From: bliss-sf4ever@dslextreme.com   
      
   On 10/7/25 16:19, William Hyde wrote:   
   > James Nicoll wrote:   
   >> In article <5j28ek9rqntltlibteell2llkmfdg5o89h@4ax.com>,   
   >> The Horny Goat   wrote:   
   >>> On Sat, 04 Oct 2025 09:24:08 -0700, Paul S Person   
   >>>  wrote:   
   >>>   
   >>>> In my case, both intra-ocular lenses produced astigmatism, so going   
   >>>> without glasses was never an option.   
   >>>>   
   >>>> Not that I would have, having worn them since at least the 6th   
   >>>> grade.=20   
   >>>>   
   >>> In my case it was October of my grade 1 year when my teacher called my   
   >>> mother and advised her to get my eyes checked.   
   >>>   
   >>> Fortunate for me since I was a tall 6 year old (and in most grade 1   
   >>> classes that means "seated at the back of the classroom") who was VERY   
   >>> good at verbal questions but having a tough time with the blackboard   
   >>> even those a strong reader (I started reading just before my 5th   
   >>> birthday) With glasses I had no problems and did well in school   
   >>> thereafter.   
   >>   
   >> In grade one and two, the luck of the seating draw by surname   
   >> put me at the back of a middle row. Until I got my glasses towards   
   >> the end of grade two, I had no idea there was stuff on the blackboard.   
   >   
   > I was lucky, and got glasses in grade one.  I could see that there was   
   > something on the blackboard.  Perhaps I mentioned that what was on the   
   > board didn't look anything like what was in my book.   
   >   
   > The past is a strange place indeed.   
   >   
   > William Hyde   
   >   
   	It certain was strange but had some very nice inhabitants.  It also   
   had people like Adolph Hitler, Father Coughlin, Henry Ford, Joseph Stalin   
   Daryl Gates, Fred Trump and their various crews. Nice folks like FDR and   
   Eleanor, Harry Truman, Dwight David Eisenhower, Earl Warren and   
     Pat Brown, the younger more idealistic Jerry Brown, and a host of other   
     including JFK, Martin Luther KIng, and more I never heard of.   
     Allan Ginsberg, Hemingway, Jack Kerouac, Robert Heinlein, Ray Bradbury,   
     Cordwainer Smith, to name but a few. Oh and much younger me. James   
   Branch Cabell had completed his long series about Manuel before I was.   
   Eggar Rice Burroughs with his fantasies from Africa to Mars was pretty   
   well out of the picture.  Tom Swift was not yet jUnior and flew his   
   Electric Airplane and other fantastic toys.   
   	Batman has been freshly invented to take the place of Sherlock   
   Holmes as Master Dectective as well as acroBatic crime fighter.   
   Kal-El was so young he could not fly nor did he yet know his   
   given name but was happy to work as a reporter, with a crush   
   on Lois Lane. for the mighty newspaper "The Daily Planet'.   
   During WW II they would be joined by Bullet Man and his companion   
   a woman, Wonder Woman herself, Hawkman and his girl friend.   
   Captain America and the Star-Spangled Kid, The Human Torch   
   who was an Android, Daredevil who was not blind then and   
   several troups of children all fighting the NAZI and their spies   
   in our sacred USA and overseas. At the same time in the   
   real newspapers, we had Mutt & Jeff, Terry and the Pirates,   
   Flash Gordon, Prince Valiant, the Katzenjammer Kids copied   
   as the Captain and the Kids, Our Boarding House and others.   
   Bring Up Father aka Maggie and Jiggs.  Oh life was rich if   
   you could afford a daily paper and we could. We also read   
   the Saturday Evening Post, Life Magazine, Colliers' and   
   a few others. I think it was Colliers that printer long   
   articles on the forth-coming space exploration with   
   illustrations of orbital space station inspired by Werner   
   von Braun ideas.   
      
   	We had Amazing Stories, Astounding which became Analog,   
   Worlds of If, Galaxy and the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction,   
   still floating around were Startling Stories, Planet Stories and more.   
      
   	It did not have White Christian Nationalism but Isolationism   
   and its supporters who worked on a plot to overthrow FDR. The old   
   John Birch Society which insisted that some Democrat had surrendered   
   China to the Communist Party whereas we never held any title to any   
   of China.   
      
   	There was no movement to change the laws regarding same sex   
   relationships nor the idea that allowing them the same rights as other   
   Americans would destroy society or harm other peoples sexual   
   relationships.  Transgender would not arrise until teh 1960s when   
   a book was published called the "Transsexual Phenomena" by an   
   endocrinologist,Harry Benjamin, then it was only a scale of gerder   
   from normal? thru transgender to the most extreme transsexual.   
   before that the term "Sex Change" was used to designate the more   
   public members of the gender dsyphoria crowd.   
   	We had the fission bomb and the fusion bomb and lived   
   in fear of Communist invasion.  Movies were made about that   
   unpleasant possibility.   
      
   	Yes the past was strange and the future, if humanity persists   
   in its many follies, will be stranger still.  I hope humanity itself   
   persists somehow.   
      
   	bliss   
      
   	   
   	   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)