Time to bust out my ethnocentrism and wish everybody a Happy Thanksgiving! Even if you don't live in the US. Happy..um..late November? Or you could join us in eating ourselves sick on big plates of food; it's really one of the easiest holidays to play along with. I'll join in yours!
I mean it. I love the holidays. Any holidays. All Arbor's Day of the Chrimukwanukah Solstivus Eve, whatever you got, I'll take it. Every Thanksgiving I can lay my hands on (did you know the first American Thanksgiving was actually in Texas? No? It's true!), Halloween and Day of the Dead, I don't care. Any excuse for strange foods and rituals is a good one!
But there is an element of the latter-month holidays that fills me with dread, one nasty nigh-inescapable blight on this shiniest of seasons. One nasty ORANGE blight.
See, I'm allergic to orange foods. It's not that I dislike them. I *dislike* canned peas. Canned peas do not make me throw the heck up, or break out in hives, or have trouble breathing. But pumpkin, sweet potatoes, even humble carrots, when cooked...they bring the doom upon me. And most of the year, they are easy to avoid. But today, on this festive holiday occasion, they are everywhere. And so I have learned earlier than most to cook my own holiday dinner, and hold Thanksgiving only with those close companions who have shown an understanding of concepts like "anaphylactic shock" and "next time the mess goes in YOUR shoes".
So today, armed with turkey and pecan pie, I go once more to brave the trials of Family Fun. I'm grateful to be able to go to a fairly safe place; and I'll be even more grateful to return home, if I can sneak by the well meaning relatives and stealth pies once again.
May your Thanksgivings be fun, and less full of danger!
Showing posts with label history. Show all posts
Showing posts with label history. Show all posts
Sunday, November 22, 2009
Friday, March 27, 2009
In Which I Take Something Seriously
Hey, kids! Know what month it is?
No, not that one.
Not that one either.
No, it's Frozen Foods month!
This makes me happy. The other history specializations going on this month- and indeed, the way history is generally taught--offends me on an academic level. An accurate accounting of the human past would not consider the work of a handful of powerful men to be "real" history, with everything else shunted to the side! Generally, these are little theme park versions of a single social movement in a culture's past (Suffragettes! Potato Famine! Civil Rights!) so that historians can get them out of the way and get back to the REAL business of discussing Men Killing Each Other in Manly Fashion.* And everyone knows this is unfair and wrong, which is why Special Interest History Months exist anyway, but rarely does any real effort get made to change the underlying teaching structure.
But Frozen Foods month is so bizarre, so unprompted by any real social unease, that it's actually worth noticing. It points the way to a better, more accurate way of considering human culture, one that takes focus away from the battles and the coronations and puts it on the things that really matter: the endless little inventions, made by mostly forgotten humans over every day of every millennia of our existence, that have made things better for the humans of their day, so they have the breathing room to make things even better, and so on. It's the little things adding up that carried humans across every continent on earth--and even farther.
Don't believe me? Quick, what's more important to scheduling your day:
(1)Alexander the Great caused Rome some problems.
(2)The sacking of Lindisfarne
(3)Bleeding Kansas
(4)Dinner is in the freezer when I get home
That's what I thought. I acknowledge that the US, as a whole, is a rather future-oriented culture, in that we're doing well to remember last Tuesday. But even in cultures that really nurture their ties to their past, even people who hang on to ancient grudges like they're a good pair of boots, well, folks gotta eat. And wear clothes. And like as not, write down messages in some way. And all of that is made possible not by conquest and battle, but by frozen foods, and new kinds of plant hybrids, and innovations in looms....
So here's to frozen foods month. May it help everyone learn to see our history, not as a grim march of battles and treaties, but as the shared web of ideas it really is.
Now excuse me, I'm gonna go make dinner.
Other nifty things too often overlooked:
The Red Cross-people at their best, when things are at their worst
Social Workers--much maligned, little rewarded, but you know all those people "someone" ought to help? These are the someones.
Peanuts!--They changed the American South. They can be eaten in every course of the meal. They don't even need refrigeration! Find out about one of the awesomest crops ever to be domesticated.
*I find Men Doing Stupid Stuff In A Manly Fashion highly entertaining, mind you, but that's why I have Ninja Warrior and Man Vs. Wild. It's fun, but it's not History.
No, not that one.
Not that one either.
No, it's Frozen Foods month!
This makes me happy. The other history specializations going on this month- and indeed, the way history is generally taught--offends me on an academic level. An accurate accounting of the human past would not consider the work of a handful of powerful men to be "real" history, with everything else shunted to the side! Generally, these are little theme park versions of a single social movement in a culture's past (Suffragettes! Potato Famine! Civil Rights!) so that historians can get them out of the way and get back to the REAL business of discussing Men Killing Each Other in Manly Fashion.* And everyone knows this is unfair and wrong, which is why Special Interest History Months exist anyway, but rarely does any real effort get made to change the underlying teaching structure.
But Frozen Foods month is so bizarre, so unprompted by any real social unease, that it's actually worth noticing. It points the way to a better, more accurate way of considering human culture, one that takes focus away from the battles and the coronations and puts it on the things that really matter: the endless little inventions, made by mostly forgotten humans over every day of every millennia of our existence, that have made things better for the humans of their day, so they have the breathing room to make things even better, and so on. It's the little things adding up that carried humans across every continent on earth--and even farther.
Don't believe me? Quick, what's more important to scheduling your day:
(1)Alexander the Great caused Rome some problems.
(2)The sacking of Lindisfarne
(3)Bleeding Kansas
(4)Dinner is in the freezer when I get home
That's what I thought. I acknowledge that the US, as a whole, is a rather future-oriented culture, in that we're doing well to remember last Tuesday. But even in cultures that really nurture their ties to their past, even people who hang on to ancient grudges like they're a good pair of boots, well, folks gotta eat. And wear clothes. And like as not, write down messages in some way. And all of that is made possible not by conquest and battle, but by frozen foods, and new kinds of plant hybrids, and innovations in looms....
So here's to frozen foods month. May it help everyone learn to see our history, not as a grim march of battles and treaties, but as the shared web of ideas it really is.
Now excuse me, I'm gonna go make dinner.
Other nifty things too often overlooked:
The Red Cross-people at their best, when things are at their worst
Social Workers--much maligned, little rewarded, but you know all those people "someone" ought to help? These are the someones.
Peanuts!--They changed the American South. They can be eaten in every course of the meal. They don't even need refrigeration! Find out about one of the awesomest crops ever to be domesticated.
*I find Men Doing Stupid Stuff In A Manly Fashion highly entertaining, mind you, but that's why I have Ninja Warrior and Man Vs. Wild. It's fun, but it's not History.
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