No, it wasn't. I don't think anyone said it was bliss. But life today isn't bliss either.
Poll:- life better now or in 1959?
- Thread starter JLM
- Start date
I'll bet the folks who got it in place in 1962 were working on it in 1959
The Medical Care Act came into existence in 1966. When I was born I was 1/2" under 2' long. My mother is quite short and I didn't have a lot of room to grow. It resulted in my legs being somewhat misshapen from the knees down. i used to have to wear oxfords that had been taken to the orthopod, ripped apart and re-built to help my legs 'reshape'. I also wore boots with a metal bar between them, when I went to bed. All this cost my parents thousands of dollars - none of it re-embursed by the government. I've also lived in the States where i was told by pone woman, "I clean houses for people that don't want funded health care'.If I never used it I would still want to have it. I never see adds in the TV advocating for women to get pre-post natal care, or to have their babies vaccinated. We just do it as a matter of course because we don't worry about the cost. If I have to wait in line for a procedure so someone more seriously ill goes ahead? So be it. Yes. We're better off.
Women still have to fight in the workplace for what they are entitled to (and not because they are female but because they are competent, we have decent healthcare coverage. We have legislation against various forms of discrimination - of course it's better.
I dislike the speed of life now - that is something I'm not fond of. Information comes at us o fast that we have no real time to process it - and quite frankly, the news media doesn't have enough time to accurately research news stories - resulting in a lot of circulated mis-information. We see thinks that have happened all over the world and it feels like they happened in our neighbourhood - seems to aqdd to a bit of paranoia sometimes. This is one of my few misgivings about 'now'.
Were think=gs more 'innocent' back in the '50's? I don't think so - I just think they were more hidden. Everyone knew about the girl who went to 'visit her aunt for a few months' and they all passed judgement on her. At least now that girl has options and much less condemnation from the community.and, i might add, better health care.
Women still have to fight in the workplace for what they are entitled to (and not because they are female but because they are competent, we have decent healthcare coverage. We have legislation against various forms of discrimination - of course it's better.
I dislike the speed of life now - that is something I'm not fond of. Information comes at us o fast that we have no real time to process it - and quite frankly, the news media doesn't have enough time to accurately research news stories - resulting in a lot of circulated mis-information. We see thinks that have happened all over the world and it feels like they happened in our neighbourhood - seems to aqdd to a bit of paranoia sometimes. This is one of my few misgivings about 'now'.
Were think=gs more 'innocent' back in the '50's? I don't think so - I just think they were more hidden. Everyone knew about the girl who went to 'visit her aunt for a few months' and they all passed judgement on her. At least now that girl has options and much less condemnation from the community.and, i might add, better health care.
Universal medi care, under the leadership of Tommy Douglas was implemented in
l962, I just looked it up.
JLM was right.
l962, I just looked it up.
JLM was right.
Fine. I was wrong. It seems that it was all planned and laid out before then, but wasn't implemented until '62. So what? That still doesn't counter the fact that some things are worse now than then and I admit that some things are better. This either it is/or it isn't stuff is just nonsense. It's inane.
Over how many years did those three billion people dump their untreated effluent directly in the air and water.
Quite so, Downhome Woman, we are in total agreement. As to the problems you mention, sure we have problems today and they are real. But today’s problems are a result of progress, of prosperity and a result of our desire today to treat everyone with equal rights (the desire was sorely lacking 50 years ago).
Thus, the society is more fractious today, why? Because everybody wants their equal rights, nobody is going to be quiet if they think that they are being treated as unequal. In the 50s, it was a given that while male was at top of the heap, that he will be given preference in almost everything. Everybody expected that, nobody complained about it.
We are definitely better off today compared to 50 years ago, much better off. But prosperity, civil rights come at their own price, and not everybody is prepared to pay that price. Some no doubt pine for the peaceful, halcyon days 50 years ago (where everybody knew their place and nobody made waves).
Where humankind is concerned, I am an optimist, I think our best days are still ahead of us. There can be no return to the ‘bad old days’.
One thing I don't like is our obsession with the outrage of the day - some guy a thousand miles away shoots some cops, and that is the outrage of the day. Tomorrow, it's a bus plunge that kills 25 people. Tomorrow, it's a kid who got kicked out of school for dropping his pants in Lower West Nowhere.
Not that these things aren't tragic, but I don't think we need to obsess about such things the way we (the media) do. It gives people a false idea of 'how bad things are', because everything that happens anywhere in the world, we know about instantly.
A golfer gets beaten up by his wife? Who cares, except for the humour content.
Not that these things aren't tragic, but I don't think we need to obsess about such things the way we (the media) do. It gives people a false idea of 'how bad things are', because everything that happens anywhere in the world, we know about instantly.
A golfer gets beaten up by his wife? Who cares, except for the humour content.
You may be right. But again, why is there such an outrage? That is because we can find out anything we want at the click of the mouse. In the old days, it was highly unlikely we would know something about somebody a thousand miles way (unless it was Toronto).
These days, we have 24 hour cable channels, internet blogs, Google search etc. So we get information very quickly, and some of us have the time to be outraged. But again, it is the sign of progress. As I said before progress comes at a price.
It's a sign of the times. Back in '59 we were busy living our lives- now we are busy living other people's lives. How many people today spend 10 hours on a Sunday watching a bunch of people they don't even know?
Longtime. And then since then more people added theirs to it, plus we added plastics, more chemicals, more light bulbs, etc. to the stuff that was there from the first 3 billion.
Some countries have almost stopped, but some haven't and then big countries like China and India start developing their own additions to the junk..Yup. "I might modify what McLuhan said to say, "Celebrity and everyone else is news, the rest is not good enough"; meaning people have allowed their own lives to become blase, so they find interest in everyone else's.
In 1959 people were interested in other people because of a genuine interest in their well-being. Some are still like that, but most just crave stuff about others.
Our society is not well and hasn't been for a long time.
I just barely remember 1959. It was my first year of school and I got a lot of sleep between the interruptions of that silly old woman with the strap babbling about the crack house on cherry street. Things were bigger then and my closets had real monsters in them instead of machine parts. I had just emigrated to Nova Scotia from Northern Ontario to attend a special school for weird children in
That is because technological tools were available to do only that, JLM. Long distance phone calls were hideously expensive, the normal means to get in touch with somebody out of town was through mail (phone if it was something urgent)
These days we have cell phone, texting, E Mail, dirt cheap long distance phone calls, even video phones and so on. We can learn about somebody instantly, in the old days it took longer.
It is all the price of progress, JLM and it is all good.
You're right. People didn't make time for useless crap like idle chatter. There were better topics to talk about then.
Or perhaps playing board games with the kids, taking them toboganing, swimming with them, playing catch, camping, etc.
You're right. People didn't make time for useless crap like idle chatter. There were better topics to talk about then.
Oh c'mon now...you're talking about providing a good upbringing for the young 'uns. Jeez, now there's an old-fashioned idea! What an inefficient waste of time - camping? Surely you jest...what possible good could come from going out into the wilds (the real world, to some) and experiencing nature and life and all that smarmy stuff...you should have been kicking open the computer room door, tossing in a TV dinner, and letting the little ones discover the world via the Internet! Or at least letting them crank their little minds up to Worp 7 with a blinding plethora of raw-boned, blood and guts-infested spectacles of death and high-tech pillaging on their computer screens. Then they would turn into such personable, well-rounded, polite, little darlins' that you see down at the local mall that you would simply melt with pride at the thought of the impression they would be making in the local community.
Er, oops, maybe I goofed there...I keep getting '59 mixed up with '09. Let's start over again...then they would turn into self-centred, confused little buggers who might bowl over old ladies while rocketing down the sidewalk on their skateboards, spewing the "f" word around like it was the only thing they ever heard than actually sunk in deep enough so they could remember it! Or maybe it's because it's a one-syllable sound, thus qualifying it as a candidate to stick in that sugar, fat, and additive-infested mass sometimes laughingly referred to as a "brain!" (Don't get me wrong...I'm not referring to ALL kids of today...just the ones who behave as noted above)
Sir whats-his-name will no doubt feel compelled to respond to this in his usual eloquent manner, and possibly even quote me some thoroughly-researched and professionally-authenticated statistics that will be intended to make me feel like an unsophisticated piece of crap from the backwoods of nowhere and obsessed with living in the past with my head implanted firmly up the place where a colonoscopy originates, but alas...I already know that!
I'm a-thankin' 1959 was the best, a-hootin' and a-hollerin' good time to live!
There's another reason why idle chatter is better now than the useful things back then, reading to your kid and having them read to you. Who needs that:?: :angryfire: