The hog whisperer

I think it probably goes without saying that I was a weird kid.  I was also a kid who was obsessed with cats.  I hounded (no pun intended) my parents about getting a cat until they finally relented.  When we went to Cat Welfare to pick out a kitten, we took along our family friend Dottie, who had three cats of her own and who had taught me very carefully how to properly pick up and hold a cat.

Dottie demonstrating proper cat-holding
 technique on the day we got Ginger, my first cat 

--and me holding one of Dottie's cats.

This technique has worked with pretty much every cat I've ever had up until the present: our black cat, Stella, doesn't like to be picked up or held at all, and has let me know in no uncertain terms that not only is this technique not "proper," it's tantamount to abuse, and if I keep it up she'll report me to the authorities.

Still, the method has generally served me well, especially on one particular occasion.

My grandmother lived in the very small town of Athens, West Virginia, and when I was growing up, we'd often go down to visit.  Trouble was, there wasn't a whole lot to do in Athens, and the options were further limited by my grandmother's ideas about what was proper for girls to do.  So, I often entertained myself by walking through the cemetery that was just down the hill from her house.  There was a path at the back of the cemetery that led down to a barn and a small pond on some land she owned further down the hill, and it was kind of fun to play "pioneer" down there.

One summer day when I was about eight or thereabouts, I was on my way back from the pond, wandering through the cemetery and reading the headstones, when I caught a flash of something furry out of the corner of my eye.  A cat, perhaps?  It was about the right size.

I followed it and discovered that it was, instead, a groundhog.  He was just ambling along, and when he noted me following him, he stopped.  I crouched down and made the usual clucking noises you make to get a cat to come to you, and much to my surprise, he kind of wandered over in my direction.

Or maybe he didn't: to be honest, I don't remember.  I like to imagine that I enchanted him, like a groundhog whisperer, and he realized that I was a Trustworthy Gentle Person.

At any rate, he stopped, or moved slowly enough that I was able to pick him up, flip him on his back like I'd been taught to do with cats, and carry him back to the house.

I remember being so excited to show everyone what I'd found in the cemetery--my very own pet groundhog!

My mother, of course, tells me that the adults were freaking out when I came in the house cradling a groundhog, but didn't want to alarm me (or the hog).  So, they very helpfully suggested putting it out on the fenced-in stone patio behind my grandmother's house, where I could visit with it.  And my dad (in typical fashion) maintained enough presence of mind to snap a picture.

The groundhog and I stayed out there for quite awhile.  I probably fed it something; I don't recall.  What I do remember is that when I got up the next morning, the groundhog was gone.  I was disappointed, though in hindsight, it was remarkable that it stuck around at all after I put it down!

A few years ago this incident came up at a family dinner and my parents said they supposed the groundhog was sick; why else would it let a kid pick it up and carry it around?

To be honest, though I was well into my forties by then, that thought had never occurred to me.  For the first time ever I was able to see the event as an adult would: Holy crap, does that thing have rabies?!  Put the pest-ridden wild animal down slowly, little girl. 

In addition to the photo, that's the thing I'm most happy to have taken from that experience: the knowledge that at one point in my life, I was innocent and trusting and bold enough* not to worry about such things.

Happy Groundhog Day, everyone!


*and stupid!  Did I mention stupid?

******************UPDATE*********************

Here's my mom's version of events.  Needless to say, I did not witness Chuckie's escape.

We were in Athens for an overnight stay on our way to visit the Beegles and their horses in Charlottesville and then on to Williamsburg. 

You decided to take a wander--unbeknownst to us--to the cemetery.  That's where you discovered Chuckie, as you called him, sitting tamely among the markers.  You scooped him up and carried him back to Grandma's.


Yes!  Dad and I were startled and a bit worried.  It seemed strange to us that a wild animal should be so amiable--perhaps he was sick.  Rabies flitted through our minds.   It took some persuasion to convince you to part with Chuckie:  he would not be happy as a house pet, he was used to country life, we wouldn't know what to feed him, etc.,etc. Finally you reluctantly agreed to free him and he scuttled away--under the washhouse as I remember. And your parents tried not to be too obviously relieved. Now we have the picture and the memory, thanks to Dad with his ever present camera.

Happy brew year!

Or maybe that should be "Happy new beer"?

Tom's toyed with the idea of making his own beer for a long time, and thanks to my sister and my mom, he got a home-brewing kit for Christmas.  So, today was our first brewing day!

Fortunately, the kit came with everything--and I mean everything--you might need to get started, including a well-produced DVD with step-by-step instructions.  After watching that, we felt confident enough to get started.

So, first we had to empty the brewing grains into a mesh bag and steep them in warm water for 20 minutes.

Remove those, then bring the water to a boil and add a half-gallon (!) of malt syrup and a packet of dry malt.

Bring back to a boil, and boil for an hour, adding the hops as you go.  There were three different kinds of hops: one that went in at the beginning of the hour, one that went in fifteen minutes into the process, and one that went in 45 minutes in.

After the hour of boiling was up, the pot went into a cold-water bath to cool down.  Fortunately, I'd been defrosting the freezer, so there was lots of ice available for that.

Once the pot cooled down to room temperature, it was time to add the yeast. 

That's it.  We snapped on the lid, put in the valve that shows if fermentation is happening, and hauled the bucket off to the basement to do its magic.  Fingers crossed that we had the right temperature for the yeast to grow!

There were several other crucial steps involved, most of which involved sanitizing everything, including the bag of yeast itself and the scissors used to cut it open.  And something about using a hydrometer to measure the specific gravity of the mixture so that you can compare the initial reading with later readings to know when it's done fermenting.  Thank god the brewmaster here has a bachelor's degree in physics, because that's the point where my brain shut off.

Once the fermentation stops, it'll be time to bottle it, and then the beer needs to be bottle-conditioned for a couple of weeks.  But we should have our first batch in about a month!  So, expect more updates as the experiment continues.

Cheers to all our readers, and best wishes for a very happy 2012!

P. S. Many thanks to my former student Rebecca for the tip about Northern Brewer's idiot-proof kits and supplies. 

You'll definitely surprise that special someone with these Valentine's Day treats...

Thinking about making a cake for your sweetie for Valentine's Day?  Here's a new product (well, new circa 1949) that might make that task simpler:

Recently, the fearless chef over at Retro Recipe Attempts tried to make cupcakes in actual coffee cups from a vintage recipe, with questionable results...so I suppose Swan's Down Instant Cake Mix was a big improvement over baking from scratch for some folks.

What interests me is that the mix seems to only come in one flavor; the back of this brochure explains how you can doctor it to make chocolate cake, spice cake, lemon cake, and so forth.  Hard to imagine, now that you can buy cake mixes in every imaginable flavor (and some unimaginable, like confetti).  But given Retrochef's experience, even a basic box mix might have saved many a baker.

As might have this product, which appears to be liquid Crisco.  Mmmmm!

Is it just me, or does this look exactly like a 1970s Wacky Pack?  (And speaking of Wacky Packs, did you know that Art Speigelman was one of the original artists who created them?)  The parody version of this would, of course, have to be called "Hurl."  As for the text at the bottom: "The first and only CHUNKY GREEN SHORTENING that you HURL!"

If you're planning a full-on party, but don't want to work too hard in the kitchen, I have just the solution for you.  Or rather, Martha Logan, chief Home Economist for Swift does:

The introduction speaks for itself (click on the picture to enlarge).  Poor Martha--hopelessly trying to sound hip while urging young hostesses that their parties must lead to Fun for Everybody™.  Just because you're chief Home Economist for Swift doesn't mean you get all the plum assignments.

There are hot-dog themed party ideas for every conceivable occasion in this 24-page beauty, but most appropos for our purposes is the "Valentine Dance," with its "Franks in Hearts-and-Arrows" sandwiches and clever games:

And of course, there's always room for Jell-O.

Happy Valentine's Day, everyone, and as Martha Logan says, "Don't spare the eatables!"

Christmas 1941

When we think of December 1941 these days, we automatically think of the Pearl Harbor attack on the seventh, and the declaration of war.   To hear my parents talk about it, though, at the time most people in the U. S. had never heard of Pearl Harbor, and Hawaii seemed a long way away.

My Dad was a senior in high school at the time, and after he graduated the following June, he'd be drafted straight into the Army.  In December 1941, he wasn't thinking about any of that, though:  in his teenage techie geekdom, he was more concerned about recording a Christmas greeting to send to his older brother, who was doing his medical residency in Minnesota.

This was the result.


This was recorded on a paper disk with a thin plastic coating on it, made on a record-cutting machine that Dad borrowed from the Calhoun County High School.  Pretty remarkable that it's even held up for nearly seventy years, much less still be semi-listenable! 

My favorite line:  when Dad complains about his grandmother and sister's "backwardness" (i.e., shyness), saying, "Brother, I tell you:  this is a trial." 

From left to right:  my great-grandmother Sophie Hathaway, my aunt Virginia Hathaway Kirby (looking just as uncomfortable having her photo taken as she was being interviewed), Dad, and his mother, Eva Hathaway.

Trick, or treat?

In an effort to hand out something seasonal, in addition to candy (knowing that kids would mutiny if they didn't get candy, too), we bought this bag of silly plastic rings at our local Big Lots. Spiders, pumpkins, bats...

But wait--what kind of rings are these?



Hmmm.

"Since when is Easter a jokey holiday?"

--thus spake commenter "Joan" in response to this post on one of my favorite blogs, Cake Wrecks. I don't often read the comments there, since there are usually scores of them, mostly from readers trying (unsuccessfully) to out-wit the Blogger, Jen.

But this post, and the comments, caught my folklorist's eye: what is up with a cake shaped like a lamb with a cigarette, or what looks like a cigarette, in its mouth?

To summarize the commenters' theories:

• It's Joe Camel.
• The lamb is smoking to signify the end of Lent, and the enjoyment of vices one might have given up for Lent, such as smoking.
• The cigarette is supposed to represent a paintbrush, and is colored on the end to suggest the lamb's blood that was used to paint door frames during the original Pesach.
• What looks like a cigarette is actually a scroll, and is in the lamb's mouth to illustrate a passage from Revelations: "Then I saw, between the throne and the four living creatures and among the elders, a Lamb standing as if it had been slaughtered, having seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven spirits of God sent out into all the earth. The Lamb went and took the scroll from the right hand of the one who was seated on the throne."

Perhaps the best comment, though, was from a guy who wondered why whoever took the photos hadn't thought to ask the baker about the cakes' meaning. A little fieldwork goes a long way, folks.

I'll be interested to see if Jen posts a "definitive" answer, but I suspect there isn't one...like all good traditions, there are going to be multiple interpretations of the same object.

I am puzzled, though, by the comment that Easter isn't a jokey holiday. Granted, it does mark a very somber occasion, but it's still a holiday, which means it's inherently festive.

Yesterday I took to my folklore class a bunch of parody Passover songs that a former student collected as part of a fieldwork project on her family's Pesach traditions. I'd never come across anything like them before, and was blown away by the collection, and by her description of how they were incorporated into her family's Seder. Here are the lyrics to a couple of my favorites:

My Passover Things (to the tune of “These Are a Few Of My Favorite Things”)
Cleaning and cooking and so many dishes,
Out with the hametz, no pasta, no knishes.
Fish that’s gifellted, horseradish that stings,
These are a few of our Passover things.

Matzoh and karpos and chopped-up haroset,
Shankbones and kiddish and Yiddish neuroses.
Tante who kvetches and uncle who sings,
These are a few of our Passover things.

Motzi and maror and trouble with Pharaohs,
Famines and locusts and slaves with wheelbarrows.
Matzoh balls floating and eggshell that cling,
These are a few of our Passover things.

When the plagues strike,
When the lice bite,
When we’re feeling sad…
We simply remember our Passover things,
And then we don’t feel so bad.

There’s No Seder Like Our Seder (to the tune of “There’s No Business Like Show Business”)

There’s no Seder like our Seder,
There’s no Seder I know.
Everything about it is halachic,
Nothing that the Torah won’t allow.
Listen how we read the whole Haggadah
It’s all in Hebrew
’Cause we know how.

There’s no Seder like our Seder,
We tell a tale that is swell:
Moses took the people out into the heat,
They baked the matzoh
While on their feet.
Now isn’t that a story that just can’t be beat?
Let’s go on with the show!

Even the most somber of holidays need festive elements--in fact, somber holidays are perhaps even more inclined toward "jokiness," to lighten the mood. Christians hide eggs, summon forth the Easter Bunny, eat chocolate rabbits and marshmallow chicks--jokey!

Both Pasque (Easter) and Pesach (Passover) are probably the most "mysterious" of holidays in each tradition: Jesus was resurrected? The Red Sea parted? In a way, it seems the only response to great mystery is great mirth. And really, doesn't Easter ultimately commemorate the greatest practical joke ever pulled off? "You thought you killed me...Ha-ha!"

Several other commenters noted that the lamb cake isn't exclusive to Easter celebrations, either, but that in some places, they are also traditional at a child's First Communion: the kid gets to lop off the lamb's head, and--in some instances--the head and neck have been filled with grenadine so that red "blood" oozes out when the head is chopped off. Now that's a jokey tradition.

My friends Mike and Don annually create a Jell-O tableau fashioned after a famous scene in The Ten Commandments (see past examples here). And I'm waiting with bated breath for the Washington Post to reveal the winners of this year's Peeps Diorama Contest.

Then there's this fabulous "Facebook Haggadah," and Erica over at The Good Old Days laments not buying a set of "Ten Plagues" finger puppets she saw in a catalog years ago.

However, my all-time favorite inquiry into the sheer absurdity of holiday traditions is David Sedaris' brilliant essay, "Jesus Shaves," about trying to explain the Easter Bunny to his fellow language students when he first moved to France. Listen to it below--my summary can't do it justice. (Longish, but totally worth it for the ending. Seriously.)



UPDATE 4/11/09: The Washington Post Peeps Diorama contest winners are online!

More tales of ritual holiday child abuse

...and then I promise, I'm going to be done.

But when I opened the Columbus Dispatch here at my parents' this morning, there was yet another story about an odd Christmas tradition of terror and mayhem, this time from Iceland, where a mountain hag named Gryla, her husband Leppalud, and their thirteen nasty sons, the "Yule Lads," threaten to carry bad children off and eat them.

The article includes examples of similar traditions from Italy and Austria. After reading this piece, I have to revise my original assumption that the figure who beat my friend's father in Vienna was the Belsnickle...sounds more like he was attacked by Krampus. (These distinctions are so important! ;^)

If you click to read the article, please do ignore the Cox News Service journalist's conclusion that all of these things are "Christmas mythologies borrowed from pagan folklore." As Erica neatly pointed out in a comment to the last post, the only valid Grand Unifying Theory is the one that reminds us that "it's all in your head"!

Bigfoot and Santa, separated at birth?

...That's essentially the theory of Jeffrey Vallance, whose story of making this connection in the deep woods of Lapland is pretty compelling.

I like the connections he makes between the Sami "Snömannen," Big Foot, the Grinch, and Santa, though I don't buy his assertion that "Santa Claus, the wildman and Snömannen must spring from the same ancient source." Why, O Why, must such interesting and loose cultural connections always be tied up with one impossible Unifying Theory (Which Is Also Always Ancient)? Isn't the paradox of parallel diversity more intriguing?

I found Vallance's article by way of Cryptomundo, a blog about "cryptozoology (the study of unknown, hidden, and as yet to be verified animals)," by way of a BoingBoing post that featured this family tree, drawn by Vallance:


I'm relieved to see that Vallance's theory includes a hefty dose of humor. But the real reason I'm re-posting this here is because the Wildman family tree includes the Bellsnickle (sic)!

So next time you're out in the woods, kids, don't worry about bears, or even Biggie himself--beware the Belsnickle!

Ephemera, the holiday edition

It seems like a good time to trot out some of the more festive holdings from our vast collection of ephemera.

Tom tells me these German Santa postcards are relatively valuable, especially as the Santas aren't wearing the typical red garb, but purple. This antique-postcard site features some similar examples, and suggests that the one on the right is a "Belsnickle Santa."

The Belsnickle seems to be haunting me lately. Recently, a friend told me that her father was in Vienna, and had been beaten by the Belsnickle, a character who travels around with Santa and sort of plays "bad cop" to Santa's good cop. The Belsnickle carries a stick and hits those he thinks have been bad. My friend wasn't sure why her father was targeted, other than being a tourist, and an American tourist at that.

When I was teaching at Ohio State, a student in one of my folklore classes there did a wonderful (and slightly disturbing) fieldwork project about her own family's tradition of the Belsnickle, though she didn't use that term. Every Christmas Eve, one of her family members would dress up as Santa and break into the house, carrying a stick s/he would use to "beat" the kids. Before you start "tsk"-ing, there was more chasing and brandishing of the stick than any "beating," and the kids would scream in mingled horror and delight...it sounded not unlike the thrill of going to a staged haunted house at Halloween.

This student's family was German-American, and had lots of other typical German-American holiday traditions to accompany this--the usual foodways and the pickle ornament, for example. In doing some trolling around for information about the Belsnickle, I discovered a site that claims that this is an Appalachian custom, which is interesting given the stereotypical view of Appalachian folklore being rooted exclusively in Scots-Irish tradition.

The description of the Belsnickle's travels reminds us, again, that Christmas used to be a much more raucous festival of misrule than it is these days: lots of drinking, going from door-to-door demanding food and libations, and general bad behavior. We now seem to have limited that kind of thing to New Year's Eve.

Anyway, enough of the folklorist ranting--more ephemera!

Here's one of my favorites: a card presumably intended for a husband to give his wife, circa the 1930s-1940s, I'm guessing. The dishcloth on the front is actually a small piece of gingham fabric!


Ships seem to have been a popular Christmas-card theme in the 1920s and 1930s; why, I'm not sure, other than the usual church = ship connection. We bought all of these in Colorado, so it's not because they came from a coastal location. I love the stylized look of these.


This one, at least, clearly seem to be referencing the "I Saw Three Ships Come Sailing In" carol:




And finally, my all-time favorite. I distinctly remember finding this one: I was sorting through a box of postcards and such at an antique mall in Fort Collins, and spotted the black-bordered envelope. Having never seen an actual Victorian mourning card, I thought I'd finally found one. And sure enough, when I opened it up, the inside card also had a black border. But here's what it says:


On that cheerful note: happy holidays, dear readers! Hope it's a peaceful and merry few weeks for you, and that you don't get beaten by the Belsnickle (unless that's what you asked for).

Have a finger-lickin' good Halloween!

I've never been a big fan of Halloween--at least, not once I got past trick-or-treating age (and drunken costume-party age). I don't much like being scared, which puts a damper on things. But --as some of you not only know, but were witness to--Halloween does indeed mark the anniversary of Tom's and my official couple-dom. So, I guess I have to observe the occasion in some way.

Tonight we'll be heading up the hill for the un-party of fellow Greeley expat and Halloween-hater, Brian, to hand out treats to those kids with the cardiovascular endurance to venture off the flatter parts of Waitman Street.

At home, the cats will be having their own shindig, since this is Stella's signature holiday, being one of those unlucky black cats and all. Here she is, striking the traditional spooky pose (or doing her best Gene Simmons impersonation, take your pick):



Pip, on the other hand, is working on her "cocktail-swilling society matron" getup. I think she's just about got it down.

The best costume I've seen this year, though, was last weekend in Louisville, Kentucky. Just down the street from the hotel where the conference I was attending was being held, the local Radio Disney station was sponsoring a kids' costume contest. This little guy was one of the finalists, unsurprisingly. Too bad I didn't catch him another block further down the street, in front of the life-sized statue of Col. Sanders at the Louisville Visitors' Center!

In which Little Miss Midwestern Suburbia gets nostalgic about her Western adventures

The 4th of July was Greeley's signature holiday, since it usually coincided with the last day of the Greeley Stampede, the "World's Largest Fourth of July Rodeo."

I remember once having a discussion with a UNC colleague, who said to me (with no little condescension), "There are people in this town who think the Stampede is local culture. Can you believe that?!" He was of a mind that the city symphony, such as it was, was a more worthy candidate. But any damn city can have a symphony.

The Stampede, on the other hand, could not be more local in every possible way. Being on the Stampede Committee was the ultimate indicator of insider-ness: you knew you'd made it when you were crowned with one of the custom-made cowboy hats that the committee commissioned every year.

The composition of the committee also indicated exactly where in the 20th century local politics was stuck: it was huge (and controversial) news when the first woman got on the Stampede Committee, and when the first Latino got on. And both of those events happened after I moved there in 1996.

The Stampede also embodied the beauty and the ugliness of local culture. I have to admit, I brought all my outsider prejudices to rodeo the first time I went. And they weren't helped any when a calf that couldn't get up after being roped had to be pulled out of the arena on a dray while the guy sitting next to me yelled, "It's McDonald's for you tomorrow, buddy!"

But after going once to a tiny, pro-am rodeo in Grover, a little town on the eastern plains--a rodeo where only one rider stayed on his bull for the full eight seconds, and one competitor had to be life-flighted to the hospital--I came to appreciate rodeo as a sport, and the skill required to do well at it.

And while I know it sounds corny, there is something kind of thrilling about watching a thundering herd of rodeo queens charge into the arena, flags flying. Say what you like, those girls can ride, and ride hard and fast without getting one hair out of place. One year the Stampede featured a women's rodeo, which was really fantastic; we sat next to an older woman who told us that her granddaughter was in the bullriding event, and that she had been a bullrider herself. Three generations of women bullriders in the family.

But then there's the ugly side. In order of least offensive to most offensive: the announcers' sexist jokes; the "Indian races" at the Cheyenne Frontier Days Rodeo; and Greeley's systematic exclusion of the Latino community from the Stampede. You see, the Stampede used to include one day of Charreada, or Mexican Rodeo, a tradition that includes different events than the more "mainstream" rodeo (though using the term "mainstream" to describe whiteness in Greeley, where some 35-40% of the population is Latino, is a little misleading).

One year, the Stampede Committee simply decided not to have the Mexican Rodeo anymore. No explanation was offered, though they made the lame excuse that it wasn't profitable; however, the Committee refused to make its books public, and everyone knew that in fact, the charreada was one of the most popular and well-attended events during the whole ten-day Stampede. Eventually, the Latino community started its own annual festival around Mexican Independence Day in September, but the message had been received: your cultural heritage is separate, and we don't want any rodeo miscegenation.

It's depressing, but that was Greeley (unofficial motto: "Discriminatin' aginst Latinos ain't racism; it's patriotism!"). I served on the city museum board for several years, during the time when they'd just gotten money to build a new history museum, and it was amazing how marginalized the city's long Latino history was.

And in many cases, this marginalization was literal: all that fascinating, but incriminating information was confined to the adobe house at the living-history village. So, unless you knew where to look, you'd miss the cool story about the "Greeley Grays," a competitive minor-league baseball team formed in the "Spanish Colony" (yeah, no joke: that was the name of the segregated neighborhood Latinos were confined to in the pre-civil-rights era).

Nevertheless, I kind of miss the 4th of July in Greeley. Because it coincides with the Rodeo, you have never seen a parade with more livestock in it in your life--there are more horses and cattle than people, to be sure. And I'd rather see horses than the endless string of vintage Corvettes, all owned by one family, that makes up a ridiculous portion of the parade in my hometown.

Since, in Greeley, we lived between the Stampede arena and the staging area for the parade, we'd often see floats and horses going by en route in the morning before the parade started. One year, Tom and I were sitting in the backyard drinking our coffee when we heard a tremendous shuffling sound, and looked over the fence to see an entire herd of longhorn cattle strolling up 13th Avenue. (I guess longhorns don't "stroll," exactly, but they were moving at a leisurely, unconcerned pace, as if they walked this route every day.)

I don't think I'm going to see longhorns strolling, or whatever they do, up Simpson Street anytime soon.