I’m East for a wedding, and while I wait for TG to suit up, I’m catching up on reading. I’ve bought a stack of books for Biggest Guy, and am slowly reading down them myself while I wait to give them to him.
So I just started the counterinsurgency classic, ‘Learning to Eat Soup With a Knife‘, by Nagl. And found a funny typo – or a suggestion that West Point (where he was a professor) isn’t as straight-laced as it’s reputation. From the Acknowledgements:
Special thanks to my mother and mother-in law, both of whom found books and provided emotional support and diversions from writing. Like mother, like daughter: Susi has fought insurgents in her pot plants and over the kitchen table as well as on the computer keyboard.
Who knew it was so much like UC Santa Cruz?? So far it does look like a damn interesting book…
My Mom used to call all of our inside plants “pot plants” and was DEFINITELY making reference to the container not the content! I assumed it was just a shortened version of saying “potted plant”, mostly because, well, it’s just common knowledge that we Texans don’t know how to talk right!
But do keep in mind Kris Kristofferson held a teaching position there. So maybe….
As a former West Point cadet (a drop-out, not a grad), I can tell you that in all that gray there is some creative freedom allowed at West Point for cadets. My best anecdotal evidence is that my screen-saver on my computer as a cadet was a big, loud, colorful peace symbol and I received absolutely zero flak for it.
Counter-intuitively, rebels are even more valued in places like West Point. You almost have to find ways to go ‘outside the box’ to maintain your sanity. Rules, and there are a dizzying number of often baffling rules at West Point, do not always perfectly indicate culture.
Let me know how that book reads, it’s been on my wish list for a looong time.
I believe Prof. Nagl spent a lot of time at Oxford, and being married to an English woman I can assure you that the vast majority of English/Welsh/Scottish/Irish/Australian etc. people call any indoor plants “pot plants”.
It’s just what they have called them for years, far longer than marijuana has been called “pot” I’m sure.
Mojo