Today’s guest blog comes from Sherrilee.
As many of us on the Trail have discussed before, as we get older, it’s an interesting phenomenon that information that used to be part of our cultural lexicon has passed out of usage. As the mother of a teenager I am constantly reminded that the younger generation doesn’t have the same cultural knowledge that my generation has.
When I was a kid, Lucretia Borgia was well-known as famous poisoner. I didn’t know much more about her except that she had lived in the olden days and wore a big ring that opened up to deliver deadly poisons to her enemies. In fact, I remember a Charlie Chan movie, Castle in the Desert, in which the femme fatale was a descendant of Lucretia and had inherited the venomous ring (which, of course, was the murder weapon). I have since read up and learned that poor Lucretia Borgia was greatly maligned and probably didn’t do any of the dastardly things that used to be “common knowledge” about her, although her father and brother were certainly very poor role models for anything remotely resembling nice guys.
Although she was born out of wedlock, her father, Pope Alexander IV, didn’t hesitate to use her for his political gain. He married her off repeatedly to political allies beginning at a young age. Then when the political winds shifted, he and her older brother Cesare arranged various endings for those marriages (annullment and murder topping the list). Her final marriage survived her father’s ambitions (and life) and she lived the remainder of her life in Ferrara. She died from complications of childbirth in 1513.
She was just thirty-nine
In my job, I arrange a lot of functions in hotels throughout the world – welcome receptions, breakfasts, theme parties, meetings. About 10 years ago, I was working with the Westin St. Francis in San Francisco and arranging the final night dinner for a small group. In discussing the evening, I asked where my event was scheduled and my contact replied “in the Borgia Room”. We finished our conversation but as I hung up the phone, I turned to one of my co-workers and laughed… “I’m not sure if I were one of my participants, I would want to have my final night dinner in the Borgia Room.”
My co-worker, who is not that much younger than I am, looked at me blankly. Not only did she not get my joke, but when I explained who Lucretia Borgia, it didn’t even ring a bell. I went on a small surveying trip around my department and with the exception of my boss, no one had heard of Lucretia Borgia. I was dumbfounded to realize that something I assumed was common knowledge was NOT.
My group’s dinner went off without a hitch and no one seemed concerned about eating a meal in the Borgia Room. But I have never forgotten it!
What things used to be common knowledge in your world, but aren’t anymore?
Trail Baboon 
Most excellent, Sherrilee! I’ve got a long list, what with technological changes and such, but a lot of the “common knowledge” changes have had to do with career/vocation changes. At one time in my life, it was common knowledge that carbon forms 4 bonds, oxygen 2, nitrogen 3, and hydrogen 1. From that world, I fell into a world where everyone could tell you in a flash how the plays of O’Neill differ from those of Brecht and all you had to say to someone was, “oh, just bag it out” and it was as good as done. Which Muppet is which color? Do you have to even ask, everybody “knows” that. And these days-baguette, batard, boule-equally useful, but hardly interchangeable!
But please don’t ask me for my cell phone number, I have only the vaguest idea.
And in fishing news: the Up North bluegills were excellent (PJ-I only read about your peas this morning-rats!) and the s&h called from Iowa to inform me he will be bringing home a 6# catfish-I am further informed that it is a “flathead”, and those are big ones. Steve-can you verify and Krista, would these be the Flathead Cats your band is named for. Will entertain any and all Baboonish recommendations for preparing catfish fillets.
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MiG – for most of my cell-phone owning years, I’ve had my number on a post-it note stuck inside the phone. Because not only did I never remember it, but didn’t remember how to look it up using the phone itself!!!
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If I had a cell phone, that’s where I would keep my phone number too, provided, of course, I didn’t have one of those new-fangleded phones that don’t flip.
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I’ve got a very old cell that doesn’t flip-somebody asked me the other day-“does that work?” Indeed it does. The numbers have worn off the keys, but I know where they should be.
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Nothing is better ( for taste, anway! Health-wise, not-so-much) than catfish fried. Roll them in 1/2 flour, 1/2 cornmeal, salt and pepper.
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no egg? and what do you fry in???
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NO egg. I fry in canola oil. But we eat little fried food here. My grandmother fried everything in lard and she still lived to 99 1/2 years.
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Rise and Shine Sun-Loving Baboons!
None of these dad-blame young-uns can tell me where they were the day Kennedy was shot, durn ’em.
I once told a group of kids my son’s age (now 29) that I have “a stack of 45’s from my youth in my basement.” They looked at me in horror, asking, “Why do you keep old guns?” I had to explain they were records, like CD’s.
And then there was my grandmother’s watch which I used to wear on a chain around my neck. A kid I was working with noticed it and asked about it. I showed him how to wind it. Then he asked, “Where do you put the battery?”
Oh, brother.
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You can’t win, Jacque, so it makes sense to have some fun with it. Tell those kids where you were when you heard that Lincoln had been shot. Tell ’em how there was so much heated telegraph traffic as people looked for John Wilkes Booth that the wires melted. And then the Feds grabbed poor Dr. Mudd and tossed him in prison because he’d authorized an MRI of Booth’s leg, but Mudd then went on to invent a vaccine for polio and he was forgiven by everyone except (of course) Jonas Salk, who was really cheesed off.
History can be boring or lively. You know which I prefer.
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“Did you know that Paul McCartney was in a band before Wings?” And now kids don’t get that joke either…
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Love that one, told it just the other day. 🙂
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…but it was to someone my age.
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Congratulations, MIG! Be sure to inspect your flathead fillets before cooking. If you see guitar picks or Teva sandals in the meat, you have the wrong kind of Flathead Cat and it might be time to hide the evidence of an Incident. But relax. They taste like chicken. That is, catfish feature firm white meat that accepts a variety of herbs and spices. You can bake, fry or grill them. The key here is the size of this flathead. At six pounds, it is big enough to be nice to work with but young enough it hasn’t absorbed every spooky chemical in the water. Should be good.
Just Google “cooking catfish” to find a recipe that sounds like something you and the s&h would like.
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this is going to sound really old and crabby. manners or just consideration for others – not common knowledge anymore.
yesterday the grocery store was busy. i only had four items and i was in a hurry, so i proceeded to the express line. there, a woman who was old enough to read the sign was unloading a cart of about 30 boxes of cake mix and 30 cans of frosting. does that count as 60 items or two?
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That drives me crazy too. Either way, it counts as “rude.”
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I take solace in that even though I may screw up in plenty of other ways as a parent, Daughter at age 7 already knows that thank you notes need to be written (and will write them, sometimes, without prompting from me). Spelling may be, um, unique, but “thank you” at least is written clearly along with her name. 🙂
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Anna – I’ve always known we were kindred souls. I started out the child early on. Before she could write, I wrote thank you notes for her and “stamped” the notes w/ her handprint. When she got a bit older, but still not writing, she told me what to write. In kindergarten, she wrote just the words “thank you” while I filled in the rest. Now that’s she’s a teenager, she writes all her own, without whining, addresses them, has her own address labels and off they go!
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Good for you Anna and vs. I’ve lost count of how many high school, college graduation and even wedding gits have gone unacknowledged.
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while i sometimes forget (and some friends and i have an agreement of “no thank yous”) there are occasions where one expects a note. i sent the church in Duluth that my Mom attended while she lived up here and the church where she grew up some very generous checks in her memory – as well as the assisted living where she lived for a few years before moving to Diamond Willow in Cloquet. DW staff got checks – hugs, thanks and notes from most. nary a thank you from the churches or the assisted living place. well, they’re not in my will anyway – ha, ha!
question: does an email note count ever??
funny also – i sent one of my two remaining aunts a get well card a couple months ago. she sent me a thank you for the card! that’s too much pressure. 🙂
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Some people do tend to go overboard, with thank you notes. I think I know what Emily Post would have said about email notes had she known about them, but in my mind an email certainly beats no acknowledgement at all. I’m confident all baboons know who Emily Post was, but not so sure most young people today would have a clue….or care.
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biB, my guess is that you will eventually hear from the churches, just as soon as someone gets the information to the church secretary and she has a moment to do it (don’t ask me how I know).
I think email thank yous do count-partly because we just got one, as we were part of a group gift-giving to a departing staff member, and partly because in the case of the s&h, handwriting is extremely painful to get done. Third reason is that one of the people we routinely need to send thank yous to is never home and travels the world (no, seriously). An email thank you gets there in timely fashion and acknowledges receipt of a shipped gift-a written thank might not get into the right hands for a month or so.
Emily Post seems to have been the sort who understood that the world changes. I have 2 copies of her big blue books from different eras-just because.
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A few years back Miss Manners was in town on a book tour. She is wonderfully funny, very down-to-earth, and quite gracious. She is one of my heroes.
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I like her too. Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays…. I always read her column online!
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OT, but I can’t help myself. Michelle Bachmann is the gift that keeps on giving. She was interviewed the other day and asked about her penchant for making pronouncements with garbled facts. Bachmann said this was part of modern politics and she could take the heat. Then she introduced her campaign for president by pointing out she was born in Waterloo like that wonderful icon of traditional values, John Wayne. She meant to take America back to his kind of world.
The problem is that John Wayne the tall actor was born in Winterset, Iowa. The John Wayne who grew up in Waterloo like Michelle was John Wayne Gacy, the serial killer who dressed as a clown and filled his crawl space with small skeletons. No thanks, Michelle, I’d rather not go back there!
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teehee, snort, chuckle
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I’m sure that Michelle didn’t mean John Wayne Gacy. She thinks we should all know that she just made a little mistake and the press is just picking on her or that all politicans make mistakes like this that are caught by the press. I don’t think she accidently told people that they shouldn’t fill out the US census survey. How could you be so anti government that you wouldn’t cooperate with the collection of census data.?
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On my way in to work this morning, I heard an Iowa gentleman who had been at the Waterloo event say that MB seemed to have a lot of common sense, and that is what we need.
oh dear
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I’m thinking if she keeps waving that vigorously she’s going to dislocate her shoulder before the elections…
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Priceless
Please steve forward to the daily show
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Good morning to all:
Well, this should be a good topic for an old guy like me if I can manage to remember anything. Thanks for your interesting guest blog, Sherrilee.
Do any of you remember cold plate meals that were served by restaurants years ago?. I think this item is no longer offered or offered by very few places. They usually included jello and cold cuts, and could have a variety of other cold items such as cottage cheese, sliced cucmbers, potato salad, and sliced cheese with bread and butter on the side. Many restaurants in the 50s and 60s had this on their lunch menus.
Were any of you told that men and boys, when walking with women, should walk on the street side? Apparently this was done to protect women from anything that might come up on the sidewalk from the street such dirty water from puddles. I’ll bet parents no longer tell their sons that they should do this.
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ooh! ooh! Jim, my Mom and i ran the little “Lido Cafe” in Arlington one summer (think i was a junior or senior in HS). Mom was the cook and i was the wait staff. she ALWAYS had a “cold plate” at noon – quick and cheap – for the men who would come in for lunch – mostly guys who were working on some kind of gas line or something. we always had “commercials” as well. beef, turkey mostly – sandwiches on white bread, a glob of mashed potatoes next to the sandwich and about a ton of gravy over the whole thing. i think they were $.55 then – probably 1962 or ’63.
forgot to say THANKS! Sherrilee! two interesting and fun topics in one week. good help for Dale.
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I always wondered why they were called “commercials”-remember them well, but never indulged as I didn’t like white bread OR gravy. Just give me the roast beef and mashed potatoes, thanks.
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That meal sounds like a very fine funeral lunch in the church basement. I do remember one time hearing about the gentleman taking the curbside of the sidewalk-I’m just working on getting the s&h to hold the door for people and yielding a seat to an elder.
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My son once asked when the black and white world turned colors. He looked at pictures from my childhood and felt badly that we lived in shades of gray.
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I loved when that happened in the Wizard of Oz!
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While I was reading the blog post, I saw “Charlie Chan” but thought “Jackie Chan.” For a moment I was all excited, a Jackie Chan movie I hadn’t heard of! Alas. I think Charlie Chan might be one of those things resigned to the pop culture storage unit (not even the pop culture attic).
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Charlie Chan was great! Actually, I slightly prefer Peter Lorre as Mr. Moto but Warner Oland as Charlie was really wonderful. And Sidney Toler did a nice job of filling in after Oland’s death.
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I definitely have my wires crossed. When I saw “Charlie Chan”, my mind kicked in “…the Chinese Chicken”.
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Snort!
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Good morning Baboons,
Fabulous topic Sherrilee!
A quick fly-by with my gingered hot cocoa and cinnamon roll — I’ve never met anyone who remembers The Cantinflas Show: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amigo_and_Friends
Jim – I’ve met some men who do (walk on the street side of the sidewalk), and I always appreciate it. Heck, I went to a girls’ high school so when I first had a door opened for me at 19, I think I stood still in shock.
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I didn’t use to like having doors held for me, because it seemed silly and unnecessary unless I was carrying something–it’s not like my skirts were going to get in the way, which I suspect was the origin of the practice. Now I have enough gray hair (somewhat premature, but less premature than it was…) that I’ve decided opened doors and proffered bus seats are my due. I can’t get away with calling people “young man” yet, but I’m working up to it!
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A clerk at a little neighborhood store keeps calling me “young lady,” and I’m least 25 years her senior. I’m sure she means to be friendly, maybe even flattering, but it drives me crazy.
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Is that the Continflas who had the role of Passepartout in the movie of Around the World in 80 Days? I don’t remember him having a show but I think I was familiar with him in some way before I saw the movie, so maybe I did see it. We were very very late getting a TV; we had a dryer first and I would watch the clothes go around through the glass in the door as a substitute for TV.
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🙂
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We’ll, the clothes spinning around in the dryer would certainly be more interesting to watch than the test picture used for setting the various controls on your TV.
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Apparently the Cantinflas that I recall was a cartoon character that was inspired by but only very loosely related to Cantinflas the man.
Yes to Passepartout! What a memory! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cantinflas
I’ve never owned a TV. The last one I had was in 2004, it belonged to a housemate. Mr. MNiS has a monitor that can be a TV, but I only watch it when I walk by his office or when I’m called to come look. Although I have to say I was pleasantly surprised to find that there is actually real news on the regular news channels here (CBC).
I liked the test pattern. I didn’t like the continuous sound (hoot? beep?) it made.
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My memory of seeing Around the World in 80 Days is particularly vivid because my grandfather took me to see it on my golden birthday; just the two of us on a very special date. We went out to lunch first and for dessert afterwards. I was 5 years old and that still stands out as a pinnacle event in my life.
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Probably always will. Sweet!
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I think I only know who Lucretia Borgia was because she appeared on Peabody’s Improbable History.
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You’re one of the young ones.
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And she was interviewed at about that time by Barbara Wah-Wah.
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I remember the story I was going to tell now. You may remember that recently Google featured a very cool logo animation of Martha Graham. Well, when I saw it I called over one of my younger (probably early 30s) coworkers to watch it. She had no idea who Martha Graham was. Never heard of her. Martha Graham! You didn’t need to have ever set foot in a New York theater to have known who Martha Graham was Back In The Day. Oh, there were always people on the talk show circuit for whom you couldn’t remember the reason for their fame, like the Gabors (the professional dinner party guests of the television age) but doesn’t it seem like celebrities once used to be influential, intellectual and/or creative people, rather than criminals and game show runners-up?
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I ran into the same thing when Google did their salute to Martha Graham – though one or two at least recognized the signature black and white photo with her leg swept back leaving that lovely arc of skirt and her hand to her forehead (without knowing that this was a famous dancer/choreographer who totally changed the dance world).
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It’s part of modern politics to say things that are unintentionally inaccurate at best or intentionally inflammatory at worst. And this is acceptable…why? Oh, right…you’re just trying to make a point. Well, I guess that justifies everything.
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I referred once to Desmond Tutu and work and got blank stares from my co-workers. Desmond…Tutu. Not ancient history, not even as far back as the 70s. Apartheid? I asked. South Africa? Umm…nope. No recognition. Nelson Mandela?…Wasn’t he the guy that Morgan Freeman played in that movie? (oh dear) I didn’t even mention the shantytowns that got set up on campus while I was in college (in the 80s) to protest our college’s investments in companies that did business in South Africa. I didn’t bother trying to tie this in to Peter Gabriel’s song “Biko”…that would border on ancient history, I guess. :S
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Anna, I sure hope it is not a generational thing. There have always been ignorant people in all age groups. Well rounded people have inquiring minds and posses a broad base of knowledge. In the Pioneer Press there’s a daily feature called Bulletin Board. One category within the BB is called Baader Meinhof, defined by BB as encountering a piece of previously unknown information twice within a 24 hour period. I’m continually amazed at what words (plain old vocabulary), persons or events someone had never encountered before. But you don’t know what you don’t know, I guess. I know that I’d fail a quiz on today’s pop-culture.
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How true.
A person of any age reading something like the Bulletin Board, or watching Linda’s Peabody’s Improbable History is going to be less clueless than most. Hmmm… a more elegant way to say less clueless would be… Clueful?
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But I know what you mean. I’m just trying to not become my dad.
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M/PJ – I didn’t realize there was a word for this. Baader meinhof. This happens to me ALL the time. The latest one just happened this past weekend. Was doing the crossword on Sunday and the clue was “siroccos”. I hadn’t the vaguest, although eventually figured it out from the other letters (dust storms). Then yesterday, when I got to work, “sirocco” came up as the Word of the Day (I have 2 different sites that send me words each day).
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On behalf of the Bulletin Board, I bestow on you a satisfying BM!
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That sounds kinda dirty.
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Smut is in the mind of the beholder. I love smut! Anyone remember Tom Lehrer?
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Poo is smutty? I mean yes well to some I suppose, but that wasn’t what I was going for… :o/
Daniel Radcliffe introduced me to Tom Lehrer last year by singing The Elements on BBC…
N.B. – tim, what were you saying about geekiest videos?
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MniS, that is a geek trifecta-Harry Potter/Tom Lehrer/Periodic Table (and yes, I do know where to get t-shirts with the Periodic Table on them, yes I do)-what is the award we give for that????
and thanks, I still have that Lady Gaga piece in my head, but am feeling considerable better about the lack of Dr. in front of my name.
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Darn it, now, even without watching DR sing it, I have the elements song in my head. (I was introduced to Tom Lehrer in high school and had a friend who would sing a lot of the Lehrer catalog – sometimes I think without realizing he was singing loud enough to be heard.)
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MIG – I’m very much afraid that your award is a T-shirt that says “Hey Harry, show me your wand”.
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Now that is kind of dirty….
I’m afraid I may have been unclear (call the punctuation and/or grammar police)-I’m trying to figure out what the Geek Trifecta Medal looks like.
I also was thinking that seeing the Lady Gaga clip from yesterday confirmed that I was most likely meant to be a costumer, as I was completely absorbed by trying to figure out what all the elements of her costumes were, and wishing I had designed them.
(sadly, theatre also has more than its fair share of “bad projects”, so I didn’t escape that-the words “possibly moving to Broadway” still make me shiver)
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Genuine customer service comes to mind. I am too often amazed when I ask for help in a store – the young person answers the bare minimum, doesn’t occur to him/her to look something up or ask co-workers, for instance. And I seldom feel like telling them how to do their job…guess I should just demand more, now that I read this.
Fun topic, Sherrilee, I’m going try and think of more.
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Honestly, I’ve been a fair number of places in the world and of all the places I’ve been, “genuine customer service” of the non-hospitality-industry variety may only exist in Singapore, Minnesota and Wisconsin.
In Houston you’d stand in line at the post office and even if you were the only person there, the clerks behind the counter would keep chatting, clearly ignoring you.
In Malaysia the default service counter response is either a blank look or “No we can’t do that”.
In Sudbury the service centres are clean and bright and there’s no line, but they will still manage to screw something up with the paperwork.
A colleague recounts this story where at one of the D.C. hospitals, he called to speak to another physician, was put on hold for so long that he set the receiver down, walked across the street to the physician’s office and up to a receptionist, who said “Can I help you?” to which he said, pointing to her phone, “Yeah that’s me you’ve got on hold there.”
Her response? “Sweetie I’m on break.”
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When I first moved to DC, I was told, ” Welcome to Washington, DC, home of Northern hospitality and Southern efficiency”.
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My niece has a friend who was visiting and was completely astounded that there was no caller ID on the phone. Your phone is ringing and I can’t tell who it is! That’s so weird! What do you say when you pick it up if you don’t know who it is?
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The teenager clearly doesn’t understand the concept that relatively speaking, microwave technology is a recent phenomenon. “How did you used to heat things up?” was her question a couple of weeks ago. The fact that the stove sits right in the kitchen wasn’t a big enough clue for her!
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I remember when my brother and his wife had their first child and visited us- without a microwave – and they didn’t know how to heat a bottle. Mom had to show them how to put it in a pan of water pan of water on the stove.
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I remember the gadgets that dispensed hot water for when “you just can’t wait for the microwave.”
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Am I the only one having trouble with Word Press? It sometimes refuses to print a comment because it thinks I said that before. And I haven’t. And then it will sometimes print two copies of the comment, which IS duplicative. It never posts a comment the first time I click. Grrrr!
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Some times I have to wait a long time to have my comments posted. At first I thought they were lost and then I found out they would show up if I waited for several minutes or more. That seems like a long time when most things only take a few seconds to get done on computers and the internet.
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Mine show up right away but the comments stay in the reply box….
Firefox and a Mac if that matters.
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That’s what happening to me too. iMac and Safari combo. Don’t know that I can blame all my typos on Word Press, though I’d like to.
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