Subject:  I feel old.  Not ancient, but old. 

I know I'm not that old, but to think back on my earliest memories and to compare those with what we see every day is a study in welcoming a new world.  I really feel for those, like my Mom-in-Law, who have even more time on this earth and who have seen changes that must truly be baffling.  Imagine what it was to have been born in the 1920's or 1930's, and now to live in today's world.  Back then, no TV, radio for the masses in it's infancy, many places with no electricity including lights.  Cars are becoming popular, but airplanes are still wood frame open cockpit and, except during WW I, not common.  The telephone not yet common.  In some other ways, possibly even more disconcerting, is the change in society.  The fall of good manners, the rise of me! me! me! as a driving force for most of society; the old order changed and not always for the better.  The speed of daily life was much slower in those days, and the daily tasks to stay alive, much less to stay healthy, took much more time then they do today.  The focus in the old days was for most people, as I interpret it, much more on the base of the Maslowian pyramid because we as a nation and a species had far fewer resources to spend on the higher levels, the "wants" rather than "needs", of the pyramid.  Technology had not invented many of the items that we take for granted today that improve our lives.  More thoughts on this soon, but for now, it is time to avail ourselves of two changes in this day and age that make life much easier and faster:  The chain restaurant and the supermarket.  Best to you all.