Anthro 101, Part 2

Essay topics

An anthropological canvass of campus essay topics revealed that political scientists were focused on what they described as "old chestnuts", such as whether a constitution must be written down to be effective, which, naturally, brought up Bagehot (Badge-ut).

An English prof asked her students to read Orwell's essay Politics and the English Language, and to comment on what Orwell meant by "sheer cloudy vagueness".

In the bird courses, Soc (Sewsh) and Psych, no essays were assigned--and none were submitted.  Similar results were reported at Mount Royal College--MRC-k-e-y m-o-u-s-e.

Spanish onions

Apparently Henry Kissinger had distinguished leaders who were like onions (with many layers to peel back) from others who were more like marshmallows (whom you could push and push and never come up against anything solid).  It would be inflammatory to identify which dictators around the world were considered onions or marshmallows.  I think Chairman Mao was a marshmallow.  And Tricky Dicky Nixon was an onion.  Nixon's excuse was that he worked for Tail Gunner Joe McCarthy himself during the Fifth Amendment communists.  I don't know whether Mao even liked marshmallows.  Whatever his real faults might have been, it is important to remember that Nixon was not a crook.  And it is unclear whether Mao ever handled a gut, out of which, he declared, power grows.

 Whatever his real faults might have been, it is important to remember that Nixon was not a crook.  And it is unclear whether Mao ever handled a gut, out of which, he declared, power grows.  But both Mao and Dick definitely took their people down The Road to Serfdom.

No matter when these bums ever get their act together, the anthro surveyor concluded, the best boiled and roast beef sandwich on campus came from an outlet in the Earth Sciences building, where no hot food options were available.  Apparently they used bread and butter pickles in their sandwiches to keep people coming back.  God I hope so!

French fry gravy

Consensus among First Years was that you shouldn't eat borscht from the Mac Hall cafeteria, no matter how much the server pleads with you.  She was Ukrainian, and it was to be expected that she would want you to eat her own home cooking.  Opinions about the french fry gravy were decidedly mixed.  The gravy was described by many as too salty, but that didn't stop people from requesting it, even when there wasn't any on offer, or, as the Ukrainian baba put it: "We don't got no gravy"!  We knew nothing of poutine in Calgary; nor did we realize that browning granules wre made with blackstrap molasses.  Not that it would have made any difference.  I never knew a hungry teenager who'd turn down a hot turkey sandwich--especially one prepared on square bread.

Unaccountable objects

For most of us, entering a prof's office was like walking into someone's living room, where nicknacks and trophies that had utilitarian as well as iconic value were bound to jump off the bookshelf or stare up at you from the desk.  Among the more interesting objects--unaccountable until the prof was suitably interrogated, were a bronze of Napoleon (I don't know whether it was a miniature--Napoleon himself was supposed to have been a dwarf) that doubled as a bookend; a bolas stone (minus the cord) used as a paperweight; a Victorian glass feeding bottle (minus the decanting straw) used as a magnifying glass; and a stack of leather bound books (lacking labels), which had a certain shock value.

The upshot of Anthro 101

It wouldn't have been Anthro 101 if we hadn't also been asked to participate in the worlds from which we were sampling information.  We all participated--and when we failed to participate we partook.  And we partook of something, somewhere, at some time.

There was no question that we had all observed--although, coming from southern Alberta, we were hitherto only used to doing that on Sundays.  And when we observed we were definitely looking, although sometimes when we looked we didn't see.

After we had participated, observed, and written up our experiences, could any of us say we had understood?  Surely, we can pat ourselves on the back for having tried.  Whether we succeeded in actually getting it was another matter.  Veni vidi vici.

I don't think any of us actually "got off the pot" like Rodin's Thinker.  Actually, I'm pretty sure nobody who was on pot actually got off--not then, and not since either.  Now, with Just-in (Trudeau) Time (the sign in the window of a local vape shop), and the legalization of pot, it doesn't matter, but there is still the perma fry aspect.

In the end it didn't matter whether we got it--or got anything else--because Anthro 101 has proved unforgettable.  I cite his post as evidence.  QED