 The temps are about to swing sixty degrees in the proper direction. Perhaps more. Thirty below a few days ago; 40 above this weekend. Everyone will joke: tropical! One of the two main utilities will be relieved, since they told their customers to turn down the thermostats to 63 degrees during the Polar Vortex, or Portex as we’re not now calling it.
I don’t think many people did that. And there’s a lesson. People assume that having sufficient stock on hand is the job of the supplier, and if they didn’t arrange enough gas for the worst-case scenario, well, that’s not my problem. If the city had turned on the tornado sirens and sent a message to everyone’s phone and had everyone on radio and TV tell us it was absolutely necessary to turn the thermostats down to 63 now, I think we would have done so. In the absence of actual manifestations of an emergency, crisis fatigue sets in. There’s a world-ending problem? Fine. I’ll sit this one out.
Do you have crisis fatigue? he asked, Althouse-like, wondering if there were tags on the blog for crisis fatigue. (I josh, affectionately.) I do. Mostly because I’ve witnessed small individual crises that were indicative of larger issues, and they’re all drowned out by media-amplified crises over hyped-up issues that wax and wane every 48 hours, with the constant thrum of vague existential crises underscoring all the momentary horribleness.
It's all a matter of individual perception, and how you prioritize things, and which media stream you bathe in. When I was in my 20s, I thought everything was horrible, but then I watched things improve. Steadily. Perhaps we were better prepared to admit progress because we hadn't intertwined our personal identity with opposition to capitalism. Well, one guy we knew did, but he was the cook at the Valli, and while he was a cheerful little Marxist, the last I heard he was on a episode of COPS when they came to Minneapolis. He was leading a protest. At the end the officer said he was arrested for biting a policeman.
The Mysterious ANK, who sends me postcards - most of which will be coming this and next year, as I work through the Tottering Stacks of material to be scanned - adds llittle bits of info to the back of the cards.
I did not. From Bartlett’s wiki entry:
Sir Frederic Charles Bartlett (20 October 1886 – 30 September 1969) was a British psychologist and the first professor of experimental psychology at the University of Cambridge. He was one of the forerunners of cognitive psychology as well as cultural psychology.
This is one of those areas about which I know nothing. So let's learn something.
The "War of the Ghosts" experiment from Remembering (1932) was Bartlett's most famous study and demonstrated the constructive nature of memory, and how it can be influenced by the subject's own schema. A memory is constructive when a person gives their opinion about what had happened in the memory, along with additional influences such as their experiences, knowledge, and expectations.
Schema def: A representation of a plan or a theory in the form of an outline or a model.
That’s no help at all, if you're not in the discipline. Anyone else?
In psychology and cognitive science, a schema describes a pattern of thought or behavior that organizes categories of information and the relationships among them. It can also be described as a mental structure of preconceived ideas, a framework representing some aspect of the world, or a system of organizing and perceiving new information.
The second part makes sense.
In the experiment, Bartlett assigned his Edwardian English participants to read the Canadian Indian Folklore titled "War of the Ghosts". Participants were told to remember the story at extended intervals numerous times. Bartlett found that at longer intervals between reading the story and remembering it, participants were less accurate and forgot much of the information from the story.
Well . . . I am not surprised by this.
Most importantly, where the elements of the story failed to fit into the schemata of the listener, these elements were omitted from the recollection, or transformed into more familiar forms. Each participant's report of the story mirrored his or her own culture, Edwardian English culture in this case. An example of this can be demonstrated by some of these participants remembering "canoes" from the story as “boats."
I love the way we know how schema sounds, because the word sets us up to think of a scheme, but “schemata” looks like it should be Yiddish for something unpleasant. Ah, here comes Teitelbaum again, his shoes all full of schemata.
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I’ll just leave this one here. It's from this week's batch of scanning.
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This was a children’s magazine cover, once upon a time. Things change. Wouldn't do this today.
Someone colorized it, here.
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From a 1946 Hearth and Home booklet I scanned and will post to the site in 2020, or perhaps 2021
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He hosts a radio show called Junior Junction, an ABC radio show for teens. Can you name him?
Answer way down below. |
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I sent daughter a picture of the forecast on my weather app, and get back this:
And she was on the move again, on the bus, heading south, and sent this picture:
Yes, she surfed. She surfed! Twice. Said it was hard work. Wife immediately went to “she can’t swim!” And I said she can swim well enough, she’s not going to get in the water and not know what to do. But she can’t swim. She took two courses! One at Foss, and one at the Y, I took her to both. I remember the one at Foss, because it was at that strange mall that lost all of its tenants, had a strange 80s makeover, then got new cut-rate tenants. What was it called?
The lessons never took.
Knollwood! That was it. This is the short history of post-war retail, right here.
Knollwood Mall opened in 1955 as an open-air strip mall called Knollwood Plaza. It featured a Powers Dry Goods store, Woolworth, JCPenney, and Red Owl Grocery Store. The center was enclosed in 1980 and Montgomery Ward added to the eastern side.
Powers became Donaldson's and then Carson Pirie Scott. In 1994, the Carson's store closed and was torn down for a Kohl's.[6] Montgomery Ward closed its store in the mall in 1998, and one year later, Cub Foods opened in its place. The eastern wing of the mall was vacated in 1999 for a movie theater multiplex which never opened.
JCPenney closed in 2000.
By God, Google lets you walk right in.
Okay there is something else going on here
First of all . . . did this guy call up Lance? Or did Lance tumble on him through his own deduction?
Second, kid-nape-er?
Solution is here.
The opening played with the fourth wall every time, but early in the run I think they realized they could cut it for time, if they had to. Hence this.
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I have a particular hatred of music that makes this sound. You'll know which one.
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I don't know why the orchestra was alarmed; this always happened.
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As you see, they blended the Anchor-Hocking fanfare into the music cues. No stock library stuff - full orchestra and the signature piano player.
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It's not as if he was some miraculously great character - but it was the bartender Ethelbert that made the show different.
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Although I'm sure Staats would have begged to differ.
2019 returns to the bins, and the records dumped back into the world when someone dies and the kids give the contents of Mom and Dad's entertainment system to the Goodwill.
I love this stuff so much.
Early stereo records loved to put things in different speakers because that was STEREO, you know.
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Anyone want to guess the name of the announcer? |
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Gas is going up, up, up - it'll be a quarter before you know it. |
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So! Was this the Best Bleat Week ever? I think the range and quantity of stuff was . . . well, substantial, at least. If you've enjoyed it all, and are looking forward to another week of stuff, why not contribute a jot, or a tittle, or a farthing'sworth, or whatever? Here's the easy means to do so, and remember - everything minus ten percent goes to Daughter's college fund.
Thanks to all who've chipped in, and when she's back from her endless trip around Brazil, she'll make something to show her personal thanks.
Have a fine weekend! See you around.
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