This evening this very post was spammed with such a thing. I always scan the spam to be sure that Mark B.’s and Justin’s comments aren’t caught there again as they have been in the past. This time opening lines of the spam were startlingly familiar. Stripped of the links, those lines were:

Colloquium speakers urged us to be financially perceptive, to mark between wants and needs, to extra ourselves from profitable bondage. This morning Keepa jumps aboard that bandwagon with a Noteworthy song from the depths of the Clever Depression, 1934. By The Way, Beatrice F. Stevens, the father and composer, is the changeless woman who recalled her youth experiences with raising silkworms in an earlier piling. When you wake up in the morning, and the tan is shining flashing: “Be Penurious,” Tra-la-la

Spammed with my own words! Only Beatrice has become a man, “post” had become “piling” and “Great Depression” was “Clever Depression,” etc.

The best computer-generated alteration, though, is the admonition to Be Penurious. Ha!

I’ll see what I can find out. However, the LDS Archives have just closed for more than two months (they’re moving all the treasures across the street to the brand new building), so my opportunities for research are severely restricted for a while.

Unless your pennies were thriftily squirrelled away in an Icelandic bank…presumably in those days, the target audience kept their money in a jam jar under the mattress?

Ardis, do we know what happened to Sister Stevens in the end? Between thrifty songs and the silkworms, I don’t think I could cope if she died in poverty

I was puzzled by the English spelling of “realise” and “economise”, but not “sympathize.” Just poor editing, or evidence that certain orthographical verities hadn’t become fixed by 1934.

Sobering.

I don’t like these parts:

“…when he is growing old…when you’re fifty…”

Not at all.