Vintage things that have REAPPEARED in your lifetime?

[Trenchfriend]

If THAT'S true, I will applause!

 

[FOXTROT LAMONT]

I had always planned to climb a large mountain. Now, if I can walk down to the mailbox and back up again, I feel muchlike I've climbed that mountain.

I was all set to have a Matterhorn go while in the Army but permission denied and later I realized life itself is mountainous. Today, I have a knee issue that nags periodic wry amuse over youthful insouciance.

 

[LostInTyme]

Had both knees and hips replaced, so the orignals disappeared to be substituted by man-made products.

 

[tonyb]

…

Not sure if I mentioned it before on this thread (my web connection is moving too slowly to check today), but something I've found came "back" is..... the Parker 51. Well, sort of. Yeah, Parker themselves made a LE version of it about a decade ago, but that was just a regular cartridge pen gussied up to look like a 51, not the same thing. The Wing Sung company of China, however, have since about 2018 been making their 601 model, which is very close to a 51. Not identical - parts are not interchangeable and they have adapted and improved the vacuum mechanism - but cosmetically it looks the same. Lovely pens. About £30 from a UK dealer, though I bought all mine direct for a little under half that, just needed the patience for the 'free postage' taking three weeks. They're wonderful, lovely pens to use. I went mad and bought a *lot* of different colours. I probably own about twenty of them (purchased across three years or so!), and I only ever had one that leaked - which the seller replaced immediately without quibble once I sent photos showing the problem. I keep other fountain pens for when I want a flexible nib, or a broader line, or one-handed operation, but these are my favourite go-tos. They're a bit of an indulgence, really, as I virtually never nowadays need to handwrite anything for anyone else to read - beyond a greetings card (and even then a lot of those I order online via one of the custom-card companies). However, there's a pleasure I get from handwriting for myself and using a fountain pen. The technical simplicity - also the notion that, especially with a true fountain (or, as in the case of the Waterman pens I have, an ink converter), I'm not contributing to the mountain of single-use plastics as if I were using disposable pens. That is, of course, a little compromised by having a lot of them, but still...

The original Parker 51 went out of production in 1972. Parker have sporadically released special editions and not-quite right versions, but always expensive... The Wing Sung 601 has, for me, brought back the idea of this style of hooded-nib pen with a 1940s aesthetic and a bigger than average reservoir as a really practical tool for daily use.

I have sentimental attachments to my Waterman, a gift from an old girlfriend who is since deceased, and a Mont Blanc, presented to me by my lovely missus back before we were married. But I rarely use either anymore.

 

[Edward]

I have sentimental attachments to my Waterman, a gift from an old girlfriend who is since deceased, and a Mont Blanc, presented to me by my lovely missus back before we were married. But I rarely use either anymore.

I think most folks are handwriting less and less generally now, just the way things are moving on. When I was an undergrad I had sheafs and sheafs of handwritten notes. I finally threw virtually all of them - long outdated as they were - in the bin about five years ago when my parents were moving house and needed me to clear stuff out. hurt to do it - they were no use to anyone, but somehow still I found it hard to let them go as they represented so much effort put into producing them. Fast forward the better part of three decades, and I now regularly find in an undergraduate tutorial I'm the only one in the room with a pen, as they type everything. When we still had proper exams, some of them would struggle with the idea of simply handwriting for three hours as they'd not done it in so long. They type everything. The curse of it is they remember less..... particularly with the absolute madness of continuing with open book, online assessment post pandemic (being fought back against by academics, and resisted by senior management who see only the cost-saving of everything being off-campus and online), it's shocking the number of students who now commit absolutely zip to memory, because they don't have to in their eyes. Course, those who over-rely on that are always the ones shocked to discover they still fail...

 

[tonyb]

^^^^^
I have a couple plastic storage bins full of wire-bound notebooks from my student days. They aren’t really in the way, and they are physical evidence of the time and effort I put into my education. So I have that to show for it, if not a helluva lot more.

I’ve long held that pen (or pencil) on paper is in some ways superior to “keyboarding,” as it’s called these days, especially for committing new information to memory. We’ve been over this territory before, so I’ll spare everyone a rehashing. I wouldn’t wish to write anything lengthy, and which would require rewriting and proofreading, in longhand, though

 

[FOXTROT LAMONT]

Had both knees and hips replaced, so the orignals disappeared to be substituted by man-made products.

I understand crossing one's legs cannot be done while seated after such surgery. That I would find unbearable.

 

[LostInTyme]

That only for a short time, until the muscles that have been cut begin to heal. I actually crossed my legs shortly after hip replacement and my hip started to dislocate. A pain I don't want to experience ever again. I got it popped back into place and never did that again until it was healed, A couple of months was all it needed, Everything is fine now and the hips and knees work much better than to old arthritis-ridden joints.

 

[Turnip]

After being in abeyance since 2001, German government seriously considers reactivating the compulsory military service and an alternative compulsory civil service for all Germans, male and female, of respective age cohorts.

 

[LostInTyme]

I think everyone should perform some type of government service in their lifetime, be it military or civil. For too long it has not been the case, and complacency has taken over. These days it seems that people expect to be handed free stuff and services without ever have given back.

 

[tonyb]

^^^^^
There’s something to be said for that, although it’s a far easier sell for someone like me, who is well past the age of conscription.

It might go a long way toward getting us out of our respective “silos.” It might be where stereotypes go to die, or at least get weakened.

 

[Turnip]

Now, that’s for sure!

Having completed my military service in 1991 I’ll finally get officially sorted out from reservist status next year.

 

[Trenchfriend]

Have you ever recapitulate, what a formidable easy snack this still is?:

>> hearty Knäckebrot/Crisp bread + a thin layer of sweet-picant mustard

Yumm!!

 

[Trenchfriend]

Bought a new kitchen radio, today.

Plain old FM travel/kitchen radio with telescope antenna (including Bluetooth option, I have no use for).

No digital display, no DAB/DAB+ tuner, no bass control, no tone control. Just analog FM-frequence scale, tuning dial, volume dial, power switch, that's it.
2x D-Cell battery port.

 

[Turnip]

A colleague showed unexpectedly up at work today. She was evacuated from home(office) because two nice unexploded 500kg bombs in her area had to be defused.

 

[tonyb]

^^^^^^
Ordnance left over from WWII?

The young couple across the street from our former residence occupied the house inherited from his late father, who had more than a dozen inoperable cars (he was partial to Pontiacs) behind a tall fence, among numerous other collections of what might fairly be called junk.

The young man set to the fairly daunting task of clearing out the junk. One day I came home to find the property surrounded by crime scene tape and police vehicles, including the state patrol’s bomb squad van. It turned out that he came across a WWII vintage hand grenade. He had no way of knowing if it were live or not, hence his calling the local cops, who in turn summoned the bomb specialists.

 

[Turnip]

No, just two allied WWII aircraft bombs, with two igniters each.

 

[Trenchfriend]

Years back, there was a Youtube-video of a 250 kilogram bomb safely-ignited by the bomb disposal team in Leipzig at one of the central rail tracks.
And THIS was one of the very view videos, where you could really see, what power such a bomb is able to set free! That's, why I remember this video so well.

 

[Turnip]

No, just two allied WWII aircraft bombs, with two igniters each.

Four more 500kg Easter eggs found in the same region, defusing scheduled for Thursday.

 

[Turnip]

Defusing completed, been five at the end.