New Deal, and we're not playing poker

The above newspaper clipping was affixed to a page in one of my mother's scrapbook - next to articles announcing births, deaths, weddings, and rustic yarns. The publication from which the clipping came is not identified nor did Mom write a date on the clipping. It is, however, surrounded by clippings that she dated in 1935-1936.

We are still complaining about the alphabet soup of governmental units that are, today, in place. Within my personal list of such organizations, accumulated over the years of my education, employment or volunteer service, are well over 100 such entries. Few of the entries in my relatively modern listing repeat units in the above listing. I did note that both FAA and FCC are still around and that the SSB was formed in August 1935.

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Below are the first and last pages of the listing of terminology that I kept at work - back in the olden days. The pages are from the last printout that I made - on April 17, 1997, our Wonderful GrandDaughter's 14th birthday. The pages are electronically trimmed to provide a more manageable display. (The paper version comprises a stack of paper over one inch thick.)

I carried the electronic version of a similar listing of pertinent terminology with me when performing volunteer duties on a disaster response operation. In that listing, about 10% of the entries were governmental agencies or departments. I was amused to note that, although the latest update was September 17, 2015, one of the included terms is VTC - Virtual TeleConference. We didn't even have COVID-19 in those days!

Comments

[Stu Savory]

During the Third Reich, Germany had the SA, the SS etc etc.
To this day we are not allowed to have these initials as part of our (personalised) number plates on our vehicles. So tough for me. I can't even use my initials as a sigel when signing off parts on contracts etc.

[Cop Car]

Stu--That would be tough, not being able to abbreviate by using the initials of your own name.

You, and other regular visitors with whom I've exchanged emails, know my "real" name. You can understand how easily I am able to initial documents.

When HH and I were divorced, I changed my name so that people within our common industry would not blame poor HH for the things that I might do/have done. I did not however wish to change the initials that I had while using HH's last name as my own (too many drawings etc to sign off on).

My birth surname started with a letter that was not so benign in initialing things; hence, I took the first three letters of HH's surname and the last three letters of my birth surname to form a new surname by which I have since been identified. Easy initialing and paying homage to HH and to my birth family. As a bonus, as you can attest, my surname has a meaning in German. (My ancestry does include German, but more Viking-Irish as the red hair suggests.)

P.S. My ploy to "protect" HH was successful. Following our re-marriage, I worked with a woman for several years before she somehow learned that I was HH's wife. She came to me with an "I don't believe it!" exclamation. She had been administrative assistant to one of the managers who had worked for HH during a few of the years when we were apart.