Naming decades

I was pondering the sudden lionization of Ronald Reagan that happened a couple years ago, and that got me thinking about the 80's in general. I remember how in the 90's, MTV spun up a video show where they played music videos produced exclusively in the 80's, and they called it "The Big 80's". The single adjective - "big" - seemed to fit very well, I thought. It was a decade of big hair, big shoulder pads, big business, global superpowers brandishing big weapons, and big servings of soda. The cultural zeitgeist was about making it big, in the corporate world or the entertainment world.

So then I thought: Why not come up with some other single-word descriptions for the other decades? Here's my rough list:

• The roaring 20's
• The dirty 30's
• The fightin' 40's
• The phony 50's
• The trippy 60's
• The sparkly 70's
• The big 80's
• The electric 90's
• The nerdy 00's
• The tricky 10's

Thoughts? Alternates?

In praise of outdoor cats

Little Mira has always been an outside cat, even when she was a young thing. I would supervise her on the back porch as she sniffed timidly around. She’s had multiple encounters with other cats, and possums, and gangs of raccoons, and even a dog on one startling occasion, but she learned to do the right thing each time. Run home.

I can’t count the number of times I’ve seen her blast in through the cat door, or vault through the open window, to escape pursuit from some creature intent on violence. I’ve chased foreign animals out of my house, out of the back yard, off the roof.

I do not look forward to the day when Mira fails to come home, or comes home injured as I have seen other cats do. But I accept it nevertheless, as the cost of keeping her the way I want her to be, the way I most enjoy her:

I want a cat that is sane!

All those cats sitting in windows? In silent houses, staring into space? They’re all as nutty as fruitcakes! Totally bonkers; left reality years ago and never came back. What else can you expect when you take a creature whose reactions are so fast it can casually slap a fly right out of the air … and you lock it in a silent, lifeless purgatory?

I know Mira is happy here, because being home is a choice she gets to make.