RE: L.O.E.S - 4 - The Power Of A Name

It was revelatory to me when I learned of the importance of culture. As a child I was raised in a community of half American families that had come to enjoy the natural wild resources of SE Alaska, that therefore had no roots, no depth of acculturation save that generally of America, a fierce devotion to personal and community liberty, which I embody whole-heartedly not only by virtue of acculturation, but my personal character which I was born with. The other half of the population had primeval roots in Sitka, which meant 'The Place' in Tlingit. This was their capitol, the heart of the roots of their people, and the cumulative research of human evolution I have undertaken all my life suggests a deep prehistoric continuous occupation of Sitka by the Tlingit that at least began as soon as the glaciers receded >10kya. They had a mythos involving all the features of the region, all their families were associated with the ecological aspects that mattered most to people. Wolf, Orca, Salmon, Raven, Eagle, and, oddly, Frog. Complex rules of inheritance and mandatory intermarriage between clans factored heavily in their lives, and their holidays reflected the events in the wildlife they considered important, the return of salmon to the rivers, the spring and fall migrations of the frogs, and so on.

This wasn't remarked on by me as a youth. I hunted and fished, foraged and manufactured tools at appropriate times, along with everyone else. The seasons ruled the lives of men, naturally. But when, as an adult, I furnished a home, I realized something I had not remarked on before, considering a chair just in terms of it's function, as a thing to sit on. A simple chair reflects millennia of culture. The astounding variety of chairs reflect the diversity of human purposes to which chairs are put. We sit on them for similarly diverse reasons, to take off muddy boots, to verbally joust with political rivals in parlors, to eat workman's dinners, or to show our etiquette at formal affairs, and chairs embody these cultural complexities in their manner of construction and materials.

I hadn't thought of that at all until I needed chairs for my home, and then the variety of options took me aback in my quest. An overstuffed leather battleship armchair for lounging and verbally jousting in parlors was a ridiculous choice for a mudroom, and the spare wooden perch suitable for the mudroom unsuitable for the living room, or for the dining table, where the comfort and appointments requisite to a chair were midway between what was suitable to the mudroom and what suited the parlor. I only had room in my first apartments for three kinds of chairs, in the aforementioned roles, and had an enormous variety of chairs to exclude, because some chairs for formal dining cost literally $T's, and these weren't fit for purpose for me, nor I for them, honestly.

Our cultures are reflected not just in our names, but in our tools, our places, and even in our chairs.

Thanks!