Sorry, Agnes. This is what happens around here when you write something noteworthy. You get moved to the front page.
Fireside Chats with or without Agnes
By Agnes K. Quereton
My name is Agnes Quereton. I offer information up front about the family name for two reasons: it prevents your embarrassing attempts to pronounce the unexplainable and it makes me sound interesting. The name is Hungarian, therefore spelled wrong. Gypsy, or Roma ancestors immigrated in the late 1880s, passed themselves off as French by replacing K with Qu and turned Karatov into Quereton with emphasis on Ton to make it sound fancy. Now, it’s all up front: Cure a Ton and I might be an exotic gypsy dancer. Since my grandchildren say I am a hundred years old, it is also now funny.
I was directed to read an article here by a reader who follows your debate around the campfire. The article was “What TBP Means to Me,” which introduced me to this strange little familial cluster of unique personality types which interact fairly well considering fewer than a dozen have met face to face. There is a certain frankness and honesty that comes through, suggesting some of your readers, comment writers, contributing post writers and other members of the place are genuinely engaged in conversation and debate, with regular rude interruption, crosstalk, and sometimes pure genius which flashes on the flames and sputters out. For me, TBP replaces the crisp, unopened newspaper I loved to read with the morning coffee after the kids were at school decades ago, my husband at the shop and myself, queen of our world, in my flannel pajamas about to read the news, then turn to editorials if the headlines did not demand further investigation. But, instead of the tribune/daily/standard/news delivered to our doorstep, my routine now begins with the newest comments on the platform, checking to see if certain team members have commented. I suspect I am not alone in this sense of bonding one feels with the TBP community.
With museum curator background, I call myself an Anthropologist. Anthropologists study human interaction and societal development and how societies change. We also delve into why, though that is more the sociologist’s territory and they, like any territorial beast, do not give up territory easily. So, yes, I read Strauss and Howe and consider the idea of Fourth Turnings to be consistent with my own observations and conclusions drawn from reading voraciously most of my life. As an old lady with zero credentials, I pronounce TBP (and a few blogs and forums I’ve seen) to be on the frontier of a new kind of social group, the extended cyber-family.
Armchair Anthropologists like myself were women once known as Granny or Grandmama in many societies. An old granny, still alert, can always recognize the interactions between archetypes from one generation to the next, even if ignored in today’s anti-Woman climate.
You heard me: anti-Woman climate. I’m old enough to have witnessed what actually happened at the dawning of the Age of Aquarius. I saw a fascination with time and space become a grand misunderstanding of mankind’s relative power over his existence. Current strange behavior regarding womanhood and what it really “means” to be a woman, along with obsession with genitalia and mutilation of all things masculine and feminine can only lead to one thing: the obvious intentional sexualization of our children through mixed media training. It should have been obvious from the early years that Feminists were intent on destroying the most valuable product on earth: the human child produced as intended by Nature.
Babies should be born of sperm and egg, from man and woman to multiply in good times and to sustain population in lean conditions. That is just a biological fact, not a judgment on gender roles. A woman once played a very important role in that natural phenomena in both ideal and phenomenal situations. She carried it, birthed it and fed and nurtured it, and taught the child its role in the family. In most ancient societies, an old woman was revered for her long life and multiple generations she gathered around her. Those matriarchal societies are found in many Southwest Indian Tribes, most of which trek to the continent from Asia via Alaska or from South America, escaping Spanish invaders slaughtering pagans in the name of Christendom, which hitched a ride whilst looking for shorter trade routes to China.
There is something very appealing about trade with China. You do not hear much from or about Chinese women, do you? The recent prominence of the North Korean sister seems almost caricaturist, doesn’t it?
Back to your own little social network here: https://www.theburningplatform.com/2017/08/24/what-tbp-means-to-me/
I started reading a bit last fall and before I knew it, I’d made a couple of comments, using initials AKQ and hoping no one noticed me. Until now, no one has.
More than anything, Stucky’s heartfelt discussion of the end-of-life issues he is now juggling prompted this offering to Admin. With personal experience from the nursing home “trenches” while my sister battled dementia and wandered hallways looking for me, my heartstrings ache for the losses many of you have suffered and shared with the platform that burns. At the nursing home with my sister, I sat in the courtyard one day and listened to her tell me all about her childhood and sisters. I am glad she had good memories to play in that theater of her mind. I hope we all take the time to gather our memories and write the stories we hope to play when we wrap ourselves in pleasant dreams and set sail for Elysian Fields.
Women in my family claim the label of ancient woman proudly, with my husband’s clan from Hungary (Cure a Tons), making my having outlived everyone I ever wanted to not only exotic but amazing. Longevity is a mixed blessing in a modern world dismissive of the value of a lucid and healthy grandparent in the home as an unneeded inconvenience. Fortunately, almost all modern tragedies plague my family, so I’m a needed inconvenience. Being needed makes all the difference.
I hope this finds the right set of eyes. I will leave that to fate, my own grasp of how information transmits on this blog and a little bit of luck. If others in the community want to meet and talk to Agnes, they will do so. And if not, I will see you around as AKQ or not, as destiny dictates.
Welcome to the cess pool Agnes. And thank you for some really good word thingy things there.
Well done Agnes, I look forward to more. I, like you, read TBP, but don’t write much. Interesting views around here…
That was a warm fuzzy. You do know they have tinder for grannies? greydar dating app? among others. OK,OK not fair.. some really good ideas there, where good means opposite of evil. May you live long, and hey, judge yourself and worth by your own personal growth, not compared to others. You have grown plenty I suspect.
“Extended cyber-family,” Agnes names TBP.
I’m not going to argue with an anthropologist of a hundred years. I’m only wondering whether “cyber-tribe” might fit the bill as well? I mean after all, if this group’s members were under one tree canopy in more ancient times, there’d likely be a murder or two during the rendezvous. I suppose families murder one another now and then as well, but from what I’ve read tribes murder for sport, which is something like what goes on at TBP.
Anyway, loved hearing about gypsies going French and being reminded that old ladies have lots to offer with their perspective of how things were and how they ought to be now in this troubled era of mixed gender-bs among other things. Good on you, Agnes.
Welcome to the family AQK,
that was a very thoughtful post, and it was a pleasure to read.
hope to hear more words of wisdom from you.
I would be willing to bet that you don’t consider yourself especially wise, but I say that your wisdom flares from every paragraph and with every shift of topic, of which all compliment and build upon each other.
Well done.
Welcome fellow Slav Agnes.
Long time lurker. Rarely moved to comment. I am over 70, female and Mensan. I only mention the latter to provide background. Not a genius, but good at taking tests and somewhat smarter than the average bear. TBP has fewer village idiots than most sites, so I check it daily. Agnes, you are a marvel, a woman who writes like a man. Always a rarity, more so now. I hope to read you again.
Welcome to the hive, Vikinglady. Hope you’ll comment more often.
Agreed, fellow Mensan (when I remember / have the cash to pay dues, that is).
An anthropologist ‘eh and a woman with years under her… whatever. Ponder this; what is this fascination the leftist/commie/swine have with evil. It’s one thing to oppose a view held by many here, but their seeming embrace appears much more than a mere difference of opinion. Do any of these people actually believe the clintons are not the scum sucking murderous pit of hell criminals they so clearly are? Do they truly embrace the cult of child rapist? How do you explain the vile doings of the leaders of the FBI, DOJ, and state dept. Are these people less than human?
I have often lamented to my friend from Algeria the sorry state of humans represented by these creatures. She tells me the same can be said for those she observes back in her country. It has not always been thus. Too, news from Europe and far east as well must lead one to think we’re collectively going mad. Or, perhaps we were simply not aware, that the internet has freed information from the strangle hold of convention. Forth turning indeed!
I have sometimes provided insight from The Urantia Book, much to the amusement of some here. However, there is no other authoritative source of information about us and our past… and those who were the source of the book have told us it is an emergency revelation. It is merely the 5th such epochal revelation in the near million year history of the human race on this world; our celestial overseers recognize the seriousness of our plight, we should too.
You keep right on quoting the Urantia Book Mark. It is an amazing work.
Wow… Nice to meet you.
Agnes, There is a gypsy proverb. Stay Where There Are Songs.
Please give us more songs like yours above.
I welcome you to our online troop here as we caravan together and pause to dance while there is still a chance to travel the highways and byways of the free. Long live the Roma of the roadways and may their children prosper .
Here follows a song. “Teach Your Children” with a short history of the code for those on the road at the end of the video.
First of all, thank you FM for elevating Agnes’s post.
By now, I hope most of you realize Agnes is an amalgam of several mature and wise women I’ve known in my life. She is a work in progress.
The woman whose photo is I used initially is that of an old woman for whom I picked blackberries as a child. She gave me a dollar and all the cookies a chubby little girl could eat, just as she did my own son when he was a toddler.
(Insert photo Aunt Martha handing food to the boys in Prescott, every aspect of her scarred and gnarled hand and her wrinkled and grinning visage detailed by the photographer. The photographers’ perpective is, of course, my favorite. I will caption the image: A grandmother’s gesture to her grandkids, “eat my child for life awaits you and it is hungry”.) In a religious context, the two members closest to God in “real time.” The dual nature of humanity. What has been; what is yet to be.
One day last year after I’d gotten myself in a bit more of a fix with a few policemen while trying to be a smartass. I recognized someone, I believe, from childhood and stupidly declared my disbelief that a playground bully like him could end up on a police department or something mildly insulting the Maggie you know might say half-joking. Since I got the young boy in trouble that ended with 5 leather strap swats to a bare bottom (yes, in third grade), I think he holds a grudge. This led to a sequence of events culminating in my visiting a hospital in handcuffs after a very disturbing day I can’t tell you about. It shows that what goes around does indeed sometimes come around. Perhaps I can tell Agnes what happened. Perhaps. Even now, my stomach acid churns at the thought and poor Nick. Poor, poor Nick.
Agnes might be able to tell you for me just as she can tell a young woman’s story about some situation none of us can even imagine facing: A young woman I know chose 60 days in jail over wearing an ankle bracelet for a year. Through Agnes, she has agreed to tell you why drinking that vodka she keeps in her purse, hidden in the cardboard rolls of paper towels and in nooks and crannies around her home is more important to her than her children.
Agnes can teach you how to find court records online in many states. Some of them are blocked to anyone except lawyers, who get a special access key. Agnes wonders why public information has to be paid for while I know asking that question at the courthouse will get me labelled as a target by local authorities. Lawyers have managed to turn justice into a commodity. What a country, Yakov said. I wonder what he says now, if anyone is listening.
I actually conferred offline with a couple of monkeys (no big dogs, with only a courtesy call to a couple, including Jim Quinn, who has put up with a lot from me through my writing transition. Poor Admin.) Stucky was to get the first nod from Agnes, the big lumberjack-looking dude who triggers so many of those strange vignettes that spring into my mind, unasked. Stucky, in my mind, becomes my big galoomfy cousin from East St. Louis who loved visiting the farm in the summer because he could blow off all the firecrackers and shoot as many rats, crows, squirrels and coyotes as he wanted. He also told me about going into the ghetto to shoot coons, but I like to think he was a blowhard. Perhaps, if Stucky had been able to visit our little flat-bottom farm in the alluvial floodplain of the Mississippi he could have shot up the wildlife and blowed up dynamite on the fourth of July, like we did one year. That world is all gone. But, do we have to give everything up?
(Insert video of the Mississippi taken yesterday while at Cape… less than a minute panoramic of the pregnant Miss, swollen with recent rains and melting ice which once turned the region into what Mingo Swamp looks like now. Hell, insert image of Mingo Swamp now )
… by the way, Control Z has saved my ability to post, Stucky. You tipped me that Control U no longer undoes for just everything. Whew! I just did “something” and the previous paragraph disappeared… Now, I’m writing in Word and salvaged the effort. You have made Agnes possible, Stucky. After I got this laptop and couldn’t retrieve lost documents the “old” way, I kind of gave up. You have inspired me to create again. Control Z… if only that worked when I’m standing in the basement trying to remember why I just walked down two flights of stairs.
Later, I will do the edits and add images and media, as indicated parenthetically, but will post the bare text now so that people know I’m planning to move forward with Agnes as a vehicle for others to speak through and to speak toward. In many ways, Holly O is like our Paul Revere. I am no Abigail, but my paternal grandparents have roots in Colonial Virginia and six “Sons of the Revolution” mentioned in the family documents. For those unfamiliar with Samuel Adams, he pretty much ran the propaganda plan for the Landed Gentry who wanted to run things their own way and stop paying tribute to the king. He put some of his own skin in the game, along with a family name and fortune, and put together a network of people who could create and spread the news to outlying areas. The Adams’ family spent their family fortune on the idea that educating and informing people of the underlying reasons for what they were doing would build a support network that could make a difference. That was the ideal he was willing to invest his intellect and effort into forming: Committees of Correspondence which later evolved into a letter-writing campaign between Federalists and Anti-Federalists determined to preserve a nation while protecting the individual.
It was the news the Forefathers wanted told, of course, but if it wasn’t truth, the independent-minded farmers and hunters and wanderers were free to dismiss it and move along. We are no longer free to move along.
[Insert picture of Traveling Man Archie and explain how that image draws views, but not as many as the second image of Archie, the grizzled old face in fine detail in black and white by my own father]
(Future Fireside Chats topics, perhaps. Discussion of the Travelling Irish and the government’s restriction on caravans on public land. Discussion of Grand Canyon closing… versus state parks left open. Discussion of a middle-aged woman walking down the street, acting a little weird and manic, perhaps, but not drunk or dangerous, who ended up face down surrounded by cops, handcuffed.)
So, now you know. And I always intended full disclosure with Agnes after planting the image of a hundred-year-old woman disrobing in exotic gypsy belly dancing garb, especially when you find out she’s had a double mastectomy. That way, her frank discussion of all things pertaining to women is less likely to made the monkeys act like pigs. While Maggie likes to joke around with you filthy pigs, Agnes doesn’t have time for that crap and was never a flirt. Okay, Agnes may still turn Stucky on, but I think we can all forgive a lot from the big galoomfy lumberjack-looking dude because he is part of the clan until he or the Lord decides he is not. What I am creating is a character and a way of telling story. And I’m doing it right in front of you. With a closed group of colleagues and friends and experts (mostly women) I am standing Agnes up and trying her out. I have not completely fleshed the venue out, but Agnes has some real potential and I hope the idea gains traction.
As far as the “genre”? Genre is a stupid word. What type of story is it? It isn’t Womany, EC, even if it is sentimental in ways. Even your Doctor Pangloss could tell you that. I’m not sure the medium exists yet, Doug. You mentioned the prophet of the television age, Marshall McCluhan. I hoped you would look into mediums and messages. In fact, I hope more people do so before I finish this up and have the next Fireside Chat. Marshall McCluhan: the Medium is the Message drove an entire mindset regarding transmitting information into the human mind.
For a glimpse at the ideas of a visionary who shaped modern television and advertising strategy for our current generation of heroes, for better or worse. http://www.marshallmcluhanspeaks.com/lecture-panel/
To see the three paragraphs Google thinks you need to know about him and his “Ideal” for a global village connected by a giant communication network where information sharing elevated man, go to this link. You will get the googleplex version move along and look at the cutesy graphics. https://www.google.com/doodles/marshall-mcluhans-106th-birthday
Marshall and a few others of his ilk, the academician, were Idealists. They understood how the world changes depending upon one’s perception, depending upon where one is standing. Perhaps Agnes can help us learn a bit about what the world looks like from where she and those who want to speak through her for whatever reason have stood. And, if you don’t really care, well, for now, there is no law requiring you to read this. Nor is there one, yet, preventing any of us from doing so. Except for a few of us like Holly, who has not emailed me, encrypted or googlewise, who need cover in order to speak. I’m trying to create some cover.
I can’t pretend to understand what is happening with the Technocracy, or the Imperial Presidency, or the Military Industrial Complex, or the Survivalist Prepper types I know west of here. Agnes can talk to the ones who might contact her via encrypted email if they do not want to submit an essay via comment for consideration to elevation. I have some details to work out with the “logistics” of working with encrypted email and files, but as it turns out, all that work in government databases seems to have compartmentalized my brain. As I work with this laptop and its “abilities” I’m beginning to see how things work, now. (My old laptop that died was twelve years old and was missing an “e” and an “l” key. I had to keep them pasted into notepad to use by inserting them via macro. Read that again… I could build my own macro to insert an “e” into copy I was typing on a decrepit old keypad but now I’m accustomed to my old rotary phone and an ink pen and lost entire 2000 word TBP posts into cyberspace until Stucky told me it was CTRL Z instead of CTRL U. We could all use a brushup and tuneup to keep our minds running) .
Much editing and work to do on this before it becomes the first installment of what I hope is more than five Fireside Chats. But, for now, it is what we called back in Newswriting and Newsroom days, “the teaser.”
And, yes, Whosie Susie, it is obvious you have interesting background stories to tell as well. Perhaps you should talk to Agnes once she decides what the contact address should be.
Oh, and LGR… Horny Monk and Dirty Blonde? I’ll have you know I went Redhead this last rinse. Your bunny is in the mail.
Speaking of RiNS? I think he knows a lab technician with an interesting point of view Agnes would love to chat with. And so on…
Much editing and work to do on this before it becomes the first installment of what I hope is more than five Fireside Chats. But, for now, it is what we called back in Newswriting and Newsroom days, “the teaser.”
Holly has still not contacted me. I see that EC has, but will ignore that until I post this. I know it is Womany. I am a Woman.
“Eat, my child, for life awaits you and it is hungry.” (Who? Agnes but she hasn’t said it yet, has she?)
I see wonderful comments above but for right now I am trapped in the Dirty Box of Misery’s Holler, thousands of miles from the Thirty Blocks of Pennsylvania Squalor, waiting for my internet persona to stand up.
Let’s see if I did this correctly on the laptop. This email, Admin, is the gmail account Holly contacted me on. I plan to close it since now she’s planted her cookie cooties in my inbox, but I will wait to see if she contacts me there again.
Those with my encrypted email address? Are you having any issues?
Yes, many issues. My Hushmail account was overrun and rendered useless. I have employed StartMail (if it’s good enough for Snowden, it’s good enough for me!) Nobody in my circle will play when it comes to encryption. Sometimes it seems hopeless. Again, thanks to all here, for everything. Got to get to the range. Adios!
Agnes is everybody’s grandma, or great-grandma, depending on how old you are.
She looks like a combination of both of mine. I never knew either one very well. Were they alive today, they would both be around 120 years old. My maternal grandma was married to a relatively well known paleontologist. (My step-grandfather and the only grandfather I ever knew). She went with him on most of his digs and cataloged everything for him. I wish I had known her better. I am sure she would have had much wisdom for me. She died when I was nine.
Agnes, welcome!