Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers)

Seeing how we’ve apparently gotten into a ‘Before They were Famous’ series of RePrint posts, let’s finish it up with an earliest post on rogers.

Damn! A lot of posts have our Herdonian brethren as primary thematic focus if not the clear topic/subject matter. Let’s go with this one, as we have a Six Sentence Story to ‘find’.

“Sing a song of Sixpence, a pocket full of rye…” what is it about rogers and the Past? the Wakefield Doctrine pauses, reflects and offers you Pie*

January 26, 2012

Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine ( the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers )

Sing a song of sixpence,
A pocket full of rye.
Four and twenty blackbirds,
Baked in a pie.*

* Many interpretations have been placed on this rhyme. It is known that a 16th century amusement was to place live birds in a pie. An Italian cookbook from 1549 (translated into English in 1598) contained such a recipe: “to make pies so that birds may be alive in them and flie out when it is cut up” and this was referred to in a cook book of 1725 by John Nott.^[1][2] The wedding of Marie de’ Medici and Henry IV of France in 1600 contains some interesting parallels. “The first surprise, though, came shortly before the starter—when the guests sat down, unfolded their napkins and saw songbirds fly out. The highlight of the meal were sherbets of milk and honey, which were created by Buontalenti.
( source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sing_a_Song_of_Sixpence )

Well, didn’t they know how to have fun back in the 1600’s ? ( ” Hey, Ephesus!!  dude, yo  when her Majesty the Queen Mother sees the birds fly up from the table, she will surely impart a smile upon thee…dawg” )

Be that as it may, today we talk about the thing that rogers have for the Past.  Lets dispense with all the work of constructing a well-crafted narrative and get all Bullet Pointy on this bad boy! So, ‘The Past’ and the rogers? Welll…we’ll have you know that:

• rogers live for the Past (as scotts live in the Present and clarks live for the Future)
•  most ‘Historians’ are clarks and yet rogers are the people who you think of when you are interested in knowing something old, or out of date or archaic, what the hell!
• the more involved the family tree, the more you need a roger, and not just because they love Yellow #2 Pencils**
• in order to maintain a coherent history, you must have an internal consistency… rogers  love repeating patterns
• the past is ‘a place’ that rogers know they can be alone and by themselves, at least for a little while
• hey, it’s really rather simple! …the farther back in time a tradition or a practice or a dogma extends, the bigger the herd that has come to be associated with it and, like scotts…for rogers ‘more is more’! …following is the epitome of this ideal:
• …Ken Burns…

This quality of the rogerian personality type is one of the most positive and essential, not only to the rogerian people, but to mankind as a whole. It has often been said that rogers are responsible for society and a (certain) continuity of civilization, without which we would all still be living on the savannah…darting down to the stream in the evenings nervously keeping one non-stereoscopic eye on the treeline, alert for the sudden movement of a scott!  As a matter of fact. I was talking to a rogerian friend, Valerie about the Doctrine and the positive contributions of her people to life and I put it this way, “Yes scotts are active and loquacious and really get things done, but would you want to fly across the country on a plane designed and built by a scott?”

I believe at that moment, Valerie understood and become proud of her people***

Tomorrow is Friday so get your ears out, it is Video Friday!!

** …and nice, clean, full-sized #2 Pencils! certainly not what you would find in your hands if you made the mistake of asking a scott for a pencil!! (think teeth-marks, stubby and prone to smudge)

*** which emotion, of course, was immediately transformed into a sense of  fervent righteousness and a total conviction of the deficiency of  all non-herd members

*