Figure 1 – Baby window cage of the 1930’s.

When I was young part of a boy’s childhood was reading “Ripley’s Believe it of Not.” I suspect that early exposure to that sort of imagery, as well as whatever primal instincts of curiosity for the bizarre it arises from, is manifest today in all of these websites that promise us x number of images of truly weird events.  I didn’t escape it this afternoon, when promised 116 photographs of our human history that would amaze me.  Some of them did, although many even most were more like examples of inhumanity than humanity.

But I found myself looking for the most bizarre of all 116 and finally settled on Figure 1 from around 1937 showing a baby in a baby window cage, a solution to the problem of how to make sure that baby gets fresh air and sunshine while living in densely-packed  tenements or apartments.  Seemed pretty bizarre to me.  But it followed pretty closely on my watching on the “Today Show” this morning a story from Kentucky about a family whose children have been taken away from them because of their minimalist lifestyle.

Now I’m not going to comment about that case.  But the point is that norms change generation to generation.  My mother was a firm believer in the power of sunshine, and would take me out in my pram on a cold January day. It was essential that baby-Davie got his daily dose of vitamin D, that despite the fact that I was fed fortified milk – not to mention “Sugar Pops.”  But baby window cages make the heart stop and I am glad that these never really caught on.