Should Have Posted Over Here

[sunflower]

Ken,

If you refer to the vinyl records I do recall the players but not the ones with the phone-like horn. Something I also recall is the pianolla and the music rolls - we didnt have one, but next door did. The music rolls were being made in Sydney but I'm not sure if they are still there or went to the Smithsonian Museum as this was the only working plant left in the World about 10 years ago.

The first home phone we had was fixed to the wall and was a rotary dial, a wooden box really with the phone hanging on the cradle. I do recall the color plastic rotary dails that sat on a table, desk or kitchen bench and were so easily knocked off onto the floor. I dont recall when we got push buttons but I know I had one at work. Now I love my corldess phones and my net wireless connection. My mobile? Well one day I may get the hang of it. A family member has researched and found our Grandfather had one of the earliest home phones in Sydney at the time and  we got the phone number.

What is this to do with Astrology? Well the Tranits of Uranus would certainly have quite a lot to do with the technological advances that began and have been made since WWll. Communications had to be smarter, easier and faster for one thing so the limits were reset again and again and the Status Quo has been pushed beyond anything we could have imagined in the earlier years of the 20th Century.

I dont think everyone is ready to move into The Age of Aquarius yet. Some are there already and some are still back in the watery pools of Pisces yet to climb out, dry off and move on.

sunflower   

[Ken Haining]

Hi Alice.

When my Mom was still pregnant with me, my Father started going out on her.  By the time I was a toddler, the marriage broke up, and when I was three years old, my mother remarried my step Father, who became my adopted Father.  He was a very violent military man, and when he drank he was especially violent.  When I was five years old, he had a stroke, and was hospitalized for 9 months.  When he came back he was disabled, and although he still yelled and cursed, he was never violent again as he had been before the stroke.  He was not allowed to drink. 

It was right around that time that we moved back out to Long Island, from PA, and I ended up in that school where I had so much trouble and was tested for mental retardation.  That test would have been the Spring of 1960.  The superintendent of the school district did the test, and he came into my class room to discuss the test results of myself and the several other boys who took it with me.  He and the teacher were standing next to my desk, and I overheard the superintendent tell the teacher that the other boys should be left back.  And then the teacher said, with her usual lack of tact, "What about him?" and pointed to me.  He then asked who was the brightest student in the class.  The teacher had Brian stand, (see, I remember his name), and said he was top of the class and doing 4th grade work, even though he was only in the 2nd grade.  The superintendent then said, "This boy (referring to me) should be doing at least that well."   It was a shocker, since I was considered the class dunce.  It was one of those highlights of your life that you always remember.  A restoration of dignity.  As I say, I think that it was around April of 1960.  I was 7 and a half years old, and so it is a stretch to remember exactly when it was.

I never saw my original Father again.  He left when I was three years old, and I tried to look him up when I was 37 years old, but he had already been dead for quite a while.  He was a Marine veteran of World War 2.  I went to the V.A. and looked up his records.  He was married three more times after my Mom.  I probably have half brothers and sisters out there, but I have yet to try and trace that out. 

I think dyslexia is a condition of the brain that you are born with.  I don't think it is caused by environmental factors, but you never know.  As far back as I can remember, I would reverse letters and numbers, and have a hard time figuring out which direction I was going in. 

Ken