My son, in a hostel in Kiev Ukraine as captured on Skype.
This blog, based on the letters of http://www.tighsolas.ca/, is about the similarities and differences between 1910 and now.
With this blog, I am writing a book called Flo in the City, about a young woman, my son’s great great aunt, coming of age in the pivotal 1908-1913 era.
I’ve been procrastinating, big time on the actual draft of the book.
But no one blog I have written until now better captures the differences and similarities between the two eras.
The Nicholson letters exist because the Nicholson father, Norm and his kids had moved away from home, to find work in 1910. The world was changing and job opportunities were scarse and there weren’t many in the rural areas and towns.
The mother, Margaret feared for her family (even though they ‘kids’ were 25ish, like my son.) Letters kept them together. And all the fears this mom, Margaret Nicholson, had for her family were expressed in the letters. She was especially anxious about Herb, who hardly ever wrote home.
Andrew, who is travelling across Europe, isn’t that keen on talking to me and has little interest in updating me on his activities. (Just like Herb and Marion Nicholson, his ancestors.) But he knows I am worried and he’s getting a little bored and tired. He is spending a couple of days travelling and another couple of days chilling in his hostel. Quite literally as it is 34 degrees in Kiev on this day.
The Ukraine is like Canada, he says, landscape wise and weather wise. But it is very very different people wise and architecture wise. The women are ‘shockingly’ beautiful, he says. ( I tell my son how in the 60′s and 70′s the Western media portrayed Russian women as hideous battle axes who all drove trucks for a living or picked potatoes in the fields. (Unless they were spies called Natasha.) Amazing how these ‘bow wows’ had such beautiful grandchildren.) Kiev is huge and the main boulevards are in the grand style in neo Stalin, the hostel owner described it to him. He says there are giant underground shopping areas at the street corners. Similar, again, to Montreal.
Tomorrow, he is going to Chernobyl.
I wonder what Margaret would have thought about that, Margaret, the worrier. She worried about her son getting bad habits in the big bad city (Montreal) and she worried about her husband being hurt on the railway. She didn’t live long enough to worry about nuclear bombs: she died in 1942. Later Herb would move out West (like so many others) and she worried about that big time. Travelling to Manitoba, in those days, was probably no different from travelling to the Ukraine, today.
In 1910, A T and T was pitching the new telephone gadget. One ad shows a Mom on the phone, and says the telephone ‘helps you keep in touch’.
They were preying on a mom’s fears.
Some things change, some things stay the same.
This blog begs the question: Does technology keep moms from worrying about their kids?
Of course not. In fact there’s a good argument to say that it increases worry.
But for now, I got to see and hear my son on a screen (very clear although with a slight delay) and Kiev, Ukraine, doesn’t seem so far away,
