Food, History, Fun!

Connecting food to history, art, music, geography and all that good stuff.

If you don't understand The Great Depression very well, here's an aid:



Follow the links—every page is wonderful.

This one is about the art of the paintings of Jello.

That Jello tour of The Great Depression is from The Gallery of Regrettable Food

Click the airplane for Sunbeam Bread's 1949 pro-bread propaganda pamphlet aimed at children, and some 21st century commentary by James Lilek. I advise you not to read it while you're eating bread or drinking any liquid.


Below is the creation of an unschooled girl named Hannah who was free to watch TV. She saw a cooking show and created this meal. I'm glad to have the photos and her mom's account! Click the photos to read.


Songs about food and about candy


But what really started me on this post was the books post before this. I had a link to a site with cakes made to look like medieval books, and it was on a quiet, still little page here. I'll leave the quote I started the post off with, and when/if I find where those photos went, I'll bring them. My cake-as-sacrifice link is still good, though.

I have a page on cake, and worshipful ceremonies related to cakes,
and this page on cakes made to look like medieval books ties those two together!

REAL libraries, and crows with coins

Keith, my husband, sent me this link: Red-Hot and Filthy Library Smut. Yeah, baby. For lovers of books or Europe or the Middle Ages or any two of those, these photos are HOT. Holy cow. I want to be there, I want to DO that.
Samples:

   

Not being able to poke around the libraries, I poked around the blog, and found Crows and Coins, photo-commentary (with captions upon commentary) of crows with coins, and what they must (or might possibly, but probably not) be thinking!

      

And that's all commentary on this:

The Goal

The goal of this project is to create a device that will autonomously train crows. So far we've trained captive crows to deposit dropped coins they find on the ground in exchange for peanuts. The next step is to see how quickly we can get wild crows to learn the system, and then how quickly they can learn it from each other.

Once we've got system down for teaching coin collection we'll move to seeing how flexibly they can learn *other* tasks, like collecting garbage, sorting through discarded electronics, or maybe even search and rescue. The crows continue to amaze us with their abilities, so who knows?

In the meantime, the idea of mutually beneficial synanthropy is gaining ground. That's the concept that we can have mutually beneficial relationships with animals adapted to human ecologies. We're doing some consulting with companies that have animal-related problems to find animal-related solutions - instead of just bombing, shooting, or poisoning them.

Comments on comments on connections on connections!

New Way to Walk

Here's a little article on The Pointer Sisters and their connection with Sesame Street. I had always thought that "New Way to Walk" must be a direct parody of a Pointer Sisters' song, but I guess it's just a style parody. I started wondering...

Years later Destiny's Child performed it with muppets: 1993 version between those, made of clips from guest stars from the year or so before. (I remember when they did a similar thing with "Put Down the Duckie.") According to the Sesame Street Wiki *, this clip includes Savion Glover (famous before he was a regular on Sesame Street), Bill Irwin (Mr. Noodle, who played the uncle at Thanksgiving in "Across the Universe"), David shiner, Maya Angelou, Garth Brooks, Ruth Buzzi, Michael Chang, John Goodman, Kevin Kline, Cheech Marin, The Neville Brothers, Rosie O'Donnell and Sally Jesse Raphael.

New Way to Walk Music by Joe Raposo Lyrics by Mark Saltzman I was feeling low, I was kinda blue But that's all gone since I got something new I got a new way to walk (Walk, walk) I got a new way to walk (Walk, walk) I got a new way to walk And my new walk suits me fine I got a new way to walk (Walk, walk) I got a new way to walk (Walk, walk) I got a new way to walk And it makes my spirit shine It's a little bit of strut and a lot of smooth And a little bit of bouncing fine My chin is up, my feet don't stall When I walk my walk, I walk real tall I got a new way to walk (Walk, walk) I got a new way to walk (Walk, walk) I got a new way to walk And it shows how good I feel This little piggy went to the market This little piggy stayed home This little piggy got a whole new walk And look at these pig feet take me home I got a new way to walk (Walk, walk) I got a new way to walk (Walk, walk) I got a new way to walk And it shows I've got some sense I got a new way to walk (Walk, walk) I got a new way to walk (Walk, walk) I got a new way to walk And I walk with confidence

Russian Nesting Dolls

We had nesting Santa dolls for years, and just this year I burned the chipped up unbroken few left. The wood had dried and cracked. They were inexpensive, though, from a cheap catalog that sells bulk imports.

There was a Flight of the Conchords mention of Russian dolls. And so with it already in my head, I came across a page called History of Russian nesting dolls. The translation is rough and interesting, and here are a few quotes:

"In 1918 the unique Museum of Russian and Foreign Toys was opened in Sergiev Posad. The first Russian matryoshka by S. Maliutin is a part of its exhibition."

The life and death of nesting dolls: "Private making of matryoshkas and production of other hand crafted things was forbidden in the USSR – craftsmen had to work at the factories where was no possibility neither to earn enough money for their labor (rates were quite low as at other state enterprises) nor to show their art abilities (goods had to be simple enough for mass production)."

Present time Now Semionovo matryoshka has not the best time. The complex economic situation in Russia mirrors at these crafts too: it's harder to buy raw materials, fuel and electricity became more expensive. In these condition it hard to create something new, people instead of wage in money get just ready goods: matryoshkas, wooden spoons, wooden tableware. It press people to leave a factory and to work separately at home. Maybe it is hard in the beginning but in such conditions can be born new ideas, types, goods - there are more to room for creative activity. We sincerely hope that Semionovo matryoshka will blossom soon and will expose us new unusual things. (From Russian-crafts.com.)

I didn't know the Soviet Union forbade home crafts. Way to kill a culture.


Above, 1970's stop-action animation from Sesame Street.
Below, Flight of the Conchords use Russian Dolls in a philosophical analogy.



For sale on e-Bay 4/6:

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Added July 2008:



Some images I had above, before, quit working, so I've brought a google link to more Nesting Dolls than you could ever look at. Some are pretty funny these days!

Russian Nesting Doll image search, Google

Photography: What about it?

What are your thoughts about photographs? How have they changed life, or how has life changed them?
At your house, what's the difference between the oldest photos you own and the newest?
What are photos good for? Bad for?

Daguerreotypes
"Welcome to the Mirror Image Gallery, the place on internet for all interested in photos and history."

I like that the description said "photos and history," because photos become history. The buildings and cars behind people in documentaries become records. The surroundings of movies shot on location become history. New Orleans shows in Easy Rider is a distorted but 1960s way, and in A Love Song for Bobby Long, one neighborhood is shown in a very casual, leisurely way. It might not be there anymore, but with the passage of time it wouldn't be there any more in the way it was during the filming anyway.

"Is it a picture or a painting?" "There is recent speculation that 17th century artist Johannes Vermeer used a precurser to the camera, the Camera Obscura, to create his incredibly detailed paintings. The result is an interesting blurring between artistic and scientific mediums...." (blog post with responses and many links)

Mirrors in images, and mirror images

Miraculous Photographs

Don't Believe Everything you Hear...

I have a page called Myths too many parents believe. Someone wrote and asked me to add my opinion on why they were myths on the last four there (about writing, bedtime/jobs, self-regulation having to be taught, and not swimming right after eating), so while working on that I figured I might as well branch out and get some assistance!

I'm going to list a few things that have changed in my lifetime or not so long ago, or "truths" that turn out not to be true, and I invite you to add others. Google away, if you want to. Directions for making a clickable link in a comment field are in the sidebar, but if that's confusing to you just leave the URL and I'll come and enliven a link for you. Comments can be as long and as frequent as you want. Have fun!

Don't Believe Everything you Hear... from doctors.

"Nursing mothers have to drink lots of milk so they can make milk." Cows don't drink milk. People don't need to drink milk to create milk. It's nuts. Most adult humans are lactose intolerant anyway, but it hasn't kept schools and hospitals from giving milk out like crazy, and sometimes insisting that it be finished off.

"Four out of five doctors prefer Camels." (Magazine ads in the 1960's, which also explained how soothing to the throat smoking was, and helpful to the nerves.)

Dr. Dio Lewis, a prominent late-19th Century doctor, was sure that the northern U.S. created strong, wise men. The Carolinas had a climate that emasculated the settlers, and Southern California caused deterioration, loss of learning and of interest in ideas, and people who live in southern climates fall into gossiping. The exact quote is here.


Don't Believe Everything you Hear... from teachers.
"Your permanent record will follow you forever."

When I went to teach in the school district I had attended for ten years, I asked to see my permanent record. It was legal to make the request, and if it was going to follow me everywhere, why couldn't it be produced for a few minutes for a school employee to see? Uh.... "They're in storage and it would take a while to find it." I was like 22 years old and it had already quit following me!? I just laughed; I didn't press it. I'm just as glad not to know what insipid things were in there. The principal had written on my teacher review that I had "a good rapore with students."

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"Brush your teeth up and down," which was replaced in a few years by "Brush down on the top teeth, and up on the bottom teeth," which was replaced within about a year by "Make the toothbrush go in circles." That might could go under don't believe everything you hear from doctors, but I learned it from teachers in health classes, telling us what the dental profession had learned to be crucial, tooth-saving Truth.

A friend of ours is an EMT and says mouth-to-mouth resusitation is not considered a good thing now. Lots of us who had red-cross cards over the years were told otherwise. Advice has changed on treatment of burns and on tourniquets, too. I put that under teachers instead of doctors because I learned first aid in school at in Girl Scouts. Here's one article on the changing stance, and many more can be found with a web search.

Don't Believe Everything you Hear... from parents.

"If you stick your tongue out your face will freeze like that."

Existing collection about parenting: "If I let him, he would..."

"Masturbation will [do various specific and unfounded things to] you." [Because of masturbation, "People would lose flesh, they would get weak, they would cough, and they would end up with tuberculosis, which of course he called consumption. " Read more about that here, including the original purpose of Kellogg's cornflakes. Eeyew. (And this, too, could've gone under the doctors' list but most people heard it from their parents and this might help explain why.)

"If kids play with guns they'll become violent." SandraDodd.com/peace/guns



Some of the best links and examples left in comments below might be added above. Expect the main entry to change, is what I mean to say. —Sandra

Drapetomania, School Refusal and Hikikomori

I learned a lot of things in one day, and got up this morning to read something I was just too tired to finish reading last night.

When I read I don't mutter, so when I gasped aloud I knew I had read something worth quoting somewhere, to someone:

The hikikomori studied and interviewed for Zielenziger's book were not autistic, but bright intelligent people who have discovered independent thinking and a sense of self that the current Japanese environment cannot accommodate.

I'll get to links and references in a minute. An unschooling mom (Meghan, in California) sent me a copy of a movie, a faux documentary, that was on TV I don't get. I didn't watch it when I first got it, but yesterday I watched This is Spinal Tap and started thinking about the value of documentary-for-fun. So I pulled out that tape of "The Confederate States of America." It's a fake documentary done by a fake British Broadcasting system with a fake Canadian historian adding lots of commentary. It's all part of the one big fiction. There are commercials, because it's done as a TV documentary that breaks for commercials, but the commercials are part of the false over-all.

In the program and one of its commercials, they talked about a disease called "drapetomania," and I looked it up, figuring Wikipedia might say it was created for that documentary. No, it was, in the 19th century, a real, medical "mental illness." Drapetomania caused slaves to flee captivity.

So I thought I would look up "school refusal," which I thought would lead to a Japanese term and phenomenon. A few years ago, I spent some time with a Japanese unschooling mom who translated some of my writing (and prefers anonymity) and she said that in Japan they lock kids up in mental hospitals for "school refusal." But it turns out School Refusal was a European disease that spread to the U.S. Somewhere in there as I read, though, I came upon "Hikikomori," which can cause school refusal in Japan.

I'm just pointing out the tip of an iceberg. I don't intend to examine, map or calculate the size and weight of this iceberg. The fact that it exists is plenty for me.

During the slave period in the U.S., it was considered a mental illness to want to escape. Today, 150 years later, there are diseases to describe school children who wish they weren't required by the government to be in school, and it's a disease not to want to leave your house to go out and mingle with the culture at large.


If you don't want to read any more, I don't blame you.
If you do want to read more, I'll make it easy:

C.S.A. the Movie
School Refusal in Children and Adolescents, in The American Family Physician.
School Refusal on wikipedia, which led me to their entry on Hikikomori
which led to
Japan's nervous breakdown, by Michael Zielenziger, excerpts from his book Shutting Out the Sun: How Japan Created its own Lost Generation. One quote:

Unable to work, attend school, or interact with outsiders, they cannot latch onto the well-oiled conveyor belt that carries young boys from preschool through college, then deposits them directly into the workplace-a system that makes Japan seem orderly and purposeful to outsiders, even as it has begun to break down.

Unschoolers, I hope it will lead you to spend extra time with your children today, in peace and joy.