I also want to take this opportunity to say happy birthday to my stepdaughter VEL, who is furthering the family's reputation as intellectual lightweights by getting her Ph.D. in Medieval Literature from Cambridge University, England. Have a birthday as lovely as you, dear.
I can't adequately put into words how disturbing the scarecrow soldier image is for me. You may want to approach the teacher from the position that depicting a soldier as a scarecrow is a little too close to the reality of death that soldiers face every day to be humorous or entertaining. It seems downright disrespectful to me, even though I'm sure the teacher wishes it to have the opposite effect. Some people, some professions just have to be off limits. Would you make a Pope scarecrow? A Mother Theresa scarecrow? How about a Billy Graham scarecrow?
ReplyDeleteSupport our troops, indeed.
-ThreadingWater
Having dealt with well meaning conservatives longer than you have(Albertan,) I'd take this approach:
ReplyDeleteYou wouldn't incorporate a U.S. flag into a scarecrow,would you? No,you wouldn't. It would be disrespectful to the people who fought and died for that flag. So,why would you incorporate a military uniform into a scarecrow,when that's a uniform that people have fought and died in,and are fighting and dying in right now? This would also be disrespectful,and I ask you please not to do it.
T S Eliot
ReplyDeleteLet me be no nearer
In death’s dream kingdom
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat’s coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer—
Not that final meeting
In the twilight kingdom...
Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom
For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.
I might suggest a Revolutionary-era redcoat soldier in place of a modern-era GI, while advancing the (admittedly kneejerk) theme that dressing the class scarecrow in dogface drag is 'disrespectful to the troops'.
ReplyDeleteAnd kudos to you, BG, for owning up to the misreading of the article you referenced - "Character is much easier kept than recovered."
Don't beat yourself up about blowing it, Blue Gal. You have been an inspiration to me over the years. I can cite any number of people who have followed your lead and drawn strength from you.
ReplyDeleteWe all can blow it from time to time. I certainly have and I will continue to do so for the remainder of my life.
That being said, I don't have an effing clue about what to do with the scarecrow.
On blowing it.
ReplyDeleteDoes not the Bible say that we are all assholes?
Everyone is an asshole about something,sometime.
The absolutely worst assholes,as others have pointed out before me,are those you labour under the irrational conviction that there are,someplace,some people who are somehow NOT assholes,and who passionately seek to be mistaken for one of them.
Better to be the best asshole that you can,within your assholish limitations,to the best of your assholic ability.
Personally, I'm impressed. We need people to get doctorates in Medieval Literature. Most won't because it won't necessarily lead to a well paying job, but that isn't really the point.
ReplyDeleteWay to go, Vel and happy b-day.
A lovely narrative, BG. Several lovely narratives, actually. Your heart really shines through.
ReplyDeleteThe part about missing honest discourse really struck a nerve. (Of course, now I have to go and figure out a response ya evil wench :-)
Two suggestions, neither very satisfactory...
A dirty lab coat, a stethoscope, a reflector, and a helmet: The battlefield medic, who does God's work under hellish conditions.
If they want to do a genuine tribute to their sacrifice, what about a soldier in a wheelchair? What? You don't want to honor our disabled vets? Just what kind of dodgy institution is my tax $$$ paying for!
A lobster scare crow is funny, cute, like some cartoons. There is nothing funny about the illegal invssion of Iraq, nor of sending American soldiers there, and then dressing up straw dolls in fields to look like them. I get it. This is about implicit support of that war, no matter what one's own beliefs are. As I think you said, B.G., it's hard to know how to challenge this fait accompli, this done deal, and not to sound disrespectful of the young men and women in uniform, when the disrespect is really the other way round. Yes, I'm angry. We all have a right to be.
ReplyDeleteExcellent post, BG. It's 12:49 am ... I'm exhausted ... so will think about this tomorrow.
ReplyDeleteBAC
way too competitive and why I still don't know.
ReplyDelete