Talk:A&E/1939

Out Takes

How might an energetic 3-year-old intuit the possibilities of life at the farm relative to lonely prospects set by his urban agenda? Lacking sufficient experience, I gave that question little forethought, and I took my time in working out an answer. For my parents, on the brink of 40, the prospect of moving to the farm came with expected continuities set in their well seasoned character and established patterns of activity. They had bought the farm for a song in a deeply depressed market 2 or 3 years before I was born.

Pre-war in New York, a dual-earning, professional couple with a 3-year-old child would be unusual requiring substantial child-care assistance then. And the asymmetry of their dual-earner status furthered their distinctiveness, for Their move was not one that fit the suburban model because the self-expectations of both left neither adaptable to the homemaker role. Both Margot and Joe would commute , leaving Robbie and Woz from 7 am to 7 pm in the place in the country. That's right: I saw this situation largely favorable; Woz did not. She had been incubating her nest egg near to her home in Hells Kitchen, a walk from Gramercy Place. But from rural Pennsylvania, she found catching the eye of a regular guy who would eagerly marry and make with her a home and family of their own an impossible dream.

When we moved to the farm, Margot and Joe had owned it for 5 years or so and used it as their place in the country. As their place in the country, it fit well with their urban aspirations and norms, and we were clearly moving to the country, not the suburbs, in going there full time. They might think their 3-year-old would have analogous expectations, playing around a red barn with a cow and some chickens, and initially many anticipated continuities. But to a surprising extent, children are natural phenomenologists and they take in what they see, quite distinct from the fantasies their imaginations might conjure and the routines normal in their prior circumstances. [**** I'm quite sure, in a somewhat different way for my parents, we need to step back a bit Margo and Joe had bought the farm But I am sure that by the time it became home, I was ready to turn active, exploring the farm and making it my turf!

2/7/2026:

We should note a couple aspects of this experience. First, sometime post war, my little egg scale became obsolete, in part because industrial large-scale suppliers started using high tech weighing systems. , to the wonders of modern veterinary medicine, the metabolism of the average egg-laying hen has shifted up, for typically a dozen eggs seem to weigh 3 ounces more. to a dozen eggs so that grocery stores have discontinued small eggs and added jumbo eggs to the line-up they usually sell. The more important aspect relates tangentially to this inflation, but more fundamentally to the similarity between the whole business with the eggs and my project of digging to China.

2/9/2026:

But to describe those impressions in a way that will enable us to grasp them, I must put them in a highly speculative cultural context that is consistent with the few facts about them that I've been able to garner. To begin, I'll set aside what I think was a misconception. As a child, I thought Marlies and Carl were émigrés from Hitler, but I don't think it would have been owing to Nazi racial policies as those took hold, ever more comprehensively, nor to the ideological repression as Hitler consolidated his power, but could very possibly have been because Carl's art in Germany would exemplify what Hitler called "degenerate art." But I've come to believe that Carl went to New York in the very early 1930s because he found life in Germany stultifying and he found himself unable to support either himself by his art or his art by any other means.

Carl was a wanderer, perhaps better a contented one, one ready to find and cultivate what he fond good wherever life took him. He was born in 1892 just to the west of Frankfurt in a town that has now been swallowed up into the city. He must have had decent schooling and perhaps started serious study in an art school, but then decided to go to sea instead, somewhere within Australian jurisdiction when World War I broke out and was imprisoned as a German in Sydney. 2/11/2026, Material for Marlies and Carl. Needs reworking after I've checked to see if I can find more information about them.

As Marlies contributed much to my sense of autonomy in action, she had a similar influence on my sense of what we can and should be doing in reading. I associate her with a 19th German book, Struwwelpeter, known in English as Slovenly Peter As I've grown older, I'd recurrently think about them, recognizing their importance, but finding the recognition shrouded in some perplexity: Who were they? How and why did they show up in my experience? And just what was it that I thought and felt as a child with them that continues to have importance for me?

To begin, I'll set aside what I think was a misconception, something sort of true but puts the experience in a less interesting context. As a child, I thought Marlies and Carl were émigrés from Hitler, without really knowing what that might mean. Later when I'd think about it, this didn't fully make sense. I don't think they would have been fleeing Germany owing to Nazi racial policies as those took hold, ever more comprehensively, nor to the ideological repression as Hitler consolidated his power, but I thought it could very possibly have been because Carl's art in Germany would have exemplified what Hitler called "degenerate art." The paintings I saw Carl create were conventional portraits, realistic likenesses with hints of the subject's characteristic expression giving life to the pose. My hunch that before coming to the United States, his art pressed more at the boundaries proved correct, as did my fear that it would be derivative and mediocre. What was it that made such an impression on me?

I've come to believe that Carl left Germany before Hitler's rise to power and came to New York in the very early 1930s because he found life in Germany stultifying and he found himself unable to support either himself by his art or his art by any other means.

Carl was a wanderer, perhaps better a contented one, one ready to find and cultivate what he fond good wherever life took him. He was born in 1892 just to the west of Frankfurt in a town that has now been swallowed up into the city. He must have had decent schooling and perhaps started serious study in an art school, but then decided to go to sea instead, somewhere within Australian jurisdiction when World War I broke out and was imprisoned as a German in Sydney.

2/14/2026: themade me aware of a difference between reading as a spectator and as a participant. In reading as a spectator, a person get caught up in what a book is about, perhaps identifying with an emotion, thought, or character presented in it. In contrast, in reading as a participant, person sees the text presenting a question or conflict that the reader recognizes as a question or conflict she in some way has herself and in dialogue with the text tries to think about or perhaps decide her question or conflict. Marlies introduced me to the 19th German book, Struwwelpeter, known in English as Slovenly Peter, at a time very important in a person's inner life of reading.

[Excursus: On How We Read] Of course, all of us read, sometime as spectators and sometime as participants, and most any book invites the attention of both spectators and participants. In considering formative education, both with respect to the public at large and to the person specifically, the balance between reading as spectator and reading as participant is an important, fraught question, one fundamental to the theme of agency and education. But here, the question is neither the public at large, nor persons in general, but the cumulative formative experience of one specific person. We need to renew the recognition that historical change takes place through persons, each in their unique circumstances, forming their agency as best they can.

At this time of beginning to read by myself, I liked The Little Engine the Could,which I would read as a spectator, identifying with all the boys and girls and circus people trying to get an suitable engine to take their train over the mountain, finally after many rejections from various possible engines, getting the game little engine to take the circus train over the mountain—I think I can; I think I can; I think I can—to the eager children in the city below. The reading results in the reader's identification with the sentiment of determination in performing a challenging task.

Hoffman's Struwwelpeter was certainly as much a didactic tract as the Little Engine. One could get the point as a spectator, particularly reacting to the illustrations, but they were way overdrawn, way exaggerated, and they wouldn't bring off the reader's positive or negative identification with lesson in question.

Original Ignorance 1st version by me

As we are newly born, all of us know nothing about parents and their world of experience, about their and other's situations in time and place. Our natality inserts us into a full, actively developing world, uniquely situating each within it. As instances of self-maintaining life, we are thoroughly ignorant about what we can and should do. Knowing nothing, each newborn must recognize, understand, and judge its given circumstances, discovering how to act purposefully with and upon them and thereby experience the contingency of actuality, forever renewing that original ignorance. . . .

Robbie (talk) 19:01, 25 January 2026 (MST)