The Future vs the past

As Sadie sat on my lap the other day after having had her 3-month birthday, I wondered it she would see as many changes in the world as I have. When I was her age Calvin Coolidge was President and the population of the US was 115,829,000; Tennessee schoolteacher John T. Scopes was arrested for teaching the theory of evolution; Al Capone took over the Chicago bootlegging racket; Annual Federal spending was $2.92 billion and a first-class stamp cost $0.02. Airplanes were a bit of a novelty and as a 4 or 5 year old, remember seeing one fly over Seward. Women had won the right to vote only a few years earlier and if they worked outside the home, it was often as a "domestic". My Mother was the only one of her siblings or Dad's to go to HS and she only went through the 10th grade. Though we lived in Seward (at the NW edge) we didn't have water or plumbing in the house. We did have electricity which was greatly missed when we moved to the farm in 1932. Much of what we ate came from our garden or was raised locally. I wasn't able to digest Mother's milk nor cow's milk when I was a baby so was "raised" on goat's milk. Our home sat on 6-lots so we had room to keep the goat's for the family milk and Dad even butchered them occasionally. We also had chickens for eggs and meat. But neighbors and families helped each other in time of need. Living conditions today for most of our 330 million population far exceed what we accepted back at that time. As I look at Sadie, I only hope and pray that conditions during her lifetime can continue to improve and do so on a sustainable basis.