Three very special old books (book geekery)

I sold one very special book today on Ebay, and listed two more. This is all for work, so it's not like I benefit outright, but I do take a certain pride in it.

The book that sold was an oversized Bible printed in Cincinnati in 1852, and it had an older family register sewn into it. Hand-penned records of the births and deaths of the Smith family covered 1756 to 1901.

That's pretty special.

The Memoir of Elder William Conrad was printed in 1884, and never reprinted. He was born in 1797 when we were barely a nation. But he wasn't too old to autograph and write an inscription in his memoir by the time it was published. This Baptist travelled all over the Midwest and what he called the Far West- the western territories before they attained statehood. He founded a church in Kentucky, and a lot of people trace their ancestry back to him. So I hope this book goes to someone with a personal interest in it.

The other book was a copy of Civic Biology by George William Hunter. At a glance, it's just an old high school textbook. However, it is the 1914 textbook that started the 1925 "Scopes Monkey Trial" by putting evolution in the curriculum. We were descended from monkeys?? No way! It was the media circus of its day, lots of celebrities involved, spawned a play I had to read for high school lit, etc. Wikipedia has the details.

Interestingly enough, the post-trial printings of the book removed all references to evolution (and included an expanded chapter on eugenics, which is a whole different nasty topic). But this is the 1st edition, just as John Scopes would have taught it. If you're a science geek, kind of cool.

Delayed, not defeated

Well, another couple weeks have gone by without a word from me. A great part of it is: I have tried for 3 months to write Chapter 8, and it is just not working. I mean, the adventures of two young men, going shopping, unsupervised- and this is Allan, so interesting things just occur, even if he didn't quite start them. I try to do a chapter a month, so to stall for 3 months on a single chapter and still have nothing is...disastrous.

So, I am skipping ahead to Chapter 9, back in the country, and will have to get back to Chapter 8 at a later date. I don't want to quit over something so stupid, and I don't want to post something I'm not satisfied with either. That's just how it's going to be.

My car was totaled by a deer. I couldn't find anything used that I felt good about buying. Flat tires, coolant lights on, and the asking prices were astronomical. Of course you never pay asking price, but they could count on selling anything under 10k to someone, so there wasn't much incentive to come down on price, and I was pressed for time. I bought a new Honda Fit, gritted my teeth and took out a 3 year loan, and kissed vacations goodbye for the next 3 years. My income and expenses are now exactly equal. Sometimes I'm not as smart as I mean to be.

So what else...?
I've learned a few new, fun tidbits of information:

That funky ledge inside some teacups is NOT there to hold the spoon....
It was to keep tea from ruining your carefully groomed mustache. A very Victorian fad.
The link goes to Wikipedia's blurb on mustache cups.

Victorian were quite serious about their nativities, or putz, putting as much time and effort into them as they did with Christmas trees. Too bad so many of the animals were made of lead! Incidentally, putz is derived from a German word which means "to clean or to decorate." However, in Yiddish it is slang for a penis.

It seems I didn't properly dry my acorns, and they developed mold. I didn't feel safe eating them, even boiled. But apparently some Korean grocers stock acorn flour, so if I want the actual taste sensation, I can buy some to experiment.

 

Insanity strikes again

Somehow another two weeks have passed without a post.
I've had nothing good to say, really, so I've said nothing.
This picture sums it up nicely:

Most people, if they have heard of Mercury retrograde, think it is a lot of superstitious nonsense. I can't argue with that. It does seem silly to say it's all the fault of a few errant planets. However, insane things happen in my life about three times a year, coinciding like clockwork with the times Mercury goes retrograde, and I have learnt to know when they are and be careful.

So, the last two weeks have included over a week of anxiety attacks and/or gluten symptoms, as bad as I've ever had. I've been logging my food, so I KNOW I didn't have any gluten...just the symptoms.

A friend's emergency gallbladder surgery.

A mystery package that I took to be an attempt to scam me, that turned out to be a random gift from a family member. My sister got one too. We are both mystified as to why.

A party. Everyone either declined the invitation or didn't answer, so I cancelled it. Then 2 days before it happened, some of them changed their minds, so we threw things together at the last minute to host 3 adults and 5 hyperactive children.

My husband hit a deer on Friday, so now we need to shop for a car. I'm afraid to do it before retrograde is over, as there is a better-than-usual chance it will catch fire or the wheels will fall off or something. Will probably spend a good deal of this month car-shopping, a stressful pastime if there ever was one, while trying to stall actually buying one.

So I'm taking a week off from updates. Just not feeling up to it. Try again next week.

More Mincemeat

Ok, so green tomato mincemeat? Actually fairly tasty. I admit, I was a bit dubious when I read the recipe. 4 cups sugar and a ton of sweet spices and a goodly amount of salt, ok. But my eyes bugged out a little when it came to the tsp of black pepper. But really, it worked out ok. A bit too sweet for me. You'll have to excuse my attempt at gluten-free tart crusts. They taste good, but they crumble easily.

I collected my acorns today. Red oak, so they're going to take more leeching to get the bitterness out. Shall I roast them like chestnuts or grind them into meal for grits or pancakes?

 I'm waiting on the persimmons to ripen, and will update on my food adventures in a week or so.

Green tomatoes, persimmons, and other food adventures

Somehow another couple of weeks have gone by. That Chinese-Art Deco fusion work of art turned out to be a modern painting mimicking traditional art styles. Halloween is well underway. An early frost and a hungry groundhog forced me to pick all the tomatoes that were left on the vine, most of them green. I started looking for ways to deal with them, since several pounds of fried green tomatoes is Waaaay too much of a good thing.

Understand that I am a foodie. Or perhaps I have settled for being a foodie. I would like to be an adventuress. Visit all kinds of fascinating places, have unique experiences, eat unusual foods, read all the books in the world. Yes, book adventures count. But I'm on a super-budget, so I often turn my attention to making unusual foods, foods that you can't buy anywhere.

So, several pounds of green tomatoes. What to do? Internet searches turned up a number of suggestions, some of them very strange indeed, or very inventive.

Green tomato jelly: Sounds fun, except that the ingredients are green tomatoes, sugar, and raspberry gelatin. If I'm using green tomatoes, I want it to have the flavor of green tomatoes, and not raspberry jello.

Green tomato pie: I made this last year. It tasted a lot like tart apple pie. If you like apple pie, I can recommend it. But I've done that before, so it's not much of an adventure.

Pickles: Not just for cucumbers! You can pickle just about any vegetable with salt and vinegar (have I ever mentioned my grandma's pickled watermelon rind? Sounds weird, tastes delicious).  I took the little cherry-sized green tomatoes (too small for anything else) and fresh dill and made a quart jar worth. I go for refrigerator pickling instead of hard canning, so I will know how those turned out in 3 days. They probably make good bread & butter pickles because of their tartness, but I have to limit my sugar, so I went with sour dills.

This left me about 6 cups of green tomatoes (and 5 large ripe ones, which made a lovely tomato soup)
So I kept looking.

Picalilli: some kind of Southern relish. It's probably like chutney. Not sure what you put it on, actually, and I couldn't find the recipe again. Or spell it, which is probably the problem.

Green tomato mincemeat: SOLD! It's weird, sounds disgusting, and I'm pretty sure you can't buy it even in the most country of country stores. THAT is worth my time and effort. I mean, the store-canned mincemeats are disgusting, but I'm hoping it's like fruitcake, where the home-made ones are really delicious. At the least, I'll have something to talk about (Ew, this tastes terrible! Here, you try it!)

That's why they're food adventures.

So I need to scale down the recipe from a peck (12 lbs) of green tomatoes, and buy some things I don't keep around the house, but I will get back to you with the results.

But that got me started on other ideas. It's acorn time, and I know the Native Americans ate acorns. If I can steal some from the squirrels I might experiment with them as well. I don't expect them to taste good, but the bragging rights will be worth it.

I also have an American persimmon tree in my yard. The fruit isn't ripe yet, but when it is I have recipes lined up for persimmon jam, butter and puree. There are recipes out there for bread, pudding (in the bread pudding sense), cake and cookies, and even persimmon fudge, but they're all full of gluten, except the fudge, which is loaded with sugar.

Doing something with the loads of mint from my garden is really just an afterthought.

What can you do with mint besides dry the leaves for tea, or make mint jelly?
Inquiring minds want to know.

A mysterious painting

I didn't feel like I had much to say when I updated last night, but guess what!
A mysterious painting arrived in my office today! It's a beauty, isn't it?

It appears to be a watercolor portrait painted on fabric (likely silk) and is nearly as tall as I am. It isn't signed, in any language.
The outfit looks like traditional Korean or perhaps Chinese. It isn't Japanese or Thai. I don't know enough about other nations to know.

The traditional Asian portraits I've been looking at generally have no border or background, and include calligraphy. The subject is usually an Emperor or an ancestor (usually a middle-aged man). Is this person one of the thousand Chinese gods, or is this the son (or daughter) of a wealthy family? It's not typical for a girl to carry a cane, is it?

Since the mid-1700s, Chinoiserie seems to come into fashion every few decades. If this was European I'd say it was done in 1910-1920s Art Deco style, imitating traditional Asian art. Looking at the face, however, the portrait style is not Westernized.
Perhaps looking at portraiture wasn't the right place to start. It may have started life as part of a screen or wall hanging that was later framed. I don't like to base appraisals on guesses, so if anyone has a background in Asian art history, I'd love to hear from you.

Oh, and the donor commented that the frame was quite valuable. It looks quite average to me, so I'm not sure why... It's modern. She may have meant "framing it was expensive" which I'm sure it was. Since the truck crew know nothing about art, they couldn't pump her for information the way I would have.

Well, that's my little mystery.

Visiting Union Terminal in Cincinnati

I haven't felt like I have much to say for the last couple weeks, but I don't want this blog to fall by the wayside.

I was in Cincinnati over the weekend, and took my husband to the Museum Center at Union Terminal. My very first job was there, back in 1996-97. It's an amazing building, truly huge, and there is even more space behind the scenes than most people comprehend. Hidden space behind the fabricated walls. Blocked-up tunnels. Perhaps a few secret passages. I was a fervent Phantom of the Opera fan, so of course it all seemed awesome. There's a catwalk that goes over the 100' half-dome rotunda. I've been on it. They give that tour twice a year. Contact the museum for details- but only if you're not afraid of heights.

Anyway, if you can spare any time from checking out the paid attractions, there are two freebies you should take advantage of.

Climb Tower A, which overlooks the railyard, where you can watch the trains come and go. The tower is packed with railroad artifacts, and railroad enthusiasts itching to tell you about them.

There is also a free tour of the building; which, if you like architecture and historic preservation, is truly amazing. You go up to the second floor catwalk for a closer look at the murals. Then they take you to the building's original offices, beautifully restored to their Art Deco glory. The building was derelict for several years, so restoring them was no mean feat. The guide could see our interest, so he took us pretty much everywhere he had keys for, pointing out little details; the clamshell elevator; the room where men waited for the train; the fine dining hall with murals on the ceiling, the phone booths. I haven't seen a phone booth in years. The 30 minute tour stretched to over an hour, but it made our day.

For more about Union Terminal, accompanied by stunning photos, go here.