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December 29, 2007 |
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FREE RANGE CHILDREN
FOUND by Michaela Severn
in Tucson, Arizona
I found this folded up on the ground when I was walking home.
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The Final Word... March 13, 2006 |
Love Billy ... October 23, 2008 |
Model Citizen August 28, 2007 |
Buy Shit... July 25, 2008 |
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We collect FOUND stuff: love letters, birthday cards, kids' homework,
to-do lists, ticket stubs, poetry on napkins, telephone bills, doodles -
anything that gives a glimpse into someone
else's life. Anything goes...
As in "Home on the Range"?
WHAT?
well, generally free range refers to
something like chickens or cows. free
range means that they aren't cooped up,
before they're slaughtered for dinner food.
hmm, children let roam free in a field,
prior to being sent off to slaughter for
your dinner food... you are what you eat.
So weird. Why would someone write that? I've heard people refer to their toddlers as "free range children" during the potty-training years.. running around without diapers. But never saw any sort of signage about it. Something tells me Hannibal Lechter might be interested in free range children.
maybe the writer lives in an area where the little kids run wild...and where the hell are the parents?? who's minding the children?? hence, "free range children"
or...maybe their last name is "Range" and he is giving his children away for "Free" heehee
This immediately brings to my mind a French Christmas song about three children who go out in the field to gather firewood and then get lost. They knock on a farmhouse door for help and it's an evil butcher's house. He chops them up and cooks them in a soup. One day St. Nicholas arrives at the door and magically brings the children back to life and terrifies the evil butcher. That's a nutshell version. Maybe someone else is more familiar with this story than I am, and can fill in the details. I think the song probably originates from a fairy tale or folk tale.
quiet, that's funny!
Maybe it's from after a garage sale. The only things that didn't sell were the range and the children. So they left them on the sidewalk with this sign:
Free Range
(and)
Children
Totally someone's rejected band name. Rejected, that is... until NOW. *scribbles*
perhaps it is a protest slogan like, "free Winona!"
but who are "Range Children?" honestly, if they are not clebrities what is the point for protest?
if only the weathermen had banded behind the likes of Paris Hilton...
Clover, the song sounds like a retelling of the original St. Nicholas legend which took place somewhere in Greece or Asia Minor. I first read the story in "Hans Brinker and the Silver Skates" which I believe you can find in e-book online.
In Holland St Nicholas is celebrated on Dec 5 or 6, and that's when the kids get their presents, St Nick being the patron saint of children (along with actors and prostitutes, hm.) Dec 25 is for church and family visiting. Or was...
Free Range Children--sounds like someone's been reading Jonathan Swift's "A Modest Proposal" too long and too late.
Happy New Year everyone. Someone somewhere has declared 2008 "the Year of the Potato."
Haha! All it is is a joke. A funny one, at that. This is the sort of sign I could imagine posted up against the rails of a childrens playground in a primary school. Think, all the children running around like chickens... free range. As opposed to battery-produced. Haha.
Free range children are tasty.
When I saw this I thought of those people who put their kids on leashes. Maybe someone was saying that children should be allowed to roam free.
lol @ tuvalu. There's this factory in my town that has this teeny weeny fenced in area for its employees to have lunch. (literally just big enough for a picnic table and some space around it) I often think of putting a sign up on the 'cage' with some kind of zoo-like explanation of the homo erectus inside the cage. Maybe i'll do that in april.... hmmmm planning ....
Are free range children kind of like feral cats. I think there are some in my neighborhood. feral children, that is.
I went to an unschooling conference in September - the kids there were definitely free range. If you look at school like a factory farm, which it is, then free range kids would be free from that brand of insanity.
I'm with you, Clover, the range and children are both free. Who out there hasn't felt that way once or twice before?
Free Range Children- as opposed to kids sitting in front of the TV/computer/video games. It's probably a better way to go with kids. I wouldn't know since we live in an apartment and I sometimes have to turn the tv on just to get dinner made. I dream about living in the country side and just being able to chuck them outside if they get to wiley.
This find has brought out some of the best comments in a long time, I think. And it's early yet. Only three words. Fun with Found!
Crazy cat lady, just last night i watched my sister feed the baby feral cats on her farm. There are nine -- a mama cat and two litters this year. They look like different-sized sets of the same kind of stuffed animal toy. My sister says she's going to get the oldest litter spayed. What about cat reproduction does she not understand? She's a math teacher, too. Heck, I'm probably to blame. I told her that the original barn cat would do a better job catching mice if she fed her, because it would make her healthy and strong. It was true. But it also made her multiply. Those little free range cats are so SO cute! Like little bobcats, all identical. But they live out in the cold wet rain and they must eat. Freedom isn't all it's cut out to be.
Range Free Children
Range free, children.
Children range free.
Free children range.
Range! Free children!
God, I hope that isn't the name of a daycare center or something.....
Mmmmm... Delicious... The only baby humans I eat are free range...
Googling the finder brought this up:
http://www.foundmagazine.com/comments/1070
Declaring Hen Freer
Nightingale, you are quiet the sleuth! Funny, I first pictured Michaela walking along a fence by a country road (like in Napoleon Dynamite) where she found this paper. Now I think she's probably a college student.
Perhaps, as Katilla suggested, this one WAS a band name. And perhaps the list from Michaela's previous submission is also a list of possible band names. Someone who has more time could do some MySpace searches. I can only imagine what the music would sound like.
Mama Cat said:
"I told her that the original barn cat would do a better job catching mice if she fed her, because it would make her healthy and strong. It was true. But it also made her multiply."
OMG - I don't want more kids. Should I stop eating? I never realized the connection before.
Curious, reproduction from overeating is only automatic if you're an ameba, or a Tribble. Now, having just dated myself, I will slip back into my December coma.
I've never heard of free range children! Up until now I've only had the "raised on nintendo" variety that taste like that Lick-M-Aid powder, only way more sour ;) I guess I should move to Tucson and eat healthy!
Free range tofu: Epitome of health food, or just another Internet scam?
You be the judge.
I prefer my children to be certified organic.
This was the working title of "Children of the Corn".
This reminds me of a daycare I once visited [I was catching a ride home and the lady had to pick up her son]. The kids were all in one big room.. maybe like 15x18 at most. There were hardly any toys and only one door, which had a babygate on it. All of the kids who could walk were piled at the door, biting each other for "the good spots". It was terrible.
All of the adults who ran the daycare were in the next room over watching tv.
This is so funny, as are the comments.
Basil, I too thought of "A Modest Proposal". That's a bit twisted, though. :)
Yeah! Cause I heard that those range children were being held against their will. FREE THE RANGE CHILDREN!!
Tastes just like chicken
Free range children don't taste any better than the ones kept in pens... but it's just more humane that way.
Baby Basil, can dating yourself cause you to reproduce?
I'm pretty sure dating yourself is in itself a form of birth control. For that matter so is homosexuality.
oh, listening in...only if you're easy.
Good anagram, Ghost! Sleepless: that sounds like the day-care center from hell [shudder]. Clover: you are so funny! Belated birthday greetings, Kat. Baby Basil: you've given me new appreciation for St. Nick. Hahahaha!
I knew YOU'D get it. Hahaha!
" just last night i watched my sister feed the baby feral cats on her farm."
I wish my baby would eat feral cats. It would be so much cheaper than Gerber and easier than breast feeding.
I imagine free range children are a good source of protein. I always try to to get organic/ free range anything because I am more comfortable with it. For instance, I totally do not support farmed fish, it really creeps me out. I think eating "weak" food produces weak people.
p.s. mona- i like your idea about the april signage:-)
cat lady:yes, feral children are just as much of an issue as feral cats, only sometimes they bite more.
this is my favorite found in AGES. You kids crack me up!!!
wow i actually lol-ed
*resists urge to make Madeleine McCann joke*
glad you resisted, that would have been a very lame joke.
I'm in Tucson and I've never seen free range children wandering about. Maybe they're outside of town with the open range cattle. I wonder if they get stuck in those cattle guards they put across roads, if so.
Now I saw this a different way... not so much the "Kidz Gone Wild" as the way things wuz while I was growing up... Even paranoid parents didn't have a problem with kids walking (long ways some times) to & from school, getting side-tracked by creeks & pollywogs & whatever lay between the school and the destination home. ("Be sure to be home by dinner!!")
Heck, lots of people didn't even know where the key to their doors were. My grandparents would lock the front door if they were going to be gone for more than 3-4 days, but all the other doors to their house were easy-access.
So - I may be oooold (I was in 6th grade in 1962)... but I was truly blessed to grow up in a world without a lot of the Hideous Headlines stuff going on.
sarasara.. i'll do it, this will be my april fools joke of the year. I'll post the results on myspace... hey, wouldnt it be funny if someone took down my sign, and made it a found?
Today's find and comments are why I love found! It's fun to loll and lol! So many lols today.
Btw, I can't believe how fast stuff changes. Now lol is "dated." Lol has dated herself. Oh! LOL!
(Geezo, STOP it Clover!)
Camelia, I was only one year old in 1962, but my growing-up years were the same way. We were totally 'free range children' and very safe in the neighborhood. Now, in 2007, I won't even let my 6th grade daughter walk 3 houses down the street to her friend's house, because being a 'free range child' is a thing of the past.
Ahhh Clover--the rest of that "dated" expression might just possibly be "geezo peezo"?? Hmmm? Those were the days. When a kid could get his mouth washed out with soap for saying "geez, mom". And the first time you said the f word, if you ever did, was in college--and you felt guilty for days.
This find has suddenly reminded me of the odd little song at the end of "Bagdad Cafe" (love that movie!): "Home on the gas range, workin for the small change; if you're feelin' blue, get a new tatoo at a little truck stop where life's just a lovin' situation..."
Yep, Mel in Den... It's so weird (for me) to be so old that people don't even believe some stuff...
When *I* went to grammar, jr., high school, gals were REQUIRED to wear dresses. When I was in kindegarten, we lived in a very cold & foggy area and I had tonsillitis a LOT. So, I had to wear the skirt/dress -- with long pants on underneath!!
I mentioned this to one young lady (who apparently every day of her life wore overalls).... and she said "WHAT!!?! And this was in AMERICA!!??!!!??"
True, Camelia, true...seemed like the colder your area, the stricter the dress code for girls. Winter-weight tights are ITCHY, OK? Even if they're not wool. And for a 6 year old, managing them when you really have to pee is no picnic, especially at school! The dress code didn't change to include pants-for-girls in my area until about 1975. No wonder we all changed to jeans and T-shirts with loud cries of joy!
I was personally responsible for the elimination of swimming caps for girls at my school in 1976. The logic was "girls have long hair that clogs up the filters." Except I wore a VERY short haircut, while there were guys with hair down to their shoulders. This was brought forward at the only middle-school council meeting I ever attended. The motion carried. No more caps. No more gym-class induced headaches, no more pressure stripes on our foreheads that lasted all afternoon.
Yay for common sense in dress!
I don't like feral children, they hide under the table and bite your ankles. Free range children are much more fun...no predators, no fear.
Clover, come down from the ceiling! You're as high as a kite! Must be a reaction from all that Christmas washing-up.
Basil, thanks for the St Nicholas story. It comes in Benjamin Britten's cantata 'St Nicholas' (a movement called 'Nicholas and the Pickled Boys') but I hadn't heard it from anywhere else. Weird that the legends associated with St Nicholas (fourth-century Bishop of Myra in Asia Minor) involve the number three -- three pickled boys, three penniless daughters saved from prostitution by St Nick's anonymous donation of bags of gold (hence the three gold balls on the pawnbroker's sign) -- hence too St Nick being Santa and giving presents to children -- and there were some other 'three's too I forget now.
(Oh, and we hang up stockings for Santa because that's where St Nick's bags of gold landed up when he threw them in through the window -- in the daughters' stockings hung up by the fire. That was THEIR story anyway.)
They really taste much better than caged!
Now wait!! Maybe... the Range Children are incarcerated!! Locked up!! Behind bars & doin' time!!
You know, like in them Olden Daze: "Free Huey Newton" ... "Free Angela Davis" ... "Free Radicals"
(oh! Free radicals are new-fangled and not to be championed I guess!)
Honest confession (I gotta laugh at myself)... I was in 6th grade in 1960-61. The only reason I remember that is because in Current Events (or whatever) one gal brought in a paper with "1961" written on it. She turned it upside down & showed us the amaaaazing-but-true fact that, upside-down OR downside-up, the year read the same!! (whatever that is called...)
I think she said that the next closest date like that would be (sort of cheating) -- 2005!!
Sheesh! I 'fibbed' out of Pride & Ego.. and how dumb!! one year... hmmm... Like my friend says, "When I was growing up I couldn't figure out why Jack Benny would say he was '39' years old! Euuuww!! How can you brag on being that old!!"
True Story (in 3 parts):
Part 1: I graduated high school in 1967. Gals still had to wear dresses/skirts -- Because it was mini-dress-fashion era, there was a rule about skirts not being too short. To determine if THAT rule was broke, the dress-wearer had to kneel on the ground, and the rule-tester used a ruler to make sure the hem was a couple-of-inches-above-the-knee (2? 4?).
Part 2: That school year (1966-67) something really weird happened: One day, 3 senior gals wore a NEW fashion, "Granny Dresses". These, of course, were hemmed down near the ground when standing. Well, the Admin folk (principal etc.) took each of the gals HOME to change into "normal" wear, so they'd be allowed back in school that day!! {and yes, this STILL was in America!)
Part 3: I graduated June 1967, my sister started as a freshman in 1967-68. She joined the school newspaper/journalism as her 'elective'. That year, she wrote a crusade of articles in the paper about the stoopid must-wear-a-dress rule.. and got it changed!!
Part 4 (yes, I fibbed again, but it's an interesting after-note)... In her junior year, she & her friend sold advertising for the newspaper & yearbook. Within the first 4-6 weeks, they had actually sold more advertising than had ever been sold in a year... So they held out the purchased ads, and almost every day they received permission to skip class & use the teacher's car to "sell ads". Then they slowly submitted their already sold ads!
AHAHAHAHAHA!
Thank you Lunar, my ramblings are Our Secret!! (This is fun; I'm prattling on & on, not being Politically Co-Rect -- and nobody is giving me a ration!!)
Cheaper than therapy, eh, Camelia? You should write a book! Just be careful, certain individuals read past Finds religiously, so your secrets aren't as secret as you think. Hahaha!
My dad graduated high school in 1961, and I remember looking at his class ring when I was little and marvelling at it because the year was "spelled out" on the corners around the center stone: 1 and 9 on the top L and R corners, 6 and 1 on the bottom L and R, so it read the same upside down and right side up. I was about 5 when that shook my lil ol world.
There was an interview on the radio this morning with the daughter of the founder of Summerhill (a 'progressive' school in England) and she referred to the students as 'free range children'.
Coincidence or wot?
Treehouse of Horror?
Remember when Principal Skinner says "and now to check on the free range children" :)
Hee hee.
i also thought of the simpsons when i saw it. to be honest it's the only possibility!
Yeah, Ghost... I've been disclosing LOTS lately. Heck, even *I* could probably put 2 & 2 together & figure out a few things about myself!! (might as well add another True Confession: -- I even put in a post (somewhere) that was soooo PC-not that I actually made up a made a NEW nom-d-plume!) (you know -- a fake identity to protect the reputation of my fake identity!) (I think the '60s were too kind to me! lol)
Lil ol'--- Heck you were pretty bright when you were even Littler Lil Ol'! (Oh, oops -- unless you are 5 yrs old now?)
We all do that, Camelia, have aliases for our nom d'plumes! Welcome to free speech! We're all free range children!!
Or... Free Range Posters? Free Range Foundlings?
btw -- who has the link to our Coffee Table Found book? anybuddy?
Best band name ever.
Pepper and Butter: Are you pictured cooking?:
http://www.foundmagazine.com/comments/272