Mementos Mori
thebaffler.com
Mementos Mori
1–10 of 26 posts
Re: Mementos Mori
#2Things that are disappearing now
Doorbells
Random Personal phonecalls
Re: Mementos Mori
#3Things that are disappearing now Doorbells Random Personal phonecalls
Friends dropping by unannounced.
Kids roaming free for most of the day.
Fun playgrounds without neutered climbing structures.
Re: Mementos Mori
#4The plural of “memento mori” is “memento mori.”
Re: Mementos Mori
#5Things that are disappearing now Doorbells Random Personal phonecalls
Friends dropping by unannounced. Kids roaming free for most of the day. Fun playgrounds without neutered climbing structures.
> Fun playgrounds without neutered climbing structures.
This is not a global thing though. While they replaced sand with woods chips or "smarter" materials that make it less painful to fall, the playground in my town are definitely more interesting that the one I got to play with growing up. They tend to rely less on pure strength and more on agility which is definitely better in my opinion.
Re: Mementos Mori
#6Earlier quoted context omitted.
Friends dropping by unannounced. Kids roaming free for most of the day. Fun playgrounds without neutered climbing structures.
> Fun playgrounds without neutered climbing structures. This is not a global thing though. While they replaced sand with woods chips or "smarter" materials that make it less painful to fall, the playground in my town are definitely more interesting that the one I got to play with growing up. They tend to rely less on pure strength and more on agility which is definitely better in my opinion.
Ah, yes, in the USA. I don't mind safer things to land on, but each generation over the last 20 years is less fun/scary. Slides were shorter, nothing to climb to give any hint of accomplishment, nothing to cause even the slightest fear.
Seems like the age of entertain kids in play structure dropped from 12 to 3 during the last 20 years.
Re: Mementos Mori
#7The Baffler has been a source of excellent weirdness in my life since 89? 90? Good folks.
Re: Mementos Mori
#8I'm quite fine with ashtrays disappearing.
Re: Mementos Mori
#9The plural of “memento mori” is “memento mori.”
It's a weird situation for a weird verb. Memento is an imperative form meaning "remember/be mindful". The plural form would be "mementote mori", but that makes no sense here at all, so I agree it would have been better to leave it alone as a fixed Latin expression grafted onto English.
Originally I thought the title was trying to be clever (expected something about breath mints, perhaps).
Nice to see The Baffler still kicking around, though!
Edit: the more I think of it, the more I think it's okay -- it is just a play on the phrase and our borrowed noun "momento". Objects that have died in relevance in some way, rather than things that remind us of our mortality directly. Surely the use of Latin in English is not too far from once ubiquitous and now largely forgotten ashtrays.
Re: Mementos Mori
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
Friends dropping by unannounced. Kids roaming free for most of the day. Fun playgrounds without neutered climbing structures.
> Fun playgrounds without neutered climbing structures. This is not a global thing though. While they replaced sand with woods chips or "smarter" materials that make it less painful to fall, the playground in my town are definitely more interesting that the one I got to play with growing up. They tend to rely less on pure strength and more on agility which is definitely better in my opinion.
I agree. Here in Toronto (Canada) we try to build the kinds of playground toys that children enjoy. They even have a pseudo rock climbing feature (It's PVC instead of rock) at the townhouse complex across the road from me. It has a few twists and turns, too. Not just a wall.
They might even get hurt a little sometimes, but kids find life boring without some sort of risk factor. Thankfully they're bouncier than us older folks.