A few weeks ago, a friend linked me to a blog post about making cuneiform cookies. I loved the idea, and I thought I could get slightly more authentic results. Here’s what I did, with plenty of pictures below the cut!
So apparently last year the National Park Service in the US dropped an over 1200 page study of LGBTQ American History as part of their Who We Are program which includes studies on African-American history, Latino history, and Indigenous history.
Like. This is awesome. But also it feels very surreal that maybe one of the most comprehensive examinations of LGBTQ history in America (it covers sports! art! race! historical sites! health! cities!) was just casually done by the parks service.
Roses are red, that much is true, but violets are purple, not fucking blue.
I have been waiting for this post all my life.
They are indeed purple, But one thing you’ve missed: The concept of “purple” Didn’t always exist.
Some cultures lack names For a color, you see. Hence good old Homer And his “wine-dark sea.”
A usage so quaint, A phrasing so old, For verses of romance Is sheer fucking gold.
So roses are red. Violets once were called blue. I’m hugely pedantic But what else is new?
My friend you’re not wrong
About Homer’s wine-ey sea!
Colours are a matter
Of cultural contingency;
Words are in flux
And meanings they drift
But the word purple
You’ve given short shrift.
The concept of purple,
My friends, is old
And refers to a pigment
once precious as gold.
By crushing up molluscs
From the wine-dark sea
You make a dye:
Imperial decree
Meant that in Rome,
to wear purpura
was a privilege reserved
For only the emperor!
The word ‘purple’,
for clothes so fancy,
Entered English
By the ninth century
.
Why then are voilets
Not purple in song?
The dye from this mollusc,
known for so long
Is almost magenta;
More red than blue.
The concept of purple
is old, and yet new.
The dye is red,
So this might be true:
Roses are purple
And violets are blue
.
While this song makes me merry, Tyrian purple dyes many a hue From magenta to berry And a true purple too.
But fun as it is to watch this poetic race The answer is staring you right in the face: Roses are red and violets are blue Because nothing fucking rhymes with purple.
ALICE ROOSEVELT WAS HARDCORE. “She was known as a rule-breaker in an era when women were under great pressure to conform. The American public noticed many of her exploits. She smoked cigarettes in public, swore at officials, rode in cars with men, stayed out late partying, kept a pet snake named Emily Spinach (Emily as in her spinster aunt and Spinach for its green color) in the White House, and was seen placing bets with a bookie.
So what I’m reading here is, she was a Roosevelt?
Well I have a new hero.
Her whole wikipedia article is gold
“When her father was governor of New York, he and his wife proposed that Alice attend a conservative school for girls in New York City. Pulling out all the stops, Alice wrote, ‘If you send me I will humiliate you. I will do something that will shame you. I tell you I will.’”
“Her father took office in 1901 following the assassination of President William McKinley, Jr. in Buffalo (an event that she greeted with “sheer rapture.”)“
“During the cruise to Japan, Alice jumped into the ship’s pool fully clothed, and coaxed a congressman to join her in the water. (Years later Bobby Kennedy would chide her about the incident, saying it was outrageous for the time, to which the by-then-octogenarian Alice replied that it would only have been outrageous had she removed her clothes.”
“She was dressed in a blue wedding dress and dramatically cut the wedding cake with a sword (borrowed from a military aide attending the reception)”
“When it came time for the Roosevelt family to move out of the White House, Alice buried a Voodoo doll of the new First Lady, Nellie Taft, in the front yard.”
“Later, the Taft White House banned her from her former residence—the first but not the last administration to do so. During Woodrow Wilson’s administration (from which she was banned in 1916 for a bawdy joke at Wilson’s expense)…”
“As an example of her attitudes on race, in 1965 her African-American chauffeur and one of her best friends, Turner, was driving Alice to an appointment. During the trip, he pulled out in front of a taxi, and the driver got out and demanded to know of him, “What do you think you’re doing, you black bastard?” Turner took the insult calmly, but Alice did not and told the taxi driver, “He’s taking me to my destination, you white son of a bitch!”
“To Senator Joseph McCarthy, who had jokingly remarked at a party “Here’s my blind date. I am going to call you Alice”, she sarcastically said “Senator McCarthy, you are not going to call me Alice. The trashman and the policeman on my block call me Alice, but you may not.”
I love this woman.
WOMEN WHO NEED FUCKEN MOVIES.
This is Alice as an older lady. The pillow says “If you can’t say something good about someone, sit right here by me.”
In the fourth grade, we had to pick an inventor, dress like the inventor, and explain our invention. I decided to pick something off the wall (instead of, like, a light bulb), so I ended up doing my little presentation as George Crum. I remember reading about his work as a chef, learning about his shortness with customers, and the interaction (possibly apocryphal, although Crum certainly invented the potato chip) with the diner who kept complaining about his home fries being too thick.
I literally made a presentation as this man, and used a few websites and a couple encyclopediae (yeah, I’m old) to source all the data. I certainly know more than most people do about George Crum.
The point of all this is that, until I came across this post on Tumblr, I had absolutely no idea he was black. I’ve known who Crum was for over twenty years and never knew his race, because no website or encyclopedia thought it was worth mentioning.
Erasure is a fucking disease.
I also know the story about Crum, heard it several times–nobody EVER mentioned that he was black.
There’s so many historical figures I’m only realizing as an adult were other than the standard cis white straight male and I hate it
Fuckin’ I live in the town where chips were invented and didn’t even know that… 😦
Speck was born on July 15, 1824 in Saratoga County in upstate New York. Some sources suggest that the family lived in Ballston Spa or Malta; others suggest they came from the Adirondacks. Depending upon the source, his father, Abraham, and mother Diana, were variously identified as African American, Oneida, Stockbridge, and/or Mohawk. Some sources associate the family with the St. Regis (Akwesasne) Mohawk reservation that straddles the US/Canada border. Speck and his sister Kate Wicks, like other Native American or mixed-race people of that era, were variously described as “Indian,” “Mulatto,” “Black,” or just “Colored,” depending on the snap judgement of the census taker.
As for his name…well, Speck was effectively renamed by a white guy who couldn’t be bothered to remember who Speck was:
Speck developed his culinary skills at Cary Moon’s Lake House on Saratoga Lake, noted as an expensive restaurant at a time when wealthy families from Manhattan and other areas were building summer “camps” in the area. Speck and his sister, Wicks, also cooked at the Sans Souci in Ballston Spa, alongside another St. Regis Mohawk Indian known for his skills as a guide and cook, Pete Francis. One of the regular customers at Moon’s was Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt, who, although he savored the food, could never seem to remember Speck’s name. On one occasion, he called a waiter over to ask “Crum,” “How long before we shall eat?” Rather than take offense, Speck decided to embrace the nickname, figuring that, “A crumb is bigger than a speck.”
First, to the best of anyone’s knowledge, George Crum never made the claim that he had invented the potato chip, let alone claimed the tale as his own — those assertions emerged only many years after his death. Crum was, by some reports, the sort of cook that would have punished an overly demanding patron in the manner of the legend. He was also not a modest man. Had one of his fits of pique resulted in a popular dish, it’s highly unlikely he’d have been humble about it.
Second, in 1899, while Crum was still alive, his sister claimed in an interview to have been the one who invented potato chips. Says Dirk Burhans of Crunch! A History of the Great American Potato Chip:
The most credible version is that Katie Speck Wicks invented the chip in an accident not dissimilar to the culinary misfire in which the brownie was born (from a mix-up of cake and fudge). “Aunt Katie,” who also worked at Moon’s Lake House, was frying crullers and peeling potatoes at the same time. A thin slice of potato found its way into the frying oil for the crullers, and Katie fished it out. Noticing the chip, Crum tasted it and said, “Hm hm, that’s good. How did you make it?” After Katie described the accident, Crum replied, “That’s a good accident. We’ll have plenty of these.”
In 1917 Wicks’ obituary credited her as the inventor of the potato chip.
So the potato chip was invented by a black Native American woman, and was popularized by a black Native American man.
This is why terf ideology is inherently white supremacist- sex essentialism is not universal but a specific western ideology that has been violently imposed on other cultures during colonial expansion, and people not fitting the western binary literally exterminated.
Though there are certainly examples from western history too, like the Roman Galli for example. And, especially given how much fascists and conservatives worship Imperial Rome, I think it’s important to make clear that transfeminine individuals did in fact have an important and valued role in that society too.
Beltainefaerie's Flights of Fancy 