The Spoils of War

So you think you know words..

http://www.etymologic.com/index.cgi (they could at least tell me what the right answer is when I get it wrong! Ach, they are forcing me to look stuff up!)Correction, they do tell the right answer, i’m just tired, better try and sleep!

Remember that 80’s song by Berlin ‘No More Words’  Berlin was awesome, my favorite ‘Riding on the Metro’.I should be doing better at this than I am -English professor folks but can’t seem to stop, because I just really like words- their meanings, their origins.. the finding of ones I ‘ve never heard. When I find one I’ve never heard before , it’s like that Monty Python flick where the natives find a Coke bottle and think it is freaking Holy Grail. Sometimes I make up my own, like ‘White Suprivilegacy’ (combo of Supremacy and Privilege) which I used in the rants section

http://silentconsort.wordpress.com/2007/08/26/heresy-re-establishing-whiteness/

The endless search for truth and understanding -

But even with all this, gosh damn I still admit to enjoying a few chapters of  ’Janet and Mark’ -60’s and earlier school readers where wholesome , white , suburban kids frolicked in redundant happiness. Girls even still wore dresses..

http://www.juliascollectibles.com/DJ60.htm

Note that some of these texts are actually earlier editions and some have been diversity-ized. The sellers of these collectibles know that people look for the non-integrated editions, thus many put this in the descriptions. I am somewhat of a collector of old children’s books, and the ones that aren’t collectible yet, that the library has given away because , well, maybe the people in them were all White, or maybe it said something about Indians, or like in the book ‘The Story of the Wheel,’ it spoke of the White man bringing the Wheel to America, and the ‘Brown people.’. I have many books about early America, from Daniel Boone, to explorers.. all discarded by the library as no good, though the books are in fine shape. The way things are going , a kind of “revisionist history” as it were, of throwing away our history, in the future kids might think Obama refused to give up his seat for Hillary, and Columbus discovered pizza.

Reminds me of that Pink Floyd song-

So, so you think you can tell Heaven from Hell,
blue skies from pain.
Can you tell a green field from a cold steel rail?
A smile from a veil?
Do you think you can tell?
And did they get you to trade your heroes for ghosts?
Hot ashes for trees?
Hot air for a cool breeze?

I think that song was about the war, about trading your life to fight- That element is still relevant as well now, very relevant- – but in the sense I am thinking about right now, it is the small, every day, common stuff that we take for granted. How society wants to re-write and knock down everything that was, as if it were all crap because we weren’t always fair. Or Equal. They don’t want us to take credit for anything- they qualify our successes by saying we only achieved this or that at someone else’s expense, thus making all the good things we’ve done >lesser than, they want to strip us of those things, and rob the following generations of even the knowledge of our history- and that is why I salvage these throwaway library books.

We’re throwing things we discovered , built, invented, created, all of us- we are trading something beautiful and wonderful for total crud.

I have the one featured in this auction, they have others in their store- http://cgi.ebay.com/THREE-OF-US-READER-GUY-BOND-CHILDRENS-BOOK-HOMESCHOOL_W0QQitemZ180205819222QQcmdZViewItem

If you’re a ‘purist’, you’ll want McGuffey’s readers-vilified for being sexist , racist and anti-semitic

http://www.togetherforeverchanging.org/Never%20Again.htm )

McGuffey’s are unique – the print, the illustrations, they are the kind books you’d expect the ‘Little House on the Prairie’ kids to have, and not expensive! The re-prints aren’t anyway.

http://search.half.ebay.com/mcguffeys_W0QQmZbooksQQqueryZmcguffeyQ27sQ20QQsortZ88QQsoZ1