Going Feral: The nature themed tattoo

Going Feral: The nature themed tattoo: 

The nature themed tattoo

Let me note, in general, that I'm not a huge fan of tattoos.  That being said, some of them are striking works of art now days, something that really wasn't true of most tattoos back when I was a young adult, although I will note a fellow National Guardsman, a full timer, back when I was a Guardsman had a striking tattoo of a tiger.  He was a jerk, but that tattoo was very well done.

Anyhow, somehow within the last twenty or so years tattoo artistry has dramatically improved.  Included in that are some with some really striking natural themes, including the following.

 

Observations on Denver

Some years we have Rockies' ticket package. We did last year, but we didn't go to a single game for a variety of reasons.  Work was the big one, but then, about this time just a year ago, I was under the knife for the second time as well.

We went to the Orioles game on September 1.

The choice of the date was not my own, September 1 is the opening day of blue grouse and dove season, but I didn't complain about it.  A young member of the family loves the Orioles and that's why it was chosen.  When you get old, as I am, you yield in favor of younger family members, so I did, without complaining.  You also learn, hopefully, not to complain where in former days you might have.

It was a great game.

I've been to Denver several times since my surgery, but they were all hit and run type of deals for work.  In and out, with no time to spare. This is the first time I've lingered in the Mile High City for awhile, and the first time over a weekend for a long while.  Therefore some observations, I guess.

It was hot.  "Unseasonably hot" is what I'm hearing.  I'm not a fan of hot.  As Wyoming has already been chilly in the morning, and I couldn't find my Rockies jersey, I wore a light flannel shirt.  I don't really feel comfortable in just wearing a t-shit in that setting anymore, so I when I got hot, right away, before the game, I went and bought a jersey.  Now I have two.

I can't wear my old New York Yankees pull on jersey anymore.  I'm too big and its too small.  My Sox jersey is messing a button.

It's really weird to think that at least into the 1940s people dressed pretty formally at baseball games.  Men were in jacket and tie, something you'd never see now.

We were there on Sunday.

Holy Ghost is, in my view, the most beautiful church in the region and the most beautiful one I've ever been in.  We went to Mass early Sunday morning.  It's stunning and it never fails to impress me with its beauty.  

A beautiful church really adds something to worship, and a sense of the Divine.

Not a new impression, but the street people problem is out of control.

I don't know what can be done to help these people.  Some, you can tell, are now so organically messed up that they'll never really recover.  

In various places, when approached for money by somebody on a street, I'll give them some.  But not in Denver.  The people on the streets are so messed up I know where that money is going.  Something needs to be done to help them, but I have no idea what it would be.

The day before I went down I read that the Venezuelan criminal gang Tren de Aragua (TdA) had taken over two apartments in Aurora.  Looking it up, it's apparently true, and they're using them for sex trafficking.

The greater Denver area, fwiw, has never been all that nice, in spite of what people might say. I recall going down in the 1980s, when I was an undergrad at UW, and parts of were really rough then.  16th Street was just starting to develop.  The area around LoDo was really really rough.  I can recall walking from an off street towards 16th past a really rough looking bar mid morning when a prostitute came spilling out of it, probably just getting off work.  The Episcopal Cathedral, St. John in the Wilderness, had lots of broken windows, broken by rocks thrown into them from the street.  Colorado Blvd in the region of what is now Martin Luther King Blvd was as complete red light district full of XXX movie theaters.  Lo Do was a no/go zone.

Coors Field really cleaned up a lot of that, and much of downtown Denver has really gentrified.  16th Street, however, is a drug flop house as is much of downtown Denver.  The legalization of marijuana, COVID, and a highly tolerant city council has created an enormous problem.

Anyhow, I don't go into Aurora much, but I don't really recall it being really nice.  I recall my father, who had experience with Denver going back to the 1930s, mentioning it had never been nice.

We had a big breakfast at Sam's No. 3.  It's a great cafe.  A real urban one, which probably makes it surprising that I'll go there, but it is great.

At the game, I had a hot dog.  I usually have "brots", rather than dogs, if I have your classic small sausage on a bun.  I'd forgotten, accordingly, what real dogs taste like.  I like them, but I don't like them as much as brots.

Converse Chuck Taylors are comfortable for sitting at a game, but not for hiking around a city.  Like my baseball jerseys, I like Chuck Taylors but given my line of work and my off time avocations, which I unfortunately seem to be able to engage in less and less, I have little call to actually wear them.

Regarding clothing, while I hesitated to post it, a lot of young women in urban settings don't dress decently when dressing casually.  I don't mean "dress up" either. Perhaps because it was hot, a lot of them had on "summer clothes" which showed way more skin, and other things, than is decent, in my view.  For that matter, coming out of a hotel a barista was coming in wearing a t-shirt who had chosen to omit undergarments and was showing, well, through.  I almost turned to my daughter who was with me and thanked her for not dressing like so much of what I was seeing, but I didn't.

On that, some of the younger women were clearly with a parent. Why would you let a child, even if not a child any longer, go out dressed like that?

I'm not really proud of noticing and I didn't glare or stare, but frankly with so much on display its impossible not to notice anything.  I'm old, but not dead, and there's way too much on display, certainly way more than is the case up here in the rude hinterlands.  A Christian should have custody of their eyes but I'd rather other folks make it easy to exercise.

Also on display were vast numbers of tattoos, some artful and some really bad.  Having a bad tattoo has to be a bummer.

I was reminded of how much I don't like country music.  My wife and daughter do, so we listed to one of the XM Radio satellite radio channels on the way down.  I never listen to contemporary country music, although over the years I've gotten to where I like some of the older stuff.

Anyhow, I was surprised by how much country music is just devoted to getting drunk.  It's weird.

A fair amount is devoted to bad decisions, particularly with alcohol and women.  Some has gotten inappropriate towards women in general.  One of the songs on the way down I heard was Country Girl, which involves alcohol, and also the lyrics "shake it for me, girl".  I've been around country people, including country girls, my entire life and I've never seen a country girl shaking whatever for anyone.  Indeed, I've always been impressed by how almost everyone who lives in the sticks knows how to swing dance and tends to wear, usually, a fair amount of clothing, even in the summer.

Ink

 

Kid with ink drawing mimicking tattoos. A lot of the tattoos I saw the other day were no more artfully placed and were equally bad.

I went to two weddings in two weeks.  They were both outdoor weddings.

Weddings in July mean, of course, that people's clothing is relatively light.  Women wearing dresses, generally will wear light ones, although anymore, a lot of women don't wear dresses to outdoor summer weddings.  The nature of summer dresses is such that women therefore are showing more skin than they do in, let's say, January.  This is true for a lot of men as well, although not to the same extent.

One of the guys I know at the second wedding is a year or two out of the Navy, in which he spent six years.  His comment, "geez, with all these tattoos, maybe I should get a tattoo".  It was said in at least semi jest.

That a sailor would comment on the plethora of tattoos really says something.

There were quite a few women with tattoos at the first one, but it was also on a ranch, and probably half or more of the attendees were actual working ranchers or hands of some sort.  Young women at that one were closely associated with ranching.  Tattoos haven't spread, at least here locally, to the agricultural class.

They certainly have to the legal class.  I'd guess about 1/3d of the paralegals, who are usually women, have tattoos and I know some lawyers who have tattoos, which used to be the kiss of death for employment in the law.

Anyhow, never in my life have I seen so many outright bad tattoos as I did at the second wedding.  And I mean horrifically bad.

The best example was a young woman (I'm terrible at guessing ages) who was nicely dressed in a summer dress and who has attractive in the sort of youthful pouty way.  The sort of girl whom, if she'd been that age when I was that age, in the early 80s, would have drawn a lot of attention at a dance.  But the horrific tattoos. . . 

Both arms were tattooed, one with a horrific crying heart, which is just childish in the extreme.  And there was some sort of tattoo of an off-color dead center on her sternum.  Roman numerals?  Initials?  I dunno as the color made it difficult to see, if noticeable, and a person would have had to close the distance to read it.

Do women really want men reading tattoos that are cleavage originated?

The same young woman and an older woman (late 30s?), who may very well have been her mother, had very fresh tattoos that started on their lower side and curbed into their bodies. They were large.  Now, these tattoos were such that they'd have had to have been pretty much completely nude in order to view them, which raises its own question.  If they're just elaborate floral decorations, what's the point, unless you want to show them off, in which case, well, that's its own problem.

One young man had a long arm tattoo that was a set of geographic coordinates.  Why?  Whatever the reason, these remind me of the blood group tattoos that members of the SS had during World War Two, or that Vietnamese Marines had during the Vietnam War.  Both of those tattoos, by the way, gave the person away later on to the victors in those war as to their wartime service.

Some young woman had a huge, but quite well-done tattoo of a water dog of some sort.  It was very artfully done, but extremely large.

Now, I have to be careful here.

I have to be careful as 100% of the female members of this household are now tattooed, the spousal unit having a small tattoo that's a significant signature to her, and the female descendant having one or deep religious significance and the other of personal significance, which are very well done.  The latter aren't visible normally. The former is barely noticeable.  And the male defendant's long time wishes to be betrothed has a colored trout tattoo that's quite well done.  In my place of legal employment, one of the male employees has two tattoos for which I'm responsible, remotely, as I noted the pilgrim's tattoos from Jerusalem when he was on his way there.

I have to admit, if I went to Jerusalem, which I have less than zero interest in doing, I'd get one of the pilgrim tattoos, although that brings up something about tattoos, which is that they sometimes seem to operate like peanuts at the bar.  You have a couple, and then the next thing you know, you've forged on them.  My colleague started with one, then had it added to, and then got a second.  One former female employee of mine was constantly having new ones added.  The pouty girl at the wedding probably started off with one (bad) one before they spread.

Over a year ago, I ran this item:

Percentage Tattooed

 From the Twitter feed of Simon Kuestenmacher:

I admit, I just hate this trend.  And if its 46% of Americans, that means its well over 50% of younger Americans.

I've wondered what it was in the US. Over my lifetime, It's gone from something only certain veterans and members of motorcycle clubs had to being darned nearly universal for people under 40.  I have to confess that while tattoos have gotten better, I hate this trend.

I really wonder what percentage it is now, just a little over a year later, but this is an amazing trend.  That Israel stands at 25% is notable, for example, as tattoos are banned by the Torah.

You shall not make gashes in your flesh for the dead, or incise any marks on yourselves: I am the Lord.

Leviticus 19:28.

Indeed, some Christians take the position that tattoos are likewise accordingly banned for everyone, but generally this is regarded as one of the Jewish laws, like ritual cleaning of pots and pans, clothing fiber restrictions, and circumcision that is regarded by most Christians as having been lifted by Christ.*  Indeed, in some Christian cultures at one time, tattooing was common to mark yourself as a Christian.  As already noted, Christians being tattooed in Jerusalem for having made the pilgrimage there is an ancient custom.

Those pilgrimage tattoos set a person apart because they've been on the pilgrimage, which is an important clue, I think, to the popularity of tattoos in our current era.  Tattoos have always set a person apart, while at the same, quite often, saying that you belong to some sort of special group.  Marine Corps tattoos meant that you'd been part, or were part, of a hardcore group of soldiers of the sea, tough men.  Bluebird tattoos on the chest likewise meant that a man had been part of the pre World War Two 25th Infantry Division, which was stationed in Hawaii.  Biker gang tattoos served the same purpose.

When tattoos starting emerging in recent times in the wider population, this was still true.  It might mean, for example, that athe person was a member of a sports team.  Now, however, what they seem to be trying to do is to either express a deep belief of some sort, something important to the person, or to set the person apart, sometimes both.

And hence the purpose. They're a reflection on the fake nature of modern life.  

In prior eras, people lived so much closer to authenticity that tattoos for the masses were basically unnecessary.  Tattoos expressed something unusual, but most of society experienced a wider authentic life.  Not necessarily a pleasant one, but an authentic one.

Now a lot of life just isn't authentic.

The culture has been stripped of its authenticity and much of the most fundamental aspects of it are now reduced to "lifestyles".  In the wider American culture, nothing has much of a value, including people and existential beliefs.  

Tattoos are a strike against that in a valueless society.  Not always effectively, and not always entirely.

An office worker may spend his days in a cubicle, but his arm sleeve of the forest says where his heart is, and where he wants to be.  A mother may spend all day in front of a computer, but the names of her children say where her heart his and where she wants to be.  A bold religious tattoos says the wearer can't get to Mass daily, but that's where her heart his.

Nobody gets a tattoo of a cubicle. 

Footnotes

*Generally, most Christian denominations don't hold anything against tattoos per se today, although some "fundamentalist" Christians do, and some of those can be found in any denomination.

It Catholicism, there's no set rules on tattoos, which is true of most other Christian denominations, maybe all of them. The only time they're regarded as definitely sinful is if they're in the nature of something sinful, i.e., the classic naked lady type tattoo.

Still, some must feel uncomfortable about them as it was recently notice that one of the chapel veil girls at our local parish applies make up to a tattoo of a turtle on her forearm while at Mass. There's really no reason she would need to do so.

Related posts

The Evolution and Rise of the Tattoo.

Percentage Tattooed

Coast Guard Drill Instructor

Monday, March 3, 1924. End of the Caliphate.

The Turkish National Assembly ended the Ottoman Caliphate.  It had been in existence for 407 years and claimed religious sovereignty over Islam.  The Assembly also ordered that Abdulmejid II and his harem were to be deported by March 15.  The official deposing of Abdulmejid would come at 2:00 a.m. on March 4.

He did not welcome the news and warned that the ending of the caliphate would cause the rise of extremism in Islam, which his role as the religion's leader of Muslims tempered.  He proved to be correct.  He lived the rest of his life in Europe, at first in Switzerland, and then in Paris, where he died in 1944.  His exile was not an easy one at first, and he was disappointed that Muslims did not demand the restoration of his office.

The Teapot Dome investigation continued.

And the local Piggly Wiggly was robbed.  That location is now a tattoo parlor.

Last prior:

Saturday, March 1, 1924. The Nixon Nitration Works Disaster.

Percentage Tattooed

 From the Twitter feed of Simon Kuestenmacher:

I admit, I just hate this trend.  And if its 46% of Americans, that means its well over 50% of younger Americans.

I've wondered what it was in the US. Over my lifetime, It's gone from something only certain veterans and members of motorcycle clubs had to being darned nearly universal for people under 40.  I have to confess that while tattoos have gotten better, I hate this trend.

Related thread:

The Evolution and Rise of theTattoo.

Coast Guard Drill Instructor

A couple of comments.

This is a female Coast Guard Drill Instructor.

Note:

1.  The recruits behind her are all female. This photo dates to March 18, 2021.  I wonder if the Coast Guard has retained separate recruit training for men and women?  I hope so, as that practice is a wise one that should be retained service wide.

2.  Note the M1911 campaign hat.  We've discussed the campaign hat here before, but it was once an Army and Marine Corps field hat that went into a use decline starting with the helmet but which was revived for DI use by the Marines in the 1950s, followed by the Army.  I know that Air Force DI's wear a blue one, but does the Navy now also? That the Coast Guard does surprises me.

Note also, Coast Guard DI's must wear the same hat irrespective of sex, as opposed to the hideously ugly separate DI hat foisted upon Army female DI's which should be ditched.

3.  Note the arm tattoo. . . of course.  I'll be glad when the tattoo trend is over, although its unlikely to pass on before I do.

Sunday Morning Scene: Inside the World’s Only Surviving Tattoo Shop For Medieval Pilgrims

Okay, recently I posted on tattoos here, and if I didn't diss them (and I don't think I did) I was somewhat critical of them.

Here, however, is something a bit different.  Indeed, much different.

Inside the World’s Only Surviving Tattoo Shop For Medieval Pilgrims

The Razzouk family has been inking religious pilgrims in the Middle East for 700 years.

I get this.

This strikes me the same way, I'd note that Marine Corps tattoos do.  There's an element of devotion here that's not only sincere, but which requires effort on the part of the person who obtained it.

I guess, while I fear to do so, that I'll contrast this with the recent tattoo obtained by a young man I've known for years, upon his obtaining age 18. It also expresses a religious devotion and. . .it's hideous.

Indeed, while it expresses a religious devotion, it's not obvious that this is the case.  That's the worst sort of message to send   Amongst people who ponder advertising that's regarded as a classic advertising "fail".  If people didn't get it, your message was pointless.

Of course, tattoos aren't necessarily meant to send a message to anyone but yourself.  Or maybe they are.  Or maybe they do, no matter what you meant.  And the difficulty of obtaining them might mean something as well.

Anyhow, these stand apart to me.

The Evolution and Rise of theTattoo.

Kid with ink drawing mimicking tattoos.  Bad tattoos like that were pretty common on servicemen with I was young.  It wasn't the art of it, they were badges of a sort.

Allow me to be frank.  I'm not keen on tattoos.

And that being the case, of course, I've had to accommodate myself to a massive societal shift concerning them.

When I was a boy, teenager and young adult, only men had tattoos, and only certain men.  I can distinctly recall the first time I saw a woman with a tattoo.  It was actually at Mass on a Saturday night, and there was a Hispanic woman with a rose tattooed on her shoulder.  It was quite a surprise, frankly, as I'd never seen a tattooed woman before, and by that time I'd been in college for several years and had been in the National Guard for several years as well.  It wasn't as if I hadn't been around a bit.  But I'd never seen that.

FWIW, she was quite stunning and rather strongly resembled Linda Rondstadt.

Anyhow, I've obviously seen a lot more tattoos on women since then and it doesn't shock me anymore.  I still don't like it.

Back in my youth only certain men had tattoos.  The most common tattooed men were men who had acquired tattoos in the service during World War Two, followed by men who had otherwise acquired them in the service.  Marine Corps bulldogs wearing Brodie helmets, for example, were pretty common.  Or just U.S.M.C.  But for those men. I.e., if you saw on one of those tattoos you didn't ask about it, you could be pretty certain that fellow had really seen some awful stuff.

You also saw other service tattoos, like tigers on the forearm, on younger men.  That didn't mean as much.  I recall at Ft. Sill a medical Specialist gave us a canned lecture about things to watch out for in Lawton Oklahoma, one of being tattoo parlors.  He had a fresh patch on his forearm from a fresh tattoo. . .

The other group of men you saw with tattoos were characters who had some rough association.  Guys who were in gangs.  Guys who'd been to prison. That sort of thing.

The long and the short of it is that they were badges of a type, and the type of badges they were indicated some pretty tough guys as a rule.  Most servicemen didn't have tattoos no matter what service they'd seen.  So to have a tattoo was, well, an indication that the wearer had really seen the elephant.

And maybe been stomped by it.

Indeed, certain tattoos could be read, including service tattoos.  Blue birds on the chest are the property of the 25th Infantry Division, or where.  Bulldogs with Brodie helmets are a Marine Corps tattoo.  Tigers on the forearm were an Army tattoo for some reason.

Tough guys, in other words.

Somehow this all changed.

And I don't really know how.  

It started, it seems to me, about fifteen or so years ago.  Tattoos started spreading with the college crowd at that time and, frankly, their quality improved considerably.  A lot of the older tattoos were, quite frankly, hideous.  I can recall, for example, seeing a really nice friendly guy come into a barber shop I was in with a hideous naked Statute of Liberty tattoo. Absolutely ghastly.  Nobody would get a tattoo like that now.  Todays' are much more artful.

And with the spread of the artful quality, they spread to women.

I wish they hadn't.  No beautiful women is going to be more attractive with a tattoo and no woman who feels that she needs to be adorned will be well adorned in that fashion.  Indeed, the opposite is true.  It's a detraction, for male and female, but particularly for female.  "You look beautiful just the way you are" is true. The tattoos aren't going to add to it.

Not that it matters what I think.  This trend shows no sign of abating.  Indeed, its spreading.  Classes of people who would never have gotten a tattoo earlier now routinely do.

When I was first practicing law there would have been no earthly way a lawyer would have gotten a tattoo. If he had one, I could almost guarantee he'd seen military service, and probably of the screaming horror variety, and before he became a lawyer.  Now, however, I know at least one younger, really good, lawyer who has an extensive arm tattoo.  You can't see it when he's practicing law, as he wears a long sleeve shirt, as we do. But after hours, it can't be missed.

And even one lawyer about my age that I went to law school with has one.  I don't know what the symbolism behind it is, but he became extremely involved in athletics of the iron man type and then one showed up.  My presumption is that its related to that somehow.  It's on an ankle.

And all the younger paralegals seem to have them now.  I can hardly run into one that doesn't. At one time we hoped that if they had them they weren't visible to jurors.  Now I don't worry about that as its spread so far.

And lots of women I know express an admiration and desire for them.  And indeed lots of the women I know and like now have them.

What's it all mean?  This sort of development indicates something.

Tattoos really went from an underclass thing in the 19th Century to something else in the 20th.  It entered the military from seafarers who had picked it up from the cultures they encountered.  The old association of sailors with tattoos wasn't bogus, it was a real thing.  That it went from merchant seamen to sailors and marines, to soldiers stationed in the Pacific, to soldiers in general makes quite a bit of sense. 

But how did they make the jump from men who'd been shot at, or who might get shot at, to the general public?

I don't know, but what I do know is that there's been a death of a sense of belonging in the late 20th Century that's really carried on into the 21st.  I think that explains it.

Tattoos have always been badges of a sort, along with other sorts of closely related identifiers like tribal scars.  They have always said, "I'm a member of this . . . " tribe, group or society.  Soldiers who had the bluebird tattoos, which you will still occasionally see, declared not only that they were or had been in the Army, but that they'd been in the 25th Infantry Division.  Anchors, Marine Corps bulldogs, and the like, all symbolized similar things.  At some level, I think they all do.  They all express some sort of devotion.

I think they all also express, on some subtle level, an widespread and deep dissatisfaction with modern urban life.  People don't get Walmart tattoos, for example, even if they spend a lifetime working there.  They're a cry back towards a more primitive age.

Some of that age was with us fairly recently, and indeed still is.  It wasn't all that long ago that people very strongly identified with ethnicity and culture in a way that they tend not to now.  Indeed, the irony of modern life is that the culture of American elites has worked hard in the past thirty or so years to wipe out the concept that there's really deep distinctions between individual groups of Americans, even as they've celebrated "diversity". But in celebrating "diversity", they've argued that it doesn't exist.  The diversity imagined is a shallow one with a "we're all the same in the end" solvent being washed over all of it.

In the end, however, we really aren't all the same and, moreover, we don't want to be.  We still want our group or, as a recent British historian has termed it, our "network".  Indeed, he sees networks, which are simply a group, on the rise.  I think he's likely right.  At any rate, the desire to be part of a group and not part of the urban cubicle mass is pretty strong.  The rise of tattoos in the general middle class seems to me to be part of that.

Tattooed blacksmith by illustrator F. X. Leyendecker.  F. X. Leyendecker, like his brother, was a popular illustrator of the early 20th Century before his addiction to drugs lead to suicide.  I suspect that a lot of people identify more with the figure portrayed, a blue collar working man of an earlier generation, than with their own stations in life. . . and who can blame them really?