38 responses to
“Beyond the fence.”

1. 

   Jen said on May 19th, 2008 at 1:51 pm

   I read that “purity ball” arti­cle this morn­ing and won­dered if you’d link to it. The arti­cle was creepy enough, but did you see the slideshow of pho­tos? It’s here: http://​www​.nytimes​.com/​s​l​i​d​e​s​h​o​w​/​2​0​0​8​/​0​5​/​1​9​/​u​s​/​0​5​1​9​-​P​U​R​I​T​Y​_​i​n​d​e​x​.​h​t​m​l​?​t​h​&​a​m​p​;​emc=th

   It looks like a cult!!

   I tried to think of my dad tak­ing me or my sis­ter to a “purity ball,” but I don’t think he wants to think about any­thing related to our “purity.” Igno­rance is bliss. Not that my sis­ter or myself would ever WANT to go to a purity ball, because it’s not our father’s (or any­one else’s busi­ness) to pro­tect us “in the area of purity,” as it’s put in the arti­cle. That’s our choice, but I’m sure the women and girls in this type of cul­ture have no choices like that (a 17-year-old girl “promised” to a 16-year-old boy!!). It’s sad and creepy. I’ll bond with my dad with­out dis­cus­sions of my “purity,” thank you very much.

2. 

   Sue said on May 19th, 2008 at 2:04 pm

   Hold onto your milk bot­tles, Nancy, they’re the next big col­lectible after every­one gets tired of that tacky depres­sion glass. Just kid­ding. Milk bot­tles are cheap and easy to find; the trick is find­ing local dairies and good exam­ples.
   As for purity balls, since these poor girls are iso­lated in every aspect of their lives, pro­tected from evil influ­ences like coed sports, Judy Blume and R-Rated movies, exactly who are their dads pro­tect­ing them from? It’s not pos­si­ble that they don’t trust the upstand­ing young men they allow their daugh­ters to get within a mile of, is it?

3. 

   Dorothy said on May 19th, 2008 at 2:35 pm

   This cap­tion on a photo caught my atten­tion Jen:

   Lt. Col. Terry Lee attended the ball for a sec­ond year, this time with his youngest daugh­ter, 16-year-old Rachel. He said: “It inspires me to be spir­i­tual and moral in turn. If I’m hold­ing them to such high stan­dards, you can be sure I won’t be cheat­ing on their mother.”

   Isn’t this what he & his wife promised when they took their wed­ding vows? To be true to each other? Why does he have to revisit it when his daugh­ters are of age?

4. 

   Jeff said on May 19th, 2008 at 3:44 pm

   Alan is actu­ally ahead of most archae­ol­o­gists, if you don’t count fire-cracked rock and flint deb­itage, which is all most of us find most of the time. The His­tory Chan­nel (aka The Hitler Chan­nel, but they’re try­ing to branch out) had a really fun piece on last night about real archae­ol­ogy and Indi­ana Jones, and they let slip the trade secret that the one true thing both have in com­mon (other than the way too funny sequence at the start of “Last Cru­sade” when he sneaks out of his crummy office and line of stu­dents at the door through the win­dow) is the degree of inter­per­sonal rivalry up to and almost includ­ing gun­play between com­pet­ing archae­ol­o­gists.

5. 

   brian stouder said on May 19th, 2008 at 3:54 pm

   That WAS a good arti­cle from Ms Noo­nan; if she’s a stopped clock, the WSJ caught her at just the right moment. (and note that Sen­a­tor Webb from Vir­ginia, a Demo­c­rat, was one of RWR’s SecNavs….and he may well be our next VP. All the sub­stan­tive peo­ple seem to be Democ­rats nowa­days)

   As for archae­ol­o­gists – it would be more fun to study recent his­tory. At Spring­field Illi­nois we learned that some gen­uine trea­sures are found in out­houses, for example….or in the walls, when old houses get ren­o­vated

6. 

   coozledad said on May 19th, 2008 at 4:04 pm

   My wife and I just attended the NC dis­trict 13 con­ven­tion to vote for Obama del­e­gates. We out­num­bered the Hillary folks sub­stan­tially. It was a pretty con­ge­nial meet­ing, and excit­ing. Our con­gress­man, Brad Miller, is an expert on the mort­gage loan indus­try, an Obama superdel­e­gate, and a good speaker.
   His mes­sage, in essence, was this admin­is­tra­tion has ruined every­thing it was per­mit­ted to get its hands on. If we get the White House and work­ing mar­gins in the House and Sen­ate, we may not have to suf­fer another Repub­li­can admin­is­tra­tion for a gen­er­a­tion.

7. 

   Sue said on May 19th, 2008 at 4:28 pm

   Re Coozledad’s com­ment: any­one heard from Danny lately?

8. 

   whitebeard said on May 19th, 2008 at 4:34 pm

   If Obama wins and the House and Sen­ate get solidly Demo­c­ra­tic, Repub­li­cans will be in the desert for another 40 years. Of, course, it may take 10 years to restore the finan­cial sys­tem, 20 years to restore the U.S. image around the world and 30 years for some new Repub­li­cans to sur­face and won­der why they are hold­ing their con­ven­tion in a phone booth.

9. 

   Jeff said on May 19th, 2008 at 4:47 pm

   Ah, the glo­ries of his­toric era priv­ies! Like the one that had been in what is now left field of the Bal­ti­more Ori­oles’ “Cam­den Yards” which had been behind the bar where Babe Ruth grew up — there’s a very care­fully labeled dis­play in one of the con­courses of 1890′s arti­facts sifted from the fine grained dried, um, silt from the, um, col­umn of arti­fact rich debris behind the brick struc­ture. Bot­tles, lit­tle lead toys, crock­ery frag­ments, the stray key.

   In fair­ness to the purity ball folks, who are indeed mod­er­ately creepy — West­ern Civ has clearly and deci­sively walked away from the for­mer out­lines of tra­di­tional sexual/family moral­ity. I’m not yellin’, i’m just sayin’. What we’re walk­ing towards no one quite knows yet — ser­ial monogamy as elites once prac­ticed is now a main­stream cus­tom, and the mores of grand­par­ent­ing are slowly adjust­ing along with dat­ing and mat­ing and even, yes, mar­ry­ing — for some.

   In our office, there’s an ongo­ing debate on the ques­tion of what makes up the “deci­sion field” for young women who are not col­lege and career ori­ented, for choos­ing to start hav­ing babies. There is clearly an inter­me­di­ate stage devel­op­ing of “i’m not ready to get mar­ried, but i’m ready to start hav­ing kids whether the guy is going to stay in the pic­ture or not,” and we’re start­ing to see the chil­dren in juve­nile court of that devel­op­ing and grow­ing demo­graphic.

   It’s trans-ethnic, broad-based, and seems to have a deci­sion tree behind it, except we are hav­ing trou­ble get­ting at the unspo­ken fac­tors that shape the choice. They’re 23 to 26, have a cou­ple of kids, and usu­ally end up in a longer term rela­tion­ship with a guy start­ing around 30 who they may or may not have a final kid with.

   When you see in working-class and lower mid­dle class neigh­bor­hoods a major­ity of young women hav­ing kids with­out present part­ners, let alone spouses, it can pro­voke some odd flail­ings of a hand reach­ing around in the dark for some­thing to hold onto, and like the emer­gent church move­ment, you see some unusual bits of tra­di­tion pulled out of the attic, or tribal appro­pri­a­tions taken from one con­text and jammed into another, just to make a place to stand.

10. 

    Catherine said on May 19th, 2008 at 4:55 pm

    Archae­ol­o­gists are a super­sti­tious lot. Many of them really believe that some archae­ol­o­gists are just luck­ier than oth­ers. Good crew will fol­low a lucky archae­ol­o­gist any­where. The other key ingre­di­ent is a good cook. Luck and decent food, maybe that’s what it all comes down to in any field?

11. 

    Jeff said on May 19th, 2008 at 4:58 pm

    . . . and cold beer. Field school is all about the cold beer, which the direc­tor sits on in the large blue cooler until the day’s site report sheets are fin­ished. When the dig direc­tor gets up to take the forms and file them, the cooler opens, and the evening begins!

12. 

    MaryC said on May 19th, 2008 at 5:15 pm

    The St. Joseph fig­ure your hus­band found — was it buried upside down? It’s done that way some­times and I’m not sure why.

    I’d love to find a milk bot­tle from the dairy that deliv­ered milk to my Mom’s house when she was a child. She’d be thrilled. I’ve left my phone num­ber with every antiques & second-hand dealer in her home­town to let me know as soon as they see one, but no luck so far.

13. 

    Sue said on May 19th, 2008 at 5:34 pm

    I’ve found milk bot­tles in my town and area from north­ern Wis­con­sin, the UP and lower MI, and Ver­mont, but none from old area dairies. The only local ones I’ve seen are in our lit­tle his­tor­i­cal soci­ety. Maybe you need to look fur­ther afield, Ebay or some­thing.

14. 

    Scout said on May 19th, 2008 at 6:34 pm

    Nancy, I love your fence jump­ing anal­ogy. I too am look­ing for­ward to the whole silly sea­son to be over with so we can let Pres­i­dent Obama get busy clean­ing up the godaw­ful mess the ele­phants made all over the people’s house.

    Roses are going to look per­fect in those milk bot­tles.

15. 

    del said on May 19th, 2008 at 7:13 pm

    Fence-jumping anal­ogy was per­fect.

    Purity balls? Good Lord. I am awfully dis­ap­pointed that Chris­tians con­tinue to ele­vate the mat­ter of sex­u­al­ity to a level impor­tance that it ought not have.

16. 

    alex said on May 19th, 2008 at 7:31 pm

    Jeff, I believe at least part of the expla­na­tion for all of this young sin­gle moth­er­hood is the enor­mous stigma that is now attached to abor­tion. For all of its whin­ing, the pro-life move­ment has in fact scored some sig­nif­i­cant vic­to­ries we don’t often con­sider, like the fact that few women these days would dare to admit to hav­ing an abor­tion.

    The deci­sion field, I’m guess­ing, is one in which sex edu­ca­tion left no last­ing impres­sion.

17. 

    coozledad said on May 19th, 2008 at 7:41 pm

    Jeff: I keep find­ing arrow­heads, hide scrap­ers, and spear­points on my farm, and I haven’t found descrip­tions or pic­tures on the web or in muse­ums that are an ade­quate match. I’m in North Cen­tral North Car­olina, two miles from the VA bor­der. It’s an area his­tor­i­cally inhab­ited by the Occan­nechi band of the Chero­kee, but these arti­facts may be older. I don’t know what stone they’re made of, but I sus­pect it isn’t local. The bro­ken pieces have a bluish cen­ter in cross sec­tion, that becomes a desert yel­low on the out­side. I don’t know if it’s chert or flint, but they do look a lit­tle like Kirk points.

18. 

    joodyb said on May 19th, 2008 at 8:03 pm

    JEAL­ous! those are gor­geous. (i love milk bot­tles.)
    your jump­ing anal­ogy is brill, of course. and a jack rus­sell named Triscuit! what a per­fect name. best dog name i’ve run across: a Scotty named Her­shey. with a pup named Snick­ers. fo real.

19. 

    Catherine said on May 19th, 2008 at 9:12 pm

    Given that there are alter­nate words for “ball” — party, dance — one won­ders why that word. Pag­ing Dr. Freud?

20. 

    brian stouder said on May 19th, 2008 at 9:16 pm

    one won­ders why that word.

    I think we’re miss­ing their thrust…

21. 

    Dave K. said on May 19th, 2008 at 10:09 pm

    My favorite dog name was that of my favorite dog, “Mocha”. She was a beau­ti­ful choco­late Lab. (R.I.P. at 14 years old). Her dad was “Her­shey, with Nuts”. Really, with papers.

    Glad to see John Edwards’ endorse­ment of Sen­a­tor Obama last week, with the United Steel­work­ers announc­ing their sup­port soon after. Maybe Joe will put up a “USW for Obama!” yard sign now. (He didn’t want a “USW-Vote for Jill”, but we did OK any­how).

22. 

    Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on May 19th, 2008 at 10:31 pm

    St. Joseph fig­ures are buried upside down to speed real estate sales, the tra­di­tion dates back to a Catholic book store owner who had an over­stock of small stat­u­ary and needed some quick liq­uid­ity, and so cre­ated a new super­sti­tion (kid­ding, kid­ding, but the real estate thing is actu­ally true, or . . . you know what i mean).

    http://​www​.snopes​.com/​l​u​c​k​/​s​t​j​o​s​e​ph.asp

    Coo­zledad, chert is just low-grade flint (all flint is tech­ni­cally chert if you’re a geol­o­gist, but archaes tend to use it as a grade-marker). With­out a trac­ing, i’d say Kirk sounds rea­son­able — are they corner-notched, or side notched? (Cor­ner is diag­o­nal, side is straight in from the side.) And are they at all ser­rated?

    Alex, i’d con­cur up to a point. Except . . . with the avail­abil­ity of con­tra­cep­tion, and the fact that we’re talk­ing to young women who have been sex­u­ally active for years (more than i care to think about), the “whoops” fac­tor doesn’t seem to explain any­thing here. It’s more like a sub­tle, sub­con­scious deci­sion to let it hap­pen, very often at the 23-26 range, so i have trou­ble see­ing it being the “ol’ bio­log­i­cal clock” either.

    Two of the three women i work for/with are on the “not on the hav­ing babies” team, so to speak, and keep ask­ing me what i think the logic is — like i’d know! There is clearly also a class/education fac­tor here, since women who have college/career plans defer past that point, and then may choose to embark on a tar­geted or donated preg­nancy, but that’s usu­ally a 40-ish thing.

    It’s the increas­ing preva­lence of 23+ year old semi-intentional strug­gling work­ing moth­ers that has us stumped. (Oh, and they all either love Hillary — a few — or have no idea that there’s an elec­tion on. I talked to an African-American mother of three the other day who said, dur­ing a side-conversation between two other peo­ple in the room, “Who’s this Obama guy?” Her mother, 40+, looked like she was going to slap her daugh­ter out of embar­ras­ment, but it was sin­cere puz­zle­ment.)

23. 

    coozledad said on May 19th, 2008 at 10:55 pm

    I think these are side notched. Maybe late archaic. But they’re very worn. I’m likely to find more. I’m con­stantly find­ing chips and flakes on the sur­face, if I sim­ply take the time to look. The arrow­heads I find when dig­ging post­holes or foun­da­tions, ie. around 2 ft.
    I doubt they merge with any his­toric occu­pa­tion.

24. 

    Kafkaz said on May 19th, 2008 at 11:28 pm

    Catherine–I’m with you, there. Shouldn’t it be a purity cotil­lion, or some­thing?

    Any­way, “purity ball” sounds like some­thing that’s meant to be dropped in the wash­ing machine.

25. 

    Joe K. said on May 19th, 2008 at 11:32 pm

    Just sit­ting here a won­der­ing why, if Obama and Hillery have all the answers on low­er­ing gas prices they don’t do some­thing now instead of wait­ing till next Novem­ber. I would prob­a­bly vote for them if they showed me how, or actu­ally waved their magic wand and made the gas prices go down. I seem to remem­ber Nancy Polosi telling every­one that the Democ­rats were in charge of Con­gress and the sen­ate, they were going to do some­thing about these high prices!!! hope she doesn’t help me any­more. Friends the only way oil is com­ing down in price is if we bite the bul­let and start explor­ing and drilling off the coast and in Alaska. Heck all you would need to do is say you were going to start drilling and the future mar­ket in oil would col­lapse. We also need to find some sort of alter­nate fuel source, be it nuclear, hydro­gen or some­thing else. Dave K. you can but a Jill sign in my yard, if I can put a John Mc sign in yours!!!!
    Pilot Joe.

26. 

    Dexter said on May 20th, 2008 at 3:00 am

    Fifty years ago my fam­ily lived in an old brick house located on the high­est point in DeKalb County, which is a mile from the Noble County line. The grounds were too hilly for farm­ing in the imme­di­ate envi­rons, but were a great place to find arrow­heads and other arti­facts. All the neigh­bor kids found at lest a few arrow­heads and other stuff, and one neigh­bor had a huge col­lec­tion which was exhib­ited at fairs and the like.
    How­ever, I tried my best; I spent long hours search­ing for just one arrow­head, but never found one.
    Years later, I did find some very cool items: pet­ri­fied shark’s teeth, in Goose Creek near Charleston, S.C. My brother-in-law and I went on an excur­sion and found quite a few in the creek beds. Later I found out that creek was full of poi­so­nous snakes…I never would have waded around if I had known that!
    By the way, that house in DeKalb County was so high in ele­va­tion we could eas­ily see the Fort Wayne TV trans­mit­ters from our yard, more than twenty miles away, at night when they blinked brightly.
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    I was shocked to read that this guy com­mands such a pres­ence on The Times best seller list !!

27. 

    Connie said on May 20th, 2008 at 6:52 am

    When we first moved to south­ern Indi­ana we rented a house in the mid­dle of a corn­field. Trea­sure hunters with metal detec­tors knocked on our door reg­u­larly seek­ing per­mis­sion to hunt the field. (We pointed them to the landlord’s house.)

    Turns out this field was the rumored site of the Reno Broth­ers buried train rob­bery trea­sure. And was listed in sev­eral books about trea­sure hunt­ing.

    Point being, the field was filled with arrow­heads, in which none of them were the slight­est bit inter­ested.

    The Reno Broth­ers: the first train rob­bery, Alan Pinker­ton causes an inter­na­tional inci­dent, lynch­ings, hid­den trea­sure, it’s a most bizarre story.

28. 

    coozledad said on May 20th, 2008 at 7:04 am

    Con­nie: I under­stand Beck’s next book will be a quasi-fictional account of the surgery on his arse, ten­ta­tively titled “The Longest Yard”. Pre­buys from the John Birch Soci­ety and The Dead­wood Group (a com­bine of assisted liv­ing cen­ters) are account­ing for more than half of sales.

29. 

    john c said on May 20th, 2008 at 7:15 am

    The “looks like a cult” com­ment got me to the purity ball pic­tures. Holy crap! The huge cross and the peo­ple approach­ing it under two gleam­ing swords?! The girl on her knees before (one assumes) her father?! The dad kiss­ing the head of a pale, eyes-closed daugh­ter, who appears to be either in a trance of uncon­scious. Yikes!
    If any of you see me at one of those things in 11 years with my lit­tle Sally, you have per­mis­sion to clunk my over the head with a milk bot­tle!

30. 

    Dorothy said on May 20th, 2008 at 10:24 am

    St. Joseph is also the patron saint of car­pen­ters (home builders) and fam­i­lies, so that’s part of the “super­sti­tion” too, Jeff. And I did my Catholic duty and buried a small St. Joe statue in SC once the house went on the mar­ket (one year ago Sat­ur­day, mind you) and it STILL hasn’t sold. We’ve dropped the price a total of $20,000 since last May, too, and still no offers.

    Joody – peo­ple across the street from us in South Car­olina had a choco­late lab named “Reese” for Reese’s Cup.

31. 

    Sue said on May 20th, 2008 at 10:54 am

    Dorothy: Maybe Joe’s upset that you didn’t do your car­pen­try work to code.
    A few years back, when I was devel­op­ing an inter­est in herbs (not THOSE herbs, you guys), I con­sid­ered putting a statue of Saint Fiacre in my gar­den, because I heard that he is the patron saint of herbal­ists. Then I found out that he is also the patron saint of hem­or­rhoid suf­fer­ers and v.d. suf­fer­ers. Plus he hated women. Maybe I should put him in the gar­den upside down.

32. 

    LAMary said on May 20th, 2008 at 11:19 am

    I’d name a choco­late lab Toblerone or Lin­dor. Go for the good stuff.
    Joe, one sen­a­tor alone can­not lower gas prices. Also, drilling in the Alaskan wildlife reserve is not bit­ing the bul­let. Rethink­ing how we use fos­sil fuel and not con­sid­er­ing it our God given right to piss it away is bit­ing the bul­let.

33. 

    Sue said on May 20th, 2008 at 11:40 am

    LAMary: I knew some­one would be able to say it bet­ter than me. Thanks.

34. 

    MichaelG said on May 20th, 2008 at 12:37 pm

    Besides, the ANWAR is lim­ited – that is there is only so much oil there. It could poten­tially help short­ages but would not go any near solv­ing short­ages. Also if they started out today with full approvals, per­mits, etc it would be ten years before any of it arrived at the pump.

    We had a beau­ti­ful golden retriever named Blondie. She was a sweet­heart but very emo­tional. Our yel­low naped ama­zon used to call her from the other room. “Blonnnntie”. Then poor Blondie would come into the bird’s room and the bird (her name is Mur­phy and she’s 26 now) would cuss her out and make her cry. What a col­lec­tion of ani­mals we used to have.

35. 

    Jen said on May 20th, 2008 at 12:52 pm

    I will say this: a lot of politi­cians are going around act­ing as though they can and will lower gas prices when, the truth is, their fixes (like get­ting rid of the gas tax for the sum­mer) isn’t going to do did­dly squat. At least Obama makes a lit­tle bit of sense when he says that a gas tax hol­i­day is a “quick-fix” solu­tion.

    I don’t really think drilling in ANWAR is the answer, but if the gov­ern­ment and com­pa­nies keep refus­ing to invest a good amount of money into research­ing alter­na­tive fuels and/or alter­na­tive trans­porta­tion meth­ods, what else can we do?

    Me, I’ve been try­ing to drive a lot less, but in small-town Indi­ana, there are no buses and few side­walks to any­where where I can buy food, med­i­cine, or any­thing else I need. At least I can walk to work every day!

36. 

    Jill said on May 20th, 2008 at 4:58 pm

    LA Mary said, “I’d name a choco­late lab Toblerone or Lin­dor. Go for the good stuff.”

    We named a mas­tiff Rolex (called Rolie), because if you’re going to have a watch­dog, she should be the best.

37. 

    joodyb said on May 20th, 2008 at 7:18 pm

    Won­der if Beck paid writ­ing coach/ghost writer enough not to blab, assum­ing s/he is com­pro­mised at some point. i know i shouldn’t say this with­out hav­ing read his book, but lots of these guys write like they talk.
    Looks like the choco­late labs get all the great names. choco­late, so uni­ver­sally inspir­ing! my aus­trian poophounds should have such clever names. but then, they are poophounds.

38. 

    LA Mary said on May 21st, 2008 at 1:02 am

    Omega would be good for the watch­dog too.

    The in-house Brit sug­gests Cad­bury for a choco­late lab. My black lab has the very pedes­trian name of Smokey, and that works for me. The golden retriever mix is Poppy and the huge hulk­ing dane/boxer came with the name Max. All in the house­hold acknowl­edge that Duke would have been a bet­ter name. I refer to him as “the blunt instru­ment” occa­sion­ally because he made out bet­ter in the phys­i­cal strength depart­ment than in smarts.
    Joody, you could call the poophounds schiesse­hunds (not sure on the spelling of the Ger­man word for shit). Schiessleins works too.