Is It Old or Is It New

We have all heard the saying that if your clothes are out of style, just hang on to them long enough and they will come back into style. The problem with that is once you have lived through an era wearing those clothes you are more than likely done with them. When and if they come back into to style you will either wonder why they were ever in style in the first place much less AGAIN, or you will be a different size. Or both. Even sadder, when the styles come back around your kids think they are great.

It’s not just clothes that seem to have a rebirth every other generation or so. The last movie I went to showed previews for 4 upcoming movies - a sequel to the 80's movie “Tron”, and remakes of Yogi Bear, The Green Lantern, and The Green Hornet. Is Hollywood out of ideas?

Many would say that music is timeless. There doesn’t seem to be an age or time barrier for many genres. While sharing dinner and cards with a younger couple in the late 80's they began telling us about this great new group they had discovered. The young man even ran to his car to get the cassette so we could hear it. It was indeed great music - and we had thought so when we first heard it 10 years earlier. The “new” group was The Moody Blues!

While technology continues to speed along the path to newer and better, the way we use it is not really new at all. According to World Wide Words the term “unfriend” used on Facebook originated in the 1500's.

“But I believed, niece, you had a greater sense of propriety than to have
received the visits of any young man in your present unfriended situation.”
(The Mysteries of Udolpho, by Ann Radcliffe, 1794.)

Turns out Texting lingo is really nothing new either. Just the way we do it is new - on a tiny screen via cell phone instead of handwritten in clandestine notes or flowing love letters that used actual paper and ink. Phrases like 2 cute 2 B 4gotten are well known. And the familiar Thx at the end of a typed or written communication is commonplace.

The Victorian poets were masters of “texting” style. * Charles Carroll Bombaugh wrote the following verse in “Gleanings for the Harvest-Fields of Literature”

“And 1st should NE NVU
B EZ, mind it not,
Should NE friendship show, B true:
They should not B forgot.”

Translation:

And first should any envy you
be easy, mind it not,
Should any friendship show, be true:
They should not be forgot.

So, next time you "discover" something new, beware. It just might be a great old invention on its second time around. Here I will end with a "text" message seen on World War II letters. SWAK



*Discovery New article 08-23-10 by Rossella Lorenzi