OSU and Timeless
Certainly good that things weren't any worse at Ohio State. Very sad that the one student felt that way. He must have known his chances of surviving that day were nil.
Definitely it was at a building I taught in. Ohio State has a huge campus with many, many buildings; there were 50,000+ students there even back in my day. I wouldn't be surprised if some of the students didn't like having class there. It's at the far north end of campus. So if you didn't live in the near by dorms or north of campus, it could be a long walk. When I was there, there was a breezeway through that building there where the car went up on the sidewalk. It was one of several popular walkways to get deeper into campus from the north. Back then theoretically you could have got a car up on the sidewalk and driven from one street to the next. In the event yesterday the car didn't make it past the raised brick planters to the sides of the open area. They were there back when, too. My classroom was right beside the breezeway on the south side. Since then, they filled up the breezeway with classrooms and put in a loading dock on the north side of where the breezeway had been. As I said yesterday, I don't know if the classroom I taught in survived the remodeling.
Timeless: As TV often does, the show has a stilted view of the past. I think in those days, as now, the joker who was asking every secretary in the building to get coffee for him would have been despised by his male coworkers as well as the secretaries. It was certainly a careless thing to be doing in a large organization, because sooner or later he'd run into someone who was a private secretary of a higher-up, who'd have no qualms about telling him off. I think it's fair to say that some folks overstress the servile part of the secretary getting coffee. If you've ever been in a menial desk job, you'd know that the chance to get up for a semi-valid reason and leisurely do something else for a while is not a thing you'd go out of your way to avoid. The waiting-on-someone-else thing is always there, but perhaps not as onerous as is made out by some, especially if the person on the receiving end is the least bit appreciative.
It was kind of a shock to see someone in 'Mary Tyler Moore' hair, after all these years. Long hair was certainly in fashion in those days, and that particular style of wearing long hair was quite beautiful. Quite beautiful but also now very dated. Heck, what we saw in the episode probably was a wig from back in the late 60s or early 70s. The actress certainly didn't look comfortable. Besides the first few seasons of the Mary Tyler Moore Show, I remember that hair style from one of those god-awful, patronizing commercials directed at women in those days. Basically the attitude was that women were suckers, and that if you pretended to be the least bit pro-feminist you could get them to buy anything. (You've come a long way, Baby! ... But I'm still going to refer to you as Baby!). The commercial with the girl with the hair was for a brand of alcoholic beverage which still exists so I won't name it. Basically guy and girl with the hair are starting a meal in a restaurant, instead of having the guy order a drink for her, (A bizzare custom for someone you've barely met, but in those days the girl would sometimes tell the guy what to order for her before the waiter came. Not universal, but some women though it was classy for the guy to order for the woman.) this girl speaks up and orders Blabiddy Booze for herself. The announcer intones, "She knows her own mind!" as if we're supposed to expect she wouldn't. I don't know what women thought of that pandering. But I think most guys thought her ordering for herself was just fine, but what she ordered, though, made me instantly think, "Airhead! You could have had a nice wine or some classy cocktail, but you ordered that cheapo Blabiddy Booze!"
Definitely it was at a building I taught in. Ohio State has a huge campus with many, many buildings; there were 50,000+ students there even back in my day. I wouldn't be surprised if some of the students didn't like having class there. It's at the far north end of campus. So if you didn't live in the near by dorms or north of campus, it could be a long walk. When I was there, there was a breezeway through that building there where the car went up on the sidewalk. It was one of several popular walkways to get deeper into campus from the north. Back then theoretically you could have got a car up on the sidewalk and driven from one street to the next. In the event yesterday the car didn't make it past the raised brick planters to the sides of the open area. They were there back when, too. My classroom was right beside the breezeway on the south side. Since then, they filled up the breezeway with classrooms and put in a loading dock on the north side of where the breezeway had been. As I said yesterday, I don't know if the classroom I taught in survived the remodeling.
Timeless: As TV often does, the show has a stilted view of the past. I think in those days, as now, the joker who was asking every secretary in the building to get coffee for him would have been despised by his male coworkers as well as the secretaries. It was certainly a careless thing to be doing in a large organization, because sooner or later he'd run into someone who was a private secretary of a higher-up, who'd have no qualms about telling him off. I think it's fair to say that some folks overstress the servile part of the secretary getting coffee. If you've ever been in a menial desk job, you'd know that the chance to get up for a semi-valid reason and leisurely do something else for a while is not a thing you'd go out of your way to avoid. The waiting-on-someone-else thing is always there, but perhaps not as onerous as is made out by some, especially if the person on the receiving end is the least bit appreciative.
It was kind of a shock to see someone in 'Mary Tyler Moore' hair, after all these years. Long hair was certainly in fashion in those days, and that particular style of wearing long hair was quite beautiful. Quite beautiful but also now very dated. Heck, what we saw in the episode probably was a wig from back in the late 60s or early 70s. The actress certainly didn't look comfortable. Besides the first few seasons of the Mary Tyler Moore Show, I remember that hair style from one of those god-awful, patronizing commercials directed at women in those days. Basically the attitude was that women were suckers, and that if you pretended to be the least bit pro-feminist you could get them to buy anything. (You've come a long way, Baby! ... But I'm still going to refer to you as Baby!). The commercial with the girl with the hair was for a brand of alcoholic beverage which still exists so I won't name it. Basically guy and girl with the hair are starting a meal in a restaurant, instead of having the guy order a drink for her, (A bizzare custom for someone you've barely met, but in those days the girl would sometimes tell the guy what to order for her before the waiter came. Not universal, but some women though it was classy for the guy to order for the woman.) this girl speaks up and orders Blabiddy Booze for herself. The announcer intones, "She knows her own mind!" as if we're supposed to expect she wouldn't. I don't know what women thought of that pandering. But I think most guys thought her ordering for herself was just fine, but what she ordered, though, made me instantly think, "Airhead! You could have had a nice wine or some classy cocktail, but you ordered that cheapo Blabiddy Booze!"