Postblogging Technology, January 1956, I: Why Would You Risk All This Progress With Adlai?

R_.C_.,
Shaughnessy,
Vancouver,
Canada

Dear Father:

Where in some boring parts of the world the story is having to book a last minute flight into Vancouver because of catastrophic and avoidable flooding in northern California and Oregon, we needn't lose focus on the real news, which is that someone is talking Tony Eden down in London, and the President's latest appearance in Key West implies that the GOP might have to run Nixon against Adlia, eww. And while it might seem as though Fortune has gone political in an even more unhinged way this month, it is actually the fact that there has never been so much progress, and we'll lose it all the moment we vote for "groupocracy."

On the bright side, we're currently not invading Jordan or atom bombing Peking, and ElectroData has landed on my desk because I am known to have an interest in the College Boy. Sybil Rock is a delight! On the bright side, I'm not going to have any trouble making my hours. On the less bright side, I think I have children?

Your Loving Daughter,

Ronnie

Postblogging Technology, December, 1955, II: Peace On Earth and Sick Presidents. (In 1955!)

We've done this before, but Pogo has never been more relevant.

R_. C_.,
Shaughnessy,
Vancouver,
Canada

Dear Father:

Once again I am writing to the man downstairs. It seems a bit silly, but I also feel blue and somber and like somehow marking the occasion of Victor's death, which has hit James even harder than it has me. 

Test flying is dangerous work, and we have lost friends before, but this is the first of them to be killed on a plane that James was not sparing in describing as a pointless death trap. You have to swallow a certain amount of bile when your warnings go disregarded, and it is not like Victor is the last man this silly contraption will kill. 

I suppose this what we deserve for living in a country that turns out not to need a President at all, after apparently living through almost two centuries labouring under the illusion. At least as long as the Cabinet consists of good Republicans, the country flies autopilot!

Your Loving Daughter,

Ronnie

Postblogging Technology, December 1955: A Heart-Warming Christmas Time

R_. C._,
Shaughnessy,
Vancouver,
Canada

Dear Father:

Hopefully this, and the Christmas post accompanying, will reach you before you leave for Santa Clara, where I will see you for our a dinner which I'm sure will be as jolly as the Geneva Conference. (If I can b be Molotov, Grace has to be Dulles!)

Your Loving Daughter,

Ronnie

Postblogging Technology, November 1955: Even the Moderate Adlai Stevenson

The Ballad of Davy Crockett hit the Top 10 twice in 1955, by two different artists. Leaving the historic Crockett aside (JFC he was a Shawnee, deal with it). "Justice was due every Redskin band." What do you even do? RIP Estes Kefauver.

R_.C_.,
Shaughnessy,
Vancouver,
Canada


Dear Father:

The idea was good, but the material wasn't up to 
it and they took it too far. 

Fall is here, and I have to say that, as materialistic as it sounds, it is very nice to be making good money and not from a family allowance. James had leave, and we took the family up to Napa in our very nice new 405. (Fortunately the neighbours take it for granted that it is family money, and I don't correct them, because I am a liberal, but I am also a hypocrite, because it is just safer that way.) 

We saw the Ks for the first time since their return from Europe. I regret to say that all does not look entirely happy on the domestic front, but there is the thought that they will do it for the children, and one might hope that misery will lead to a great novel. One's fingers are crossed. We also saw, in a more bohemian way, V., who is making quite the splash on the science fiction literary scene, if not precisely the money. He pretends Bohemian diffidence, but I'm sure that he would be more comfortable being diffident with more money! On the bright side he introduced us to some friends, wild-eyed vintners, if you can imagine, and leaving us half-convinced that there's a reason to be wild-eyed about California wine. 

Your Loving Daughter,

Ronnie

Postblogging Technology, November 1955, I: The Path of Duty

First week at Number 1 started 26 November. Princess Margaret isn't exactly a working class hero, but I bet she's vibing to this right now!

R_.C_.,
Shaughnessy,
Vancouver,
Canada




Dear Father:

After the excitement of playing secret agent for a few weeks, I am afraid that my life has turned into that of a junior associate doing her best to get her billable hours up and having to watch her children being raised by someone else. 

Since elsewhere I'm on about the history of Route 40 and the French and Indian
War, here's another reminder that there is no such thing as the crest of the 
Appalachians. This is about a day's walk from Gnaddenhutten. 

I have to confess that the thought of turning in some masterpiece of corporate "raiding" and half-retiting on my laurels was very attractive. Otherwise, it will be hard for James and I to spend anywhere near as much time together as we would like. Hawaii and San Francisco aren't that far apart, at least for dashing airmen, but trans-Pacific dashes can be wearing for any of us. At least he is not in Washington flogging the SeaMaster on. And, yes, if we want to give little James-James and Vickie a little brother or sister, it would be best to do it before James is put aboard an atomic aircraft!

We are not thinking about moving from Palo Alto, although thank you for your offer. The house is nice, and the train is punctual and a good time to do some paperwork --at least in theory!  


Your Loving Daughter,

Ronnie

Postblogging Technology, October 1955, II: Boom boom!

According to  Reddit User WeirdWings, this is the  Bartini A-57, a supersonic V/STOL delta
wing flying boat nuclear bomber, with a supersonic recon plane piggyback. "It was never put 
into production" says Wikipedia, which proceeds to speculate on why it was cancelled in 1957.

R_.C_.,
Shaughnessy,
Vancouver,
Canada




Dear Father:

With this one you find me back to work, in the office, and missing my children, whom I got to see a lot more when I was running around the Santa Clara Valley. As exciting as making sure you aren't followed on the way to a secret rendezvous and passing coded messages is, it was not to be. The young men who want to leave Dr. Schockley's employ have neither a patent case nor money, and there's not very many of them. We might be able to turn around the money. There are investors out there, but Shockley will have to get a lot worse for the rebellion to spread across the office, and, I don't know, tell them he doesn't want their work. It is hard to believe any of that is going to happen. 

Your son, if he hasn't written you separately, is settling into squadron life again. As he says, being in charge of planes at least means that he doesn't have to be in Washington championing the SeaMaster. He will be back in town next weekend, and we will go see Oklahoma!

Your Loving Daughter,

Ronnie

Postblogging Technology, September, 1955, II: Ike in '56!

R_. C_.,
Shaughnessy,
Vancouver,
Canada

Dear Father:

You might be happy to hear that I have been branching out from pouring over patent tenders to wining and dining Bill and David. While it might seem as though the partners are taking advantage of my connections, I see it as me taking advantage of the partners! It is nice to be working a bit closer to home, though, as I am feeling more than a little guilty about how little I am seeing my children. 

You'll notice a lack of aviation journals. The Farnborough issues of Flight have vanished into the postal never-neverland. On the bright side, an October number of Aviation Week has managed to track me down at the Palo Alto address in defiance of all probabilities. Maybe circulation remembers our long correspondence the last time I couldn't get my magazines here?

Your Loving Daughter,

Ronnie

Ray Milland's last directorial effort?

Postblogging Technology, September 1955: Paper Rationing Is Over, Interest Rates Are Up, and the President is still Healthy

It appears that Susannah and the Singing Dogs are only represented on Youtube by this, and not their chart-leading performance of "Jingle Bells."

R_. C_.,
Shaughnessy,
Vancouver,
Canada

Dear Father:

A short note as I am fitting myself in at the firm and a bit frazzled, as you might be able to tell from all my screaming at The Economist to just get on with it! Hopefully I will be a bit more at ease by Christmas. 

Your Loving Daughter,

Ronnie

Postblogging Technology, August 1955, II: Plane On Ice

(Per Newsweek of 1955, the theme of Porgy and Bess is that American racism isn't as bad as they say.)

R_. C_.,
Shaughnessy,
Vancouver,
Canada




Dear Father:

The last Renata cherries are off the market here, the peaches are ruined, it's raining,  the roof is leaking again, and James is off to his squadron. Summertime is not easy! And the worst part is that we only have a week to go, because I have to go down to San Francisco to look at our new digs and meet the partners, who seem very pleased to have someone with a track record of staring at patent applications all day, albeit admittedly in the service of selling turboliners, rather than making vast sums of money defending and prosecuting patent violation cases. At least I got to wear a nice flannel plaid to market in Nelson, which you would ordinarily not do in August.

But we did get Canadian polio vaccinations, and I guess no-one ever offered to cancel September. And, even if they did, I voted for the other guy. 

Your Loving Daughter,

Ronnie

Postblogging Technology, August 1955: Open Skies

R. C.,

Shaughnessy,
Vancouver,
Canada

Dear Father:

Smaller than Sputnik, but solid state. NASA. No spying, 
pinkie swear!

The slow task of reassembling my subscriptions continues, with an all-British collection this week, just in time for Canada to abandon the Old Country in favour of  the United States, which I am sure will not be a problem notwithstanding the warnings from down Vancouver way that since Canadian rivers run south, except where they don't, we all shall be induced by easy fits of relaxation to join the United States to enjoy all the advantages of efficient transportation. 

Looking around Nakusp and comparing it with Kamloops, I certainly see the advantages of being on a river that flows into the United States, the innocent young mother said, innocently! 


Your Loving Daughter,

Ronnie

Postblogging Technology, July 1955, II: Cherry Time

R_.C_.,
Shaughnessy,
Vancouver,
Canada

Dear Father:

Mon only looks drawn because it's a 25 hour day keeping
the kids from knocking all that kitsch over. 

I am pleased to report that my husband, children, and I are enjoying an idyllic Arrows Lake summer, and that the Nelson Public Library carries The Economist and Newsweek, but that Notre Dame's collection of thinly-disguised advertorial collections is woefully deficient, and wherever in the postal universe my magazines are, they aren't here. I am sure that they will turn up shortly, but everything in life is short except deadlines, however self-imposed, so I am going with what I have got and am then off to contemplate what to do with even more fresh cherries than we can eat raw. 

Your Loving Daughter,

Ronnie

PS: Upside Down Cake!

Postblogging Technology, July 1955: Vaccine Experts Disagree

R_.C_.,
The Lake House,
Nakusp, B.C.
Canada




Dear Father:

In perhaps the most unexpected development in the history of this correspondence, I forgot to pack some of my magazines for the trip, most notably the Newsweeks, and all I could find in Nelson was Time. (For my hypothetical readers in twenty years time, I am addressing this to the gentleman in the bedroom in the landing downstairs because I wanted to write this for you. I hope that you feel appreciative, or at least guilty!) even though 

Your Loving Daughter,

Ronnie

Postblogging Technology, June 1955, II: Free Speech and Tolerance Except for CIO Organisers

Yes, it's that movie. 

R_. C_.,
Lake House,
Nakusp,
Canada

Dear Father:

It is my last day in Britain, and I have handed off this letter and other confidential papers to the courier. We are waiting on a taxi to take us to Waterloo, and from there to Southampton to catch our ship providing it hasn't been struck in. Montreal and by rail to Revelstoke, none of the troubles of Atlantic flying with two children in tow, thank you very much! James cannot travel with us as there is some tedious planning exercise in regards ground radar at the East Anglia stations, so he will be flying in by stages, eventually to Kelowna. So we will have a rented car for the vacation, after all! Just as well, since there are probably going to be some trips to Nelson when Nakusp palls.

Your Loving Daughter,

Ronnie

Postblogging Technnology, May 1955, II: It Sure Better Not Be 99 Balloons Going By!

R_.C._,
Shaughnessy,
Vancouver,
Canada

Dear Father:

@Ferry Life: https://ferriesbc.proboards.com/thread/9490/bc-ferries-memories

You find me in the doldrums of an ongoing election campaign. The world has discovered peace, and I have discovered just how angry a four-year-old can be. (Very!) She finds the disruptions of packing far too much to bear, and the intimation that she shall have a nurse while Mama is away all day is not to be countenanced. At least her baby brother is a placid little cuddle bear! And I shall be well clear of Britain when Tony Eden launches whatever manic midnight expedition he has his mind set upon by then. I am betting on Athens, but not ruling out New Guinea. 

Your Loving Daughter,

Ronnie

Postblogging Technology, April 1955, II: Streaming and Peppermint Bombs

Fortune is going to get you Philistines into abstract art even if it takes another
25 years

R_.C_.,
Shaughnessy,
Vancouver,
Canada




Dear Father:

The much predicted election is upon us. I cannot see "my" side winning, but I have to confess to some trepidation about the nation's choice this time around that goes beyond the partisanship of us wooly-minded young progressives. Anthony Eden is not, quite frankly, in his right mind. I expect the cabinet to restrain him, but I am also worried that he will run right over the men I am depending upon. Rab Butler hasn't the strength of character to stand up to Eden, and MacMillan is too deferential. If Eden hits on some disastrous policy that appeals to the 1923 Committee types, what is there left? 

Or I could just relax and enjoy the optimism of this new Elizabethan Age. (Except, yikes, inflation!)

Your Loving Daughter,

Ronnie

Postblogging Technology, April 1955, I: I Don't Even Know What Secrecy Is, Any More

R_.C.,
Shaughnessy,
Vancouver,
Canada

Dear Father:

I'm having a bit of a mix-up with my magazines, which I am sure I will have sorted out next time. In the mean time, enjoy a review of the news over two weeks in which the Chief of Naval Operations is allowed to just make stuff up and plant it in the press, an MP isn't allowed to complain about an actual security violation, and the Atomic Energy Commission outright lies about the United States having atomic warheads for guided air-to-air missiles. 

Unless WWIII does break out. I can't rule it out, but I'm writing on the 15th, and I will be going to bed well before midnight, so I may wake up to find us in the midst of the final global battle between the imperialists and the Socialist Soviet of Workers and Peasants.

Your Loving Daughter, 

Ronnie

Postblogging Technology, March 1955, II: Detroit's Battle of the Century

Tony Randall as sex symbol is the perfect lead into the musical act that closes the thumbnail below. 

R_. C_.,
Shaughnessy,
Vancouver,
Canada

Dear Father:

It is my understanding that I am to call you "Daddio" and decline to do my homework until such time as there's a revolution or something, and there's really no point in doing anything but knock over newstands. I'm not even sure that I am allowed to care about Kefauver '56 or Aneurin Bevan, as they might be too square. (Bevan sure is. Binge drinking is for when you're young and irresponsible, not putting yourself forward as a potential prime minister!) 

So, you know, who cares about stuff and anything? Not us young people today! (I am young, right? At least, I'm not thirty!) Anyway, because it is March and the technical press is still exhausted from the New Year's stuff, and the British press is waiting on an election, it will probably feel like this installment is all rebellion.  

Your Loving Daughter,

Ronnie

It won't hit the top of the charts until the summer, but Rock Around the Clock is the hit single from the Blackboard Jungle soundtrack. Did you know that the novel that Blackboard Jungle is based on is set in a British school? I didn't!

Postblogging Technology, February, 1955, II: Diamonds in the Rough

R_., C_.,
Shaughnessy,
Vancouver,
Canada

Dear Father:

Here is your biweekly news summary, boiled down to a single sentence: Peter Sellers is the funniest thing in the world and the cobalt bomb is the scariest. Are they related? They are! Pardon me for giving away the plot of a movie that's still in the theatre, but the reason that the Grand Duchy of Fenwick wins its war with the United States is that it captures a doomsday device, "the Q-bomb." If you can't laugh at the end of the world, what can you laugh at?

Your Loving Daughter,

Ronnie

Postblogging Technology, February 1955, I: Adding Oxygen

R_.C.,
Shaughnessy,
Vancouver,
Canada




Dear Father:

There is nothing to make you want to buckle down and write an informative newsletter full of the latest developments in the field of  metallurgy quite like February in London. We haven't quite seen the kind of Scottish weather that had Flight beside itself  about helicopter rescue flights, but there have certainly been some days when I wouldn't have minded being rescued from the rain and gloom by a glamorous helicopter of the sort that can't actually fly in that kind of weather.

Alas, its job would have been to carry me off to the north of London, pram in tow, to drop in at the studio and see how they're doing at corralling madmen into acting instead of drinking. Show business is show business, even when it features ghastly alien plagues from beyond. I would write a learned appendix to this answer about what I think of all the alien plagues from beyond these days, but I would probably be arrested on suspicion of thinking about what Das Kapital might have to say about 1929, and then where would my children --and husband, if there's a difference-- be? 

Your Loving Daughter,

Who Knows Ever So Much More About Wave Equation Boundary Conditions Now,

Ronnie

Postblogging Technology, January 1955: Phreaking Over Fallout

R._C._.,
Shaughnessy,
Vancouver,
Canada


Dear Father:

So, nothing much has changed in that I am back in glamorous London. (Joke! Rose Dolores is in the news. It turns out that Dolores Del Rios also used the "most beautiful girl in the world" tagline, though.) The letter is a bit different in that I am finally reunited with my magazines. I hope that you don't mind that I'm a bit shorter with Aviation Week than I have been in the past, but two things have changed. The first is that Aviation Week's editor since 1945 has just disappeared. Robert H. Wood's departure from the publisher's chair was announced by his deputy in the 21 January issue, effective 2 February, but Wood did not contribute an editorial for the next issues and I have no idea what became of him. I have no idea why this matters to me, but I feel sad. Second, I am very tired of treating advertising-disguised-as-editorial content seriously.

I've continued to read to James-James before bed, since it was such a hit at Christmas. After some experimenting I've hit on a book he likes, a wartime fantasy in which some siblings romp around on a flying bed. It's marketed above his age, but he seems to be enjoying it, and I am thinking about The Hobbit when we are done. Best to get him started on fantasy and science fiction early considering the work his mother is doing. (And by that I mean patent law, and not helping out around the studio.) Too bad about the old job. I know if I were at the desk I'd make sure those Australians buy the Avro Vulcan!

Your Loving Daughter,

Ronnie

PS: I guess we know how the world ends now: With clouds of Cobalt-60.