Tags
Food, Humor, Karens, Memes, Montana, Polson Montana, Travel, Turn About
At Karen’s Produce, The Manager would like to speak with you!
30 Thursday Nov 2023
Tags
Food, Humor, Karens, Memes, Montana, Polson Montana, Travel, Turn About
At Karen’s Produce, The Manager would like to speak with you!
25 Saturday Nov 2023
Posted Animals, Anthropology
inTags
Accidents, Auctions, Clifford Geertz, Meaning, Oops, Semiotics, Significance, Signification, Stories
Somewhere in the Phenomenology of Perception, Merleau-Ponty tells us that mankind is condemned to meaning.
Somewhere in his own works, Clifford Geerts asks what is the difference between a blink and a wink?
It’s been a long time since I read either of the works in question, but I was recently reminded of both when I came across an old family picture of my Dad with a hog he bought at a livestock auction at the state Colorado state fair.
What the little news clip accompanying the picture does not say is how my father came to came to deliver the final bid on this hog. Dad used to love telling this story. Suffice to say, the plot thickens just after he began to feel a slight itch on the tip of his nose.
22 Wednesday Nov 2023
Posted Childhood, Uncategorized
inTags
Childhood, Corporal Punishment, Discipline, Memories, Punishment, School, School Days, Spanking, Tough
I don’t know what he had done this time, but little Scotty McNameRedacted was always in trouble. He really didn’t get along with any of his teachers. At this particular moment, it was a long-term substitute for our first grade teacher that had lost all patience for Scotty. Why, I didn’t know, but this time, she got the paddle out. And there in front of all of us, she bent Scotty over her knee and began to paddle him.
Scotty made no sound as the paddle struck. In fact, he barely flinched. I remember looking up at the face of the substitute, and watched as an expression of frustration crossed her face. Seeing no signs that her punishment had made an impression, she began to put some real muscle into it. I realized with some degree of horror that she was actually striking Scotty as hard as she possibly could, straining to hit him hard enough to teach him a lesson, so to speak.
…and she got nothing.
If I had looked forward to seeing someone I took to be our class bully get a comeuppance, that feeling was now completely gone. I was schocked to see just how hard the substitute was beating him, and more so to see just how well he was taking it. I reckon Scotty had taken more spankings than the rest of us put together, so I might have expected him to handle it better than I could. Still! This was a level of courage I could not have imagined.
And just like that the spanking stopped. I wasn’t entirely sure why. Had the substitute reached some magic number of blows? Did she realize she had gone too far? Or had she simply given up? I couldn’t tell what led to her decision to stop. I just watched along with the rest of the class as Scotty got off of her lap.
Scotty walked back to his desk and sat down without a trace of a tear on his face, not even a wince as his butt hit the chair. He looked around at the rest of us, maybe a little embarrassed and perhaps a little confused, but he showed absolutely no signs of surrender, no regret, and reform.
For her own part, the substitute appeared to be totally drained.
…and utterly beaten.
I’ve heard a lot of things about corporal punishment as a means of dealing with children. Having no children, myself, I don’t have any real commitments one way or another, but whenever the topic arises, I cannot help but think of this memory.
Scotty may have taken the hits on that day, but there has never been any doubt in my mind.
On that day, at least.
Scotty won.
18 Saturday Nov 2023
Tags
Art, Creativity, Fighting, Montana, Museum, Soldiers, Spare Time, Trench Art, War
This last summer, I spent a little time in Polson, Montana. As my wife was busy at a conference at Salish Kootenai College, I had time to kill. So, naturally, I found my way to The Miracle of America Museum. As might be expected from the title, this was a rather conservative institution, and its massive collections certainly reflected this outlook; old fashioned Americana interspersed with plenty of military hardware, and of course a couple UFOs. There was certainly plenty to see.
One thing that definitely caught eye was a small display of trench art not far from the entrance to the museum. “Trench Art” got its name from the shear quantity of such art produced by soldiers in World War I, but that hasn’t stopped folks from applying the label to art made during other wars. What makes something trench art is the fact that soldiers are making it during their time down range. What makes it interesting is the frequency with which it is made using materials clearly manufactured for the purpose of fighting war.
Here is what the museum has to say about it:
“Inscribed and carved mess kits were called scrimshaw or Trench Art. To pass the time during a lull in the fighting, soldiers would use pocket knives, tips of bayonets or tools from the field machine ship to personalize items, or make useful mementos like salt and pepper shakers, ashtrays, vases or lamps. Spent shell casings were handy and usually used.”
I have a couple close-ups. (Click to embiggen)