Just back from the Y (and before I even bathed!), I looked up questions that came up in my brief conversation with Norm at the Y. I gave him a clarification on the Argentine ant I'd mentioned to him on Saturday. (It was in a column by Chip Johnson, who said the Argentine ant, losing because of the drought the green it requires, has started a home invasion, including into pocketbooks.) He had looked up the article and found the sensational photo:
That evoked him to quote some adage like "Observe the ant and be wise." He said he thought Ogden Nash had said that. So I mentioned Isabel, "The Adventures of Isabel," which he hadn't heard of. I remember that someone I dated (when I really shouldn't have) had given that to Jonathan "in spite of the racist illustrations." So, I had my research calling out to me.
I just looked up Little Black Sambo and found this like for a very long
article on the history of Sambo's
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/06/30/pancakes-and-pickaninnies-the-saga-of-sambo-s-the-racist-restaurant-chain-america-once-loved.html
And Ogden Nash on ants:
The ant has made herself illustrious
By constant industry industrious.
So what? Would you be calm and placid
If you were full of formic acid?
By constant industry industrious.
So what? Would you be calm and placid
If you were full of formic acid?
What Norm quoted turned out to be from the Bible!
Go
to the ant, thou sluggard; Consider her ways, and be wise:
As
for The Adventures of Isabel by Ogden Nash, did the illustrator Walter Lorraine
mean to imply that the cure turned the doctor from black to white? Of course in 1936, it was unusual that a
white child would have a black doctor, so maybe he's just in shadow until
"she took those pills from the pill concoctor" and "calmly cured
the doctor."
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