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PaperclipPerfector  9mo ago (text post)   2563 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for August 18, 2023

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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Why should smart people move away from small towns, especially now that the Internet has come?

That's a fair enough point for the current generation. I have no idea how you would mean to apply that to the generations that grew up in rural America (especially Appalachia) before .... 2000? "Go get an education and come back" was also not reasonable because local economies often lacked the professional infrastructure to support (let alone attract) degree holders.

As for geographic consistency, their kin died for that ground within two or three centuries of folk memory.

Quiet part out loud, bro. You emphasized "died" instead of "fought for." Fatalism.

And what's the salience of the piece of land on which the dying occurred? Before the Civil War, a lot of sons of Appalachia died in all kinds of strange spots west of the Ohio, South of the Rio Grande, and elsewhere. Grandpa lost friends in France and Germany ... not a whole lot of country songs about the Ardennes. World War 2 veterans are remembered for the dedication to American values and a conflict against evil, imperialism, subjugation. That promotes a more generative outlook on the possibilities post-combat than the immutable fact of location and time of death.

I can, however, sympathize with Barney Google and Snuffy Smith over in the holler by the crick.

I don't know if this is an attempt at humor or not.

I have no idea how you would mean to apply that to the generations that grew up in rural America (especially Appalachia) before .... 2000?

Convenient, then, that we're focusing on a songwriter who was born nearly a decade before 2000, and whose hometown has a university and a college, each with the kind of Internet access which allows business to occur remotely from port cities.

Quiet part out loud, bro. You emphasized "died" instead of "fought for." Fatalism.

Don't QPOL me, bro, I'm a damyankee whose grandparents come from Ohio, Michigan, and parts further north and east. I'm saying a death is usually considered a higher price to pay for a plot of land than a successful battle, despite the PTSD, alcoholism, and generational child abuse from "fighting for". (Although to some degree, it shouldn't.) A death means a tombstone, and a tombstone often anchors a family to a locale.

And what's the salience of the piece of land on which the dying occurred? Before the Civil War, a lot of sons of Appalachia died in all kinds of strange spots west of the Ohio, South of the Rio Grande, and elsewhere. Grandpa lost friends in France and Germany ... not a whole lot of country songs about the Ardennes.

Facetious, almost farcically so. The salience is that their grandfathers and fathers built the towns and cities they died for; their names went into family bibles with generations in the same spot, while their brothers and cousins left for big cities or adventurism out west or across vast oceans. There's a very romantic, very human tendency to work to keep what previous generations paid costly prices for, even when the going gets tough and it looks like a depreciating asset.

The Americans in the Ardennes was an ideological battle, an estimation that if Hitler took the Bulge from a band of brothers, someday he might roll over the Appalachians.

I can, however, sympathize with Barney Google and Snuffy Smith over in the holler by the crick.

I don't know if this is an attempt at humor or not.

Why, I do dee-clare I believe my dislike of revenooers done come from ol' Snuffy Smif hisself.

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