Marco Polo’s claim to have imported the pasta concept from China is pretty much sauced with ego. For thousands of years, flour, water, salt and ingenuity have made pasta-like foods for the poor. In the first century BCE, Horace wrote…
Blog Archives
Wanted: 50 hr. work week
In June, 1911, the Cleveland garment workers, mostly immigrant women, struck for a series of demands the owners considered outrageous: a 50 hour work week; a “short Saturday” (7:30am to 1:30pm); Sundays off; not being charged for use of the…
The anti-Statue of Liberty
In the midst of virulent anti-immigration legislation rampant in so many states now, I came upon this cartoon from the time of President Woodrow Wilson (1913-1921). Miss Liberty is complaining: “Mr. Wilson, if you are going to make this island…
Southern Festival of Books
This weekend I went to the Southern Festival of Books in Nashville for a reading and it was lovely. For many reasons: 1.Incomparably beautiful drive across the Cumberland plateau where early fall was just beginning to paint the hills rolling…
How to curse a book thief
I’m reading Stephen Greenblatt’s The Swerve, a fictive biography of Poggio Bracciolini, the great book-hunter, active circa 1417 and pictured here in cute bucket-cap. It’s an illuminating read. In the very first chapter I found a useful suggestion. Did anybody…
Ebooks and wild sightings
I just heard from Amanda Bergeron, my indefatigable editor at HarperCollins, that When We Were Strangers has sold 3,100 ebooks, a record which she says means “confetti needed.” I’ve got none handy but tonight when our house fills up with…
Revising “something”
I’ve been asked to do a workshop on revision for the local Friends of Literacy group. So I’ve been thinking of Revision Tactics I Have Used. I remember my first creative writing teacher, Miss Vincent, repeating: “You can always revise…
Pie charts and crusts
One of joys of writing historical fiction is the researching of it. It was thus that I discovered which 19th C researcher popularized the pie chart. And who was that? While you imagine the “Wait, wait, don’t tell me!” sound…
Food facts of the 1880’s
As Irma was moving west and discovering herself, our food technology was creeping along. I found a site which gives some of the advances of the 1880’s. Here’s an edited list, based on the unscientific principle of things most interesting to…
Corset curiosities
Corsets must rank with foot-binding in “not made by or for women” fashion history. But the search for wasp waists and swan-curve backs did call up the ingenuity of Victorian engineers – and some benighted attempts to make these armatures…
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