You Have to Be Carefully Taught
It seems to me there are any number of intrinsic merits to a vacation, e.g., putting a pause to life as usual, getting away from the slog, seeing new things, etc. One benefit I sometimes forget was quite conspicuous this year for me, namely coming upon intriguing book leads in local bookstores. I'd guess I have read at least 5 or 6 books with some sort of vacation locale influence since our July trip that were directly inspired by a few brief stints in bookstores in places like Thermopolis and West Yellowstone.
One of those books was my original intended subject here, but before we get to that I have a side issue. And that book may have to await a future blog, depending. Much as that vacation awaits further blogs, unfortunately. I have intentions and designs, believe me, but the execution is another matter. I spent numerous hours doing some limited cleanup on the vacation pics, as I may have noted before, and even got so far as to print out 150 or so of the suckers for some sort of hands-on keepsake. A selection of those images also now grace Facebook, though pics there as yet stop well short of Yellowstone.
I have a generally likable and entertaining co-worker who was raised in a town of population 1,500 or thereabouts in northeast Kansas. We have a lot of common enthusiasms in the way of things like preparing and consuming food (preferably with spice, smoke, and tang), gardening, and critters, both domestic and wild, but politics is not one of them. He only recently took down his office photo of McCain and Palin. (My treasured mockup, courtesy of Ma-in-Law, of Ford, Bush I, Reagan, and Nixon, thanking me personally for my dutiful support of the R party remains on display.) He is judicious around me, but prone to bait those of the liberal persuasion with any signs of weakness or lack of redeeming qualities of the sort I guess I feature and otherwise brag of his narrow-minded, right-wing, I've got mine, screw them mindset.
He was 18 years old or so before he encountered rice in a form other than Rice Krispies. His wife, who grew up in somewhat similar surroundings, to this day cannot eat rice. My friend had not encountered an avocado before they moved to Seattle back in the early '90's. He now considers avocados a food of the gods.
My dear friend Michael lives less than 50 miles from where my co-worker grew up. He recently expressed despair at living in the only slightly-blue enclave in a horrific state of red. He grew up, at least in my impression, in the environs of the biggest metropolis in the area, i.e., Kansas City (or its' burbs).
My guess is that when I was about the same age as my co-worker when he first came upon the miracle of rice as we know it as a component of a dinner meal I was reveling in the idea of alternatives to Cantonese Chinese foods in my neighborhood. Szechuan and Hunan were still a little down the pike, but a Mandarin restaurant blossomed I think while I was in highschool, only a couple miles from our home. And was promptly adopted and enjoyed by us. A restaurant meal was a celebration in our family, not something done spontaneously or lightly. But that intriguing source of new spicy/tangy, even hot, food was added to the pedestrian (Shakey's!) pizza parlor, more wide-ranging spaghetti house, and a more distant mexican restaurant as part of our family repertoire.
Otherwise, while a few African-Americans and Asians attended my highschool, it was a pretty solidly waspy area.
"You have to be carefully taught." I think that is from The King and I, and whether I have it right or not, I have that stored in a category that might be labeled "Teaching Bigotry." The insight for me here, though, is that if you grow up in an environment that does not even include anyone significantly different from you, no "ethnicity" even in the vicinity, there is a significant chance you will fail to mature to be a well-rounded global citizen with the ability to empathize with or even cope well with cultural and ethnic differences (not to mention diet!). Especially if your parents are incurious and make little or no effort to expand your horizons. Or serve you rice, for gosh sake. We can be carefully taught in so many ways.
I'm not saying I have achieved that, either. But I feel blessed that, while I did not have the advantage of a particularly multicultural neighborhood or educational system, at the very least I had the benefit of a far more varied and curious encounter with the trappings of other cultures than my coworker.
Growing up in a vibrant port city, fueled by international trade and populated by a mix of folks including escapees from the Mississippi Delta as well as Asians of multiple affiliations, is quite different from growing up in a small waspy Kansas plains town.
Mind you, I am not defending my co-worker, merely trying to better understand where he is coming from. And hoping that might help me in some unknown way to better deal with the obvious collective insanity on the right that we are seeing these days. Abetted, of course, by the Corporate Media, increasingly intolerant of any real reporting a la Izzy Stone.
One of those books was my original intended subject here, but before we get to that I have a side issue. And that book may have to await a future blog, depending. Much as that vacation awaits further blogs, unfortunately. I have intentions and designs, believe me, but the execution is another matter. I spent numerous hours doing some limited cleanup on the vacation pics, as I may have noted before, and even got so far as to print out 150 or so of the suckers for some sort of hands-on keepsake. A selection of those images also now grace Facebook, though pics there as yet stop well short of Yellowstone.
I have a generally likable and entertaining co-worker who was raised in a town of population 1,500 or thereabouts in northeast Kansas. We have a lot of common enthusiasms in the way of things like preparing and consuming food (preferably with spice, smoke, and tang), gardening, and critters, both domestic and wild, but politics is not one of them. He only recently took down his office photo of McCain and Palin. (My treasured mockup, courtesy of Ma-in-Law, of Ford, Bush I, Reagan, and Nixon, thanking me personally for my dutiful support of the R party remains on display.) He is judicious around me, but prone to bait those of the liberal persuasion with any signs of weakness or lack of redeeming qualities of the sort I guess I feature and otherwise brag of his narrow-minded, right-wing, I've got mine, screw them mindset.
He was 18 years old or so before he encountered rice in a form other than Rice Krispies. His wife, who grew up in somewhat similar surroundings, to this day cannot eat rice. My friend had not encountered an avocado before they moved to Seattle back in the early '90's. He now considers avocados a food of the gods.
My dear friend Michael lives less than 50 miles from where my co-worker grew up. He recently expressed despair at living in the only slightly-blue enclave in a horrific state of red. He grew up, at least in my impression, in the environs of the biggest metropolis in the area, i.e., Kansas City (or its' burbs).
My guess is that when I was about the same age as my co-worker when he first came upon the miracle of rice as we know it as a component of a dinner meal I was reveling in the idea of alternatives to Cantonese Chinese foods in my neighborhood. Szechuan and Hunan were still a little down the pike, but a Mandarin restaurant blossomed I think while I was in highschool, only a couple miles from our home. And was promptly adopted and enjoyed by us. A restaurant meal was a celebration in our family, not something done spontaneously or lightly. But that intriguing source of new spicy/tangy, even hot, food was added to the pedestrian (Shakey's!) pizza parlor, more wide-ranging spaghetti house, and a more distant mexican restaurant as part of our family repertoire.
Otherwise, while a few African-Americans and Asians attended my highschool, it was a pretty solidly waspy area.
"You have to be carefully taught." I think that is from The King and I, and whether I have it right or not, I have that stored in a category that might be labeled "Teaching Bigotry." The insight for me here, though, is that if you grow up in an environment that does not even include anyone significantly different from you, no "ethnicity" even in the vicinity, there is a significant chance you will fail to mature to be a well-rounded global citizen with the ability to empathize with or even cope well with cultural and ethnic differences (not to mention diet!). Especially if your parents are incurious and make little or no effort to expand your horizons. Or serve you rice, for gosh sake. We can be carefully taught in so many ways.
I'm not saying I have achieved that, either. But I feel blessed that, while I did not have the advantage of a particularly multicultural neighborhood or educational system, at the very least I had the benefit of a far more varied and curious encounter with the trappings of other cultures than my coworker.
Growing up in a vibrant port city, fueled by international trade and populated by a mix of folks including escapees from the Mississippi Delta as well as Asians of multiple affiliations, is quite different from growing up in a small waspy Kansas plains town.
Mind you, I am not defending my co-worker, merely trying to better understand where he is coming from. And hoping that might help me in some unknown way to better deal with the obvious collective insanity on the right that we are seeing these days. Abetted, of course, by the Corporate Media, increasingly intolerant of any real reporting a la Izzy Stone.
posted by Sir Gumbo at 10:59 PM
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