Extreme PC on the half shell

Oysters and mussels

The Whaleback Shell Midden, along the Damariscotta River, in Maine, contains the shells from oysters harvested for food dating from 2,200 to 1,000 years ago.

From Robert Whitcomb’s “Digital Diary’’ in GoLocal24.com

Here’s an example of the sort of political correctness/hyper-sensitivity that drives people into the toxic arms of Trump & Co.:

A couple of us are working on a little book about oyster farmers on the Maine Coast. We wanted to get a couple of pictures of middens, piles of shells left by Native Americans. So we asked a University of Maine project for permission to buy rights to use a couple of their photos. At a staffer’s request, we sent that person the only reference in the book to the middens:

"The central story of the Pine Tree State’s oysters begins on the Damariscotta River, which is really mostly an estuary and which  for millennia has been a superb  source of oysters. The Wabenaki Indians left huge piles (aka 'middens’) of oyster shells, some as high as 30 feet,  that can still be seen on the banks of the Damariscotta.  It might be the best environment in which to grow oysters on the planet.'

The staffer wouldn’t cooperate, saying that “Unfortunately, there are misconceptions involving Indigenous use of the coast.  I work with the tribes here in the State, and they and I are sensitive about how images and information regarding their lifeways are used.’’

This was accompanied by a list of things, with a couple of the staffer’s factual errors, the staffer presumed we didn’t know about Maine but in fact knew well.  My project partner is a Mainer, by the way. The all-too-common arrogance  found on the Isle of Academia.

This little tiff also reminded me of the intensely bureaucratic nature of so much of higher education,  as I learned in teaching gigs and otherwise dealing with that sector.

In any event, we found the photos we needed in the real world.