Good Bye View-Master

The best toy ever, the View-Master, is being put to sleep after 70 years of making kids happy. It seems the new kids aren't amused by the View-Master. It doesn't have enough moving parts, doesn't make interesting noises and doesn't do all the work for you. You actually have to use your imagination to play with it.

I treasured my View-Master when I was a kid. Maybe that's because I didn't have a closet full of toys, or maybe that's because I was the type who liked being drawn into another world that seemed to be on another plane.

I had Quick Draw McGraw

and Deputy Dawg.

I had the Flintstones and famous places and wild animals. I had Jungle Book and Disney Land and Snoopy and space images. You could hold the red viewer up to your eyes so close you couldn't see anything of the real world but could focus just on the 3-D images in front of your eyes. And you could live in that world as long as you could hold your arms up to your face.

Yep. I loved my View-Master. My kids had them, too, and their old reels are still somewhere in the house with an updated projector kind of View-Master. I'll have to break those out and disappear into the world of 3-D for awhile and remember the days of leisurely sitting on the floor with all those reels spread out on the floor waiting to take me to another world. Stupid new kids and their demanding ways.

Long Live Anita Bowser

You know I occasionally check my hometown newspaper's website to scan the obituaries (morbid, I know, but I'm at that age). Over this past weekend, I read the obituary of Indiana State Senator Anita Bowser . She was a noted Democrat who championed causes protecting the neediest in the state's population. She was respected on both sides of the aisle for her intelligence and plain and outspoken approach to law making. The picture on her senate page is lovely. I remember none of those things about Anita Bowser . My first year or so in college was spent at a branch of Purdue University, and in the early 80s, Anita was a political science professor. She taught my American Government class my freshman year, and she was a mess. Somewhere in my old text book, I have a sketch of her drawn on a particularly dull day in class--her hose sagged at her ankles, her slip showed at least half an inch all the way around, her hair had been slept on but not brushed, and her bright red lip stic...

My Sitemeter is All Bloated and Not Quite Itself

I'm tempted to let it sit on the couch with its feet curled up under a blanket, a hot cup of coffee in hand, a block of cherry almond bark Chocolove within reach, and An Affair to Remember spinning in the DVD player. I'm one of those obsessive bloggers, the kind who checks her sitemeter as often as possible throughout the day, the kind who gauges the quality of her writing by the number of readers who regularly stop by. I've become less interested in the overall number of hits and more interested in the number of repeat hits. The return visitors are the ones I long for. When my sitemeter reads forty at the end of the day, and the majority of those hits are webpals who have conversed, I'm happy. Forty may seem low to many of you, but I've only been at this since August. To me, forty is a jackpot. A few days ago, I sat down at my laptop and discovered a number somewhere in the eighties. Eighties! Yippee! Yeeha ! Hoo-rah ! I've been discovered by the webworld , o...

Happy Birthday...

to me! Update: Since you have asked, I only got one actual packaged gift, a beautiful hand-made bracelet from a friend, but both girls were home for the weekend, and we had dinner at the lake and a relaxing weekend. Thanks to all of you for your lovely wishes!

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