Are the Cherokee Still There?

We find their beautiful spear heads and points as well as fragments of stone tools in our fields, just as we find remnants of those who supplanted them.

There is no record of permanent Cherokee settlements in our county but we were certainly a part of their hunting ground. The big bottom field at the lower part of our farm is where most of these artifacts came from and the presence in one small area of numerous half-finished points and flakes of flint leads us to believe that this field between two streams must have been a summer encampment and this one area must have been where a flint knapper worked.

When I mentioned the Cherokees in my Saturday post, Reader Wil (who is in the Netherlands) asked if they were still around and I promised to blog about the Indian Removal, also called The Long Walk or, more poetically still, The Trail of Tears. It's a shameful story, which I've already talked about in my book OLD WOUNDS and which I use again in the forthcoming THE DAY OF SMALL THINGS.

Briefly, the story is this. White settlers wanted Native American land and in 1838 the Indian Removal Act meant that all Native Americans in the southeastern US were driven from their land, houses and orchards destroyed. They were rounded up, impounded in stockades, and forcibly marched west to Oklahoma. 1,200 miles they traveled -- a six month journey. Men, women, and children, the very old and the very young were forced along the Trail of Tears--most walking -- in the bitter winter weather. One in four of the some 17,000 Native Americans died on the march.

There were some Cherokees who avoided the removal by hiding and some who came back later. Eventually, the Cherokees were 'given' land here in the North Carolina mountains -- a tiny fraction of what had been theirs. This is the Qualla Boundary -- Cherokee, NC, a few hours drive from our farm.

The Trail of Tears is our country's shame. I've put a link below to a much fuller account.

Go here to read about some modern day Cherokees --a Cherokee flute player and a woman who is trying to keep the Cherokee language alive. And here for a visit to the Qualla Boundary -- the home of the Eastern Band of Cherokee. And here for the story of the Trail of Tears.

This is such an iconic event -- it's hard to be a writer in western North Carolina and not feel compelled to write about it. Many have and many will. I'm sure I will again.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, O MISTRESS

The Mistress of Sarcasm in her Youthful Days.

The Mistress of Sarcasm celebrates having completed twenty-seven trips around the sun today.

Sometimes it’s hard to believe how much water has passed under the proverbial Bridge o’ Time. But it has... and the evidence is right before our eyes. A beautiful, talented young woman, where once there stood a little girl.

She is one of the few people who can (almost) make me laugh unto the point of unconsciousness. This is especially scary, because we find the same things amusing.


The Mistress of Sarcasm celebrates with the help of an inflated King. How ’bout a hunka hunka birthday cake?

I did say “talented”, didn’t I? Take a gander at that pendant. One evening, she was inspired by an antique electric fan - one of the many items in her Great Accumulation of Arty Tchotchkes - and decided to render a miniature version of it in sterling silver, for use as a piece of jewelry. Here it be, in closeup:


“Antique fan” pendant in sterling silver, created by the Mistress.

Snazzy, eh?

She Who Must Be Obeyed may have put it best: it may be the Mistress’s birthday, but we’re the ones who received a gift twenty-seven years ago... and it’s a gift that we continue to treasure more every day. Happy Birthday, O Mistress of Sarcasm, my love!

ROASTY

The Grill-Roasted Corn with Chesapeake Butter pictured above is one of the tasty goodies with which we celebrated the Mistress of Sarcasm’s impending birthday yesterday evening. Dinner consisted of Grilled Meat, in accordance with the desire of the Mistress (a chip off the old block, evidently) - and so why not grill a veggie, too?

Our early celebration was necessitated by the fact that the Missus and I are, even as I post this, heading northeast for the week. We’ll stop in Dee-Cee to visit Elder Daughter, after which I will continue onward unto the City of Brotherly Love. Philadelphia! Home of cheese steaks, soft pretzels and mustard, Tastykakes, a certain brand of cream cheese, the first U.S. Mint... and, incidentally, the Cradle of American Independence. Also the site of this year’s biennial FJMC Convention, which is what brings me back for the first time in well over a decade.

But we were talking Roasted Corn, weren’t we? Yes, we were.

To make this stuff, I adapted a Cook’s Illustrated recipe. You shuck your fresh ears of corn, throw ’em in a big pot of water in which you’ve dissolved a half-cup of salt, and let ’em brine for at least a half-hour. Then you put them directly on a hot grill - no foil wrapping. Turn the ears frequently; you want them caramelized nicely but not carbonized. It should take about 15 minutes to get them nice and tender.

While the corn is brining, make the Chesapeake Butter. Combine a stick of softened butter, a teaspoon or so of Tabasco, a couple of cloves of minced, pressed, or finely grated garlic, and one or two teaspoons of Old Bay seasoning. Mix well. When the corn is done, slather the ears with this butter. It’s like a landmine of flavor. Yowza!

We gobbled up the corn along with some Korean-style marinated flank steak, sautéed green beans with lemon-soy butter, and a nice green salad... leaving room for a slice of superb raspberry layer cake (courtesy of Publix). Hey, not every damn thing is made from scratch here!

Hot Daze

Some strategies for staying cool -- POM pomegranate juice with soda (lots of soda) over ice . . .

Salad for lunch with last night's cold eggplant/shrimp/red pepper pasta tossed in . . .

Bathe two large, reluctant dogs. Don't change wet clothes when done. Sit in front of fan. Ah . . . .

I got to shoot Aliens, so all was good with the world.

He told jokes...and took his ear off.

And I stood in line for over an hour listening to him.

Yes, we waited in a line for over an hour to ride Toy Story Mania at Disney.

A 3D shooting ride.

Remy & his cousin were very excited.

And, boy, did I kick some alien bootay.

I saved the world.

Really.
I mean, for all we know, this ride could be real life...I mean, if we don't do it, maybe real aliens will arrive and take over the world.

I did my duty.

At least, that's my story, and I'm stickin' to it.

The Mountain Park Hotel

Hot Springs, NC -- a real place, unlike the fictional Ransom and Gudger's Stand in my Elizabeth Goodweather books -- has long been known for the healing waters that emerge from the earth at temperatures up to 104 degrees. The native Cherokees used the springs till they were driven out by white settlers who named their growing village Warm Springs.

Inns were built to accommodate travelers on the Drovers' Road and as the trail was improved into a stagecoach road, known as the Buncombe Turnpike, the springs began to attract tourists.

The first resort was built in the 1830s --The Warm Springs Hotel, often called The White House, was made of white brick, three stories high with thirteen columns on the long porch facing the river. Partially destroyed by fire in 1838, it was rebuilt.

A gentleman by the name of Charles Lanman wrote of his visit to the hotel in 1948: The Warm Springs are annually visited by a large number of fashionable and sickly people from all the Southern States. The principal building is of brick and the ballroom is two hundred feet long. The hotel has accommodations for two hundred fifty people. There is music and dancing, bowling , bathing, riding, and fishing.

The hotel changed hands several times, survived the Civil War, and was operating under the name of The Patton Hotel when it burned in 1884. The property was sold once more to a group of Northern businessmen -- The Southern Improvement Company -- and in 1886, the Mountain Park Hotel was built. A new hotter spring was discovered and the town's name was changed to Hot Springs.

In 1887 -- at the time of the subplot of my work in progress -- The Mountain Park Hotel was an elegant resort, offering a rich social life as well as the healing powers of the baths. The railroad had at last come to Hot Springs and travelers could make the journey in comfort, rather than enduring the bone-jolting stagecoach ride of previous years.

Built in the Swiss/ Gothic (!) style and set in a hundred acre park, the hotel had 200 gas-lit, steam-heated bedrooms, some with the ultimate luxury of a private bath. There were over a thousand feet of verandas, a dining room that could seat 300, and gloved waiters in tuxedos.

A bathing house boasted 16 private marble-lined baths with adjacent dressing rooms. There were tennis courts, horseshoes, bowling, riding, target shooting, croquet, to name only a few of the entertainments. And there was an orchestra that played every night!

Oh, it was something grand! Till it burned down in 1920. But I'm enjoying spending imagined time there as I work on my historical subplot.

If you want to know more, there's a useful little book Hot Springs, NC, by Della Hazel Moore. And you can, of course, Google Hot Springs, NC.

I'll be heading over there soon for a little real time research -- stay tuned!

A BIT OF RESIDENTIAL NOSTALGIA

Eli and Elisson, September 1955.

You’re looking at a photograph of Eli (hizzownself) and his young son - Eli’s son, AKA Yours Truly - taken in September, 1955 in front of our old Unqua Road residence in Massapequa, New York. The Old Man is all of thirty years old in this picture; I am a month shy of my third birthday. I’m pretty sure I was toilet-trained by then.

I was a nine-month-old infant when Eli and family moved from Brooklyn to the blue suburban skies of Long Island. As such, my earliest memories are of that house on Unqua Road, our home for fourteen years.

I remember the basement, with its dim, dark, dank corners and the mysterious Heating Oil Tank that sat against the western wall. The basement also served as our laundry room: the washer (and later, the dryer) sat against the eastern wall, while a handy trap door in the bathroom on the main floor allowed us to throw our soiled clothing directly into a waiting basket below.

There was also a crawl space behind the basement stairs, a place so shrouded in mystery, I never thought to explore it. I was content to imagine how we could convert the basement into a makeshift fallout shelter when the bombs started falling - as I figured they inevitably would. Yeesh.

After we had been in the house a few years, there were some necessary renovations. A screened and heated porch was added in the back of the house, and the garage - visible behind Eli’s shoulder in the photo above - was converted into a family room. To replace it, a new detached garage was built on the other side of the house, a narrow breezeway separating it from the house. I have a dim, fragmentary recollection of playing on the garage’s newly-poured concrete slab before the framing was put up.

We moved out of that house 42 years ago, but it still stands. Here it is today:


The Unqua Road house, June 2009.

The original cedar shingles have long since been replaced by vinyl siding, but you can recognize the master bedroom window, the one with the white shutters and windowbox in the 1955 pic. On the left side of the picture you can see where the garage used to be. The steps and railing are new, as is the circular driveway. Our old lamp-post, added after the garage conversion, still stands.

I was curious about how the place looked inside, but not enough to scare the crap out of the current resident by ringing the doorbell.

We moved out of that typical suburban ranch house in 1967. Our new home, a grand total of three blocks away, was a bit more contemporary. Here’s a current photo:


The Pocahontas Street house, June 2009.

Yes, that caption says Pocahontas Street. Pocahontas Street West, to be exact. If you didn’t care for ridiculous-sounding Indian names, you had no business living in Massa-fucking-pequa.

The landscaping has grown a bit more lush in the eighteen years since Eli moved away, and the fence on the left is new... but this is pretty much how it looked when we lived there. The Japanese red maple, now huge, hides the front entry in this view, but my old bedroom window is visible behind the pink azalea. And that long, sloped roof is the very one upon which Danny Baldwin would climb on the odd evening, there to run around and drive my parents insane. [Years later, when he worked for a landscaping company that was doing some work at the house, he sought an audience with my mother in order to proffer an apology.]

Oh, the Baldwins. Alec, Billy, Danny, and Stephen... and sisters Beth and Jane. They lived one street over, at the southwest corner of Iroquois and Sunset Road, in a house that was, at the time, a Legendary Eyesore. It’s a respectable place now:


The Baldwin house on Iroquois Avenue.

As with most Budding Delinquents, I’m sure they were a fun buncha kids. But this is only conjecture on my part. Alec, eldest of the brothers, was six years younger than me, so our paths rarely crossed.

Ahh, if only walls could talk... what stories they could tell!

Around and About

. . . odds and ends from the past few days . . .

I'm still trying to get a picture of all four banty chicks but Mama hustles them indoors as soon as I point the camera their way.

They are feathering out and are beginning to need more space -- in the next few days, I believe, John plans to move the little family to Justin's chicken tractor, currently occupied by two banty hens.

When I was on my way to the grocery store a few days ago, I was stopped by an outbreak of two naughty calves. They had slipped under the fence and were out for an explore. The mother in the lower left corner is saying something like, "You better get back in here this minute!"

Fortunately, Justin and Claui were taking their dogs for a morning stroll (click on the picture to see what's happening) and quickly turned the bad babies back in with their mamas.

You can see that the calfies aren't a lick repentant and will probably get out again as soon as we move on.

The garden is coming along well -- squash plants are bigging up; tomatoes look good -- thanks to John who mulched them heavily. The broccoli, however, was so full of worms ( I know how well the bt stuff works -- but with all the rain we had, there wasn't a chance for the spray to get a foothold. When I plant more, I'll use row cover to protect them.) So yesterday I yanked out the wormy, buggy plants and gave them to the chickens -- who were delighted.

I'm trying to get out in the garden in the cool of the morning -- then spend my afternoon and evenings writing. Just now I'm back in 1887, with the DeVine sisters at the Mountain Park Hotel in Hot Springs, NC (formerly Warm Springs). I'll tell you more about the hotel (which unlike the DeVine sisters really existed) tomorrow.

USELESS INVENTION OF THE WEEK

[Photo credit: SWMBO.]

Presenting...the iPhonebooth!

TODAY’S PITH AND VINEGAR

BobG’s comment at this post got me thinking... about an idea for a Great New Reality Show.

Maroon twelve celebrity contestants on an inaccessible island. Give ’em plenty of fine food: steaks, lobster, the works. Gourmet stuff. Let ’em eat to their hearts’ content...

... and then give them a powerful laxative (Ex-Lax in the chocolate mousse, f’r instance) and a pack of Zig-Zags. Now, watch the fun begin.

It would be a real test of ingenuity.

And you, Esteemed Reader, have your own test of ingenuity: What would you call this show? Please share your best ideas in the comments.

PLYING THEIR TRADE

At first I thought the Bunwad-Merchants were pulling a Hershey Bar Scam on us.

The Hershey Bar Scam, for those who are not pruned-up enough to remember, is how the chocolate people dealt with fluctuating raw material costs. For many years, you could buy a Hershey milk chocolate bar for a mere five cents... but it wasn’t always the same size. In 1930, that nickel bar weighed two full ounces, but by 1968 it had shrunk to ¾ ounce. It’s simply a hidden price increase, and it works because people pay way more attention to the price of the package than they do to the amount they buy. But it’s the unit cost that really counts.

For a moment, I suspected that the Asswipe Boys were taking a page from the same book. Or pulling a sheet off the same roll, to customize the analogy.

Most of us are accustomed to using two-ply paper, except on boats and in cheap hotels, where single-ply is the norm. (Ecch. Ouch.) Two plies seem to provide the perfect balance between softness and durability: You want to get the job done with a minimum of irritation and chafing, while at the same time not generating a “bush full of berries” (so to speak).

Technological advance continues apace, however, and the World o’ Bunwad is no exception. Quilted Northern has introduced their “Ultra Plush” line, with three (count ’em) plies of tush-friendly paper. Hey, the razor-blade people are doing it... why not the Asswipers?

When I first heard about this Wonderful New Invention, I was skeptical. I’m not a fan of overly soft Tee-Pee, mainly because it tends to form those nasty dingleberries, the existence of which has now been officially acknowledged by the Charmin Bears:



(That’s right! Bears got dingleberries!)

But a couple of weeks ago, when the Missus and I were on a Bunwad-Hunt, we found a great big package of this Ultra Plush stuff and decided to give it a try, thanks to its being heavily discounted.

It was the Missus who first noticed the difference.

Never mind that the paper was, indeed, both softer and more prone to berrification. That was bad enough... but the clincher was the dimensions of the roll. The three-ply rolls are a half-inch narrower.

It’s not so much that the roll looks weird on a standard Tee-Pee Dispenser. It’s that I’m used to having a certain amount of papery real-estate in my hand when I commence to wiping. I like the roll to be at least as wide as my hand, for obvious reasons.

The package, of course, tells you how many sheets per roll you get, how thick they are, and the dimensions of each sheet, as well as the total area on the roll. But I suspect that a vanishingly small number of people actually look to see the dimensions of the sheets. The Quilted Northern Ultra Plush sheets are are 4 x 4 inches, compared to 4½ x 3½ inches for the traditional products. Narrower but longer.

So it’s not really a Hershey Bar Scam after all. The narrow sheets actually have 1.5% more area. Wheeee!

But I still prefer the traditional Roll Dimensions. I mean, let’s pull an extrapolatio ad absurdum, shall we? If this trend continues, in a few years we’ll see twenty-ply bunwad with individual sheets measuring ½ x 36 inches. They’ll be really soft, but you’ll have to use ’em like Rectal Floss. Oy.

FRIDAY RANDOM TEN

It’s Friday, time once again for the Friday Random Ten, that obnoxious exercise in Musical Miscellany in which I put up a list of songs spewed out (at random, of course) by the iPod d’Elisson.

What’s playing today? Lessee:

1. Radar - Bernard Herrmann, The Day the Earth Stood Still (1950)
   
   
2. Matchbox - The Beatles
   
   
3. Tell Me Why - The Beatles
   
   
4. Fire And Chains - Frank Zappa
   
   
5. Wachet Auf (from Cantata #1 40) - Wendy Carlos (J. S. Bach)
   
   
6. Train in Vain (Stand by Me) - The Clash
   
   
7. Club Limbo - Squirrel Nut Zippers
   
   
8. The Way You Look Tonight - Stan Getz & Dizzy Gillespie
   
   
9. Bratislava - Beirut
   
   
10. Weapon of Choice - Fatboy Slim
    
    Break, eject
    Eject, eject
    Break, eject
    Eject, eject
    
    Break, eject
    Eject, eject
    Break, eject
    Eject, eject
    
    ’Fore they catch ya chainsmokin’ (word)
    ’Fore they catch ya chainsmokin’ (word)
    ’Fore they catch ya chainsmokin’ (word)
    ’Fore they catch ya chainsmokin’ (word)
    
    ’Fore they catch ya chainsmokin’ (word)
    ’Fore they catch ya chainsmokin’ (word)
    ’Fore they catch ya chainsmokin’ (word)
    ’Fore they catch ya chainsmokin’ (word)
    
    ’Fore they catch ya, ’fore they catch ya
    ’Fore they catch ya, ’fore they catch ya
    ’Fore they catch ya, ’fore they catch ya
    ’Fore they catch ya, ’fore they catch ya
    
    Don’t be shocked by tone of my voice
    Check out my new weapon, weapon of choice
    Don’t be shocked by tone of my voice
    Check out my new weapon, weapon of choice, yeah
    
    Listen to the sound of my voice (aah...)
    You can check it on out, it’s the weapon of choice, yeah
    
    Don’t be shocked by the tone of my voice (aah...)
    It’s the new weapon, the weapon of choice
    
    You can blow with this
    Or you can blow with that
    You can blow with this
    Or you can blow with that
    Or you can blow with this
    Or you can blow with that
    Or you can blow with us
    
    You can blow with this
    Or you can blow with that
    You can blow with this
    Or you can blow with that
    You can blow with...
    
    Walk without rhythm, it won’t attract the worm
    Walk without rhythm, and it won’t attract the worm
    Walk without rhythm, and it won’t attract the worm
    If you walk without rhythm (uh), you never learn, yeah
    
    Don’t be shocked by the tone of my voice
    Check out my new weapon, weapon of choice
    
    Don’t be shocked by the tone of my voice
    Check out my new weapon, weapon of choice
    
    (Can’t forget to load it)
    Before they catch ya chainsmokin’
    (Can’t forget to load it)
    Before they catch ya chainsmokin’
    (Can’t forget to load it)
    Before they catch ya chainsmokin’
    (Can’t forget to load it)
    Before they catch ya chainsmokin’
    
    You can go with this
    You can go with that
    You can go with this
    Or you can go with that
    Or you can go with this
    Or you can go with that
    Or you can go with us
    
    You can go with this
    You can go with that
    You can go with this
    Or you can go with that
    Or you can go with...
    
    Organically grown
    Through the hemisphere I roam
    To make love to the angels of light, yeah, and my girl
    I guess you just don’t understand
    It’s gone beyond bein’ a man
    As I drift off into the night
    I’m in flight
    
    Break, eject
    Eject, eject
    Break, eject
    Eject, eject
    
    Break, eject
    Eject, eject
    Eject, eject
    Eject, eject
    
    Break, eject
    Eject, eject
    Break, eject
    Eject, eject
    
    Eje, Eje, Eje, Eje, Eje, Eje, Eje, Eje, Eje, Eje, Eje...
    
    

It’s Friday. What are you listening to?

I'm usually very laid back

These adorable little angels are my nieces.
And I wish they'd come live with me.

I'm normally very tolerant of all children.

Screaming babies on airplanes don't bother me.
Kids throwing fits at the grocery store have me feeling sympathy for their parents.

BUT, recently, on our Disney trip...
I was hot.
I was tired.
I was hungry.

And while we were waiting on a dinner reservation,
there was annoying, terrible, horrible little child whining
and crying to her parents about wanting to go on the elevator.

My tolerance evaporated.


I almost told this little girl,
a stranger...


that the elevator went straight to hell.

And if she got on it...there'd be monsters.



I don't know what got in to me.

With Flowers and Thanks

. . . to all of my friends out there in the invisible blog community.

Your words meant a lot . . .

. . . but all I can say is thank you. . . and enjoy the flowers.

EQUAL... BUT SEPARATE

Another fine essay by my friend Ron Feinberg, this one posted at Like The Dew.

It’s (mostly) about Ron’s experiences as a Jewish student at the University of Georgia in the late 1960’s - a time of growing (but as of yet, very incomplete) enlightenment.

As I read accounts of newly-released transcripts of conversations between Richard Nixon and the Reverend Billy Graham in 1973, I find myself completely unsurprised... especially after reading Ron’s post.

Go. Read it all.

THE KING (OF POP) IS DEAD

News flash: Michael Jackson has died at the age of 50, reportedly of a heart attack.

Holy fuckamoley.

More to follow. I have not yet decided whether to include my usual array of tasteless jokes.

A FAREWELL TO FARRAH

Farrah Fawcett, one of the original Charlie’s Angels, is in the process of getting acquainted with real angels, having passed away this morning at the all-too-early age of 62 after a lengthy struggle with cancer.

Men of a certain age will remember, with a sort of wistful nostalgia, the iconic image of Ms. Fawcett shown above. It was a hot-selling poster Back In The Day, the mid-1970’s answer to Marilyn Monroe, Jayne Mansfield, and the immortal Brigitte Bardot. The red one-piece swimsuit - not overly revealing - encourages the viewer to use the imagination, and the pose showcases Fawcett’s slender shape impressively. But the “sizzle” all comes from that Texas-sized cascade of hair and that big, bright smile. (OK, the perky nips don’t hurt.)

Unlike Monroe and Mansfield, Farrah Fawcett survived past her mid-thirties, long enough for the blush of youth to have worn off her. As she matured physically, so did her acting ability, garnering her a nominations for six Golden Globes and three Emmys.

For many of us, Farrah Fawcett will be forever young, that poster-girl image having been seared into our minds at an impressionable age. But it is a sad reality that youth doesn’t last... and neither does life. It’s a sobering matter to think about, and today’s events force us to confront it.

Brigitte Bardot is still walking the planet, though. She turns 75 this year. Où sont les sex-kittens d’antan?

Bear

Our sweet Bear died yesterday evening -- John found her under the willow tree where she so often slept.

She was still breathing but limp and completely unresponsive. And very soon, she took her last breath.

We haven't a clue -- sunstroke, heart attack, snakebite . . .

On Monday she took a long walk with John, swam in the creek, and seemed in fine spirits. Yesterday she acted tired. But that wasn't unusual for Bear.

And now she's gone.

I'm pretty sure she didn't suffer . . . and I'm glad I was there.

She was a fine dog.

SORRY, MR. SIMON

I got a Nikon camera
I love to take a photograph
So mama don’t take my Kodachrome away

- Paul Simon, “Kodachrome”

I hate to be the bearer of bad tidings, Paul, but Mama Eastman is, indeed, going to be taking your Kodachrome away.

The Big Yellow Box from Rochester, New York - Eastman Kodak - announced this past Monday that manufacture of the venerable color film will be discontinued after the final batch - now in production - is completed. At current usage rates, that means Kodachrome will belong to the ages well before year-end.

Before the era of digital photography arrived and ate the guts out of the traditional emulsion-based photographic film business, Kodachrome - the oldest and longest-lived line of color reversal film - established the benchmark for high-quality slide photography. Transparencies (a more technical term for slides) have a much higher dynamic range than color prints, and Kodachrome offered, as well, very low grain, high sharpness, and accurate color reproduction. It was favored by professionals, especially those shooting images intended for print.

Unlike other color reversal films like Kodak’s Ektachrome and Fuji’s Velvia, Kodachrome does not contain color couplers in the film itself; they are added during processing. What this means is that processing Kodachrome is a gold-plated bitch, using extremely complex chemistry and a lengthy, multiple-step process well beyond the capabilities of your local photofinisher. Kodak could do it, as well as a handful of independent labs, but not the guy in the back room at the corner drugstore. [For many years, Kodak processing was included in the film’s price, but a 1954 court ruling and the resulting consent decree put an end to that practice. Tie-in sales are prohibited by the Clayton Antitrust Act of 1914.]

The beginning of the end for Kodachrome was in 1990, when Fujifilm (the Big Green Box) introduced Velvia, a transparency film offering better color reproduction, even finer grain, and higher speed. Even better, Velvia could be processed by any modestly-equipped lab using E-6 (Ektachrome) chemistry. Photographers deserted Kodachrome in droves... and then along came the Digital Revolution, slamming an electronic stake through the heart of the traditional film business. Polaroid imploded; Kodak began to delaminate.

With Kodachrome now accounting for only one percent of Kodak’s rapidly declining film sales, the handwriting was on the wall. The 74-year-old film would have to go.

I have hundreds - nay, thousands - of color transparencies tucked away in the bowels of Chez Elisson. A goodly proportion of them were shot on one kind of Kodachrome or another: the fine-grained Kodachrome 25, the crisp, contrasty Kodachrome 64. They represent a vanishing technology, much as the Mistress’s collection of shellac 78 RPM phonograph records represents a technology that has since been displaced by digital audio in all its varied forms.

Kodachrome now joins daguerreotypy, wet-plate negatives, and tintypes in the dusty Land of Obsolescence. I will miss it...

...but whenever I pick up my Nikon camera (I love to take a photograph), I don’t miss it all that much. Digital provides high quality, instant satisfaction, instant results, and low cost per image. I’ll remember Kodachrome with nostalgia, but no longing.

[Tip o’ th’ Elisson fedora to the Other Elisson, who provided the link to the WSJ article.]

Update: Looks like Dax Montana beat me to it. His post is here.

BLACK GOLD

Black raspberries. Look kinda like truffles, don’t they?

Yesterday, as She Who Must Be Obeyed and I wandered the aisle’s of Harry’s Farmers Market (now owned by Whole Paycheck Foods), we struck gold. Black gold.

No, not Crude Oil. I’m familiar enough with that crap, owing to a 32-plus year career in the petrochemical industry at the Great Corporate Salt Mine.

I’m talking about black raspberries.

We see plenty of red raspberries here, and once in a while - especially at Fancy-Pants Fresh Market - you can snag some golden raspberries. I love ’em both, but golden raspberries taste pretty much like their red brethren despite their exotic appearance.

Black raspberries, though - they’re a Whole ’Nother Thing.

You might expect these bad boys to taste pretty good: like the bastard son of a red raspberry and a blackberry... but you’d be wrong. They’re even better. Black raspberries have a subtle, delicate flavor that is somehow a little... mysterious. Intoxicating. You could even call it sexy.

I took a handful of those black raspberries and threw them in a bowl with some blueberries and cut-up peaches and apricots. It was a perfect Summer Fruit Medley... and all it needed was a handful of Grape-Nuts to convert it into a complete meal. Breakfast for lunch - what’s not to love?


A summer fruit medley: Apricots, peaches, black raspberries, and blueberries.

THE QUEEN

I’m Hakuna, Queen of all I survey.
If I don’t like you, stay out of my way.
Despite all my bitching
I enjoy a good skritching
And sometimes, I might even play.

Hakuna is adjusting to life without Neighbor. In the idealized everyone-holding-hands-around-the-campfire-and-singing-Kumbaya world, I might even believe she misses the ol’ Midnight Marauder... but no. I think she’s happier than the proverbial Porcine in Excrement.

Update: The Friday Ark is afloat, with Hakuna in pole position. [Now, there’s a mixed metaphor for you.] Catch Edition #249 at the Modulator.

And for yet more Catness, swing on over to When Cats Attack! Sunday evening for the 276th installment of Carnival of the Cats.

Update 2: CotC #276 is up.

Pub Dates

Not the kind where you slope off to the local tavern for a cider and a Scotch egg -- but the dates of publication. I've just found out for sure that Birdie's book -- The Day of Small Things -- is set for a May 25, 2010 release -- quite a bit later than I'd originally been led to believe. Probably it was that second rewrite and getting rid of Myrna Lou that slowed things down.

But at least I won't be out trying to promote the book during the unpredictable winter months when there can be so much ice on our road that I can't go anywhere.

Why so long? I hear some of you asking. I thought the book had been copy edited already.

And so it has but they like to get out the advance copies to reviewers and allow plenty of time for those reviews to get published by the time the book hits the shelves.

There is a tentative pub date for Under the Skin --the one I'm working on now -- and it is March of 2011. But I've said I'll have it in by December 1 of this year -- if I do this and the rewrites don't take too long, it's possible that date could change. We'll see.

Meanwhile, I'm going to be hard at it to meet that deadline.