tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post7275813388334346149..comments2024-01-28T03:56:39.351-08:00Comments on TOM CLARK: Jack Delano: Freaks (The Rutland Fair, Vermont)Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-72510472509891461892010-09-11T03:04:16.496-07:002010-09-11T03:04:16.496-07:00Elmo,
It would always be good to believe in progr...Elmo,<br /><br />It would always be good to believe in progress, never more so than at a time like this, when things are moving backward at such a frightening rate.<br /><br />As a child I witnessed Freak Shows at Riverview Park, a large "amusement park" in Chicago. In a loud smoke-filled tent I watched fully grown adults gape at a woman who, naked to the waist, manipulated objects with a third arm, which grew out of her midsection. She laughed as she did this, and the spectators were impressed.<br /><br />I was born with a genetic connective tissue disorder, Ehlers Danlos syndrome, which has significantly affected my own stay in this amusement park known as human life.<br /><br />An early girlfriend let this information leak to her father, who took her to the Bronx Zoo, and there, sitting upon a bench, revealed to her, in the marked pages of a medical text, garish photos of persons suffering from this particular disorder.<br /><br />What do you suppose was his intent in doing this, I asked her.<br /><br />Discouragement, she said. <br /><br />I wish I could say things have changed since then. But I wonder. Said the freak.<br /><br />(By the by, that's the first time in a while I've heard the words "Christian" and "heart" used together. This is touching.)TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-91745174047570286862010-09-06T20:51:45.191-07:002010-09-06T20:51:45.191-07:00there but for fortune
go you and I,
but for geneti...there but for fortune<br />go you and I,<br />but for genetic drift or<br />shift<br /><br />being aggrandized by<br />someone else's odd<br />anomaly<br />perhaps an ultimate<br />gluttony<br /><br />it's scientific understanding<br />and perhaps a development<br />of the Christian heart<br />that has spread the sense<br />of brotherhood and inclusion<br />to the malformed, though they still<br />suffer from it,<br />they are not the objects<br />of derision or planned astonishment<br />of spectators<br /><br />we could say there has been some progress<br />then for those who were once considered "freak"Elmo St. Rosehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01588245143022651357noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-81615819881467261892010-09-03T01:52:51.187-07:002010-09-03T01:52:51.187-07:00By the way, for those who may have missed it, Jack...By the way, for those who may have missed it, Jack Delano's brilliant colour work from the Rutland Fair may be found <a href="http://tomclarkblog.blogspot.com/2010/07/at-fair-ii-reality.html" rel="nofollow">here</a>.TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-36776253165928065132010-09-03T01:49:07.142-07:002010-09-03T01:49:07.142-07:00I don't know whether it was those "sidesh...I don't know whether it was those "sideshow decoration" monkeys looking out at (laughing at?) the Yankee fairground spectators; or the prospect of mutant-human "wonders" (grotesqueries) promised at the Freak Show; or the forlorn empty tent of the Fortune Teller; or the even more forlorn "backstage" scene at the "girlie show"; or, possibly the most telling of all these evidences, the physically repellent (palefaced, largely corpulent) appearance of the sulky race crowd; but... at the end of the day, the stranger-in-a-strange-land quality of this particular photo-series, done by a young man from New York (son of Ukrainian immigrants), to whom Vermont may as well have been the Moon, struck me as a telling objective catalogue of monstrosity.TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.com