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1. The Peanuts Cartoon Character That Gave a Young Girl Permission to be Herself -- yeah, it surprised me too.
Fotos InternationalGetty Images
At Lenox, I was the only girl in the Lower School who wore glasses. I was one of the minority who had to wear tie-shoes. Uniforms were required — a winter jumper, a spring jumper, a tunic and bloomers for gym, and even a specific smock for art class. (The French blue painter’s smocks our mothers had to purchase at a store called “Youth at Play.”) We wore them over our other uniforms. This didn’t strike anyone as odd at the time, just the usual rigidity of single-sex schools. Glasses weren’t cool or retro or indicative of braininess or style in the mid-1960s if you were a kid. There were two styles for girls: cats’-eyes and Clark Kent. There were two colors: pale pink and tortoise shell.
In the land of Peanuts, everyone had his or her signature look. (I wouldn’t have called it that in 1967, I realize.) Lucy’s blue dress, Charlie Brown’s yellow-and-black zigzag t-shirt, Schroeder’s striped t-shirt, Linus’ red shirt and blue blankie, Snoopy’s accessories: all provided information about their owners. Our uniforms, on the other hand, only revealed which school we attended. The jumper masked our individual identities in the most efficient way possible. Only through one’s socks and coats did anyone have an opinion, or more likely, did she express her mother’s point of view. Our own stories were less important.
As one of three kids in my family I was instructed never to be selfish. Selfishness was the worst thing I could imagine; if there were anything more despicable, I hadn’t heard of it. I was the only girl in the family so I had less sharing to do if you think about it. I tried not to think about myself too much.
Lucy, on the other hand, reveled in her self-centeredness. It was hard for me to feel empathy towards her. She was dramatic. She wanted Schroeder’s love and respect and had no problem demanding it. She had confidence. She may not have had a guilty bone in her body as she grabbed Charlie Brown’s football away just as his foot was about to kick it. She could be bad. She could be mean. She didn’t really suffer any consequences other than our disdain for her.
Lucy not only offered advice, she insisted on being paid for it. (It would take decades — in fact well after Charles Schulz’s death — but eventually Lucy’s big sense of self would be seen as a positive attribute for the modern woman. Was she a little abrasive? Good grief. You can’t worry about making friends while ascending your own ladder to success.)
Unlike what I had experienced, the Peanuts kids did not run off and tell their parents everything. As a pre-pubescent reader of Mr. Schulz’s oeuvre, when I still considered my parents the heroes of my young life, I missed seeing the characters’ parents. True, the gang got called in for supper and were sent to school at a certain hour, but they were independent. They solved their own problems. They got on with things. They didn’t dwell on hurts or resentments, unlike real kids. Unlike real Birnbachs.
2. The Troubling Age of Algorithmic Entertainment
I think it's easy to become a bit too precious about the sanctity of the experience of art. For centuries, people have read books in random ways, watched film while half focused on something else, or listened to music while scrubbing the floor. Because we treat one piece of art or entertainment as fluff, it doesn't mean we do that to everything, and you can still find meaning and beauty in a snippet of something; sometimes the part is more important than the whole. And sometimes, the ability to mess around with art leads to new things: clever remixes, or unexpected, fruitful meetings with other ideas.
But the sheer ubiquity of the streaming platforms for how we get content now suggests that the dominance of algorithms and their place in the attention economy aren't entirely neutral or value-free. Disney, for example, is quietly placing classic Fox films into its so-called "vault," where it hides movies from distribution for a while to drum up hype when they are re-released. One imagines this is so they can put them back on their forthcoming streaming service, to much delight.
The point is that streaming is affecting content and we don't quite know how that will play out over time. Still, if there's one thing we know about algorithms, it's that they tend toward an odd mix of the flashy, the outrageous, and the comforting. And art that perhaps doesn't fit, or won't appeal to the way the algorithm works, may get pushed to the side. That isn't new exactly — that has almost always been the case with media that pushes against the status quo — but it's hardly the democratic utopia that digital's most prominent supporters promised us, either. Instead it represents a dumbing down, a dull sameness — and unlike a setting on a TV, the size and influence of the tech giants means it won't be something you can simply switch off.
3. Why most of America is terrible at making biscuits (Personally I blame Pillsbury and those horrible pop-up biscuits of my youth...not that I can eat biscuits any longer, unless someone has created almond dough biscuits or oat dough biscuits, which they most likely have. I wouldn't put it past them to have created biscuits made with cricket flour, although I'd think that would be difficult. I always found biscuits very baking sodish in taste and a bit thick, personally. But that's probably because of Bisquit, Pillsbury, and various package brands.)
4. Adios Powerpoint, banned by Amazon and others ...because a new simple document template makes meetings shorter sweeter and smarter
Oh goodie. I hate powerpoint. I've always hated power-point. I call power-point the pointless dog and pony show.
5. Television..
Well, it had to happen eventually...Prodigal Son is starting to bore me and aggravate me. Yes, yes, show, I know Malcolm helped his father kill people and was most likely involved -- hello, the title pretty much screams it. Stop teasing, move on. And the scenery chewing lead...was great for a couple of episodes, but is wearing thin. He stands out a bit too much from every one else. Also, criminal procedures don't really work for me. I burned out on the trope/genre in the 1990s.
We'll see how long I stick with this. Will the cast be enough? Eh. I do like the cast a lot and relationship drama, the mystery of the week (no) and the flashbacks (getting old).
I may just be burned out on television at the moment. It happens.
Fotos InternationalGetty Images
At Lenox, I was the only girl in the Lower School who wore glasses. I was one of the minority who had to wear tie-shoes. Uniforms were required — a winter jumper, a spring jumper, a tunic and bloomers for gym, and even a specific smock for art class. (The French blue painter’s smocks our mothers had to purchase at a store called “Youth at Play.”) We wore them over our other uniforms. This didn’t strike anyone as odd at the time, just the usual rigidity of single-sex schools. Glasses weren’t cool or retro or indicative of braininess or style in the mid-1960s if you were a kid. There were two styles for girls: cats’-eyes and Clark Kent. There were two colors: pale pink and tortoise shell.
In the land of Peanuts, everyone had his or her signature look. (I wouldn’t have called it that in 1967, I realize.) Lucy’s blue dress, Charlie Brown’s yellow-and-black zigzag t-shirt, Schroeder’s striped t-shirt, Linus’ red shirt and blue blankie, Snoopy’s accessories: all provided information about their owners. Our uniforms, on the other hand, only revealed which school we attended. The jumper masked our individual identities in the most efficient way possible. Only through one’s socks and coats did anyone have an opinion, or more likely, did she express her mother’s point of view. Our own stories were less important.
As one of three kids in my family I was instructed never to be selfish. Selfishness was the worst thing I could imagine; if there were anything more despicable, I hadn’t heard of it. I was the only girl in the family so I had less sharing to do if you think about it. I tried not to think about myself too much.
Lucy, on the other hand, reveled in her self-centeredness. It was hard for me to feel empathy towards her. She was dramatic. She wanted Schroeder’s love and respect and had no problem demanding it. She had confidence. She may not have had a guilty bone in her body as she grabbed Charlie Brown’s football away just as his foot was about to kick it. She could be bad. She could be mean. She didn’t really suffer any consequences other than our disdain for her.
Lucy not only offered advice, she insisted on being paid for it. (It would take decades — in fact well after Charles Schulz’s death — but eventually Lucy’s big sense of self would be seen as a positive attribute for the modern woman. Was she a little abrasive? Good grief. You can’t worry about making friends while ascending your own ladder to success.)
Unlike what I had experienced, the Peanuts kids did not run off and tell their parents everything. As a pre-pubescent reader of Mr. Schulz’s oeuvre, when I still considered my parents the heroes of my young life, I missed seeing the characters’ parents. True, the gang got called in for supper and were sent to school at a certain hour, but they were independent. They solved their own problems. They got on with things. They didn’t dwell on hurts or resentments, unlike real kids. Unlike real Birnbachs.
2. The Troubling Age of Algorithmic Entertainment
I think it's easy to become a bit too precious about the sanctity of the experience of art. For centuries, people have read books in random ways, watched film while half focused on something else, or listened to music while scrubbing the floor. Because we treat one piece of art or entertainment as fluff, it doesn't mean we do that to everything, and you can still find meaning and beauty in a snippet of something; sometimes the part is more important than the whole. And sometimes, the ability to mess around with art leads to new things: clever remixes, or unexpected, fruitful meetings with other ideas.
But the sheer ubiquity of the streaming platforms for how we get content now suggests that the dominance of algorithms and their place in the attention economy aren't entirely neutral or value-free. Disney, for example, is quietly placing classic Fox films into its so-called "vault," where it hides movies from distribution for a while to drum up hype when they are re-released. One imagines this is so they can put them back on their forthcoming streaming service, to much delight.
The point is that streaming is affecting content and we don't quite know how that will play out over time. Still, if there's one thing we know about algorithms, it's that they tend toward an odd mix of the flashy, the outrageous, and the comforting. And art that perhaps doesn't fit, or won't appeal to the way the algorithm works, may get pushed to the side. That isn't new exactly — that has almost always been the case with media that pushes against the status quo — but it's hardly the democratic utopia that digital's most prominent supporters promised us, either. Instead it represents a dumbing down, a dull sameness — and unlike a setting on a TV, the size and influence of the tech giants means it won't be something you can simply switch off.
3. Why most of America is terrible at making biscuits (Personally I blame Pillsbury and those horrible pop-up biscuits of my youth...not that I can eat biscuits any longer, unless someone has created almond dough biscuits or oat dough biscuits, which they most likely have. I wouldn't put it past them to have created biscuits made with cricket flour, although I'd think that would be difficult. I always found biscuits very baking sodish in taste and a bit thick, personally. But that's probably because of Bisquit, Pillsbury, and various package brands.)
4. Adios Powerpoint, banned by Amazon and others ...because a new simple document template makes meetings shorter sweeter and smarter
Oh goodie. I hate powerpoint. I've always hated power-point. I call power-point the pointless dog and pony show.
5. Television..
Well, it had to happen eventually...Prodigal Son is starting to bore me and aggravate me. Yes, yes, show, I know Malcolm helped his father kill people and was most likely involved -- hello, the title pretty much screams it. Stop teasing, move on. And the scenery chewing lead...was great for a couple of episodes, but is wearing thin. He stands out a bit too much from every one else. Also, criminal procedures don't really work for me. I burned out on the trope/genre in the 1990s.
We'll see how long I stick with this. Will the cast be enough? Eh. I do like the cast a lot and relationship drama, the mystery of the week (no) and the flashbacks (getting old).
I may just be burned out on television at the moment. It happens.
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She liked biscuits and gravy, but either couldn't figure out how to do it or my father disliked it, so we didn't have that.
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My father would have had a fit if my mother had served us biscuits and gravy as anything but an emergency meal. They both wanted to keep the Great Depression and its trappings for them in the past. Chicken a la King may have been just a small step up, but to my parents it would have mattered.
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My mother's father was a cattleman or cattle farmer (farms in Kansas, Iowa, and Missouri), and ran his own trucking company in the 1940s and 50s. They has a lot of potatoes with gravy and biscuits with gravy.
But my Dad didn't have that growing up. More can foods, like Chef Boyadee, and cheaper things. He was raised just outside of Philly. Parents were poor. But he was in the service (Korean War -- although never went overseas), and travel industry.
So they didn't really associate it that way, I don't think. My Dad just didn't like it. And it made me ill. (I didn't know why back then, but the mere thought of biscuits and gravy makes me want to hurl. Now, I do know why -- same reason I struggled with sandwiches..hello, ceiliac.)
no subject
Also, Southerners can make biscuits. We know the secret, and our biscuits rock.