Summer of Photos from the 1970s: Polyester Turtle with a Bicentennial Belly

It may be possible that I had the most 1970's stuffed animal that ever was. Or at least it could have been a contender. He was a turtle that my grandmother made on her sewing machine from random material scraps while I worked on my summer tan running around the backyard blowing bubbles. While this photo is black and white, it's important to know he was made from polyester - mint green polyester. While avocado green got a lot of attention in the 70's, I think we need to take a moment with 1970's mint green. This was the color of the occasional men's leisure suit, and it was the color of some 1970's women's platform shoes - ones you would see in the back of someone's closet and know that no one had ever actually worn them. 1970s mint green may not have been as popular as some of the other well-known 70's colors but let me tell you that it is a color that deserves to be celebrated. It was the color of jello molds found in the cabinets of middle class homes across the U.S. for a couple of decades. It was the color of Tupperware, it was the color of that strangely delicious side dish that you'd see at 1970's potlucks: Watergate Salad.

Now you may be thinking that a stuffed turtle made from polyester is very 1970s, but wait, it gets better. He had a Bicentennial Belly. My grandmother used scraps from her 1976 curtains to make his belly.  These curtains brought up all kinds of intense and far reaching nostalgic history feels for those alive in '76, even though no one alive in 1976 had been alive in 1776. 

If you are thinking this turtle could not possibly be more 1970s, know that he lived for a time on shag carpet in a corner of my room. As a tot, I liked my stuffed turtle, and I also thought he was a little strange, but really wasn't that how most things were in the 70s?

This turtle had a black felt trim around his edges and black felt eyelashes, and dang it, those hilarious eyelashes are obscured by my hand in the photo. While I appreciate the black and white photo shoot my dad did of me in my room as a 1970's tot, I only wish this turtle could have gotten his own photo shoot - instead he will only be remembered by history as a stuffed animal merely in the background while the photo subject got more attention.

(c) 2024 All rights reserved by Chloe Craik Koffas

photo by Gary Craik

turtle by Eva Lee Craik

Summer of 1970s Photos: Smiling at the Lost Generation

Throughout 2017, I spent a year writing about the Lost Generation - those born in the early 1880s to about 1900, who endured WWI, and a pandemic. Generation X is also considered a 'lost generation' - from our formative years through adulthood there was once again, in history, one major large scale crisis after another. 

To be Generation X means your early life overlapped with the end of the lives of the Lost Generation. There was this window of time, when we still had neighbors, friends, and other loved ones in our lives from that generation. We were fortunate if we got to know our Great Grandparents, even if it was only for a short time. To go back three generations in time is to find your generational kindred spirit. 

It was America's Bicentennial year when this photo was taken. There is the red shag carpet, and the fabric is printed with the shapes of retro Christmas tree ornaments. The colors and aesthetic of this 1970s space look like the 1960s have not yet left the collective consciousness in pop culture or interior design. 

One lost generation smiles at another lost generation

Here I am as a brand new Gen Xer, Irish on my father's side, sporting red hair before it turned blond, a color that came from the other Northern European people on my maternal side. I am smiling at my Lithuanian Great Grandfather. 

And while this is just me as a baby meeting my great grandfather, this is, in a larger sense, one lost generation smiling at another. 

Every generation has an epic collective story to tell as they grow older, especially if you are a lost generation. This means your path has been harder, the road has been longer. If you use this as a chance to grow in grace, and to not become bitter, it means your connection to other people can be greater, your compassion can be deeper. At the same time, I hold enormous space for the way people who have been through a hard life can struggle to focus on the positive, who can wrestle with wondering why it all had to be so difficult. I have struggled, too. And so did the Lost Generation. Among other things, they were all detrimentally affected by WWI in some way, and like us, experienced a pandemic. They were more susceptible to this virus than those older and younger than themselves during the years of 1918-1920 due to a flu they had gotten as children - one more thing that made them different, misunderstood, or lost. The effects of such history altering events were with them for the rest of their lives, even those who never talked about it - maybe especially those who never talked about it. It appears some had 'long-flu' then, like some have long-covid now. While they called it 'shell-shock' back then, we now call it PTSD. It can be unfortunate the way history repeats itself. 

My Great Grandfather has that classic story of coming to America as an immigrant, of seeing the Statue of Liberty for the first time and all the emotion that went with that. He immigrated by himself when he was only 13 years old. And then spent his life working in the boiler factory in Kewanee, Illinois. I am still piecing together details of his life, but no one crosses the Atlantic at the age of 13 if their life is easy. 

The Lost Generation watching over Generation X

Throughout history there have only been small windows of time where two lost generations got to be together. And while we can find ourselves a bit lost in this world, what we do have is each other. When we find ourselves lost on the timeline of history in which we find ourselves, we can reach back out to our kindred generation with a prayer, a word, a moment. We can hold their life's mementos in our hands, we can tell their stories. We can remind them we loved them then, and that we love them now. Those on the other side don't want to be forgotten. 

Sending gratitude from Gen X to the Lost Generation, for the days, hours, and moments you spent with us. Thank you for the ways you still watch over us. Thank you for the ways you still show up for us in distant memories, in present dreams. 

This is just one great grandfather watching over his great granddaughter's crib. And yet, in a larger sense, this is the Lost Generation watching over Generation X.    

(c) 2024 All rights reserved, Chloe Koffas 

Summer of Photos from the 1970s: Late 1970's Christmas Morning

The joys of a late 1970's Christmas! I remember waking up that morning to some pretty amazing stuff. I ran down the hallway and into the living room and didn't even know where to begin! Some things were on display on the hearth (where Santa left stuff when he came in through the fireplace) and some things were wrapped by my parents and ready for me to tear them open. It was a good day! 

Here's the rundown:

1) A dolly that looked just like me, and as you can see I was bouncing off the walls in happiness because my holiday morning hairstyle is already falling apart! I always wanted a daughter, even then - at the time, this doll was the closest thing I could get to that! 

2) A Snoopy house - you could wind up Snoopy and he would walk right in! Woodstock was there on top proudly flying a flag. 

3) I think the little blue house that is somewhat obscured by my curls is a Weebles house? (Weebles wobble but they don't fall down as the commercials used to say!) 

4) An aardvark with a velcro tongue that you would push around on the floor and he would pick up big blue felt ants. He could also pick up socks laying around your room if you didn't feel like picking them up yourself. He was affectionately named 'Alvin the Ardvaark' by Kenner, a toy company known by multiple generations from 1946-2000. 

While the gifts were great, it was the energy that was in the air that I loved most, the anticipation, the excitement. As a toddler tries to understand the world around them, there is this realization that that, even though life was full of packing tuna sandwiches in a metal lunchbox and heading to preschool early on a regular weekday, there were these days in the year set aside for pancakes on the griddle, and stuffing on the stovetop; days that were for joy, for love. 

And the big brass candle holders sporting garland and ornaments couldn't be more 1970's if they tried. They wanted to match the gold shag carpet. If you are looking for a Gen X Christmas aesthetic, you've got it all right here...and to the far right on the hearth is a box of 1970s matches, perfect for lighting a 1970s fire in your fireplace at the end of a holiday, when a good time was had by all! 

(c) 2024, Chloe Koffas

All rights reserved on photo and writing

Summer of Photos from the 1970s: Lulu and I in the Backyard Sunshine

In the 1970s, I had a dog named Lulu who would sit with me in the sunshine, chatting about things. I'd tell her stories, and she'd nod in approval. Sometimes we'd quietly observe the adults, and their strange and mysterious ways. They'd be doing things adults did that we didn't really understand, like using can openers or paying the electric bill, and we'd collaborate on how baffling it all was. 

Here I am in my cowgirl dress, complete with a bandana and a 1970's retro-style Goody brand red plastic bow barrette placed squarely on my head. The morning sun would lay soft on suburban green grass that looked a whole lot like the shag carpet in the house. Lulu and I would sometimes spend time together before I was placed in a car seat and off to church. While coffee hour with humans can be nice after church, a pre-church social hour with your dog is the ideal way to spend the earlier hours of a Sunday morning. 

Lulu's face showed she was already pretty old by the time I was born. She had probably seen the 1960s and the 1970s both, and considering all the social upheaval of the time, that was a lot for a dog to take in. Sometimes we would watch Walter Cronkite deliver part of the nightly news and then we'd wander off to see what toys we had left lying around the backyard earlier in the day. She seemed like a dog who understood everything. She had been around long enough to see the ridiculous vanity of the human situation, and at the same time, all the beauty, love, and humor of it. Being an old soul myself, there was a lot of camaraderie between us. 

In my earliest of days, her soft little ears were always there for me to hold gently in my hands. Her affirming looks showed me she knew I was small and that she needed to watch out for me. Her black coat was ever-huggable in the warm sun; her golden eyes were wise. Here's to every Generation Xer who remembers a dog from their growing up years, may we find them again on the other side. 

I loved her so.  Lulu and I.  

(c) 2024 by Chloe Koffas - All rights reserved 

Summer of Photos from the 1970s: Blue Photo Albums and Backyard Bliss

It's the Collective Experience....

Ever since I started blogging about Generation X in 2011, I deeply hoped to make my way back to the photos of my early childhood. It took a long time to find my way back to them. Posting pictures of your growing up years illuminates the collective experience you have with your generation in a very real way. It's the details, the pop culture things that are framed in the picture, the album in the background by some one hit wonder band you forgot and then lovingly remembered once again, it's that kitchen with the avocado green General Electric stove in the background and the comforting smell of dinner baking inside. You see some detail in one of your photos, or in someone else's photo, and a flood of emotions goes over you. If you are Gen X, the things in your childhood photos, like the toys you played with, or the books that were on your shelf are a part of my story, too - I would have played with some of those same toys as a tot, I would have read some of those same books as a child.

The Eclipse

Last spring, I went to Texas to visit my father. He invited me to go see the April eclipse, and I had this intuitive feeling that something lost would be found during that visit. I was shocked and overjoyed when old 1970's photo albums emerged from a shelf in a closet - I spent an afternoon opening the pages and taking digital photos of analog ones. Emotion came over me like a hard desert rain. I hadn't seen some of the photos since the 1980s, I hadn't seen some of the pictures since the 1970s, and some I had never seen. We will remember 2024 as a year of a big eclipse in America, and it's incredible the way that sometimes what was lost can somehow be found, yet that's how eclipses work - there is a darkness, and then parts of the universe are brought out into the light. So while the sun shines, this will be my summer of posting 1970's pictures that are from my childhood. And we will begin with a picture from summer, and a checklist of official funny things 1970's tots did.... 

While the above list mentions a few things floating around in the pool, like my Fisher Price Little People car - the red one I am holding in my hand in this picture - I should also mention a few more things that are worth noticing just for the humor of it all:

1) The random blue metal barrel in the background my father brought home from work as a backyard toy: a tunnel for me to crawl through or hide in

2) If you look closely, you'll see white styrofoam peanuts that I was borrowing form a neighborhood friend - these are drifting across the water because I needed to check if they could float!

3) My slowly emerging chipmunk teeth really add to the photo.

4) The kiddie pool, which was purchased at the same store as the pink sparkly ball (Grand Central - which was later bought out by another retail chain) and the funny, random mix of animals on my pool: fish and elephants?

Fresh Cut Green Grass and Blue Sky

And while there is so much to laugh at in this picture, there is something so beautiful and sacred about it - I loved that backyard so much, it was my little paradise - the sun, the puffy clouds moving gently above me, the sweet simplicity of being young and life being easy for a while. I am one of those rare people whose memory goes back to being a baby. I remember this moment of toddlerhood well, my father took the photo, smiling and laughing my desire to drink up every fun moment life could offer. How incredibly sleepy, and happy, I felt in that moment. I didn't want to miss a thing - the cool water on my toes, the New Mexico sun warming my back as it hung there in the bluest sky. There was the sweetest of smells: fresh cut green grass mowed by my father, the wafting scents of the flowers planted by my mother, and that extraordinary, electrical, earthy smell of a desert summer rainstorm slowly rolling in over the horizon. I loved that backyard. 

There was the orange of the marigolds in our yard, there was the pink of the desert sunsets. There were the open, starry nights. Bend the sunlight toward me and let it warm my shoulders, send me a New Mexico thunderstorm to give my soul the strength it needs to go on, give me a moment to feel that bliss once again, when life was new, when hope was full.  

Here's to believing what was lost can be found again, here's to dusty old blue photo albums of the 1970s that hold our collective memories. When I have seen others Gen Xer's pictures from the 1970s, not knowing that I would ever find my own 70s pictures again, I would look for myself in their pictures - my old toys, my old books, my own story. Now that I finally have made my way back to my old pictures, if you want to, you can look for your story in mine. 

                                                              (c) 2024 by Chloe Koffas - all rights reserved

How Gravity Bends Light

"We have not even to risk the adventure alone

The Pillars of Creation - (c) NASA - public domain

for the heroes of all time have gone before us. 

The labyrinth is thoroughly known...

we have only to follow the thread of the hero-path. 

And where we had thought to find an abomination 

We shall find God. 

And where we had thought to slay another

we shall slay ourselves. 

Where we had thought to travel outwards 

we shall come to the center of our own existence. 

And where we had thought to be alone we shall be with all the world." 

-Joseph Campbell

(c) NASA - public domain photography

Campbell was a scholar, teacher, and thinker from the GI Generation whose wisdom has gone far beyond the years in which he lived. His writing on the hero's journey has influenced books and movies throughout the decades. Campbell felt his Catholic childhood gave him a higher vantage point from which to view history and to see the commonalities that exist across religions and cultures. Like the silver threads woven into the fabrics of altar cloths, his liturgical experience gave him an ability to look across the timelines of history and see what stitches all of us together. 

He once spoke about the first full image of earth, the first one humanity saw collectively of the Earth as a whole that was taken in the 1970's. This image, The Blue Marble went into circulation during the more formative years of Generation X. It may have given our generation a deeper sense of the collective experience of humanity when we were still impressionable in a way we maybe were not even conscious of. Campbell said, "Our world as the center of the universe, the world divided from the heavens, the world bound by horizons in which God's love is reserved for members of the in group: that is the world that is passing away. Apocalypse is not about a fiery Armageddon and salvation of a chosen few, but about the fact that our ignorance and our complacency are coming to an end."   

2024 includes a partial eclipse on March 25th which will create a collective experience for most of North and South America. This year also includes a full eclipse on April 8th, which I am planning to go see in Austin. I am not sure what colossal shift might take place for us collectively April 8th, or what light-bending experience will happen for me individually. The path the Sun will take on that day is essentially the journey my ancestors took once they landed on the shores of the US and slowly migrated, over generations, to Texas. I will be thinking of their journey, along with my own journey so far, and where to go from here, between the light and the shadows. For a few minutes of totality, the brightness of day will become one with the darkness of night. 

How does gravity bend light?  It's a complex physics formula, so for those of us who'd like to look at it for a moment in simple terms, we could say it's the way stars sometimes appear in the wrong place....

Einstein, who was from the Lost Generation, hypothesized that gravity is a warping of time and space - an impact to the 'fabric' of the universe. He believed a large object like the sun could distort spacetime enough that gravity could bend light. While he published his General Theory of Relativity in May 1916, it was during the eclipse of May 1919 when scientists observed that some stars appeared in the wrong place based on previous measurements of the universe - showing evidence of Einstein's theory. 

Maybe every generation gets at least one moment to graze the surface of the sun. 

How do we, as humans, who find ourselves and our world in so many places of darkness, bend the light toward ourselves, and toward others? Maybe this is anything that takes something terribly wrong and makes it right. Maybe it is overcoming the obstacles that block us, maybe sometimes its fighting for something, and other times it is letting go of the fight and finding our peace. 

(c) NASA - Silent Generation Buzz
Aldrin's footprint  on lunar soil

To have survived a pandemic means we have made it through quite a labyrinth, as Joseph Campbell would have called it, a necessary and grueling chapter of a hero's journey that leaves scars on your skin and grief in your soul. History has its cycles, and generations do as well; your ancestors, as they found themselves in generations leading up to yours, saw eclipses, and pandemics, and went through immense struggle, and pushed on to wake up to another day on the planet until their time was over. And we, like living miracles, walk across the earth, not realizing each footstep is silver, each breath is golden. 

(c) NASA - Aurora Borealis
St. Patrick's Day 2015
image credit:Sebastian Saarloos

How does gravity bend light?

Einstein explained it with his theory of relativity. 

Joseph Campbell explained it by showing that when the hero or heroine comes home from the journey having found the answer - and the answer is always in some way rooted in forgiveness and unconditional love.

Some silver thread keeps us bound to this earth, for a time, and that thread is woven into the tapestry of the whole human story. Each religion, culture and generation may be, as it turns out, more alike than different, though we can only see this when we can see a much bigger picture. 

If we are in the modern Western world, we see time as linear. If we can bend the way we see time, even just for a moment, we can bend light as well, and this is where we can get a glimpse of the eternal beauty -- the reality that all of time is one. And when we know this, both in our mind and in our heart, we know that anything that has gone wrong can be made right again. 

This is how gravity bends light. 

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(c) St. Patrick's Day 2024 - Chloe Koffas - all rights reserved

Sources:

The Hero with a Thousand Faces - Joseph Campbell 

ncronline.org/blogs/earthbeat/eco-catholic/joseph-campbell-earth-heavens

science.nasa.gov/eclipses/history/

NASA photos are public domain

And a piece about the 2017 partial eclipse as seen from Northern California, with thoughts of the Lost Generation: 

The Turnings of the Universe

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A Charlie Brown Christmas and the Glow of Colored Lights

Each year, during the month of December, my daughter and I have a tradition of watching A Charlie Brown Christmas with a cup of hot chocolate. We take apart the Charlie Brown diorama that has been set up for fall, and replace it with a winter scene - the one in the holiday special where they go to shop for their Christmas tree. 

While I've yet to find a mini Charlie Brown Christmas tree to scale with this scene that would work, these bottle brush trees seem to capture the colors and images of the tree lot scene well, and we'll just say Charlie Brown is staring off into the distance with a smile, seeing that sparse little tree he wants to buy at the other end of the tree lot.  

A full moon brightens up their way and the glittered background reflects light to make it look like the Milky Way in the Christmas Time night sky. 

These are beautiful, though Charlie Brown sees a tree that is much more real in the distance,
one that is a little beaten down by life like he is

Linus and his blanket at the Christmas tree lot 

Linus shows his support like a good friend should, and brings his blanket to the event, as always. Maybe being misunderstood is bearable when you have at least one friend who is willing to go with you on the journey. Who doesn't want to turn around and see this guy smiling at you? 

It has been such a long, hard year. It has been such a long hard few years, for myself, for all of us on a planet that has been through a pandemic that has forever changed our lives. The marathon continues, and there are a hundred things to do before 2023 turns into 2024, but before this year gets away, I wanted to just have a few peaceful, creative moments, to take a few photos and write a few words....

There is something powerful about the collective experience a generation shares, and there is something amazing about how the smallest of things can help us make that connection. When I would watch Peanuts holiday specials as a kid, I would get this sense that all my problems would go away for those 30 minutes, and I loved the feeling I was watching it with all the other kids in America at the same time.   

I went downstairs this afternoon, tired, holding an empty laundry basket, clean clothes just dropped off in an upstairs room, and as I walked toward the lights of the Christmas tree in our living room, I was thinking of everyone I have loved and lost. I was looking under the tree to see if I had forgotten to put anything there. I was thinking of how I ran out of time to do all the things I meant to. I was thinking of Gen X Christmases come and gone, thinking of how I need to get dinner on the table and of the suitcases I need to pack. I was thinking of all the problems I have that still did not get solved in 2023, of how much work there will be to do in the new year, and all the things I still need to sort out in my life, and said to no one in particular, "I feel lost in time and space." 

And my daughter walked up to me and whispered in my ear, "You are right where you are supposed to be." That might just be about the most comforting thing anyone has ever said to me. 

As hard as all of this is, as bleak and cold as this collective dark night of the soul has seemed, maybe we really are right where we are supposed to be - and there is a hope in that.

Merry Christmas, Generation X, 

to you and to the younger generations you share your holiday specials with.

How we made this diorama

box for scene: painted wood crate purchased from a craft store

moon and sparkly night sky: scrapbooking paper

trees: dyed bottle brush trees, some with snow flocking

ground: white felt

snow drifts: cotton 

fence: purchased unfinished from a miniatures store and painted white 

Linus' blanket: a piece of my old blue tee shirt

tree lot string lights: battery powered colored fairy lights attached with white electrical tape

And for one of our favorite hot chocolate recipes: 

Hot Chocolate and a Charlie Brown Christmas

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(c) 2023 writing and photos by Chloe Koffas