Vintage Advice: The Secret of Perfect Living

Posted on June 18, 2013 by Hope

The Secret of Perfect Living
James T. Mangan
Prentice-Hall, Inc. 1963

The subtitle really drew me in:

  • How to set into motion tremendous “sleeping powers” that can bring you all the good things of life as if by magic.

Confession: when I read “tremendous sleeping powers,” I expected to find a cure for my ongoing insomnia. No such luck. James T. Mangan is referring to powers within yourself that you haven’t fully realized or activated. Oh, well.

First: what are we striving for?

Perfect Living is a state of absolute togetherness, a union of the conscious and subconscious selves for the ultimate good and benefit of your whole person. It’s a highly thoughtful state of being. Mangan suggests that using switchwords helps people gain the cooperation of their subconscious selves instead of battling subconscious fears and desires.

This book is written in a winsome, witty style. Read the contents of chapter 2, The 12 Answers to Life. Along with the usual suspects (God, service, art, love, etc.), there’s a section called All the Answers are Confusing to help the reader sort out what might seem like conflicting advice. I love a self-help book that helps itself!

The book’s introduction is titled: The Shoe Clerk Quoted Goethe. Irresistible. A clerk loses his shoe horn, jeopardizing a sale. The customer says, to break the tension, “We do these things to ourselves.” The salesman agrees, and quotes Goethe: “There are two souls in my own breast, and one is determined to beat down the other.”

This rings very true. I am often my own worst critic or enemy. Mangan explains that the two souls Goethe described should get together, but they want to fight. I love his description:

The stronger and bigger of the two, often called the subconscious…is the one with all the experience. But the little and weaker soul [the conscious mind], is the boss of the person and like a silly little office boy is eternally giving orders to the big underself, the real president of the corporation. The president then goes out to fight down the little office boy and it knows how.

Switchwords are cues our conscious mind can use to activate better subconscious functioning. I occasionally suffer from anxiety and panic attacks. My therapy involves doing something to change the tape that runs in my head and/or switch direction. When I feel the flush of anxiety begin, I say, “triple A” (the Antidote for Anxiety is Action) and find something to DO that will take me away from the helplessness of panic and move me toward acting (and therefore feeling) more in control. For example, I work well under pressure, but sometimes I procrastinate too long and get overwhelmed with anxiety. When I recognize that sensation kicking in, I make a detailed list of all the things I have to accomplish. This allows me to focus and start crossing things off my list, and thus feel less overwhelmed. And even powerful! The act of making the list makes me cognizant of all the work I need to do, it acknowledges my fear, and it gives me a positive action I can take.

(I’m sure somewhere, somebody reading this is laughing at the thought of a grown woman repeatedly mumbling to herself, “triple A.” Let me assure you that 1. it’s not the weirdest thing I say to myself, by far, and 2. I will laugh with you, all the way to the bank or the grocery store or whatever productive task this self-talk enables me to accomplish. As Popeye says, “I yam what I yam.”)

Mangan says we are each the sum of all our experiences, positive and negative. We can use switchwords to actively push the positive experiences to the forefront in our brains in order to react effectively to challenges. He explains that consciously accessing these unconscious (hidden) mental files can speed up the process of learning to cope, because each success will beget more success.

One example of Mangan’s switchwords is change. He says humans often employ this switchword without being aware of it, for example when someone dresses better for an important meeting or changes location in order to get a better perspective on a problem. This is productive but subconscious behavior we have learned based on past experiences.

to dispel an attack of the blues: UP

Getting back to change…in my case, when I recognize a  headache I think: HYDRATE. Dehydration is a primary cause of headaches, but even when it’s not, taking time to drink a glass of water empowers me. I can affect the outcome of the situation rather than surrender to the pain.

In spite of my general aversion to “power of positivity” peptalks and a tendency to dismiss most self-help books, I really enjoyed The Secret of Perfect Living! The writing is clever and engaging, and the way Mangan framed internal struggles really resonated with me. I am not on board with the notion that specific words are the perfect switchword for everyone, but I appreciate the author’s attempt to outline them. Some make great sense, while others seem silly.

File under “sensible” switchwords:

  • To be a good mechanic: CONSIDER
  • To meet a deadline: DONE
  • To achieve moderation in any field where tempted by excess CUT
  • To break a bad habit: OFF
  • To get ride of inertia: MOVE
  • To stop faultfinding: PRAISE
  • To handle anything unpleasant: ADJUST

File under silly:

  • To be kind: TINY
  • To relieve constipation: SWIVEL
  • To heal a scab: ALONE
  • To make your children obedient: CROWD
  • To cure hypersensitivity: DUCK (I know it kind of works, but I can’t help but picture the bird)

What are your switchwords or mantras?

optimism

PS: I also use visual switches. This photo of me when I was about 3 reminds me of the child’s perspective that the world is full of good things just waiting to be discovered.

 

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Vintage Advice: Pack-o-Fun

Posted on June 14, 2013 by Hope

isn't it festive?

Pack-o-Fun
“The Only Scrap-Craft Magazine”
May 1971
Publisher John M. Klapper, Park Ridge, Illinois

I came across this magazine in my scrap drawer, which holds old calendar pages, magazines, photos, and other paper ephemera I cut up and use in projects. I can’t fathom what possessed me to bring this home, because it’s consistently hideous. Maybe it was tucked into something else I picked up? Or maybe I wanted to gape at it with someone else. Here I am! There you are! Thank you for gaping with me!

I’m thinking this magazine might actually be perfect for the untalented and/or uninspired crafter, because anyone who attempts any of these projects can only come away with increased esteem for their own handiwork and taste.

The feature article is about Crazy Hats. It begins: These hats will never win designers’ awards, but they might bring a prize at a crazy hat show.

You don’t say! Actually, a crazy hat party sounds fun and funny. And I do love the offbeat challenges on Project Runway. But these creations are just grim. They would win first prize at an ugly hat show, no doubt.

The sketches of crazy hats are fairly charming…although one might wonder how it is possible to realize the artist’s vision with the suggested scrap materials: plastic jugs, tissue paper, paper plates, foam trays, etc. Let’s zoom in on a gem: the pizza hat.

atsa lotsa look!

The thing that perplexes me most about the pizza hat is the execution. What is UP with that Eiffel tower of pepperoni in the center? It is made of red socks. Recycled socks. Think about that for a moment. Appetizing? Not so much.

The article helpfully concludes with verses describing some of the fashionable creations which your event’s emcee can read aloud during the parade of hats. (forgive the poor meter)

Table Tennis Hat:

Despite the fact she’s tired/Mom will join right in the fun/This hat will speak for her/And say, “Tennis, anyone?”

Eiffel Tower Hat

At times, Mom dreams of travel/Of Spain and Shangri-La/With this French hat upon her head/She’ll feel, “”Ooo-la-la!”

Pack-o-Fun certainly lives up to its name — at least the packed part. There are many other projects: painted cutting boards, sock pincushions, Foam Egg Cartons, skit suggestions, plastic jewelry, plastic cleanser bottle projects, macaroni and seed art patterns, handy hints, and a Q & A section called Leader’s Page. I found some of the questions charmingly specific.

Please give me directions for making a footstool from large fruit juice cans.

How can I use a number of the enclosed soft sponges in projects?

I have quite a few red plastic milk bottle caps, and have no idea of what to do with them. Can you help me out? (Editor Edna Clapper suggests lapel pins, doll house dishes, belts, pin cushions, shade pulls, and table decoration bases).

The back of the magazine features classified ads for craft patterns, sales agents, fund raisers, and pen pals! Pages and pages of names, addresses, and interests of people who are seeking pen pals. I remember dreaming of a pen pal when I was little. I think I had a couple false starts. It is interesting how very far this is from today’s concept of protecting personal information. Also, I am a little bit tempted to try and look up some of the kids seeking pen-pals. Wouldn’t it be funny if I could track down any of them and get a letter back? Google rabbit hole, here I come!

So the thing I keep wondering about is this: forty years from now, will people look at currently popular crafts and think they are hideous? Is the evolution of craftiness more about taste or skill? Taste has to be a big factor. If you think about gorgeous primitive art or the charming crafts (paint, decals, embroidery) of the thirties and forties, it makes you wonder about the seventies…why was everything so ugly? Did the preponderance of plastic have anything to do with it? I don’t think it was exclusively an American pitfall, as I have old magazines from Denmark with plenty of ugly seventies projects. Things that make me go hmmmmm…

So: my takeaways from this week’s vintage advice:

  • Beauty is definitely in the eye of the beholder.
  • Just because it’s recycled, doesn’t mean it’s beautiful (and sometimes garbage is just garbage).
  • People throughout the ages have felt compelled to decorate their environments…some with more success than others.
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Favorite Things Friday: Clocks!

Posted on June 7, 2013 by Hope

Today is my birthday. I think that what you do on your birthday reflects your priorities for the year, so I really wanted to write. I was having trouble picking from my list of favorites when my husband suggested I write something related to the milestone.

Soooo…I love parties, I love cake, I love ice cream, I love taking time to tell someone they are special to me AND I adore receiving the same treatment. But I don’t have pictures for those topics. I looked around my house and realized another favorite thing works well to mark the passage of time: clocks.

my office white noise provider

I am not a clock worshipper. I try to be timely, but forgiving friends with flexible time frames know that sometimes I run behind. I am often late sending birthday cards or such. I get to appointments on time, but if there is slack in the time-space continuum, I am likely to find it. (Or it finds me.)

I don’t look at my watch much during the day. I have an instinctive sense of time and can often guess accurately without having checked a timepiece for hours. I usually only check the time when I’m  stressed or worried. Maybe that is why I am fond of broken clocks! It’s like someone has pulled the rug out from under my anxiety. I like clocks that work, too, but they are more objects of art or soothing background noise (tick, tock. tick, tock) than they are tracking devices. (Except when I am exercising, and then I am looking at the clock every 20-30 seconds, and each minute expands to feel like five, and I wonder if the clock is, in fact, broken.)

I especially like old clocks. I laugh when I stumble upon my terrorist-grade high school alarm clock at garage sales from time to time. It sounded like an alarm on a nuclear submarine and terrified me so much that I eventually trained myself to wake 2-3 minutes before it went off at 5:40 a.m. (the bus came at 6:30). The digital display was green but the numbers were fuzzy because one of my siblings had painted over the plastic with nail polish and the remover roughed it up. It was like viewing it without my glasses, all the time. Nowadays when I need an alarm, I wake to the crickets tone on my iPhone. Ahhhhh.

First broken clock I acquired: this Bakelite cutie that currently hangs out on our mantel.

an eclectic assortment of tchotchkes

Two songbirds by Jim and Tori Mullan keep it company. I found it (for a song! ha!) at the Depot Town Flea Market, filthy. It had a cord and it ran, the seller showed me, but as it turned out, it didn’t run for long without making an alarming hot smell. No matter. I cut off the filthy cord and cleaned it up and now it shines in any spot where it lands.

You can easily kind find beautiful, charming little dinged up old clocks for big money on Etsy and at antique shops. But that’s no fun. I love the hunt. Happily, there are plenty of dinged up old clocks in want of homes at lower rent venues, i.e., Value World, rummage sales, and even the garbage.

 

hands, skunk, clock, scrabble tiles

The clock pictured here in my crafty nook would not grab me by description alone. I like red but it’s plastic and 80s era and neither one of those descriptors make my heart skip a beat. But look at it! It’s sweet and represents the best of 80s style rather than the worst. (Who needs an overstuffed purple reclining sofa clock, anyway?) And! It was handpicked for me by a friend who (oh baby) knooooowws what I like!

Same friend also found me the gorgeous kitchen timer pictured with Moomin Mama below. Aren’t friends grand?!

The travel clock below has a cool roll-top leather cover. I got it for a dollar. The plain white clock I liked for its simplicity, plus it says Smith, my maiden name. And it perfectly sets off one of Carsten’s pieces of random art: a hand made out of packaging tape.

Sometimes I like fixer-uppers. The pile of watch faces is destined for bird and robot projects (Carsten’s specialty) and the broken down cuckoo clock is due for major refurbishing. I do love a fixer-upper. And at $3, how could I say no? (I guess I’m a girl who just can’t.)

 

 

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Vintage Advice: Dream Analysis!

Posted on June 5, 2013 by Hope

ta-da!

10,000 Dreams Interpreted
Gustavus Hindman Miller
1931, Hubbard Press

Today in Vintage Advice…what your dreams mean…or not!

Here’s a quick recap of the 40-page (!) introduction:

There are three pure types of dreams: subjective, physical, and spiritual…The latter is always deeply prophetic, especially when it leaves a vivid impression on the conscious mind. The former, too, possesses an element of warning and prophecy though the true hidden meaning is hidden in symbols or allegory….Physical dreams are more or less unimportant. The rest of the book is essentially a catalog of entries on particular topics and what they mean.

I had a vivid dream about gnocchi last night, and wondered what my man Gustavus had to say on the subject. I found no entry for gnocchi. No entry for pasta, though there is one for pasteboard. (I was also bemused to find four pages of horse imagery.) There was no entry for food, though there is a banal one about Cooking: Some pleasant duty will devolve on you. Many friends will visit you in the near future. If there is discord or lack of cheerfulness you may expect harassing and disappointing events to happen. So GHM is saying if you dream about preparing food, you are going to have guests. Duh!

It is funny how some entries are so obvious while others are oddly specific. For example, Crust: To dream of a crust of bread denotes incompetency and threatened misery though carelessness in appointed duties.

Do people really dream about bread crusts? I guess a gnocchi dreamer shouldn’t cast aspersions. I’d wager that the implication of incompetency mostly reflects that era’s culinary fondness for dainty finger sandwiches.

Other entries are simply bizarre: Freckles: For a woman to dream that her face is freckled denotes that many displeasing incidents will insinuate themselves into her happiness. If she sees them in a mirror, she will be in danger of losing her lover to a rival.

I think freckles are adorable, although I realize pale complexions were prized at the time of this book’s publication. But Gustavus takes a flying leap off the crazy cliff when he connects seeing freckles in a mirror with losing one’s lover. What do freckles have to do with relationships? If we consider freckles metaphorical “stains,” why would losing one’s lover reflect badly on the woman rather than on the cad?! Maybe GHM just thinks that being “rejected” is the most significant unhappiness a woman could experience? This interpretation reminds me of college. I went to a women’s school and some male visitors assumed our parties were meat markets. When rejected,certain men concluded we were lesbians…that if we weren’t attracted to them, no man would do. Egomania at its best!

There are many different birds cataloged in these interpretations. Once again, GHM goes a little too far. Crow: To dream of seeing a crow betokens misfortune and grief. To hear crows cawing, you will be influenced by others to make a bad disposal of property. To a young man, it is indicative of his succumbing to the wiles of designing women. I am starting get the idea that Gustavus has a poor opinion of women, what about you?

tangential!

I decided to take a look at Dancing, (surely a gateway drug for sin, right?) and was pleasantly surprised to find that entry was quite positive. But then I read further and the following entry, Dancing Master, is equally negative. Click on the pic in the gallery below to compare them.

Total tangent: the discussion of dancing reminded me of something I found this week while cleaning my office: a tiny Arthur Murray rumba flip book. Love it!

Back to the book. I googled Mr. Miller, picturing a somewhat sheltered, European scholarly type with bushy hair and bottle-cap glasses. According to Wikipedia, I am way off the mark.

Fiction writers sometimes chafe at the suggestion that their writing reflects their experiences, values, etc. Not me. It is the personal filters that people use in their storytelling that make stories interesting (or not) to me. It’s certainly possible to assume someone else’s perspective while developing a character/narrative, but I’d still argue that the details authors choose are not meaningless. Even when we try to disguise our point of view, it can leak through. Of course, what the details mean is always open to interpretation.

My take: GMH’s interpretations reflect the social norms of his time as well as his own biases, and probably also represent a bit of creative license. I agree that images can have strong cultural connotations, but sometimes a bird is just a bird. Other times it might just be a vehicle to deliver a secret message written on tiny paper so our imaginary story makes sense. I believe dreams are a combination of our hopes and fears, plus random sensory impressions that get “misfiled” in our brains and show up unpredictably, plus our unconscious mind’s attempt to solve problems.

So what about my gnocchi? I was hungry. And I am expecting guests. Also, I had seen a snippet of a reality show in which an Indian father-in-law complained about an Italian restaurant not offering lasagna or chicken parmigiana. Why did my dream feature gnocchi, since that wasn’t mentioned? I suspect it has something to do with fun word itself. Say it with me…gnocchi, gnocchi, gnocchi!

PS: If you have dream imagery you would like to run by GHM, post it in the comments. I’d love to look it up! (Do so on behalf of a friend if it’s embarrassing…)

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