I have been rather busy in my yard. I have my chicken house to build, fences to erect, vegetables to plant. My grapes are beginning to bud out. The chicks are getting big FAST. So, no excuses, just sorry I have not done a proper post, but I shall, I promise.Some quick history from May 1956:
This is the month when Salk's polio vaccine is first really available to the public. It really begins to change the face of health care and how we look at preventing disease. Many were scared of it as well and I feel bad for those parents who opted out of it and their children suffered the disease.
This month Nuclear testing: In the Pacific Ocean, Bikini Atoll is nearly obliterated by the first airborne explosion of a hydrogen bomb. We are moving towards the scary aspects of the modern world. I do wish we had put as much thought into education and healthcare as we did making more bombs. While our European neighbors were faced with rebuilding their world, health and education became an important factor in their new world, we, seculded in the USA, found it easier to make our shiny new world of shopping and plastics. I love the enthusiasm and the good intent of our country after the war, but in retrospect, I wish we could have had more overall planning. Yet, we can make changes now, I believe, that can really make us have a wonderful new world and not Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World" which I am afraid we are now heading towards. Particularly the 'feelies' in that novel and the numb over entertained bored controlled masses. This is a great LINK to a breakdown of Huxley's novel, which has some eerily right on predictions, though it was a work of fiction, though it was written before WWII in 1931. Here, for example, is the breakdown of how 'sexual freedom' is seen:
Sex is a primary source of happiness. The brave new world makes promiscuity a virtue: you have sex with any partner you want, who wants you- and sooner or later every partner will want you. (As a child, you learn in your sleep that "everyone belongs to everyone else.") In this Utopia, what we think of as true love for one person would lead to neurotic passions and the establishment of family life, both of which would interfere with community and stability. Nobody is allowed to become pregnant because nobody is born, only decanted from a bottle. Many females are born sterile by design; those who are not are trained by "Malthusian drill" to use contraceptives properly.
Any way, I am off and busy again today. I just wanted to check in with all of you and let you know I have not forgot about you nor our wonderful community. If any of you are new, don't forget to go to the website and join the FORUM, we are always having such wonderful discussions there.
