| | I just turned 59 on November 10. My parents were the youngest of five and seven, born in 1929 and 1931. I don't know my dad's side of the family, but my one grandmother was born in 1896 and my grandfather in 1884. (They were married at 30 and 18, odd, perhaps, now, but historically supported.) My grandmother raised two generations in the same house: her own children, of course, but when my uncles went to World War II, their children, and then, last, my brother and me. So, for me, the time before airplanes and radios and televisions was very real. I remember when we got more digits in the phone number, seven, really, not four. (It was the local exchange system: Ontario... Shadyside... Cherry..., which were neighborhood switches, right? You can still see the buildings around town, if you know what to look for.)
But my grandparents were very modern -- or at least my grandmother was. I would come home from school and find my science books out. She told me about meteors she saw and fossils that came up from the coal mines they lived at before coming to Cleveland. She was a passenger in airplanes and then in jets.
So, I take nothing for granted.
I find it all thrilling. Everytime I fly commercial, I think about the fact that I am cruising at 80% the speed of sound, one-third of the way to outer space.
Back in 1999/2000, I wrote a series of Millennial Wonder Stories in the Gernsback style. I submitted one for a contest.
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