Bostonian Flexaire $19.95

My favorite ad was one by Continental Airlines that boasted, “You can buy your ticket on the plane.” Fifty years ago this month Time Magazine ran that ad. A lot can change in 50 years. You can hardly buy a Coke on the plane today without three forms of identification. In 1962 you could buy a Botany 500 suit for $69.50 and dress it up with Bostonian Flexaire shoes for just $19.95. Botany 500, originally a Philadelphia based firm doesn’t appear to exist anymore but you can still buy Bostonian shoes for about 10 times the 1962 price. Leafing through several issues of Time Magazine dating back to 1962 is an interesting exercise. I heartily recommend it to those old enough to remember the year 1962, and those too young to believe that there ever was an actual year 1962. In historic terms 50 years isn’t very long. The magazine itself only goes back 88 years to 1923. There are several things you can’t miss even with only a cursory look at the magazine. The pages weren’t glossy, there was very little color photography and to say women and minorities were under represented is a gross understatement. One of the ads I loved, placed by Goodyear Tires, typifies the way we were back then. They introduced the “Captive-air Double Eagle by pointing out that a Double Eagle won’t go flat. It “carries the load for up to 100 miles until you or your wife can conveniently stop for service.” I guess back then women weren’t expected to be customers for tires. The ads then were directed mostly at men. Just a couple of years later Goodyear dipped a cautious toe into the women’s market in a backhanded way, running ads that showed a woman trying to change a tire herself but the ad was directed at man’s responsibility to keep his wife out of such predicaments. One ad that startled me was one placed by the Blue Cross Association which pointed out that Blue Cross paid out over $1.3 billion dollars in benefits in 1961. This was before Medicare and Medicaid of course. In those days Blue Cross all but owned the health insurance market. So that number probably was a reasonably good indicator of what the nation was spending on health care back then. Even if it was double that amount including out of pocket expenses, it was a pittance compared to recent years. In 2010 we spent $2.6 trillion! While our population hasn’t quite doubled in the last 50 years our healthcare expenditures are nothing less than breathtaking. One thing some advertisers did back then was include prices in their ads, something you rarely see now. Kings Men after shave went for a buck a bottle. A Ronson Big Daddy electric shaver (which “ate beards for breakfast”) could be had for just $29.50 A Zenith Piedmont, transistorized, space command, remote control TV was advertised at $575. Unlike healthcare by the way, you can buy a Zenith 50” Class 720P Plasma HDTV for $499 today. Somehow inflation got knocked completely out of the box when it came to TVs. If healthcare services were like televisions, healthcare would cost less now than it did in 1961. And x-rays would be available on wide color screens in high definition. Some of the captions that appeared in news stories would be anathema today. Oscar Brown, Jr. singer-song writer was described as a “hip negro folk poet. for example. Then there was a picture of First Lady, Jacqueline Kennedy watching a mongoose fight a cobra. The caption: “A treat for an animal lover?” And of course there were some questionable claims like Florsheim Shoes. Their ad claimed, “Florsheim introduces the square toe and again changes the shape of the nation.” And you thought the social upheaval of the Sixties was responsible for a changing nation. Western Union placed a full page ad that simply said, “To be sure to get action, send a telegram.” Imagine what the Madman who wrote that line would do with a Tweet. Looking back at the way news and advertisements were presented in the past can be a very enjoyable experience. If you were alive during the period you’re studying, it gives you a fresh perspective and can even confirm events you think you remember but wouldn’t bet on. It can also clarify and even correct some ideas you have about why the world is shaped the way it is today. If nothing else, it can make you wish you could take advantage of those Bostonians for $19.95. Copyright 2012, Len Serafino. All rights reserved.

Everybody Knows Everything Now

The other day my friend Richard said, “We now live in a world where everybody knows everything. It’s not what you know that matters anymore. It’s what you do with what you know.” Richard’s comment succinctly points out that anyone with access to a Web browser can know almost anything they would like to know in a flash. It’s changing the way we teach and the way we communicate.
Yesterday I met a pediatrician who’s been teaching medical students in a nearby medical school for ten years. I asked him, “What’s changed since you started teaching?” He told me the biggest change is that they are teaching students a good deal more about how to find the information they’re looking for from reliable sources rather than relying on memorization. He said, “It’s pretty easy to find how to treat a disease state but what we worry about is a doctor’s ability to determine which disease to look for.” He added, “Doctors need to learn how to observe patients, talk to them and above all, listen.” Apparently those skills are still not emphasized in medical school. Finally, he said, “Memorizing certain things is still important but it isn’t as critical as it once was.”
I for one am practically overwhelmed by the reality of having so much information at our fingertips. As a writer I’m delighted to have such easy access to so many sources of information. Then again, there aren’t many good defenses for getting the facts wrong anymore. And precious few excuses for postponing my writing when research is such a snap.
On a visit to the local library recently, browsing in the reference section, I came across the Reader’s Guide to Periodical Literature. Most of you will recall that the Guide provides an index of articles from selected popular periodicals published in the 20th and 21st centuries. In ancient times, before the World Wide Web, we used the Guide to find information we were looking for when we had term papers to write. No doubt some of you recall writing down the desired article references on small pieces of white note paper so you could search through heavy, bound editions of magazines or; if you were unlucky, be required to work your way through endless reels of microfilm. All this just so you could find the three sentences you needed to support your rebellious contention that Matthew Arnold’s Dover Beach had nothing to do with religion. If you haven’t visited the reference section of your local library recently you might be surprised by the changes you encounter. For starters, you won’t need any tiny white slips of paper.
The Guide is still available of course, on line now. And, instead of simply providing a list of various topics, the magazine’s name, edition and page numbers, you can now click your way right to the article you need to prove your brother-in-law is an idiot. To make it even easier to get at what you are searching for, our local library (and perhaps yours?) doesn’t even order a hard copy of the Reader’s Guide to Periodical Literature anymore. In fact they buy Gale Publishing products and make them available on line from home to anyone with a library card.
While pointing and clicking certainly saves us a lot of time, I do wonder if speed itself robs us of needed time to reflect on the information we’ve gathered. Over the years I have learned the hard way that as it is with driving well over the speed limit, speed in communication can have deleterious results. There was a certain value I think in the labor involved in research. Limited time and tired eyes often forced us to return to the library a few times to get what we needed. We had time to reflect and consider what message we wanted to send. Celebrities are plagued in my opinion, by live microphones, texts and tweets. A thoughtless comment is nearly impossible to catch up to, let alone fix. Ozzie Guillen, the manager of the Miami Marlins is struggling with that problem right now. He isn’t the first and he won’t be the last.
I love having information easily at my fingertips. Yet, I pray that what’s on the tip of my tongue doesn’t make me long for the days when knowledge played hard to get. As Richard said, it’s what we do with what we know that matters.

Copyright 2012, Len Serafino All rights reserved.