The Aristocrats

As is sometimes the case, we must look outside the discipline to find ethnographic innovation: Need to 'reframe' Glassie's construct of 'interdependently variable and traditional' into a 'usable past'? The Aristocrats is one of the best ethnological monographs to come along in recent years, and nary a chair in sight. Seriously though, I found it to be a comprehensive and clear demonstration of structuralism, oral formulaic, historic geographic and —without a doubt— a little of the Psychoanalytical method folklore study. This film delineates "insider" and "outsider" status efficiently while remaining one of the more enjoyable examples of "artistic communication in small groups" I have ever seen.

You people should never let me teach.

International: Like a House of Pancakes

Spent a bit of the day down at the Bowling Green International Festival. The yearly opportunity for Bowling Grenians to get out and celebrate the ethnicity of their wardrobes. "No Earl, you wear that Hawai-een shirt, I'm a gonna wear that there african-print skirt I done bought at the Mall. You know, in that store that always smells funny"

All snideness aside it's good to see Bowling Green at least make an attempt at culture besides the Longhorn Steakhouse. Again, I spent a month in Indiana where culture was non-existent, grew up in a place where culture was non-existent. If it is not a truly "authentic" international festival who cares? the damn thing was filled with people who were being exposed to cultures they would have never given a second thought to otherwise. Maybe the old adage is true about 'leading a horse to water', but at least someone is trying to lead the horse to water, and like the Special Olympics it's not important that they be successful but that they be "brave in the attempt".

Still, given the number of Korean, Chinese, Japanese, and Bosnian cultures represented, there sure seemed to be an awful lot of talk about Jesus.

Here we go.

Okay here's the first post. Great good to get that out of the way. This'll take a week or two but I'm gonna try and figure out how to use Blogger's RSS feed to send this Blog to my flash page on my WKU site. With the RSS feed you can receive notice of my posts in your e-mail or on your cell phone. Can you image anything more annoying???