Library Notes


Rebecca Hyde

December 23, 2012



What do food critics do between meals? How can one plan a life around tasting food, good and bad? Would you want to know a food critic as a friend? Would they be obnoxious, controlling tablemates? For the following writers, food criticism is the art of living.

M. F. K. (Mary Frances Kennedy) Fisher was a writer for whom food was the thread of memories: love of food and a passion for cooking bring together descriptions of friends and meals, social commentary on food preparation and consumption, and advice on how to develop a taste for living. Life is best lived when attention is paid to small details and to relationships: an intermingling of food, love, and security. The young M. F. K. Fisher found life good when eating hoarded chocolate bars at school. When aging and ailing, she recommended the practice of spare but appreciative eating. The last essay in “An Alphabet for Gourmets” collected in “The Art of Eating,” describes the “Perfect Dinner”:

Fisher was a great correspondent. As with cooking, she started early. Letters to friends and family have been collected in “M. F. K. Fisher, a Life in Letters: Correspondence, 1929-1991.” Here again is the thread of interest in developing a discerning taste or mind, whether applied to food or to the complexities of public and home life. Most of her letters begin with a thanks of appreciation for a note received. The importance of other people and the warmth of her interest in them shine forth in Fisher’s letters. In a last letter to good friend and neighbor Lawrence Clark Powell, Fisher speaks of aging and coping and why : “It’s a question of dignity. I don’t know the answer, but it adds enough spice to the dish to make it edible, whether or not I want to eat it. The only answer for that is to say ‘bon appetit’ to myself and to you too. Love,…”

Jeffrey Steingarten is a food critic with a sense of humor. He has collected some of his more outrageous “Vogue” magazine essays in “The Man Who Ate Everything: and Other Gastronomic Feats, Disputes, and Pleasurable Pursuits.” He is a frequent critic of our obsession with health. “Salad the Silent Killer” pokes fun at our attempts to categorize food as good or bad: even the “good” guys (raw vegetables) contain chemicals which make the vegetable indigestible, or nutritionally useless, unless cooked. In “Primal Bread,” on the other hand, here is a person who flatly says the world is divided into two camps, those who can live happily on bread alone and those who need vegetables, meats, etc. Steingarten belongs to the first category, and will always use its bread in judging a restaurant.

Ruth Reichl, in a “Los Angeles Times Book Review,” wrote of M. F. K. Fisher’s genius in insisting on the importance of life’s small moments. Reichl must be a likable person. We also have her funny, perceptive, touching book,” Tender at the Bone: Growing Up at the Table.” In her apprenticeship, Reichl is guided by the discovery at an early age that “food could be a way of making sense of the world… if you watched people as they ate, you could find out who they were.” Food could also be dangerous. Her manic-depressive mother sometimes served strange food, crafted from food bargains. On one occasion, twenty-six people ended up in the hospital. Reichl’s stints along the way as a waitress in a failing restaurant, an impoverished social worker on New York’s Lower East Side, and staff member in a collectively owned restaurant in Berkley, helped prepare her for her job as food critic for “The New York Times.” The book is the story of how a person finds what they’re born to do.

Library Notes


April Everett

12/16/12



Giant, gold-rimmed glasses. Cheesy, big-toothed grin. Fringed Western shirt. Turquoise bolo tie. The year is 1994, the phase is cowgirl, and what blooms is a yearbook photo I will forever wish extinct. Fast forward to 2005. I’ve answered a Craigslist posting for a temp job transcribing a poorly written manuscript for a peculiar, elderly woman. I begin to suspect that my “boss” has stolen the manuscript and is trying to pass it off as her own, which is the only crime worse than being the actual author of the wretched work. I pay a visit to the history room of the local university (my “boss” is an alleged alumni), and I pull out volume after volume of their yearbooks until I finally locate her name. It’s most definitely not her.

Whether you’re looking for a humorous trip down Fashion Faux Pas Lane or trying to solve good, home-grown mysteries, the dusty old yearbook can prove a valuable tool. Fast forward to 2012 and meet North Carolina Yearbooks, a collection of college and high school yearbooks from all over North Carolina. This collection is available for browsing through DigitalNC.org, the official site of the North Carolina Digital Heritage Center. The Center is a statewide digitization and digital publishing program maintained by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The Center works with libraries, archives, museums, historical societies, and other cultural heritage institutions from across the state to provide online access to their special collections.

DigitalNC.org allows you to browse photographs, newspapers, scrapbooks, maps, artwork, manuscripts, and more supplied by more than 80 counties in North Carolina. These items are grouped into collections such as Images of North Carolina, North Carolina City Directories, and North Carolina Newspapers. Of course, my personal favorite is the North Carolina Yearbooks collection. The yearbooks offer high quality images and are searchable. They are surprisingly “real” as the onscreen format mimics a real yearbook and allow you to turn pages like a physical book. According to the Center’s website, the student yearbooks “provide a window into college life in North Carolina from the 1890s to the present. From sports teams to sororities, fashions to hairstyles, these volumes document the changing attitudes and culture of college students year by year.” A number of private and state-funded institutions are participating in the yearbooks project.

Visit the Digital Heritage Center online at DigitalNC.org and use the tabs along the top of the page to browse by collection or by county. Note that there are also special exhibits and slideshows covering topics such as basketball, lighthouses, and therapeutic travel in North Carolina. While you’re browsing, be sure to look up a friend, family member, or (better yet) your boss in one of the North Carolina yearbooks.

News and Notes Enough with the Words and Promises


By John Tucker

As musical carols are to the holidays, debates and promises are to an election year. Like it or not--listeners are always treated to an earful. The difference is we look forward to one, and hope that we will survive the other. Have your ears taken in more statements and stalemates than can be digested in a single sitting? If so, don’t give up on the words flying around; change the mode of communication to a book rich in wisdom, supported by smiles and a belly laugh or two. Might I suggest a trip to the library where a humorous look at life awaits?

First to catch my eye was the book titled “Cosbyology” by Bill Cosby, a collection of laugh-out-loud stories that embrace family life, work, school and sports. “Cosby”- the comic son of William and Anna who was born in 1937; “ology”- study of…how does one study the life of a comic? We laugh our way through his ordeals and “first” situations of life experiences. I found my smiles turned to chuckles, then to laughter that had to be shared with others. It is quite the collection of essays and observations from the “Doctor of Comedy”.

Second, the book titled “Cotton Mill Boys: and other characters I’ve known” by Richard Thorpe is a memoir of life in a mill village from the 1940s and 1950s. These recollections of childhood will give new meaning to life on a road called Railroad Street and chicken dinners from scratch before B.C. (meaning before Colonel Sanders). Can you remember the joy of the two o’clock whistle? How about learning that your house key not only unlocked your home, but every other house at the mill? If you can’t remember when… this book can help you recall a simpler time.

A favorite collection of wit and wisdom is titled “Look Who’s Laughing” compiled by Ann Spangler and Shari MacDonald. These short stories record the humor in everyday relationships. No bond is too sacred for these jovial jaunts. You will snicker at the tale of a preacher visiting a church member and helping himself to the bowl of peanuts on the coffee table. By the end of their visit, the parson confessed that he had eaten all of the peanuts in the bowl. “Oh that’s alright. Ever since I lost my teeth, all I could do was suck the chocolate off of them.” I thought that would get to you, please check out the rest of the tales in this rib-tickling text.

On a more serious note, peruse the famous “Poor Richards Almanack” written by Benjamin Franklin. These words and phrases record some of the best advice you might recall from your childhood. Phrases like: “No gain without ______”, or “A true friend is the best ____________”. “A penny saved is a ___________________”. “Blessed is he that expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed.” “A true friend is the best possession.” “The doors of wisdom are never shut” so catch up on your reading with Ben’s gem of a classic.

In the library collection of short stories and witty essays one text looked out of place, until I opened the first page. “Dancing the Dream” by Michael Jackson is a collection of photos which we might expect and they are wrapped in words, pros and poetry that radiate creativity. Michael Jackson’s observations and reflections help us see that trust, love and faith in others and ourselves is the foundation of a life well lived.

Words are truly a part of our daily lives and these are but a few of the joyous resources that weave together smiles, dreams and visions to take us from our daily grind into a relationship with joyful words. Come to the library and encounter words of joy found faithfully unchanged in a book.