olden times

“There really was no other way to get that resource in the olden times.”

“In the olden times, we viewed clean energy as ‘alternative energy’ — the Whole Foods of energy,” Mr. McKibben said.

In olden times, part of the fun in watching the Oscars via this medium we used to call “TV” was parsing the early awards given during the show and imagining how they were creating a narrative and, perhaps, forecasting which movie would win the ceremony’s last prize.

He was no apologist for the olden times, though, and neither were his subjects, who spoke about abusive landlords, occasional incest and the disregard of the elderly and the infirm.

The contents of Abuelita’s bulto looked like it may have belonged to El Niño Fidencio, the famous curandero of olden times, and I watched in awe as she sorted the ingredients for Pita’s treatment.