Then and Now

Here's Jo, bringing back John Dierdorf, who has an interesting riff on time and change.

Last time John was here he blogged about period language, and he has a great web site about that here. Today, however, he's bringing interesting thoughts which could be summarized by "Would Tutankhamun be more at home in the American 1890s than our great-grandparents would be now?"

There's a book prize -- details below.

It's all yours, John.

John: When we read a Regency novel today, the manners and mores seem almost like Science Fiction, taking place about two hundred years before the present. (250 years for a Georgian.) Everything about that world seems strange and quaint.

The modern Regency romance was more or less invented by Georgette Heyer, and her first book was published in 1921, only a hundred years after the end of Prinnie's regency. In Heyer's early career, there were still people alive who were BORN during the Regency!

Jo: Now that's a thought, John. Just as there are people alive now born before World War I.

John: Right. To Heyer, the "strangeness factor" of the Regency would have been the same as such a person reading a book today set in the immediate years before World War I. Heyer was born in 1902, the year after Queen Victoria died. In her early years anyone respectable had servants, nobody ever saw a lady's ankle in public, transport was via horses and carriages, and so on.

Jo: So the position of women in society and the sexual mores, especially of the middle and uppper classes, was still Victorian. To the blog readers. It's been suggested that in these respects Heyer's world was based more on that Victorian/Edwardian milieu than on the true Regency, which was pretty racy in the aristocratic levels she portrays. Comments?

John:I used to tell my teenage daughter, who came of age in the 80's, that not only did her generation not invent the sexual revolution, but neither did my generation -- the one that came of age in the 60's and may or may not have inhaled while listening to rock'n'roll.

The true revolution had been the generation of my grandmother, her great-grandmother. My grandmother, like Ms Heyer, came of age in the 1920's, and almost overnight became free of corsets, wearing knee-length skirts, smoking and drinking in public, and consorting with the male half of the race without benefit of chaperones, courtesy of Henry Ford. The social change from 1914 to 1924 was almost certainly greater than in the almost 90 years since.

Jo: May I quibble a bit there, John? I wonder if that is a factor of a short time span, so it's a revolution rather than an evolution. I would argue that the change from 1924 to 2004 was as great, but not as shocking, IThat doesn't affect your basic point, however, that the revolution was stunning at the time.

Readers -- What shocking differences would a time traveling lady find if she was zapped from 1924 to 2004?

Sorry for the interruption, John. You're stirring all kinds of thoughs. What stimulated these ideas for you?

John: Mary Jo Putney's new YA novel, Dark Mirror -- written as M J Putney -- which features a teenager jumping in time from 1805 to 1940 and being bewildered by everything from fashion to electricity to automobiles to Nazi bombers. The character who first encounters her in 1940 wonders why she is wandering around in her nightgown, when she is wearing a perfectly respectable dress of 1805. It struck me that if her time warp had only taken her to 1910, she would have been right at home. 

That reminded me of a story I used to tell my Computer Science majors: If an Egyptian pharoah of 3,000 BC had been brought forward 5,000 years to the Ohio farm where my grandfather was born in the 1880's, he would have understood almost everything about that farm. The implements in the kitchen and the animals in the barn would have been recognizable, and he would have understood that farmer's way of life as being basically the same as that of an Egyptian peasant of his time.

At most, he would have been surprised that some things that were very expensive in his time, like glass and iron, were now cheap enough that even a dirt farmer could afford them, but otherwise he would have
settled right in, perhaps shaking his head at the incredible artistry of the few family photographs in the parlor.

And yet, my grandfather lived to sit in front of his color television set watching men walk on the Moon. He used to entertain me and his other grandchildren with stories about the first electric light he had ever seen, the first telephone, the first automobile, reading about the Wright brothers in the newspaper, and so on.

The net of this is that if we want to experience the same sensawonder as did Ms Heyer's first readers, we should be reading Edwardian romances, not Regency. And mid-Victorian (1860's) instead of Georgian.

Jo: How interesting, John. I avoid Victorian-set novels because I have an aversion to the Victorian world. Don't ask me why. If there's anything in past lives, I must have had a dreadful one. I do feel it to be familiar, however, in part because I grew up with a lot of Victorian stuff around. My paternal grandmother was thoroughly Victorian, born in 1862, and she lived to 95. She still wore long, vaguely Victorian dresses, and her house was darkly Victorian in decor. My father was also a Victorian, born in 1896, and Victorian stuff, including books, photographs, and knick-knacks were all around.

Thus I automatically went further back in time for anything romantic. The Regency also feels fairly normal to me. It's the Georgian period that's deliciously exotic, and the medieval that's intriguingly alien.

All right, readers, share your thoughts and feelings on the above. You could have a stab at the couple of questions I've asked above.

Do you know at what point in the past the setting becomes very much "not now?" If you want to share your age we can see if there's a pattern. If you were zapped back in time, how far would it have to be for you to feel like an alien?

What part would environment and country play? I can stand on many seashores and see and hear what others would have a hundred, even a thousand years ago. But a city, town, and even village will be an instant shock.

Over to you, and there's a prize for a radomly picked comment -- a copy of an earlier time travel romance by Mary Jo -- A Distant Magic

Thanks again, John, for a most interesting stream of ideas.

Historical romance is a sort of time travel anyway, isn't it? You can zoom back to the 1760s through An Unlikely Countess, which was out in March, or soon back to the Regency with the reissue in June of Forbidden, in which the very honorable Lord Middlethorpe is forced to jilt a crippled lady because of the wayward ways of the woman he meets on a dark lane.

 

Jo

 

Comments

[wendy p]

Do you know at what point in the past the setting becomes very much "not now?"

At the age of almost 42, when I think back to what it was like growing up as a kid in the 1970s - back when you wrote a letter to talk to someone halfway across the country because you couldn't afford the phone call, back when half the people in my elementary classes did not have home phones, some had party lines (something my kids just can't understand!) Where the nearest grocery store was 1 hour away, when the roads weren't paved, and when everyone in town literally knew everyone else in town. Then in the 80s, we were riding high on technology! "Simon" and those early "Atari" which arrived near the 1980s mark - oh, and when the first computers for home use came out, they were gigantic and absolutely confusing to use. And the first generation cordless phones which were the size of a small refrigerator held against your ear.

If I was zapped back in time, I don't think I would feel like an alien, maybe a little out of place, but since I have spent most of my life reading and studying people's lives in the past (and spent my first 20 years doing colonial re-enactments), that the past does not make me feel alien at all - its the future that makes me feel weary of what is coming next. Honestly, I really know how my parents (born 1936 and 1938) and my husbands parents (who were born 1918 and 1924, yep, late in life baby) felt as they got older and everything seemed so alien to them...

[Jo Beverley]

Wendy, good point about being a reader of history. That certainly would help us to adjust to the past. And being a reenactor, even more so!

I was in Exeter today, and I ate my lunch sitting in front of the cathedral. I wondered how someone from the middle ages would react if they emerged into today.

Well, we'll leave out the maintenance vehicles right outside. I think their first thought might be how tidy and calm it was. I'm sure way back when it was thronged and noisy, and there'd be stalls and beggars.

Jo

[Linda Banche]

Well, I'm with you, Mary Jo, on the Victorian being too familiar to be romantic. I like the Regency because it's far enough in the past for some fantasy, and romance requires a little fantasy. Yet, the modern world started then, so it's recognizable to our twenty-first century eyes. Regency technology was still old (horses instead of trains), but behavior and social institutions had changed from Georgian times. The American and French revolutions put democracy into the air, which didn't exist fifty years earlier. Anything earlier, especially if the author is true to the era, is like visiting another planet.

Although the Regency loosened women's repression a little, the Victorian era returned a lot of it. I also think the culture before about the 1970's was still Victorian. There's a difference between technology change and culture change. Technology changed radically between 1850 and 1950, but attitudes toward women didn't. For all that women bobbed their hair and wore makeup, their primary function was still home and family. A woman with a career was unnatural. Women were still defined by their sexuality. Women had to be virgins when they married or they were "bad girls", and the disgrace followed them all their lives as they did 100 years earlier. These attitudes are Victorian, and they exist in living memory. Sad to say, they are still with us. Think of the difference in connotation between "womanizer" and "slut".

Since these Victorian attitudes are still too close, there's no romance involved. Steampunk may be the exception, because it's part fantasy.

[Deanna]

I agree that electronically we have made enormous leaps in technology even in my lifetime. We found penicillin, and went on from there with major advances in medicine. The auto precedes me even if I am in my 70's. I read about many time periods so would have to go back to before the Pilgims in this country to feel out of place .

[Isobel Carr]

Travel has shown me that the world is still filled with places where people subsist as though the Industrial Revolution never happened. The shanty towns of Dhaka were shocking. The itinerant Berbers of Morocco were a time warp. The countryside in Turkey was a trip back to the middle ages.

I think I’d do far better being transported into Medieval England or Roman Italy than I would waking up as a denizen of a modern slum.

[Jennifer Spiller]

As a reader of history, I think I would have some understanding of many eras, but I actually believe I would feel alien if transported back only as far as the 1970's.

I was born in 1974, but most of my memories begin in the 1980's. And as late as 1979, my mother (even though she was the primary wage earner in our family) was not allowed to sign for our home mortgage when my parents bought our house.

As a woman, I think I would have difficulty with any time before the last 20-25 years. I do not believe I could handle either the overt nor the subtle and systemic condescension of society and/or men.

[Jeanne Miro]

I was born in 1947 and as a child I was still able to play kickball in the street, walk the mile to school, home for lunch, back to school and home again by myself. Spending time now with my granchilren I have finally realized the change that has happened in the world. Children can no longer walk to school safely or ride their bikes to the local store to pick up bread and milk.

The one thing that surpises me the most is that also no longer seem able to be responsible and learn that money to spend is made by "getting a job" - i.e. a paper route, mowing lawns, shoveling snow, etc. They also seem to have no responsibilities around the house - washing dishes, ironing, doing laundry, etc. When my sons were growing up they go a small allowance and if they wanted "school lunch" they used their own money. When they wanted a color TV in the house they learned "No" was a one word answer. I guess when my husband and I were raising our children from 1972 - 1992 we were old fashion even though we grew up during the "sexual and drug" revolution. We instilled in them a work ethic and to help others. We also used a lot of common sense. We got these values from not only our parents but our grand and greatgrand parents. We only hope we have passed them on to them.

Like the old saying goes "The times they are a changing". Maybe we should re-visit the past because in the last 20 years we seem to be going backward in being reasonable sensible people.

I grew up during an age with discrimination against women in the workplace who made less than their male equivilent and the only thing it made me was a more successful determined woman. I didn't get angry or resentful but instead learned from those around me and moved forward succesfully. Never received a hand-out but received many people with a hand to help me along the way.

My grandmother who was a seamstress who lived in a cold water flat taught me to appreciate what I had and be proud of what and who I was. She also taught me how to cook on an old coal stove which made better meals than the fancy stove I have today.

In the last few years I've realized how much "technology" can hold us back and restrict us instead of moving us forward and I yearn for the "good old days".

[Isobel Carr]

@Jeanne: My childhood in the 70s sounds just like yours in the 40s, LOL! Personally, I don't think the world is anymore dangerous now, I think the news cycle has just convinced us it is (which is sad for kids). And while my parents were anything but old fashioned (Bay Area hippies), chores and work ethic were certainly emphasized.

[Helen]

Very interesting post

Times change all the time I was a teenager in the 70's here in Australia and things were so open then and changing my mother used to shake her head at me with some of the things I would say.
I love the regency period but I would also love to visit the 40's loved the music and fashon from that time

Have Fun
Helen

[Hellion]

I was born to older parents (I'm 36) and my parents were raised in the Depression era (my Dad is 89), so I don't exactly fit in with my peers (80s & 90s) because I grew up with records and singing Johnny Horton and Hank Williams. I swear I could almost be a child of the 40s and 50s than a child of the 80s that I was.

I'm not sure how far back I'd have to go to feel completely alien though. When I was real little I remember sometimes having to use the outhouse and/or using oil lamps when the electricity went out. No microwaves, et al. I think once I had to go back far enough that there were *ONLY* wood stoves to cook on would completely throw me. I could build a wood fire (we had wood heat in my house as a kid), but cooking in a wood stove would be confusing to me. (I remember having a wood stove in the house when I was a kid though! Never cooked on it though....)

And to go back far enough in time where women were pretty much banned from wearing pants (Thank you, Kathryn Hepburn!)--that would throw me off. And no Maxi wings? That would be the most alarming for me. *LOL* Since I've been around, feminine hygiene products have been awesome. Before my time, not as cool. Wouldn't want to have to fool with it.

[Jo Beverley]

Great comments, everyone.

Isobel, what a great insight about the variety of "times" in our world now. And how some of them would be more alien that 1000 years ago in a European setting.

Ah, yes, Hellion, all those conveniences we take for granted.

It was hard physical work in the past for most people to just keep things going. Hard for men and women, and the children who had to help, too.

Jo

[catslady]

I was born in 1950 so of course I don't really remember the early 50's so I would think that would be about the time things would seem very strange for me. But even clothes and hairstyles seem to change faster than that. Oh, and technology is even faster!!

[theo]

I'm going to prattle a bit here just because it's easier. I remember my great grandmother who was born in 1868. My maternal grandmother was born in 1887. My father was born in 1907. I was born in 1954. Both my great grandmother's and grandmother's houses were very Victorian in design and style. For a long time, I rebelled against that style because it seemed old and stuffy and since I was a 'hippie' in my teens, it was about as far from what I liked at the time as one can get. *a disclaimer: I love anything 1750-1890's now* Not only was the style stuffy, both my great grandmother and my grandmother who were from England, were stuffy. They carried their 'high-class' moors with them until the end and when I was around them, I was expected to behave accordingly.

My father on the other hand, had polio when he was a little baby and didn't walk until he was three and attacked life with a vengeance much to his mother's chagrin.

My mother was born in 1917 to a mom who was already close to 30. Her parents were from Scotland and so, between the two cultures, I grew up very much immersed in attitudes, customs and manners that were of a different era.

That's not to say that my mother wasn't ahead of her time as well. She couldn't wait to hit the workforce and when the war started, she tested the B-52 Bomber engines at the Willow Run plant during WWII. If it hadn't been for the one who's oil lines blew up in her face and having to rush her through my dad's department to the infirmary, they'd never have met and eloped 3 months later.

Which was probably best since my very British grandmother wasn't at all happy with her son marrying a Scot, but that's another story/history lesson in itself.

And all of this is to say, I think I'd have a much easier time going back. My father lived through no light bulbs, no running water, an outhouse, the introduction of the automobile and a baby sister who died of blood poisoning from a bug bite when she was three and wouldn't stop scratching it, to the invention of penicillin (which would have cured his sister) to a man walking on the moon to his last year at 93, sitting in front of my computer and watching a video online in 2000.

I wonder if there will ever be another generation that will see the drastic changes in the world as quickly as his.

I wouldn't want to come forward if I couldn't live through it naturally. At least not to this time period anyway. Talk about a culture shock. But I could definitely go back!

[Diane]

I am 77 years old, and I think I could go back 100 years without feeling too out of place. I can remember riding in 1920's cars in my youth and feeling terribly conspicuous. Now, though, I would be riding in a "Vintage" automobile and considered rich enough to feed a hobby in antique autos. I still have some 78 rpm Victrola records that we used to play on my grandmother's old wind-up phonograph. Of course, we had outhouses back then in a country town in California, although the "towners" had flush toilets. And my grandmother cooked and canned on a wood stove in the heat of summer. Wow, I wouldn't have liked that! She must have been tough.

But anything further back than 100 years would be difficult, I think. Women lived such restricted lives. Medicine would not have progressed very far, and people died of tetanus and fevers and food poisoning routinely. Workers worked in appalling conditions. And, if I were then the person I am now, I would have been very distressed and frustrated at the lives society forced upon its own people.

I have done a lot of genealogical research into my own family. I found that my great, great grandparents in the 1840's moved here from London where he was a tailor. They lived on Dartmouth Street in Westminster near St.Martins in the Field where they were married. I often wonder what was happening in Westminster, London, in mid-century that forced them to make such a hugh change in their lives.

Now I am just a little proud that I can keep up with technological changes enough that I can at least use this computer and a cell phone. It's more than I would have dreamed of when I was a young girl.

[Martha Andrews]

My grandfather (in his 90's at the time) told me about courting my grandmother on a horse & buggy but then told me some "pranks" he and his friends did considered "OK" for Halloween and I couldn't help but think that things really hadn't changed in the basics except he'd be called a juvenile delinquent today!

I do feel sorry for children no longer able to hop onto a bicycle and ride 3 miles to visit grandma & grandpa (at age 9) or hop onto a city bus and go to the movies by herself at age 11! But as to feeling foreign I have to think teenagers of today would be like an alien coming to earth if put into a world of the 1940's or 50's.

For me---I absolutely agree with John about the farmer and the Egyptians--some basic things were the same for so long and now we are leap-frogging in 10 years what used to take maybe 100's of years to do.

Even farms are no longer "basic" (Industrialized farms) and raising cattle for beef is completely a foreign thing to the methods of 30 years ago. With steroids etc.

IF I were set down where I'd want to be--it would be in Europe (speaking German) to hear music as it was written and to feel the surprise and delight at Mozart or Beethoven's sounds that were never heard before.

[Wilssearch]

Having been born in 1949 and coming of age during the late 60s & early 70s, I found myself out of sync with the times I lived in. Being a reader and not a doer, I would need to live in a time where I didn't need to work and there would be access to lots of books - regardless of format. I would be uncomfortable with anything else. I also would not like to visit the future.

I agree that societal changes (cultural if you prefer) does not keep up with changes of a technological/scientific matters. So I guess I will just stay here with my KindleNook and read history and romance!!!! LOL

[Barbara Kuterbach]

I am in my early 80's and I think I would be at home In Regency, Georgian, and even earlier times. Growing up in the Depression, I learned how to cook, make clother, clean game, etc. We didn't have a lot of appliances people take for granted, nor did we have instant communication--not even a telephone. I am reminded of the lyrics to a song by Cathy Miller--"Life was very wonderful when Grandmama was young, the women were all beautiful. The children, they were good, The men were so gallant and so tall."

[Pageturner]

What an interesting idea - that Georgette Heyer 'knew' the Regency world in a way we don't quite take on board. I think the Scarlet Pimpernel stories were first written in the 1920s too - but when I read them as a child I assumed they were contemporary ie set in the 1790s.

[email protected]

[Pageturner]

Of course I meant 'written in the 1790s' not 'set'!

[Jo Beverley]

Jo here. Pageturner, I read once that The Scarlet Pimpernel was an idea originally based in the lower class revolts in her native Hungary, but as no one in Britain, where she then lived, was interested in that, she switched it to the French Revolution.

I think today an author wouldn't get away with such a clear class divide -- aristocrats good and nobl; peasants unpleasant, cruel, and often stupid; and those leading them, sneaky and venal.

At least, that's how I remember it. Never bothered me, so I'm not sure what that says!

Jo

[Julie Wolf]

I am 63 and have lived the 60's, husband a viet nam vet, so know that history very well. I would love to go back to the Jane Austen time period. I love the clothes and good manners. Although I do not like the class distinction. But then we still have that today in the rich, middle class and poor in our country. With what our world has to offer, there should never be poor, but there is. I love reading historical romances, just to glean thoughts and descriptions about clothing and what they drove. I use to restore antique dolls and wondered where those dolls had been and wished they could talk. :) I would study the dress of the times and dress them accordingly fun!

[Robin Wilson]

Born in Washington, DC in 1954, brought up in Northern Virginia (most of it outside the beltway), I would not have to go far to find a time when things are very much "not now".

I can remember signs on cafes (not far from where I live today) that read "Whites Only". And until the sixth grade, I attended segregated schools.

It wasn't until 1928 that Gov Byrd signed into law the Antilynching Law; this was the first in the nation that defined lynching as a state crime. And, please, do not confuse Gov Byrd as a progressive; he was vehemently opposed to desegregation.

So, yes, I would find my life much more difficult without the creature comforts we know today, e.g. dialing 9-1-1, holiday shopping on the internet, pay per view, heated car seats, the ubiquitous cell phone and last but not least, the advances in medical science. But still, the loss of these things would not be nearly as strange and foreign as the society I can still remember and can only say "good riddance".

[Mary Jo Putney]

John--

Thanks so much for visiting us again, and for such a fascinating blog! It makes us think. I grew up on a farm in Upstate New York, and have found that very handy for writing books set in earlier, more agrarian times.

Part of the fun of writing time travel novels is the 'fish out of water' situations the characters find themselves in. (The issues of physics and changing the timeline I steer clear of. *G*)

[Maryannelanders]

Thank you for your post, John and Jo.

I was born in 1952. If I got caught up in time warp, I'd probably do all right if I ended up after WWI. Before, not so much. To my mind, that series of events marked the cultural great divide between "our time" and "before our time". A subjective call, but there you have it.

My current WIP involves times travel. I've done my fair share of thinking on this subject.

The way I see it---just my opinion, of course, seeing as nobody can prove it---the big problem such a voyager would encounter wouldn't be dealing with obvious changes. The fashions, customs, laws, technology, anything having to do with sex---changes in these departments would be comparatively easy for a smart, resourceful time-traveler to handle.

No, the greatest obstacle would be the cultural mindset of the time---the underlying patterns of thinking, and therefore acting, that distinguish one period from another. These are so profound, so powerful; yet so hard to fathom, let alone deal with.

Often the mindset involves assumptions and paradigms of ideas that are rarely if ever brought up. Therefore someone who lives in terms of them might not be able to describe them. There has never been a need to think about them.

John brought up the notion of a pharaoh time-traveling to an Ohio farm in the 1880s, and posited that this ancient Egyptian would recognize most of the items in his surroundings. Furthermore, he would feel more at home there and then than a member of that farm family would if time warped into the present.

May I voice a polite disagreement? Even in the late 19th century, agricultural technology was far ahead of what that pharaoh would have been familiar with. Early harvesting and cultivating machines. Changes in farming techniques, such as crop rotation and improved strains. Crops no ancient in the Old World ever knew, such as corn, potatoes, tomatoes, squash, and tobacco. The very notion of raising crops for feeding cities hundreds of miles away. Improvements in crop yield that even then were lowering the ratio of country folk to city folk.

Even if that farmer was technologically behind the times, and no doubt many were, that pharaoh wouldn't have to wander far before he'd run into a railroad. And a factory. What would he make of the Industrial Revolution? Not to mention its profound effects on society.

And unless that pharaoh were Akhenaten, the famous (if unsuccessful )religious reformer, he'd probably have a hard time understanding the fact that this farm family worshipped one god rather than many. Let alone the effects of their religion on their daily lives.

And let's not overlook another profound and significant difference between the farmer and the pharaoh. One of them lived in a democracy. Far from a perfect one---Is there such a thing? Has there ever been? Still, that 19th-century American farmer enjoyed far more rights and opportunities than his counterparts in ancient Egypt did.

These included equality under the law and social mobility, concepts that would have bewildered that pharaoh. And, if he finally understood them, would have angered him!

The differences between the worlds of these two men largely have to do with cultural mindset. Changes in fields such as technology and politics arise from it, and these changes further shape it, giving rise to new changes, and so.

Well, I've gone on long enough. Thanks for posing your questions and starting this discussion. Keep up the good work!

[Bonnie]

I was born in 1958 to older parents, so I never really felt like I fit in to my time.

I don't necessarily think I would have trouble with a "time" period as much as an "attitude" period as others have mentioned.

Just in my lifetime religion (christian) has become much less of an influence in our lives, for instance, stores are not closed on Sundays (many are never closed)as a matter of course.

Thanks to the struggles of centuries of strong women, we don't have to have a male countersigner to apply for credit.

It is sad that people today don't feel they can let their children off a short leash. My nieces, ages 14-25, were never allowed the freedoms of my sister and myself. People seem to think that evil has only come into the world in the last 40 years. Evil has always been around, it just wasn't talked about.

We act as if there is no class system in the US, but keeping up with the Joneses is just that and more insidious.
If something bad happened in your family, you hushed it up quickly, so as to appear "normal".
Mentally challenged people were locked up, girls were sent away to have their babies or to quietly have an abortion if you were wealthy enough. Sex abuse was around, it was just covered up by the macho mentality of the times. A husband couldn't rape a wife. He had all the power in the family. This seems shocking to many readers when shown in an historical romance. What most don't realize is that those mores have only changed in the last generation or two. Think about the song "Standing on the corner, watching all the girls go by" in the 60's. Watch any old cop show from the 70's and blatant sexism and racism is there to be seen.

Having to cook on a wood stove (which my grandmother did up into the 1970's would be a piece of cake to me rather than butting my head up against the brick walls of conformity, sexism, and racism.

I still remember those attitudes, and am very glad that I did not grow up in an overtly racist area also.

[Bonnie]

Badly edited note above, but you get the gist.

[John Dierdorf]

One more minor anecdote to add to what Jo posted for me. I have a collection of letters written in the early 1870's by my great-grandfather to the girl who would become my great-grandmother. He was a Civil War veteran working in the "big city", living in a boarding house and saving every penny so they could get married. The letters are full of his distress that he hadn't seen or talked to her for months. (He couldn't afford to rent a horse, so the only way he could get to her family's farm was a 12-hour-walk each way. Since he worked six days a week, that means the couple got together at Christmas.) Today that distance is 3 or 4 exits on Interstate 77 -- call it half an hour by car. And of course today everybody has a telephone.

[Jo Beverley]

Thanks again, John.

We always fly to the realms of fantasy for our guest gift, so this time....

ta-da!

Your own time machine!
http://www.hollywoodlostandfound.net/props/timemachine.html

You'll have some fine observations when you return.

Jo