When They Tell You What’s In Store For Summer Of 2020
Category: Fun
Cubs Of A Feather
Rowing Away From The Crazy
I love vintage National Geographics. They didn’t mince words in describing these “shanty-boat folk” in May of 1932, which, though in the Depression, was STILL probably a better May than ours, as they weren’t consumed by thoughts of invisible germs killing them. Shanty-boat folk don’t care about no germs. SBF don’t care about paying property taxes, since their “crude craft of clapboards and tin” drifted along the Ohio River and down the Mississippi as they saw fit, stealing food from cornfields and berry patches, or snatching an unfortunate stray chicken. These water gypsies had been “the bane of steamboat skippers,” who tried to maneuver around them in days of yore, and continued to incite derision as the decades passed.
For more information on shanty boat people and cool images like this even-more-mobile mobile home, check out: https://peoplesriverhistory.us/project/history/.
When Her Firm Handshake Debilitates You
While Knuckles McGee appears to be subjecting her partner to pain, they’re actually just bopping to some 50s jive. What really gets my attention is the ducktail hairdo, in all its greasy glory. You don’t see that one much these days. Looks like a lot of work!
Let’s Meet Up For Coffee & Be Despondent
Rare Sighting Of 3 Foot Beehive Dates Back To 1937
Put On Your Red Shoes And Dance The Blues
1971 Roaring Twenties Party Still Looks Like 1971
And if that doesn’t make you feel old enough, now we are actually in another set of Roaring 20s, or whatever adjective you’d like to choose. I’ve seen so many hundreds of yearbooks and thousands of pictures over the last 150 years, that it really chaps my hide when folks don’t even try to look era-specific. Don’t get me started on the mom’s hair in A Christmas Story.
Flappers had bobs. Not Crystal Gayle hair. Not Marcia Brady hair. Certainly not Chrissy Snow pigtails or a beehive. Sigh. Then again, it was just one night.
When Dirty Bus Seats Didn’t Kill You
Statement Wall 1938
Wild Rice Is Life
Four incredibly color-coordinated pale faces chat about patterns with Chippewa Chief Big Bear in Itasca Park, Minnesota back in 1935. His tribesman sold many items to visitors, including beaded bags, baskets, toy birch-bark canoes, and other handicrafts. They also held husking parties, such as these, with the intent to supply rice for sportsmen’s game banquets.
While other tribes chose corn as their main crop, the Chippewa lived in a “place where there is food upon the water” surrounding the Great Lakes region. Wild rice, or “manoomin” in the Ojibwe language, was integral to their diets as well as their entire way of life. Wisconsin Chippewans have harvested manoomin for centuries.
In 2018, Chippewa Indians from Turtle Lake, Wisconsin continued to gather in the name of rice, hosting their 45th annual Wild Rice Festival. The pow-wow was the showstopper.
While rice beds have been diminishing, threatened by climate issues, pipelines, and mines, Chippewans struggle to protect the crop by reseeding lakes and waterways, hoping to meet the needs of their communities as well as pass on the culture to younger generations.
Who knew wild rice was such a big deal? To most of us, it’s just a side option at restaurants.
Or a delectable holiday dish, such as this cranberry squash wild rice pilaf.
Seriously, I could eat that right now.
Check and see if your state celebrates wild rice as well. Why, we even have a Texas Wild Rice Festival in San Marcos! There’s the mayor floating the river in the middle of the festival.
thevoiceboxmedia.org
Prices seem fair in most places, even if you don’t get a pow-wow or float down a river.
And don’t forget to dress up!
Countdown To May Day
Perhaps your state will start re-opening as per its Phase I guidelines on May 1st. Perhaps it’s May 8th. All I know is it WILL be May, and folks will be getting prepped and ready to shine.
Betty can breathe on Martha, and Martha can cough on Mary.
Carl won’t have to wipe down that wooden chair seat after he gets up.
The line at Great Clips will stretch past the adjacent Subway and Pizza Hut in the strip malls.
The cleaners will be packed with piles of people’s threadbare sweats and yoga pants.
Cobblers will be cobbling.
Diners will be packed elbow-to-elbow.
People might even board public transportation.
Ew. Seriously gross. Kirk is even having second thoughts about cushions never cleaned.
Butchers will be butchering, fileting, de-boning, and slicing deli meats and cheeses.
Department store racks will be scoured for wider waistbands.
Bars and restaurants, clubs and dance halls will throw open their doors and welcome the traumatized masses, stumbling in to relearn dances, to rebuild their tolerance to cocktails, and use public restrooms.
The streets will sound with joyous rapture and merry harmony. “So long, farewell, auf Wiedersehen, goodbye” to coronavirus.
At least…for now.
I Don't Get It 