The Human Element

I’m not very good at choosing just one thing as a favorite. If I have to choose a favorite color, flower, tree, sweet, cake, or a decade I really can’t give just one answer.

Today’s topic for Blog Every Day in May is ‘Favorite Decade.’ Some might be able to answer that quickly having something that happened in a decade that make it stands out for them.

I don't have a favorite decade. Each decade has something special about it. 

So, I thought I would focus on retro desserts instead of music, movies, fashion, or political movements – all things that define a decade.

Then I just started thinking about what actually defines a decade. There are the things I listed just there types of music and fashion and wars and other political stuff. 

We get a lot of the facts. In the 1920’s women had won the right to vote. That’s a fact. It happened, but it takes away the human part of it. What did women have to do to get that vote? How did the people feel?

Upside Down Pineapple Cakes were popular in the mid 1920’s. Why were they popular? People then didn't have access to ovens like we do today and they made cakes in skillets. Fruit on the bottom cake batter on top and when you flip it over instant upside down cake. Who used pineapples first is still unclear.

I promise I have a point to all of this and it’s that facts don’t define a decade. I can read about what people wore, what they listened to, and what they ate. But I don’t know how those people felt.

I know how I feel when I wear my comfy jeans and novelty tees and I know how I feel when I hear Timber by Pitbull featuring Ke$ha, and how I feel about the desserts and cakes I make and eat. I know I feel about the economy and how it affects all of the above.

However, I can only guess how it would have felt to be a young woman in the 1920’s having fought or not fought for the right to vote. Depending on how I felt about woman voting would then determine how I felt when I had the right to vote. 

I am for equality in all shapes and forms so I would like to think that if that was my time, my decade that I would have been one of those woman who felt strongly about woman being equal to men. Heck, we're still fighting for it. 

I can dress in vintage clothing, but it will always feel like dressing up (to me) instead of my everyday clothes. I can listen to Elvis Presley but lets be honest his music is tame to the music I grew up listening to in the 90's and naughties. I can bake pineapple upside down cakes, but I have a choice of baking it in the oven or on the stove in a skillet or even in a novelty pan that has indents for the pineapple. I take the use of an oven for granted. 

I will never know how the people of the past felt about certain things. Because their feelings were based on their environment and the social society they were a part of.

Everything changes.Yet, nothing does. People will always be people and people will always love and hate or laugh and cry ... what makes one love and hate or laugh and cry changes. 

There is a human element to every decade, to the past, that we will never fully grasp unless we lived it. 

My favorite decade(s) are the ones I have lived in and the ones I will be a part of. 

notes: This post was written for day 17 of Blog Every Day in May. Photos are from here and here. The two pans are Nordic Ware they have not sponsored this post nor do I own either of them I just thought it fit with my post.