First week of the Fall semester in “sunny Tucson”:http://www.cs.arizona.edu/camera/. New classes, new students — including the undersocialized ones who come into your office asking to use the phone — and an uptick of amusing activity in the “Police Blotter”:http://wildcat.arizona.edu/papers/98/2/01_50.html. The Blotter is kind of a litany (“reports stated”) of the joys of being young, engaged in illegal activity, and perhaps a little slow off the mark:
A student was referred to the diversion program for possession of marijuana in the courtyard between Coronado and La Aldea, 822 E. Fifth St., Friday at 10:23 p.m., reports stated.
Police smelled burning marijuana coming from the area and saw the student who had red, bloodshot eyes and whose breath smelled of marijuana, reports stated.
Police asked the student if he had any marijuana on him and he said he had smoked earlier but didn’t have any on him and said, “You can check me,” reports stated.
At that point he put his hands in his pockets and said “Oh yeah, I have a little,” reports stated.
These are the people I have to interest in the transition from Feudalism to Capitalism. As it turns out, it can be easier than you might think (when they’re not stoned). For instance, you can go a long way with a discussion of the division of labor that begins with the question “Why the hell are there nearly a million people living here in the desert?”
{ 11 comments }
bad Jim 08.25.04 at 9:20 am
Yeah, well, maybe that’s the sort of kids you get in Arizona.
In my college years we had helicopters tear-gassing us, we faced National Guardsmen with drawn bayonets, policemen on horseback, bean-bag guns and rubber bullets.
(And we walked five miles to school uphill both ways in the rain.)
I can only remember one instance of sharing a joint on campus, after a fencing bout. That probably says more about my memory than my behavior, though.
Peter Murphy 08.25.04 at 9:27 am
I’d be more interested in the related question “Why the hell can there be nearly a million people living here in the desert?” Would the answer be the nearby Colorado river?
Dutch 08.25.04 at 1:54 pm
A description of luddites in a police state? (c)
Where else could you find students without a cellphone, and students arrested for having a bit of marijuana?
The current page again has someone unable to call the police from his cellphone, and the following crime:
Police searched the room and found a Corona beer in the bathroom.
Anyone knows beer should be kept in a fridge before consumption. But the real crime is what the locals here call ‘alcohol abuse’:
the Corona was poured out, reports stated.
What a waste!
yabonn 08.25.04 at 2:20 pm
I suppose the two big eras of this kind of cities are pre air conditioning and post a-c. Still doesn’t really explain the “why” though.
rea 08.25.04 at 2:36 pm
“Would the answer be the nearby Colorado river?”
Tuscon is not particularly near the Colorado, unless “within 300 miles” counts.
jif 08.25.04 at 3:59 pm
Which is preferrable- the stoner students who can’t remember that they have a little stash in their pocket, or the student who answered her cell phone in a class of 15, and who stated during a discussion of class in American society that “well, like, there’s only so much stuff and some people have it and some people don’t, so, like, whatever.” ? Not that I’m advocating drug use, but sometimes I wondered if a bong hit or two wouldn’t have helped.
Lysander 08.25.04 at 8:13 pm
I’m still stuck with “is kind of a litany “
Todd Fletcher 08.25.04 at 9:08 pm
Deserts are healthy places to live. No nasty mold and mildew. I get sick a lot less here in AZ than I did when I lived on the East Coast. Besides, why are people so surprised at desert cities? Many of the earliest civilizations arose in deserts or semi-deserts, like Mesopotamia, Egypt and the Indus Valley.
Besides, there’s good mexican food here.
Another Damned Medievalist 08.25.04 at 11:18 pm
Well, you could start out by remembering that there is no such thing as a transition from Feudalism to Capitalism, since the former is a very loose term that covers a set of political and social relationships, while the other is all to do with economics. Perhaps you mean manorialism?
Another Damned Medievalist 08.25.04 at 11:50 pm
Apologies for the terse tone, but there’s a reason lots of medievalists (the people who kinda know a little something about it) call it “the ‘F’ word.” I don’t think Brown is completely right about it (Brown, Elizabeth A.R. “The Tyranny of a Construct: Feudalism and Historians of Medieval Europe,” AHR 79 (1974), pp. 1063-1088), but I also would argue that most of us don’t completely buy Bloch’s interpretation, or at least might say that he’s often misinterpreted in terms of what the actual feudal relationship is.
Another Damned Medievalist 08.25.04 at 11:54 pm
Apologies for the terse tone, but there’s a reason lots of medievalists (the people who kinda know a little something about it) call it “the ‘F’ word.” I don’t think Brown is completely right about it (Brown, Elizabeth A.R. “The Tyranny of a Construct: Feudalism and Historians of Medieval Europe,” AHR 79 (1974), pp. 1063-1088), but I also would argue that most of us don’t completely buy Bloch’s interpretation, or at least might say that he’s often misinterpreted in terms of what the actual feudal relationship is.
[got a 500 error, and am trying to post again — sorry if it duplicates]
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