Two Women, One Request, and 50 Years Later, a Changed World

One afternoon, still during the era of clacking typewriters, rolodexes and manila folders, Jefferson County, Ky. Clerk James Hallahan saw his low-tech civil service office in downtown Louisville surge into modernity. But it wasn’t new technology coming through the door July 6, 1970 that pushed local government toward the future.

It was two people. Of the same gender.

Marjorie Ruth Jones and Tracy Knight walked up to Hallahan’s counter and said they were there to apply for a marriage license. The women had been wed in a spiritual ceremony over the Independence Day holiday.

The clerk wasn’t sure what to make of the request. The first thing Hallahan told Jones and Knight was not that Kentucky law forbade them from marrying, but that it required a two-day waiting period before a license application could be turned down, a rule by which he would abide.

So for 48 hours at least, the two women won the slightest of victories for equal treatment. But on July 8 came the official and predictable denial of the request.

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CLICK HERE to learn how Louisville went from nearly the worst to one of the best places for LGBTQ rights.

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Jones, then 39, and Knight, 25, weren’t about to give up. They went to court, asserting that their 14^th Amendment rights to equal protection of the law were violated by being denied a marriage license.

In the courtroom, Hallahan displayed none of the tentativeness he had shown behind the clerk counter, testifying that same-sex marriage, while not literally forbidden in Kentucky state law, could be “dangerous,” cause “breakdowns” in government and slow “the continuity of the human race.”

Researcher Catherine Fosl, writing a few years ago in the Filson Society historical journals, said of Jones and Knight’s quest:

“In a courtroom climate that ranged from raucous to quizzical to aggressively hostile, the women lost their case and a subsequent appeal.”

The plaintiffs -- who to protect their safety used false last names in their lawsuit -- said they went to court to move their community and nation forward.

“We did it to help get a gay liberation movement started,” Marjorie Jones told Fosl in 2012. “To make people realize that we’re human beings the same as (heterosexuals) are.”

Among the news stories that day...

Tracy Knight in 1970 told Courier-Journal reporter John Finley their lawsuit was a bid to win equal access to the financial and tax benefits of marriage for all people, and “to show that I can love a woman on my own terms… and I won’t be pointed to as a weirdo or a freak.”

Despite the depth of those issues, the Louisville establishment didn’t take Jones and Knight’s matter that seriously. County Attorney Bruce Miller, then in his first year of a 16-year stint at that post, said that while researching state law before the trial he found Jones and Knight’s case “amusing.”

Reporter Finley employed a common gender double standard of journalism during that male-dominated era, focusing inordinately on the plaintiffs' looks.

His Courier-Journal story the day after the women requested their marriage license described Jones as a “blonde with a bouffant hairdo,” and after writing that Knight had produced photographs of herself working as a dancer in a Louisville club, added “indeed they showed that she is a dancer -- an attractive and scantily attired one at that.”

On the first day of the civil trial, Judge Lyndon Schmid gave a very different fashion review. He ordered Knight to leave the courtroom and change out of her beige pants and return in a dress, putting the case on hold for an hour while she went home. 

"She is a woman... and she will dress like a woman in this court," Schmid said, as quoted in a Courier-Journal story by Stan MacDonald. This more on-topic story said the trial included testimony by anthropology professor Edwin S. Segal, who told the court women sometimes marry other women in the cultures of the Nupe, Ibo and Nuer peoples of Africa.

"I can see no disruption to what we now consider normal marital relations... by allowing marriage by two persons of the same sex," Segal testified.

MacDonald's story said about 25 onlookers occasionally chuckled during the trial, drawing a stern order by Judge Schmid for silence. 

Knight’s go-go dancer profession wasn’t the only atypical angle for the first lesbian couple in the nation known ever to have filed for a marriage license and only the second same-sex couple to have done so. Attitudes of various people involved in their case often went against what we have come to expect in LGBT rights cases.

For example, Knight told the Courier-Journal she did not want to adopt children with Jones, who was a twice-divorced mother of three, because “I don’t think it would be fair to raise a child in a gay home.”

But from the domestic front of Jones’ second heterosexual marriage came support for marrying Knight. Jones told the newspaper two of her children had been told of her wish to marry a woman and enthusiastically approved, as did her second husband.

Though their case directly spurred the formation of the Louisville Gay Liberation Front, which in turn led to a thriving array of LGBT groups and actions in the city, Tracy Knight and Marjorie Ruth Jones receded into private lives after 1970. Even as Louisville and its Jefferson County suburbs went through fierce gay rights struggles, then adopted anti-discrimination ordinances in the 1990s, there was no documented local public comment from either, at least using the same last names as in 1970.

On magazine covers, and in upscale
store windows, same-sex unions are
mainstream in Louisville today.

Though Jones spoke to Catherine Fosl for the Filson historical files in 2012, online searches show no statement attributed to her or Knight regarding the 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges U.S. Supreme Court ruling guaranteeing same-sex marriage rights, the ultimate victory they sought 45 years before.

Fosl said the women's identities have been better known to students of legal texts nationwide than many Louisville LGBT activists.

Those include same-sex couples who today can walk in Marjorie and Tracy’s footsteps into the Jefferson County Clerk’s office and walk out married.

                                                                    ____________________________________

Brian Arbenz is a radical justice activist in Louisville.

The Political Left or the Cultural Left?

Both challenge established rules, but the
political and cultural left differ in purpose.

Keith the eclectic sage looked receptive as he listened to my suggestion, sitting back with his classic mellow pose. I had said he should start attending a radical socialist forum I frequented, which I touted as a good way to “counteract the line of the bourgeoisie.”

He pulled his marijuana cigarette from between his lips, but instead of doing so to give the affirmative response I eagerly sought, he half-consciously pronounced just three syllables:

“Burr-go-weeeze.”

His attention immediately returned to the scattered conversation percolating in the living room at this Saturday afternoon party of bohemians.

So much for my invitation. Marxian economic theory meant little more to the free-thinking crowd of that era, the mid-1980s, than an opportunity for a goofy play on words.

And Keith was every bit the free thinker. He was a beat poet whose understanding of Marx was as fully developed as his fine grasp of any philosopher, poet or outspoken artist. But any feelings about Marxism were just a tiny sliver squeezed in between Keith’s passions for Robert Heinlein, Bob Dylan and Bertrand Russell on the giant spectrum of knowledge and understanding he possessed.

Keith was the cultural left. My proposition that he come to socialist forums was the plea of someone on the political left.

Keith and the other eclectic and outspoken people at this social gathering had myriad grievances against society -- over militarism, the war on drugs, bigotry, anti-intellectualism and the light regard for literacy and critical thinking skills.

The political left had these same grievances. But we tied the solution to all injustices to one thing -- a different system of distribution and production. And to greatly varying extents, the end of private property beyond personal property.

My version of the political left’s diagnosis was that the massive and unending flow of commercialism’s incentives to buy had made otherwise good and loving people irrational, and that the desire to attain higher economic status had created a false and destructive need to make people of other skin colors, genders and sexual orientations seem lesser.

These evils would be repaired, enabling us to treasure one another, only by changing to a system of producing and distributing for sincere, true-to-ourselves purposes.

To the cultural left, a precise, all-encompassing prescription like changing our methods of production, seemed mechanistic. The class consciousness idea seemed prone to regimentation.

  
Besides, many of them liked having small businesses or being self-employed. They saw their own little shares of society’s means of production as being progressive and conscientious. Folks at that party included owners of businesses selling home baked bread, carving peaceful children’s toys and installing renewable energy heating systems in homes.

With pro-green and pro-peace purposes like those, it may seem clear why these people didn’t see themselves as members of the “Burr-go-weeeze” and saw no benefit in entering the doorway of doctrinaire zealots at the socialist forums.

The political and cultural lefts diverge over an impasse caused by the political organizers' "mobilize the masses" vision, contrasted with the cultural side's personal freedom emphasis. One side talks Trotsky or Michael Harrington; the other eyes Janis Joplin and Jimmy Hendrix.

There have been figures who blended the political and cultural left, ranging from Emma Goldman to George Carlin and Lenny Bruce. But as is illustrated by the Beatles’ repertoire including John Lennon’s pro-socialist “Imagine” and George Harrison’s “The Taxman,” pop culture’s role in the economic agenda of the left is ambiguous.

In the ‘80s, my friend Keith was not the business owning type and he worked as a manual laborer in a wood shop (yeah, quite proletariat). That job gave him economic stability, but many of his coworkers’ all-day expressions of bigotry and non-literacy grated on his nerves.

By the 1990s, Keith was considering voting for the Libertarian Party, whose pledges to end drug prohibition connected with him. Moreover, when the choice is Bill Clinton or Bob Dole and corporate money controls the parties of both, the Libertarians looked revolutionary.

Since then, that secret corporate money -- namely the Koch Brothers’ bucks -- totally took over libertarianism as a movement. The Democratic Party got its left wing back via Move On, then Bernie, then Elizabeth Warren, then Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the election of other similar establishment defying democratic socialists.

Rage Against The Machine transformed pop music from saleable cool to political substance once again.

The economic egalitarian agenda was reconnected to the public mind, made hugely popular in America by sub-prime lending scams, Money is Speech rulings, unlivable wages, “I can’t breathe” killings, student debt schemes and climate catastrophes.

And I don’t have to persuade Keith to go to forums to connect with the political left. It has come to him.

                                  ____________________________________________

Brian Arbenz of Louisville, Ky. USA is decidedly on the political left, as evidenced by his hoisting the "Stop US Terrorism in Central America" sign in the lower photo in this blog entry. That was during an April 1987 demonstration. 

My Karen Moment -- Stop Blaming a Trope for What's In Any of Us

It was my 15-minute break from in-home teleworking a fast paced online job and all I had time for at the Tex-Mex place down the block was a soft drink from their fountain.

I was there to get away and chill, more than for the beverage.

Out the window, a man passing by on the sidewalk bent down to look deep into a trash can for a second or two. Then he entered the restaurant.

He hadn’t reached into the can; I didn’t automatically take him for destitute. Nonetheless, he came to my table and outright asked if I could buy him a bowl of beans from the counter.

It’s that moment when we all feel tested, and when we scan the collection of stock response lines available. I could have said, truthfully, that I had to leave in two minutes. Or, that I didn’t have the money (not actually the case). Or just: sorry, I can’t.

Then there is the completely truthful response: There are churches up and down this street which I know for a fact will give you much better food right now, or vouchers for a neighborhood supermarket. The Metro Government Center a few blocks from here will get you all sorts of help. In downtown, there are four shelters or aid centers that serve free meals every day.

All that’s a lot to impart to a person in the two minutes I had. And beyond this info, I was aware of my time pressure -- and the realization that buying him a bowl of beans (and, let’s be real, whatever he would add to it as we would walk down the serving line) won’t change his situation like those nearby social services very well could.

With all this running through my mind, the response that came out was not me at my best. It could even have been viral material for a vigilant iphone user who doesn’t care about context.

“No,” I said, starting off in a low key that immediately catapulted into an annoyed, eye-rolling, “I can’t.”

What I was frustrated by was the lack of attention to really addressing the problem of neediness. But, honestly, was that all that bothered me at that moment?

I got up to half-refill my cup for the short jaunt home, but in earshot of an employee servicing the fountain, I mumbled, “Why can’t I just enjoy a coke for 15 minutes!”

Contrast this with a woman at the next occupied table pleasantly telling this man, “Sure, I’ll buy you a bowl of beans” and getting up to do so.

It's not just for women any
 more: (Never was)
 

Yep, I’ve long said the “Karen” notion is a wrongheaded genderizing of an issue. And had someone been videoing this, I could have fulfilled my wish of de-genderizing that folk character who represents cold elitism.

Who watching would know that I have paid for medicine for people in line in front of me at drug stores when their card didn’t go through. Who would know that when I won $15 worth of food for answering a question right on a radio call-in, I immediately took two-thirds of it to a shelter.

Moreover, who would know that when I can adequately verify a person’s claim of need, I’ll help them if I can. People with whom I have become acquainted from years of bus riding have received bus fare and food from me, because I can trust them.

As a longtime pedestrian in my city (I’ve owned no car for the last seven years and I walked a lot for many years longer than that), I’ve seen plenty of good in people, but also have learned every insincere line.

In my more innocent days, I walked by two children who asked me for bus fare, only to instantly and with no shame take the money I gave them, turn around and gleefully run into a food mart to buy candy. They saw no need to conceal their scheme even long enough for me to walk on beyond their view.

In more recent years, I have realized that outside CVS drug stores, which do not sell cigarettes, I have never been asked for money from someone saying they need a little for their prescription medicine, whereas outside Walgreen’s, which sells cigs, that’s happened multiple times. And when I have offered to supply the cash they requested -- inside at the prescription counter -- the person walked away without comment to take his pitch to someone else. (I principally blame cigarette companies for his plight, but that’s for another blog entry.)

Some of my frustration during the soft drink break originated in me, not out on the sidewalk. Those of us who are policy wonks sometimes feel exasperated because no one is hearing us -- the nuance, vetting and system wide response we know are crucial to solving problems take a back seat to “feel good” anecdotal acts.

Though I stand by my belief that with so many accessible services so close by it was not cruel to turn the man down, I’ll admit that the episode shows that I ought to rein in my overthinking. In the spirit of the Will Rogers’ line: “I’d rather be the person who bought the Brooklyn Bridge than the person who sold it,” I could gain some peace from just allowing people like that woman at the next table to risk making their own errors.

                   ___________________________________

                           Brian Arbenz lives in Louisville, Ky. USA

Quality is too expensive for today's publishing game

Check that spelling, please!

An old acquaintance I caught up with by social media circa 2012 filled me in on how his lifetime love of chess had expanded into new arenas, including his writing reviews of books about the game.

He said one of his reviews of a title through the self-publishing firm iUnivese was scathing, and justifiably so: the book on Bobby Fischer was so horribly written, it had the chess grandmaster’s name spelled two different ways throughout!

“I will never review another book published through iUniverse,” he said. “So what have you been up to?”

The truthful answer would have been: I have self-published two sci-fi books -- through iUniverse. I had been eager to tell him of these works, but tipped off by his story, my response suddenly came out: “Oh, you know, the usual -- mowing the lawn, paying bills.”

Be assured, my sci-fi works, titled “Out From It All” and “Worlds,” had all names spelled consistently, and met higher literary quality standards as well. But the fact that the same company could let such rubbish as that Fischer fiasco roll off its presses was pretty disconcerting.

And it was more than an indictment of the booming self-publishing business.

I soon began to hear reports that the conventional book publishing industry’s standards as well were eroding.

The premier and the, uh, senator?

The much heralded “Astronaut Wives Club,” which has enlightening detail about the stresses and despairs endured by the women married to NASA’s Mercury, Gemini and Apollo astronauts, also refers to the kitchen debate between “Senator Richard Nixon” and Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev in 1959. That’s six years after Nixon went from senator to vice-president.

Throughout the audio version of Lilly Koppel’s book, the last name of Betty and Gus Grissom is pronounced “Grisham.”

If NASA had standards that sloppy, the Eagle would have landed in downtown Cleveland.

In the genre of baby boomer TV memories, we might not expect quite as much scholarly devotion as in books about great events like the moon landings. But my jaw still dropped when I saw posted reviews of actor Frank Bank’s memoirs of his years as Lumpy Rutherford on “Leave It To Beaver.”

They said Bank’s “They Call Me Lumpy” included gross factual errors about plots of episodes involving him -- plots any Beaver fan would know well. Then there were accusations by reviewers that Bank’s writing was frequently ungrammatical, to the extent that large parts of his book amount to nothing more than notes thrown together.

What happened to copy-editing, proofreading and fact-checking? Those get in the way of the modern goal of rapidly getting books out and reaping quick receipts from the ability of the enticing promotional paragraphs to prompt purchases by clicks.

And since e-publishing is the way these days for books and news reporting, errors can always be corrected later when enough of the readers post their complaints.

Which is another tribute to contemporary capitalism’s deftness at replacing qualified professionals with free “crowd sourced” labor.

We are in a time of regaining our awareness of ideals that were diminished in the era of “shock jock” raunchiness. Empathy and nuance are two of them. Let us add “professionalism” to the list.

                                                           __________________________________________________________

                                           Brian Arbenz lives in Louisville, Ky. USA

Is a Planned Economy in Our Future?

Production for use instead of for profit.

I loved the way that sounded in a contributor’s 2005 column I edited for a monthly leftist newspaper I helped produce in those days.

I later learned it was a longtime Democratic Socialist framing of their doctrine. As a description of socialism, it was simple and relevant -- and instead of the foreboding feeling of ideology, it evoked the familiarity of barn raisings and bookmobiles.

So I asked this contributor if he’d consider taking his belief in replacing capitalism with production for use to a more mainstream audience.

A Louisville TV station (this was the tail end of analog days) had just put out a call for guest opinions from qualified spokespeople to pepper their own editorials. And our paper’s contributor was a longtime union labor activist and member of our city’s human rights commission -- the perfect person to bring production for use to the next level of discourse.

I told him I sensed the time was right for the channel surfers of average America to hear a suggestion for a new way to make their cars, medicines and sink cleansers -- one which would end unemployment right now and end pollution and racial inequality soon enough.

photo from Remy Gieling

He thanked me for my proposal, but passed on it. I don't know his specific reasons, but I grasped that among viewers of mainstream TV stations, production for use instead of for profit was too audacious and disorienting.

That was 2005. Gasoline prices were stable, sub-prime mortgages non-controversial, tiny houses were for Barbie dolls, and John Kerry was as far to the left as the mass public mind was allowed to roam. The idea of producing for use and for social good, instead of for profit was the stuff of coffeehouse discussions.

Fifteen years later, 20 percent of the U.S. population says socialism is a better idea than capitalism, and 40 percent of those leaning toward the Democratic Party prefer socialism. And the surge to those ratings came about because of the personal situations of today’s youth and young adults, not ideological immersion.

And whereas the right wing can demonize the word “socialism” as brutally as ever, they can’t stigmatize it as long as they maintain oppressive student debt, unlivable minimum wages and payday lender traps -- and as long as the billionaires’ PACs block legislators from changing those conditions.

Contrast this strain of capitalism with the one that not so long ago paid real interest on savings, offered pensions and wanted to pay wages high enough so its products could be afforded. The transformation from that era's reasonable degree of economic equity, political pluralism and emphasis on education to the dictatorial plutocracy of today fits Karl Marx’ analysis of capitalism outliving its once great usefulness.

So, is production for use, via a planned economy instead of the marketplace, in the offing? Will it arrive inevitably -- or would we have to create it? And how -- would it be made by revolution or legislating prompted by activism, as in the manner of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act or the ban on child labor?

Michael Harrington could see 
a planned economy coming.

Many on the U.S. left, including Michael Harrington, have seen Marx as evolutionary and a democratic socialist. Others say that co-opts Marx’ vision into a state capitalism, instead of class-based struggle. This underscores the principal hindrance to leftward movement -- sectarianism. Dozens of clashing and uncompromising ideologies call themselves socialist.

Would a planned economy be statist all around, or planned like highways or mass transit lines -- with bids let to competing contractors to build the things we need? The state’s involvement could be limited to placing the production facilities wherever they are needed to achieve full employment, as well as setting wages and prices.

And if you have a proliferation of people at a certain job skill level in a specific area, you produce things there that match that level.

Of course, “things” don’t describe our production these days nearly as much as services, finance and software. Could a planned economy possibly produce today’s tech that is in demand? Perhaps a more bourgeois variety of a planned economy will come that will be geared to restore the old American system of affordable education, housing and health care, but leave a have-have not (or have less) split.

But making tech? Seriously? That's
 a tall order for a planned economy.

I have come to favor a sort of “floating” ideology -- that means we build a genuine political democracy (a first for the United States) and then see where that takes the economy, be it to socialism or capitalism. This democracy would be achieved by enforcing the equal protection guarantees of the 14^th Amendment (which preclude the Money is Speech notion), and just as importantly, enforcing the laws that declare corporations to be licensed entities.

A corporation is publicly controlled and required to operate in the public interest. The corporate license is granted to a for-profit company, but so that public goals can be achieved. But because of several horrible Supreme Court decisions giving corporations the people’s 14^th Amendment rights, we live under corporate control of our foreign policy, colleges, elections and more.

As for the screams of “totalitarian” and “tyrannical” socialism, it is the capitalist U.S. that has fatal no-knock police entries, false confession machines railroading black youth, and a state disinformation media. All while economic opportunities vanish and the U.S. imprisons more people than any other nation (and not because of any war on crime, but the mass incarceration of non-violent offenders).

Though we don‘t know exactly where into the realm of a planned economy we should go, capitalism that operates like this creates a consensus that we certainly don’t want to stay where we are.

                                  _____________________________________

     Brian Arbenz is a writer, editor and researcher living in Louisville, Ky. USA

 

Whatever happened to the 21st Century?

                       At the 1962 World's Fair we were all giddy about it: 

  

In 2001, a century arrived -- but that same century also ended in that year. For my entire conscious life, I would turn glassy eyed at the mere mention of "the 21st Century." It meant sleekness, ingenuity, innovation, and silver suits with V-necks. It meant, well, the future.

Today, one-fifth the way through it, you almost never hear "the 21st Century" used to describe our time.

That term died the very year it was becoming reality -- as airplanes were crashed into the World Trade Towers -- because the fanfare surrounding the new century ceased at that moment. Today nearly the only time you hear "The 21st Century" used is on retro videos from the 20th Century gushing over the wonderful times just ahead.

When we look back at our often impetuous, giddy projections of what the upcoming 21st Century would be like, we call the picture that was painted "Retrofuturism." And thanks to the internet, there's no hiding the paintings.

Today, we're blasé about the present that was long awaited so eagerly. Perhaps that’s because we’re overwhelmed with details 24-7, we work such irregular hours, we grapple with crises happening like clockwork, and we've been collectively stabbed in the back by so many once-trusted institutions. 

Fifty and 60 years ago, the expression “This is the 20^th Century” was constantly used -- and favorably, to denote modernity and open-mindedness, or to prod someone to get with it and be modern.

Moreover, back in the 1960s and ‘70s when I was coming of age, the term “The Twenty-First Century” left us spellbound with anticipation. But then, at one time, so did awaiting a trip on the Titanic’s maiden voyage.

And today as we huddle shivering in the lifeboat of our $1,200 Covid-19 stimulus checks and had to fight furiously to avoid capsizing in another stolen election in 2020, we realize that we are never going to use the term “21^st Century,” at least not in the tones of awe we did for so long.

As said, the 21^st Century was a phenomenon of the 20^th. And would you believe it, they both ended,  in differing senses, with jet  airliners being crashed into skyscrapers killing 2,800 people. The same year HAL killing four innocents was supposed to be the extent of the carnage.

The deaths shown in “2001: A Space Odyssey” took a back seat in the consciousness of most viewers to the grandeur of dazzling technology, esoteric ideas and unencumbered space travel. Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke’s NASA-assisted 1968 movie masterpiece launched into hyperdrive the eagerness to reach the 2000s, as did Walter Cronkite’s 1967 TV series “The 21^st Century.”

Both were made in the middle of the decade that amounted to the crux of the 20^th Century’s baffling combination of great progress and atrocious horrors. The 20^th was a century to revere and revile. The 21^st, we had a feeling, would be all the good, with the bad eliminated. More a hope than a hypothesis.

It seems that sci-fi about the future is always utopian or dystopian – and with companies like GE, Union Carbide, and Philco-Ford underwriting Cronkite’s TV series and NASA contractors and other tech giants helping with Kubrick and Clarke’s movie, the awe factor triumphed over the worries about the century to come. 

We didn't yet associate these corporations with Neutron Jack Welch or the Bhopal catastrophe. Space Odyssey fans realized that the homicidal HAL wouldn't really happen, but the Howard Johnson's Earthlight room in the 1-G comfort space station evidently would.
So, the 21^st Century is gonna be a joy, folks. Get ready to luxuriate in it!

“One government report projects that by the year 2000, the United States will have a 30-hour work week and month-long vacation as the rule,” Cronkite tells us while lounging in a mock-up 21st Century living room designed by Philco-Ford in a March 1967 episode of his TV series named for that century. “A lot of this new free time will be spent at home.”

The iconic CBS anchorman then demonstrates how people will spend it by calling up the latest news, weather and music on separate desk top computers and wide screen TVs, then cooking in microwave ovens. Oh, and many will do their weekly 30 hours of work by those computers, in their homes.

“We may not have to go to work. The work would come to us,” Cronkite exuberantly says.

The same living room set is used in a 1967 film by Philco-Ford itself showing a household in 1999. The man (curiously, played by game show host Wink Martindale) pays the bills on a home computer and the Laura Petrie-like woman, still wearing a mid-60s bouffant flip, shops online and dutifully serves the family meals recommended by the computer based on the nutritional needs of the couple and their son Jamie, who is educated at home online.

 

The mother is played by Marj Dusay, best known for stealing Spock's brain in an infamously off-the-rails episode of the someday-retrofuturist Star Trek.

In 1999, this family drives a bubbletop car that combines Mustang informality with Jetsons tech.

             ___________________________  

 

General Motors had legendary narrator Alexander Scourby nearly hyperventilating while celebrating what we now call Rainforest Depletion. In fairness, though, this ride got some forecasts right:

 

                         _____________________________________ 

 

So, how did Walter, Philco-Ford, GM, Clarke and Kubrick do at forecasting such a carefree congruent 21^st Century? Yes on home shopping, microwave ovens, and online school, but OMG did they ever not foresee the feminist movement!

And getting 30 hours of work per week means you’re heading for a shelter, not a month-long vacation! Far from ensuring that Jamie and his parents eat healthfully, high tech in the hands of the food industry has steered us to sugary, high-carb foods we overeat due to the effects on our brains of the high fructose corn syrup used widely. 

The Mom-Dad parental unit is yielding to child-care cooperatives and grandparents, and gasoline prices would make Dusay and Martindale’s 1967 eyes pop out, so forget about the Mustang-Jetsonmobile.

                   In 1974, the Internet foreseen, gender equity not. 

 
Of course, all predictions and forecasts involve the risk that one’s legacy will be to provoke ridicule, counterbalanced with the chance of being hailed as a visionary genius. So, give ‘em credit for putting themselves out there.

 

A tiny ember of that sleek Century 21 look and feel can be seen in Apple stores:

                        

                          -----------------------------------------------

One of the most respected, if today lesser recognized forecasters of the future was Athelstan Spilhaus, the dean of the University of Minnesota’s Institute of Technology. He wrote “Our New Age,” an internationally syndicated weekly comic strip from 1957 to ’73 designed to get the youthful Beetle Bailey and Dick Tracy crowd more interested in science.

Athelstan Spilhaus and one of his "Our New Age" visions he published in Sunday comic sections.

Spilhaus, who helped plan the acclaimed Minneapolis and St. Paul downtown pedestrian skyways, wrote in a 1962 “Our New Age” strip illustrated with a person looking at text on a video screen:

 

“Researchers, thousands of miles away, may consult books in the Library of Congress or the British Museum.”

You bet your net he was right, but three years later, an “Our New Age” feature showed a man with his head connected to a cap hooked up to wires and declared:

 

“In 2016, man’s intelligence and intellect will be able to be increased by drugs and by linking human brains directly to computers.”

Yes, 2016 – the time of the Tide Pod challenge, flat-Earthers and a chronically bankrupt, non-literate, groping thug succeeding a Harvard lawyer and model husband and parent as Chief-Executive. Bring on those computers, Dr. Spilhaus – and those drugs!

                                   ______________________

 

Brian Arbenz, who lives in Louisville, Ky. USA, likes to revisit the 21st Century of his youth when he feels nostalgic.

BONUS: The Internet in Phoenix, better houses, and food you plug in -- Click below for a full "21st Century" episode. CAUTION: at 15:16, don't eat the package:

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__MGYrcapdk&t=2s