Frontier House
Jul. 15th, 2002 09:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
inulroSubtitle: "How Clueless? hahahahahahahahaha"
Did they all think it was going to be a Theme Park Old West or something?
What some of you may not know is that I'm from just north of the border from Montana, so this frontier stuff is very much my heritage. It was pretty much the only thing they taught us in history at school, and Prairie Literature was the mainstay of English lessons. Celebrating the hardships endured by our province's settlers was (and probably still is) an enormous part of our culture. Most of us had living relatives who'd
immigrated from either Eastern Canada/US or directly from Europe, so we'd had the hardship stories first hand. (The main difference between Canadian and US settlement patterns being that western Canada was settled slightly later - in the 1920s my great grandparents were clearing virgin land)
So for me, the level of unpreparedness on the part of the families was pretty staggering.
And don't get me started on the ways that the programme makers actually made things easier for the participants than the real experience would have been. Having said that, the spring storm was an authentic piece of disaster they couldn't have planned.
Anyway, go read Bad Land by Jonathan Raban. It's about the other half of Montana (which has a fertile half and a semi-desert half), but a lot of what he has to say is relevant. Plus it's an excellent book.
In other news, I finally started painting my dining room chairs. I've only been putting it off for a year and a half. I've done the first coat of two chairs. They will need at least two coats; and I've a set of six.
Did they all think it was going to be a Theme Park Old West or something?
What some of you may not know is that I'm from just north of the border from Montana, so this frontier stuff is very much my heritage. It was pretty much the only thing they taught us in history at school, and Prairie Literature was the mainstay of English lessons. Celebrating the hardships endured by our province's settlers was (and probably still is) an enormous part of our culture. Most of us had living relatives who'd
immigrated from either Eastern Canada/US or directly from Europe, so we'd had the hardship stories first hand. (The main difference between Canadian and US settlement patterns being that western Canada was settled slightly later - in the 1920s my great grandparents were clearing virgin land)
So for me, the level of unpreparedness on the part of the families was pretty staggering.
And don't get me started on the ways that the programme makers actually made things easier for the participants than the real experience would have been. Having said that, the spring storm was an authentic piece of disaster they couldn't have planned.
Anyway, go read Bad Land by Jonathan Raban. It's about the other half of Montana (which has a fertile half and a semi-desert half), but a lot of what he has to say is relevant. Plus it's an excellent book.
In other news, I finally started painting my dining room chairs. I've only been putting it off for a year and a half. I've done the first coat of two chairs. They will need at least two coats; and I've a set of six.
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no subject
Date: 2002-07-16 05:21 pm (UTC)What amused me was the bloke whinging about having to carry this water 150 foot from the stream to his cabin!
I mean he'd be the first one to moan if they'd built the cabin right next to the river and then it flooded!!
no subject
Date: 2002-07-17 04:08 am (UTC)