29 December 1957 “More on the Coming Year, Schrödinger's Homemaker in Many Worlds and Elvis Gets Drafted”

First off I have to say it has been SO wonderful with so many comments. It felt quite good to see so many responses to my query for decisions for the new year.

I see many are leaning towards the 1930’s.  I was surprised to see a few votes for 1912 (which I would love to do the early 19th century and maybe one day if we move or find ourselves in a different setting that might be a goal). A few wish me to simply segue into 1958, a rather easy move I might add.

There have been a few comments that have suggested combining the time periods in some way. That got my wheels turning concerning the coming year’s decision. However, no matter what I choose all old posts will remain and my new project. The site will continue to keep and add to the previous years findings.  I don’t want to throw away all my hard work and in so many ways it would be impossible to shake ‘50’s Gal’ completely.

That brings me to the few who have answered, “I don’t care you’re nutz”, which of course I might be. Myself and my 50’s persona have become inseparable. We two are so often together  that sometimes I cannot tell where she ends and I begin. Often I am very much one person yet sometimes we separate and I have to think, “Hmm what would 50’s gal do in this situation?”

Many times she has been my sound and responsible parent tsk tsk-ing and tapping her foot at a decision I was about to make. Either way, I am sure it would be great fodder for a psychoanalyst. And those are becoming des rigueur here in the late 1950’s. By the mid 1960’s we’ll all have analysts.

Any decision I made, however, I simply will have as a dramatic reveal come 1 January, only we won’t know what year I tack onto the end of that date until that day. In fact, I still don’t know. One year, a decade, a mixture of all, any could happen. One smart commenter suggested a sort of ‘time hopping’ from decade to year as my post deemed fit. I like that idea as well and it makes me think of another thing that occurred this year, 1957: The is the “Many Worlds Theory of Quantum Mechanics” published and this year by American Physicist Hugh Everett III. This is quite involved but in a really bad interpretive nutshell, there can be multiple realties or lines of history. For example if one were to actually time travel and kill Hitler there would be both a line of history containing Hitler’s survival as well as his death running in tandem. Many ways, I feel very much that way, in my multiple world.

This also touches on another parallel for me in 1930’s and 1950s. Part of the idea of the 1957 Many Worlds Theory is derivative of the 1930’s theory or paradox called Schrödinger's cat. This was a thought experiment dreamt up by Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger in 1935. It basically (and again very simple is my interpretation) that if one were to put a cat in a box with a bottle of poison and a radioactive substance and sealed. If a Geiger counter reads the radiation it breaks the bottle and the cat dies of the poison. But, the second probability is that it doesn't get broken and therefore the cat IS alive. So the paradox is that Schrödinger's cat is both alive and dead. This was of course a hypothetical experiment and no actual cat was placed in a box. But, it does run the course with me sometimes. I am both in 1957 and in 2011. One can open my box and find me in either state, 1950’s homemaker happily humming away in her kitchen using her old appliances and dressed vintage or slumped at my modern computer using modern technology to write my nonsense to all of you. Therefore, I present to you Schrödinger's Homemaker. I rather like that, it gives a certain caveat to my experiment. One can imagine the proposed notion of a quantum physics PHD on the relative location of a time-travelling homemaker. Perhaps I should contact M.I.T. straight away!

If any are interested to learn more about Schrodinger’s Cat there is quite a bit of information out there. An interesting modern alternative which will apply actual items (and not a living animal) to this experiment has been proposed and HERE is an interesting article about it.

Now, to close today’s post I thought I would share the interesting news about our ever growing super star Elvis Presley. When we first met Elvis, back in 1955, he was just starting to appear at local venues often with his name misspelled. Now, by the end of 1957, he is a bonafide super star, and in many ways one of the first. Concerning that idea of Super Star, John Lennon of the Beatles once said of Elvis, "Before Elvis, there was nothing."

On 20 December this year, 1957, Elvis was spending Christmas at his new Manse, Graceland, when he received his draft notice to the U.S. Army. Ten’s of thousands of fans wrote the Army begging them to let Elvis out of it, but he wouldn’t hear of it. He wanted to do his Patriotic duty. Though accepting a deferment to finish his movie, King Creole, he was sworn in as an army private in Memphis on March 24, 1958.

Another interesting outcome of Elvis’ military stint was the rise in people going to get their vaccines. Elvis was viewed as a model for all young Americans, so when he got his polio shot from an army doctor on national TV, vaccine rates among the American population shot from 2 percent to 85 percent by the time of his discharge on March 2, 1960.

I’ll close with Elvis’ interview at Fort Dix enjoy. And Happy Homemaking and keep voting for my next year’s choice, its such fun to see what you think.