Brought to the brink of desperation by the effort involved in trying to get a ribbon for my obsolete printer that goes with my obsolete computer, I have not paid as much attention to what’s going on in the area as I should.

That’s why my belated congratulations to the young woman from Hartland who will represent October in a centerfold, are belated. From what I know of these things, the competition for such an honor is overwhelming and I think all of us should be happy knowing that one of ours has made it.

And whence all this talk of pornography? The trouble with the unco guid is that they so seldom seem to have access to a dictionary. I have, and here it is from my Britannica World Language Dictionary, Pornograpy: &uot;The expression or suggestion of the obscene in speaking, writing, etc.; licentious art or literature. 2. Originally a description of prostitutes and prostitution as related to Public hygiene.&uot;

I remember a second-grade teacher reading &uot;The Night Before Christmas&uot; to us one December. She skipped the line, &uot;He had a round little belly/ That shook when he laughed like a bowl full of jelly.&uot; A little African-American girl noticed the omission and whispered to the nasty little tattle-tale across the aisle from her, the missing words.

The tattle-tale, of course, did her thing and the teacher was horrified &045; or pretended to be.

&uot;Any child who says such dirty things about Santa,&uot; she snarled, &uot;should not be surprised if he fails to visit her house on Christmas Eve.&uot;

The little girl with the pornographic tongue was reduced to tears. The rest of the class was shocked into silence.

At the camp I attended every summer, we used to gather at night for a sing-along.

That was some 75 years ago, so I don’t recall the name of the popular song we were singing one night.

It could have been &uot;Shuffle Off to Buffalo.&uot; Anyway, there was a line that went, &uot;And between your chair and my chair some day may be a high chair and we’ll call it yours and mine.&uot;

Pornography again! The order went out that we were never, but never to sing that song again. A reaction that fastened it in our minds as nothing else could have.

There was so much else that I remember about the unco guid of the time. There was the mother of one of the girls that forbade our playing password in her house because she was convinced that when we whispered a word from one to another, the fact that we whispered at all indicated that the word being passed was an indecent word.

The newly organized Albert Lea Art Center held its first exhibit at one of the local churches. Among the exhibits was a small apple tree branch. The bark had been removed and the branch polished to an incredible shining perfection. The branch in no way resembled a human form. It looked like what it was: a small branch from an apple tree, separated from its bark and polished in such a way that seeing it inspired the viewer with the beauty in everyday objects.

Unfortunately the artist, a competant lady who would spend some years teaching art in Albert Lea High School, had titled the branch, &uot;Nude.&uot; One of the members of the church, a wife-beater, but pure, went breathlessly to report the awful fact to the pastor.

The pastor, truly one of the unco guid, descended in righteous indignation on the artist who was forced to carry out the pornographic branch, lest viewing it, corrupt the righteous citizens and threaten the very foundation of morality in our town.

Ah well, as the Bible says, &uot;to the pure, all things are pure.&uot;

(Love Cruikshank is an Albert Lea resident. Her column appears Thursdays.)