Slave Voices, Pie Lessons, and a Woman With a Hatchet

Saturday News Digest, V1/E13

(A little note in case you didn’t notice: I’m changing the title to Saturday’s special newsletter from News Scraps to the more aptly descriptive title, News Digest.)

Table of Contents:

• The Voices of Juneteenth

• The Pie Watch

• On the Cookbook Illustrations Front

• This Week’s Book Club Quote

Texas African American History Memorial, Texas State Capitol in Austin. Galveston is the historical place where Juneteenth began, but there’s another one that places it on a plantation in Groesbeck,Texas. Monument’s sculptor, Ed Dwight; photographer, AP Photo/Elaine Thompson.

The Voices of Juneteenth
A continuous dialog with the past 

I can’t do more justice to Juneteenth than to present these video and audio interviews.

The Vox video is a powerful presentation of what Juneteenth means and accompanies an interview with Karlos Hill, a professor of African and African-American studies at the University of Oklahoma. The second is a recorded interview from the Library of Congress’s slave narrative collection. In it, Charlie Smith of Bartow, Florida, talks about being born in Africa, shipped to America, bought for a Texan plantation, and freed after the Civil War. The audio is of poor quality and sometimes Smith is hard to hear. Use earphones or crank up the volume and be patient as you listen to his story.

The Pie Watch
The Pie Cottage is up and running

Kate McDermott’s Newsletter is a font of well-written personal and food stories. In addition to that feat, she runs her famous Art of the Pie® Day Camp, which she just started up in-person again after the long COVID break. Unfortunately, each session is sold out. Since Kate is a wonder woman, she also offers her monthly Pie Boot Virtual Workshop that offers lessons on how to make one type of pie. Just in time for summer picnics, her July 10 session will be on Key lime pie. Kate is always fun to hang out with, and her great pie skills are unmatched. So think about signing up for the class and learn how to make your family and friends jealous!

On the Cookbook Illustrations Front
TIME Reader's Book of Recipes

The most interesting aspect of The TIME Reader’s Book of Recipes, published in 1949, is its portrayal of women at a crucial moment when the country was wondering what to do with them. The cookbook knocks around two alarming questions that would have been unthinkable before World War II: Would Rosie the Riveter return to hearth and home after experiencing a degree of autonomy and the joy of receiving her own paycheck? Would women abandon their traditional roles to the increasing availability of new technology and machines—such as automatic washers and dryers?

“If woman [sic] goes on turning more and more household chores over to the machine, she will soon cease to function except as an ornament, and will be doomed like the dodo.”—Florence Arfmann, Young & Rubicame Advertising agency from The TIME Reader’s Book of Recipes preface.

TIME’s women readers are quoted throughout the book to provide reassuring answers below their recipes. There’s recipes and comments from a farmer, lawyer, an unmarried secretary, and an accountant. One woman runs a successful magazine store in Auckland, New Zealand, and another is a mail carrier in British Columbia. The no-nonsense quotes (“One of my pet peeves is that so many people think wives who have interests outside the home neglect that all-important job of making the fireside scene a happy one. Quite the contrary!”; “Cattle ranching doesn’t leave much time but I can whip together a dinner in no time”) present uncontestable evidence to its nervous readers that the little lady won’t abandon her kitchen post.

The book’s witty illustrations by Richard Erdoes underscore this thesis. His women are capable of taking matters into their own hands but always wear an apron and a smile while accomplishing it.

This Week’s Book Club Quote

I’m kidding….I’ve never been in a book club in my life for the simple reason that I’m a card-carrying introvert and my slow reading pace would drive people crazy.

That makes you my small personal club, and this week’s (two-month) book read is To Speak for the Trees: My Life’s Journey from Ancient Celtic Wisdom to a Healing Vision of the Forest, by Diana Beresford-Kroeger. I picked her book up because of my interest in folk medicine and for Beresford-Kroeger’s poetic activism. She enlightens you on every page.

I want to remind you that the forest is far more than a source of timber. It is our collective medicine cabinet. It is our lungs. It is the regulatory system for our climate and our oceans. It is the mantle of our planet. It is the health and well-being of our children and grandchildren. It is our sacred home. It is our salvation.”
― Diana Beresford-Kroeger