The Story of Akiko Takakura, One of the Last Survivors of the Hiroshima Bombing, Told in a Short Animated Documentary

in Animation, Art, History, Life | November 21st, 2022

André Hör­mann and Anna Samo’s short ani­ma­tion, Obon, opens on a serene scene — a qui­et for­est, anda red torii gate fram­ing moon­light on the water.

But then we notice that the water is choked with bod­ies, vic­tims of the bomb­ing of Hiroshi­ma.

Akiko Takaku­ra, whose rem­i­nis­cences inspired the film, arrived for work at the Hiroshi­ma Bank just min­utes before the Eno­la Gay dropped the atom­ic bomb “Lit­tle Boy” over the city, killing some 80,000 instant­ly.

Takaku­ra-san, who had been clean­ing desks and moon­ing over a cute co-work­er with her fel­low junior bank employ­ee Sato­mi Usa­mi when the bomb hit, was one of the 10 peo­ple with­in a radius of 500 meters from ground zero to have sur­vived .

(Usa­mi-san, who fought her way out of the wreck­age with her friend’s assis­tance, lat­er suc­cumbed to her injuries.)

Ani­ma­tor Samo, whose style harkens to tra­di­tion­al wood­cuts, based her depic­tion of the hor­rors con­fronting the two young women when they emerge from the bank on the draw­ings of sur­vivors:

With­out craft or artistry to hide behind, the draw­ings told sto­ries unfil­tered, made me hear shak­ing voic­es say­ing: this is what hap­pened to us.

Takaku­ra-san attempt­ed to cap­ture one such image in a 1974 draw­ing:

I saw one corpse with burn­ing fin­gers. Her hand was raised and her fin­gers were on fire, blue flames burn­ing them down to stumps. A light char­coal-col­ored liq­uid was ooz­ing onto the ground. When I think of those hands cradling beloved chil­dren and turn­ing the pages of books, even now my heart fills with a deep sad­ness.

Takaku­ra-san was 84 when writer/director Hör­mann trav­eled to Japan to meet with his­to­ri­ans, nuclear sci­en­tists, peace researchers and elder­ly sur­vivors of the atom­ic bomb. Over the course of three 90 minute ses­sions, he noticed a qual­i­ty that set her apart from the oth­er sur­vivors he inter­viewed :

…the sto­ries that she told me there was always a glim­mer­ing light of hope in the midst of all of the hor­ror. For me, it was a sigh of relief to have this moment of hope and peace, it was beau­ti­ful. It is impos­si­ble to just tell a sto­ry that is all pain. Ms. Takakura’s sto­ry was a way for me to look at this dark piece of his­to­ry and not be emo­tion­al­ly crushed.

Her per­spec­tive informs the film, which trav­els back­ward and for­ward through­out time.

We meet her as a tiny, kimono-clad old woman in mod­ern day Japan, whose face now bears a strong resem­blance to her father’s. Her back is criss­crossed with scars of the 102 lac­er­a­tions she sus­tained on the morn­ing of August 6, 1945.

We then see her as a lit­tle girl, whose father, “a typ­i­cal man from Mei­ji times, tough and strict,” is unable to express affec­tion toward his daugh­ter.

This changed when the 19-year-old was reunit­ed with her fam­i­ly after the bomb­ing, and her father asked for for­give­ness while ten­der­ly bathing her burned hands.

To Hör­mann this “tiny moment of hap­pi­ness” and con­nec­tion is at the heart of Obon.

Ani­ma­tor Samo won­ders if Takaku­ra-san would have achieved “peace with the world that was so cru­el to her” if her father hadn’t tend­ed to her wound­ed hands so gen­tly:

What does an act of love in a moment of despair mean? Can it allow you to you go on with a nor­mal life, drink tea and cook rice? If you have seen so much death, can you still look peo­ple in the eyes, get mar­ried and give birth to chil­dren?

The film takes its title from the annu­al Bud­dhist hol­i­day to com­mem­o­rate ances­tors and pay respect to the dead.

As an old woman, Takaku­ra-san tends to the fam­i­ly altar, then trav­els with younger cel­e­brants to the riv­er for the release of the paper lanterns that are believed to guide the spir­its back to their world at the festival’s end.

The face that appears in her glow­ing lantern is both her father’s and a reflec­tion of her own.

Read an inter­view with Akiko Takaku­ra here.

To Chil­dren Who Don’t Know the Atom­ic Bomb

by Akiko Takaku­ra

8:15 a.m. on August 6, 1945,
a very clear morn­ing.
The moth­er prepar­ing her baby’s milk,
the old man water­ing his pot­ted plants,
the old woman offer­ing flow­ers at her Bud­dhist altar,
the young boy eat­ing break­fast,
the father start­ing work at his com­pa­ny,
the thou­sands walk­ing to work on the street,
all died.
Not know­ing an atom­ic bomb would be dropped,
they lived as usu­al.
Sud­den­ly, a flash.
“Ah ~
Just as they saw it,
peo­ple in hous­es were shoved over and smashed.
Peo­ple walk­ing on streets were blown away.
Peo­ple were burned-faces, arms, legs-all over.
Peo­ple were killed, all over
the city of Hiroshi­ma
by a sin­gle bomb.

Those who died.
A hun­dred? No. A thou­sand? No. Ten thou­sand?
No, many, many more than that.
More peo­ple than we can count
died, speech­less,
know­ing noth­ing.
Oth­ers suf­fered ter­ri­ble burns,


hor­rif­ic injuries.
Some were thrown so hard
their stom­achs ripped open,
their spines broke.
Whole bod­ies filled with glass shards.
Clothes dis­ap­peared,
burned and tat­tered.

Fires came right after the explo­sion.
Hiroshi­ma engulfed in flames.
Every­one flee­ing, not know­ing where
they were or where to go.
Every­one bare­foot,
cry­ing tears of anger and grief,
hair stick­ing up, look­ing like Ashu­ra*,
they ran on bro­ken glass, smashed roofs
along a long, wide road of fire.


Blood flowed.
Burned skin peeled and dan­gled.
Whirl­winds of fire raged here and there.
Hun­dreds, thou­sands of fire balls
30-cen­time­ters across
whirled right at us.
It was hard to breathe in the flames,
hard to see in the smoke.

What will become of us?
Those who sur­vived, injured and burned,
shout­ed, “Help! Help!” at the top of their lungs.
One woman walk­ing on the road
died and then
her fin­gers burned,
a blue flame short­en­ing them like can­dles,
a gray liq­uid trick­ling down her palms
and drip­ping to the ground.
Whose fin­gers were those?
More than 50 years lat­er,
I remem­ber that blue flame,
and my heart near­ly bursts
with sor­row.

via Aeon

Relat­ed Con­tent 

The “Shad­ow” of a Hiroshi­ma Vic­tim, Etched into Stone Steps, Is All That Remains After 1945 Atom­ic Blast

This 392-Year-Old Bon­sai Tree Sur­vived the Hiroshi­ma Atom­ic Blast & Still Flour­ish­es Today: The Pow­er of Resilience

Haunt­ing Unedit­ed Footage of the Bomb­ing of Nagasa­ki (1945)

Watch Chill­ing Footage of the Hiroshi­ma & Nagasa­ki Bomb­ings in Restored Col­or

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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The First Live Performance of Springsteen’s “Jungleland” After Clarence Clemons’ Death, with His Nephew Jake on Sax (July 28, 2012)

in Life, Music | November 17th, 2022

When you think “Jun­gle­land,” you think of Clarence Clemons and his icon­ic sax solo, which stretch­es on over two glo­ri­ous min­utes. It’s hard to imag­ine any­one else play­ing that solo. But, after Clarence’s death in 2011, the hon­ors went, fit­ting­ly, to his nephew Jake, who joined the E Street Band and per­formed “Jun­gle­land” live in Swe­den, on July 28, 2012. It was an emo­tion­al per­for­mance for all.

Speak­ing below, Jake Clemons remem­bers it as “an extreme­ly emo­tion­al moment. It felt like the most extreme emo­tion that I had ever expe­ri­enced…” He con­tin­ues: “Up to that show, all of the shows before then, I felt like I was fill­ing in for Clarence… That moment for me was a moment of like, he’s not com­ing back. Phys­i­cal­ly he would not be walk­ing on that stage again.”

Lat­er, he told Rolling Stone, the “moment was so sig­nif­i­cant that we couldn’t sound­check it. That moment was the first time that the band heard me play that song.” But, from there, it “became a huge part of the heal­ing process.” You can watch the poignant per­for­mance above, with the sax solo start­ing around the 5:10 mark.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Bruce Spring­steen Per­forms Mov­ing Acoustic Ver­sions of “Thun­der Road,” “The Ris­ing” & “Land of Hope & Dreams” on the Howard Stern Show

Bruce Spring­steen and the E Street Band Impro­vis­es and Plays, Com­plete­ly Unre­hearsed, Chuck Berry’s “You Nev­er Can Tell,” Live Onstage (2013)

Bruce Spring­steen Lists 20 of His Favorite Books: The Books That Have Inspired the Song­writer & Now Mem­oirist

Bruce Spring­steen Plays East Berlin in 1988: I’m Not Here For Any Gov­ern­ment. I’ve Come to Play Rock

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Joni Mitchell Tells Elton John the Stories Behind Her Iconic Songs: “Both Sides Now,” “Carey” & More

in Apple, Life, Music | November 14th, 2022

When Joni Mitchell heard the great cabaret artist Mabel Mer­cer in con­cert, she was so struck by the old­er woman’s ren­di­tion of “Both Sides Now,” the endur­ing bal­lad Mitchell wrote at the ten­der age of 23, that she went back­stage to show her appre­ci­a­tion:

… but I didn’t tell her that I was the author. So, I said, y’know, I’ve heard var­i­ous record­ings of that song, but you bring some­thing to it, y’know, that oth­er peo­ple haven’t been able to do. You know, it’s not a song for an ingenue. You have to bring some age to it. 

Well, she took offense. I insult­ed her. I called her an old lady, as far as she was con­cerned. So I got out of there in a hell of a hur­ry! 

But I think I final­ly became an old lady myself and could sing the song right.

This is just one of many can­did treats to be found in Mitchell’s inter­view with Elton John, for his Apple Music 1 show Rock­et Hour.

For the most part, Mitchell’s rem­i­nis­cences coa­lesce around var­i­ous icon­ic tracks from her near­ly six­ty years in the music indus­try.

“Carey,” off Mitchell’s 1971 album Blue, sparks mem­o­ries of an explod­ing stove dur­ing a hip­pie-era sojourn in Mata­la on Crete’s south coast, with an Odyssey ref­er­ence thrown in for good mea­sure.

“Amelia” was hatched, as were most of the tunes on 1976’s Heji­ra, while Mitchell was on a solo road trip in a sec­ond­hand Mer­cedes, an expe­ri­ence that caused her to dwell on the first female avi­a­tor to cross the Atlantic solo. (She scrib­bled down lyrics that had come to her at the wheel when­ev­er she pulled over for lunch.)

Regard­ing “Sex Kills” from 1994’s Tur­bu­lent Indi­go, John quotes a Rolling Stone arti­cle in which Mitchell dis­cussed the “ugli­ness” she was detect­ing in pop­u­lar music:

I think it’s on the increase. Espe­cial­ly towards women. I’ve nev­er been a fem­i­nist, but we haven’t had pop songs up until recent­ly that were so aggres­sive­ly dan­ger­ous to women.

“What did you mean by that?” John asks. “ Peo­ple say­ing rap music with ‘my hos’ and stuff like that?”

“Oh, well, y’know, yeah,” Mitchell says, “Hos and booty, y’know, haha­hah.”

She may not seem over­ly fussed about it now, but don’t get her start­ed on what young women wear to the Gram­mys!

John also invit­ed Mitchell to dis­cuss three songs that have influ­enced her.

Her picks:

Lam­bert, Hen­dricks & Ross’s “Charleston Alley” (a musi­cal epiphany as a high school­er at a col­lege par­ty)

Edith Piaf’s “Les Trois Cloches” (a musi­cal epiphany as an 8‑year-old at a birth­day  par­ty)

And Chuck Berry’s “John­ny B. Goode” (danc­ing ‘round the juke­box at Saska­toon swim­ming pool)

Cir­cling back to “Both Sides Now,” Mitchell prefers the orches­tral arrange­ment she record­ed as an alto in 2002 to the orig­i­nal’s girl­ish sopra­no, with its pos­si­bly unearned per­spec­tive. (“It’s not a song for an ingenue…”)

When I per­formed it, the orches­tra gath­ered around me and I’ve played with clas­si­cal musi­cians before and they were always read­ing the Wall Street Jour­nal behind their sheet music and they always treat you like it’s a con­de­scen­sion to be play­ing with you, but every­body, the men — Eng­lish­men! — were weep­ing!

Per­haps you too will be moved to tears, as singer-song­writer Bran­di Carlile was dur­ing a per­for­mance of “Both Sides Now” as part of the 2022 New­port Folk Festival’s Joni Jam, Mitchell’s first show in 22 years, owing to a peri­od of major dis­il­lu­sion­ment with the music busi­ness as well as a 2015 brain aneurysm.

Tune into more episodes of Elton John’s Rock­et Hour here.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Watch the Full Set of Joni Mitchell’s Amaz­ing Come­back Per­for­mance at the New­port Folk Fes­ti­val

Songs by Joni Mitchell Re-Imag­ined as Pulp Fic­tion Book Cov­ers & Vin­tage Movie Posters

Hear Demos & Out­takes of Joni Mitchell’s Blue on the 50th Anniver­sary of the Clas­sic Album

How Joni Mitchell Learned to Play Gui­tar Again After a 2015 Brain Aneurysm–and Made It Back to the New­port Folk Fes­ti­val

How Joni Mitchell Wrote “Wood­stock,” the Song that Defined the Leg­endary Music Fes­ti­val, Even Though She Wasn’t There (1969)

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo and the soon to be released Cre­ative, Not Famous Activ­i­ty Book.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Kierkegaard on Why We All Misunderstand the True Meaning of Love: An Animated Explanation

in Life, Philosophy | November 1st, 2022

Søren Kierkegaard died in 1855, but if he’d glimpsed our mod­ern-day land­scape of dat­ing apps, he prob­a­bly would’ve under­stood it. “Peo­ple who oth­er­wise pride them­selves on their lack of prej­u­dice will apply ter­ri­fy­ing­ly strict cri­te­ria to their choice of part­ner,” says Alain de Bot­ton in the ani­mat­ed School of Life video above. “They want some­one with just a cer­tain sort of face or income or sense of humor. They think of them­selves as kind and tol­er­ant, but when it comes to love, they have all the broad-mind­ed­ness of a believ­er in ‘a caste sys­tem where­by men are inhu­man­ly sep­a­rat­ed through the dis­tinc­tions of earth­ly life.’ ”

Kierkegaard noticed these human ten­den­cies even in his day, and to his mind, they had noth­ing at all to do with love — true Chris­t­ian love, that is, which he spent a good bit of his philo­soph­i­cal career try­ing to elu­ci­date. He insist­ed, de Bot­ton explains, “that most of us have no idea what love is, even though we refer to the term inces­sant­ly.”

Whether in Europe of the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry or most any­where in the world today, we believe in roman­tic love, which involves “the ven­er­a­tion and wor­ship of one very spe­cial per­son with whose soul and body we hope to unite our own.” But this, Kierkegaard argued, results in “a nar­row and impov­er­ished sense of love should actu­al­ly be.”

The ver­sion of Chris­t­ian love for which Kierkegaard advo­cat­ed “com­mands us to love every­one, start­ing, most ardu­ous­ly, with all those who we by instinct con­sid­er to be unwor­thy of love.” In this con­cep­tion, those we believe are “mis­tak­en, ugly, irri­tat­ing, venal, wrong-head­ed, or ridicu­lous” are exact­ly the peo­ple to whom we should “extend our com­pas­sion,” iden­ti­fy­ing and under­stand­ing the dif­fi­cul­ties that made them what they are and offer­ing our kind­ness and for­give­ness accord­ing­ly. The ulti­mate goal, accord­ing to Kierkegaard, is to “love every­one with­out excep­tion,” which may well sound like an unrea­son­able demand. But how much less rea­son­able is it than the check­lists with which so many of us screen our poten­tial match­es?

To delve deep­er, read Kierkegaard’s book, Works of Love.

Relat­ed con­tent:

An Ani­mat­ed, Mon­ty Python-Style Intro­duc­tion to the Søren Kierkegaard, the First Exis­ten­tial­ist

Søren Kierkegaard: A Free Online Course on the “Father of Exis­ten­tial­ism”

Exis­ten­tial Phi­los­o­phy of Kierkegaard, Sartre, Camus Explained with 8‑Bit Video Games

What is Love? BBC Phi­los­o­phy Ani­ma­tions Fea­ture Sartre, Freud, Aristo­phanes, Dawkins & More

Dear Immanuel — Kant Gives Love Advice to a Heart­bro­ken Young Woman (1791)

Philoso­phers Drink­ing Cof­fee: The Exces­sive Habits of Kant, Voltaire & Kierkegaard

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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FAMOUS ARTIST DIES PENNILESS AND ALL ALONE: The Met Museum’s Fascinating Archive of Artists’ Death Notices

in Art, History, Life, Museums | October 31st, 2022

Oh to go behind the scenes at a world class muse­um, to dis­cov­er trea­sures that the pub­lic nev­er sees.

Among the most com­pelling — and unex­pect­ed —  at the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art in New York City are a pair of crumb­ing scrap­books, their pages thick with yel­low­ing obit­u­ar­ies and death notices for a wide array of late 19th and ear­ly 20th-cen­tu­ry painters, sculp­tors, and pho­tog­ra­phers.

Some names, like Auguste Rodin or Jules Bre­ton, are still famil­iar to many 21st-cen­tu­ry art lovers.

Oth­ers, like Fran­cis Davis Mil­let, who served as a Union Army drum­mer boy dur­ing the Civ­il War and per­ished on the Titan­ic, were much admired in their day, but have large­ly fad­ed from mem­o­ry.

The vast major­i­ty are requiems of a sort for those who toiled in obscu­ri­ty. They may not have received much atten­tion in life, but the cir­cum­stances of their deaths by sui­cide, mur­der, or bizarre acci­dent had the whiff of the pen­ny dread­ful, a qual­i­ty that could move a lot of news­pa­pers. The deceased’s address­es were pub­lished, along with their names. Any trag­ic detail was sure to be height­ened for effect, the taw­dri­er the bet­ter.

As the Met’s Man­ag­ing Archivist, Jim Moske, who unearthed the scrap­books four years ago while prowl­ing for his­toric mate­r­i­al for the museum’s 150th anniver­sary cel­e­bra­tion, writes in Lit Hub:

Typ­i­cal of the era’s crass tabloid jour­nal­ism, they were craft­ed to wring max­i­mum dra­ma out of mis­for­tune, and to excite and fix the atten­tion of read­ers sus­cep­ti­ble to raw emo­tion­al appeal and voyeurism. Their authors drew upon and rein­forced stereo­types of artists as indi­gent, debauched, obsessed with great­ness, eccen­tric, or suf­fer­ing from men­tal ill­ness.

It took Moske a fair amount of dig­ging to iden­ti­fy the cre­ator of these scrap­books, one Arturo B. de St. M. D’Hervilly.

D’Hervilly spent a decade work­ing in var­i­ous admin­is­tra­tive capac­i­ties before being pro­mot­ed to Assis­tant Cura­tor of Paint­ings.  A ded­i­cat­ed employ­ee and tal­ent­ed artist him­self, D’Hervilly put his cal­li­graph­ic skills to work craft­ing illu­mi­nat­ed man­u­script-style keep­sakes for the fam­i­lies of recent­ly deceased trustees and lock­er room signs.

In a recent lec­ture host­ed by the Vic­to­ri­an Soci­ety of New York, Moske not­ed that D’Hervilly under­stood that the muse­um could use news­pa­pers for self-doc­u­men­ta­tion as well pro­mo­tion.

To that end, the Met main­tained accounts with a num­ber of clip­pings bureaus, media mon­i­tor­ing ser­vices whose young female work­ers pored over hun­dreds of dai­ly news­pa­pers in search of tar­get phras­es and names.

Think of them as an ana­log, paid pre­cur­sor to Google Alerts.

Many of the clip­pings in the scrap­book bear the ini­tials “D’H” or D’Hervilly’s sur­name, scrawled in the same blue cray­on the Nation­al Press Intel­li­gence Com­pa­ny and oth­er clip­pings bureaus used to under­line the tar­get phrase.

Moske the­o­rizes that D’Hervilly may have been using the Met’s account to pur­sue a per­son­al inter­est in col­lect­ing these types of notices:

New­ly pro­mot­ed to curate mas­ter­piece paint­ings, had he giv­en up for good his own artis­tic ambi­tion? Was the com­po­si­tion of these mor­bid tomes a veiled acknowl­edge­ment of the pass­ing away of his cre­ative aspi­ra­tion? Did he iden­ti­fy with the hun­dreds of uncel­e­brat­ed artists whose fates the news clip­pings record­ed in grim detail? Per­haps, instead, his intent was more mun­dane, and com­pil­ing them was an expe­di­ent for col­lect­ing use­ful bio­graph­i­cal data as he cat­a­logued pic­tures in the Met col­lec­tion that were made by recent­ly deceased artists.

Many of the hun­dreds of clip­pings he pre­served appear to be the only traces remain­ing of these artists’ cre­ative exis­tence on this earth.

After D’Hervilly suf­fered a fatal heart attack while get­ting ready to leave for work on the morn­ing April 7, 1919, his col­leagues took over his pet project, adding to the scrap­books for anoth­er next ten years.

In research­ing the scrap­books’ author’s life, Moske was able to truf­fle up scant evi­dence of D’Hervilly’s extracur­ric­u­lar cre­ative out­put — just one paint­ing in a cat­a­logue of an 1887 Nation­al Acad­e­my of Design exhi­bi­tion — but a 1919 clip­ping, duti­ful­ly past­ed (posthu­mous­ly, of course) into one of the scrap­books, iden­ti­fied the long­time Met employ­ee as a “SLAVE OF DUTY AT ART MUSEUM”, who nev­er took time off for hol­i­days or even lun­cheon, pre­fer­ring to eat at his desk.

via Lit Hub

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Take a New Vir­tu­al Real­i­ty Tour of the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art

An Unbe­liev­ably Detailed, Hand-Drawn Map Lets You Explore the Rich Col­lec­tions of the Met Muse­um

Down­load 584 Free Art Books from The Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art

The Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art Puts 400,000 High-Res Images Online & Makes Them Free to Use

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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What Happens When Mortals Try to Drink Winston Churchill’s Daily Intake of Alcohol

in Food & Drink, History, Life | October 17th, 2022

I have tak­en more out of alco­hol than alco­hol has tak­en out of me. — Win­ston Churchill

Win­ston Churchill had a rep­u­ta­tion as a bril­liant states­man and a prodi­gious drinker.

The for­mer prime min­is­ter imbibed through­out the day, every day.  He also burned through 10 dai­ly cig­ars, and lived to the ripe old age of 90.

His come­back to Field Mar­shal Bernard Mont­gomery’s boast that he nei­ther smoked nor drank, and was 100 per­cent fit was “I drink and smoke, and I am 200 per­cent fit.”

First Lady Eleanor Roo­sevelt mar­veled “that any­one could smoke so much and drink so much and keep per­fect­ly well.”

In No More Cham­pagne: Churchill and His Mon­ey, author David Lough doc­u­ments Churchill’s dis­as­trous alco­hol expens­es, as well as the bot­tle count at Chartwell, his Ken­tish res­i­dence. Here’s the tal­ly for March 24,1937:

180 bot­tles and 30 half bot­tles of Pol Roger cham­pagne

20 bot­tles and 9 half bot­tles of oth­er cham­pagne

100+ bot­tles of claret

117 bot­tles and 389 half bot­tles of Barsac

13 bot­tles of brandy

5 bot­tles of cham­pagne brandy

7 bot­tles of liqueur whisky


All that liquor was not going to drink itself.

Did Churchill have a hol­low leg?  An extra­or­di­nar­i­ly high tol­er­ance? An uncan­ny abil­i­ty to mask his intox­i­ca­tion?

Whiskey som­me­li­er Rex Williams, a founder of the Whiskey Tribe YouTube chan­nel, and pod­cast host Andrew Heaton endeav­or to find out, above, by ded­i­cat­ing a day to the British Bulldog’s drink­ing reg­i­men.

They’re not the first to under­take such a fol­ly.

The Dai­ly Telegraph’s Har­ry Wal­lop doc­u­ment­ed a sim­i­lar adven­ture in 2015, wind­ing up queasy, and to judge by his 200 spelling mis­takes, cog­ni­tive­ly impaired.

Williams and Heaton’s on-cam­era exper­i­ment achieves a Drunk His­to­ry vibe and tell­tale flushed cheeks.

Here’s the drill, not that we advise try­ing it at home:

BREAKFAST

An eye open­er of John­nie Walk­er Red — just a splash — mixed with soda water to the rim.

Fol­low with more of the same through­out the morn­ing.

This is how Churchill, who often con­duct­ed his morn­ing busi­ness abed in a dress­ing gown, man­aged to aver­age between 1 — 3 ounces of alco­hol before lunch.

Appar­ent­ly he devel­oped a taste for it as a young sol­dier post­ed in what is now Pak­istan, when Scotch not only improved the fla­vor of plain water, ‘once one got the knack of it, the very repul­sion from the fla­vor devel­oped an attrac­tion of its own.”

After a morn­ing spent sip­ping the stuff, Heaton reports feel­ing “play­ful and jokey, but not yet vio­lent.”

LUNCH

Time for “an ambi­tious quo­ta of cham­pagne!”

Churchill’s pre­ferred brand was Pol Roger, though he wasn’t averse to Giesler, Moet et Chan­don, or Pom­mery,  pur­chased from the upscale wine and spir­its mer­chant Ran­dolph Payne & Sons,  whose let­ter­head iden­ti­fied them as sup­pli­ers to “Her Majesty The Late Queen Vic­to­ria and to The Late King William The Fourth.”

Churchill enjoyed his impe­r­i­al pint of cham­pagne from a sil­ver tankard, like a “prop­er Edwar­dian gent” accord­ing to his life­long friend, Odette Pol-Roger.

Williams and Heaton take theirs in flutes accom­pa­nied by fish sticks from the freez­er case. This is the point beyond which a hang­over is all but assured.

Lunch con­cludes with a post-pran­di­al cognac, to set­tle the stom­ach and begin the diges­tion process.

Churchill, who declared him­self a man of sim­ple tastes — I am eas­i­ly sat­is­fied with the best — would have insist­ed on some­thing from the house of Hine.

RESTORATIVE  AFTERNOON NAP

This seems to be a crit­i­cal ele­ment of Churchill’s alco­hol man­age­ment suc­cess. He fre­quent­ly allowed him­self as much as 90 min­utes to clear the cob­webs.

A nap def­i­nite­ly pulls our re-enac­tors out of their tail spins. Heaton emerges ready to “bluff (his) way through a meet­ing.”

TEATIME

I guess we can call it that, giv­en the tim­ing.

No tea though.

Just a steady stream of extreme­ly weak scotch and sodas to take the edge off of admin­is­tra­tive tasks.

DINNER

More cham­pagne!!! More cognac!!!

“This should be the apex of our wit,” a bleary Heaton tells his belch­ing com­pan­ion, who fess­es up to vom­it­ing upon wak­ing the next day.

Their con­clu­sion? Churchill’s reg­i­men is unmanageable…at least for them.

And pos­si­bly also for Churchill.

As fel­low Scotch enthu­si­ast Christo­pher Hitchens revealed in a 2002 arti­cle in The Atlantic, some of Churchill’s most famous radio broad­casts, includ­ing his famous pledge to “fight on the beach­es” after the Mir­a­cle of Dunkirk, were voiced by a pinch hit­ter:

Nor­man Shel­ley, who played Win­nie-the-Pooh for the BBC’s Children’s Hour, ven­tril­o­quized Churchill for his­to­ry and fooled mil­lions of lis­ten­ers. Per­haps Churchill was too much inca­pac­i­tat­ed by drink to deliv­er the speech­es him­self.

Or per­haps the great man mere­ly felt he’d earned the right to unwind with a class of Graham’s Vin­tage Char­ac­ter Port, a Fine Old Amon­til­la­do Sher­ry or a Fine Old Liquor brandy, as was his wont.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Win­ston Churchill’s Paint­ings: Great States­man, Sur­pris­ing­ly Good Artist

Win­ston Churchill Gets a Doctor’s Note to Drink “Unlim­it­ed” Alco­hol in Pro­hi­bi­tion Amer­i­ca (1932)

Win­ston Churchill Goes Back­ward Down a Water Slide & Los­es His Trunks (1934)

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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5 Ways to Build an Alzheimer’s-Resistant Brain: Neuroscientist Lisa Genova Explains

in Life, Neuroscience | September 19th, 2022

Though not eas­i­ly dealt with in main­stream enter­tain­ment, Alzheimer’s dis­ease has inspired pop­u­lar works of fic­tion. Take the 2007 nov­el Still Alice by Lisa Gen­o­va, lat­er adapt­ed into a fea­ture film star­ring Julianne More. As a neu­ro­sci­en­tist, Gen­o­va brought an under­stand­ing of the sub­ject by no means com­mon among nov­el­ists in gen­er­al. Since her debut she has pub­lished four more nov­els, all of them built around char­ac­ters suf­fer­ing from neu­ro­log­i­cal impair­ments of one kind or anoth­er. But her lat­est book, last year’s Remem­ber: The Sci­ence of Mem­o­ry and the Art of For­get­ting, is a work of non­fic­tion, and in the video above she dis­cuss­es a few of its points about how to build an “Alzheimer’s-resis­tant brain.”

After briefly explain­ing the bio­log­i­cal process­es behind Alzheimer’s (and assur­ing her old­er view­ers that their day-to-day for­get­ful­ness is prob­a­bly noth­ing to wor­ry about), Gen­o­va offers five ways to ward off their effects. The first is sleep­ing, which gives glial cells, “the jan­i­tors of your brain,” time to clear away the amy­loid plaque that sets the dis­ease in motion if left to accu­mu­late.

Keep­ing a Mediter­ranean diet — full of “green leafy veg­eta­bles, the bright­ly col­ored fruits and berries, fat­ty fish­es, nuts, beans, olive oils” — has sim­i­lar­ly salu­tary effects. So does engag­ing in reg­u­lar exer­cise, which also comes with the ben­e­fit of reduc­ing chron­ic stress, a con­di­tion that inhibits the for­ma­tion of neu­rons involved in mak­ing new mem­o­ries.

Gen­o­va names yoga, med­i­ta­tion, mind­ful­ness, and “being with peo­ple” as oth­er ele­ments of an Alzheimer’s-resis­tant life. But she saves for last the strat­e­gy per­haps most rel­e­vant to Open Cul­ture read­ers. “If you’ve lived a life where you’re cog­ni­tive­ly active, you’re reg­u­lar­ly learn­ing new things. You are build­ing what we call a ‘cog­ni­tive reserve.’ Every time you learn some­thing new, you’re build­ing new synaps­es.” All the neur­al con­nec­tions thus estab­lished will help you “dance around those road­blocks” put up by the ear­ly effects of Alzheimer’s or oth­er dele­te­ri­ous men­tal con­di­tions. This means that no mat­ter how young you are, you’ll ben­e­fit lat­er from form­ing the habit of learn­ing new things on a dai­ly basis. As for which new things you learn — 1,700 free cours­es worth of which we’ve gath­ered here — that’s entire­ly up to you.

Relat­ed con­tent:

How Yoga Changes the Brain and May Guard Against Alzheimer’s and Demen­tia

How Music Can Awak­en Patients with Alzheimer’s and Demen­tia

For­mer Bal­le­ri­na with Demen­tia Grace­ful­ly Comes Alive to Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake

The French Vil­lage Designed to Pro­mote the Well-Being of Alzheimer’s Patients: A Visu­al Intro­duc­tion to the Pio­neer­ing Exper­i­ment

The Restau­rant of Mis­tak­en Orders: A Tokyo Restau­rant Where All the Servers Are Peo­ple Liv­ing with Demen­tia

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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Sally Schmitt, the Creator of the French Laundry & Unsung Hero of California Cuisine, Gets Her Due in a Poignant, Short Documentary

in Food & Drink, Life | September 19th, 2022

One of the New York Times’ most com­pelling reg­u­lar fea­tures is Over­looked, which gives remark­able indi­vid­u­als whose deaths passed unre­marked by the Times obit col­umn a rous­ing, over­due send­off.

Sal­ly Schmitt — “one of the great unsung heroes of Cal­i­for­nia Cui­sine” as per Michael Bauer, the San Fran­cis­co Chron­i­cle’s fear­some for­mer food crit­ic — is not one of those.

When Schmitt died ear­li­er this spring at the age of 90, a few weeks shy of the release of her book, Six Cal­i­for­nia Kitchens: A Col­lec­tion of Recipes, Sto­ries, and Cook­ing Lessons From a Pio­neer of Cal­i­for­nia Cui­sine, the Times took note.

Schmitt received a grand obit­u­ary that delved into her per­son­al his­to­ry, phi­los­o­phy, and her con­nec­tion to Napa Valley’s The French Laun­dry, a three star Miche­lin restau­rant which Antho­ny Bour­dain hailed as the best in the world.

The French Laundry’s renown is such that one needn’t run in food­ie cir­cles to be aware of it, and its award-win­ning chef/owner, Thomas Keller.

Keller, how­ev­er, did not found the restau­rant that brought him fame.

Schmitt did, with the help of her hus­band, Don and their five chil­dren, who pitched in in both the kitchen and the front of the house.

Fam­i­ly was impor­tant to Schmitt, and hav­ing deferred her dreams for the many years it took to raise hers, she was deter­mined to main­tain bal­ance between home and work lives.

In Ben Proud­foot’s New York Times op-doc, above, Schmitt recalls grow­ing up out­side of Sacra­men­to, where her moth­er taught her how to cook using in-sea­son local pro­duce.

Mean­while, her father helped Cal­i­for­nia pro­duce make it all the way to the East Coast by sup­ply­ing ice to the South­ern Pacif­ic Rail­road, an inno­va­tion that Schmitt iden­ti­fies as “the begin­ning of the whole super­mar­ket sit­u­a­tion” and a dis­tress­ing geo­graph­ic dis­con­nect between Amer­i­cans and food.

The Schmitts launched The French Laun­dry in 1978, with a shock­ing­ly afford­able menu.

Julia Child, a fan, once “burst into the kitchen,” demand­ing, “My dear, what was in that dessert sauce?”

(Answer: sug­ar, but­ter and cream)

Six­teen years after its found­ing, The French Laun­dry was for sale.

Schmitt’s facial expres­sions are remark­ably poignant describ­ing the trans­fer of pow­er. There’s a lot at play — pride, nos­tal­gia, fond­ness for Keller, a “real­ly charm­ing young chef, who’d made a name for him­self in New York…and was down on his luck.”

Schmitt is gra­cious, but there’s no ques­tion she feels a bit of a twinge at how Keller took her dream and ran with it.

“In high school, I was always the vice president…vice pres­i­dent of every­thing,” Schmitt says, before shar­ing a telling anec­dote about her best friend beat­ing her out for the high­est aca­d­e­m­ic hon­or:

I went home and cried. Yeah, I thought that I should have it, you know. And my moth­er said, “Let her have her moment of glo­ry. Don’t wor­ry. There will be moments of glo­ry for you.”

This doc­u­men­tary is one, how­ev­er posthu­mous.

Accom­pa­ny­ing it is a brief essay in which Proud­foot con­trasts the lives of his worka­holic late father and Schmitt, with her “delight­ful­ly coy can­dor a mes­sage about the rewards of bal­ance and the trap of ambi­tion:”

I made this film for all of us who strug­gle “to stir and taste the soup” that already sits in front of us.

Anoth­er moment of glo­ry:

In Keller’s land­mark The French Laun­dry Cook­book, the final recipe is Sal­ly Schmitt’s Cran­ber­ry and Apple Kuchen (with the hot Cream Sauce that so cap­ti­vat­ed Julia Child.)

Sal­ly Schmitt’s Cran­ber­ry and Apple Kuchen with hot Cream Sauce

Serves 8

KUCHEN:

6 table­spoons (3/4 stick) unsalt­ed but­ter, room tem­per­a­ture, plus more for the pan

3/4 cup sug­ar

1 large egg

1 1/2 cups all-pur­pose flour

2 tea­spoons bak­ing pow­der

1/4 tea­spoon kosher salt

1/4 tea­spoon fresh­ly grat­ed nut­meg

1/2 cup milk or light cream

3 to 4 Graven­stein or Gold­en Deli­cious apples

1 cup cran­ber­ries or firm blue­ber­ries

Cin­na­mon sug­ar: 1 table­spoon sug­ar mixed with 1/4 tea­spoon cin­na­mon

HOT CREAM SAUCE:

2 cups heavy cream

1/2 cup sug­ar

8 table­spoons (1 stick) unsalt­ed but­ter

1. Pre­heat oven to 350 degrees. But­ter a 9‑inch round cake pan.

2. For the kuchen: Using an elec­tric mix­er, beat but­ter, sug­ar and egg togeth­er until the mix­ture is fluffy and light­ened in tex­ture.

3. Com­bine the flour, bak­ing pow­der, salt and nut­meg. Add dry ingre­di­ents and the milk alter­nate­ly to the but­ter mix­ture; mix just until com­bined.

4. Peel and core apples. Slice them into 1/4‑inch wedges

5. Spoon bat­ter into the pan. Press apple slices, about 1/4‑inch apart and core side down, into the bat­ter, work­ing in a cir­cu­lar pat­tern around the out­side edge (like the spokes of a wheel. Arrange most of the cran­ber­ries in a ring inside the apples and sprin­kle remain­der around the edges of the kuchen. Sprin­kle kuchen with the cin­na­mon sug­ar.

6. Bake for 40 to 50 min­utes, or until a cake tester insert­ed into the cen­ter of the kuchen comes out clean. Set on a rack to cool.

7. Com­bine the cream sauce ingre­di­ents in a medi­um saucepan. Bring to a boil, low­er heat and sim­mer for 5 to 8 min­utes, to reduce and thick­en it slight­ly.

8. Serve the cake warm or at room tem­per­a­ture, driz­zled with the hot cream sauce

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Watch Antho­ny Bourdain’s First Food-and-Trav­el Series A Cook’s Tour Free Online (2002–03)

Watch 26 Free Episodes of Jacques Pépin’s TV Show, More Fast Food My Way

Watch Wern­er Her­zog Eat His Shoe, Cooked by Chef Alice Waters (1980)

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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