babble folk culture

I'm a hockey-mom...

[img]wink.gif" border="0[/img]

At least I can thank such dieties as may be that I live in a market with an alternative like Classical 96.3.

My Mom's grandparents came from lancashire, my dad came here in the 1960s from the West of Scotland.
I am a social democrat. I am part of a dying political culture that has it's roots in the labor movement of the 19th century. I apreciate things British(Monty Python, Blackadder, The Goons, Mint Penguins, etc.)
I like the Internet, Joss Whedon and Battlestar Galactica.
I don't really fit here(in the valley). I'm not a ultraconservative outdoorsman or a subconsciously suburban eco hipster.

My fellow travelers constitute about 2% of the elkvalley's population. 99.9% of them are middle aged.

[ 08 October 2008: Message edited by: CMOT Dibbler ]

[ 08 October 2008: Message edited by: CMOT Dibbler ]

My culture is in its roots as Saskatchewan as you can get. I keep a garden and compost heap like my grandmother did, learned to hunt and fish (and drink rye) with my father, bake a mean saskatoon berry pie, feel lost without the open sky and a have a strong belief in social democracy. My grandfather was a British Home Child and left a legacy of intense attachment to family, especially children.

I also practice Chinese martial arts along with my daughters, who are also a cellist and violinist respectively. Layer on that my profession, filmmaking and writing -- third generation small business owner, too.

White anglo saxon protestant, I guess. But I'm an athiest. And, I'm not sure, beyond white, what my "ethnicity" actually is. Angle? Saxon? Celt? Norse? England is quite the melting pot. That's where both my maternal and paternal lines originate from in recent generations. Except for my Acadian great grandmother.

Then again, it's possible that I have more DNA in common with my East African neighbour than I do with my equally WASPY neighbour.

I never drew identity from such things. But I eat what I grew up with. Roast beef. Yorkshire pudding. But my favorite spice is Garum Masala, and my favorite thing to cook is speghetti sauce.

And I have been to Wales, Scotland and England. And I do not belong.

I'd like to say working class is my culture. But then, my love of learning or it's own sake is viewed sometimes suspiciously by my peers. I am at times, a curiosity to them. I am more than tollerated by them. I think there is some genuine affection. But, I do not belong.

Perhaps I could point to the culture of science and the company of scientists as something to identify with. But then, my math skills betray me, and I have hung out with actual science dudes and dudettes. And I do not belong.

I once explored a sexual sub culture thinking that a sexual excentricity was something I could identify with, culturally. But, well, I do not belong.

I am at heart, a disciple of experience. I try to adhere to what I understand as the spirit of the Enlightenment.

But, my namesake and all the others are long, long dead. There is no one there to belong with.

Aside from family, I just don't belong.

And you know, it's rare that I even long to belong.

[ 11 October 2008: Message edited by: Tommy_Paine ]

quote:

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Originally posted by martin dufresne:
[b]People who put the word ethnicity in quotation marks, feeling it doesn't really apply to them, are generally White. We racialize others.[/b]

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The longer people have been here, the more likely it is that their culture has succumbed to the non-culture that pervades north america. So people whose families came over here a long time ago often cannot identify themselves ethnically or culturally. It's a loss - I'm not sure they think it's a "good thing".

My own family started speaking English recently enough that I am out of place here (even more than I would be in "the old country") and I would describe myself as "ethnic".

Or went back to the "old country" and were embarassed by it. [img]wink.gif" border="0[/img]

It may have something to do with when we were taught or became politically aware. Today, we see positive results from people who use their ethnic backgrounds for celebration, or to draw strength from. I come from a time when to identify ethnicity or identify with ethnicity opened up the flood gates of racist thinking.

It was seen as a way to divide people, and set them against each other. Better to expunge it from your philosophy and concentrate on the individual and his or her's ideas and character, was the thinking. Or what I picked up by osmosis.