Best Of MetaFilter

Sea of Cotton by subarcticmike (cc by)

My big thrill, enacted every time I brought my sack to the trailer, was to climb the ladder and dump my cotton, just like the grownups did. The field boss always seemed to take me seriously, and logged my meager tonnage in his book as if I were an adult. But he looked the other way when I climbed the ladder; sometimes I would "accidentally" fall off the plank onto the soft cotton.

soldiergrafitti3 by dkmonkey

My ancestral home was requisitioned by the US army to house many soldiers. My great-grandmother cooked for them and became fond of many of them. Enclosed is a sample, I know it is difficult to read but it says: "Edw Clark 9cd Co. 114th US INf, Camp McClellan, Anniston Ala. In nov, in Berlin."

I wanted to send these inscriptions left by their ancestors while serving in that horrible war, but have not been able to trace anyone, unless I am willing to pay for a research service. I do not know the hometown of these soldiers in the US. Camp McClellan, in Ala, was formed in 1917, so I should be able to obtain enrollees names and details, but no success.

A mystery AskMe with a very happy ending.

Fan Expo Vancouver 2012 by John Biehler (cc by-nc-sa)

jdroth explains how to get started evaluating a comic book collection.

p-71-b-102 by NeenahHistory (cc by-nc-sa)

Cool Papa Bell explains a thing about gym teachers.

If you were a member of Generation X, think back on your male high school teachers. Lots of football coaches and auto shop teachers and whatnot.

You probably had some really terrible ones, right? I know I did. I set of male teachers that were pretty much shunned by the other teachers because of their sheer incompetence and general fuck-you attitude. The kind of teachers that were relegated to driver's education duty.

Everyone has them, right?

Not so fast there. Realize that the many male teachers of the 70s and 80s were in the profession only because it provided them with the cheapest, easiest means of avoiding the draft. Getting a teaching credential bought you two extra years of college deferments. And getting a single-subject credential -- physical education for example -- that made you eligible for high school teaching, was the easiest of those.

Playing with cameras by magicmonkey (cc by)

MeFite yeolcoatl offers a suggestion about how to politely and respectfully tell people to put away their cameras during a wedding ceremony.

Since I study tea ceremony, I talked about the idea of ichi-go ichi-e (one time one meeting): the idea that this moment with these people will never happen again, and that that the moment should be experienced, because the feeling of looking at pictures you can have over and over again, but the feeling of being in this moment cannot ever be recaptured. I mentioned the professional photographers and that we could trust these experts to do their job, and then I asked them to put away their cameras and turn off their cellphones and invited them to share the experience of the moment with the bride and groom.

Emergency Room / Health Care by Rosser321 (cc by)

When a paramedic gives tips on what to do when something is embedded in your body, you should file this away for later, just in case.

A Road Less Traveled by ~Pixelsmithy, used with permission

Tim Samaras is in the same class a volcanologists who race to a volcano when eruption is eminent, the same class as the astronauts who lost their life in the Space Shuttle, or in the Apollo III fire. You try to make things as safe as possible, but you still go to work knowing that there is a risk of something going wrong. On this day, it did.

Dancers on The Judy Garland Show (1964) A few illuminating answers to a question about why some old Twilight Zone episodes can look especially creepy. Meet the term, and the MeFite, orthicon halo.