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SubTitle: Ernetedank Fest
Posted by: rs on 11/24/1997@00:25hrs:
In Reply to: Re: Thanksgiving on Old SI posted by: DAN BLAINE on 11/23/1997@23:41hrs:
Dan, this is a terrific account, more than I expected. Thanks very much for such a descriptive and informative account. I visited the Oktoberfest in Monterey a couple of years ago and got my fill of the folkloric costumes, the animated dancing that the kids and the rest do, as well as the food and drink you describe. Used to go up to 86th Street (Yorkville) around 1st or 3rd to the Lorelei and another club to drink beer and dance to the oompah, the polia music. Hefeweisen is a beer gaining in popularity around here,now, especially in the microbrew pubs popping up. Had a Schwab classmate at Wagner who had trouble with a certain letter, think it was V or W, that was his dead-giveaway as a Swabian, as I recall. Interesting it's a village fest as opposed to a family gathering. Wonder what that says about fundamental cultural differences. Sometimes you see something like that here, such as the annual county fair, or, for example, the Sonoma town wine fair in the central square with booths, displays, dance shows put on by children's groups, etc.
What I think a communal gathering demonstrates is an attitude that says we're in this together for better or worse. I think it must stem from medieval times or earlier when everybody in a small, isolated village was related by blood or contract as noble or serf or both. You know the Plague of 1348 which decimated Europe freed the serfs by making them able to sell their labor now in the coastal towns, where the plague started from fleas from rats from ships that wiped out coastal populations first. This upset the customary mutually supportive relationships in the inland villages. It turned the less well-off into aggressive beggars who would curse out those who turned them down for charity, which formerly would have been forthcoming but for the economic disruption from the plague. Hence fairy tails such as Snow White and others featuring the witch not invited to the wedding, also, more importantly, the outbreak of witch-hunt persecutions of those whose curses appeared to have come true when misfortune fell on the one cursed out. This, at least, is Keith Thomas's explanation in, I believe it is "Religion and the Decline of Magic." Witch-hunt history is a subject I follow because they haven't gone away; I define a witch-hunt as the hunt for a culprit before finding out there's been no crime. TWA-800 had aspects of a witch-hunt. The Richard Jewell fiasco at the Olympics in Atlanta when the bomb went off was another; here there was the crime, but publicly denouncing Jewell turned him into a modern day witch. Germany, France, England were famous for their w/hs. Then Salem. Spain and Rome had the Inquisition, their own institutional way of demonizing the disfavored. Eternal vigilance is the price of Liberty. Ben Franklin, I think. Thanks, again, Dan, and Happy Thanksgiving in Schwabenland. Prost!. -rs-