When Thanksgiving gives you lemons...

 ...It's time to roast that turkey for a seasonal surprise.  Make sure the volume is turned on the video. 

Happy Thanksgiving from the Cookie's.

What Thanksgiving day movie should we see, 1975 version.

 

As is traditional, after the parade, after the Thanksgiving meal, after the football games, after dinner left overs, what movie shall we see?  And in 1975, these are our options.

Jaws for the 100th time? Paper Moon? The Sting? 

How about this double bill from the third column?  

Now, Cookie has questions. 

How does one approach this?  "Oh, honey, how about seeing the film adaptation of one of Shakespeare's greatest works on power and how it corrupts, followed by an X-Rated film of an unknown subject?  Sound like a plan?"

I mean Macbeth is, well, Macbeth - "Out damned spot, out!  Hell is murky..." and all.

And what sort of X Rated film does one chose to run in the theater?   The Devil in Miss Jones would work, I think.  But what if it's a three minute Rip Colt loop film involving men creating their own salad dressing? 

  

If 2020 were a birthday party...

 ...this would be it.

Seriously, I mean.  What the fuck. 

This is more like a dream that you need to talk to your therapist about:  

"Well, Dr. Freud, I am trapped in a French birthday party.  There is only me, the guest of honor who speaks no French at all, and two faceless people who walk around, dressed as emotionally ambivalent clowns, who are observing me, acting out pantomimes that make no sense.   The man occupies what I think is the woman's costume.  A woman occupies what appears to be a then old man's costume.  They dance about, feigning shock, surprise, and ennui. 

"Yes, there are candies to eat, but I am told that they are not for me, but guests.  Who the guests are no one will tell me.  And they generic brand candies, too.  To drink is warm strawberry quick, with peppermint sticks.  And there is a cake which I am not allowed to eat.
 
"The wall of balloons prevents my escape. And the mute clowns keep pulling me back into this scene. 
I can now only seek sexual fulfillment if there are people in costumes made of boxes, judging my performance.

"John Paul Sarte appears, doing magic tricks.  "Pick a card," he says.  I look, it is the three of hearts.  Sarte then holds up a rubber rat and says "You guessed wrong."

"what does it mean, Dr. Freud?  What does it mean?"

 

Horseshoe Lake, 1908

 

Simpler days, no?

This was taken way back 1908 and it appears to be folks out for an excursion to Shaker's Horseshoe Lake.  And it's so early that Shaker Heights as a village wasn't even established.  The concept was there, just not the incorporation.  That would happen until January 1912. 

The lake was full - they have been dredging the lakes, I believe, to get rid of years and years worth of silt and muck.  I don't know if it's full again. But they called it a Beauty Spot, and for good reason. 

Apparently, this was taken along the earthen damn that separates (and makes possible) Horseshoe Lake from Doan Brook. The map below, looking SSE is about right:

The house in the distance of the original picture is still there today 17050 South Park Boulevard, and it is a masterwork of Chateauesque style.  You just can't see it from this vantage point in the original picture from Google Maps street view. 

We should be grateful that this still exists.  In addition to the lake providing parklands and a nature reserve, this vista could have been a giant freeway interchange had a fiend by the name of Albert Porter had his way. 

Long story short, Albert Porter was the Cuyahoga County Engineer.  In addition to being a grade-A creep (he would ultimately lose his position when it found he had been demanding salary kickbacks for years from his employees) hated Cleveland's eastside heights communities.  He felt that the people that lived there in the 1950s looked own him.  So chip firmly planted on his shoulder, Porter devised a network of freeways that would effectively destroy Shaker Heights and the Doan Brook watershed.  

Two of the freeways were the Lee Freeway - an eight-lane monster that would have torn through the right side of the picture, and the Clark Freeway, also overbuilt, would have gone from left to right in through the middle of the image.  Connecting them was a multi-level exchange of concrete, steel, and pavement.  Porter got as far as convincing the State of Ohio to fund the project. (I believe that there were four freeways involved in this diabolical plan. 

What stopped it?  Shaker Heights citizens led by mostly housewives and professional women including one Alice Van Deusen, principal of Mercer Elementary School.   They are the ones who brought Governor Jim Rhodes to this site and showed him what he would be destroying.  It worked; Porter was stopped dead in his tracks.  Moreover, ODOT moved to cancel funding on any highway that would never pierce the sylvan scenery. The nature center building was built in the wooded area and name for Mrs. Van Deusen, who was also Cookie's grade School Principal until her retirement in 1970. 

Why all this now? 

Remember, when you fight for what is right, just, and serves a purpose larger than yourself, beautiful and enduring things happen.  In this time of unsettlement, remember what side you are on.  Good people win when they choose the cause larger than themselves, and the bad guys who want to wreck it all for their own greed don't win when you stick to your principles and fight the smart fight. 

On the record about the facts of life

 For some reason, pediatricians and record labels got together in the 1950s and 1960s and decided it would be a fine idea to teach the facts of life using records. ALL of these are an example of products sold to parents who dreaded having "the talk" with their children.

So, lets start with something that seems somewhat tasteful:

Well, alright.  The title is oogie.  I think that they would have better off stating "How parents should talk to their Children," instead of using the word "instruct". Which well, is oogie in this context.  But the model children look normal or at least haven't been grossed out yet.  We give this a B grade. 

Oh look, this one comes with a book! The book is instructional and filled with basic line drawings.  And now we have reached a product written by a doctor, who we hope understands what children should hear, and delivers it in a clinical but slightly avuncular tone.  Mom and dad are there - they bought these outfits just for the talk.  And the young girl appears to have a nice jumper on her support hose. 

We give this an A for presentation and authority.

And here comes Dr. Fishbein, America's Dean of Physicians. He's not interest in talking to young girls, but he'll talk to your ninth grader.  Well, it says (Growing Girls)  so there.  Now I wasn't able to find him on Google, so we're just going to have accept that Fishy here is what they say he is.    Nothing to unsettling.  The cover is clinical, almost grandfatherly.  Fishy would probably say that "One of the responsibilities of becoming a woman is knowing these facts, rather than rely on rumors."  At the end of the recording, Mrs. Fishbein brought out a tray of sugar cookies and some Kool-Aid for the growing girl and scotch for Fishy. We give this an A- for questionable and unverified authority but he looks trustworthy, too. 

And here we go into the toilet.  SEX and RECORDS!  Long, long, too long answers to an adolescent's questions that really were horrible rumors being spread between these too.  Bud looks really uncomfortable - he doesn't have any questions.  In fact, Bud has all the answers. Father, thoughtful, but ashamed.  Sis looks hypnotized by the spinning record label. 

But it's MOTHER that draws your eyes.  

Mother looks like she's had a past.  SEX is how she snagged Father.  And MOTHER is the one who is forcing this family gathering. She'd rather be screwing the milkman, but she wants to be sure that her daughter is sufficiently scared and save herself for a lonely marriage to a college professor with good benefits and who never touches her.  Father can't even bear to look at his wife.  And she is disgusted by the way he ting-tings the teaspoon in his coffee cup.  MOTHER gave up her best years by running off with that old fool, but she has "needs" too.  Mr. Simpkins, the milkman always has something for mother's needs.  "No heavy cream today, George.  But I'll need a delivery tomorrow."  

This gets a D for being creepy and an A for creepiness.

And prepare yourself for the worst:

"IT'S TIME SHE KNEW" sounds like a lot of bellowing, but notice the sotto voce application "about Menstruation" speaks to the shame - the sin of Eve, the curse, well you get the ugly picture.   

The "you" in "YOU need not be embarrassed" means it's something unpleasant, distasteful, and frankly, so oogie that YOU, parent/guardian, get a pass.  

But then, of course, the ad wants you to do the cowardly thing.  Buy the 45rpm record for one dollar, and then make the child listen to "Sally and her mother" do your dirty work for you, which will be told in a nice manner that you cannot muster up for your child/foster child/ ward, whatever. 

And once you have shamed her into listening to the record, for added embarrassment, can you imagine this 45rpm record getting swept up in her Fabian, Ricky Nelson, and Patsy Cline record collection that she takes to a party?   One minute it's Brenda Lee singing I'm Sorry followed by Sally and her mother having an adult conversation about menzies.  

Yeah, she'll never live that down.  And she'll just die from embarrassment, too.  So we give this an "F".

As for Cookie - I learned everything that I could as young as I could.  By the time the boys in school started with the "He puts his thing in the hole where her thing should have been..." story was told Cookie reacted to it with a look that said "And what?"

"Aren't you grossed out by it?"

"No, and neither will you one day."

"That's nasty."

"Then you're nasty because that's how you were made."  

SCORE!

But the idea of being sat down by either of my parents and being told to listen to ANY of these while they watched is simply creepy.  

UGH.