A Journal of Humor and Verbal Anarchy

 

anthropology 101

Have you ever considered that people up there on the hill might be studying us?

That we might just be a bunch of lab rats for some kind of experiment they're conducting at Cornell? That we're swimming around like protozoa in somebody's petri dish?

Ever think about that? Ezra has. He knows that there are scientists up there who are watching everything we do every minute of the day. Taking notes. Cranking out dissertations.

Imagine yourself on the cover of National Geographic. A photograph of you taken at the Ithaca Festival, falafel in one hand, plastic cider cup in the other. Or Shalimar bag under one arm, carrying a woodpecker carved out of pine that you just purchased at the booth of a rustic woodcarver from Newfield. Surrounded by other upstate aborigines holding similar objects of interest to Cornell ethnologists.

Somebody is watching, taking notes, doing measurements, shooting film. That's why all those college kids swarm over the Commons with their videorecorders. They're checking out the behavior of the natives. Maybe they have little hand held lasers to measure the size of your cranium too. Ezra always avoids having his picture taken downtown. He's afraid that he'll end up in the same issue as folks with a big plate squeezed in their lower lips, a thigh bone stuck through their noses and a little skirt of grass tucked around their waists.

How do you know there isn't a Department of Ithacan Studies tucked away in the corner of the Anthropology Dept. with a couple of grad students working away under the close tutelage of a frumpy professor resembling Margaret Mead? Are they wise to the fact that Ithacans have a compulsive fondness for Swedish automobiles, eat an unusual amount of bagels and humus, have a yearly Rebirth and Renewal festival sometime in June (when is the Ithaca Festival?) Do they study our tattoo preferences? Investigate rites of passage behind the bushes in Dewitt Park? Film endless hours of hackeysack exchange on the Commons? What do they make of Ithaca Hours? Maybe they're working on a book or two - Coming of Age in Ithaca or Barbecue and Grilling Rituals Among the Upstate Ithacans: Backyard Socialization Patterns." And, even Volvo: Modern Cargo Cults."

Maybe you'll walk into a downtown bookstore and discover a copy one day. Which brings Ezra to a burning question he's entertained for years. Being a peripheral in a college town, after all, he's begun to absorb the scene, the lingo and become hip to the anomalies of living near large concentrations of gray matter. He's going for a street degree.

Ok, the question. What, Ezra asks, is the real difference between sociology and anthropology? And what's this thing called 'cultural studies?. (Does Ithaca have a culture worth studying?) No easy dictionary answers now! Ezra believes the difference lies in the social prejudices of the observer, the "ist" if you were. But that's only his opinion. If you live in a grass hut, eat stuff you catch yourself and bring in from the woods, dress up and do ceremonial dances, believe that trees are deities, practice ancestor worship, you get to be studied by an anthropologist. If you live in an apartment or pre-fab Cape Cod, eat stuff that you buy at Wegman's, dress up and go to the Nines, believe that trees are where you get newsprint, and abandon your ancestors to nursing homes, then you are likely to be studied by a sociologist.

It's a lifestyle thing, So now the question is who's looking at us? Maybe our way of life looks pretty primitive to folks who have grown up in Los Angeles. Despite its pretensions to the contrary, Ithaca might resemble Amazonia to people from Long Island? What cultural prejudices color the way that our guests (or are they our hosts) up on the hills see us?

Cross-disciplinary studies. Guys with white coats rummaging through our garbage, analyzing the effluvia of our lives, standing behind poles at the Greenstar or Farmer's market with little notebooks, watching us behind two-way mirrors at Simeon's. . Maybe the data in the registers at the P&C or Tops is uploaded to Cornell? Better get rid of your supermarket smart card! Your shopping choices will end up in someone's dissertation!

Maybe social anthropologists are poring over letters to the Ithaca Journal? Speaking of which, here's one that deserves studying:

Dear Editor,

Would people like letter-writer Joel Savinshinsky ("Scared," 3/10) criticize the government for strong anti-terrorist policies if they and their families lived 250 miles south of here in NYC? It's very easy, it seems to me, for residents of Tompkins County to say that the government is unduly diminishing our civil liberties to protect against possible terrorist attacks. But the last time I checked, rural upstate New York counties were not exactly prime targets of terrorists. Big cities have been and will continue to be. (How far away is 9/11). We feel safe up here, but can the same be said of residents of New York, Washington D.C., Chicago?
The psychological great divide in our country is rapidly becoming whether or not one lives in a major city. In the context of the horror of terrorism, geography matters a great deal. And in that context, certain civil liberties may have to be sacrificed. What good are civil liberties to those who die in a terrorist attack or to their grieving relatives?
Yes, our country's abstract principles are important, but more important is the opportunity to actually continue living in our country.
Murray Cohen, IJ, 3/24/03


What to make of this? Here's obviously an educated person who is sounding like a complete idiot. Which civil liberties would Murray like to, or be willing to give up? The right to read books? The liberty to have an opinion? The freedom to use the Internet without Bill Gates and the FBI, CIA, Homeland Security checking which sites he visits? Murray may feel safe in Ithaca, but Ezra doesn't! There's all that plutonium up at Cornell! And somebody is doing some kind of research up on the hill a terrorist would like to disrupt. What's going on at the Gutterman Bioclimatic Labs? Is somebody developing a new kind of corn or wheat that can grow in the desert? So Iraqis that survive the bombing can eat Wheaties with a picture of George Bush dressed up as Tony the Tiger on the back panel? Corn Flakes for oil. What a miserable trade off!

Who knows what kind of research (besides research on us) goes on up there? Are genetic engineers breeding pigs that fly? That would be a real menace to Islam. "Unclean! Unclean!," people scream as squads of aerial porkers circle Baghdad or Damascus or Amman in precision formations. Maybe the Mossad would bomb Cornell if they knew that kind of stuff was going on? It ain't kosher.

Murray, you're a schmuck.

Log on to http://www.thememoryhole.org/war/gulfwar2/.

Check out the sacrifices being made to preserve your so-called freedoms and get you back and forth from Dryden. Are they necessary? The images may disturb you. Pick up a pair of rose colored glasses. They're sold at Autumn Leaves and the Ithaca Journal.

Hey ,a late breaking concert review. Joan Baez came to Ithaca last night. She drove in on a tour bus that probably requires an entire Iraqi oil well to run. Joan looked a little frail at first but she gathered steam as the concert progressed. The packed house didn't respond well to Joe Hill but went wild when she started playing to Ithaca's progressive self-illusion. Seems like she had just toured Ohio. Joan mentioned how she knew she was near Ithaca when she found Amy Goodman on the radio. At that point the audience wanted to draft her for Mayor.

Joan talked a lot about the war. Made some funnies about Bush. She's a seasoned veteran of anti-war rallies and long haired college audiences past and present. Maybe she thought this was the same kind of crowd. There was even a ripple of applause when she mentioned Emma Goldman. Ezra didn't know there were anarchists up here in Ithaca. Maybe they live in EcoVillage and pay $150K and up for a condo with a solar panel on the roof.

Ezra loves Joan Baez. He just thinks she should go back to the bus, kick the mammoth tires and try to figure out what it's all about.

Comments invited at: ezrakidder@gmail.com - Peace, Ezra at 6:41 AM