My mom was a big Consumer Reports fan

actually now that I think about it I associate her with a lot of the more bougie ‘70s optimism, especially early on in my life

I mentioned her taking me to an Earth Day fair in the early ‘80s, on the consumer-movement side I remember us taking a People Express flight, which in the early ‘80s was the pioneer of the Southwest/Alaska/ValuJet business model - low fares on a narrow selection of valuable routes from a second-tier airport, simplified ticketing infrastructure, no free meals, baggage fees.

Both my parents were there, she was a housewife/childraiser and I guess under that system you just tend to associate your earliest years with your mother (looking it up the oldest I could’ve been is 3 before the airline folded, though I have a definite memory of her packing sandwiches for us in these insulated plastic McDonalds lunch bags)

She was even into crystals for a while, alternative medicine. I’ve said I kind of give her a pass on that because she has scoliosis so the chiropractic woo about your problems stemming from spinal misalignment basically hold true, but also it was funny how this interacted with the consumer-advocate idealism - like, she’d shop at the natural health foods store and get all kinds of vitamins but she was indignant that this “homeopathy” shit was a ripoff scam