Category Archives: Reading Recommendations

Book Pairings: Fierce Femmes of Lore

Reading about historical women, fact & fiction, in Pénélope Bagieu’s graphic novel Brazen: Rebel Ladies Who Rocked the World and in Joy McCullough’s older teen book in verse, Blood Water Paint.

Valerie P., Teen Library Assistant

It’s obviously part of my job to read as many books as possible, so I can give the best recommendations to folks that are interested in the widest variety of topics, niche and otherwise. However, lots of the time I don’t actually have much time to actually… read (!). Because our libraries are so busy, a lot of my time off of the reference desk gets eaten up by planning programs like storytime and Teen Tuesdays, problem solving technical issues, and getting people excited about coming to the library! So, how do I stay on top of what the coolest most interesting books are?? I read a lot of reviews and am on a ton of email lists from professional book reviewers (*insert heart eyed emoji here*), so I can 1) be aware of what’s out there and fresh and 2) wisely decide which books to spend my valuable time reading. I am very selective about what books I actually sit and read all the way through, just because there are so many books that look so good, and I have to guard the time that I do have!

But actually, for both of the books that I’m going to rave about today, no one recommended them to me! They just snuck up on me and jumped on my back and wouldn’t let go until I read them!! THEY WERE BOTH AMAZING AND QUICK AND EASY AND YOU SHOULD DEFINITELY CHECK THEM OUT!

Brazen: Rebel Ladies Who Rocked the World by Pénélope Bagieu

For the Francophiles out there, this graphic novel was originally released in two parts in French, called “Les Culottées”. Now, I don’t speak French, but according to Google Translate, that translates to “the cheeky ones,” which I personally think is a great title. I guess the publishers thought “Brazen” would sell better or whatever. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Excerpt from Bagieu’s “Brazen” (2018): Katia Krafft, Volcanologist

Regardless, French artist/author Pénélope Bagieu did an amazing job with it, and it covers thirty women – trans women, cis women, lesbian women, bi women, straight women, Black women, Asian women, Native American women, Middle Eastern women, white women, autistic women, disabled women. There was a woman or three that I had learned about in my schooling – and I have a Master’s Degree in Women and Gender Studies – but mostly women I had never heard of before, all women who had done something really super cool, and things that SHOULD HAVE been included in my education! There were also more long dead as well as still living women included that I had expected there to be.

The art is beautiful throughout, and I kept wanting to buy prints to cover the walls of my room with them, and the book overall was inspirational, fun, and light – and helped me get out of a funk I had been in. HIGHLY recommended for everyone to check out! 🙂

Also also also!! I just learned that apparently they made/are making a TV show based on this book for French television, consisting of thirty 3 minute episodes, done with a different artist. Maybe soon there will be an English translation, or you could use it to learn some French! 😉 Learn more about the series and its performance at film festivals here.

Blood Water Paint by Joy McCullough

trigger warning: this book contains instances of sexual assault, parental abuse, & misogyny

Another really awesome famous woman who happens to be super dead now is Artemisia Gentileschi, an Italian painter who lived in 17th century Italy. I mostly know her from this really cool piece of art, Judith and Holofernes, which is actually one of my favorite paintings from the Baroque movement (which lasted from the early 17th until the mid-18th century). I think one of the reasons that I like it so much is because it is a depiction of a scene from a Biblical story that has been done by other artists, but the way that Artemisia does it is so different, so much more real and full of emotion. Look at the expression on Judith’s face, and the muscles in her arms, how you can see her leaning back so she doesn’t get hit with the blood that’s squirting everywhere. ISN’T THAT COOL?!? Relatedly, for more information on her growth as an artist and an examination of the differences between her two paintings, below, check out this blog post “Artemisia Gentileschi, Judith Slaying Holofernes” by Dr. Esperanca Camara on SMARTHISTORY.ORG.

But like, aside from this cool work of art that I learned about when I was in high school, and was then lucky enough to SEE IN PERSON in a trip to the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, Italy, I knew nothing else about Gentileschi – until I read this book!

Left: Artemisia Gentileschi, *Judith beheading Holofernes*, 1611-12, oil on canvas, 159 x 126 cm (Museo Nazionale di Capodimonte, Naples); and right: Artemisia Gentileschi, *Judith and Holofernes*, 1620-21, oil on canvas, 162.5 x 199 cm (Uffizi Gallery, Florence)

Joy McCullough, the author of Blood Water Paint, actually first wrote this book as a play, which was staged in 2015 in Seattle and I’m super jealous of the folks that got to see it because it looks like it was really awesome! The book is actually mostly in verse – which means it looks like poetry – which can be a little intimidating if you’re not used to reading poetry or books in verse, but it’s actually really great and easy to read, with the format of the text heightening Artemisia’s emotions.

Because yes, Blood Water Paint is actually about Artemisia when she was a teen, and still learning how to paint, still learning about her place in 17th century Italy’s society. In the book, Artemisia is living with her father, who is a master painter, but Artemisia’s skills have actually surpassed her father’s, so she’s doing his work for him and signing his name on the art, to keep money coming in. Her mother died when she was small, and she doesn’t really have anyone to confide in. However, she still remembers the stories that her mother told her about other strong women, and she uses them to give her strength when times get tough. So when her father uses Artemisia’s youth and beauty to get her a spot working under a more respected artist who is in town working on a big ($$$) job, Artemisia is excited about the opportunity, and hopes that this handsome man can teach her how to paint perspectives. Unfortunately, being a woman has never been easy, and when those that she trusts take advantage of her, she has to make some hard decisions.

This book was powerful in a different way from Brazen, and particularly timely, as I happened to be reading it as more and more people were speaking out about their experiences of sexual assault. I would definitely recommend this book to everyone that feels able to read it.

If you or a person you love are a victim of sexual assault and need someone to talk to, know that there are helplines and support systems in place. You can call the National Sexual Assault Hotline 24/7 at 800.656.HOPE (4673), or log on to the RAINN site at centers.rainn.org to find a local service provider who can help you with counseling, legal advocacy, healthcare, and more.

The Bottle Imp and the Limits of Logic

Logic! It’s fantastically useful stuff. Use it all the time for sorting out your options, thinking up plans, and generally making your life easier. There’s some very real limits to it, though, and whether an idea checks out logically doesn’t always have anything to do with its relevance to the real world. Here’s the test: can this idea be used to predict what will happen?

vintage photo of a dog in a top hat and white tie suit — Very dapper, but will this dog hunt? (Also proof that dogs have been putting up with the human impulse to dress them in clothes for a very long time.)

There’s a Robert Louis Stevenson story called The Bottle Imp. Go read it in this collection, here, if you like. No plot spoilers, but I will be discussing the premise of the story, so if you want to read it before we get to that, do. The main idea of the story is this: there’s a bottle that contains an evil imp. It can grant any wish except to prolong the bottle owner’s life, and if you die with the bottle in your possession, you go straight to Hell. The only way you can get rid of the bottle is to sell it to someone for less than you paid for it. Here’s where it gets interesting.

A display of ancient glass bottles of various murky clear shades — Some 17th Century glass bottles in a museum. Probably not full of evil, though.

Truth and Consequences

Let’s play a game, and think about the Bottle Imp problem logically. Eventually, there’s an ultimate loser: someone stuck with the bottle who bought it for a single penny, and they can’t sell it. So, following that, the next person up, who sold it to them, bought it for two cents, and must have known that they wouldn’t be able to sell it to someone for one cent. There must have been someone above them who got it for three, but should have known that they couldn’t sell it for two, because the person who got it for two would have to convince someone to take it for one, which nobody would ever do. Theoretically, nobody should ever take the bottle for any price, because the problem of not being able to sell it for a cent should cascade up the chain of prospective bottle owners. This is, of course, assuming that everyone involved is thinking logically (and whenever you hear that phrase, you should also assume that this perfectly spherical, frictionless dog hunts perfectly spherical, frictionless partridges in a vacuum).

The trouble here is that real people just aren’t rational actors, any more than real hunting dogs are spherical and frictionless. Realistically, everybody in the chain, down to perilously close to the bottom, is probably going to think “eh, I’ve got plenty of time, and I’m sure I can find some sucker to sell the bottle to” – and, in the main, they’d probably be right. The existence of the whole idea of gambling in general testifies to the idea that people – real people – generally do a terrible job of thinking logically and rationally. If the odds could really be in your favor in the long term, casinos wouldn’t exist.

a shack by a creek, with a man and a dog sitting outside — Las Vegas in 1895, before the gambling industry really took off.

a view of the Vegas strip in 2011. Reasonably recent. — A view of the Las Vegas strip. Practically a monument to the irrationality of humans. Keep feeding those one armed bandits, guys…

Sometimes, especially when dealing with real human behavior in the real world, logic does a truly wretched job of predicting real-world outcomes and decisions. There’s a distinction between logic, and actual utility. Most of the time, logic is very useful, but sometimes, especially when you’re dealing with questions of real human behavior, not so much.

Teen Book Review: Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier

Page Count: 386

Genre: Crime, Gothic Romance, and Mystery

Series or Standalone: Standalone

Reading Level: High school and beyond

Review by: M.L., a local high school junior

Rebecca is bursting with mystery and suspense throughout the book. The main characters are Rebecca, the Narrator, and Maxim, who is the owner of Manderley. Rebecca’s mysterious death still haunts Maxim. The Narrator speaks in the novel, in chapters 1-2 is present day, while the other Chapters are foreshadowing the past that leads into Chapters 1-2 as you re-read the first two chapters which gives you a better understanding. I found Rebecca more and more intriguing as I read it.The mystery of the book kept unraveling as I kept reading which made me want more and solve the mystery. Rebecca is a Gothic romance novel which is my favorite genre. I like the way the early chapters are set up to urge you to read on. At first the set-up was weird but suspenseful. I love this book and I’ll read the novel again.

I thought that the Narrator was naïve , I wanted to slap her into common sense and for her fight, but she is younger than Maxim. It was a new experience for her throughout the book. The Narrator doesn’t have a name in the book. I felt as the book can show you to grow in different ways in life and to never judge a book by its cover. Including learning about a person first before you jump into something serious or conclusions. I would recommend this book to readers that want mystery, dark romance, and suspense. I’ll rate Rebecca as a 4/5, because there are some parts that vaguely explain what’s going on in the novel but overall, a great novel that readers would love and enjoy.

STRONGLY Recommended: Children of Blood and Bone

When I first got my library copy of Tomi Adeyemi’s debut novel Children of Blood and Bone, I groaned a little. I had been excited about it because I had seen the hype surrounding its release – Adeyemi had publishers fighting for the chance to print it, the title has been *heavily* advertised in the book world, and there’s already a movie deal! – but I had missed that it was over 500 pages long! Usually that’s not too much of an issue for me, as I am a bookworm (heck, I work at the library!), but for whatever reason I just wasn’t feeling a long book. But I knew if I didn’t read it when I got it the first time, I probably wouldn’t be able to get my hands on it again anytime soon (as of my writing this, there are 20 people waiting on LFPL’s 5 copies). So I forced myself to check it out. And immediately got sucked in. I am so glad I read this book, and now I’m going to gush about it because no one else has had the chance to read it yet and I need to talk about it!

So, to start off, know that the author, Tomi Adeyemi is a 24 year old (!!!) Nigerian-American who LOVES anime, especially Avatar: The Last Airbender, and has said that her main inspiration for this series (that’s right, it’s the first book in a series) comes from that love of anime, the beauty of Yoruba culture, and the constant feelings of fear and hopelessness she has due to the reality of police brutality that’s so prevalent in the United States. So. That’s definitely a REAL and interesting combination of things, but it honestly does all come together in an amazing way.

Here’s the blurb that’s on the back of the book, and it does a much better job at summarizing it than I did when I tried (I tend to get distracted and go on tangents, which can be fun sometimes but not the best for summaries).

THEY KILLED MY MOTHER.

THEY TOOK OUR MAGIC.

THEY TRIED TO BURY US.

NOW WE RISE.

Zélie Adebola remembers when the soil of Orïsha hummed with magic. Burners ignited flames, Tiders beckoned waves, and Zélie’s Reaper mother summoned forth souls.

But everything changed the night magic disappeared. Under the orders of a ruthless king, maji were killed, leaving Zélie without a mother and her people without hope.

Now Zélie has one chance to bring back magic and strike against the monarchy. With the help of a rogue princess, Zélie must outwit and outrun the crown prince, who is hell-bent on eradicating magic for good.

Danger lurks in Orïsha, where snow leoponaires prowl and vengeful spirits wait in the waters. Yet the greatest danger may be Zélie herself as she struggles to control her powers—and her growing feelings for an enemy.

If you can’t wait to get started reading it, here are the first 6 chapters of the book, made available in a Sneak Peek by the publisher! And, once you finish it, please come talk with me about it at Bon Air Library!

Amazing Mules

Mules are pretty amazing. In this very special LFPL Teen Blog post, we’ll explore key points of history and biology – as well as thorny ethical issues – all at the same time through the lens of these famous hybrid equines. (Language warning? Or something. It’s all clean in context, but we do need to talk extensively about donkeys, especially jacks.)

The Definition of a Species

A species is all of the living things that can make babies together, whose babies can also make babies without any problems like diminished fertility. That’s it. Easy, actually. That’s why a gray wolf and a toy poodle are members of the same species, even though they look so different. Wolfdogs are a thing, and absolutely can go on to have lots of puppies. Like so:

By Venpia (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Chinstrap Penguins (for example) and cabbages are not members of the same species, because they can’t make babies. That’s also why Chinstrap penguins are not the same species as Little Blue Penguins. Almost always, two species can’t interbreed at all, let alone produce living offspring. But sometimes, two species are close enough that they can produce healthy babies together, but those babies have trouble reproducing.

This brings us to equines (the horse family) and mules.

Introducing Mules

There are lots of equine hybrids, actually. You may have heard of mules, hinnies, and even zorses, but one of my favorite equine hybrids is the otherwise fairly rare and obscure zebroid stallion zebra X jenny donkey hybrid, called either a zedonk, a zebronky, a zonkey, or a zebrass.

a zebrass in tall grass. zebra-like leg stripes, upright mane, roundish ears, but a shaggy gray body coat.

By Whitney Carpenter. [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)], via Wikimedia Commons

Majestic! Stripes, upright mane, solid gray body coat, and all of the untamed aggression and cantankerousness of a zebra with a donkey’s thoughtful stubbornness, which is exactly why they’re fairly rare. There’s no demand for this animal, except as a curiosity. It certainly isn’t going to carry you or your luggage.

Mules, though, were wildly popular, and continue to be the most commonly bred equine hybrid. They’re reliable to breed, and generally have the best traits of both horses and donkeys. Horses are fast, but tend to panic. Donkeys are strong and sensible, but are usually smaller than horses. A mule (if you choose the parents wisely) can be in the size range of a horse, strong, fast, and sensible. A mule is the offspring of a male donkey, and a female horse. To make all this easier to understand without too much typing, here’s some basic terms!

Horses:

Baby horse – foal

Immature female horse – filly

Immature male horse – colt

Mature female horse – mare

Castrated male horse – gelding

Mature male horse – stallion/horse (We call all horses horses, even though technically it’s just the stallions that are horse horses. Just like we call all cows cows, even though it refers to specifically female cows, which is kind of redundant. Similarly to dogs: only male dogs are dog dogs. I’ll probably do a whole post on the English language and all our weird animal terms. Also, different breeds take different amounts of time to grow up, so the exact years in which a horse is a filly vs a mare or colt vs stallion can change, depending on the breed. Just like humans take different amounts of time to hit puberty or something. Some breeds are just late bloomers, or early ones, depending.)

Donkeys / Asses:

Baby donkey – foal

Female donkey – jennet / jenny

Male donkey – jack

Castrated male donkey – john / gelding

To get a mule, breed a mare to a jack. That’s much easier to say.

Mules

Baby mule – foal

Female mule – molly

Intact male mule (super rare – why put up with behavior issues if they’re sterile anyway?) – horse mule

Castrated male mule – john mule

The trick with mules is that most jacks are tiny, since most donkeys are also tiny. This is about average size for a regular donkey:

A woman walking next to a donkey, which stands maybe chest high at the shoulder.

By Rod Waddington from Kergunyah, Australia (Oromo Woman, Ethiopia) [CC BY-SA 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

What if you want a big strong mule? There are also breeds of donkey that exist just for making mules with specific traits, like size, such as American Mammoth Jackstock (and, in the case of the Poitou Mule, a specialized breed of horse, too.) This is where stuff gets WEIRD.

The Famous Poitou Mule

In France over the 18th and 19th Centuries, mules were so important to agriculture that an entire breed of horse AND an entire breed of donkey were developed purely so that farmers could get large, strong mules to pull their farm equipment.

This is a Poitou Horse, or a Poitevin Mulassier (Poitou Mule-maker):

By Poitou (Own work) [CC BY 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

This one’s even a horse horse. A stallion. His literal only reason to exist is to look pretty at horse shows and produce mares who will produce mules. Historically, anything else a Poitou Horse could do (especially a horse horse), like pull carts or even provide meat, was just a nice bonus. This animal is effectively a living gene bank.

There’s also the Poitou Donkey, a giant-sized breed with a long shaggy coat. This is a jennet and her foal at a show:

A shaggy mother poitou donkey, and her baby in a parking lot at a show.

The foal is nearly as big as an adult regular-size donkey.

Again, since the jacks are the ones that people use to make mules, jennet Poitou donkeys are also living gene banks, like stallion Poitou horses.

So, that’s two breeds (each from a different species) of equine, each selected over time just for making mules. When you do breed a Poitou donkey jack to a Poitou horse mare, you get a gorgeous, versatile Poitou Mule:

a Poitou mule wearing a pack harness at a show.

By Eponimm (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

They’re beautiful, really. You can ride them:

By Eponimm (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

You can drive them:

By Eponimm (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

They’re very photogenic:

By Eponimm (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Tragically, though, farmers have moved on to tractors, rather than mules. Now, heavy breeds of horse and donkey are generally much less popular than they were in the past, and mules along with them. The Poitou mule exemplifies this trend: as breeders strive to redefine what their donkeys and horses can do, all three breeds – the Poitou Mule, the Poitou Donkey, and the Poitou Horse – are very rare. All that has to happen for mules to stop existing is for people to quit breeding them: their genetic bank exists not in the population of mules, since those don’t breed, but in the population of horse and donkeys. Since DNA degrades over time, the best way to keep genes available is to keep the population that carries them going. But, even if you could straight resurrect members of extinct species Jurassic Park -style, in the end, that just sets up another pile of problems, and maybe not the kind of ethical dilemmas you might anticipate…

The Ballad of Idaho Gem / Idaho Star / Utah Pioneer

The setup: cutting-edge science, a wealthy entrepreneur who will “spare no expense” in pursuit of his passion, and a potentially lucrative payoff. This story isn’t a novel or a movie about what could happen with cloning technology. It’s about what did happen, over a decade ago, with the first batch of cloned equines.

Don Jacklin, the President of the American Mule Racing Association, wanted a way to reproduce his best racing mule. Since mules are sterile, this meant enlisting the aid of a crack team of equine reproduction scientists and veterinarians, and cloning his champion mule. Idaho Gem, Idaho Star, and Utah Pioneer were the genetically identical results of this successful quest to clone the first equine. Technically, due to being born first, Idaho Gem was the official first equine clone.

So, as clones of a champion racing mule, did the three duplicates go on to dominate the sport? Interestingly, no. Idaho Star apparently never was that into running, Utah Pioneer remains an educational exhibit entertaining schoolkids, and Idaho Gem – although good at racing – didn’t live up to Jacklin’s expectations as a champion. He eventually retrained for gymkhana.

I guess it makes sense, really, that clones of the original aren’t like the original exactly. After all, the three cloned mules are effectively identical triplets of each other, and identical siblings can be very different from each other in all sorts of ways, including personality.

Genetics literally isn’t everything, and it certainly isn’t destiny.

Apicius

What do you do if a bunch of Ancient Romans fall through a hole in time, and end up in your neighborhood? Invite them to dinner, of course! It’s important to be prepared to host time travelers.

If you’re planning a banquet at an insane house party for Ancient Romans, Apicius has you covered – extant books include various main courses, veggie dishes, fish, and fowl, and food preservation. Fortunately, the library has an English translation of this Probably-Fifth-Century cookbook.

Cover of Apicius: cookery and dining in Imperial Rome.

Get your English translation right here. You’re welcome!

Although there are free downloads of an old translation – good enough in a culinary emergency – the newer translation is definitely better. Or, if you’re feeling really adventurous, there’s the original Latin. Here’s some recipes I’ve adapted from the Latin and the old translation, to give you an idea of the range of dishes in the book. Let’s start with a fairly familiar one:

Leeks n’ Beans

A closeup of a giant pile of green beans.

Fresh. Green. Beans.

Aliter porros: in aqua elixiati erunt, fabae nondum conditae plurimum admisce conditurae, in que eos manducaturus es.

Other leeks: in water that cooked the leeks, boil green beans that haven’t been cooked. Mix leeks and beans, and serve.

That’s not too hard. Get leeks and green beans. Cut the bottoms and the dark green parts off the leeks, chop up and swish around in a bowl of water to get any grit out of the leeks. Boil the leek chunks in water, and reserve the water, keeping the leeks aside in a serving bowl. String the beans, if necessary, and boil the beans in the water you just took the leeks out of. When the beans are tender, fish them out, and toss them with the leeks in the serving bowl.

A nice hot salad. So far so good!

Sardine Loaf

Sardines.

Patine de apua fricta: apuam lavas, ova confringes et cum apua commisces. Adicies liquamen, vinum, oleum, facies ut ferveat, et cum ferbuerit, mittes apuam. Cum duxerit, subtiliter versas. Facies ut coloret, oenogarum simplex perfundes piper asparges et inferes.

Whipped sardine loaf: clean sardines, mix eggs with sardines. Add liquamen [a Roman fermented fish sauce], wine, oil, and stock, and let it heat [in the mold, presumably]. With care, turn over [the mold so the loaf is free]. To help it color, let it cook long enough to brown. Drizzle with oenogarum [a different fish sauce with wine in it], sprinkle with pepper and serve.

Okaaaaaaay. It’s still doable, but I’m going to have to get… creative… and you’d better like your fish extra jiggly, and your eggs extra fishy.

Materials: a mixing bowl, a spoon, a loaf tin or muffin tin (!!), or something else that is bakeable for a mold, a serving plate to turn it out on, oven mitts. OR a coffee mug and a microwave (!!!), if you can’t use the stove and oven.

Ingredients: a can of sardines, raw eggs, olive oil, fish or veggie stock, white wine (optional!), fish sauce (you can get it in the international section of the supermarket, or in East Asian or Southeast Asian food stores – if you can’t get fish sauce, Worcestershire sauce can be substituted.)

Procedure: open the can of sardines into a mixing bowl, and mash them. Add eggs, a splash of oil, stock, maybe some white wine, and a dash of fish sauce or Worcestershire sauce to taste (yeaaahh…), and stir thoroughly until everything is a grayish yellow slurry. Oil the tin you’re planning on using as a mould, and pour the egg-and-fish mixture in, leaving room for it to rise. [OR: pour the slurry into a microwave-safe bowl or mug and microwave on high for 40 seconds or so at a time, watching carefully to see that it doesn’t rise too high. Puncture with a fork if it tries to escape the mug. Nuke it until it’s set up.] Preheat oven to 375 F, and bake until the mold has set up. Turn out the mold onto the plate to serve. Drizzle with more fish sauce and sprinkle with pepper and serve.

Stewed Ostrich

A photo of a male ostrich, with nice pink legs visible.

To be fair, the drumsticks on an ostrich are enormous. Which is really half the problem, actually.

In struthione elixo: piper, mentam, cuminum assum, apii semen, dactylos vel caryotas, mel, acetum, passum, liquamen et oleum modice et in caccabo facies ut bulliat. Amulo obligas, et sic partes struthionis in lance perfundis, et desuper piper aspargis si autem in condituram coquere volueris, alicam addis.

A broth for ostrich: pepper, mint, cumin, leeks, celery seed, dates, honey, vinegar, raisin wine, broth, and a little oil. Boil in a kettle with a (plucked, cleaned) ostrich, thicken (to use as sauce). Cut ostrich meat into convenient pieces, and serve in sauce with a sprinkle of pepper. If you want to season it further, add garlic.

Honestly, your real problems here are: 1. Finding a whole ostrich and 2. Finding a pot big enough to BOIL AN ENTIRE OSTRICH IN. If you can do that, though, you’re golden. You might need some help managing a whole ostrich carcass, though, they’re pretty heavy. If you can do all that, it’s an otherwise straightforward recipe.

And, finally, one last recipe.

Gardener’s Pig

Hold onto your butts…

Porcellum hortolanum: porcellus hortolanus exossatur per gulam in modum utris. Mittitur in eo pullus isiciatus particulatim concisus, turdi, ficedulae, isicia de pulpa sua, Lucanicae, dactyli exossati, 66fabriles bulbi, cocleae exemptae, malvae, betae, porri, apium, cauliculi elixi, coriandrum, piper integrum, nuclei, ova XV superinfunduntur, liquamen piperatum, ova mittuntur trita. Et consuitur et praeduratur. in furno assatur. deinde a dorso scinditur, et iure hoc perfunditur. Piper teritur, ruta, liquamen, passum, mel, oleum modicum. Cum bullierit, amulum mittitur.

Debone a whole pig through the throat. Stuff with: minced chicken meat croquettes, roasted thrushes, roasted figpeckers, pork sausages, pitted dates, glazed onions, cooked snails taken out of the shell, mallows, leeks, beets, celery, sprouts, coriander, peppercorns, nuts, eggs and broth diluted with eggs. Sew shut the pig, roast, and split the back, pouring over a sauce of crushed pepper, rue, broth, raisin wine, honey, and oil, thickened with roux.

And that’s not even getting into the stuffed roast dormice. Enjoy!

Howard Pyle’s Pirates

Play a game with me: imagine a pirate.

Go ahead, I’ll wait.

…

Got a picture of your pirate in your head?

You’re imagining a Howard Pyle pirate. Yes, this definitely includes Jack Sparrow. In a previous post, I mentioned a centuries-old book about art criticism, and how even now, the ideas in it shape our perception of what art even is. This time, it’s about the illustrations themselves. Illustrations to books have a profound impact on the popular imagination, and yet they’re rarely given as much weight as the words on the page. You probably don’t know who Howard Pyle was, yet, he’s in your head right now, painting your pirates on the canvas of your imagination, with an army of other illustrators, costume designers, and film directors doing his bidding, and has been completely dominating the entire perception of what pirates were for the last century. Now that’s raw power.

Introducing (Officially) Pyle’s Pirates

Although you’re already subconsciously familiar with them, all of the following scurvy sea dogs are from Howard Pyle’s Book of Pirates (1903). This gorgeously illustrated book is full of illustrations of pirates. Pyle’s pirates are grubby, scruffy, and rough-looking, yet arrogant and roguishly fashionable. The artist uses red as a highlight to draw and hold the eye. As usual, click on pictures to embiggen!

painting of pirates dividing up a pile of gold

Pirates divvy up the loot.

Is a fancy red sash really practical for people who have to climb rigging and fight with cutlasses? No. Did real pirates – even European ones of the Caribbean – actually dress like that? Probably not. Do they look great? Heck yes.

I’m just going to go ahead and call this guy Captain Sparrow. Nice pose and red cloak.

This pirate even has earrings, and scraggly hair, and possibly even eyeliner. He might be Johnny Depp. He’s also an illustration that’s over 100 years old. Generations of kids have grown up on Howard Pyle pirates, at this point. By now, this is just what pirates look like.

Pirates fight over treasure chest, while the crew looks on.

I love basically everything about this picture. The composition, the colors, the anatomy, and how straightforward the storytelling is. What’s going on? Pirates knife-fighting over their share of the booty, obviously. Yarrrr mateys.

Howard Pyle had students, who went on to paint their own Pyle-style pirates. Pylerates, if you will. This group of massively influential illustrators became known as the Brandywine School – including, most famously, N. C. Wyeth. The techniques of the school, and the means of storytelling through art would go on to shape illustrations in books for decades to come, and even eventually mutate into comic books as we know it. How do we get to comic books from here? Let’s look at Wyeth, for a bit.

N. C. Wyeth

What are illustrations actually for? Seriously. It’s not just pictures to decorate books. Illustrations go with the text. Sometimes, a good illustration even adds to the storytelling even more nuance than was in the text to begin with. The story itself even happens in the pictures. Look at this N. C. Wyeth illustration from The Boy’s King Arthur (1922):

A joust with knights, the blue knight is unhorsed by the red knight.

There’s a lot going on here. Choice of what to illustrate, motion – splinters of lance in the air – reaction – the rearing horse – everything adds to the story, and makes it exciting.

Fancy expensive books need illustrations, but so do cheap dime novels, too – so do magazines, and newspapers. Soon, newspapers and magazines were paying authors to write short stories or continuing storylines – serials – for publication, to draw in an audience. All of these need illustrators. It wasn’t long before these illustrated serials got their own section, and became standard features. Some magazines specialized in publishing these picture stories.

Billy Bones with a spyglass, wearing a billowing cape.

You know what this character is like, even if you haven’t read Treasure Island at all. It’s the attitude and the cape. Instead of a cliff above the sea, imagine a skyscraper above Gotham City. That’s how these techniques transfer to comic books.

Next time you read a picture book, or any book with illustrations, think of how different it would be without them. Yet, we give less weight to the pictures, or even scorn books that have illustrations. Consider the case of Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. These books have been on the American Library Association’s most challenged book list for decades. Top of the list, for 1990 to 1999, even. Dropped lower afterwards, though – and why? Because in the meantime the publisher totally caved to pressure from pearl-clutching parents, and changed the bone-chilling original illustrations which is why they were so frequently challenged.

People would be up in arms if the opposite happened, and a challenged book “just” had all the text changed, but the illustrations left alone. But Scary Stories was mutilated, and hardly anybody but the fans of the original illustrations noticed. Stick up for illustrations, and artists. Pictures are important. Read the original versions of the Scary Stories books in protest, if you want.

Pylerates attack the stockade in Treasure Island.

N. C. Wyeth did great Pylerates, too! You also owe it to yourself to read the original Treasure Island, unabridged.

Cover of a book about Wyeth. Search the catalog for more.

The library has lots of books about Pyle, Wyeth (both of them) and the Brandywine School. They’re gorgeous.

Automation Meditations

So, I’m a dorkosaurus. Raaawwrrrrrr. An enormous shock, I’m sure. I’ve been bingewatching the series Edwardian Farm, which first ran on the BBC. Of course our library has it.

Picture of the cover of Edwardian Farm, the DVD.

The show you never knew you needed to watch. It’s fascinating, and sometimes gross.

It’s a reality-TV-ish series about making historians live on an Edwardian Era farm, as in, technology, food, clothes, and everything from the first years of the 20th Century. Yikes. One thing that I find really striking though is the way this show illustrates how the massive changes to the economy wrought by mechanization and automation started earlier than we usually think. (Or at least earlier than panicky articles about the coming Skynet-style Robot War due to cute self-driving cars would have you believe. But look at it! It’s just so roly-poly and cute! Who could hate that?*)

A 3/4 photograph of the google driverless car. Designed to be cute, actually, like a little face.

PANIC! IT’S COMING FOR YOUR JOB! IT MURDERS KANGAROOS! IT RUNS ON HUMAN BLOOD! SOON THEY WILL FARM US LIKE CATTLE! By Grendelkhan (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

But first: some definitions!

Mechanization – the process of adopting machines to do work.

Automation – machines operating without a human operator.

Our age has a lot of anxiety about machines taking over. We write entire movie series about the idea. It permeates our pop-culture consciousness. But, over 100 years ago, the process of mechanization was well underway, and even automation was on the horizon. Technological forces have always shaped our economy, from the dawn of recorded history, even.

Cover of the DVD of the movie Terminator, with robo-Schwarzenegger crouching in some fog.

A vital entry in the cultural canon of techno-anxiety.

Seriously, I had a whole coffee-rant one morning this September, about how science fiction doesn’t get enough credit for tackling massive intellectual issues like technology. I still think the rest of the Matrix Trilogy makes more sense if (spoilers spoil! Click and drag between brackets to reveal!) [you think of Zion and the resistance and everything as yet another illusion to bottle up the troublesome humans who think they made it out. That’s why the other machines were so helpful, and how Neo can still have superpowers on the “outside” – he never made it out. Nobody ever does. Of course, this way, it’s way, WAY, more depressing. Less plot holes, though…]

Anyway, let’s return from these horrifying futures to the past, and the ways in which machines were already dominating the economy a century ago. This is how you till a field, by hand. This is with a horse and a plough. By the early 20th Century, you could plow more than one furrow at once, with a riding plow, in the same amount of time. Watch these different models of ploughs. Less time to do the work of a farm means that less people have to be involved to cultivate even more food than ever before. (More horses, though, until the tractor. Today, as you can see, there’s as many people ploughing that huge field as was needed to deal with a just a single large hitch of horses, 100 years ago. The mechanization process was there all along, and reducing human labor all along, but it’s gotten so much further these days. This is a huge factor in why people moved to cities from the countryside. Shrinking employment pool for farmers, all along.)

Another great example is knitting machines. Today, textiles with a knit pattern are made on computerized automatic knitting machines. For an example, look at your t-shirt. But hand-cranked machines made knitting tricky socks much easier, starting in the late 19th Century. Time-saving devices like this made it possible to free up more time and effort for other things, and even earn extra money on the side.

As much as we read panicked articles about automation eating jobs, machines have been supplanting, supplementing, and creating jobs for generations, at least. There are no wind farms without wind turbine repair technicians. Entire jobs have opened up that did not exist before, if you get the training and the education to do them: wind turbine repair requires about a two year professional degree and a good head for heights. If you like rock climbing, this could be a good fit.

*But maybe, that’s what they want you to think: a lot of work goes into designing cars. The creators of the project knew how nervous a self-driving car could make people, and wanted to subconsciously ease anxiety by designing it to look cute. You can’t really help it, because cuteness DOES literally hack your brain’s love circuitry. Mammal parenting hormones at their best. Oxytocin is a heck of a drug. DUN DUN DUUUNNNNN!!

Rosa Bonheur, Animal Painter

Or, the painting food chain and the revolutionary importance of wearing pants.

painting of a bull (title: monarch of the herd) by Rosa Bonheur

And that’s absolutely no bull (It’s a painting of one. By Rosa Bonheur.)

Background – The Hierarchy of Genres

Before the photographic camera caused a crisis in the arts by the early 20th Century resulting in expressionism, impressionism, cubism, and various other modern-isms, there was a well-defined hierarchy of paintings – and therefore artists. Read more about it here at the Tate Glossary. At the very bottom were still life paintings, of household objects and food, and flowers.

Sunflowers, 1887. According to the Hierarchy of Genres, Van Gogh is a bottom-feeder painter making bottom-feeder paintings of sunflowers. That now sell for absurd millions of dollars. Things Happened between 1699 and now…

Jacques-Louis David, however, makes super-prestigious history paintings, and is basically a rockstar. This is the Oath of the Horatii, 1784.

For Rosa Bonheur, though, the most important thing to know is the rationale behind the Painting Food Chain: Europeans believed that literally everything belonged in a divinely-mandated Great Chain of Being, from God down to rocks, and humans were the greatest form of life on Earth. Literally, some things were created to be better than others. Have a look:

An illustration of the Great Chain of Being, from God through angels and humans, and animals, down to rocks. Note that each tier also has higher and lower. Naturally Kings are the highest form of human life (just to either side of Adam and Eve in the middle there, connected with a line to the chain). Convenient. If you’re a King, of course: “hey, I can’t help confiscating your lands and whatever – God put me in charge.” That’s why a coronation ceremony requires clergy, after all. That’s also what’s so revolutionary about the Declaration of Independence. Either George III has the literal God-given right to put down the rebellious colonies and tax the britches right off their butts, OR ditch him and the whole framework by founding your brand-new country on principles of human rights and equality. The bedrock of our founding documents is almost literal heresy. American history is, in large part, the history of the tension between centuries-old social orders of hierarchy and the necessary rejection of hierarchy on which the country was founded. In the words of Keanu Reeves: Whoa.

And now you understand almost all European and American history better! Glad we had that little diversion. It’ll help you in history class later, I swear. So, painters of inanimate things and plants were naturally below painters of animals, who were naturally below painters of the human form. But, in order to paint the human form, you have to practice, and spend quite some time observing and sketching actual humans. This means you have to have anatomy lessons, and live nude models. Now, in the days before first-year college students, the only people who would take their clothes off for money were literal prostitutes, or the truly desperate and destitute. Becoming a painter of the human form required seeing people naked and hanging out with sex workers. Because this was off-limits for women, women were denied the education and therefore the chance (with a few exceptions) to break into the highest ranks of painting.

(If you want to take a deep dive, check out this super-crunchy primary source at archive.org – in which Andre Felibien literally lays out the food chain of painters for what would become the French Academy. Hope you’re OK with clawing your way via google translate through some barely-modern French. I can’t really read this, since I took Spanish in High School, but it’s still a fascinating book, nonetheless. When you look at it, you’re looking at the book that shapes European art for the next several centuries, and casts a shadow, even today. If you’ve ever thought of some things but not others as Real Art; if you’ve been to an art museum or gallery; if you’ve ever wanted to know what it took to be a Real Artist; if you’ve ever wondered why some paintings are stupid expensive, but others are cheap – all of this means that the ideas in this book have gotten into your brain – and you haven’t even read it! That’s what people mean when they say something about how books can change the world or how knowledge is power. Now that you know, you can consciously choose to agree or disagree with the book’s view of art. Maybe YOU can be a Real Artist.)

The Hierarchy of Genres did get pushback, right from the start, however: as you can imagine, artists didn’t like being arbitrarily assigned to a lower income bracket forever. Landscape painters started sneaking people into paintings, and portraitists would sneak in allegorical details and landscape.

Lady Hamilton as a Baccante by Louise Elisabeth Vigee Le Brun, 1790. Portrait, or Genre Painting?

Lady Hamilton as a Baccante by Louise Elisabeth Vigee Le Brun, 1790. Portrait, or History Painting?

Paulus Potter – The Bull, 1647. This painting is actually about life-size, which means it’s enormous. o_O Bad Paulus Potter! You and your edging in on history painting turf with huge paintings of bullocks.

Which brings us right up to the middle of the 1800s. Painters were sneaking in attacks on the Great Painting Food Chain, the French Academy had a stranglehold on what art even means, and who gets to be a Real Artist – and then photography was invented, and massively jacked everything up.

Photgraph of Crown Princess Liliuokalani and Queen Kapiolani at Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee, 1887.

Crown Princess Liliuokalani and Queen Kapiolani at Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee, 1887. Now even if you’re a queen, you can get photographic portraits anyway. Even if you’re NOT a queen, too.

Photography caught on like wildfire, and now you didn’t need a specialized artist to paint people, or anything else, really. The painting world faced a crisis. The hierarchy of genres (and therefore artists) could no longer hold, if anyone with a camera and a darkroom could make images of anything they wanted. Artists pushed harder than ever to break the art food chain, which brings us to the incredible life of Rosa Bonheur…

The Artist

Rosa Bonheur was an animal painter, which was traditionally ranked above still life but below portrait and history painting. She went to slaughterhouses to study animal anatomy, and spent enormous amounts of time sketching in the field.

Rosa Bonheur sketch of bulls with notes.

She went to zoos, and studied exotic animals, and animals she couldn’t get close to in the wild.

The Wounded Eagle by Rosa Bonheur. Golden Eagles are not known for their tameness and docility.

She was immensely popular during her lifetime, although tastes in art have changed, and she is less remembered now than some of her contemporaries, who were on the fringes of the art world at the time. Like Vincent Van Gogh.

A Ghillie and Two Shetland Ponies in a Misty Landscape by Rosa Bonheur. Hey: it’s got a human in it! I see what you did there.

As it turns out, riding horses, tromping across cow pastures, through heather, and forests, is pretty challenging in a corset and ankle-length skirts. Fed up with the restrictions of women’s clothes and gender roles getting in the way of her work and life in general, she got a prescription for pants from her doctor, so she could get an Official Pants Permit so the police wouldn’t arrest her for wearing men’s clothes.

Rosa Bonheur's actual police permit to wear pants.

This is Rosa Bonheur’s literal Police Permit to Wear Pants. I don’t know what’s worse, the fact that this exists at all, or the fact that this happened often enough that there’s AN OFFICIAL PRE-PRINTED DOCUMENT FOR THIS. I don’t even. Just let people wear pants. Sheesh. Also: it looks like it was good for only six months at a time.

Anyway, armed with an official Pants Permit, Rosa Bonheur went on to go to farms, and hunting grounds, and all sorts of rugged places, and rode lots of horses (astride, of course, not sidesaddle, because she has a permit to wear pants now). Her most famous painting is The Horse Fair (1855), which she worked on with her friend, Natalie Micas.

Picture of Rosa Bonheur's The Horse Fair

Rosa Bonheur, The Horse Fair. The artist herself is visible wearing a black hat and a blue shirt, behind the head of the rearing grey horse in the center of the image.

Rosa Bonheur went on to continue to wear pants, and paint acclaimed and highly-sought-after paintings – whose outrageous success despite being animal paintings further eroded the Hierarchy of Genres – until her eventual death at age 77 in 1899. She was an animal painter, but with the success and fame of a history painter.

Lithograph of Rosa Bonheur in her studio.

You know you’ve made it when other painters are painting paintings of you as a painter painting paintings. This is a lithograph, though. Possibly based on a painting, but there’s a photograph of her in an almost identical pose.

This one’s a real painting:

Portrait of Rosa Bonheur, by Anna Klumpke. You see that medal on her jacket? That’s the French Legion of Honor. She was even promoted to Officer, too. That’s how important she was, during her lifetime.

You can also get all the info on Rosa Bonheur straight from the horse’s mouth (or at least really close), and read this book! Rosa Bonheur: the Artists (Auto) Biography by Anna Klumpke; Gretchen van Slyke, translator.

Protip: it’s at the library.

Squeeze the Source!

After all those science-y posts, here’s a return to history, with the very first ever Squeeze the Source challenge!

Last time we did history, the topic was the amazing history of high-heeled shoes. You can be a historian too, if you learn how to squeeze information out of sources. Pretty much everything around you, past and present, has a lot to say about who made it and why, even to the point of throwing light on the society and technology of the world they were made in.

Since squeezing sources is a skill, and requires some practice, I’ll show you how it’s done, and then demonstrate with a few sources, before turning you loose on poor, unsuspecting Caravaggio. (Don’t feel bad for him though: his biography reads like a laundry list of every possible crime against public order you could commit in late Renaissance Italy, punctuated by massive amounts of corruption – hey, it was Renaissance Italy, what did you expect? – and artistic brilliance. Besides, he’s been dead for centuries. He won’t mind.)

Cover of the book Caravaggio: a Life Sacred and Profane.

“Troubled Artist” doesn’t even begin to cover it. Getting into constant brawls with street toughs is one of the least ridiculous and drama-filled things in his life. Why, yes, the library has this book. Why do you ask?

How to Squeeze a Source:

You know things too. Don’t forget that.
Unleash your inner four-year-old.
Don’t take anything for granted, or make assumptions.
Ask the blindingly obvious questions.
Answer everything with equally obvious answers.
Follow those obvious answers to their conclusions.
Collect and connect these conclusions to the broader world.

Demonstration: Coconut Cup

A Coconut Cup.

What’s this? A coconut cup.

What’s it made of? Coconut shell and silver.

Fancy or Plain? Really fancy. Carved coconut and lots of silver work. Engraved writing. Some serious time investment and skill went into this. Probably specialized artists involved.

So, writing: more about that? In a Latin alphabet, like English, but I can’t read it. Looks like it’s Dutch maybe?

Where was the cup made? Northern Europe.

Any other details? The carving on the coconut shows a woman with scissors, and a sleeping man in her lap, with soldiers standing by. Sampson and Delilah! Clothes look contemporary to the time the cup was made though. I’d guess 1600s ish.

Artists make art because people buy it. Who’s buying fancy coconut cups? Rich people.

What do I know, based on the coconut cup? Northern Europe in the 1600s has specialized carvers and silversmiths – an economy capable of supporting artisans. Coconuts are special and extra fancy to them, for them to bother encrusting one in silver, and going to all that trouble to decorate it. They also got the coconut from somewhere, so they either have trade networks to the tropics, or someone’s very carefully hoarding the precious coconuts that wash up on the beaches. Religion (Sampson and Delilah – they’d have to assume that others would know what the carving is of), wealth, and trade literally on display in this one object. I’m sure if I understood the language, I’d know even more.

And that’s how you squeeze a source. The catch, however, is in the unexpected stuff. I can’t read the language on the cup, and I don’t know why Sampson and Delilah are so important, in this context. I just don’t have enough cultural knowledge of the social world in which this cup belongs.

The most important thing is this: if you get in a plane, and travel to a different place, you find yourself in another culture, and you will be missing some important information to help you understand the world around you. The most fundamental things are up for grabs, as soon as you find yourself operating in a new cultural environment. Here’s the kicker, though: if you had a time machine, and travel to a different time, even if you stay in your own place, you’ll find yourself in a different culture too. There’s things we take for granted that someone from just 100 years ago would find alien. So always go with what the source is telling you, and don’t let your assumptions blind you to what’s right in front of your face.

It’s Your Turn!

Cardsharps by Caravaggio. Italian, Circa 1594.

Have a good look, ask the questions, and see what you can learn about Caravaggio’s world.

Ask yourself questions like:

What’s going on in this painting? What objects do you see? Anything recognizable? Materials? Behaviors of people? Clothes? What are people doing? What can you tell about each person in the painting? Their interactions? Who would buy this painting? Why? What does this tell you about Caravaggio’s society?

Good luck, and happy source squeezing! (By the way, squeezing lots of sources to make some kind of cohesive Ultimate Source Fruit Punch Medley is called historical research. One source is a nifty thing, but lots of sources, all consistent – that’s the basis for a thesis.)