When a loved one died in parts of England, Scotland, or Wales in the 18th and 19th centuries, the family would grieve, place bread on the chest of the deceased, and call for a man to sit in front of the body. The family of the deceased watched on as this man, the local professional sin eater, absorbed the sins of the departed’s soul.
The family who hired the sin eater believed that the bread literally soaked up their loved one’s sins; once it was eaten, all the misdeeds were passed on to the hired hand. Once the process was complete, the sin eater’s own soul was heavy with the ill deeds of countless men and women from his village or town.
The sin eater paid a high price to help others drift smoothly into the afterlife: the coin he was given was worth a mere four English pence, the equivalent of a few U.S. dollars today. Usually, the only people who would dare risk their immortal being during such a religious era were the very poor, whose desire for a little bread and drink carried them along.
As early as the 1680s this morbid local feast was written of as an “old Custom at funerals,” and it survived into the early 20th century. According to Brand's Popular Antiquities of Great Britain, first published in 1813, the sin eater “sat down facing the door; they then gave him a groat, which he put in his pocket; a crust of bread, which he ate; and a full bowl of ale, which he drank oft' at a draught; after this, getting up from his stool, he pronounced, with a composed gesture, 'the ease and rest of the soul departed, for which he would pawn his own soul.”
Many funerals in the Welsh county of Monmouthshire included a professional sin eater, author Catherine Sinclair notes her 1838 travelogue, Hill and Valley. Her description of the job gets harsh when she adds that the men “who undertook so daring an imposture must all have been infidels, willing, apparently, like Esau, to sell their birthright for a mess of pottage.” To those who believed in the powers of this ritual, sin eaters were doing a necessary but distasteful job, literally becoming a bit more evil as they performed their task.
Sin eating had experienced a decline by the time Sinclair observed the practice in Wales, but the last recorded sin eater, Richard Munslow, briefly brought the custom back in the late 19th century. In the travel guide Slow Travel Shropshire, Marie Kreft explains that Munslow revived the practice not because of desperation, but due to sadness. Munslow was a successful farmer who suffered the loss of four children, three of whom passed away within one week. It’s speculated that this tragedy drove him to practice the sin eating trade, at first as a form of grieving, to help his children on into the afterlife.
The god-fearing villagers who hired sin eaters in the profession’s heyday, however, wanted to skirt the consequences of their sins by giving them to someone else, and adapted their own morals to accommodate the practice. Because of the religious cultural climate of the time, people took the idea of sin seriously, and were eager to reach heaven free from their misdeeds. They needed a sin eater to come around every once and awhile, but most of the time being a sin eater meant you were homeless and a social pariah. Nevertheless, sin eaters in the U.K. were expected to attend funerals and wakes when they were notified of a local death.
The origin of sin eating is elusive, but the custom may have grown from older religious traditions. Historically, scholars believed it came from pagan traditions, but in Death, Dissection and the Destitute, Ruth Richardson writes of a medieval custom that she thinks may have developed into sin eating; before a funeral, nobles gave food to the poor in exchange for prayers on behalf of their recently deceased.
In the 18th century, rituals involving symbolic breads, which represented the souls of the dead, were fairly common and may connect to sin eating, too. Antiquarian Henry Curzon wrote in 1712 that villagers in the English county of Herefordshire hired “poor people to take on them the Sins of the Deceased,” yet also piled cakes in “high heaps” on tables to honor their dead loved ones for the Catholic holiday All Souls’ Day, on November 2.
In her essay The Gift of Suffering, Ingrid Harris says Protestant Christian religions may have used sin eating to regain the lost sacraments from their Catholic roots; many sin eaters listened to confessions from grieving families. Sin eating was not officially supported by the Church, however, and Richardson argues that using a sin eater bestowed human power over spiritual events, which was considered heresy.
Calling a sin eater might also have meant that the local priest, who normally would coax the soul’s entry to heaven and perform a funeral ceremony alone, was overlooked. Over time, fewer sin eaters took on the mantle, restoring priests to the role. By the early 20th century, the sin eating profession had mostly died out.
Sin eaters may have stopped plying their trade, but according to Jane Aaron’s book Welsh Gothic, they continued to eat sins in literature, and were used to explore various forms of Welsh identity; in texts the sin eaters were always reviled. A narrative poem from 1920 featured a sin eater called Morgan who is described as “gaunt, ghastly, lean and miserably poor,” and was later found dead as if struck from a bolt of lightning. In the United States, the concept of sin eating made its way to communities in Appalachia, surviving as legends about nomads who roamed the countryside, looking to absorb dark and powerful sins.
When the last known sin eater in the U.K., Richard Munslow, died in 1906, he was probably one of the first in his profession to be commemorated with a ceremony and funeral of his own, which was carried out in 2010 in Ratlinghope. While it’s unlikely that anyone was able to atone for the heavy burden of his sins with a bready meal, at least he was finally served something he and many other sin eaters deserved more—recognition.
Standing 20 feet tall in front of the Custom House, Key West's Art and History Museum, the “Time for Fun” statue of an old fashioned dancing couple was inspired by French artist Auguste Renoir's famous 1883 painting “Dance in the Country." As the name suggests, it is considerably more fun than the sculpted dancers that were previously placed here.
This previous statue, based on Renoir's painting “Dance in the City,” showed a couple dancing in a formal ballroom and was called “Whispering Close.” The current installation, however, is a better match to the spirit of Key West than it's precursor. This statue is more lively and more colorful—the dancers appear to be having a much better time.
Both monuments were created by artist Seward Johnson—grandson of the Johnson & Johnson co-founder—who is known for his trompe l'oeil bronze statues. Johnson often donates sculptures to the town, where his is a part-time resident, and his pieces can be found in several places around Key West as well as inside the museum. Though many characterize Johnson's art as “kitsch,” the "Time for Fun" statue seems to be one of the most photographed objects in Key West.
In Renoir's paintings “Dance in the City” and “Dance in the Country,” the man is modeled on his friend, author Paul Lhote, and the woman is modeled on Aline Charigot, who would later become Renoir's wife. The original painting can be found at the Musée d'Orsey in Paris.
Empress José Sarria knelt by his husband’s grave clad in an old-fashioned black petticoat, dress, and widow’s veil. Dark gloves ran the length of his arms; elaborate jewelry hugged his neck and wrists. Around him, fellow mourners who had come to know Sarria through his performances and his political activism wore a peculiar mix of black and colorful drag clothes, and in the back, a small marching band dressed in bright red.
The scene was always the same: every year from 1976 until his death in 2013, Sarria led a procession of hundreds of gay and trans San Franciscans to the grave of Joshua Norton, an 1850s merchant who, after going bankrupt and disappearing from public view, returned in 1859 in dramatic fashion—he strut into the offices of a local newspaper wearing a plumed hat and a military coat and declared himself emperor of the entire United States. Around the grave of this eccentric San Franciscan, Sarria and his devotees would mourn, laugh, and discuss the state of their community. A gay and lesbian choral group sang; people sat and watched in chairs.
Empress José Sarria and Emperor Joshua Norton, of course, never actually wed—the timeline makes that impossible. Norton died in 1880. Sarria began making his pilgrimages almost a century later. The fake marriage was a kind of inside joke, part of Sarria’s flavor for the outlandish. A trailblazer himself, Sarria perhaps saw a kindred spirit in Norton’s brand of fearless outcast.
Since the AIDS epidemic, Sarria’s annual pilgrimages to his husband’s cemetery took on a new meaning: more than just an ironic celebration of Emperor Joshua Norton, they became a way for gay and trans San Franciscans to mourn their dead and to agitate for socio-political change.
The journalist Michael R. Gorman recounted a pilgrimage he attended in the early 1990s in his book The Empress Is a Man. At the time, the AIDS epidemic was reaching new heights, and much of the ceremony was spent grieving the fallen. At one point, a drag queen stepped forward clutching the ashes of one of her friends. She dumped it by Norton’s grave, then began dancing a scene from The Nutcracker, her dress sweeping the remains into the air. The ashes, which were mixed with glitter, sparkled in the sunlight. Everyone was crying.
The pilgrimage to Norton’s grave became a necessary catharsis for a community long marginalized, led by a man—José Sarria—who, decades earlier, had transformed the very foundation on which it rested.
The bulletin was part of a bold campaign by the newly formed League for Civil Education to consolidate the political power of San Francisco’s LGBT minority. At the time, gay and trans San Franciscans were subject to constant abuse. The legacy of the McCarthy era had intensified public animosity toward the queer community, whose members were labeled anti-American “subversives” linked to communism and espionage. Public outcry soon demanded that queer people be weeded out—a mandate the San Francisco police embraced.
Spurred on by editorials like the one in the San Francisco Examiner urging that someone "drive [gays] out of the city,” police in the 1950s launched campaigns of harassment against suspected homosexuals. They sent attractive undercover officers into gay bars, arresting anyone who flirted with them. They charged customers for being “inmates of a disorderly house,” a bogus crime they employed when they wanted to make an arrest, then printed the names of those gay arrestees in the local newspaper and called their employers, in effect ruining their lives.
Police also frequented gay cruising spots, confiscated gay and lesbian pulp novels, and—at one point—raided a local theater during a showing of a short movie about a young homosexual, arresting the manager and taking away the film and projector. By 1961, 40 to 60 homosexuals per week were charged with some crime relating to their sexuality, and over a dozen gay bars had been shut down.
The city’s queer population, meanwhile, could do little to defend itself. Because so many residents remained closeted, few spoke out against the constant police harassment. The queer community also lacked a unified mouthpiece—the only gay organizations that existed, like the Mattachine Society, were mostly decentralized and non-confrontational, which meant the community had few ways of voicing its anger.
The League for Civil Education aimed to change that. By registering gay and trans people to vote, they reasoned, they could create a powerful queer voting bloc, one that local politicians would have no choice but to listen to. They were trying to do something that had never been done before—to galvanize gays into politics, in effect scaring city higher-ups into submission. Perhaps, the logic went, those higher-ups would think twice about supporting homophobic harassment campaigns if they knew there was a coalition of voters waiting to punish them for it at the polls.
José Julio Sarria, a co-founder of the League for Civil Education, would soon claim that there were 10,000 voting gays in the city, and politicians had better take their needs seriously if they wanted to keep their jobs.
A waiter and performer at a local gay bar, Sarria had become a fixture in San Francisco gay circles, famous not only for the elaborate operas he performed in drag but also for his outspoken activism. Sick of the inaction by gay organizations, he burst onto the scene peddling phrases like “There’s nothing wrong with being gay—the crime is getting caught” and “United we stand, divided they catch us one by one.” Because he’d never been ashamed of his sexuality, he had no qualms about speaking out—his performances railed against both institutionalized homophobia and the queer San Franciscans whom he felt settled for second-class citizenship.
Sarria galvanized queer people to stand up for themselves, for instance telling his audience to fight against the bogus charges the police slapped on them. Previously, the custom had been for arrested gay and trans people to simply plead guilty and pay a fine, for fear that dragging out a court case would out them to their families; but Sarria’s invocations created a backlog of cases, and local judges forced the police to scale down their arrests.
Sarria became especially attuned to the city’s harassment campaigns against the gay community because the bar he worked at and dearly loved, the Black Cat Café, had become one of its major targets.
Since its inception in 1908, the Black Cat Café branded itself “the most popular place in Bohemia,” home to a clientele of vaudeville stars, writers, anarchists, and gays and to a waiting staff clad in ridiculous carnival clothes.
The bar was quickly mythologized in literary circles: it served as a backdrop for Jack Kerouac’s novel On The Road, and its customers included John Steinbeck and Allen Ginsberg. Upon his visit, Ginsberg proclaimed it “the greatest gay bar in America.” “Everybody went there, heterosexual and homosexual… All the gay screaming queens would come, the heterosexual gray flannel suit types, longshoremen. All the poets went there.” The Black Cat had cemented its reputation as a gay bar by the mid-1950s, in part because of the immense popularity of José Sarria himself.
Perhaps because of its fame, the Black Cat was subject to constant police scrutiny. First raided in 1949, the bar was added to the Armed Forces’ list of banned businesses. Around this time, the Black Cat’s liquor license was suspended for serving “known homosexuals”; when the California Supreme Court overturned the suspension, the police tried against in 1956, this time revoking the Black Cat’s license on the grounds that it catered to “sexual perverts.” The Black Cat’s lawyer managed to get a stay on the prosecution, but everyone knew it would only last so long.
With the police cracking down, paranoia soon became an essential staple of running a gay bar: to stay open, bars like the Black Cat couldn’t allow same-sex touching, kissing, or hand-holding (permitting such acts would make bars “a resort for sexual perverts” and thus result in a loss of their liquor licenses). Those few that permitted dancing hired bouncers; if someone suspicious came by, the bouncers would flicker the lights and everyone in the bar would switch partners so they appeared to be part of a heterosexual couple.
By 1961, with his campaign to register gay voters underway, Sarria became drained of this routine. He was done sitting idly by and watching the police ruin the lives of innocent people whose only crime was being gay. He also couldn’t help but notice that in the upcoming election, there were five seats open on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.
So, shortly after his disastrous meeting with local officials about his proposed gay voting bloc, Sarria took a step no other openly queer person had ever dared to in the history of the United States—he decided to run for public office.
“Watch me,” indeed.
There were a few snags.
First: no one wanted him. Neither the Democrats nor the Republicans would let him file to run under their party umbrella; they refused to endorse a homosexual.
Second: almost everyone Sarria talked to was unwilling to sign his petition to get on the ballot; they feared the ostracism that would result from publicly supporting a gay candidate.
To run, all he needed was 35 signatures and a party endorsement—he could get neither.
Third: he didn’t even have a suit to wear. All of his clothes were either drag or casual; he had to convince a friend to lend him something more formal.
He said later: “I ran ... because I saw a need. The only way that the gay community at that time could become forceful was to become political. I don’t care what people say, even one vote will make a difference. If enough people scream, it will make a difference.”
Soon, he began having small successes. He “blackmail[ed]” (his words) 35 friends into signing his candidacy petition, insisting he would spill their secrets if they refused. In order to get on the Democratic ticket, he threatened to sue the party—they eventually relented.
But party officials so badly did not want Sarria to win that, in the final hours before the filing deadline, they recruited 24 more people to run against him.
The day of the deadline, when Sarria submitted his petition, there were five open seats on the Board of Supervisors and only nine candidates; by the end of the day, there were 33 candidates, among them a musician and a garbage collector.
The election netted a record number of candidates, likely because of Sarria’s candidacy. Though city officials scoffed at the idea of an organized gay voting bloc in San Francisco, they were privately terrified by the prospect—and a victory for Sarria would thus throw their careers into jeopardy.
Operating on a meager $500 budget, Sarria bet that his local fame would be enough to win him a seat. No one who saw Sarria could forget him. He was known around San Francisco for his flamboyance: when he needed to make a deposit at the bank, for instance, he would ride in the sidecar of a motorcycle clad in red high heels and bright lipstick for all to see. Later, after winning a drag contest, he would declare himself Empress of San Francisco.
As a proud Latino and native Spanish speaker, Sarria was also able to engage with long-neglected Hispanic voters, appearing on many Spanish-language radio programs throughout the city in order to promote his candidacy. If he won, he would become the first Latino ever elected in San Francisco.
But Sarria’s main campaign arm was the League for Civil Education, which in its first year of existence devoted most of its energy to Sarria. Its publication, the LCE News, dedicated countless pages to coverage of Sarria’s campaign, keeping the local gay community apprised of everything that was unfolding. Sarria and the League’s president, Guy Strait, also passed out flyers, stopped by gay bars to register voters, and—during Sarria’s widely attended performances at the Black Cat—urged audience members to spread the word about the election.
Both Sarria and Strait viewed the campaign as an outgrowth of their push to register gay voters and create a unified voting bloc. After all, what better way to inspire gays to vote than if one of their own was on the ballot?
By spreading the word about Sarria’s candidacy, they were reminding gay, bisexual, and transgender San Franciscans that they were normal, that they should not have to hide, that people like them should be represented in all political bodies across the nation. It was a bold message, to be sure—one that would echo for decades to come.
Born in 1923 to a Colombian mother who had fled her home during a civil war, Sarria was dressing up in girl’s clothing since he was two years old. Both his biological mother and his godmother, who took turns caring for him, found it adorable; often they let him wear girl’s clothes in public. Soon after, he started taking vocal, tap, and ballet lessons. Sarria was always free to be himself, and perhaps this is why for him being gay was never a source of shame.
He grew up speaking both Spanish and English, and in high school he also enrolled in French and German. By the time he graduated, he was nearly fluent in four languages. He dropped out of college once the U.S. entered World War II, quickly finding a position as a translator in the Military Intelligence department. (At 90 pounds and just under five feet tall, Sarria didn’t meet the physical requirements to enter the army—to get in, he flirted with the recruiter, who pulled strings for him.)
Once the military discovered his sexuality, they transferred him to the Cooking and Baking School. Though normally such a discovery would result in an immediate dishonorable discharge, the U.S. during the war was so pressed for bodies that they overlooked it. By the time Sarria left the army in 1945, he’d been promoted to staff sergeant.
He soon returned to college under the GI Bill. His dream was to become a teacher. To make money on the side, he started working part-time as a waiter at the Black Cat, then a bohemian center, donning his signature high heels and singing to customers as he passed out drinks.
One Sunday afternoon, he started belting out a song from the opera Carmen—by the time he finished, the room erupted into applause, and customers began asking why he didn’t perform more often. A star was born.
But in the early 1950s, cops arrested him for “moral charges” at the St. Francis Bar, a popular gay cruising spot. His dream of becoming a teacher thus shattered, Sarria plunged himself further into the world of the Black Cat.
By the end of the decade, he’d dropped out of school, and he was soon putting on four performances a night. His most widely attended were his one-man opera parodies, which became especially popular among the local gay community. Underlying the brash humor and ridiculous costumes was a message of justice and self-love that the gay community, still reeling from constant police harassment, so desperately needed.
Before each opera, the other waiters pushed together dining tables in the Black Cat to form a stage. Then, once the bar fell silent, in stepped José Sarria, clad in red pumps, a tiara, tight black pants, and cherry lipstick. Sometimes he’d wear a scarf or a shawl; sometimes he’d have on an orchid. But he was always lively and unpredictable, interrupting his songs to point to an attractive audience member and say, “Now pay attention, you handsome man. This is very sophisticated stuff. You should learn this. You won’t always be beautiful, you know. You’ll need something to talk about when the plumbing gets rusted.”
Sarria’s repertoire of operas extended beyond 45, and his dresses would change with each one. Because operas were only available to the wealthy, few of Sarria’s viewers were familiar with the original versions, and he therefore tried to express their meanings through clothing. He wore Spanish outfits for Carmen, bouffant dresses for La bohème, and clown clothes for Pagliacci. Rarely did he follow a script. Even his costumes were sometimes ad-libbed—once, he came on stage dressed in window curtains from his house.
Sarria’s most famous production was his modern-day rendition of the French opera Carmen. Set in San Francisco, it featured Sarria as Carmen visiting a popular gay cruising spot; when the police arrived, Carmen ducked behind bushes to avoid the cops. By the time she finally escaped, all of the Black Cat was hollering.
Sarria’s operas became so popular among gay and trans San Franciscans that they developed into a kind of gay news service. Sarria often interrupted his operas to report some new police raid. “A blue fungus has hit the parks,” Sarria once said in reference to a crackdown on park sex. “It does not appear until about 2 a.m. It twinkles like a star. Until this fungus dies, it’s best to stay out of our parks at 2 a.m.”
As his celebrity swelled, Sarria began calling on his queer audience to take more confrontational approaches to police harassment. He railed against the custom of submitting to bogus charges leveled by the police for fear that fighting back would equal being discovered. He pushed queer people, who were at especially high risk for diseases like syphilis and gonorrhea, to visit the Health Department even though they feared the judgment of their doctors. By 1961, after the formation of the League for Civil Education, he also started calling on his audience to register to vote.
In effect, Sarria reminded queer San Franciscans that they had rights—and if they wanted social equality, they needed to start using them.
Sarria also found ways to undermine the police. Whenever he spotted an undercover officer in the Black Cat, for instance, he called them out from the stage so that everyone in the bar would know to avoid them. And when law enforcement in San Francisco began enforcing an obscure law that banned the “impersonation” of the opposite sex “with the intent to deceive,” a rule targeting trans people and drag queens, Sarria had his drag queen friends parade around in women’s clothing—but with notes pinned to the collars of their dresses that read, “I am a boy.”
But Sarria’s most lasting legacy was the sense of hope he instilled in his predominantly queer audience. He helped to stitch a disparate social identity into a thriving community, one that was just beginning to stand up and fight for itself. At the end of each of his performances, Sarria asked every customer in the Black Cat to join hands, make a circle, and belt the lyrics to a song he’d written, “God Save Us Nelly Queens,” sung to the tune of “God Save the Queen.”
God save us nelly queens
God save us nelly queens
God save us queens
From every mountainside
Long may we live and die
God us nelly queens
God save us queens!
George Mendenhall, author of TheWord Is Out, later wrote: “It sounds silly, but if you lived at that time and had the oppression coming down from the police department and from society, there was nowhere to turn ... and to be able to put your arms around other gay men and to be able to stand up and sing, ‘God Save Us Nelly Queens” ... We were really not saying, ‘God Save Us Nelly Queens.’ We were saying, ‘We have our rights, too.’”
For a community so in need of hope, “God Save Us Nelly Queens” became a kind of anthem, and Sarria, a hero.
By the time he filed to run in 1961, it was this sentiment that propelled him forward. Despite living under a hostile government, gay and trans San Franciscans—like their counterparts across the United States—were beginning to come together and demand their rights. They were forming political organizations. They were registering to vote.
They were done staying quiet. They were done hiding.
By the end of the day on November 7, 1961, the votes were in: José Julio Sarria, the first openly gay candidate for public office in U.S. history, had not won any of the five seats on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.
But he’d come in ninth in a field of 33 candidates, winning, according to most sources, a total of about 5,600 votes. Though shy of Sarria’s claim that there were 10,000 queer San Francisco voters, the number shocked the political establishment. So many thousands of votes was certainly enough to sway an election in the city—and, as an organized voting bloc, it could threaten the positions of countless politicians. Soon they were drawing the obvious conclusion: if they wanted to keep their jobs, especially if they were liberal, they needed to win the gay community.
By the end of the decade, local politicians were actively courting gay voters. Organizations like the Society for Individual Rights—a spinoff of the League for Civil Education—began hosting “Candidates’ Nights,” which brought together gay voters and local office seekers. Over the years, as the gay community became more organized, almost all liberal politicians were stopping by these events. In fact, in 1970, now-senator Diane Feinstein attended a Candidates’ Night during her race for supervisor of San Francisco. Other candidates started taking out ads in gay publications, even floating the possibility of introducing anti-discrimination measures.
In a sense, then, Sarria ultimately won. His run for office no doubt made a mutual relationship between politicians and queer voters possible, for he not only galvanized gay people into politics, but he also shocked the San Francisco political establishment into taking LGBT issues seriously.
His run for office also paved the way for future queer office seekers, most famously Harvey Milk, who would enter the political scene over a decade later.
The end of Sarria’s campaign for supervisor, however, was not the end of his life of history-making political activism. In 1965, he founded the Imperial Court System, a charity entirely composed of unpaid volunteers that raises funds—largely through elaborate drag shows—for fighting AIDS, domestic abuse, homelessness, and more. With chapters across North America, it remains one of the largest LGBT organizations in the world.
When registering his organization, Sarria realized he needed to include a list of officers—but because labels like “president” sounded too boring to him, he decided to make up his own names. Volunteers for the Imperial Court therefore bear titles like duke, duchess, czar, czarina, jesters, and so on. The head of the organization is called the Empress, and is elected annually—Her Royal Majesty José Julio Sarria was the first.
Later, in 2006, the city of San Francisco honored Sarria for all of his achievements, renaming a section of 16th Street “José Sarria Court.”
But despite the flurry of press coverage, Sarria today remains unknown in most circles. Maybe this isn’t surprising: in the U.S., LGBT history is not taught on a large scale, and the names of heroes like José Sarria languish. Further, those few LGBT people that we do remember are predominantly white, despite the fact that so much early queer activism was driven by people of color (take Stonewall civil rights pioneers Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson, for instance). That Sarria was Latino should therefore not be forgotten.
Sarria was buried beside his late husband Emperor Norton, in a plot of land he’d purchased in 1976. Still today the annual pilgrimages to Norton’s grave continue—but now, when his admirers come to celebrate the U.S.’s one true emperor, they are also celebrating Sarria, its first openly gay politician and a man who changed the LGBT community forever.
It’s an almost supernatural ability that most of us take for granted: at any given time, almost anywhere in the world, we can know the weather of the future. It’s all laid out for us, often on maps that show the movement of weather like armies colliding mid-air: triangles for cold fronts, half-circles for warm, and a mix of the two for occluded fronts, where a cold front overtakes a warm.
It wasn’t always this way. Though the very first committee dedicated to collecting and mapping weather data—the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia—was formed in 1831, all of the maps they produced had to be drawn after weather had already occurred. Predicting the weather remained largely based on superstition, like the famous “red sky at night, sailor’s delight” rhyme. In the mid-1840s, the newly-elected secretary of the Smithsonian Institution expressed his frustration with the lack of progress in meteorology. The Smithsonian's new program, he said, would focus on “solving the problem of American storms”—and yet American storms remained a problem.
That all changed in the late 1800s and early 1900s, in no small part due to the work of a father and son pair of Norwegian geophysicists, Vilhelm and Jacob Bjerknes. The Bjerknes dedicated their lives to understanding the workings of our atmosphere, and in doing helped produce the weather models that we know today—and which are still based in the work the Bjerknes did almost 100 years ago.
Jacob Bjerknes and the future of weather forecasting were born in same year. That year, 1897, Jacob’s father Vilhelm had a breakthrough: he figured out a theorem that describes the motion of a vortex in a non-homogenous fluid—like the air masses interacting in our atmosphere. Vilhelm was sure that his calculations could be used to develop a system of predicting the weather, in all its complexity, days ahead of time. This was the aim of his work: as he would lay out in 1902, “The goal is to predict the dynamic and physical condition of the atmosphere at a later time, if at an earlier given time, this condition is well known.”
When applied to the motions of the ocean and the atmosphere, Vilhelm believed his new theorem should allow weather forecasting to be handled as a problem of mathematical physics, just like a calculation of friction or gravity. At the time, this concept was a revolutionary one.
In 1913, Vilhelm became director of a new geophysics institute at Germany’s University of Leipzig, where he was surrounded by talented students—one of them, Vagn Walfrid Ekman, would become known for his eponymous theory describing how wind drives the circulation of water currents (an idea that came to him one evening at a dinner party). By 1915, this group also included Vilhelm’s son Jacob, whom everyone called Jack.
It was not the easiest time for the Bjerknes’ studies. In July 1914, Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia. Germany joined the fray only days later, setting World War I into motion. Much of the institute’s German students and staff were called into service, leaving the institute short-handed. Recent progress in the field also suffered. The first daily scientific maps displaying the globe’s weather, issued by the United States’ Weather Bureau, had to be suspended only seven months after the program began, when the war halted European telegraph transmissions. This must have been a particularly disappointing blow for Vilhelm—years earlier, he had suggested that weather observations and computations be combined on charts, allowing scientists to graphically derive maps in sequence, “just as one usually derives one equation from each other.” In a 1914 letter to the Carnegie Institution, one of his biggest funders, Vilhelm wrote worriedly: “I hope that the most unnecessary and most cruel of all wars shall not disturb the work which I am performing …”
Yet this was just the beginning of the curious entanglement of the military and war with the Bjerknes’ work—indeed, its entanglement with the development of weather forecasting itself.
In 1916, Herbert Petzold, one of Vilhelm’s doctoral students, was killed at the battle of Verdun. Though Vilhelm had written only a year earlier that his son was “still too young to devote himself to this work,” Jack took over Petzold’s studies, which examined the movement of “convergence lines,” or distinct masses of air in the atmosphere. Shortly afterward, Jack published his first scientific paper, describing that these lines of wind could be thousands of kilometers long, that they tended to drift to the east, and that they had some connection with clouds and precipitation.
By 1917, the fighting in Germany drove the Bjerknes’ to flee for their native soil. “I am now back again in Norway, not merely for a summer journey, but forever,” Vilhelm wrote solemnly. The elder Bjerknes became a professor at the new Geofysisk Institute at Norway’s Bergen Museum, where he developed the school of weather analysis that would become known as the Bergen School.
The Norwegian coast became the school’s laboratory: through negotiations with the government, Vilhelm increased the number of weather observing stations in the south by nearly tenfold. Jack and two other students were set up as forecasters. With the war severely limiting supplies—the scarce winter of 1916–17 became known as the Kohlrūbenwinter, or turnip winter—Vilhelm’s goal of figuring out how to predict the weather was not just a scientific quest, but a practical one, one with the urgently needed goal of “assist[ing] the production of breadstuff.”
The plethora of weather data the Bjerknes were receiving also allowed Jack to continue monitoring convergence lines and refining his theory. By the fall of 1918, he had made a discovery: these lines of weather were connected with cyclones—large air masses that rotate around low atmospheric pressure. He published his observations in 1919. Though he didn’t yet know it, Jack had identified one of the most characteristic features of weather maps and weather forecasting. These features, too, would be linked with war, named for their resemblance to the lines of advancing armies. Jack Bjerknes had discovered the “front.”
The Bergen School continued to work off of Jack’s theories through the course of World War I. The school used mathematical analysis and data from their weather stations to revolutionize its weather maps, including the differing lines of convergence that would later be known as “cold fronts” and “warm fronts,” and the fronts colliding in a process that Jack discovered and called occlusion. Another member of the Bergen school, Tor Bergeron, proposed the symbols currently used for different types of fronts—though it would take several decades before the symbols were adopted as the standard.
By the end of the war, the Bergen School had developed realistic structural models which laid out a set of rules for how storms would behave: how they would form, where they might move, and how they could disperse or intensify. This life cycle is intimately connected with the weather forecast. With such rules, dubbed the “Norwegian frontal cyclone model,” the Bergen school sought to remove subjectivity from meteorology, and to transform it into a science.
Jack and Vilhelm’s physical paths split in the early 1920s, though their scientific goals remained united. Jack Bjerknes became the head of the Weather Forecasting Office for western Norway from 1920 until 1931. In 1926 Vilhelm moved to a professorship at the University of Oslo, where he remained until his retirement in 1932. He would remain scientifically active through his later years, up until his death in 1951. After leaving the Weather Forecasting Office, Jack followed in his father’s footsteps, teaching meteorology back at the Bergen Museum.
The 1920s were a time of exciting advancement in meteorology. The development of radio technology allowed faster and more detailed transmission of weather information; by 1922, 98 stations across 35 U.S. states were verbally broadcasting weather reports, forecasts, and advisories. That year also saw the beginning of an exchange of weather observations between France and the U.S. Weather Bureau, to be broadcast from the top of the Eiffel Tower to other European services. By 1924, pressure maps were being drawn daily for the northern pole and much of the Northern Hemisphere.
Yet it wasn’t long before war again caught up with the world, the younger Bjerknes, and his work. In July 1939, Jack and his family—his wife Hedvig Borthen and their two children—departed for a lecture tour in the United States. It was supposed to be an eight-month trip. But in April 1940, Nazi Germany invaded Norway. Almost immediately, the Norwegian weather alert service was forced to halt its work, and all weather transmissions. The Bjerknes family’s visit to America became a permanent one.
To the Allied war effort, of course, the expatriate (and soon citizen) Bjerknes was a valuable resource. With accurate weather information urgently needed by troops, the U.S. Air Force asked Jack to lead a new school for training Air Force weather officers. Jack chose the University of California’s Los Angeles campus for his school. The Department of Meteorology that he would develop there rapidly grew into one of the world’s leading centers of atmospheric science, and remains at the forefront of the field today.
Meanwhile, the model that the Bergen School had developed finally began widespread implementation—also thanks to the war. In 1942, the U.S. Army Signal Service began a new service to gather and distribute weather data, which would one day be combined with the Weather Bureau Air Force-Navy (WBAN) Analysis Center, the central source of weather charts and maps for national distribution. Late in 1942, it also began the first formal analysis of fronts on surface maps, using the Norwegian cyclone model.
As weather forecasting advanced over the following decades, Jack Bjerknes’ focus would turn to larger questions about our atmosphere; he was the first to identify that El Niño, previously known only as a phenomenon local to Peru, was actually the result of a global oscillation, and that it had significant impacts all over the world. After his death in 1975, biographer Arnt Eliassen wrote that “more than any other atmospheric scientist, Jack Bjerknes managed to create order and system in a seemingly disorderly atmosphere.”
Indeed, while our increased understanding of the atmosphere, along with technology like satellite observation, has modernized weather maps beyond what the Bjerknes might have ever imagined, the theory that informs these predictions is the same. Much of weather forecasting today remains grounded in the Norwegian cyclone model, and the Norwegian cyclone model owes its existence to Jack and Vilhelm Bjerknes.
Located n central Amsterdam, the Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica, also called the Ritman Library, is goldmine of early manuscripts and books on ancient mysticism, religion, and philosophy.
The impressive collection includes around 25,000 printed materials, including around 4,500 printed before the 1800s, many of which are first or early editions. The library was founded in 1984 by Joost R. Ritman, who was driven by an interest in spiritualism.
The collection's primary focus is the Hermetic tradition, and more specifically, Christian-Hermeticism. But you will also find volumes on Rosicrucianism, alchemy, gnosis, esotericism and comparative religion, Sufism, Kabbalah, anthroposophy, Freemasonry, and others lurking amid its stacks. Gems include the Corpus Hermeticum, published in 1471, the first illustrated edition of Dante's La Divina Commedia from 1481, and Cicero's De Officiis from 1465.
The Da Vinci Code author Dan Brown drew inspiration from the texts at the Ritman Library, and used the collection for research for some of his mystery novels. He found the library such a valuable cultural resource he donated over $300,000 to help digitize and preserve the collection. The core collection is expected to be available online in spring of 2017.
Apo Whang-Od, aged approximately 97, keeps a steady pulse and entrancing rhythm as she completes her tattoos. She is not only the oldest tattoo artist in the Philippines, but the only surviving Mambabatok (tattoo artist that follows the hand-tapping tradition) in the country's Kalinga province.
The Last Mambabatok, a short film that is part of While I’m Still Here Legacy Project by Foster Visuals, takes us into the world of Whang-Od and her great grandniece, Grace Palicas. Her wrinkled hands and focused eyes demonstrate total control as she performs the ritual. “When you die, they will take away all your accessories,” she says in the video. “Only your tattoos will remain with you.”
The ink used is a mixture of charcoal and water, and is inserted in the skin with the broken end of trees or thorns. With extraordinary patience, Whang-Od produces beautiful geometric figures tap by tap. This method is slower and more painful than modern ones, but thousands of people travel to this tiny village every year for the experience of getting a tattoo by the village elder, who is quite possibly the world's most hardcore tattoo artist.
Today, as younger generations turn away from the old ways, there seems to be little interest in learning this art. Tradition dictates that the knowledge can only be succeeded through lineage—luckily, Apo Whang Od’s great grandnieces are willing apprentices, and aspire to continue the work of their ancestors.
Every day we track down a Video Wonder: an audiovisual offering that delights, inspires, and entertains. Have you encountered a video we should feature? Email ella@atlasobscura.com.
In 1989, full-page ads for a new product named Chelsea began appearing in American women’s magazines. Featuring soothing imagery of glittering tropical waters and a scent strip that smelled like vanilla with a hint of cocoa, they looked like a standard perfume ad of the time. But Chelsea wasn’t a perfume. It was, in the words of its marketers, “The first cigarette that smells good.”
Chelsea, which tobacco manufacturer R.J. Reynolds introduced into test markets in Florida, Pennsylvania, and Las Vegas in April of 1989, was one of the more striking products in a line-up of cigarettes designed to be less offensive to a smoker’s friends, lovers, and passers by. This genre of products—dubbed “socially acceptable cigarettes”—emerged in the 1970s in the wake of increasing public disapproval of smoking. As its many negative health effects became more apparent, and clean indoor air laws began to be introduced, cigarette manufacturers had to get creative.
The solution deployed in the Chelsea cigarette was a special scented paper that, when it burned, provided a vanilla aroma alongside the standard tobacco. "Chelsea was created for those concerned about offending others or those who personally find a better-smelling product more appealing," said R.J. Reynolds spokesperson Maura Payne in May 1989.
These concerned smokers were, in the imagination of the R.J. Reynolds execs, women. Documents detailing the Chelsea marketing campaign show that the target consumers were 21 to 34-year-old women. To go after these concerned, socially aware ladies, R.J. Reynolds offered freebies like the promotional object below: a cigarette lighter that doubled as a makeup compact.
But R.J. Reynolds' expectations were confounded. Analysis of the test-market buyers showed that 40 percent of those who tried Chelsea were men. The product vanished shortly thereafter following poor sales. After discontinuing the product and blaming its lackluster sales on a marketing campaign that "failed to communicate personal/social benefits to [the] smoker," R.J. Reynolds decided to, in its words, "retest the good-smelling cigarette proposition" and try to appeal to a broader audience. The company relaunched Chelsea in the Atlanta test market in May 1990 under a new name: Horizon.
Aimed at both men and women, Horizon cigarettes offered the same sort-of-vanilla smell and the same confusion over why anyone would buy the product. Its advertising slogans focused on the shame and guilt smokers felt when they lit up among non-smokers. “You shouldn’t have to leave the room,” read one. “You shouldn’t have to apologize.”
Unfortunately for R.J. Reynolds, this new shame-and-guilt approach didn't make much of a dent in the sales figures. Horizon, too, was discontinued, joining several other failed "socially acceptable cigarettes" of the era. At least it went quietly, unlike R. J. Reynolds' "Premier" a “smokeless” cigarette, which cost $300 million to develop and was pulled from the market in early 1989 after five months of testing.
Though its failure was blamed on marketing and lack of flexibility among brand-loyal smokers, one overlooked factor in the flash-in-the-pan life of Chelsea was the taste of the thing.
"It tastes like a room freshener," said one smoker in 1989. "Yuk."
Object of Intrigue is a weekly column in which we investigate the story behind a curious item. Is there an object you want to see covered? Email ella@atlasobscura.com
It’s the church that celebrates America’s Thanksgiving. But it’s some 3,500 miles away from U.S. shores in the Netherlands.
On one wall hangs a bronze plaque, a “token of enduring gratitude and in Christian brotherhood” from the Boston Congregational Club, dated July 1906. On the opposite wall, a stone gifted by the New England Society of Chicago and dated Feb. 7, 1867 faces it. That stone, inscribed in Greek, “One Lord,” represents the last trace of a church that burnt down in Chicago’s Great Fire of 1871. The church had sent it to Rotterdam after receiving a small 16th century gravestone from Rotterdam to insert in its new building.
And in a museum in a back room, the Rotterdam church celebrates American leaders George W. Bush and President Barack Obama.
All of this is steps from a 17th-century windmill on a postcard-worthy Rotterdam canal, at the Pilgrim Fathers' Church, which serves as a memorial and celebration of the pilgrims who may have prayed there before boarding the Speedwell, a ship slated to meet the Mayflower in 1620. But when the Speedwell sprang leaks, the pilgrims were able to book alternative passage on the Mayflower.
The church was founded in the early 15th century as a Catholic church devoted to saints Mary and Anthony but became Protestant following the Reformation. It has undergone several restorations and renovations over the century, including raising the floor to counter flooding and lifting the ceiling to improve ventilation. In the 18th century, it seems, parishioners used to use small, coal stoves to keep warm in the winter. The fumes from the stoves caused many to faint.
Later, it was given the name Pilgrim Fathers' Church to honor the pilgrims’ final prayer site before setting out for the new world. Every year, the Pilgrim Fathers' Church hosts a Thanksgiving celebration. Americans living abroad join congregants for a traditional meal and special church services.
The church’s history represents a preamble to the Thanksgiving story, which isn’t as well known as the aftermath of the landing on Plymouth Rock. The pilgrims, notes an essay in a book on sale in the church about its history, were real people, not symbols.
“The national myth of a glorious American past has loved to praise them as a kind of model democrats, founders of the American Commonwealth and as the chosen people which founded ‘God’s own country’ in the wilderness,” notes the essay “On the Move as Pilgrims” by professor J.W. Schulte Nordholt. “Or the other way round, they were portrayed as a small group of bigoted Puritans, anchored on the rock of Plymouth, intolerant towards their fellowmen, daming down all human pleasure, alcohol, sports and games, in short: a community of hypocrites.”
Like all historical figures, the professor argues, the pilgrims should be seen as important in their own right and their own times. “Let us try to see them as they saw themselves,” he writes.
Here’s how that portrait looks. A group that had separated from the Church of England fled to Holland, settling ultimately in Leiden, about 20 miles north of the Pilgrim Fathers' Church. There, over nearly a 12-year period, the Brownists—for its leader Robert Browne—grew to about 100. When Browne chose to return to the Anglican church, the group began referring to itself as pilgrims, with John Robinson as its leading pastor.
Although they found religious tolerance in Leiden, the pilgrims didn’t find it to be edenic by any means. Leiden’s morals weren’t sufficiently strict for the pilgrims, Schulte Nordholt writes. “Their youngsters became rebellious and wanted to play at ball and ‘kolf’ and more of such worldly amusements with their Dutch friends, even on the day of the Lord.” (Kolf is a Dutch game, perhaps dating back to the Middle Ages, which is credited as an inspiration for golf.)
When the separatists finally had secured arrangements to travel to the new world, the “sade and mournfull parting” was a “truly dolfull” sight, wrote William Bradford, who would go on to become a Plymouth governor. “To see what sighs and sobbs and praiers did sound amongst them, what tears did gush from every eye, and pithy speeches peirst each harte; that sundry of the Dutch strangers that stood on the key as spectators, could not refrain from tears.”
The rest of the story is well known. After the Speedwell“leaked as a sieve,” as the professor puts it, the pilgrims crossed the ocean on the Mayflower, upon which they drafted the Mayflower Compact. But their troubles were only beginning. Half of the group died within the first two months: January and February. That the others survived was thanks to the help of American Indians, who taught them to grow corn and catch fish.
That the pilgrims faded into obscurity is a testament to their aim simply to live quiet and peaceful lives. But tracing one’s ancestry back to the pilgrims has become a sort of American gentility. Revealed in museum exhibits are historical tidbits about pilgrims’ descendants living today that would surprise. “Many famous Americans, such as former president George Bush, are direct descendents of the pilgrims,” notes a video in the church’s museum, displaying a photograph of George W. Bush. In 1989, George H.W. Bush had visited Leiden, and in remarks there, he referred to his ancestor Abigail Jenney, who was born in Leiden.
“I’m glad to be back with my cousins, because we fondly remember Aunt Abigail back there those many years ago,” he said at the time.
Back in the museum in the Rotterdam church, a poster on a wall lists nine U.S. presidents who can trace their ancestors to the Speedwell, including both Bushes. The others are: John Adams, John Quincy Adams, Zachary Taylor, Ulysses S. Grant, James Garfield, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Barack Obama. An asterisk beside the latter’s name adds, “Obama is a descendent of a pilgrim, who came to America on Mayflower II in 1629.” As an article in the Quincy, Mass.-based Patriot Ledger recorded in 2009, the president’s ancestor, Thomas Blossom, came to the new world nine years after the Mayflower sailed, but in a ship of the same name.
In addition to being a surprising offering of Americana amid a city and scene that is entirely Dutch in every other regard, Pilgrim Fathers is a fascinating church for entirely domestic reasons. The church, whose active members number about 1,200, attracts some 400 people a Sunday, says Rikko Bulten, a Rotterdam-based tour guide, who runs a bed and breakfast. Bulten joined the church nine years ago and was part of a group that decided seven years ago to open the church to visitors twice week.
Bulten thinks three things will most surprise visitors to the church. First, it’s extensively decorated for a Protestant church. On Sundays, it is full of parishioners, unlike many other churches. And despite the fact that the pilgrims spent just a day and a night there “before the tide called them away,” Bulten says, “it’s still an important spot along the pilgrim fathers trail.”
One sign of the church’s unique story is its spire, which features not a cross but a sculpture of a herring -- Rotterdam’s symbol -- and its stained glass windows honor the nautical heritage the church represents.
If the essay by Schulte Nordholt is to be believed, Thanksgiving itself has its roots in The Netherlands. “That idea arose from having seen how the third of October—the day of the deliverance of the city of Leiden from the Spanish siege in 1574—was still being celebrated in Leiden,” Schulte Nordholt writes. “In this way, the Dutch left their mark on the American world, although herring and white bread changed into turkey.”
Salvador Dali once claimed that “Surrealism is destructive, but it destroys only what it considers to be shackles limiting our vision.”
It was perhaps because of this that he decided to bring surrealism to one of the art forms he most admired: cooking. In 1973, he published the wonderful, confusing, and delectable cookbook Les Dîners de Gala—a titlereferring both to his wife, who went by the name Gala, and the lavishness of the dishes he included.
As with everything Dali, the book is all about finding extreme pleasure. But this pleasure is combined with the grotesque, the morbid, and even the violent. He writes at the beginning of the book:
Do not forget that woodcock “flambee” in strong alcohol, served in its own excrements, as is the custom in the best of Parisian restaurants, will always remain for me in that serious art that is gastronomy, the most delicate symbol of true civilization.
Within the 12 chapters and 136 recipes, Dali plays with our senses, our imagination, and our logic. Each chapter is peculiarly named— first courses are “the supreme lilliputien malaises” and meats are “the sodomized starter-main dishes.” He even dedicates an entire chapter to aphrodisiacs, “the I eat GALA.”
The chapters are dotted with philosophical musings, striking illustrations, and instructions that range from the whimsical (“have this delicate dish prepared for you only in Brussels”) to the cruel (“Rest assured that for each member you will pull off [the gooslin] will scream so that he will be eaten live rather than dead”).
But for all the eccentricities, the cookbook is surprisingly practical. As food historian Alex Ketchum, who runs The Historical Cooking Project, told Atlas Obscura, many so-called cookbooks are not really about food preparation, but a way to talk about ideas (as in the Anarchist Cookbook), or tell stories. Les Dîners, however, actually is about the recipes, which, as Ketchum attests, “are not just edible but very good.” The surrealism, she says, comes in the illustrations within the book and also in his recommendations.
Though there are only around 400 copies of the original book left, as of this month the first-ever reprint of the book has been released by Taschen.
In honor of the re-release, we have compiled some of the recipes from the book. With a bit of patience and a wide-open mind, you can use these to create the perfect surrealist Thanksgiving meal.
105 Casanova Cocktail
(To drown out your family's political opinions)
The juice of 1 orange 1 tablespoon of bitters (campari) 1 tablespoon ginger 4 tablespoons of brandy 1 tablespoon of old brandy (vieille cure) 1 pinch cayenne pepper
This is quite appropriate when circumstances such as exhaustion, overwork or simply excess of sobriety are calling for a pick-me-up.
Here is a well-tested recipe to fit the bill. Let us stress another advantage of this particular pep-up concoction is that one doesn’t have to make the sour face that usually accompanies the absorption of remedy.
At the bottom of a glass, combine pepper and ginger. Pour the bitters on top, then brandy, and “vieille cure”. Refrigerate or even put in the freezer.
Thirty minutes later, remove from the freezer and stir the juice of the orange into the chilled glass.
Drink..and wait for the effect.
It is rather speedy.
76 Young Turkey with Roquefort
(To innovate your regular turkey recipe)
1 young turkey 1 white blood sausage 7 ozs of roquefort cheese 3 “petits-suisses” cheeses nutmeg (Swiss knight wedges) 1 tablespoon of oil 1 tablespoon of flour 3 cups of water 12 chicken bouillon cubes 2 carrots 2 onions 10 ozs of roquefort cheese 6 ozs of breadcrumbs 3 ½ ozs of corn flour 2 eggs 2 tablespoons of breadcrumbs 1 tablespoon of butter 1 egg yolk 1 quart of water
Pick a tender and well-fleshed young turkey. Clean it and pass it through a flame; we are going to stuff it.
In a salad bowl, combine the white blood sausage, roquefort cheese, “petits-suisses”. Add salt, pepper, and grated nutmeg. Stuff the young turkey; sew up the bird.
In a saucepan, put the tablespoon of oil and in it brown the tablespoon of flour. When it turns light brown, add water, sliced carrots, chicken bouillon and sliced onions. At boiling point, add the bird. Cover and simmer for 1 hour.
At the same time, mash the 10 ozs of roquefort cheese with the breadcrumbs, corn flour, egg yolk, 2 eggs, salt. Blend into a smooth paste.
Bring the quart of water to a boil, add salt.
Using a spoon, put the paste into the water (each spoonful should hold about the size of an egg).
When the puffs start floating, remove them and drain them on a dishtowel. Then roll them in breadcrumbs.
Remove the turkey, strain the gravy, slam the fat off and keep it warm to serve in a gravy boat.
Place the turkey in a baking dish surrounded with the puffs. At the bottom of the dish put the tablespoon of butter. Bake at -400°- for 15 minutes.
Watch it: the puffs turn golden very quickly, you will have to turn them several times.
94 Stuffed Artichokes
(Substitute your green bean casserole with tequila-infused veggies)
6 medium artichokes 2 quarts of water 1 small can of peas 2 avocado pears 7 ozs of grated swiss cheese 7 ozs of pork Pâté de foie 4 tablespoons of tequila 1 cup of white wine 1 tablespoon of tomato paste 1 pinch of thyme
Cut off the green part of the artichoke leaves and scrape the hearts.
Put the artichokes in salted boiling water for 30 minutes. Remove, cool, and take out the choke that is in the center. Mash the peas, the peeled avocados and the Pâté de foie.
Mix well and combine with the swiss cheese and tequila.
The particular taste of the latter will go well with the aroma of the vegetables; but if you cannot buy any tequila, use any white liquor.
Using this stuffing which you have salted and peppered, generously fill your artichokes. Put them side by side at the bottom of a big pot.
In a bowl, combine water, wine, tomato, and thyme. Add salt and pepper and a bit of the stuffing. Don’t let the liquid drown the artichokes. Cover and simmer on low flame for 1 ¼ hours.
Now and then, add a bit of liquid so the bottom won’t burn.
65 Bush of Crayfish in Viking Herbs [recipe by La Tour d’Argent]
(In a surrealist Thanksgiving, crayfish can substitute cranberry sauce)
After giving us this recipe the chef decided that he wanted to keep the exact ingredients a secret. We present the recipe any way for its reading pleasure.
In order to realize this dish it is necessary to have crayfish of 2 ozs each.
Prepare the following ingredients for a broth: “fumet” (scented reduced bouillon) of fish, of consomme, of white wine, vermouth, cognac, salt, pepper, sugar, and dill (aromatic herbs).
Poach the crayfish in this broth for 20 minutes. Let it all cool for 24 hours and arrange the crayfish in a dance. Strain the broth and serve in cups.
If you don’t have the time to cook these or the money to spend on their lavish ingredients, heed Ketchum’s advice: make your traditional Thanksgiving meal surrealist by presenting each dish in peculiar ways. That is, after all, the way of Dali.
Let’s take a trip back in time to Norfolk, England, to witness a scene of bygone rusticity: An English farmer, dressed in a tweed coat, tie and vest, topped off with a jaunty pageboy cap, herds his flock through the streets. It’s a welcome break from the average day in 1931, and mothers follow behind pushing kids in prams; a little girl clutches her hands in excitement. The livestock gobbles and wobbles.
The farmer is driving a herd of turkeys through town.
When we think back on livestock migrations, we typically think of cattle, maybe sheep. The image of a rugged herdsman driving a clucking, head-bobbing, beady-eyed gaggle of birds across open plains and down dirt roads is harder to imagine, yet this practice used to be common all over the world. In the 17th century, before the introduction of trucks and refrigerated railway cars, a turkey drive was the only way to get poultry from farm to market. Such drives were no trivial matter, either: Birds by the thousands were sometimes driven hundreds of miles over several days; fox and other predators would thin the herd along the way. In some parts of the world, such drives lasted into the 1930s.
The turkey trip from farms in rural Norfolk county to the livestock market in London, over 100 miles away, was a regular one. In her book The Agricultural Revolution in Norfolk, author Naomi Riches writes that around “one hundred and fifty thousand turkeys were driven annually from Norfolk and Suffolk down the Ipswich Road to London.” Once they arrived, the turkeys were sold at market to stores and individual buyers.
In his 1724 travelogue A Tour Thro’ the Whole Island of Great Britain, Daniel Defoe (most famous for authoring Robinson Crusoe) recorded that turkeys and geese were driven to London from August to October, when the roads grew “too stiff and deep or their broad feet and short leggs [sic] to march in.” (To protect their feet, some lucky turkeys wore leather booties. Less lucky ones had their feet dipped in tar.)
Even at this time, there were a few farmers trying to engineer their way out of onerous treks. Some birds were conveyed in special carts with “four stories or stages, to put the creatures in one above another, by which invention one cart will carry a great number,” according to Defoe. Despite this mobile poultry condominium, most turkeys—who walk more than they fly— in the world were still herded the old-fashioned way.
In the United States, it was not unusual to see a clucking herd of turkeys driven through the streets and backcountry, but this doesn’t mean the task was simple. In his book The Turkey: An American Story food historian Andrew F. Smith describes the frequent trips turkeys took between Lancaster and Philadelphia, occasionally trampling themselves to death on the 70-mile journey. Turkey drives could include “shooers” who herded the turkeys, children who scattered feed in the path to guide the birds, and covered wagons filled with grain to feed them.
In some cases the journeys were epic. One drive took birds from Ohio to Missouri, another from Iowa to Denver. The nature of turkeys also presented unique challenges: dusk prompted the birds to seek higher ground and roost, effectively ending the day's march.
"Wherever they are when the sun sets, that’s where they perch for the night," Peter Gilbert, chair of the Vermont Humanities Council told Vermont Public Radio. "And their collective weight shatters trees; occasionally birds end up perching on a farmer’s shed or barn and the building collapses. In fact, in one town, they roosted on top of the school building and the school collapsed.”
Sometimes the turkeys would mistake the shade cast by a covered bridge for nighttime and react accordingly, requiring their drivers to roust them from the structure.
Despite such calamities, turkeys were strangely suited to the trip. “The bird’s amiability, vigorous constitution, and long, strong legs made these drives possible,” writes Karen Davies in More Than a Meal: The Turkey in History, Myth, Ritual, and Reality. Wild turkeys, whose blood ran in the veins of domesticated varieties, were known to run at speeds of up to 25 miles per hour, and could climb mountainsides, cross streams, and fly over lakes and rivers up to a mile wide.
As more efficient transportation options and better roads arrived, turkey drives waned, although some persisted into the 1930s. Their rarity in the early 20th century made them a tourist draw in places like Cuero, Texas, where they were common until 1917. “Growers around Cuero drove their turkeys in flocks of five to ten thousand up to thirty miles, from their farms to turkey-processing plants in town,” writes Smith in The Turkey: An American Story.
Crowds descended on the town to witness the novelty. Around the same time, a dance craze called the “turkey trot” was sweeping the nation. The shrewd townsfolk of Cuero decided to capitalize on the trend, hosting a drive just for tourists. They called it the “Turkey Trot” and drew a crowd of 30,000. The event inspired imitators, and a version of the Turkey Trot, called Turkeyfest, still takes place today, sans turkey drive. Now it’s common for humans to do the running in “turkey trot” races around the country.
Hardly fodder for rustic reminiscing or high frontier fantasy, the legacy of turkey drives has been largely forgotten, although they get the occasional cultural nod. There was the 1991 play put on by the Trinity County, California, theater troupe Dell’Arte, “The Truly Remarkable Turkey Drive of 1912” (based on a true story). Parents who want to share the wonder of turkey drives with their kids can pick up a copy of Kathleen Karr’s The Great Turkey Walk, a fictional account of a drive from Missouri to Denver. But most folks will tuck into this season’s bird with little appreciation for how far these creatures once walked, just to end up on a platter.
St. Peter's Church in Sudbery, England—a small town northeast of London—was once a way station on a pilgrimage. Less than 20 miles north, about a day's walk, is Bury St. Edmund, where pilgrims would visit St. Edmund's shrine. On the way there, they might have stopped over at this church for a night's rest—and left something behind.
Recently, when graffiti experts examined the church, they found an overlooked bit of graffiti on one of the stone walls. Someone, most likely a pilgrim, had left a peacock behind, reports the East Anglian Daily Times.
It's faint enough that Roger Green, part of the Friends of St. Peters, told the paper, that, "I have passed it so many times since 1973 when I became involved with the church but I have never noticed it before."
In Christian symbolism, the peacock represents immortality, or eternal life. It's associated more with early Christianity than present day Christian art, but as far as graffiti in churches goes, it's actually pretty appropriate.
When the Al G. Barnes circus came to Clovis, New Mexico, in 1921, the Clovis News highlighted one performer whose reputation preceded her. “Woman has achieved many startling things in recent years. She has invaded legislative halls and courts and other hallowed precincts that have always been regarded as the sole property of masculinity,” the reporter wrote. “But Miss Mabel Stark… has done more than this. Not only has she achieved that which no other woman has ever done before her, but her feat has never been accomplished by man either.”
The feat? Taming a full-grown tiger.
“Mabel Stark used to be a trained nurse,” the New York Times reported in 1922. “That was a long time ago, and she had a nervous breakdown… So she took to training tigers. It is much simpler and easier, thinks Miss Stark.” In actuality, Mabel Stark’s life history was spotty, with vague allusions to a life before circuses and little concrete knowledge of her age. But once in the ring, her confidence and experience made it clear that she was not to be underestimated.
Ten years after training her first group of three tigers in 1912, Stark had increased her group to 16, orchestrating them all into an elaborate pyramid in which the last tiger jumped over her head. Some newspapers reported that she would appear in the ring with up to 20 tigers at a time.
Stark’s approach to training tigers was decidedly different from the aggressive, “masculine” method of antagonizing the animals and punishing them with brute force. Instead, Stark used verbal commands and a wooden pole in the ring to “tame” the beasts, further displaying her inventive approach to animal training and her uncanny ability to connect with her costars.
Stark may have been one of the more famous trainers of her day, but she wasn’t the only woman performing with wild animals under the Big Top. In The Circus Age: Culture and Society Under the American Big Top, Janet M. Davis points to this period as one dedicated to the idea of the “New Woman” in performance culture. In the first 30 years of the 20th century, the novelty of women circus performers was crucial for selling their talents to audiences.
Against the backdrop of first-wave suffragette movements and loosening sexual constrictions for white, middle-class women, circus women were seen as exotic, vibrant, and emblematic of a new direction for women inside and out of the tent.
Stark entered the circus world in the midst of these developments. In her autobiography, Hold That Tiger, she recounted that Al Sands, the manager of the Al G. Barnes circus, told Stark that her petite stature and blonde hair would be an excellent contrast with large jungle cats in the ring. This was a visual tactic employed for women like Annie Oakley and May Wirth, whose traditionally feminine appearance acted as a foil to their masculine activities. One of Stark’s most successful acts was wrestling with a single tiger, which also fed into the marketing gimmick of the small girl and the big cat as unlikely companions. In the wrestling act, a fully grown tiger would grab Stark by her head and they would rotate and fall to the ground together until one of them “won” the fight.
The media helped promote Stark’s “small girl, big cat” gimmick by covering the many accidents and injuries she sustained while working with her beloved animals. The reports often focused on Stark and other “circus girls” who were mauled or killed by the big cats they trained. “The smell of blood from the leopard cage set the lions wild and they attacked Miss Stark,” the Herald reported in 1917. “She escaped from the cage with slight injuries,” but her fellow circus girl Martha Florene was badly mauled.
Reporters also burnished the circus girls’ reputation for novelty by telling stories of their eccentric behavior outside the ring. In L.A. area newspapers, reporters regularly covered Stark’s antics, including her sojourn in downtown L.A. with her six-month-old pet tiger, Rajah, on a leash. “Tigers only love people who have stronger wills than theirs,” she was quoted as saying in a 1916 Los Angeles Herald article. It was this confluence of danger and excitement that made Stark and her peers so exciting to watch.
In 1925, Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, which had also hired Stark to perform, removed all jungle cats from its acts, leaving Stark to work with horses instead. “I find the horses more difficult to manage than the tigers,” she told the Times, in a piece that called her “the world’s most famous woman animal trainer.” After stints in Europe and a catastrophic injury in 1928 which left her walking with a cane for weeks, Stark returned to the U.S. and worked in film and television, including a job with Mae West on I’m No Angel, which the latter wrote and starred in as a circus performer.
In the 1940s, Stark moved on from circuses to more stationary gigs at Goebel’s Wild Animal Farm in Thousand Oaks, California (later called Jungleland). In 1952, the Times reported that she was a “star” at Thousand Oaks, on the way to her 40th year in the business. She worked with wild cats into her sixties, until she was fired from the Jungleland complex, where she worked until 1968. The Los Angeles Times reported her death on April 22, 1968, an event that some scholars attribute to an overdose.
Mabel Stark, along with many other women who made their living in circus work in the first half of the 20th century, were symbols of possibility for the New Woman, especially when it came to work and autonomy. Stark didn’t just train tigers to jump into a pyramid; she trained public to have different expectations about women’s abilities in entertainment. That’s another feat no man could ever do.
The Comstock Lode was the first major discovery of silver ore in U.S. history, and it sent a small handful of Americans from the working class to a new life of affluence. Two of those who struck it rich were husband and wife Sandy and Eilley Bowers, an American teamster and a famous Scottish pioneer respectively. Throughout the early 1860s, the pair used their accumulated wealth to construct Bowers Mansion, the first stately home in the history of the Nevada Territory.
Built in 1863 on the land that she won in a divorce settlement with one of her previous husbands, Bowers Mansion was Eilley’s dream house. For a cost of $400,000 ($7.7 million in today’s dollars), the estate combined Georgian and Italianate architecture to resemble Eilley's recollection of her homeland in Scotland.
Bowers Mansion brought Eilley's long, eventful life to worldwide fame. Complete with fine furniture, elegant adornments, marble fireplaces, and a handful of paintings, the mansion was Eilley’s ultimate testament to her pride and success. In addition to being her claim to fame, the famous female pioneer also used the estate to assist the women’s suffrage movement, which used the mansion to host one of their balls.
Unfortunately for Eilley, the riches couldn’t last forever. The Comstock Lode eventually played out, and the Bowers' seemingly-endless supply of wealth soon became unreliable. In 1868, Eilley’s husband Sandy died, by 1876 she was forced to foreclose Bowers Mansion and become a poor fortuneteller in Oakland.
But today, nearly 150 years after its historic foreclosure, Bowers Mansion still stands. The stately home remains a tourist attraction and offers hourly weekend tours from May 21st to October 30th. To restore the mansion's original stately appeal, over 500 families in Nevada have donated antiquated pieces of furniture to Bowers Mansion.
Nowadays, Bowers Mansion and the adjacent cemetery can be explored. The estate's grounds maintain a swimming pool, playground, and picnic area, and the stately mansion remains one of the most fascinating historic areas in the state of Nevada.
By the time she started pitching Thanksgiving to America, Sarah Josepha Hale knew her power. She was edging towards 60, and for a decade she had been the editress (her preferred term) of Godey’s Lady’s Book, one of the most widely read publications in the United States. Women followed her lead in matters of dress, food, and home—anything that required good taste—and she could convince men, too, to do what she wanted.
In 1847, what she wanted was to create a new national holiday—the American Thanksgiving Day. In her quest to accomplish this, she sent detailed petitions to five presidents and devoted numerous column inches to the idea in her magazine. More than any other individual, Hale was responsible for the creation of Thanksgiving as we know it, a country-wide day of rest and feasting at the end of November.
But the Thanksgiving Day Hale imagined would have been largely unrecognizable to Americans today: her Day of Thanksgiving was conceived as a Christian holiday, focused on prayer rather than food. And, by the end of her 15-year campaign, she thought it should be celebrated not just in the U.S. but across the world.
Hale didn’t invent American Thanksgiving from whole cloth. It had long been a tradition in New England to set aside a day in the late fall to give thanks—she called it a“good old puritan custom” in her first pro-Thanksgiving column. But in much of the country (at that point, 29 states, almost all west of the Mississippi) it was unknown. Here is Hale's first pitch for the holiday, written in 1847:
“OUR HOLIDAYS.—We have but two that we can call entirely national. The New Year is a holiday to all the world, and Christmas to all Christians—but the “Fourth of July” and “Thanksgiving Day” can only be enjoyed by Americans. The annual observance of Thanksgiving Day was, to be sure, mostly confined to the New England States, till within a few years. We are glad to see that this good old puritan custom is becoming popular through the Union...Would that the next Thanksgiving might be observed in all the states on the same day. Then, though the members of the same family might be too far separated to meet around one festival board, they would have the gratification of knowing that all were enjoying the blessing of the day...
The “Lady’s Book” then suggests that, from this year, 1847, henceforth and forever, as long as the Union endures, the last Thursday in November be the DAY set apart by every state for its annual Thanksgiving. Will not the whole press of the country advocate this suggestion?”
Hale's proposal had a decidedly nationalist tinge. In 1847, the United States was still fighting the Mexican-American War, and Mexico had yet to cede the territory that would become California and the American southwest. America and Britain had only settled their dispute over territory in the Pacific northwest the year before. But Hale was already imagining a holiday that would stretch “from the St. Johns to the Rio Grande, from the Atlantic to the Pacific border.” America was growing, and Hale was imagining a holiday that would help join these disparate lands under one national identity.
Year after year, Godey’s Lady’s Book published the same plea, sometimes recycling the same exact sentences. Within a few years, the campaign was seeing some success; by 1851, 29 out of now 31 states (Wisconsin and California had recently joined the U.S.) celebrated a day of Thanksgiving—although not necessarily all on the same day. This achievement did not satisfy Hale, though. She insisted that everyone should celebrate on the exact same day, the last Thursday in November, so that “the telegraph of human happiness would move every heart to gladness simultaneously.”
She’d thought it all through. She had picked the last Thursday in November as the ideal date because there weren’t many other distractions at that moment: farm labor was done for the season, the election cycle would be over, summer laborers would have returned home, and the “autumnal diseases” which haunted the South each year had passed.
As Thanksgiving celebrations gained in popularity, so did Hale's fervor. Short exhortations to celebrate the day turned into page-long editorials describing the great benefit of “a feast of gladness, rendering thanks to Almighty God for the blessings of the year" and a day that “would exemplify the joy of Christians."
In 1860, more than a decade after she first started promoting the idea, Hale declared victory. “We may now consider Thanksgiving a National Holiday,” she wrote. So many states had celebrated it so consistently on the same day, that Thanksgiving was no longer “a partial and vacillating commemoration of gratitude to our Heavenly Father, observed in one section or State” but a “great and sanctifying promoter of the national spirit.”
Despite her proclamation, Hale had still not achieved the ultimate endorsement: a proclamation from the President. Her ambitions for Thanksgiving had grown ever larger, though, and over the next couple of years she would advocate for a single day of Thanksgiving “throughout all Christendom.” She explicitly included Jewish people in that group and believed Thanksgiving would be popular in Europe, too.
In the 1860s, as the Civil War started, Hale focused on national unity, one of her strongest selling point. “Everything that contributes to bind us in one vast empire together, to quicken the sympathy that makes us feel from the icy North to the sunny South that we are on family, each member of a great and free Nation, not merely the unit of a remote locality, is worthy of being cherished,” she wrote.
It was only under these conditions that a president finally endorsed her idea. In 1863, Abraham Lincoln proclaimed a “day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelt in the heavens.” Among the things Americans should “fervently implore” from the Almighty? To “heal the wounds of the nation, and to restore it…to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquility, and union."
Twins are fairly rare worldwide—only one in 80 births results in two babies rather than the standard one. In India, it's even lower, closer to one in 250. Strangely enough though, the village of Kodinhi, which only has about 2,000 households total, has one of the highest rates of twinning (that's the official term) in the world.
The village is very similar to every other hamlet in its region, except that getting acquainted with the local doubles could prove more confusing than usual. Kodinhi attracted the world's attention in 2008, when it was discovered that there were nearly 250 pairs of twins born in the past several decades. That year alone, 15 pairs of twins were recorded being born, though local doctor Krishnan Sribiju believes that there are even more in the region.
The phenomenon is somewhat of a mystery. It is apparently linked to the people of Kodinhi, not the place itself, as women who leave the village to start families are equally as likely to give birth to twins. Some scientists have suggested it has to do with pollutants in the village's water, but Dr. Sribiju refutes this claim, as the rate of birth defects in Kodinhi is no higher than anywhere else in India. Genetic researchers from India, Germany, and the UK are studying the DNA of twins the village to try to understand the mysteriously high twinning rate.
On an overcast November day, Juan Chipon strolled into the chapel at the Cementerio General in La Paz, Bolivia, carrying the skull of his father. While this might sound like the beginning of a horror film, Juan was happy and smiling, and the skull was covered in floral wreaths in celebration. Behind Juan came others, also carrying elaborately decorated skulls.
A local woman named Mariela sauntered in carrying her uncle’s skull, a biker hat perched on his forehead and a glistening diamond embedded in one of his front teeth—“yes, it’s a real diamond!” she said, offended by the thought that it might be a fake. Behind her came Xahina, struggling with a large tray of four crania. And following them came thousands more, all part of what is the world’s most flamboyant exaltation of the link between the living and the dead, an annual ritual like no other in the world.
The skulls are known locally as ñatitas (roughly meaning “the little pug-nosed ones”), and this overcast morning was the beginning of their day. A massive public festival held every November 8, the Fiesta de las Ñatitas, gives thanks to the dead, as personified by their very skulls, for a year’s worth of friendship and service.
Here on the high plateau of the Andes death has never been a fatalistic concept; those who pass on have simply transcended to another phase of life, and can still function within the family or social group. Keeping a ñatita in one’s home is considered by many people to provide a great benefit, since the dead are thought to have the ability to offer services to those still living. The skull can provide security for the home, ensure domestic tranquility, aid students in their schoolwork, and provide sage advice.
A ñatita can be the skull of a relative, like Juan Chipon’s father, but they are just as frequently those of strangers, obtained from medical schools or old cemeteries, who reveal an identity to their new owner in a dream. Normally they are kept in household shrines, but for the Fiesta they return to the cemetery as a jubilant mass.
At the Cementario General, where the biggest festivity takes place, the event is a veritable postmortem fashion show. Many skulls wear glasses or hats, while others are styled in emulation of those who keep them. Some will be enshrined like relics or carried in like little princes—for the more than 10,000 people in attendance, the effort put into the presentation of one’s ñatita provides a visible sign of love and esteem.
By mid day, with the celebration in full swing, the cemetery grounds are literally awash in skulls. Devotees wander among them, providing tributes. Cigarettes placed between their jaws and coca leaves are common, but the most prominent are flower petals and crowns, as a reminder of the beautiful things of the natural world. Adding a touch of cacophony, strolling musicians offer deafeningly loud Bolivian dance music to edify the skulls.
The roots of the festival date to the Pre-Columbian world, and surviving records indicate celebrations conforming to the modern festival have been going on in Bolivia since at least the beginning of the 20th century. Beyond that, the history is murky, but that doesn’t trouble anyone assembled at the cemetery, because despite the presence of so many skulls, the focus is not on the past and definitely not on death.
“It’s about life, about the future, about gratitude and a bond,” explains Xahina, with her four skulls now set up in a makeshift altar in the cemetery grounds. “In your country, maybe the dead really do die,” she continues, “but here death isn’t so final. It’s not a contradiction because the dead are only as dead as you allow them to be. For those of us here, the dead are still very much a vital part of our lives.”
Like many a viking king, Olaf II of Norway, also known as Olaf Haraldsson, is thought to have died in battle. The year was 1030, and Olaf was leading an army to defend Christianity in the Battle of Stiklestad, the story goes, before being felled.
Or was he? No contemporary accounts of the battle exist, and the whole battle was later thought to have been simply made up; it's hard to make a saint without a little martyrdom.
Still, regardless of how he died, historians are pretty sure of one thing: where the king is buried. Today Olaf's remains are enshrined in Nidaros Cathedral in Trondheim, but, immediately after his death, they were first laid in the ground of that city.
That finding confirmed for many Olaf's spiritual prowess, and his body was subsequently moved nearby to St. Clement's Church, then on to other churches as the crowds grew, before finally settling in at Nidaros Cathedral, the northernmost still-standing medieval cathedral in the world.
Until recently, no one knew where that first wooden stave church—St. Clement's Church—was located, but on November 11, NIKU said that it had found it. Archaeologists even think they've discovered the altar where Olaf might have been buried inside the church, also located in Trondheim.
"This is a unique site in Norwegian history in terms of religion, culture and politics," said Anne Petersén, the excavation's director. "Much of the Norwegian national identity has been established on the cult of sainthood surrounding St. Olaf, and it was here it all began!"
Olaf wasn't canonized until 1164, or over 130 years after his death. Still, he's taken on perhaps more responsibility in death than in life. In addition to being the patron saint of Norway, Olaf is also the patron saint of carvers, kings, land, and... difficult marriage. That should keep anyone busy.
Val Sella is a diminutive valley located in the the Valsugana region of Trentino. Peppered with tiny clusters of cottages and hotels but devoid of any substantial villages, it nevertheless contains one of the most intriguing art gardens in Italy.
In 1986, local artists began exhibiting their artwork in the woods of Val Sella. Due to its success, the one-off exhibition turned into a biannual event. But it wasn’t until 1996 that the exhibition became permanent, with a trail called the Percorso Artenatura entirely devoted to leading visitors through the unique sylvan gallery.
Presently, approximately 30 installations can be admired along the trail. The underlying theme of Arte Sella is that all the exhibits are created using locally found materials—i.e. stones, leaves, logs, twigs, etc. Some art pieces are even interwoven with live plants and trees, making them alive and ever-changing. Art is, therefore, inserted and subjected to the living cycle of the surrounding environment.
Visiting this exhibition means taking in the mastery of the artists blended in with the beauty, sound and smell of the woods, making it a quintessential multisensory experience.
During World War II, food rationing was one way that American civilians remained engaged in the war effort. By conserving their food at home they left more for servicemen, who, being well-fed, could go on to defeat the Axis and win the war. Or so the thinking went.
This propaganda film, produced for a beet cannery, instructs laborers on how to work faster by trimming beets the easy way. By doing this they would help win the war, the placards assert, before a shot of a gallantly waving American flag.
Every day we track down a Video Wonder: an audiovisual offering that delights, inspires, and entertains. Have you encountered a video we should feature? Email ella@atlasobscura.com.
As part of their excellent ongoing coverage of the #NoDAPL protests, the folks at Unicorn Riot received a copy of the FEMA crowd control manual being passed around to local cops. In the section of “crowd dynamics,” the manual identifies the seven “types” of protesters recognized by the FBI.
Or maybe, just maybe, you’re the eighth type, conspicuously absent from this list: the person with a legitimate grievance against authority demonstrating peacefully as per their constitutional right.
