It's 4:00 A.M.
I just noticed that I have had no interaction with anyone listed under the column on the left called Who's Online.
In stark contrast, many of those listed on the right hand side under In Memoriam were people I had had a great deal of interaction with in comments or messages. I had edited stories for a number of them.
I wonder what percentage of current BC users have ever heard a Bob Dylan or Janis Joplin song? How many know what a Telex machine was? Do they have any idea what No Carbon Required means? Can they imagine a world where television stations broadcasted test patterns and Please Standby messages more hours than programming?
I've just edited over eighty of my stories. Part of the process was to update contemporary references such as looking toward your wristwatch to check the time. Even without Trump stomping on tradition and Covid turning out lives upside down things have really changed since I started posting stories twenty-five years ago.
Especially who is reading those stories.
Tempus Fugit.
Jill
Comments
Things are changing all the time.
About 10 years ago I started writing a superhero story, 'Switcheroo.' I intend to get back to it one day, but at this point there are things I included meant to be next-level tech at the time or that were just becoming mainstream that are, if anything, outdated and laughable as part of a super-arsenal.
Even at my age, the 15 years I've been here have brought a ton of change, both to the people around us, the stories they read and post, and how we interact with one another. It's enough to make some of my old pieces seem positively quaint (or, if not being so polite, laughably awkward,) and just drives home that everything new is, eventually, out of date.
You shouldn't feel compelled to change your stories because the date on your clock has ticked up, hon. A story being of its time is as much an admirable quality as a story being timeless. Imagine if classics were consistently updated to keep up with the modern day, how many great tales would be lost because of changing social norms, changing tech, or even changing countries. What would Huck Finn be with amber alerts, cell phones, and child trafficking concerns thrown on top? Does Narnia need to be updated to include fiber internet in Aslan's castle and Mr. Tumnus' Instagram feed?
Your writing is a time capsule, of where you were and who you were at the time you wrote it, and of how the world was. That's something to cherish, because I'm sure I speak for many of us when I say that, nostalgia be damned, returning to a simpler time when quarantine wasn't a thing, our lives weren't lifted up or torn down by Twitter posts, and having privacy was legitimately possible is something we'd gladly fantasize about.
Things are changing all the time . . . but sometimes it's worthwhile to appreciate the things that stay the same, and the small comforts that can be found within them.
Melanie E.
I actually saw Dob Dylan play live
That dates me doesn't it? He played a gig at Blackbushe Airport on the Hampshire/Surrey border (UK). A good number of those who I was at school with are already deceased. One only just over a week ago. Because of what they put me through over 5 years, I'd be the last person a live to shed a tear over their passing.
I've just renewed my Motorcycle Club membership. I've been in it since 1976. 44 years and counting. There are only a few of old grumpies left standing.
Let's face it Angela, none of us are getting younger and you are right, a lot of the old stalwarts here are either in TG Heaven or posting a lot less.
All I can say is...
Keep on Trucking, and say no to any 'Move over Darling' requests.
Samantha
Was that 1978
If so he was supported by Eric Clapton.
Four years later Clapton went through Hazelden which is a mile from where I live. As part of his rehab he waited on tables in a small restaurant located one hundred yards from the house I currently live in.
Jill
Angela Rasch (Jill M I)
Concerts
In 1970, I attended two concerts in Monterey, CA, and saw live performances by folk like Duke Ellington, Joan Baez, Cannonball Adderly, The Beach Boys, Country Joe MacDonald, Buddy Rich, Linda Ronstadt, The Modern Jazz Quartet, Woody Herman, and Kris Kristofferson.
Not a lot of those people still with us today. The day after the second concert, we found out Janis Joplin had died in another part of the state. That was the day Kristofferson first heard Janis's version of his song, "Me and Bobbie McGee" which she had recorded a few days before her death. If she'd been at Big Sur with us, she might have lived to take another piece of our hearts.
Hugs,
Erin
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
Yep, it was july 1978
I was temporarily working for the British Army in Germany at the time and travelled back for the gig. I lived just to the east of Reading so I spent a few nights at home before returning to Westfalia.
Eric 'slowhand' Clapton did support him.
Ironically, I was at Blackbushe a couple of weeks ago getting my Flu Jab at the 'Drive Thru' centre. Yes, I only live a few miles from there even today.
Samantha
Trip through one's past
Jill, we left all those things behind us in the annals of time. For better or worse we kept advancing into the present and that also rolled behind us lost in time but retained in memories. Family, friends, enemies no longer there to love, hug, or just wish they would hurry up and die. These lives, these mortal shells are a gift. But the gift comes with a price. We love, learn, share, and add to our spiritual soul. I for one am glad my gift comes with an expiration date. I've been blessed more than anyone I have met or I know. A price comes with that gift too. Have I done everything I could? Am I leaving the world a better place for having been? The answer is no. Humanity is still set on a collision course with destiny. The hate, the selfishness, the greed, ignorance, sins, gets worse by the day. It was sheer prideful ignorance to think I could change any of that when I came back this time.
Hugs Jill
Barb
Life is a gift, treasure it.
Oklahoma born and raised cowgirl
Right with you
I grew up watching cartoon Saturday mornings. I was in college when I drew my first number, and the draft ended, so it seems like I'm a contemporary. Now, I came to appreciate this style of writing fairly late; 2014 was when I discovered the Saga of Tuck, about a year after Ellen dropped off the map. I realized I enjoyed it, and have been hooked ever since. I've now developed my own sense of what I like, and there's enough variety here that there's almost always something new to enjoy. Your writing can be challenging, but I never fail to read it to see where you're heading!
Keep it up, and thanks for the entertainment,
Steve
The Trans experience is also changing
I mostly read the trans-related stories here, but one thing I've noticed is that and awful lot of the experiences and the concerns that are described are foreign to me. I transitioned in the time of "informed consent," of corporations going to some trouble to be considered LGBT+ friendly, of trans people being able to live and flourish while "out" as trans. (Not to say that there aren't places and communities where trans people still have a hard time, but I'm discovering that there aren't as many as I would have thought.) So many of the stories feel like they're back in the days of gatekeepers (i.e., pre-2000) and having to be "stealth" (something I am constitutionally incapable of.)
For that matter, many of the ones that describe teenage years seem to be from before my time, too, and I was in high school (ages 15-18) in 1969-1971. I was never particularly masculine and never went to any effort to be, and while I was definitely an outsider and regarded as "weird" and "queer," people didn't go out of their way to make my life miserable. (They did the sort of making-miserable that they did to everyone.) I'm sure there was a social stratum where jocks and cheerleaders were gods, but I was never part of that society, and they weren't a problem. Actually, the winds of the '60's were beginning to seep into my part of the Ante-Bellum South, so by the time I was a Junior (1970), people's minds had room for the idea of people being "different," yet still human.
Drama
If life had enough drama for everyone, it would not be necessary to read fiction. :)
Hugs,
Erin
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
Not so sure
I think that a lot of folks read fiction to get away from the real-life dramas.
Penny
Voluntary vintage here
Compared to my [age] peer I should be nearly 10 years older. Even though I just cracked half a century, I like listening (among others) to the music of Bob Dylan, Janice Joplin, Peter Paul and Mary, Pete Seeger, Red Souvine (on the english side), and others who started on the german folk scene in the late sixties and early seventies of the last century.
In my personal opinion, a wristwatch with an analog face is still the best way to quickly and discreetly check the time. I consider it very rude to pull out the [smart]phone during a conversation, even if it is just to check the time. Because that breaks both of our concentration on the subject, and interrupts the flow of the conversation.
And even though, back in 1985, I was the first one in our community to own a home computer, today I refuse to participate in any of the so-called "social networks". The likely cause of that aversion is probably the blatant disregard of due-process and blatant breach of confidentiality by the judicial system during the break-up of my marriage and the custody war.
My taste in reading material has also changed a lot since I discovered TG fiction in the late 1990s. Today those early stories have too much of a sexual (as well as emotional and physical) abuse component for me to feel comfortable, let alone enjoy. They are even borderline triggering of my PTSD. Though I also have to admit, that these "abusive" stories have been an important factor for my awareness of the mobbing and abuse I suffered from my early school years almost through to the end of high school, and the resulting PTSD. There is a big part of low self-esteem and a desire to "check out" from this world in my then enjoyment of those stories.
Today I much prefer stories that show acceptance, love, support and overcoming of adversity. Some of my personal BCTS evergreens are: Frills, The Station's Late Nite Princess, The Pom-Pom Fortress, Venture Realm Adventure Park and the SPA universe (this last one sadly abandoned with several unfinished story lines). The recently finished Tommy - The Trials and Tribulations of a Girl? by Teddie S. has resonated positively on so many levels with me. The ongoing Broken Wings by Cyclist story is a nice point in case.
In the realm of fantasy the Anmarian Tales are worth an occasional re-read.
There are several other authors that I am actively reading or re-reading, that I can not all mention here.
With the warmest and best regards for all of you!
Jessica Nicole
So You're A Dinosaur
Just like me, but I think I predate you by a few years. Bob Dylan? Hah! Johnny come lately. I went to The Marquee Club in London in 1962 to see Georgie Fame And The Blue Flames (who remembers them?) and also saw this brand new group called The Rolling Stones. In 1956 a band called Bill Haley And His Comets played in The Odeon Tottenham Court Road (London) where I saw them too!
Telex was our preferred method of company communication in the mid 70's and early 80's. I think it was 1983 or 84 when we got our first Fax machine, which could do one copy at a time. When I started work in the late 50s copying was done by Roneo and a blueprint really was a blueprint.
We got our first TV in 1959 and had two channels (OMG) in black and white and then I went to live in a country that didn't even have TV! For years I used to stagger my colleagues by insisting on using notebooks with carbon paper but they were even more amazed when I could produce my copies of the notes that I had sent them which they had tried to ignore or deny that I had ever sent.
We have all seen friends and acquaintances move on or die, but there are still some great friends left, particularly here, where we are in the company of those who understand us.
We just have to withstand the winds of time until it is our turn to shuffle off this mortal coil. May that be many years hence.
Your world is my world
Yes indeed. There is a whole generation who struggle to tell time on an analog clock. To whom a note written cursive is in a secret code. I recently posted a story that had been on my hard drive a while where the protagonist was a software engineer. I made mention that he was working on a TSR. One of the old timers here commented on the story being dated, since TSRs are DOS exclusive programing. I'm sure that many, if not most, read right by that line oblivious as to what a TSR was.
Hugs
Patricia
Happiness is being all dressed up and HAVING some place to go.
Semper in femineo gerunt
Ich bin ein femininer Mann
I have a hand....
my right hand to be specific... that I swore I'd never wash after I got to shake Janis Joplin's hand. I'M anachronistic.
Love, Andrea Lena
B.B. King
wow. I met the great man in Moscow in 1994 at a club called 'B B King's' He was staying at the same hotel as me. There was a great Georgian Restaurant above the club which was on the Inner Ring.
My first gig was Pink Floyd in London in '67. Syd Barrett was still playing lead. Hearing a 25 minute 'Set The Controls for the Heart of the Sun' blew my mind. Became a firm fan from then on and was at the first ever performance of Dark Side.
Oh my aching bones. I'm getting old
Samantha
The Spectrum
the eve of Thanksgiving that same year we drove from Wilkes-Barre to Philly for the Rolling Stones. Apart from the novelty of seeing the Stones, the BEST part of the night was the opening act - B.B. King. You might say that after he left the stage, the thrill was gone.
Love, Andrea Lena
There are few absolutes in life.......
But one is certain. Nothing stays the same.
Movement is life, and only by moving forward can we survive. Contrary to the idiotic cries heard at a certain politician’s rallies, MAGA is a fallacy. The America of the past was not that great - at least not for many. Surely a small percentage of the population feels that times were better in the past, but only because they see change as taking things away from them.
Like the children’s tale of the king of the turtles who was king of all he surveyed, when you are on top of the heap everything seems wonderful. But not for those beneath you, and only when you fall from the top do you finally realize just how bad some others have it. Wishing that you were back on top does not make things better - it simply perpetuates a bad system.
Change is life. It falls on us all to make that change good.
But the important thing to remember is that just because the world changes, that doesn’t mean that the good things that were created before are less worthy. A classic will always be great simply because it was well made. A wonderful story will always be worth the time and effort to read it, no matter how dated it may become.
Is the Mona Lisa less because the digital photo has become the standard? I think not.
D. Eden
Dum Vivimus, Vivamus
OK Boomers!
.
.
Okay Boomers, Andrea and I are gonna sing a little song for you.
Those who know this one can sing along...
Ronni: Oh the way Steve Miller played
Drea: Songs by Marmalade and Slade
Ronni: Girls like us was so afraid
Together: Those wasted days...
Drea: Couldn't come out to our friends
Ronni: Tried to fake like we was men
Together: Sister we could use a chance to do it all over again
Ronni: We wouldn't be such chickenshits
Drea: We'd take E and grow some tits
Together: But you only get one shot at this... Those wasted days!
SHEESH! That sounds a lot more depressing than it did in the shower.
I was just trying to make it all rhyme.
Oh well, that's showbiz...
~hugs, Veronica
Well shit, I guess it really CAN happen here..,
.
uh...
I only wish that when WE grew up, the worst was that we were told to stifle
all in MY family.... was filmed before a mostly live studio audience,
Love, Andrea Lena
Telex machine
I never used a Telex, but I did operate a teletype unit when I was in the Army in 1969. I typed the outgoing messages onto punched paper tape, which was then read through a reader to send the message. Incoming messages printed on paper.
My 23-year-old daughter has never used a television set where you had to walk up to it and use a dial to change channels. She has never used a dial telephone, nor needed the assistance of an operator to place a long distance call. She has never known a world without mobile phones. How did we survive in such primitive conditions?
My first home computer was an Eagle II (Zilog Z80 CPU, CP/M 2.2, 64KB of RAM) in 1982. A really nice system, soon eclipsed by the IBM PC.
The Venerable ASR33
I used one while a Student in the early 1970's. We'd dial-up a remote DEC10 (Hatfield or Open University) with an acoustic coupler. I wonder what the phone bills were? Huge.
I only disposed of my paper tape repair kit a couple of years ago.
We migrated to VT05's in '74. I have a VT420 in my Garage connected to a PDP-11.
Those were exciting days. Getting down and dirty with hardware. Unibus timing was interesting.
Samantha
A lot of my stories take
A lot of my stories take place in the 1990s, early 2000’s or my characters do not own certain forms of technology (due to their age or financial situation).
Ah Telex
Using either a Teleprinter No, 7 or a Teleprinter No. 15. Fax, the earliest fax I saw was the size of a two draw filing cabinet and was used to send pictures between newspaper offices and their HQs. Dial phones... in the UK by the seventies, when I started work, we had a mixture of 200 and 300 series, but these were being replaced with the 700 series of which 706, 710 and 711's were already being replaced by 740, 741 and 746 types. (7x1 were wall mounted phones, 7x0 were table phones with provision for 4 buttons and 7x6 were table phones with provision for a single button)
I didn't see any bands or singers live and our second TV was a Spencer West, I can't remember the first one's name, but it had a small screen.
I even remember Teletext, called Ceefax on BBC and Oracle on ITV. I'll go farther and mention Prestel, I knew someone who had a Prestel company. 1200 baud download and 75 baud upload. Unfortunately it never took off in the ammount the Post Office thought.
International calls were not common, Birmingham, UK's second city, only had five dedicated circuits to one of the five or so Internantional exchanges in London, everything else was an overflow from the London routes.
Yep, another oldie, but I am glad I lived through the 20th Century rather than the 21st.
Sam
An absurd answer for different reasons now and then
In the early years of this millenium my answer to a question would have been completely absurd 15 years earlier and no less absurd 15 years later.
At a bus stop:
- May I borrow your telephone?
- Sorry, I don't have one on me.
In the late 80s who'd be carrying a telephone? (and where was the wire?)
Now: What idiot would NOT carry a (mobile) telephone?
As for teletype and telex I've spent some considerable time handling those, including whiling away the wee hours of night writing texts that could be read directly from the punched paper tape (and definitely not when printed out). One came to 20 meters.
On the other hand I didn't come across international calling connected by a live operator until I was 24.
I'm That Idiot
In the 70s I found myself incredibly stressed. I had tapped into an innate ability to sell and was struggling to consummate all the deals I was making.
Part of the solution was to take off my wristwatch. I had lost two or three deals when I had impatiently glanced at my watch, thereby telling the prospect he was not important. At the same time I became much less precise at making appointments. This was before Daytimers and the world's fascination with scheduling. My life became immeasurably better.
For much the same reasons I don't take my iPhone with me many places. When you're with someone, you should be with them -- not hooked to social media.
At one point in my life I suffered horribly from agoraphobia. I bought several self-help books by Dr. Claire Weekes. Within months I was leading a normal life which to me included a lot of public speaking.
Serenity is extremely important to me. Constant contact with the people I'm with is serenity. Constant contact to the latest mime is not.
Jill
Angela Rasch (Jill M I)
For some of the same reasons
I use a low IQ mobile and don't use social media.
Sorry if I offended you by "idiot". The use was meant to be rethorical.
Idiot Doesn't Offend
Having been a public figure and a parent of four, I'm very familiar with being termed an idiot.
No offense taken.
Jill
Angela Rasch (Jill M I)