ditched my big, puffy hat and got two hats, one little crocheted number that wasn’t very warm, and a warmer, wool version and a midi-coat like she wore, as you can see in the Featured photo in front of my Huntington Woods home (with snow flying to add to the effect). I don’t have any photos of the little crocheted hat, which had no warmth at all. I wore the one in the photo much more often. Both were inspired by Ali MacGraw, the tragic Cliffie from “Love Story”.

Can you hear the music swell? “Love means never having to say you’re sorry!” No, we didn’t have that poster on our dorm room wall. We had the Anne Frank one…”In spite of everything, I still believe people are really good at heart.” Boy, were we young.

 

 

It’s a Mixed Bag

/ By / In / 7 Comments

My first typing experience was on an old Royal manual.  I could go like a bat outta hell on that thing, typing 80 words a minute with maybe one typo.  The other people in the office where I worked would sometimes stand around my desk and just watch me.  My boss bragged about his secretary’s amazing typing skills.  Eventually, I was rewarded with a promotion — and a new electric typewriter, with expectation that I could type even faster.

Wel-l-l-l-l, no.  My eye-hand coordination was fine-tuned to almost punching the keys with my fingers as I read from my shorthand pad and typed.  This newfangled machine required a much lighter touch.  The keys were closer together so my fingers ended up touching the wrong keys.  I had to learn to type all over again.  My boss, great guy that he was, patiently put up with my bumbling till I finally got it right.  Just when I did, the IBM Magnetic Tape Selectric Typewriter (MT/ST) flooded the market like a tidal wave, sweeping up my office.  Back to typing class!  The barrage of blinking and flashing lights were a major distraction. (A little accompanying music would have been a nice touch.) The upshot was that everything I typed, in including boilerplate sentences and paragraphs, was stored in the machine. In a matter of seconds, a clean, mistake-free document was produced by merely pressing a few buttons.

However, the MT/ST was soon eclipsed.  Without elaborating on the various phases of the evolutionary process of the computer, a state-of-the-art one was eventually at my disposal.  Every single iota of information, from newspaper articles to recipes to fashion to the photos of naked ladies my co-worker, “Bob” I’ll call him, spent his afternoons staring at was easy to trace.  You can listen to music, play games, gamble, buy anything, find a spouse, and the list goes on and on.  Bob got fired.  His replacement was interviewed via Skype then hired and processed in by Human Resources.  All she had to do was show up.

Computers are wonderful things when used to good intent. You can do practically anything with one, including opening Pandora’s box.  Just watch/listen to the news.  Or read the news on the computer.

What ever happened to shorthand?