Category: Social Anthropology

Our border with Mexico is not the problem

Sachem butterfly, female
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Beyond the walls of our domicile, all borders are figments of our imagination, maintained by mutual fear of those who live on the other side. — T.S. Emery; author, philosopher, nemophilist

My family moved to Maine the summer I started Fourth Grade. We took up residence on the shore of a 500-acre lake, populated by mostly moose and loons in summer and snowbound silence in winter. It was widely accepted in town that the previous owner, also from a Big City, got the better end of the deal by selling 50 acres of mostly swamp land to a fellow City Slicker.

But there was sufficient dry land on the parcel and Mom and Dad had no designs of building more than a home for their budding family and maybe a couple of cabins they would rent out to fellow New Yorkers to help pay the mortgage.

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Stealing American jobs

A slightly foggy day at the modern general store — John Messeder photo
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When I was a kid vacationing with Mom and Dad in Maine — we moved there when I started fourth grade — our ride home to the Big City was punctuated by a stop at the Bates woolen mill, in Lewiston, Maine. The mill on the banks of the Androscoggin River was where Mom picked out fabrics that would keep her sewing machine busy making clothing for her family.

Back in the day, a person could save a ton of money by purchasing stuff where it was made; why pay transportation costs when you were making the trip anyway. In particular, that mill was what turned Lewiston from an agricultural town to a fabrics manufacturing center.

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Make America Great (baby factories) Again!

Female bluebird atop an apple tree in a July sunset.
A young bluebird looks toward the late July sunset.

Apparently there still are many among us who believe women are for the singular purpose making babies. I’m betting there are many among us who are old enough to remember when “boys will be boys” and “girls will be chaste.” Sex was to be enjoyed by the former, but employed only for making babies by the latter.

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Landmarks

I found myself this week looking back a few years, when, well …

“I used to use that as a landmark. Something’s got to go back up there,” Ariste Reno, of New York, formerly of Chicago, told me when I visited the World Trade Center site on the first anniversary of its destruction.

I thought about the National Tower at Gettysburg, which was imploded July 3, 2000, and said so later that day to Mark McGinnis, Gettysburg College Class of 1976, who was in California waiting for a telephone cross-country conference (Zoom had not been invented yet) when the north tower died and with it 10 of his friends and colleagues.

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Christmas by any name

It’s almost time. In a few hours, the Jolly Old Elf will be sliding down chimneys, decorating trees that so far haven’t been, and leaving gifts for girls and boys.

Well, a lot of girls and boys, anyway.

So here’s to the church groups and offices and motorcycle groups and numerous others I couldn’t know or remember if I made this sentence 15 inches long – the groups who collect and deliver Christmas, with toys and necessities, to children who otherwise would not share the joy.

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The Good, The Bad and The Zucky

There are piles of books in the Messeder residence, as the Resident Home Decorator often reminds me, especially when she enters my atelier – which is a French word for “studio,” itself a fancified substitute for “office,” which, to me, sounds too darned, well, officious. I’d much rather sit in my studio with a drink and my books, and maybe … But I digress.

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Where’s the money?

“Operator, will you help me place this call.” The opening line of a Jim Croce song reminds me of the days when my aunt was a Bell telephone operator – one of those women without whose assistance one could not make a telephone call to a town 15 miles away. Telephone operators in those early days had their fingers on the pulse – and the actual wires carrying the conversations – within their domains.

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The time is NOW

The gunman was said to have been armed with a rifle and a handgun when he took control of a classroom in the Texas elementary school Tuesday.

“He shot and killed, horrifically, incomprehensibly, 14 students and killed a teacher,” (Texas Gov. Greg Abbott) was quoted in published reports later that day.

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Sometimes, some places, war is necessary

Occasionally I peruse columns I’ve written to see whether I have changed my mind. For instance, I have not changed my opinion that too many Big Media reporters cloak their reporting with an emperor’s robe of non-information as they all seem to read from the same press release, and turn phrases of one into clichés of the other.

Repeatedly, for instance, we heard emphasized how much gasoline prices had increased “from the previous year,” with no mention that the “previous year” had sent gas prices plummeting when people stopped vacationing and commuting during the early years of the pandemic.

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Europe’s Yellowstone Ranch

The events in eastern Europe over the past week (or 16 years) compare eerily with an episode of the popular television series, “Yellowstone.” Of particular note are the responses from several of our politicians who have pronounced their admiration for the biker club leader, er, Vladimir Putin.

In the TV story, a passing motorcycle gang cuts a barbed wire fence and moves into the pasture to build a fire and drink some beer. They are having a grand time when a couple of hands from the ranch stop to advise the intruders they were on private land and should leave.  A fight ensues and the bikers leave rather than be buried in the pasture.

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See the trees

Reading a book this week about Mother trees, I felt a need to find a picture of the author. I do that a lot. It is part of my relationship with the storyteller.

Sometimes I dig a little deeper into her background. Mostly I learn of her life from the story she tells, but my mind always wants to see her face.

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The path not thought of

Sidney Poitier left us last week, after my deadline for submitting my weekly wanderings. The myriad of TV accolades almost uniformly left out one of the most memorable of his scenes – at least to a certain young man then only two years out of high school.

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Calling Santa Claus

The thing I remember most about Christmas was Dad waking us kids up as he stood outside us kids’ bedroom windows, shouting at Santa.

“Wait! Stop! DON’T GO! My kids want to meet you.”

We heard sleigh bells jingling, but every year was the same thing. By the time we would get downstairs, the Jolly Old Guy would be gone, along with the homemade Toll House cookies and milk we had left for him.

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It’s in our DNA

An event this week moved me to repeat a column I wrote in August 2001. Most of it, anyway. Here, slightly edited for length and modernization, …

OK. If a kid shot one of my grandkids, I’d get testy and hard to get along with. If another kid merely picked on one of my grandkids, school administration would be wondering whether I had a cot in the principal’s office.

Ask my kids. Their schools were used to seeing Dad in the corridors, chatting with teachers and administrators.

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Seasons of change

He found the old man under the grape arbor, silently rearranging vines that were not in obvious need of being rearranged. Clearly, something needed said. He was not certain what.

Finally, the old man spoke.

“You’re getting married soon,” he said. “You won’t be coming home on vacations anymore.”

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Politicians and other birds

Morning Glory flowers have segued into their final stage: seeds for next year. Each former flower has become a pod with five tiny black seeds perfectly fitted. Outside my window, a Cardinal, a woodpecker and a Mockingbird have been devouring the bright red dogwood berries. That avian affinity for seeds is how we got the marvelous Morning Glory wall on our front porch rail.

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Plane, mountains and strangers

Being a tourist in distant countries has been an eye-opener.

I was stationed in Rota, Spain with the U.S. Navy. It was a six-month deployment with my Jacksonville, Florida-based patrol squadron, during which time we flew patrols to keep track of what the Russian navy was doing in and near the Mediterranean Sea.

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