Moods
As teens in the 1970s, we first flexed our consumer power by prowling clothes boutiques in search of suede leather vests, skirts, bags and moccasins, paisley print fashions, midriff blouses and mood rings that “magically” reflected the wearer’s emotional state. Finally, a cheap pretty ring to decode the mysteries of our mercurial thoughts and feelings!
“The ring says I’m sad. The ring says I’m in love. The ring says I’m anxious. The ring says I’m elated. The ring says I’m doomed.” All were true in the moment.
Every pubescent girl needed a mood ring’s varying colors to plumb the heights and depths of our sensitive shifting temperaments. Spanning the color spectrum from amber yellow, through the jewel tones, to a shadowy gray, a mood ring somehow validated the colliding fervors that forever churn in young beating hearts.
We crooned along to the schmaltzy hit song about “Feelings” while wallowing in ours, gazing into the little polished glass surface on our fingers, looking for proof of our capricious natures.
Mood rings, oval domed stones set in silver-plated bands, were so popular in 1975 that their sales value rocketed to $15 million. The fad was short lived though as ringmakers flooded the market. Once you bought a ring, you didn’t want another one. (These were the days before Oprah convinced us we needed eight of everything.)
We didn’t really question the science behind our fascination with mood rings any more than we challenged the workings of Magic Eightballs or Ouija boards. Part of the fun lay in not knowing.
Later we would learn that the rings were simply reacting to the changing temperature of our skin rather than our hot and cold moods.
The use of liquid crystal elements in medical thermometers inspired the designers of costume jewelry to borrow the concept of thermosensitive elements in making rings and pendants. The “stones” in a mood ring, which can still be purchased online for $12-$25, change colors in reaction to ambient temperature.
Today all the fun has leached out of not knowing.
Costume jewelry won’t reveal our nation’s mood swings, but if possible, it might signal a gathering darkness in consumer confidence and worries about what happens next in America’s scary headfirst jump into the unknown.
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The shiny yellow hopes for affordable goods and a booming economy in a post-Biden era have turned murkier with every new tariff.
So-called Liberation Day is here, triggering apprehension that it’s likely to liberate more cash from the already-thinned wallets of middle-class families. Our consolation is that in 15 years, automated robots will fill assembly line jobs to manufacture fad trinkets made right here in the good ol’ USA.
Promises to “drain the swamp” could ideally have meant ending the rampant parasitic corruption that thrives between lawmakers and deep-pocketed special interests. Arbitrary and uninformed decisions made by the richest man in the world and his squad of lifelike drones are raising anxiety among Americans concerning deep cuts to government programs that support veterans, disaster victims, senior citizens and the disabled, real-time weather information, school lunches, Medicaid, public education, national parks, food and drug safety, medical research, equal opportunity, treatment of mental illness and addiction.
A new and improved mood ring could flash red to alert us of hoax remedies such as giving a child a teaspoon of castor oil to prevent the spread of measles instead of protecting them with the scientifically proven MMR vaccine.
Did we as voters mandate loony attacks on the arts, U.S. history and the Smithsonian? Did we endorse the disrespect of our allies and the denunciation of sovereignty in Ukraine, Greenland and Canada? Are we okay with the blanket pardons of 1,500 violent rioters because they were wearing the right color of hat?
Maybe we just want to be able to pay our bills, earn a living wage to support our families and keep The U.S. Constitution intact?
We wonder whether Elon Musk’s unhinged efficiency team manifests a sincere effort to reduce government waste considering that the administration’s proposed budget asks for tax reductions while adding trillions of dollars in federal spending. The combined salaries of fired civilian workers is chump change within our crushing national debt.
No one is outlining a rational plan that explains how the imagined profits from a trade war and DOGE savings will be reallocated.
Privatization of public services means we will be paying the commercial business sector — and the IRS — while digging an ever-deeper pit of debt. That scenario should blacken the shade of any taxpayer’s mood ring.
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