Frog Applause by Teresa Burritt for August 01, 2021

From a 1879 book of U.S. history, describing the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Their idea of a suitable distance for an outdoor smoking area was similarly drastic.

https://www.google.com/books/edition/Sadlier_s_Excelsior_Studies_in_the_Histo/TyYzAAAAMAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=%2211.+private+morals%22&pg=PA84&printsec=frontcover

Newspaper peopled by employees climbing the ladder of sucksess …

Religious intolerance is still a global scourge.

well at least all that punishment stopped them from doing all that stuff – oh wait – never mind

The punishment for reading Frog Applause was so severe that they could not record it, lest people think ill of them.

Let’s not forget the hysteria that consumed a village….

Witchery was banned, but one was accused of being a witch and they went berserk, accusing many….hanging innocent people, dipping them into the lake drowning them….

Just goes to show how judgmental groups are…to this day….

Excitedly, Cecil paged through his Employee Handbook, which had been delivered to him along with the instructions for reporting for orientation and assignment. There wasn’t anything new in it, really. It was pretty much the same as for every employment opportunity he had enjoyed in the past one hundred years. Still, while it was generally all boilerplate and compliance guidelines, the language changed over time. This new one was showing signs of having been produced by some of the progeny from the wellspring of his lens of changes. The language was less precise, allowing for more latitude on the part of the employment authority in defining any offense, but the warnings were more clear, stating with great precision the steps and measures required for corrective action or dismissal. It allowed for more cleverness on the parts of both the employer and the employed, to make hay of the stated regulations for whatever personal, or personnel, reasons they favored at any given moment.

Cat got your tongue?

What a telling epithet to lay on a long-suffering wife: “a scold.” The inescapable complementary image is that of the lazy, drunken lout.

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness ….”

Wash, rinse, repeat … warlock & reload, witch of us still does that …? (Time for my CaFfEiNe ritual …!)

At least many of us are putting on a more civilised image nowadays.

Pity poor Goodman Silas Grundy for denouncing his wife Goodwife Harriet Grundy for a scold. True, the entire town knew her to be irascible and of vile temper but little did they know the extreme lengths she would go to exact her revenge after she was released from her public humiliation.

Perhaps, if she’d stopped at Silas …

Deja vu

Meh. So much for the Good Old Days, eh? Now, the self-decorating crowd impale their own tongues and be-stud them. The Social Contract has so many escape clauses nowadays that it is porous as a sieve. Citizens just don’t give a frog’s rump anymore. “Do your own thing.”

Oh, this is wonderful!! Not just a comic strip, ‘Frog Applause’ is also educational! I’ve been trying to find references to the pictured device, which I heard references to once, in ‘QI’ (BBC).

archivist at heart ;+)

Day 2. Attitudes harden; let the punishment fit the crime!

What some people have in mind to “Make America Great Again.”

Consider the “Bureau of Sabotage” (look for it in Wikipedia).Most other solutions simply allow the cycle to repeat…