F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 13 Tips for What to Do with Your Leftover Thanksgiving Turkey

in Comedy, Food & Drink | November 29th, 2013

Image by “The World’s Work” via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

“At this post hol­i­day sea­son, the refrig­er­a­tors of the nation are over­stuffed with large mass­es of turkey, the sight of which is cal­cu­lat­ed to give an adult an attack of dizzi­ness. It seems, there­fore, an appro­pri­ate time to give the own­ers the ben­e­fit of my expe­ri­ence as an old gourmet, in using this sur­plus mate­r­i­al.” There writes no less a leg­end of Amer­i­can let­ters than F. Scott Fitzger­ald, author of The Great Gats­by and Ten­der is the Night (both avail­able in our Free eBooks col­lec­tion). His words quot­ed here, from “Turkey Remains and How to Inter Them with Numer­ous Scarce Recipes,” a col­umn found in the Fitzger­ald mis­cel­lany col­lec­tion The Crack-Up, hold just as true this day-after-Thanks­giv­ing  as they did dur­ing those his life­time. Lists of Note offers the full piece, which itself offers thir­teen poten­tial uses for your left­over bird, some of which, Fitzger­ald writes, “have been in my fam­i­ly for gen­er­a­tions”:

1. Turkey Cock­tail: To one large turkey add one gal­lon of ver­mouth and a demi­john of angos­tu­ra bit­ters. Shake.

2. Turkey à la Fran­cais: Take a large ripe turkey, pre­pare as for bast­ing and stuff with old watch­es and chains and mon­key meat. Pro­ceed as with cot­tage pud­ding.

3. Turkey and Water: Take one turkey and one pan of water. Heat the lat­ter to the boil­ing point and then put in the refrig­er­a­tor. When it has jelled, drown the turkey in it. Eat. In prepar­ing this recipe it is best to have a few ham sand­wich­es around in case things go wrong.

4. Turkey Mon­gole: Take three butts of sala­mi and a large turkey skele­ton, from which the feath­ers and nat­ur­al stuff­ing have been removed. Lay them out on the table and call up some Mon­gole in the neigh­bor­hood to tell you how to pro­ceed from there.

5. Turkey Mousse: Seed a large prone turkey, being care­ful to remove the bones, flesh, fins, gravy, etc. Blow up with a bicy­cle pump. Mount in becom­ing style and hang in the front hall.

6. Stolen Turkey: Walk quick­ly from the mar­ket, and, if accost­ed, remark with a laugh that it had just flown into your arms and you had­n’t noticed it. Then drop the turkey with the white of one egg—well, any­how, beat it.

7. Turkey à la Crême: Pre­pare the crême a day in advance. Del­uge the turkey with it and cook for six days over a blast fur­nace. Wrap in fly paper and serve.

8. Turkey Hash: This is the delight of all con­nois­seurs of the hol­i­day beast, but few under­stand how real­ly to pre­pare it. Like a lob­ster, it must be plunged alive into boil­ing water, until it becomes bright red or pur­ple or some­thing, and then before the col­or fades, placed quick­ly in a wash­ing machine and allowed to stew in its own gore as it is whirled around. Only then is it ready for hash. To hash, take a large sharp tool like a nail-file or, if none is handy, a bay­o­net will serve the purpose—and then get at it! Hash it well! Bind the remains with den­tal floss and serve.

9. Feath­ered Turkey: To pre­pare this, a turkey is nec­es­sary and a one pounder can­non to com­pel any­one to eat it. Broil the feath­ers and stuff with sage-brush, old clothes, almost any­thing you can dig up. Then sit down and sim­mer. The feath­ers are to be eat­en like arti­chokes (and this is not to be con­fused with the old Roman cus­tom of tick­ling the throat.)

10. Turkey à la Mary­land: Take a plump turkey to a bar­ber’s and have him shaved, or if a female bird, giv­en a facial and a water wave. Then, before killing him, stuff with old news­pa­pers and put him to roost. He can then be served hot or raw, usu­al­ly with a thick gravy of min­er­al oil and rub­bing alco­hol. (Note: This recipe was giv­en me by an old black mam­my.)

11. Turkey Rem­nant: This is one of the most use­ful recipes for, though not, “chic,” it tells what to do with the turkey after the hol­i­day, and how to extract the most val­ue from it. Take the remants, or, if they have been con­sumed, take the var­i­ous plates on which the turkey or its parts have rest­ed and stew them for two hours in milk of mag­ne­sia. Stuff with moth-balls.

12. Turkey with Whiskey Sauce: This recipe is for a par­ty of four. Obtain a gal­lon of whiskey, and allow it to age for sev­er­al hours. Then serve, allow­ing one quart for each guest. The next day the turkey should be added, lit­tle by lit­tle, con­stant­ly stir­ring and bast­ing.

13. For Wed­dings or Funer­als: Obtain a gross of small white box­es such as are used for bride’s cake. Cut the turkey into small squares, roast, stuff, kill, boil, bake and allow to skew­er. Now we are ready to begin. Fill each box with a quan­ti­ty of soup stock and pile in a handy place. As the liq­uid elaps­es, the pre­pared turkey is added until the guests arrive. The box­es del­i­cate­ly tied with white rib­bons are then placed in the hand­bags of the ladies, or in the men’s side pock­ets.

What, you expect­ed recipes more… fol­low­able than these? And per­haps recipes with less alco­hol involved? These all make much more sense if you bear in mind Fitzger­ald’s for­mi­da­ble cre­ativ­i­ty, his even more for­mi­da­ble pen­chant for the drink, and his mor­dant sense of humor about it all. “I guess that’s enough turkey talk,” con­cludes this lit­er­ary icon of my Thanks­giv­ing-cel­e­brat­ing nation. “I hope I’ll nev­er see or hear of anoth­er until—well, until next year.” If you haven’t had enough, and indeed feel like get­ting the jump on next year, see also the Air­ship’s list of twelve Thanks­giv­ing recipes from favorite authors, includ­ing Jonathan Franzen’s pas­ta with kale, Alice Munro’s rose­mary bread pud­ding, and Ralph Ellison’s sweet yams.

via Lists of Note

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Recipes of Icon­ic Authors: Jane Austen, Sylvia Plath, Roald Dahl, the Mar­quis de Sade & More

Pre­pare Mar­i­lyn Monroe’s Per­son­al, Hand­writ­ten Turkey-and-Stuff­ing Recipe on Thanks­giv­ing

F. Scott Fitzger­ald Tells His 11-Year-Old Daugh­ter What to Wor­ry About (and Not Wor­ry About) in Life, 1933

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, Asia, film, lit­er­a­ture, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on his brand new Face­book page.

What Cultural Icons of the 19th & 20th Centuries Would Have Liked About Life in the 21st Century

in History, Literature | November 28th, 2013

At the web site, The Fer­tile Fact, you can read lists and lists of things you nev­er knew about your favorite cul­tur­al fig­ures. Or rather, you can read lists and lists of guess­es about what your favorite cul­tur­al fig­ures of the 19th and 20th cen­turies would have enjoyed about life in our 21st cen­tu­ry. From Paul Hen­drick­son, author of Hemingway’s Boat: Every­thing He Loved in Life, and Lost, 1934 – 1961, we learn that Papa would have liked e‑mail (“for a man who wrote let­ters to tune him­self up and cool him­self down against the day’s ‘real writ­ing’, email would have been a great out­let for his emo­tion”). But he would have loved Twit­ter:

Email squared. Hem­ing­way was the mas­ter of ‘cable-ese’, a form of slang devel­oped by jour­nal­ists in the 1920s to save space (and, as impor­tant­ly, mon­ey) when send­ing telegraphs, which he learned in his youth as a news­pa­per­man. He would have loved the 140-char­ac­ter lim­it to write small lit­tle nov­els of rage or love or some­thing in between. If he could write an arc of a sto­ry in six words, which went: “For Sale: baby shoes, nev­er worn,” there­by arguably invent­ing flash fic­tion, then just imag­ine the pos­si­bil­i­ties of the kind of War and Peace epics he might have tried via Twit­ter. And the pos­si­ble spats he might have got into, of course.

From Tom Williams, author of A Mys­te­ri­ous Some­thing In The Light: A Life of Ray­mond Chan­dler, we learn that the cre­ator of Philip Mar­lowe, anoth­er poten­tial Twit­ter enthu­si­ast, would take to the works of Quentin Taran­ti­no, since

The thing that frus­trat­ed Chan­dler most about Hol­ly­wood was that his vision as a writer rarely made it onto screen unmedi­at­ed. For Ray, the stu­dio always got in the way of what he was try­ing to do. It was a prob­lem that par­tic­u­lar­ly affect­ed The Blue Dahlia. Though a movie beset by prob­lems (a tight sched­ule meant Chan­dler had to write the end­ing in a state of extreme intox­i­ca­tion) one of the most con­stant laments in his let­ters is the studio’s per­sis­tent med­dling with the pic­ture. He wrote to a friend, short­ly after fin­ish­ing the film, “So here was I a mere writer and a tired one at that scream­ing at the front office to pro­tect the pro­duc­er and actu­al­ly going on the set to direct scenes – I know noth­ing about direct­ing – in order that the whole project be saved from going down the drain.”

Stu­dios were more inter­est­ed in get­ting pun­ters into the the­atre than pro­duc­ing good films as far as Chan­dler was con­cerned (see the bit­ter por­trait of a stu­dio boss in The Lit­tle Sis­ter who talks of car­ing only for the num­ber of the­atres he owns, not the films shown in them, while let­ting his dog uri­nate on his trouser cuff). Though Quentin Taran­ti­no is hard­ly the first direc­tor to work inde­pen­dent­ly of a stu­dio, his deter­mi­na­tion to make the films he wants (prov­ing the val­ue of let­ting a film-mak­er stick to his vision in the process) is some­thing Chan­dler would have admired deeply. Taran­ti­no is also will­ing to embrace all lev­els of cul­ture, and this too is some­thing Ray would have respect­ed; he was nev­er one for lit­er­ary snob­bery.

From Robert Zaret­sky, author of A Life Worth Liv­ing: Albert Camus and the Quest for Mean­ing, we learn that cre­ator of Meur­sault, the affect­less Arab-shoot­ing pro­tag­o­nist of The Stranger, would have approved of The Arab Spring:

The author of The Rebel would find lit­tle rea­son for hope, but none for despair. The instances of non-vio­lent protest in Tunisia and Egypt would serve as illus­tra­tions of Camus’ insis­tence that true rebels nev­er lose sight of the human­i­ty of those who oppress them. Syr­ia? The trag­ic illus­tra­tion of what hap­pens when rebels do lose sight of this imper­a­tive.

The Fer­tile Fact offers not only more things these three men would enjoy about our era, but sim­i­lar lists for such cre­ators as Alfred Hitch­cock, Nan­cy Mit­ford, Ten­nessee Williams, and Agatha Christie. How long before they pro­duce one for Vir­ginia Woolf, the writer who, describ­ing “the cre­ative fact,” “the fact that engen­ders and sug­gests,” coined the phrase that gave the site its name?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

18 (Free) Books Ernest Hem­ing­way Wished He Could Read Again for the First Time

Ray­mond Chan­dler Denounces Strangers on a Train in Sharply-Word­ed Let­ter to Alfred Hitch­cock

Quentin Tarantino’s 10 Favorite Films of 2013

Albert Camus Writes a Friend­ly Let­ter to Jean-Paul Sartre Before Their Per­son­al and Philo­soph­i­cal Rift

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, Asia, film, lit­er­a­ture, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on his brand new Face­book page.

William Shatner Raps About How to Not Kill Yourself Deep Frying a Turkey

in Food & Drink, Music | November 28th, 2013

Like many oth­ers on Thanks­giv­ing, William Shat­ner sought a “moister, tasti­er” turkey expe­ri­ence. The for­mer Star Trek star had pur­chased a siz­able fry­er and, turned brash by pangs of hunger, threw cau­tion to the wind; despite know­ing Archimedes’ prin­ci­ple full well, Shat­ner bold­ly went where no cook should go and deposit­ed the turkey into a vat brim­ming with oil. Oh, woe­ful day! The oil, dis­placed by the turkey, ran over the fryer’s sides and onto the open flame. Flames then shot up, burn­ing Shatner’s arms.

In 2011, Shat­ner joined forces with the insur­ance com­pa­ny State Farm to cre­ate a cau­tion­ary video warn­ing would-be Thanks­giv­ing turkey fry­ers about the per­ils of engag­ing in such a gas­tro­nom­ic enter­prise. Accord­ing to State Farm, insur­ance claims relat­ed to Thanks­giv­ing grease & cook­ing-acci­dents dropped by half after this pub­lic ser­vice announce­ment came out.

In what can only be inter­pret­ed as an attempt to tam­per with per­fec­tion, in 2012, State Farm decid­ed to have YouTube’s melodysheep remix Shatner’s orig­i­nal video, giv­ing it a glis­ten­ing new coat of Inter­net viral­i­ty. We are pleased to say that the endeav­or proved to be a resound­ing suc­cess. Please enjoy the video, above, and remem­ber the fol­low­ing fry­ing tips:

1: Avoid oil spillover–don’t over­fill the pot.

2: Turn off the flame when low­er­ing the turkey into oil.

3: Fry out­side, away from the house.

4: Prop­er­ly thaw the turkey before fry­ing.

5: Keep a grease-fire-approved extin­guish­er near­by.

Ilia Blin­d­er­man is a Mon­tre­al-based cul­ture and sci­ence writer. Fol­low him at @iliablinderman.

A Guide to Happiness: Alain de Botton’s Documentary Shows How Nietzsche, Socrates & 4 Other Philosophers Can Change Your Life

in Philosophy | November 27th, 2013

Alain de Bot­ton is a not a philosopher’s philoso­pher. This means that his work is giv­en lit­tle con­sid­er­a­tion inside acad­e­mia. It also means that he speaks to many, many more people—ordinary peo­ple hun­gry for human­ist ideas about living—than his peers. In his six-part video series, Phi­los­o­phy: A Guide to Hap­pi­ness, de Bot­ton tells us that he’d always looked to phi­los­o­phy as a dis­ci­pline that “has wise things to say about every­day wor­ries…. Phi­los­o­phy promised some­thing that might sound a lit­tle naïve, but was in fact rather pro­found: A way to learn to be hap­py.” I’m still not sure if this sounds more naïve or pro­found, but de Botton’s videos, each near­ly 25 min­utes long, con­cern thinkers who sure­ly knew the dif­fer­ence. Each video also func­tions as a trav­el­ogue of sorts, as de Bot­ton vis­its the cities that pro­duced the thinkers, and tries to square their his­to­ries with the mod­ern world around the relics.

Above, de Bot­ton dis­cuss­es Roman sto­ic philoso­pher and trage­di­an Seneca. An advi­sor to Nero, Seneca’s life may have been hap­py, at times, but it was hard­ly restrained. In any case, he had some­thing to teach us about the futil­i­ty of anger, and he was also, like de Bot­ton, a great pop­u­lar­iz­er of oth­er peo­ple’s ideas. Seneca char­ac­ter­ized anger as a ratio­nal response that nonethe­less relies on false premis­es, name­ly that we have more con­trol over our cir­cum­stances than we actu­al­ly do, and that our opti­mism about out­comes is unfound­ed and sets us up with unre­al­is­tic expec­ta­tions. De Bot­ton has before pro­fessed an affin­i­ty for the trag­ic view, and Seneca’s hor­ri­bly bloody works, which inspired the Eliz­a­bethan genre known as “Revenge Tragedy,” are par­tic­u­lar­ly grotesque explo­rations of anger. But per­haps it is those who most clear­ly see the per­ni­cious effects of an emo­tion, or lack of it, who under­stand it best.

Take Arthur Schopen­hauer, whom de Bot­ton con­sults as his author­i­ty on love. Like Seneca, Schopen­hauer seems very much at odds with much of his philo­soph­i­cal writ­ing on love and com­pas­sion. His essay “On Women” earned him a per­ma­nent rep­u­ta­tion as a misog­y­nist, deserved or not. He’s rumored to have had a vio­lent tem­per and wrote approv­ing­ly of keep­ing one’s dis­tance from the mass of peo­ple, most of whom annoyed him dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly. Schopen­hauer also famous­ly wrote that it would have been prefer­able not to have been born at all, a posi­tion of extreme mis­an­thropy known as anti­na­tal­ism.

But there are oth­er aspects of Schopen­hauer’s roman­tic life to dis­cuss, both its ear­ly suc­cess­es and lat­er fail­ures. “Noth­ing in life,” says de Bot­ton, “is more impor­tant than love for Schopen­hauer.” Even with all of its pains of rejec­tion, roman­tic love, Schopen­hauer wrote in The World as Will and Rep­re­sen­ta­tion, “is more impor­tant than all oth­er aims in man’s life; and there­fore it is quite wor­thy of the pro­found seri­ous­ness with which every­one pur­sues it.”

Anoth­er pop­u­lar British philo­soph­i­cal thinker, John Gray, has a very dif­fer­ent take on the great Ger­man pes­simist, call­ing his philosophy “more sub­ver­sive of human­ist hopes than any oth­er.” But de Botton’s tech­nique seems in many ways cal­cu­lat­ed as a mild sub­ver­sion of expec­ta­tion, choos­ing as he does such con­tra­dic­to­ry, and often very soli­tary fig­ures.

One soli­tary thinker who occu­pies a trea­sured place in the library of every human­ist is Michel de Mon­taigne, the genial French essay­ist who invent­ed the lit­er­ary term essai, and who some might say also per­fect­ed the form. Mon­taigne has always struck me as the hap­pi­est of men, even in, or espe­cial­ly in his long stretch­es of soli­tude, punc­tu­at­ed by con­sci­en­tious pub­lic ser­vice (despite his life­long painful kid­ney stones). While both Schopen­hauer and Mon­taigne engaged in lengthy self-exam­i­na­tion, Mon­taigne seems to have gen­uine­ly liked him­self and oth­ers. He treats him­self in his writ­ings as an old and hon­est friend with whom one can be per­fect­ly can­did with­out any fear of reprisal. This is per­haps why de Bot­ton chose him to illus­trate self-esteem.

Mon­taigne comes from a tra­di­tion much friend­lier to phi­los­o­phy as mem­oir (he invent­ed the tra­di­tion). And so, in this age of the mem­oir, he has seen a great resur­gence. In 2011, at least three pop­u­lar books on Mon­taigne came out, one titled How to Live and anoth­er sub­ti­tled Mon­taigne and Being in Touch With Life. Of all the six philoso­phers de Bot­ton sur­veys in his series, which also includes Niet­zsche, Epi­cu­rus, and Socrates, Mon­taigne would seem the most com­pli­men­ta­ry to de Botton’s casu­al, per­son­al approach to phi­los­o­phy, which seeks not to dig new ground nor dis­cov­er dis­tant coun­tries but to con­front the vex­ing human ques­tions that meet us always at home.

You can view all six episodes in the embed­ded playlist below:

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load 90 Free Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es and Start Liv­ing the Exam­ined Life

Alain de Bot­ton Pro­pos­es a Kinder, Gen­tler Phi­los­o­phy of Suc­cess

The Dai­ly Habits of High­ly Pro­duc­tive Philoso­phers: Niet­zsche, Marx & Immanuel Kant

Alain de Botton’s Quest for The Per­fect Home and Archi­tec­tur­al Hap­pi­ness

The Art of Liv­ing: A Free Stan­ford Online Course Explores Time­less Ques­tions

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Discover the “Brazen Bull,” the Ancient Greek Torture Machine That Doubled as a Musical Instrument

in History | November 27th, 2013

His­to­ry is replete with bru­tal­ly imag­i­na­tive tor­ture and exe­cu­tion tech­niques. The list of cru­el­ties includes cru­ci­fix­ion, where vic­tims were left to die on the cross; the rack, where tor­tur­ers would place the vic­tim on a wood­en frame to be slow­ly pulled apart; and hang­ing, draw­ing, and quartering—the offi­cial Eng­lish pun­ish­ment for high trea­son from 1351 to 1870—where men would be drawn by horse to their place of exe­cu­tion, hung until near-death, and then emas­cu­lat­ed and dis­em­bow­eled before being decap­i­tat­ed and cut into quar­ters. The most intri­cate­ly sadis­tic form of tor­ture, how­ev­er, orig­i­nat­ed with the Greek tyrant Phalaris.

Phalaris, the despot of Acra­gas (now Agri­gen­to, in Sici­ly), was infa­mous for his cal­lous­ness and reput­ed­ly “devoured” suck­ling infants. The video above describes how Phalaris, keep­ing to his char­ac­ter, asked the crafts­man Per­i­laus to con­struct a bronze bull for the exe­cu­tion of crim­i­nals. The bull housed a hol­low cham­ber where vic­tims were deposit­ed through a trap­door. A fire was kin­dled beneath the bull, turn­ing the stat­ue into an oven.

As Phalaris sup­pos­ed­ly admit­ted him­self, the most sav­age aspect of this brazen mon­stros­i­ty was its musi­cal nature:

A coun­try­man of my own, one Per­i­laus, an admirable artist, but a man of evil dis­po­si­tion, had so far mis­tak­en my char­ac­ter as to think that he could win my regard by the inven­tion of a new form of tor­ture; the love of tor­ture, he thought, was my rul­ing pas­sion… He opened the back of the ani­mal, and con­tin­ued: “When you are mind­ed to pun­ish any one, shut him up in this recep­ta­cle, apply these pipes to the nos­trils of the bull, and order a fire to be kin­dled beneath. The occu­pant will shriek and roar in unremit­ting agony; and his cries will come to you through the pipes as the ten­der­est, most pathet­ic, most melo­di­ous of bel­low­ings. Your vic­tim will be pun­ished, and you will enjoy the music.”

It is doubt­ful that the tyrant so known for his bar­barism would cringe at this nov­el­ty; nev­er­the­less, Phalaris claims to have been sick­ened by Per­i­laus’ clev­er­ness:

‘His words revolt­ed me. I loathed the thought of such inge­nious cru­el­ty, and resolved to pun­ish the arti­fi­cer in kind. “If this is any­thing more than an emp­ty boast, Per­i­laus,” I said to him, “if your art can real­ly pro­duce this effect, get inside your­self, and pre­tend to roar; and we will see whether the pipes will make such music as you describe.” He con­sent­ed; and when he was inside I closed the aper­ture, and ordered a fire to be kin­dled. “Receive,” I cried, “the due reward of your won­drous art: let the music-mas­ter be the first to play.”

Upon hear­ing Per­i­laus’ shrieks, the con­tent tyrant removed the crafts­man from bull, and then threw him off of a cliff. “Mis­tak­en my char­ac­ter,” indeed.

Ilia Blin­d­er­man is a Mon­tre­al-based cul­ture and sci­ence writer. Fol­low him at @iliablinderman.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ancient Greek Pun­ish­ments: The Retro Video Game

What Ancient Greek Music Sound­ed Like: Hear a Recon­struc­tion That is ‘100% Accu­rate’

Hear Homer’s Ili­ad Read in the Orig­i­nal Ancient Greek

The His­to­ry of West­ern Archi­tec­ture: From Ancient Greece to Roco­co (A Free Online Course)

Marilyn Monroe’s Handwritten Turkey-and-Stuffing Recipe

in Food & Drink, History | November 27th, 2013

Entire indus­tries seem to have sprung up around the mis­sion of demon­strat­ing that Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe did more in her short life than become an icon — the icon — of mid­cen­tu­ry Amer­i­can star­let­hood. We here at Open Cul­ture have pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured not just her famous­ly pho­tographed read­ing of James Joyce’s Ulysses, but the con­tents of her per­son­al library as well. The new book Frag­ments pro­vides a great deal of rich ephemera to those schol­ars of Mon­roe’s pur­suits off the screen, includ­ing, as Matt Lee and Ted Lee in the New York Times describe it, “assort­ed let­ters, poems and back-of-the-enve­lope scrib­blings that span the time from Monroe’s first mar­riage in 1943 to her death in 1962.” The arti­cle appears in the paper’s Din­ing & Wine sec­tion thanks to one Mon­rov­ian frag­ment of par­tic­u­lar inter­est this time of year: her per­son­al recipe for turkey and stuff­ing.

“Scrawled on sta­tionery with a let­ter­head from a title insur­ance com­pa­ny,” write Lee and Lee, “the recipe describes in some detail how to pre­pare a stuff­ing for chick­en or turkey. The for­mu­la is exten­sive in the num­ber of ingre­di­ents (11, not includ­ing the 5 herbs and spices, or salt and pep­per), and in their diver­si­ty (3 kinds of nuts and 3 ani­mal pro­teins). It is unortho­dox for an Amer­i­can stuff­ing in its use of a bread loaf soaked in water, wrung dry and shred­ded, and in its lack of added fat, broth, raw egg or any oth­er binder.” You can find a tran­script of the steps right below. And if you give a whirl on Thanks­giv­ing, let us know how it turns out.

For the Stuff­ing

• No gar­lic
• Sour­dough
• French bread — soak in cold water, wring out, then shred
• For chick­en giblets — boil in water 5–10 mins
• Liv­er — heart then chop
• 1 whole or ½ onion,  chop & pars­ley / four stalk cel­ery,  chop togeth­er fol­low­ing spices — put in rose­mary
• Thyme, bay leaf, oregano, poul­try sea­son­ing, salt, pep­per,
• Grat­ed Parme­san cheese, 1 hand­ful
• 1/2lb – 1/4lb ground round — put in fry­ing pan — brown (no oil) then mix raisin 1 ½ cuops or more
• 1 cup chop nuts (wal­nuts, chest­nuts, peanuts)
• 1 or 2 hard boiled eggs — chopped mix togeth­er

To Prep the Bird

• Salt & pep­per inside chick­en or turkey — out­side same and but­ter
• Sew up clamp birds put chick­en or turkey in 350 oven
• Roast­ing chick­en — 3or 4lbs or larg­er
• Cooks 30 min to 1lbs
• Brown chick­en or pheas­ant (vine­gar, oil, onion, spices) — let cook in own juice
• Add lit­tle water as you go
• ½ glass vine­gar — put in when half done
• Cooks 2 hours
• Put pota­toes
• Mush­room — but­ton canned
• Peas — fresh

via NYTimes,  Brain Pick­ings and The Dai­ly Mail

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe Reads Joyce’s Ulysses at the Play­ground (1955)

Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe Explains Rel­a­tiv­i­ty to Albert Ein­stein (in a Nico­las Roeg Movie)

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, Asia, film, lit­er­a­ture, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on his brand new Face­book page.

“Soda/Pop/Coke,” A Creative Visual Remix of Harvard’s Famous 2003 Survey of American Dialects

in Education, English Language, Film, Harvard | November 27th, 2013

Tomor­row, friends and rel­a­tives from far-flung cor­ners of the coun­try will gath­er as they do this time each year—stuff them­selves sil­ly, trim Christ­mas trees, watch foot­ball, online shop, etc. And depend­ing on how far-flung those assem­bled are, there may be in cer­tain homes some clan­des­tine chuck­ling over a cer­tain guest’s request for “pop” instead of soda, or the oth­er way around, or some oth­er fun­ny way of say­ing things. Because in this gar­gan­tu­an expanse we call the Unit­ed States, we’ve got a wealth of region­al variants—some dif­fer­ences sub­tle, some quite notice­able (though with­out nec­es­sar­i­ly the degree of socioe­co­nom­ic bag­gage as the UK, I’m con­vinced).

I recall, for instance, mov­ing to New York City over a decade ago and grap­pling for the next sev­er­al years with New York­ers’ insis­tence on say­ing “stand­ing on line” instead of “in line.” As “online” acquired an entire­ly new mean­ing, this lin­guis­tic odd­i­ty took on an even more con­fus­ing dimen­sion for out­siders. And hav­ing grown up hear­ing the sec­ond per­son plur­al as rough­ly half “you guy”s and half “y’all,”s I’ve been amused by the New York “youse.” As we learn from The Atlantic’s “Soda/Pop/Coke” above, these dif­fer­ences in word­ing cor­re­spond to region­al dif­fer­ences in pro­nun­ci­a­tion of words like “bag,” “pecan,” and “coupon.”

Inform­ing us that “at least 10 dis­tinct dialects of Eng­lish are spo­ken in the Unit­ed States,” “Soda/Pop/Coke” draws on the 2003 Har­vard Dialect Sur­vey, con­duct­ed by lin­guist Bert Vaux. As the film’s inter­view­ers ask callers Vaux’s sur­vey ques­tions, their region­al affil­i­a­tions appear graph­i­cal­ly on a map of the con­ti­nen­tal Unit­ed States, based on grad­u­ate stu­dent Joshua Katz’s heat map­ping of Vaux’s work.  You can see the more than one hun­dred vari­ants Vaux’s sur­vey mea­sures here, and The Atlantic points us to U Penn’s dense (and spe­cial­ized) Nation­al Map of the Region­al Dialects of Amer­i­can Eng­lish. It’s a com­pli­cat­ed and rar­efied sci­ence, lin­guis­tics, but we’re all at least ama­teur soci­ol­o­gists of lan­guage (some­times bad ones) as we sort and size each oth­er up—or com­plete­ly mis­hear each other—based on com­plete­ly uncon­scious choic­es in word­ing and pro­nun­ci­a­tion.

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Do You Drink Soda, Pop or Soft Drinks?: 122 Heatmaps Visu­al­ize How Peo­ple Talk in Amer­i­ca

The His­to­ry of the Eng­lish Lan­guage in Ten Ani­mat­ed Min­utes

What Shake­speare Sound­ed Like to Shake­speare: Recon­struct­ing the Bard’s Orig­i­nal Pro­nun­ci­a­tion

Learn 46 Lan­guages Online for Free: Span­ish, Chi­nese, Eng­lish & More

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Newly-Released Thelonious Monk Live Recording, ‘Paris 1969,’ Now Streaming Free for a Limited Time

in Uncategorized | November 26th, 2013

A quick heads up: Last week we told you all about how Thelo­nious Monk flubbed his first con­cert in Paris in 1954 and then made a tri­umphant return in 1969. The ’69 con­cert has just been released as a new CD, but, for a lim­it­ed time, you can hear it stream­ing online,  from start to fin­ish, for free. It’s all thanks to NPR’s First Lis­ten site. Enjoy.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Thelo­nious Monk Bombs in Paris in 1954, Then Makes a Tri­umphant Return in 1969

Advice From the Mas­ter: Thelo­nious Monk Scrib­bles a List of Tips for Play­ing a Gig

Thelo­nious Monk: Straight No Chas­er

92nd Street Y Launches a New Online Archive with 1,000 Recordings of Literary Readings, Musical Performances & More

in Archives, Literature, Poetry | November 26th, 2013

Kurt Von­negut once com­ment­ed, in an inter­view with Joseph Heller, that the best audi­ence he had ever encoun­tered was at the 92^nd Street Y in New York. “Those peo­ple know every­thing. They are wide awake and respon­sive.”

Locat­ed at the cor­ner of 92^nd Street and Lex­ing­ton Avenue, the 92Y has a ven­er­a­ble his­to­ry of pub­lic per­for­mance, con­ver­sa­tion, poet­ry and beyond. Von­negut him­self appeared at the 92Y sev­en times to read aloud from his own work. (Includ­ing this read­ing from Break­fast of Cham­pi­ons three years before the book was pub­lished.)

Cul­tur­al pro­gram­ming has been a focus at the 92Y since it opened in 1874. Orig­i­nal­ly, it served most­ly Ger­man-Jew­ish men (note, it isn’t a YMCA, but a YM-YWHA—Young Men’s and Women’s Hebrew Asso­ci­a­tion). But the Kauf­mann Con­cert Hall opened in 1930, and that’s where a ver­i­ta­ble Who’s Who of not­ed enter­tain­ment, pol­i­tics, sports, and sci­ence fig­ures have appeared over the years, speak­ing to that “wide awake and respon­sive” audi­ence.

Lucky for the rest of us, the 92Y record­ed the vast major­i­ty of those per­for­mances. And now 1,000 record­ings appear on a new site, 92Y On Demand. It’s a fan­tas­tic archive of audio and video files, search­able by top­ic, year or per­former name.

It’s all there: Yogi Berra look­ing back on his life and career. A 1961 read­ing by a young Nadine Gordimer. Harold Pin­ter read­ing his own short sto­ries and weigh­ing in on the Bea­t­les vs. the Rolling Stones. Andrés Segovia play­ing a clas­si­cal gui­tar recital. Lou Reed speak­ing on the eve of his live per­for­mance of Berlin (top). Bil­ly Crys­tal (below) on roast­ing Muham­mad Ali.

92Y is home to the Unter­berg Poet­ry Cen­ter, so the new archive abounds with poet­ry read­ings. Dylan Thomas read there in 1953. Two years ear­li­er play­wright Thorn­ton Wilder appeared and read from Emi­ly Dickinson’s work. And clos­er to our own time, Paul McCart­ney recent­ly read from his own poet­ry.

See many more cel­e­brat­ed fig­ures such as Maria Bam­ford, Mau­rice Sendak, Dan Sav­age, Junot Díaz and Jamaica Kin­caid read and dis­cuss their work at 92Y On Demand.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Kurt Vonnegut’s Very First Pub­lic Read­ing from Break­fast of Cham­pi­ons (1970)

Lou Reed Rewrites Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven.” See Read­ings by Reed and Willem Dafoe

Allen Gins­berg Gets Heck­led by Beat Poet Gre­go­ry Cor­so at a 1973 Poet­ry Read­ing

Kate Rix writes about dig­i­tal media and edu­ca­tion. Fol­low her on Twit­ter.

The “Pursuit of Ignorance” Drives All Science: Watch Neuroscientist Stuart Firestein’s Engaging New TED Talk

in Education, Philosophy, Science, TED Talks | November 26th, 2013

Neu­ro­sci­en­tist Stu­art Firestein, the chair of Colum­bia University’s Bio­log­i­cal Sci­ences depart­ment, rejects  any metaphor that likens the goal of sci­ence to com­plet­ing a puz­zle, peel­ing an onion, or peek­ing beneath the sur­face to view an ice­berg in its entire­ty.

Such com­par­isons sug­gest a future in which all of our ques­tions will be answered. In Dr. Firestein’s view, every answer can and should cre­ate a whole new set of ques­tions, an opin­ion pre­vi­ous­ly voiced by play­wright George Bernard Shaw and philoso­pher Immanuel Kant.

A more apt metaphor might be an end­less cycle of chick­ens and eggs. Or, as Dr. Firestein posits in his high­ly enter­tain­ing, 18-minute TED talk above, a chal­lenge on par with find­ing a black cat in a dark room that may con­tain no cats what­so­ev­er.

Accord­ing to Firestein, by the time we reach adult­hood, 90% of us will have lost our inter­est in sci­ence. Young chil­dren are like­ly to expe­ri­ence the sub­ject as some­thing jol­ly, hands-on, and adven­tur­ous. As we grow old­er, a del­uge of facts often ends up trump­ing the fun. Prin­ci­ples of Neur­al Sci­ence, a required text for Firestein’s under­grad­u­ate Cel­lu­lar and Mol­e­c­u­lar Neu­ro­science course weighs twice as much as the aver­age human brain.

The major­i­ty of the gen­er­al pub­lic may feel sci­ence is best left to the experts, but Firestein is quick to point out that when he and his col­leagues are relax­ing with post-work beers, the con­ver­sa­tion is fueled by the stuff that they don’t know.

Hence the “pur­suit of igno­rance,” the title of his talk.

Giv­en the edu­ca­tion­al con­text, his choice of word­ing could cause a knee-jerk response. He takes it to mean nei­ther stu­pid­i­ty, nor “cal­low indif­fer­ence,” but rather the “thor­ough­ly con­scious” igno­rance that James Clerk Maxwell, the father of mod­ern physics, dubbed the pre­lude to all sci­en­tif­ic advance­ment.

I bet the 19th-cen­tu­ry physi­cist would have shared Firestein’s dis­may at the test-based approach so preva­lent in today’s schools.

The igno­rance-embrac­ing reboot he pro­pos­es at the end of his talk is as rad­i­cal as it is fun­ny.

For more of Stu­art Firestein’s thoughts on igno­rance check out the descrip­tion for his Colum­bia course on Igno­rance and his book, Igno­rance: How It Dri­ves Sci­ence.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Orson Welles Explains Why Igno­rance Was His Major “Gift” to Cit­i­zen Kane

Noam Chom­sky Explains Where Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence Went Wrong

Steven Pinker Explains the Neu­ro­science of Swear­ing (NSFW)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day recent­ly direct­ed 16 home­school­ers in Yeast Nation, the world’s first bio-his­tor­i­cal musi­cal.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.