![Minneapolis by AD reader Gordon Scott [Updated by GS in comments]](https://americandigest.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/https___cdn.cnn_.com_cnnnext_dam_assets_200527104052-21-minneapolis-protests-0526-1-1024x682.jpg "Minneapolis by AD reader Gordon Scott [Updated by GS in comments]")
Next post: Ancient Daze: “Nothing like us ever was.”
Previous post: From “Little Gidding” by T. S. Eliot
After scanning its face again and again,
I began to scale it, picking my holds
With intense caution. About half-way
To the top, I was suddenly brought to
A dead stop, with arms outspread
Clinging close to the face of the rock
Unable to move hand or foot
Either up or down. My doom
Appeared fixed. I MUST fall.
There would be a moment of
Bewilderment, and then,
A lifeless rumble down the cliff
To the glacier below.
My mind seemed to fill with a
Stifling smoke. This terrible eclipse
Lasted only a moment, when life blazed
Forth again with preternatural clearness.
I seemed suddenly to become possessed
Of a new sense. My trembling muscles
Became firm again, every rift and flaw in
The rock was seen as through a microscope,
My limbs moved with a positiveness and precision
With which I seemed to have
Nothing at all to do.
My head knocks against the stars.
My feet are on the hilltops.
My finger-tips are in the valleys and shores of
universal life.
Down in the sounding foam of primal things I
reach my hands and play with pebbles of
destiny.
I have been to hell and back many times.
I know all about heaven, for I have talked with God.
I dabble in the blood and guts of the terrible.
I know the passionate seizure of beauty
And the marvelous rebellion of man at all signs
reading “Keep Off.”
My name is Truth and I am the most elusive captive
in the universe.
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No mention of lava lamps? We can thank the Brits for inventing them in the mid-60s, but it was the ’70s when they became popular in my extended family (on both sides) as well as among the hippies. You always wanted to know how they’re made, right?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gs-cOlrvNwI&ab_channel=Insider
The hippielight website has photos of hundreds of lava lamps from the ’60s and ’70s, including models that were set inside planters, just as the video says. If you want to bring the outdoors indoors, why not a lamp that reminds you of a volcano?
http://frink.machighway.com/~edwardcr/hippielight/hippie1.html
We had that tv in 1960
We can laugh quite some time about how we were 50 years ago. But do not forget that your grandchildren will one day laugh about how we are today. From this observation there can be no escape.
I still have the afghan throw that my late Mom knitted in a sort of hounds tooth pattern of avocado, dull straw-yellow-ochre, & white. And, yes, back in the day it was always draped over the back of the sofa. Thank you, Mom!
My front door, and all the interior doors in my house are shaved off about an inch and a half from the bottom because the folks who owned the place before my mother bought it had them all cut for shag carpet. The installers put a block of wood at the threshold for the front. Never had the console TV/stereo.
Lava Lamps? I’ve got a giant blue and yellow in the living room. Everyone loves it.
JWM
Some of that stuff lasted well into the 80’s.
I still have 2 lava lamps sitting on Pioneer HPM100 speakers and 2 beer lights on 2 more HPM’s.
When we got married in 1984 we had some HUGE boston ferns hanging from the ceiling in macrame ropes. No owl though.
He neglected to mention how a hit of orange sunshine would cause that shag carpet to crawl and move about in a fascinating way… and was the owl winking? Maybe…
I’m pretty sure that I can find a VCR and dozens of tapes somewhere around here, but don’t ask me if the VCR works.
Wow. I didn’t realize how many decorating disasters I dodged in the 70’s. Macrame always left me cold, and the shag rug in an apartment I once rented was a vacuuming nightmare. OTOH, my late father made a bundle selling handmade giant forks and spoons (firewood, meet bandsaw) to yuppies at craft shows all over Northern California.
We dodged most of the ’70s decorating disasters. Our house (of which there were many) was, and still is filled with mostly late ’50s and early ’60s stuff, mostly Henredon bought the first ten years after we were married. They made good stuff back then.
Our first house had a huge living room with the multiple orange-yellow shag and my wife said it had to go. We pulled it up and underneath was 1/2 a wheelbarrow of sand that had sifted through it. This was in Florida. Turned out there was a beautiful though neglected Terrazzo floor under it. A good cleaning, then buffing and ta-da a brand new floor. Nice and cool on the bare dawgz in the summer.
We dodged all of the items mentioned except for the shag which we only had in one room – “The TV Room”. It was BRIGHT ORANGE. The TV room doubled as a basketball court as we had a nerf backboard and rim hooked to the top of the door. The carpet got matted down in no time after hours and hours of me and my brother pretending we were “Dr. J”. Ah, memories.
I had to quickly get my parent’s old house fixed up to sell, and did a final walk on my mom’s favorite carpet, turquoise blue shag. Oh how she loved it and lovingly cared for it for almost 50 years. It still was in good shape and was in both the living room and dining room. It went well with the wooden cabinets, bookshelves, dining table, console piano, octogon end table, coffee table, brick fireplace, as well as the wooden console TV. The cream and gold flocked wallpaper in the entryway (hung by her hands) went well with the turquoise. The beige low pile generic carpet that replaced all the carpeting throughout their small home, looked fine with the now wall paper stripped walls painted in ivory, but something was lost in the transition. It looked like a boring, plain shell of its former self. The house sold quickly to a college professor, who bought it for his brat, a college age daughter who didn’t want to live with the riff raff on the local campus. Her loss. My mom’s gorgeous flowerbeds have gone to weed and the carefully tended holly bushes now grow up over the roof line. I feel bad for the neighbors, but we had no other option at the time but to sell.