(no subject)

[bitterlawngnome.livejournal.com]

Sunset, May 1951

From when the world was young and budgies were the Next Big Thing in pets.

Comments

[weelisa.livejournal.com]

We had budgies for pets - cause we lived in an apartment.

Oh, and a couple of finches and a turtle.

[bitterlawngnome.livejournal.com]

If I lived in one place all year, i would totally have a budgie.

[weelisa.livejournal.com]

Be warned, I was in charge of cleaning the bottom of the cage and it's messy and pretty much should be done every day.

Here's a story you might like: When my grandfather (a big animal lover) and grandmother were ordered to leave Fuime, Italy for three months during world war II, he decided to close the windows, let all of his birds out, puts big bowls of feed and water about and hope for the best.

Three months later they came back and all the birdies were alive and well. But my grandmother had the nice job of scrubbing all the poo off everything!

[bitterlawngnome.livejournal.com]

what do people use now that newspaper is not a commonplace?

[weelisa.livejournal.com]

Good question, I never thought of that. Do you still get flyers? If not, I'm thinking thick paper towel or wax paper would do the trick. The birds themselves don't really care.

[bitterlawngnome.livejournal.com]

hah

tiny little bird diapers

[poofy-boy.livejournal.com]

That is an amazing and heart-warming story! Although the clean-up must indeed have been a drag for your grandma.

[seamonkey-mags.livejournal.com]

People are talkin'
Talkin' 'bout budgies

[bitterlawngnome.livejournal.com]

wasn't that a Bonnie Raitt song?

[fynoda.livejournal.com]

BUDGIES! I showed this to mine, and they didn't seem to care.

[bitterlawngnome.livejournal.com]

its generational thing ... young budgies today ... what is the world coming to.

[amelia-eve.livejournal.com]

Wow, so it was the fault of Sunset Magazine! We were just watching Pulp Fiction last night, and I was pointing out to my husband the flimsy metal window frames and screens that are so common to post-war housing in California. Those screens always popped out at just the wrong time, and when they fell from the second story, the frames would get warped and never really fit again. Ugh.

[bitterlawngnome.livejournal.com]

even the ones that were hinged? of course we never had them in Canada, they don't make sense in the climate.

[amelia-eve.livejournal.com]

No, they just sort of pop into the aluminum window frames. They have little soft plastic tabs you use to tug on them for positioning and to lift them in and out. Of course, these plastic tabs eventually rip off.

If you live in Canada, you may not be aware of how Sunset fits in culturally. When I was growing up in the '60s and '70s, all middle class families I knew subscribed to "The Magazine of Western Living." It was a huge esthetic influence on the world I grew up in. The rugged, modern carpentry projects, the holiday crafts, the gardening advice, and especially the recipes. I still actually make a lot of the recipes from Sunset.

[bitterlawngnome.livejournal.com]

I sorta kinda get it - I'm sitting in the house that these Sunsets were originally delivered to, designed and built in 1949/50 very much in the style of the time, in a burb from that era, in Seattle, and I've spent some time in Tucson too, which is also Sunset territory (although I gather they had different editions for each region/state at various times). The magazines themselves are full of holes where gramma clipped out recipes, and the scrapbooks w the recipes are still here too.

The magazines of course were never sold it to where I lived (Ontario) but the cheaply printed "how to" paperback booklets were available in every hardware store, supermarket, and library. It was interesting to make the connection between these booklets (which were often quite irrelevant/inappropriate to local conditions) and the magazine and the actual environment where the advice made sense.