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Post by Deleted on Nov 9, 2015 21:44:35 GMT
This is a really remarkable slice of Americana mixed with the usual extraordinary scenes of the natural wonders of Cedar Key.
I have to admit that I find the human fauna much more confusing than the wildlife.
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Post by htmb on Nov 9, 2015 21:51:24 GMT
Me too, Kerouac. Me, too.
But that's always my problem, no matter where I am.
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Post by bjd on Nov 10, 2015 6:44:57 GMT
I keep wondering when Halloween became such a big deal in North America. Admittedly, I was a kid a long time ago, but it used to be just kids in the neighbourhood with a paper bag, ringing on doorbells and asking for some candy. Parents did not participate at all. Then there was a scare about "razor blades in apples" so there were Halloween parties in schools.
The only adults disguised in the 1960s were downtown on Halloween night because the city of Toronto allowed homosexuals to go out in drag and parade, so there were participants coming from New York and other US cities. This, of course, I didn't know when I was 8 years old.
Now, it seems to have become a huge thing, with all those fancy costumes, decorated plastic buckets for the goodies, adults dressed up, houses decorated. The idea of Halloween has obviously lost its original Christian identity and become a popular secular dress-up occasion for everyone.
May I mention that this is the first time I see baby strollers with cupholders in the handlebar! God forbid that a parent should go out for a while and not have a bottle of Coke handy (like the fat woman in the plaid shorts).
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Post by htmb on Nov 10, 2015 11:32:42 GMT
Bjd, I'm surprised this is the first time you've noticed cup holders on strollers. Yes, some people use them to hold their "big gulp" sodas, but my children and their friends use cup holders to hold their water bottles. My granddaughters even have cup holders on their car seats just wide enough to hold the stainless steel water bottles they use. It's hot and humid here so it's obviously important to stay hydrated.
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Post by bjd on Nov 10, 2015 11:57:45 GMT
I have never seen them in France. And my grandchildren's stroller in Canada is Italian -- hence, no cup holder. It must be an American thing.
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Post by htmb on Nov 10, 2015 15:56:41 GMT
It must be. Can come in handy.
I was thinking about this after your post. I'm sure my local granddaughters, ages 6 and 8, have never even tasted soda, and I seriously doubt the Arizona grandchildren have either. Water is what they are given. Juice, only occasionally, and then it's cut with water. But it's very interesting to see what many of the young people i'm around every day bring to school. It seems, the lower their socioeconomic backgrounds, the more garbage they consume.
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Post by fumobici on Nov 10, 2015 18:31:06 GMT
They don't call it class warfare for nothing. And as in most wars, the victims often tend to be the weak and the children.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 10, 2015 19:12:35 GMT
My brother and I were probably odd children due to the fact that my mother hated water. So we drank most anything else.
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Post by htmb on Nov 10, 2015 21:19:04 GMT
Sometimes consuming lots of water is not a good thing. The second half of my childhood was spent living in the middle of a citrus grove, and our water came from a well. The water tasted great, and we drank lots of it.
We later found it was contaminated with ethylene dibromide (EDB), a known carcinogen that had been used to kill nematodes in the soil. There's no way to be sure it was a direct cause, but both my sister and my mother died of cancer at relatively young ages.
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