April 1954

Tipping my virtual hat to the magazine illustrations suggested by this week's Sepia Saturday, today I feature excerpts from LIFE magazine from April 12, 1954. This date happens to be the day that Bill Haley's "Rock Around the Clock" 45 RPM record was released, heralding the birth of what was soon to be called "rock and roll" -- auspiciously followed a mere three days later by my own birth.

Amazing what 20 cents got you 61 years ago.

"Sub-teens," not "pre-teens," mind you.  Note ye olde seams in the stockings. How is that bass remaining upright?

While the sub-teens do-si-do, mom puts on her evening attire and fetishizes her modern kitchen supplies.

However, beyond the horizon, trouble brews. Gotta keep ahead of those Russkies.

Duck and cover, or evacuate in an orderly manner by carpool!

But until the day of reckoning, don't forget to butter up the boss and his wife. And don't skimp on the freedom beer!

American Capitalism and High Tech roll on!

Join the march toward modern mechanization!

That's not science fiction, it's Industry! 

Speaking of which, don't forget, we really need to keep technologically vigilant against those durn Russkies.

Even if we are ignoring the fact that Bayer was, uh, the manufacturer of Zyklon-B.

Homunculi

A drive-by reflection on the workaday world.

Corporation Capture

Dolor

I have known the inexorable sadness of pencils,
Neat in their boxes, dolor of pad and paper weight,
All the misery of manilla folders and mucilage,
Desolation in immaculate public places,
Lonely reception room, lavatory, switchboard,
The unalterable pathos of basin and pitcher,
Ritual of multigraph, paper-clip, comma,
Endless duplicaton of lives and objects.
And I have seen dust from the walls of institutions,
Finer than flour, alive, more dangerous than silica,
Sift, almost invisible, through long afternoons of tedium,
Dropping a fine film on nails and delicate eyebrows,
Glazing the pale hair, the duplicate grey standard faces.

Theodore Roethke

Captured via webcam