10 Old-Fashioned Baby Names that are Back in Style

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"These classic names went out of fashion, but now they're back as parents go vintage" --(from Parenting.com):

1) Clara

2) Eli

3) Naomi

4)  Charlie

5)  Alice

6) Henry

7)  Olive

8) Leo

9)  Lillian

10)  Jasper

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Rounding out the top 20 are Amelia, Everett, Nora, Silas, Adeline, Max, Hazel, Owen, Stella, and Oliver.

Go here for a lot more info about the names, their meanings, their re-emergence in popularity, famous people who have them, etc.

And if that's not enough, this site  lists "10 vintage baby names we want to see in 2013, including Ada, Cora, Florence, Josie, Murray and Graham.

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How about you? Have you named your baby a "vintage" name...or do you plan to? What's the reaction been from family and friends? Inquiring minds want to know!

From the Archives: When was the last time you wrote a letter?

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"Will this fading generation... also be the last to write letters? Messages crafted by hand rather than bits of binary code? Writing that carries emotions rather than emoticons?

"...Think of letters and the mind falls on Paul of Tarsus, Abraham Lincoln, Jane Austen, Mark Twain; on love letters written during the American Civil War, or letters written to a parent by a frightened soldier at the battlefront..."--Catherine Fields, The New York Times

(originally posted June 28, 2011)

Today is Long Letter Day, billed as "a time to stop and write that long letter to an old friend."

Which begs the question, does anybody write letters anymore? Should we? Why?

I myself can't remember the last time I wrote a letter. E-mails, sure. Texts just to say "I love you" or "I'm praying for you." But a letter?

This New York Times article by Catherine Fields, "The Fading Art of Letter-writing," opens with Fields' description of the regular letters she gets from her 75-year-old aunt in England.

Fields writes:

"A good handwritten letter is a creative act, and not just because it is a visual and tactile pleasure. It is a deliberate act of exposure, a form of vulnerability, because handwriting opens a window on the soul in a way that cyber communication can never do. You savor their arrival and later take care to place them in a box for safe keeping."

Some of the many letters my mom wrote to me when I was in Bible college in the late 70's--I saved all of them!

As a Bible college student, far away from home in the late 70's, my mother's regular letters were a lifeline. There was no e-mail, no cell phones, so these loving, chatty missives were like cherished gifts showing up in my otherwise-empty student mailbox.

My husband and I were apart for some two months prior to our marriage in 1978. Somewhere in my house are the letters we exchanged during that time--sweet, naive, romantic and probably somewhat cheesey expressions of our love. Do modern couples have this testament to their devotion?

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Apparently there are those in the younger generation who are trying to revive the art of letter-writing. Letter-writing clubs like this one are springing up all over the world, where members meet just to put pen to paper to "go back to the old-fashioned way of sending their regards."

Witness blogs like LetterLover.net ("where the written word lives on"). Blogger and written-word advocate Samara O'Shea writes:

"...there is nothing—not a text message, not an IM, not a Facebook status update—that competes with the emotional connection made through a letter. Handwritten or typed, snail-mailed or handed over—doesn’t matter. It’s the time you take to choose your words carefully and write them down that becomes a tangible testament to how much the other person means to you."

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I doubt that I'll start conducting all my correspondence by snail-mail. But I do feel the urge to bring letter-writing back into my life, at least occasionally!

What about you? Do you ever write letters? Do you enjoy getting them? Do you think it's an art that needs to be preserved? Let me know!

In praise of the clothesline

Source: google.com via Cindy on Pinterest

Today is National Hanging Out Day, billed as "a day to save energy by using a clothesline."

A site called LaundryList.org lists the top 10 reasons for line-drying...but you know what? They don't have to convince me!

It's been years since I've had a clothesline, but I loved using it. Nothing can beat the fragrance of clean clothes that have been dried under the sunshine in a billowing breeze.

I also loved the fact that I was saving money by hanging out my clothes. Of course, in northern Illinois, you can't hang clothes out all year long...and fluffy towels from the dryer are great too.

But I wish I had the option to hang clothes outside, and now I'm thinking of trying to figure out a way to do it.

"Barefoot and Pregnant," #7, by Sara Rose

Source: google.com via Cindy on Pinterest

This is my niece Julie's header picture on her blog--her family's jeans all in a row

Source: ajoyfulnusiance.blogspot.com via Cindy on Pinterest

Just thinking about clotheslines brings back a lot of memories. I can remember hanging clothes out for my mother...or rushing to bring in the clothes before the rain started in earnest.

I can remember slipping into bed on a summer evening between freshly laundered and line-dried sheets.

Line drying is perfect for delicate things like this

Source: michellewooderson.blogspot.com via Cindy on Pinterest

Source: google.com via Cindy on Pinterest

Source: google.com via Cindy on Pinterest

Do you use a clothesline? What do you like about it? Do you have memories of growing up with a clothesline? Let me know in my comments section!

Baby Boomer Quiz: A Trip Down Memory Lane

(A goodie from the archives of Notes in the Key of Life--this was earlier posted May 201.)

Remember "I'd like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony"?

Remember reaching into a huge cooler of pop bottles chilling in ice-cold water? Remember taking a long swig of Coca-Cola that was so cold it had slivers of ice in it? Remember paying 20 cents a gallon for gasoline? Remember listening to top 40 AM radio?



If you do, you're probably a baby boomer.

My radio co-host when I was working at 101QFL, Darren Marlar, gave me this quiz several years ago on the air, and it was a lot of fun so I thought I'd share it!

BABY BOOMER QUIZ

Look at the items below. You'll know that you qualify as a true Baby Boomer if you remember...


1. "Cruising" on a Friday night, listening to the Top 40 on your AM radio.--(Oh, yeah! I don't even remember being aware of FM radio until I was a sophomore or junior in high school...and it definitely wasn't top 40.)


2. How much popcorn you made when you got that first microwave.


3. When there were only 3 TV channels -- and it was so hard to choose what to watch!--(At least you didn't need a remote!)


4. Where you were when JFK was shot...(or RFK)...(or MLK, Jr.)...


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5. When the "Domino Theory" meant something other than planning to have pizza for dinner.

6. Who shot J.R.?




7. How scary it was to open that first Apple II...(or Tandy)...(or Commodore)...to add a card to increase the RAM from 16K all the way up to 64K.


8. When your teenage son or daughter first told you about the Internet.--(I'm on the young side for that one--my kids weren't teen-agers yet, but I remember when news stories were trumpeting the soon arrival of what they kept calling "the information superhighway.)


9. When the Beatles sang "I want to hold your hand" to Ed Sullivan.--(Yep.)

10. The unbelievable taste of good ol' Ripple wine.--(Have to pass on that one.)

11. How "neat" it was to hear the Beach Boys actually sing surfing music at the beach, on your transistor radio.--(Transistor radios! Loved 'em. My sister had one that looked exactly like a Coke can. My mom said she almost threw it away a million times, thinking it really was a Coke can.)

12. When you bought your first car that actually had seatbelts installed.--(Not really...I always remember seatbelts being there.)

13. When you said that you'd never trust anyone over 30.--(Nope...that was the "hippie" era. I was still pretty young then.)

14. What a TV test pattern looked like, when the channel went off the air at midnight.--(Yep, and the national anthem playing which meant it was time to go to bed. That was actually a good thing--a point at which you could NO LONGER WATCH TV.)

15. When we gave up trying to win "hearts and minds" and settled for "peace with honor".

16. When the price of gas jumped up to 50 cents per gallon.


17. When everybody did the "bump" in their leisure suits at the disco.--(I never frequented discos, but I sure do remember that era. Eeesh...leisure suits. How could we have ever thought those were cool? I bet they take hundreds of years to decompose in the landfills...)


18. Making love, not war, on your way to Woodstock in your flowered VW van.--(Again, too early for me.)


19. Watching the first man walk on the moon with "one small step..."--(Yep, I was glued to the (black and white) TV when that happened.)


20. When Carnaby Street came to Main Street, and everyone wore mini-skirts and platform shoes.


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How many of those items do you remember?

Add up your score and compare with the grade levels below:

16 - 20 remembered: You qualify as a true Baby Boomer -- you were there and remember it all.

11 - 15 remembered: You're probably old enough, but they say that "memory is one of the first things to go..."

6 - 10 remembered: It's nice to have you youngsters join us here today.

Less than 6 remembered: Either you're real young or you once were a friend of Timothy Leary's -- wasn't he the one who said "If you remember the '60's, then you weren't really there?"

I have a few to add to the list

Remember when every girl wore their hair long, straight and parted down the middle? You could look at your high school yearbook and it would be rows and rows of girls with that look (except for the black girls, whose Afros were so big they sometimes didn't fit in the picture.)

With my naturally curly hair, oh what pains I took to obtain that look. I spent every night with my hair in a pony-tail on top of my head, rolled into two enormous rollers bigger than orange juice cans.

Remember, years earlier than that (circa 1968, '69) when everyone wore fishnet hose? The really cool girls had different colored ones to match with every outfit.

Remember when yarn ribbons were the must-have accessory for hair?

Remember Dippity-do?

Did you have a crush on either of the guys on Alias Smith and Jones? (Read about my crush on Pete Duel.)

Which Monkee did you think was the cutest?

Got any to add to the list?

Do you have a favorite "greasy spoon" eatery?

Source: amazon.com via Gena on Pinterest

October 19th, according to halife.com, is "Greasy Spoon Day."

Several years ago when I co-hosted a radio morning show with Darren Marlar, we invited listeners to call in with their favorite local greasy spoon restaurants.

We were flooded with callers letting us know about these often little-publicized, often out-of-the-way, sometimes hole-in-the-wall, usually Mom-and-Pop operations that serve incredibly delicious food.

Which is what we meant by "greasy spoon." But apparently the common definition is not nearly so flattering.

Like this one from hyperdictionary.com:

"a small restaurant specializing in short-order fried foods."

Or this one: "The American Heritage dictionary defines a Greasy Spoon as 'a small, inexpensive, often unsanitary restaurant.' The term 'greasy spoon' speaks to careless dishwashing practices, hence grease on the cutlery."

Source: shorpy.com via Morgan on Pinterest

So what really is a "greasy spoon"?

Our aim with that radio show was to give a prize to the Rock River Valley's Best Greasy Spoon, but with those definitions, it's doubtful any eating establish would have been proud to hang up a plaque with that designation.

So, what do we call it? Obviously not "Greasy Spoon." The places we unearthed in our search were definitely clean and definitely didn't cook everything in gallons of lard.

"Out of the way hole in the wall under-publicized eatery with incredibly delicious food"? That's a bit of a mouthful...pun not intended. :)

Source: google.com via Chris on Pinterest

I remember a place in Beaumont, Texas, when I was a little girl, called "Carnation." (I think it had something to do with Carnation milk, because it was an ice cream parlor as well as serving food.)

I actually found someone reminiscing about this place online. These are the memories of Jeff "Rusty" Russell III:

"The Carnation was the epitome of all things good and great; it was the quintessential dining experience. The burgers and fries were ambrosial, and the shakes and malts breathtakingly luscious.

And, on really special occasions, we would be treated to one of their decadent sundaes, hot fudge, banana split, Tom and Jerry (one scoop vanilla + chocolate with chocolate sauce) and The Peter Pan (chocolate with marshmallow sauce).

As the customers walked through the entrance, just to the right was the ice cream display. It was always a challenge to pass it by on the way to a booth or counter seat.

The entire cooking operation took place in the center of the room in an open air setting, and the aroma of the griddle fried burgers would fill the restaurant with mesmerizing consequences.

On those times that we didn't order sundaes, a visit to the ice cream counter was de rigueur. Two scoops of peppermint, please! Some things should NEVER go away!"

Source: None via Tracey on Pinterest

So do you have such an eatery that lives on in your memory--or maybe you have one that you still frequent? I'd love to hear about it!

(Here's another cool post about the Carnation--there's even an illustration of how it looked in 1953--before my time, but it hadn't really changed a lot by the late 60s!)

Today is Permanent Press Day. Which begs the question...

...do you iron?

I do. Oh, yeah, I've been known to pull things out of the dryer and hang them up immediately before they get a chance to get wrinkled.

But by and large, clothes get ironed at our house. Our ironing board pretty much stays up, and spray starch is a regular expenditure.

My husband is one of the best ironers (is that a word?) that I've ever known. He can iron a crease on a pair of pants that you could cut your finger on.

Some clothes are just meant to be worn crisply ironed.

But ironing hasn't always been easy!

I can remember, as a little girl, opening the refrigerator door to find a bunch of damp clothes inside. Before the advent of said Permanent Press, apparently a lot of clothes were made of 100 per cent cotton, and that can be murder to iron. Keeping the damp clothes in the fridge kept them from souring before Mom could get to them, and apparently eased the pressing process.

I can remember also my mom teaching me to iron by having me iron pillowcases and my dad's handkerchiefs. Wow, is this showing my advanced age, or what? Ironing PILLOWCASES?! and who carries handkerchiefs, or "hankies," as my dad used to call them, anymore?

According to halife.com, Permanent Press Day is " a day proudly to wear polyester and keep the iron unplugged."

Please don't even get me started on leisure suits. Those polyester-filled monstrosities will still be sitting in landfills hundreds of years from now!

How about you? Got any ironing memories? And do you still grace the ironing board from time to time? Do tell!


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