From "Spider-Man posters, wood fires, food rations and car-shaped beds – what children’s bedrooms look like around the world/From a trailer in Kentucky to a tipi in Mongolia to an off-grid farmhouse in Wales, the places where children sleep offer a fascinating glimpse into their wildly divergent lives" (The Guardian)(vivid photos at the link).
About that trailer in Kentucky:
Alex lives in a trailer in Harlan, Kentucky, US, with his grandmother, mother, brother and two sisters. It is covered in soot from the coal-fire stove in the kitchen, which is the only form of heating. His grandmother sleeps on the couch, while the rest of the family sleep on mattresses on the floor: the boys are in one room, his mother and sisters in another. Last year, Alex’s father died from an opioid overdose....
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32 comments:
If you don't click the link, and you think you have a comment about the Kentucky trailer, then, you might miss the 8-year-old in Wales.
I noticed that what looked like the most privileged of the children was the activist.
Perchance is Alex kin to the Crowders? Or the Crowes? Regardless, I'm sure he'll be crossing paths with Raylan Givens at some point soon.
Alex lives in a trailer in Harlan, Kentucky
“Where the sun comes up about ten in the mornin'
And the sun goes down about three in the day
And you fill your cup with whatever bitter brew you're drinkin'
And you spend your life diggin' coal from the bottom of your grave
You'll never leave Harlan alive”
— Song by Patty Loveless
That seemed highly representative of the world, didn't it?
I didn't choose the yurt life. The yurt life chose me.
About that trailer in Kentucky:
White privilege in all its glory.
Looking for a stereotype, finding a stereotype.
A lithium battery can spontaneously or by force undergo a progressive exothermic reaction, but there are probably safer ways to stay warm.
My parents posted a cartoon inside my door, kid on phone in bedroom populated with microscopes, aquariums, toys, etc., "I have to stay in my room. I'm being punished."
Today we live in a world that no longer sees mass starvation every summer, even though the population is larger than ever. it is also a world in which the poorest of the poor owns a cellphone. India exports food today, and there are a billion cellphones in use there.
Why can't we be happy and celebrate things getting better instead of promoting stuff like climate hysteria?
Interesting choices for what photos of bedrooms the writer chose to write about. Most (all?) are surely outliers in even their given localities. Really- the typical child's bedroom in Ghana looks like that one? I can assure you the typical childrens' bedroom in Harlan, KY does not look like the one chosen for the article, and it is all but certain the typical one in Wales does not look like the one depicted either.
I'll bet that 15 Italian climate activist could EASILY afford to adopt to hillbilly from Harlan.
In the Olden Days, the people in Harlan made good money digging coal.. THEN, the union came and sent Mr Peabody's coal company out to Wright Wyoming. You want to know why Harlan is Poor? UNIONS
Home is an old farmhouse with no heating or running water, but they do have electricity from solar panels. Her father collects water from a local stream. Upstairs, everyone sleeps together on two double beds that have been pushed together.
this, OF COURSE, is The IDEAL! unlike that Yokel in Harlan, than lives in a trailer
Alex lives in a trailer in Harlan, Kentucky, US, with his grandmother, mother, brother and two sisters. It is covered in soot from the coal-fire stove in the kitchen, which is the only form of heating.
What are the odds Alex comes out as trans?
I doubt they are as high as a private school kid on the Upper East Side.
Kim Dotcom says that he is buying three Cybertrucks from Elon to store the solar power he uses to power his home. He says that they are cheaper than a Power Wall, and he speculates, will have a higher resale value. So there are lots of ways to live off the grid.
Shouldn’t there be a tag “USA is the worst country in the world and here’s the evidence”?
Gahrie
I don't know. Maybe people like being scared. I don't. Today I'm worrying about fixing the Element. But I'm not afraid of it.
Interesting choices for what photos of bedrooms the writer chose to write about.
Appeal to empathy and sympathy with trillions of dollars of capital and control hanging in the balance and elitist progress.
Great article and photos! Sometimes the Guardian can be very good. I have nothing shitty, sarcastic, or clever to add. I'll leave that to others.
Don’t leave your clothes on the floor. Pick up your toys if you’re not playing with them. Make your bed.
Loved the last two lines in the story about the girl from India:
"Her responsibilities at home are sweeping, gathering firewood and drawing water from the well. Her brother has no chores to do."
The biggest contrasts may be in housekeeping.
Yancey Ward said...
Interesting choices for what photos of bedrooms the writer chose to write about.
What did you expect? It's porn for the Grauniad readership.
"Why can't we be happy and celebrate things getting better instead of promoting stuff like climate hysteria?"
Because Maria in Italy isn't just gonna scare herself.
Mongolia has always been like this. It never built a city until after the death of Genghis Khan, and currently the country is basically one big city Ulan Bator (which was moved several times before it was permanently placed), a couple of far smaller settlements that would qualify as towns in the United States, and grazing land. For most of their history, the Mongols have been nomadic herders and their survival was completely dependent on moving their herds (and literally their homes) from one pasture to another to keep them alive, supplemented by hunting. That said, their neighbor was China, which was usually one of the most advanced peoples in the world. The Mongols typically would have silk in sizeable amounts, plus other Chinese items acquired through trade, gifts from the emperor, and/or raiding. Poor herders with expensive possessions is the norm.
One of the reasons that the Mongols exploded into the empire they became because the weather got better and the herds were thriving, so the men were freed up to do other things, like conquer China. The women could handle the herds just fine, especially now that it was on easy mode.
Conquering China and lots of other places was their undoing. On the steppe, alcohol is hard to acquire. The number of Mongol leaders of the empire that had alcoholism as a cause of premature death is long. Overeating was also a bit problem, as fat men do not make good horsemen.
Man, I swear, someday I'll move out of this dump and get a yurt of my own.
About that trailer in Kentucky: White privilege in all its glory. Looking for a stereotype, finding a stereotype.
We live in a country in which half of our "fellow citizens" think the white hillbilly kid is in fact possessed of so much privilege that he should be forced to stand aside so a less-qualified child of a wealthy black doctor or lawyer or politician can take his place in college.
A not-insignificant fraction of those "fellow citizens" of ours deplore the fact that he was ever born, and would outlaw white people from reproducing if they had the power.
"It's porn for the Grauniad readership."
I miss the Grauniad. It was better than this MI-6 propaganda shop, even if the new version has fewer typos. In the Bourne Identity movies, Jason Bourne contacts a reporter for the Guardian, and meets him, and IIRC, gets him killed. If they wrote that today, and were honest about it, the reporter would have brought a gun and finished off Bourne himself, except that Bourne would have known better than to give up his location to MI-6, err, I mean the Guardian.
Maria’s fears for the future of the planet have intensified to the extent that her mother has become concerned for her mental health.
Sorry, Mommy, but it’s already way too late.
Maria believes Vicenza and Venice will be submerged completely
Maria should take comfort from two sources. First, climate alarmists have been predicting the imminent rise of the oceans since two full decades before she was even born. And the seashore has remained stable despite the predictions. Maybe the predictions are wrong? Secondly, between them Barack Obama and his Vice President own three oceanfront mansions, which would be submerged and worthless if the predictions were ever to come true. Maria needs to learn to ignore what politicians say and only pay attention to what they actually do.
… and fears there will soon be global warfare.
A legitimate fear, but only because of the insane intransigence of Joe Biden and Vlad Putin and not in any way due to climate issues.
Other than, "We're all different and some are very poor" it isn't clear what the point of the book is.
From the Amazon blurb ...
This is the second volume in James Mollison’s well-known ongoing photographic project that documents the varied conditions in which children live, sleep and dream across the globe. A compassionate commentary on class, race and inequality, the detailed photographs of the children and their sleeping arrangements are set alongside texts about their families, habits, and hobbies, from martial arts boarding schools to climate change protests, hurricanes and refugee camps. This new volume touches upon the fast-changing issues of climate change and gender.
Aha!
Static Ping said...
On the steppe, alcohol is hard to acquire. The number of Mongol leaders of the empire that had alcoholism as a cause of premature death is long. Overeating was also a bit problem, as fat men do not make good horsemen.
Now do American Indians!!!
Perhaps this is an mi6 psyop. UK elites are mad that Mississippi has a higher GDP per person than the UK so they found some anecdotal photos. They had to change from MS to KY because even they could not be that obvious.
I guess Jordan Peterson is right.
My favorite neighbors are a very young couple rising above their circumstances. They live in a single-wide with a porch they fixed up. They own the half acre and the house outright. Every weekend they're planting fruit trees, garden beds, and tidy outbuildings. They go to county commission meetings. They put out free boxes of extra fruit and vegetables and firewood for the neighborhood.. The boy works on a farm and can build or fix anything. The girl works at a school cafeteria. They're planning children. They watch out for the old people. Their yard is lovely.
They're going to be very successful.
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