I am totally disgruntled at what has happened to the money. The poverty line today is around $30,000 a year and no one can relate to what it was like to go to France for 3 months (and get married) on $500, or to earn $85 a week my first year married. Or what a thrill it was on every level when I finally made my first sale to the SEPost, my breakthrough, for $2500--more than half a year's pay. Or $15 a photo (when used) when I worked for the paper for $50 per article (when used). All of the emotion has gone out of even talking about such things, part of my very life, much less writing about them, for no one relates, no one understands, except a few of us who are left from way back then. In the 20s Fitzgerald wrote an article for the Post called "How to Live On $37,000 A Year," a sum so munificent that it still held up 30 years later when I was trying to live on $3800 with a young wife, no dishes or furniture yet, but with a salary considered not so bad.
And as long as I am getting pet peeves off my chest, I am equally disgruntled  by what has happened to certain words in the language. A heterosexual couple now is referred to as "you guys." No no no, guys and dolls are not the same. They are different. The words husband, wife and especially marriage, important words every one, no longer mean what they did. There are many such examples but for me the worst is what has happened to what was once the most beautiful word in the language: home. It has been almost totally debauched. Realtors sell "homes." Builders build "homes." And so forth. A sacred word has lost its sacredness. Few languages have a word for home. In French, the only other language I know well, there is no such word and I constantly miss it. On days when I don't feel at home there I miss it especially. Now I begin to miss it even in English, miss it more every day. I want to go home.