I would be better off reading more books and taking more nature walks. But like many during Covid, I’ve been cocooning a lot.
Old TV
I guess you know by now that I love retro TV. We didn’t have a color TV until the late 1970s. I love these shows. Only a few* are in black & white.
- That Girl
- The Dick Van Dyke Show*
- The Mothers-in-Law
- Here’s Lucy
- The Brady Bunch
- The Waltons
- Columbo
- Family Affair (Mr. French, the butler)
- The Andy Griffith Show*
- Green Acres
- Alfred Hitchcock Presents*
- The Twilight Zone*
- Leave It to Beaver*
- My Three Sons (first B&W, then color)
I watch from zero to three episodes a day. I love the fashions, the moments in time, the character actors--and observing the women’s roles, and the households, and how they have changed. I love the simpler times. The dresses, maids, vacuum cleaners, pearls, pot roasts, layer cakes. I will write more about this another day.
Go-to Websites
- Medium, to publish my writing, check my stats and earnings, sometimes read stories (like the Governor Cuomo #MeToo one just published there).
- Google, to find images to accompany my Medium pieces.
- https://www.merriam-webster.com/ to check spellings, capitalization, grammar etc.
- Blogspot (to publish this blog site, since March 2010)
- Facebook, with individual groups, too, such as former magazine writers/editors; my neighborhood; and You know you grew up in Dumont when....
- The New York Times
- Wikipedia!
- Spotify
- Google Translate, to learn how to say “Good Night, Cheese” in French.
- Vogue (sometimes, i.e. Kamala cover)
Phone Apps
- Two different banks
- Calculator
- Flashlight
- Venmo
- Alarm/timer
- Spotify
- Google Maps
- Weather
- Notes
Style/Home Browsing
- sweetlaurel.com (California dreaming. I swear, I’m going to that pretty shop one day. Pacific Coast, rose candles, logo, decaf coffee beans etc. FYI, I think the beautiful vegan layer cakes they bake and ship are beautifully tiny. I almost ordered Fig the little heart-shaped vegan brownies for V Day but I think the shipping was going to be close to $61. So, no.)
- reedsmythe.com (Julia Reed)
- netaporter.com
- aerin.com
- llbean.com
- trishmcevoy.com (makeup)
- bergdorfgoodman.com
- wolford.com (tights)
- vestachocolate.com (Montclair coffee/style)
- mossandmore.com (fairy-tale plant shop)
- maggiesorganics.com
- karinadresses.com
- toryburch.com
Bloggers
I am loyal to these.
Nan, Buddy
Posts
The Dick Van Dyke Show was on every day at lunch time during the week-reruns of course though this was the early 1960s and my family hadn’t gotten our first color tv yet. I would walk home from school for lunch and my mother and I would watch it while I ate and then I hurried back to school, which was six blocks away, in Ann Arbor.
ReplyDeleteBut you know they weren’t actually simpler times, of course. The shows just chose to omit complications. So Sally was nearly unique in the writer’s room— even today women are drastically under-represented. And certainly none of the Petri’s wacky and good-hearted neighbors in New Rochelle were Black, due to red-lining.
I loved DvD, and even now could probably recap a bunch of my favorites from memory. But my nostalgia is always tinged with the harsh light of reality, which even then encroached on my child’s world.
Nan, such a good memory of watching DvD with your mom and then scrambling back to school. I love that.
DeleteYou have given me a lot of food for thought in this comment. I’m planning to write a second post about why I like the old shows so much. And you are 100 percent correct, there are zero or few People of Color.
“That Girl” is the one show where I see Black people. Her neighbors in the apartment building on 53rd? street; a young boy who runs away from his Dad and takes refuge with Ann; and other people in New York City. But you are right, these shows are predominantly white bread, and that is a very fake world. Love Alice
(I want to watch “Julia,” about the Black nurse...Dan remembers watching that as a kid, and I have to see if I can access it.)
Also, even then I was scared of horror, and never watched the Twilight Zone until I was in my thirties!
ReplyDelete