Interesting Reading

I get a newsletter from my undergrad, St. Mary's College, and I used to just trash them figuring there was all academic mumbo jumbo that I didn't have time to read about. Well last year I was bored one day when I got it so I sat down and actually read through the thing and ever since I've been amazed by how many articles I actually genuinely enjoy. So, I received another lovely installment this weekend which was focused on the anthropology department at my school. By the way, I am highly partial to liberal arts colleges - look I'm even learning stuff about areas of study I'd never have given a second thought to years after I've left school.

So, the cover article was called 'What Our Lawns, Toys, and Yellow Ribbons Reveal About Us' and was about research on of the professors, Dan Ingersoll, has done on 'anthropology of everyday life'. It was quite intriguing overall, however, what I found most interesting was the history of lawns. He said that "lawns were originally a medieval lord's way of signaling his wealth. Normally cattle and sheep kept a pasture in check. Through having humans rather than livestock trim the pasture, the lord exhibited his wealth in two ways: he showed that he could afford to pay humans to cut his grass, and he showed that he could afford to take land out of production. Later, the aspiring members of the middle class imitated the aristocracy by acquiring their own lawns. The final result is what we have today." How crazy is that!

And then he went onto point out that our front lawns are very different from say, Kongo culture where they value grassless swept-earth front yard, WHICH Brandy and I were cracking up about when we were looking through her and John's pictures from Uganda because she was telling me how their neighbor used to always have their kids ripping up all the grass and would tell Brandy and John that their yard was messy (which we could only assume was because it had grass in it)!

AND, trimming lawns with symmetry traces back to 18th century England, where humans are "imposing our will" upon nature by overcoming the "wild, unordered, and unpredictable" nature. So much cool stuff that you wouldn't learn if you only paid attention to your little slice of the academic pie! Yes, consider that a sales pitch for liberal arts schools.

Oh, and I was happy to find out (also thanks to the little River Gazette) that my undergrad is 1 of only 17 colleges in the United States that is purchasing green energy at the rate of 100 percent! Way to go SMC!