Vignettes #58

National Geographic is a magazine I gew up with. My American grandpa had a subscription from very early on, and in his basements he had hundreds of old editions going back as far as the 19th century. As a child I often spent hours leafing them through and taking in all those photos. I guess I got my fascination for photographic images from there. When we moved to Germany National Geographic was with us, since my Grandpa gave us a lifelong subscription. In Germany we spent our afternoons after school with our German grandparents having lunch with them and doing our homework till my parents got off from their jobs and picked us up. One afternoon I was leafing through a new edition of National Geographic, when my German grandafther gave me a sceptical look and told me to give him the magazine. It was open to an editorial about some native tribe in South America or Africa, and there were photos of naked people all over the pages. My garndfather was a very strict Catholic and didn't speak a word of English, so he wouldn't have known what the text is about. He took a long look at the photos, and I thought he was going to forbid me to look at this magazine ever again. To me surprise he explained to me: "These people live in regions where the weather is extremely hot. Therefore they have no need for clothes. If we lived there, we would do the same."
Although my German grandfather was a very simple man who came from a small town hidden in the Bavarian boondocks and was raised under a very strict and unwordly Catholic environment , he always found reasonable explanations for things you though he might not understand. I eternally admired him for that.