Taters

Remember my joy in reciting the numerous cream choices at the market?  I now can top that.  Yesterday I stopped in to buy potatoes.  Want to guess how many possibilities faced me?  Twenty-two!  I’ll spare you the list, but I can tell you I’m still feeling overwhelmed.#

Yesterday I hied off to the British Museum to catch I object:  Ian Hislop’s search for dissent.  Ian Hislop is the editor of Private Eye, a satirical magazine.  He enlisted the aid of BM staff to select +/- 100 objects to explore the idea of dissent or subversion.  It comes across with mixed success.  I found some of the objects fascinating, but overall the exhibition is a bit thin.  Turns out a major practice over the ages is to deface currency.  You can do it anonymously and get away with it.  The coin bearing your message stays in circulation, passing from hand to hand.  There were messages demeaning Cleopatra in order to get at Mark Anthony;  mocking pictures hidden within pictures; Afghan rugs with Soviet soldiers depicted as horned demons bordered by tanks and helicopters; etc.  The dangers of taking on the King, Pharoh, or any authority figure are made clear.  Of course there’s danger if the authority figure perceives something to be subversive whether it is so intended or not.  There’s a painting of a Chinese soldier of noble visage depicted as a terracotta warrior.  Heroic you say?  Sure, unless the government perceives the artist to be saying the military hasn’t had a new idea in a thousand years.

The oldest item in the collection is a brick with a mocking message about the pharoh from a laborer working on the pyramids. The newest item  is a pink pussy hat from the Washington women’s march.