Comments on: 10 reasons I’m glad I don’t live in the 50s

By: Retro Renovation » Time Warp Wives

Retro Renovation » Time Warp Wives — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 08:00:57 +0000

[...] 10 reasons I’m glad I don’t live in the 50s. [...]

By: Retro Renovation » Authentic vintage bunny slippers for Mom

Retro Renovation » Authentic vintage bunny slippers for Mom — Fri, 02 May 2008 12:23:10 +0000

[...] mom got me a pair for my birthday in February and I have been wearing them every day since. In 10 Reasons I’m Glad I Don’t Live in the 50s, I wrote about how much I loved my Teva’s because they made my feet happy — that goes [...]

By: leslie

leslie — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 05:12:05 +0000

Wonderful list! The 40’s & the 50’s…..ahh, the boom of modernism in art and design. Products and ideas that still look more contemporary today than many of our convenient but anti-aesthetic advancements. Life was affordable, right sized and not so grandiose. But today? What can beat the ease of: travel, of “jetting” over the seas and arriving in another language, time zone and cultural way of life? Of resources at our fingertips, of knowing the well being of our friends across the globe on the same day they wrote? Of working, and choosing our professions. Our mothers received a reprieve when they went to work at our fathers dismay. They hung up their aprons (albeit lovely), bought a commuter car and made decisions outside of the house, this was their revolution. I take it for granted, a birth right but there were many that paved my way and I am grateful to be vibrant in the year 2008 with all of my choices, going strong yet still loving the aesthetics of a retro kitchen in the making!

By: Sumac Sue

Sumac Sue — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 22:06:18 +0000

Hi. Great post. Just spent the weekend with my 95-year-old grandmother, who has lived through a lot of decades. She definitely would pick today rather than the 50s, or any other decade she lived through, for that matter. She might want the youth, or the health, she had in years past, of course, but she has always loved experiencing the latest trends and inventions. She and my grandpa were the first people in their neighborhood to get a color TV back in the very late 50s or early 60s. (Can’t remember the year, but I remember that everything on TV looked green or orange, and it was a big hunk of a floor model.) Now, she is very proud of the flat screen plasma TV hanging on the wall of her condo!

By: maddy123

maddy123 — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 20:02:37 +0000

I don’t wanna live in the 50s either! (And I wasn’t born yet, anyway…) But I enjoy many things about the past, and find a lot of design from earlier periods pleasing, or at least fun to re-visit. I love it when people appreciate the older stuff, and aren’t in such a hurry to move on to the next thing (like ripping out cool vintage features when they remodel).

I love my cell phone and contemporary coffeemaker, for sure.

By: Ronn

Ronn — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 17:51:18 +0000

Hi,

I’ve already lived in the 50’s. I don’t need to again. I liked your list. It reminded me of one I wrote for my own website a few years ago. You might enjoy it:

“July 20, 2003:

I’ve made lists before of things that I “should” take for granted, but just DON’T. I know some of you DO take them for granted, and that’s probably the less “cluttered” approach to living a contemporary life…but I remain at least mildly amazed by things we find in OUR DAILY lives.

I’m reminded of this today because I needed to check in with my Wife. She was somewhere in another state, driving down some road at 70 mph, and I had no clue where. To be able to simply press a few buttons on my landline telephone machine, which, through the air, instructed other machines to call yet other machines, and send another signal through the air to another non-landline radio receiver (cell phone) machine sitting next to her in this car machine somewhere…well, that still amazes ME.

I’m amazed at electricity, airplanes, space stations, aircraft carriers, wrist watches, digital technology, organ transplants, the gyroscope, polyester shirts, television, radio, cognac, radar, cameras, contact lenses, cloning, the Hoover Dam, glass, movies, plastic, tape recorders, the Hubbel telescope, light bulbs, linear perspective, lasers, and the fact we continue to find “brand new” AND “long extinct” species of animals living right here amongst us.

I prefer living this way.

I like being amazed.

I like moving through the world…looking, listening, touching…and thinking “Man, THAT is so cool! I’m SO glad someone came up with that!”

Ronn.