I saw a photo online Sunday that sparked a memory from many moons ago when I was newly-minted reporter.
A friend and I - she also was a reporter - attended a press event at a dinner where a university president was keynote speaker.
Before the dinner we were introduced to him and his wife, and lo and behold, I was wearing the same floral print dress as the president's wife was wearing!
Too funny.
I was rather shy at the time (odd for a newspaper person I admit) and said nothing. I may even have pretended I didn't notice.
All these years later I'm sure I would have said something! 'Twas a funny coincidence.
I was going through a box of my mother's things Saturday and just happened to find a book with an Independence Day theme.
Today is the perfect day to share my discovery.
My mother was given this book from the town's school district when she graduated from eighth grade on June 17,1938.
In the back are pages titled "Names of My Teachers,"Names of My Classmates," and "My School Chums."
Every person who signed the book used cursive. Sadly that wouldn't happen today, 80 years later.
What a beautiful graduation gift for the students!
Today I forced myself to peek into a box in which my mother kept old photos and found this gem! I'm so gIad I took that peek.
She was 8 in the spring of 1932; that's how I came up with the year.
Dear readers,
Today's Valley Voice newsletter features a Legislative Town Hall in Derby, and the movie, The Post, brings back my memories of newspapering.
Thanks for reading!
Patti
Manual typewriter, anyone?
That's what we used at the former Evening Sentinel, the Valley-centric daily paper based in Ansonia.
Former colleagues of a certain age will remember things like copy paper, hand-drawn page layouts, and manually sizing black and white photos fresh out of the darkroom.
(I had more trouble learning how to use that danged percentage sizing wheel.)
We graduated to electric typewriters (woo hoo!) before the company finally got us big, cumbersome computer monitors. With their arrival came a bit of a learning curve for all of us.
Fast forward to 2018: Over the weekend I saw The Post, a movie about The Washington Post publishing The Pentagon Papers way back in 1971.
While I wasn't working at that time - I'm not quite that old - when I did arrive at The Sentinel technology had not yet taken hold.
We used old-school procedures to put our paper out. So I could definitely relate to a lot of what I saw on the big screen: the newsroom, the press room, the deadlines, and the atmosphere of the time. People actually smoked at their desks. Ugh.
The Post, directed by Steven Spielberg, is a compelling film starring Meryl Streep as Post owner Katharine Graham - the first female publisher of a major American newspaper - and Tom Hanks as the no-nonsense newspaperman, Executive Editor Ben Bradlee.
Their relationship and their friendships with key people in the government underscore the human side of editorial decision-making.
Go see the movie if you're at all a fan of newspapers, American history, politics, or all three!
This classic photo sums up why I have grown so fond of old black and white movies from the '40s. It was my mother's era and she's in this photo, standing in the back row.
I'd love to know where and when the photo was taken.
We found the photo among her things. I wish I had seen it before she passed; she could have told me what it was all about!
Taking a walk back in time
My mother passed away more than a year ago at age 92, and this afternoon our son Cameron helped us clean out a storage unit that contained her things - a china set, crystal goblets, old vinyl record albums, a brass umbrella stand.
When he and I pulled up to the storage facility, surrounded by locked, wrought-iron fences and all, I said, "I feel like we're visiting a prison."
We chuckled. Cameron said, "It's like a prison for junk."
That's pretty accurate, I'd say! I'm sure people put stuff there and pay the bill every month but never get around to returning for it. I'm glad we finally did.
But I soon learned there was more than junk inside for us. There were treasures, especially the photos!
I had to share this one of my parents' wedding day. It was taken outside the Little Church Around the Corner (Church of the Resurrection) in Manhattan, where they were married in 1951. I've never seen the photo before and I was thrilled to find it.
My maternal grandparents, my parents, and my paternal grandmother, October, 1951.
When one doesn't have a lot to do but rest and take care of oneself, one just might find classic movies on TV.
And that's what has happened to me over the past six weeks since having my transplant surgery.
I've especially liked tuning in to the black and white movies of the '30s and '40s. Such a different time and place!
From Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire to Katherine Hepburn, Spencer Tracy, Cary Grant, Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, Judy Garland, and so many more too numerous to mention, I've enjoyed their work.
I'm currently watching Fred Astaire tap dance in the musical Swing Time, from 1936. The songs in this movie remind me of my mom!
That would be me.
I've come to the realization that I no longer get a charge out of having all these electronic devices. I want to go back to 1993!
Am I the only one who keeps forgetting to charge my "stuff" until I'm ready to run out the door?
Wires and cables and chargers, oh my.
Another charge-hungry device missing from photo: camera. I was using it ;-)
Yes, I do indeed remember using manual typewriters..no electricity needed!
