Twenty-sixteen that is!
Here we go! … brand new year full of brand new stuff from Widder Island … and musings, and occasional visiting cat photos.
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Greetings to the bunch of people who started following this blog at the end of December, you know, after I posted that I wasn’t going to post anything until the new year. Seriously though, welcome and I hope you enjoy the ride.
I wonder at what point in the Golden Age of rock-n-Roll (everything before 1970) did someone decide that a female human is officially ‘available’ the moment she turns sixteen? Fifteen is off-limits but after that she’s fair game?
Was it a reaction to the buttoned-up fifties and the concerted effort to put women, and by extension girls, back in the home at the end of WWII?
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It seems our pernicious grammarian continued their dastardly actions and picked on the entire Phryne Fisher series. They grow bolder by the book, not content to merely correct historical data, they are now taking thesaurus-ing to a whole ‘nuther level. Mrs Widds has post-it noted an entire book (8 ‘edits’ and counting) and we’ll let our Librarian know. (not this sort of Librarian, but I bet they sometimes wish they could be)
I have to ask myself, what has this person got against Phryne?
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I guess not much has changed since that ‘golden age, eh? …
I don’t understand the destructive ones, but something from Sol Stein’s book On Writing (p. 271) clanged in the recesses of my brain, and I dug it out for you. This is a fictional character, a psychiatrist, but Stein wrote him in a novel called The Magician, and had the psychiatrist “assert his theory of the three categories of people, those who set their own goals, those who are followers content to obey instructions, and those who burn with frustration because they refuse to follow, can’t lead, and don’t know what they want.”
I think those who tear things apart are in this category of those who burn with frustration. They literally don’t know what to do with themselves, and envy makes them destroy what other, creative, people do.
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Thank you for taking the time to search this out …. Mrs Widds and I both agree with the sentiment. 🙂
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I know this librarian would have preferred being one of the Librarians, but alas, I have to live my alternate life in fantasies! Happy new year to you and Mrs Widds and the visiting fur faces.
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I’m taken with the video: Only Sixteen. I’ve always liked that song, but hearing it perform live reminds me how great this group sounds. They sound exactly the same live as they do on the radio. That doesn’t happen a lot today. Those boys had talent.
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The good Doctor knows how to sell a song! 😀
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That sounds hilarious. It would add to my enjoyment of the series.
In other news, just saw this story and thought of you. Time share cats!
http://distractify.com/animals/2015/12/31/deb-at-least-nine-lives
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With all the effort that the person is putting into the Phyre novels, she/he could’ve written one. The person must be very insecure that she/he has to attack the books. Oh well.
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Infuriatingly sad.
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Hmm… that Neil Sedaka song is catchy and well sung, but when I listen to the lyrics, I can’t help feeling slightly uncomfortable about them. I actually checked his age on Wikipedia at the time the song was released and apparently he was only 22, but because of the hairstyles and the suits everybody used to wear in those days, he looks a lot older than that to me. Anyway, even at 22, I’m not sure…
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I know we have to take these things in their cultural and historical timeline, but still …
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I guess we’re all just a little more sensitive to that kind of thing nowadays. It is a catchy song, though. Perhaps they could secretly change the wording to “Happy Birthday Sweet Twenty-Six.”
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Happy New Year!
I remember growing up we were very conscious that 16 was the age of consent in Nevada (it varies from state to state), and it could be important, depending on you and your significant other’s relative ages. (It wasn’t relevant for me, but oh, yes, I knew about it.)
I think in English, it’s more about the alliteration of “sweet sixteen.” If we compare to other cultures, the Quinceñeara is a year sooner, and the bar/bat mitzvah is younger yet. It’s arbitrary, just as eighteen and twenty-one are. We have to make dividing lines somewhere, right? 😉
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I think the thing about dividing lines is the why and the who of the decision making process.
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True.
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