Althouse: "As we mix the clay, the clay mixes us."

May 29, 2010

"As we mix the clay, the clay mixes us."

Clay-stomping (and artist-philosophy) for schoolkids.

6 comments:

Andrea said...: In Soviet Russia, clay stomps YOU!; 5/29/10, 9:06 AM
rhhardin said...: Great explosions in the kiln too.; 5/29/10, 9:12 AM
Anonymous said...: Yes, it's called "playing." Kids do it naturally all the time.; 5/29/10, 9:56 AM
Unknown said...: Clay all over your hair, your clothes, your feet. I can just hear my mother as I come home from school.; 5/29/10, 11:08 AM
MadisonMan said...: I read about this in the paper today, and could only ponder the laundry that it would cause.; 5/29/10, 12:10 PM
Wince said...: On the south-eastern tip of Martha's Vinyard is Moshup beach, famous for it's clothing optional attitude and brightly colored clay cliffs called Gay Head (ahem, don't confuse that name with Provincetown on the tip of Cape Cod).

In 1991 in Aquinnah, residents at a special town meeting argued emotionally over a proposal to make nude bathers subject to arrest without warrant and to very large fines. The townspeople rejected the proposed measure, although nudists and others were required to desist from the practice of taking “clay baths,” which were damaging the Cliffs...

A lost pleasure from those times in Gay Head was the “clay bath” made by damming up a flow of water from the Cliffs. Wallowing in the clay and painting it on one’s body felt cool and looked tribal.

And it was cool, at least while you were still young. The 2008 magazine continues...

But he notes Martha’s Vineyard’s tradition of “tolerance and live and let live.”

Nicky directly blamed the Bush administration; Bob does not trace it so directly to the White House, but says there is definitely a new prudishness abroad in America, particularly official America.

“There is no doubt some of the rhetoric is getting a little more stiff,” he says. “There have been hard times in recent years.”

And yet a national poll commissioned by the Naturist Education Foundation, the nonprofit, informational arm of TNS, in 2006 found a substantial majority of people (74 percent) thought there was nothing wrong with nude bathing at designated beaches.; 5/29/10, 1:53 PM