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Film presentation recalls Forty Fort’s long-lost studio

Our Opinion: Is it time to reassess Luzerne County real estate?

<p>What if someone told you there was a really cheap, environmentally sound and totally safe way to stop those annoying flying insects that try to invade your home every summer?</p><p>No, it&#8217;s not some &#8220;amazing new discovery&#8221; being gushed about on late-night TV. And you don&#8217;t have to trot out your credit card and &#8220;call now.&#8221;</p><p>Give up?</p><p>It&#8217;s flypaper, and it&#8217;s really good stuff. Putting some up on a porch or near the trash is like building a moat around your castle.</p><p>Sad to say, I&#8217;ll bet a lot of people don&#8217;t even know flypaper exists. For the record, it&#8217;s a long sticky strip that you unroll from a spool and hang by a loop and tack built right into the package. It looks gross as it fills up with dead insects but, hey, it&#8217;s a lot of bang for less than a buck.</p><p>Flypaper is a good example of an old &#8211; very old &#8211; technology that still works but that most people almost instinctively reject in favor of something more expensive ($45 for an indoor electronic bug killer on Amazon) or smellier (aerosol spray that can also kill your plants).</p><p>While flypaper is still around, sort of, some other useful technologies have pretty much passed completely out of our lives. Remember the &#8220;wings&#8221; on a car&#8217;s front windows? They were triangular glass panels you could angle outward to direct a nice breeze inside. There was little or no need for air conditioning, an &#8220;improvement&#8221; that adds hundreds of dollars to the price of an automobile.</p><p>Of course some of the old technologies have quite deservedly gone to the bone yard. If you ever had to tend a coal furnace in your home, you surely welcome the autopilot style of modern gas or oil systems. And I don&#8217;t think there&#8217;s a person alive who longs for the days when you had to crank up your car to start it.</p><p>Other forms of &#8220;progress,&#8221; though have brought mixed blessings. A clunky manual typewriter could put an address on an envelope at least as quickly as a modern home computer and printer because fewer motions were required. Holy Smith-Corona!</p><p>Like your news delivered electronically? That&#8217;s better for the environment, but I&#8217;d need some practice in balancing a very costly and breakable gizmo on one knee and scrolling down while simultaneously lounging on a porch glider and drinking a cup of coffee. I&#8217;m sure I could learn it, but for the moment holding a newspaper seems a bit safer because there&#8217;s no need for curse words if I spill the Maxwell House on a 50-cent Times Leader.</p><p>Let me hasten to add that, of course, progress is good overall. I&#8217;m simply wondering about the logic of slapping the label &#8220;progress&#8221; on every change that comes along.</p><p>I&#8217;ll admit to watching an occasional cat video online. I&#8217;ll also admit that I&#8217;ve never seen one in which a cat expressed greater joy over the latest scientifically designed cat tower or whatever they call those soaring $150 devices than over a little felt mouse or a chair cushion or another cat.</p><p>Maybe those cats can teach us a lesson. Has anyone ever really improved on the feather duster, the egg beater, the coaster wagon or the tie tack, all of which devices have been in use since the 1800s?</p><p>And now, if you&#8217;ll excuse me, I think I&#8217;ve run out of flypaper. Where&#8217;d I put that 99-cent swatter?</p><style>
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<div class="neCaption">Remember When </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo0>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/web1_TOM_MOONEY2.jpg</photo0><caption0>Remember When </caption0><photoCredit0></photoCredit0></div></div>
<div class="metaInfo"><bylineMeta><p>Tom Mooney</p><p>Remember When</p></bylineMeta></div><div class="metaInfo"><shirttailMeta><p>Tom Mooney is a Times Leader history columnist. Reach him at tmooney2@ptd.net.</p></shirttailMeta></div>

Remember When: Can progress add complication?