the return of 1975
Jan. 3rd, 2011 10:11 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
calimacToday, Monday, is Tolkien's birthday. He is eleventy-nine today. Many happy returns.
It is also the day that Jerry Brown becomes Governor of California. Naturally, this takes me back to the previous time that Jerry Brown became Governor of California, in 1975. (January 6th to be specific, as inauguration day in California is the first Monday in January, not a specific date.)
That was a while ago. At that time I'd already read The Lord of the Rings it must have been seven times, all of them in a by-then ratty paperback copy I'd soon give away, but I had only just contacted the Mythopoeic Society and had yet to attend any meetings. Discussing Tolkien with anybody else who'd also read him was still a dream to me. (I didn't know anybody who had.) I had scoured the sample bulletin that the Society had sent me for meeting info and any other clues as to what the Society did or talked about. I would hardly have believed that, a mere five years later, I would become that bulletin's editor and keep the job for 15 years. The glimmer of the idea had entered my head of dropping in to my high school's science-fiction club and seeing if anybody there was interested. I hadn't done so before because I didn't consider myself an SF reader: the only genre SF novels I'd ever read were Asimov's Foundation trilogy and Clarke's 2001. I would soon be sucked in, to SF and fandom both.
As all this predated Prop 13, California public schools were still good. I had taken AP American History, gotten the top grade, and was planning on majoring in it in college, at UC Berkeley, which I did. My eventual goal, also achieved, was a master's in library science. I had already been working in my school libraries for four years, and had settled on that as a career. I liked the work despite the fact that most of it consisted of filing cards in the catalog. I would have been pleased to know that I'd spend most of my professional career converting those catalogs into computer form, rendering the filing of cards unnecessary. (My first encounter with a computerized library catalog came in library school in 1981. I was so riveted, I didn't get up from the chair for six hours.) And it would also have been pleasing to know that computers, which in 1975 I considered useless gadgetry, would eventually become good for something.
I had been listening to classical music since I was 12 and already had a modest collection of LPs. I know I had all of Beethoven's symphonies by then (the Karajan box set) and probably all the Brahms, but I doubt there were any other prolific symphonists whom I had complete sets of. Nevertheless I knew the major orchestral repertoire pretty much as well then as I do now. Chamber music was a lot sketchier, and I already knew I didn't care much for opera. Prospects for contemporary music still looked mighty dim, mired in academic serialism. It would take nearly a decade for word to reach me that the cavalry was coming in the form of neoromantics and minimalists who were revitalizing the world of new classical music. As for current pop music, in 1975 I had a passing liking for some of the Beatles and for the likes of Simon & Garfunkel, but I wouldn't admit it to anyone, because of my utter loathing (only mildly diluted since then) of everything else that my contemporaries liked. Steeleye Span were already around, but I wouldn't hear of them for another three years, and the kind of non-pop folk singer-songwriters I like now were likewise completely unknown to me; most of my favorites hadn't started recording yet.
Where the future of classical composition looked dark, but this prognosis was overturned by events, the future of U.S. politics looked unjustifiably bright. We'd just gotten out of Watergate, the state had a bright new intelligent governor to replace the shambling moron of the previous eight years, and the life of the world looked ready to move forward into broad, sunlit uplands, to borrow a phrase. Well, that didn't work out either. But could I have guessed that Jerry Brown would serve eight years, go away into other things, and then come back?
Many people who were alive in 1975 are now dead. I would have known this intellectually, but it would have been hard to grasp emotionally, and I think it is the thing that would have stunned me most had I been granted a glimpse of today. Some of those people were dear to me, starting with my grandparents and my brother. On the other hand, many delightful people have since been born, and some small children have grown up into masterful adults. And many others have entered my life. I would not have given good odds in 1975 that at age 30 I would meet my true love and live happily ever after, but if I had known it I would not have been impatient to wait.
It is also the day that Jerry Brown becomes Governor of California. Naturally, this takes me back to the previous time that Jerry Brown became Governor of California, in 1975. (January 6th to be specific, as inauguration day in California is the first Monday in January, not a specific date.)
That was a while ago. At that time I'd already read The Lord of the Rings it must have been seven times, all of them in a by-then ratty paperback copy I'd soon give away, but I had only just contacted the Mythopoeic Society and had yet to attend any meetings. Discussing Tolkien with anybody else who'd also read him was still a dream to me. (I didn't know anybody who had.) I had scoured the sample bulletin that the Society had sent me for meeting info and any other clues as to what the Society did or talked about. I would hardly have believed that, a mere five years later, I would become that bulletin's editor and keep the job for 15 years. The glimmer of the idea had entered my head of dropping in to my high school's science-fiction club and seeing if anybody there was interested. I hadn't done so before because I didn't consider myself an SF reader: the only genre SF novels I'd ever read were Asimov's Foundation trilogy and Clarke's 2001. I would soon be sucked in, to SF and fandom both.
As all this predated Prop 13, California public schools were still good. I had taken AP American History, gotten the top grade, and was planning on majoring in it in college, at UC Berkeley, which I did. My eventual goal, also achieved, was a master's in library science. I had already been working in my school libraries for four years, and had settled on that as a career. I liked the work despite the fact that most of it consisted of filing cards in the catalog. I would have been pleased to know that I'd spend most of my professional career converting those catalogs into computer form, rendering the filing of cards unnecessary. (My first encounter with a computerized library catalog came in library school in 1981. I was so riveted, I didn't get up from the chair for six hours.) And it would also have been pleasing to know that computers, which in 1975 I considered useless gadgetry, would eventually become good for something.
I had been listening to classical music since I was 12 and already had a modest collection of LPs. I know I had all of Beethoven's symphonies by then (the Karajan box set) and probably all the Brahms, but I doubt there were any other prolific symphonists whom I had complete sets of. Nevertheless I knew the major orchestral repertoire pretty much as well then as I do now. Chamber music was a lot sketchier, and I already knew I didn't care much for opera. Prospects for contemporary music still looked mighty dim, mired in academic serialism. It would take nearly a decade for word to reach me that the cavalry was coming in the form of neoromantics and minimalists who were revitalizing the world of new classical music. As for current pop music, in 1975 I had a passing liking for some of the Beatles and for the likes of Simon & Garfunkel, but I wouldn't admit it to anyone, because of my utter loathing (only mildly diluted since then) of everything else that my contemporaries liked. Steeleye Span were already around, but I wouldn't hear of them for another three years, and the kind of non-pop folk singer-songwriters I like now were likewise completely unknown to me; most of my favorites hadn't started recording yet.
Where the future of classical composition looked dark, but this prognosis was overturned by events, the future of U.S. politics looked unjustifiably bright. We'd just gotten out of Watergate, the state had a bright new intelligent governor to replace the shambling moron of the previous eight years, and the life of the world looked ready to move forward into broad, sunlit uplands, to borrow a phrase. Well, that didn't work out either. But could I have guessed that Jerry Brown would serve eight years, go away into other things, and then come back?
Many people who were alive in 1975 are now dead. I would have known this intellectually, but it would have been hard to grasp emotionally, and I think it is the thing that would have stunned me most had I been granted a glimpse of today. Some of those people were dear to me, starting with my grandparents and my brother. On the other hand, many delightful people have since been born, and some small children have grown up into masterful adults. And many others have entered my life. I would not have given good odds in 1975 that at age 30 I would meet my true love and live happily ever after, but if I had known it I would not have been impatient to wait.
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Date: 2011-01-04 12:28 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-01-04 01:20 am (UTC)I was in Texas. But I too had about then contacted the Mythopoeic Society, being a lone reader out there for a long time yet. But I had been reading LOTR for ... several years (I'd have to do calculations to figure it out).