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Archiver > OLD-WORDS > 1999-04 > 0923010693


From: Sue <>
Subject: Re: OLD words
Date: Thu, 01 Apr 1999 17:51:33 -0600


Richard L Turner wrote:
>
> Hello, Bob and all!
>
> Goodness gracious! Didn't get "brody" or "quisling"? How young were these
> kids? I'm not THAT old (born 1960), and I recognized Mike Brody's and
> Vidkun Quisling's names. It's probably just a case of cultural
> illiteracy, like not knowing that a striped pole means Barber and that a
> wooden Indian with a handful of cigars means Tobacconist. How many of us,
> I wonder, know that a bush tied to a pole means Wine Shop?
>
> I got into an argument with a 20 year old just last year (stupid of me,
> perhaps... like teaching Heinlein's pig to sing) who didn't know who Mao
> Tse Tung was. I dread to think that the names and histories of other
> butchers of humanity like Stalin and Hitler would be unknown to him as
> well! That's not a fault in his generation, surely, but a flaw in a
> culture that values fads and consumerism more than history and tradition.
> Or maybe he was just green. :)
>
> Yours Aye,
>
> +Fr Andreas Richard Turner.

Once I had a mature, adult student tell me that Stalin was Czar
of Russia during the 1800s....Well, at least he was in the right
part of the world...

Sue

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