Yes we have indoor plumbing, we have indoor plumbing today

Note: I admit my blog this week falls very short of the assigned analysis; but the readings stirred many important memories for me and I wanted to honor my innovative farming Grandmother who taught me most of my essential life skills and how to live the best life you could under constrained conditions.

I am very, very drawn to our current regional, local color readings. My maternal great-great-grandparents and their respective families migrated to Kansas from Ireland because they were starving and could no longer make a living off the land. My great-grandparent's families in the late 1800s migrated West to Dayton, WA, from Kansas. For my maternal family, the land depicted their worth, their lifeline, their social standing, their everything.

The land had failed the family in Ireland and had been slightly better to them in Kansas. But the opportunity of their lifetime came when friends told them they could buy productive, cheap, plentiful acreage in Washington State--this land opportunity was the sole motivator for them to move their families West by covered wagon. Once West, members of Grandpa and Grandpa's families bought hundreds of acres of prime property outside of what we now call Blue Wood Ski Resort and they farmed it. When my grandparents eventually married, they accumulated more property to farm more, so they could acquire more property, so they could farm more...buying and working the land was the single-minded focus for everyone on my maternal side of the family from the 1910s into the 1980s.

My role-model Grandmother, who bore 8 children, kept a home, helped substantially on the farm early to late each day, and was a part-time LPN to boot, told me many times it was the accepted norm to have large families, in part, to have plenty of help on the farm and ensure the farming legacy would continue. In their world, which I spent 10 summers of my growing up years, was entirely geared to supporting the rigorous farming lifestyle.

When reading The Revolt of Mother, it was though I was back in my grandparent's home listening to very familiar conversations. The family conversations were always totally immersed in the happenings on the farm. My Grandmother did most of the talking; my Grandfather actually grunted or spoke in one syllable word, brief sentences. I don't recall a single conversation between my grandparents that wasn't about happenings on the farm or upcoming plans for the same.

When Grandma decided she had enough nighttime trips to the outhouse, they had an indoor bathroom installed when Grandpa was in Montana with neighboring friends, also farmers, who were also considering new-fangled tractors. Grandma had the contractor (my dad) lined out to come in and install the new-fangled indoor toilet and bath during Grandpa's two-day absence. And that is what happened.

In support of my Grandma's necessary tenacity, I would never have had a "Stop Fool!" conversation with her or with any Mother or Grandmother who took important people matters into their own hands.

Instead my conversation would go something like this:

"Mother. Another barn! Are you kidding me? Doesn't Father care if the animals are living a better life than us? Why are they so much more important than we are? I have had it. If you don't have the nerve to say something or do something, I will."
Mother: "What are you suggesting?"
"I am saying I am going to do something."

And then I would have....

Fenton's reality or big brother's purchase?

There were three points made by Natalie Houston in her article, Reading the Victorian Souvenir: Sonnets and Photographs of the Crimean War, which piqued my interest. Those points are:

For the first time ever, war photographs were available to the public for purchase and private collecting. This new access to historic photos forever changed the role of public institutions, such as museums. Museums began sharing the responsibility for the memorializing, housing and the sharing of national history with the public who purchased the photos.





Second point: Fenton's photographic work of the Crimean War was underwritten by the British government, through his employer, Agnew. Because Fenton's charge was to reiterate what was already known and report nothing new, it did not answer questions which had been raised about the ill-preparedness of the troops to weather the war and its harsh conditions. The first and second photos show the types of clothing available to a few of the men and their sleeping quarters and a weapon or so, but these could not fairly be called true indicators of life in the war zone at Crimea.









Final point which I enjoyed: Houston discussed how realistic Fenton's body of photographs really was, if at all, because the subjects had to hold their poses for several or more seconds at a time, in order for the photo to take and process. I believe that the photos may have started out to be a candid, but when the subjects were required by the science of photography at the moment to hold their pose, the photos could fairly be said to be no longer candid.
The photo to the left is titled: Two French officers, seated, and Zouave, standing with arm resting on rifle

Bonus Blog: Whitman's "Word-'Words": Lexicographer and Cartouches

". . .This is the lexicographer or chemist . . . . this made a grammar of the old cartouches, . . ."

From Whitman's Leaves of Grass (1855), page 28:

“Hurrah for positive science! Long live exact demonstration!

Fetch stonecrop and mix it with cedar and branches of lilac;

This is the lexicographer or chemist. . .this made a grammar of the old

cartouches,

These mariners put the ship through dangerous unknown seas,

This is the geologist, and this work with the scalpel, and this is a mathematician.”

Lexicography is divided into two related disciplines:

• Practical lexicography is the art or craft of compiling, writing and editing dictionaries.

• Theoretical lexicography is the scholarly discipline of analyzing and describing the semantic, syntagmatic and paradigmatic relationships within the lexicon (vocabulary) of a language, developing theories of dictionary components and structures linking the data in dictionaries, the needs for information by users in specific types of situation, and how users may best access the data incorporated in printed and electronic dictionaries. This is sometimes referred to as 'metalexicography'.

A person devoted to lexicography is called a lexicographer - said Wiki.

In Egyptian hieroglyphs, a cartouche is an oblong enclosure with a horizontal line at one end, indicating that the text enclosed is a royal name, coming into use during the beginning of the Fourth Dynasty under Pharaoh Sneferu, replacing the earlier serekh. The Ancient Egyptian word for it was shenu, and it was essentially an expanded shen ring. In Demotic, the cartouche was reduced to a pair of parentheses and a vertical line - said Wiki.

Levi's American Product: Whitman's Words

Is the late Walt Whitman, left. wearing Levi's Silver Tab, Classic Cut or Relaxed jeans in this early photo? : )

* To what extent does the Levi’s campaign celebrate, confuse, or distort Whitman’s poetic project?
I truly believe taking the arts where non-traditional audiences exist and potentially new "fans" reside, can only be positive.

How can exposing the "younger generation" to Walt Whitman be a bad thing? Unless you had a zealous English teacher growing up who grounded you in American poetry or -- are an English major or -- have a bent for Walt Whitman poetry, chances are extremely good, you are not familiar with Whitman and his words. So this novel approach, though consumeristic, is a very good thing. Although the ads are completely built to sell more Levi jeans, the ads are eloquent, poetic, very well done. I don't even mind they are trying to sell me a product because of the beautiful words, "the voice" and the compelling imagery -- which, and who, far outshadow the sales pitch.

* What was your own reaction to the “Go Forth” ads?
I was thrilled to hear Whitman's poetry come forth. So much so, I didn't really look too closely at the jeans Levi wants me to buy. I saw nature, enthusiasm, youth, heard lyrical poetry being spoken, felt a pulse.

Under normal circumstances when I hear or see classics being used commercially, I am instantly irritated and go as far, as fast as I can, away from the commercial or pitch.

I watched both ads half a dozen times and each time, can't argue with the quality or eloquence. I am assuming all Whitman's property rights issues are addressed, so I don't have to worry about theft. Well done. I think Wieden+Kennedy, the advertiser group who designed the ads, raised the bar on this campaign. I can't recall anything in my recent experience that compares to the magnetic quality of the ads.

* In what ways do themes of consumption, advertising, and promotion show up in Whitman’s work?
I am hard-pressed to have a good answer for this question. Because I have only recently read and enjoyed a couple of Whitman pieces in this class, I don't know enough to be able to search for themes or passages which speak to "consumption, advertising and promotion." The only consumption we read about was the consumption of living an every day good life in Whitman's "Song of Myself." He took no prisoners in that poem...consumed every experience in this human life and listed all the rest. Wish I had more to offer, but don't.


* Do you buy McCracken’s claim that advertisers now play the cultural roles that poets played in earlier eras?
I agree that advertising via the Internet, I Phones and all other forms of social-community-traditional media play a small part of the Poet, but these media forms do not by any measure, replace or encompass the role of Poet, as detailed by Emerson, Fuller and Whitman.

I don't see advertisers as common folk living among common people, having common experiences and writing about them. Advertisers instead belong to a numbers-driven, shark-infested cultural selling machine which relies extensively on complex research as opposed to living and using day-to-day experiences to express their ideas.

Advertisers are not one man or woman, such as a Poet Laureate, writing soley about the beauty of the day; instead they are a body of professionals whose sole job it is to sell things and if they can incorporate some aspect of today's beauty into their ad campaign, then bravo. Advertisers sole purpose is to creative seductive selling pieces and platforms.

The Poet's sole purpose is, ". . .He bestows on every object or quality its fit proportions neither more nor less. He is the arbiter of the diverse and he is the key. He is the equalizer of his age and land. . ." said Whitman from his Preface to Leaves of Grass, 1855.

In no way is an advertiser an equalizer or a proportionalist.
Quite the opposite, advertisers are convincers, opportunists and spin masters.
Poets are to be purists, reporters and scribes.
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