Childhood mortality was high due to lack of vaccines. Everything old is new again.
I approve the return of all of these! I want to go to a coffeehouse, and a department store, then retire to my women's apartment to prepare for tomorrow's calling hours. Yes.
The themes of human interaction and ease are things we need so much right now (and always!). Anxiety and depression are linked to a lack of these, I'm sure. Thank you, Maya, for some real examples of ways we can be inspired to incorporate these into our lives more often. This weekend was a BIG weekend for garden planting in my family!
I think you're right that anxiety and depression are linked back to our disconnected, hustle culture. We all need more time together in the garden. Hope you have a good weekend of planting!
“Testerical” is the most perfect word I’ve read in eons! Thank you for it. I’ll aim to use it in my future online diatribes (er—discussions—on every fresh hell this administration is perpetrating).
And I bake bread (and bagels) at least once a week. The hubby can’t tolerate sugars and sweeteners are even in organic green market breads (no honey, agave , etc); so I bake for us, the house smells great, nothing could be easier with a bread machine doing all or most of the work, the house smells like love and old fashioned times in the best way—and nothing is better than warm bread!!! Plus no time wasted cruising multiple venues reading bread wrappers for any sign of sweetener, coming home with the only 2 “safe” options (baguettes or a sourdough boule—and sometimes focaccia). Just make something and it’s a creative outlet! I can make a bagel that rivals the best of NYC bagels and never get out of my pajamas. But I’m so there for the ladies’ mile style of shopping. Alas! Stores like Altmans and Lord & Taylor are gone; and even Saks Fifth Avenue, where the same saleswoman waited on 3 generations of my family (plus, as I later learned from her NYT essay, Wendy Wasserstein) with personal service and honest advice), is a modern, indifferent version of the mahogany paneled grande dame she once was. I miss turkey club sandwiches with my maternal grand grandmother after a morning spent searching for nightgowns, handbags, and gloves: or the coffee and tea served to early bird shoppers at L&T before the store formally opened. They’d let us in, seat us in rows behind a cordon, and offer a warm beverage in a china cup served from silver services. It felt so elegant.
I can't take credit for testerical--I read it on the internet and eagerly awaited the chance to use it in a sentence. Please use it and let's make it a thing!
I am jealous of your homemade bread! You make such a great point--bread is work, whether you are buying it in a store (shopping, reading labels) or making it at home (to get exactly what you want, plus homemade bread smells, plus the pleasure of it all). I really wonder if we're all saving as much time as we think we are when it comes to shopping.
But I do not have one bad word to say about going to a department store early and getting a warm beverage in a china cup. That's another thing I'd love to come back--proper cups! More class, less trash. So much elegance.
I researched testerical once, because I was seeing a number of credits to a particular person in Bluesky and this annoyed me because I’d learned it decades ago. It’s traceable to a woman named Juli Loesch in 1972.
That sounds so special and lovely! I remember going to our local department store and seeing a fashion show at lunch and eating the store's special strawberry cake. So many of us must be holding onto such memories... :-)
Anything that encourages conversation. So yes to coffee houses. I'd love an electric car that looked like an old fashioned car from the twenties - a sit up and beg job that isn't designed to go fast but is designed to accomodate stuff. Also female only apartment buildigns - brilliant - for all ages. Teatime is my favourite meal of the day - cakes, sandwiches, tea, chat. Perfect.
I think the boarding house and YM/WCA style housing, not just renting out a spare room, but an entire building used for the purpose of commercialised cohosusing , providing private rooms, (private bathrooms too these days) breakfast and supper family style, and a secure laundry room is truly the missing housing link. Why should every un-partnered person (or childfree couple) have to pay for and maintain a whole apartment, or share with strangers or even friends? Why must people with no interest or skill at cooking have to eat their bad food, alone? A boarding house might be mixed or single genders. Might cater especially to elders, or couples.
They got a bad name as they tended to be a business of last resort for people (women) who had a house but no man earning an income as their neighborhood slid into lower income (or maybe was there all along) and they were linked to crime because of the tenants that sort of location attracted. So they were erased by housing laws in the mid-20thC surbanisation years. But modern zoning laws could allow for them and define them so as to prevent this as easily as any other sort of housing. Indeed in many cities where apartment are being legally redivided into smaller and smaller studio units a boarding house might be seen as far more luxurious because it would remove the smelly and potentially hazardous kitchen from one’s jail cell sized ‘apartment’.
Yes to department store cafes! Nordstrom still has them, and you can also get a personalized bra fitting. It makes such a difference! I don't know if they still exist, but when I visited Paris I found that the department store cafes were a great cheap place to eat.
Actually, the coffee was served in a dish, not a cup. Saucers, if present, were sometimes used to cool the drink (by pouring into them) and occasionally drunk from directly. The French writer Maximilien Misson enjoyed visited London’s coffee houses in the late 17th century. “You have all manner of news there,” Misson reported. “You have a good fire, which you may sit by as long as you please. You have a dish of coffee; you meet your friends for the transaction of business, and all for a penny.”
Childhood mortality was high due to lack of vaccines. Everything old is new again.
I approve the return of all of these! I want to go to a coffeehouse, and a department store, then retire to my women's apartment to prepare for tomorrow's calling hours. Yes.
The themes of human interaction and ease are things we need so much right now (and always!). Anxiety and depression are linked to a lack of these, I'm sure. Thank you, Maya, for some real examples of ways we can be inspired to incorporate these into our lives more often. This weekend was a BIG weekend for garden planting in my family!
I think you're right that anxiety and depression are linked back to our disconnected, hustle culture. We all need more time together in the garden. Hope you have a good weekend of planting!
“Testerical” is the most perfect word I’ve read in eons! Thank you for it. I’ll aim to use it in my future online diatribes (er—discussions—on every fresh hell this administration is perpetrating).
And I bake bread (and bagels) at least once a week. The hubby can’t tolerate sugars and sweeteners are even in organic green market breads (no honey, agave , etc); so I bake for us, the house smells great, nothing could be easier with a bread machine doing all or most of the work, the house smells like love and old fashioned times in the best way—and nothing is better than warm bread!!! Plus no time wasted cruising multiple venues reading bread wrappers for any sign of sweetener, coming home with the only 2 “safe” options (baguettes or a sourdough boule—and sometimes focaccia). Just make something and it’s a creative outlet! I can make a bagel that rivals the best of NYC bagels and never get out of my pajamas. But I’m so there for the ladies’ mile style of shopping. Alas! Stores like Altmans and Lord & Taylor are gone; and even Saks Fifth Avenue, where the same saleswoman waited on 3 generations of my family (plus, as I later learned from her NYT essay, Wendy Wasserstein) with personal service and honest advice), is a modern, indifferent version of the mahogany paneled grande dame she once was. I miss turkey club sandwiches with my maternal grand grandmother after a morning spent searching for nightgowns, handbags, and gloves: or the coffee and tea served to early bird shoppers at L&T before the store formally opened. They’d let us in, seat us in rows behind a cordon, and offer a warm beverage in a china cup served from silver services. It felt so elegant.
I can't take credit for testerical--I read it on the internet and eagerly awaited the chance to use it in a sentence. Please use it and let's make it a thing!
I am jealous of your homemade bread! You make such a great point--bread is work, whether you are buying it in a store (shopping, reading labels) or making it at home (to get exactly what you want, plus homemade bread smells, plus the pleasure of it all). I really wonder if we're all saving as much time as we think we are when it comes to shopping.
But I do not have one bad word to say about going to a department store early and getting a warm beverage in a china cup. That's another thing I'd love to come back--proper cups! More class, less trash. So much elegance.
I researched testerical once, because I was seeing a number of credits to a particular person in Bluesky and this annoyed me because I’d learned it decades ago. It’s traceable to a woman named Juli Loesch in 1972.
I was just writing about my nana taking me to the tea room in one of those dept stores. I was little but what an occasion for a little girl!
That sounds so special and lovely! I remember going to our local department store and seeing a fashion show at lunch and eating the store's special strawberry cake. So many of us must be holding onto such memories... :-)
Outings to Fenwicks in Newcastle with my grandma were a highlight of my childhood holidays. So special.
Can we get another list? 🙏
I'll work on it!
Thank you very much! Enjoy the writing ✍️.
I love all of these suggestions so much. Bring them all roaring in!
Anything that encourages conversation. So yes to coffee houses. I'd love an electric car that looked like an old fashioned car from the twenties - a sit up and beg job that isn't designed to go fast but is designed to accomodate stuff. Also female only apartment buildigns - brilliant - for all ages. Teatime is my favourite meal of the day - cakes, sandwiches, tea, chat. Perfect.
Thanks for the shout out!
Thanks for all the snacks in the garden!
❤️
I think the boarding house and YM/WCA style housing, not just renting out a spare room, but an entire building used for the purpose of commercialised cohosusing , providing private rooms, (private bathrooms too these days) breakfast and supper family style, and a secure laundry room is truly the missing housing link. Why should every un-partnered person (or childfree couple) have to pay for and maintain a whole apartment, or share with strangers or even friends? Why must people with no interest or skill at cooking have to eat their bad food, alone? A boarding house might be mixed or single genders. Might cater especially to elders, or couples.
They got a bad name as they tended to be a business of last resort for people (women) who had a house but no man earning an income as their neighborhood slid into lower income (or maybe was there all along) and they were linked to crime because of the tenants that sort of location attracted. So they were erased by housing laws in the mid-20thC surbanisation years. But modern zoning laws could allow for them and define them so as to prevent this as easily as any other sort of housing. Indeed in many cities where apartment are being legally redivided into smaller and smaller studio units a boarding house might be seen as far more luxurious because it would remove the smelly and potentially hazardous kitchen from one’s jail cell sized ‘apartment’.
Yes to department store cafes! Nordstrom still has them, and you can also get a personalized bra fitting. It makes such a difference! I don't know if they still exist, but when I visited Paris I found that the department store cafes were a great cheap place to eat.
Actually, the coffee was served in a dish, not a cup. Saucers, if present, were sometimes used to cool the drink (by pouring into them) and occasionally drunk from directly. The French writer Maximilien Misson enjoyed visited London’s coffee houses in the late 17th century. “You have all manner of news there,” Misson reported. “You have a good fire, which you may sit by as long as you please. You have a dish of coffee; you meet your friends for the transaction of business, and all for a penny.”