Ramblings and webcomics from LeEMS
My Grandmother kept her recipes in a recipe binder fitted out with envelopes for the various categories. She had never used the blank pages for each section, instead relying on the envelopes to hold all her scraps of paper. She had recipes written on old envelopes, on drug advertisement notepads, clipped out of newspapers and magazines, and sent to her in letters by friends. I was lucky enough to get a hold of this binder and had the fabulous idea to scan them all and make a kind of recipe zine for easy navigability. I’m not sure why I thought that a bulging binder would fit easily into a zine sized book. Even squishing as many recipes as I could onto each half sheet page, I ended up with 333 pages.
This isn’t the first time I played around with sewing sections of papers together to make a fat book, but it is the first where the pages were already printed up. I shoot from the hip when it comes to book making. I’ve read some articles, handled a lot of books, but I haven’t studied technique, so I made a lot of mistakes. But, the final product is exactly what I wanted: an easy to flip through, organized, collection of my Grandmother’s recipe clipping collection.
Scanning the recipes also gave the the opportunity to tweak the coloration on some of the oldest handwritten notes so they were just the tiniest bit easier to read. I already know the recipes I want to try out first based on the splatters, finger prints, and wear alone. And, though I included the recipes in this book, I will be avoiding all the molded jello salads. I just can’t.
This past year has felt frustratingly un-productive, but I did finish a thing. Though I have been dragging my feet on taking pictures and getting it listed in my Etsy shop, I am happy to say that I completed the ‘Un-Authorized Recipes of Doomed Moviethon’ zine!
So, if you ever wanted to follow along with Richard Schmidt’s excellent book, eating and drinking what he did (because I fed him), then here are the recipes you need to recreate those insane moments. I also slipped in some movie inspired comic strips.
I returned to tales of the ‘wild west’ and pioneers of the frontier looking for women who may have been cut out of the history books because of their sex, culture, and race. There are no shortage of stories romanticizing the time period, the seeming lawlessness, and the rugged criminal turned hero. They distract us from the many atrocities that were committed as east coast colonists pushed westward, warring with native peoples and decimating the land in order to claim for their own everything between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. The harsh and turbulent conditions meant that people had to contend with so much more than we can imagine, sometimes rising in fame because of their business savvy, their integrity, and their resolve. China Mary was just such a person.
Except that she was multiple people. During the time of the Chinese Exclusion Act, and the following legislation that prohibited immigration of Chinese people to the United States, racist actions towards Chinese people in the United States ranged from massacre to seemingly polite acts of diminution (“Chinese Exclusion Act,” 2021). Prior to and despite the prohibitions on immigration from China, many people living in China headed for the U.S. to escape facing violence from civil was between 1840s and 1860s, unemployment, famine and overpopulation of coastal cities. Chinese men often immigrated to the U.S. without their wives and some families in China decided to sell their daughters into prostitution oversees to both avoid starvation and provide the girls with the opportunities a new country may provide (Waggener, 2021). While looking up more information on the woman in Tombstone known as China Mary I came across a couple more, in Wyoming and Alaska, and discovered that Chinese people were often called China Mary or China John to save white people the trouble of learning their real names. I cannot adequately express how much this bothers me. To deny someone their name is ultimately demeaning and terribly cruel; it is an erasure. There are probably thousands of China Marys and China Johns completely lost to history by design. Today I’m going to explore the lives of Sing Choy, Ah Yuen, and Mary Bong, likely not their real names.
Qui Fah or Mary Bong 1880-1958
The woman who would become known as China Mary or Mary Bong in Sitka Alaska was born in Shiqi (Shek Kee 石岐) in Zhongshan 中山 county (“Mary Bong or China Mary,” 2019). From her own reporting to a newspaperman in 1935, she ran away from home at the age of 13 and headed for the United States. Aware of the immigration restrictions facing her, she arrived Canada and stayed in Vancouver until she made friends with Gee Bong, a Sitka resident on a business trip. Her reasons for marrying at the age of 15 were practical, as she recounted to the newspaperman: “I learned that if I were married to a man who had his immigration papers I could get into the U.S. as his wife. I liked my new Chinese friend from Alaska so I married him” (DeArmond, 1994). She helped her husband with his Bakery and Restaurant, where she was dubbed China Mary.
Continue reading China Mary: woman of many faces, women with no names
I inherited a weird little curio from my Grandmother. I don’t remember ever seeing it in her house, though it could’ve been hidden amongst her enormous collection of salt and pepper shakers. Any time I look at it, even now that it has lived in my house for so long, I am overwhelmed with questions. My grandmother’s house had porcelain figures of children being held up by the giant hand of Jesus, it had kitchen prayers and little plaques with owls made from shells that said ‘world’s best grandmother.’ This figure of a small person with bee wings and a halo, playing flute seems weirdly incongruous. Is it meant to be an angel? And why does the cow have a halo too?
Perhaps, I thought, it was just a product of its time that made sense to whomever brought it to my grandmother’s house. But then, I wanted to find similarly odd figurines of the mid century. I often surf around eBay looking at anything tagged as ‘mid century,’ so this time, I dedicated my search to finding these figurines. Far from the popular brutalist style of the time and equally far from the ‘modern’ ideal that most comes to mind, these figures are weird, fantastical, and kitschy. This is what I found:
Continue reading Mid century oddities
History tends to forget a lot of people for a variety of reasons. Perhaps they were not loud enough, their geographic reach wasn’t considered sufficient, they had no scandal, they were a minority, they were a woman, etc. However, even if their impact didn’t carry their name into the future, they had impact in the lives and history of the people around them. There is little we can do about the people who are completely vanished by time, but we can give the stories of those not quite completely vanished a little more lasting purchase in the collective unconscious. For this month’s foray into history I wanted to learn about someone closer to my home: Dr. Carrie Effie Mitchell-Hampton, the first African American woman to practice medicine in the state of Florida.
Carrie Mitchell was born in Fernandina Beach, just north of Jacksonville in Nassau county. From her age as reported in her obituary, she would have been born around 1894/5, but other researchers have placed her birth at 1886. This 1886 date seems more probable since all sources seem to agree that she entered Meharry Medical School in 1904. If born in 1886, she would have been 18. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
Most sources list that Mitchell grew up 130 miles southwest of Fernandina Beach, in Ocala, and that she attended both the Orange Park School for girls and Howard Academy. I assume that the Orange Park School for Girls is actually the Orange Park Normal and Manual Training School in Orange Park, just south of Jacksonville, not far from Fernandina Beach where she was born. Her time in Ocala would have started, then, when she left the greater Jacksonville area and started in Howard Academy. After Howard, she entered Meharry Medical School, in Nashville Tennessee, and graduated in 1908.
Sources don’t seem to agree on the order of what came next. Apparently she was licensed to practice medicine in Florida from 1906 to 1935, but this would have meant she obtained her license before returning to Ocala after graduating from medical school. She also owned and operated a drug store on Broadway street in downtown Ocala. Some sources claim she did this prior to becoming a doctor, but this timing doesn’t fit well with her graduation and her licensing. In 1915 she married a co-alumnus of Meharry Medical School and dentist Dr. Lee Royal Hampton. There is some mention that she gave up one of her businesses when she married. Since she reportedly practiced medicine for thirty, forty, or forty-five years, remaining the only African American woman to practice medicine through the 1920s and 1930s, I would assume that she ceased running her drug store, likely in operation from 1908 to 1915. She quickly filled her free time by helping to found, and then serving as the secretary for, the Florida Medical, Dental and Pharmaceutical Association. She was often a speaker at conventions of medical professionals and was president of the Woman’s Convention in 1955.
The couple lived on Magnolia Street in Ocala while Dr. Carrie Hampton continued her practice, becoming one of Ocala’s most highly respected citizens. Her husband, Dr. L. R. Hampton, died sometime after having practiced dentistry in Ocala for 40 years. Dr. Carrie Hampton died in Halifax Hospital 12/13/1964 at the reported age of 69.
Figure from: Map of Florida According to Latest Authorities. Digital Collections, Tampa Library, University of South Florida. https://theleemsmachine.com/bean/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/mapoffloridaaccordingtolatestauthorities.jpg
First off, this is a learning journey where I ramble about a thing I tried. If anything, maybe it will help ya’ll get ideas or learn from my mistakes, but it is so not a tutorial to replicate.
I received three weak looking stalks of grass from a co-worker one spring. I planted them and by the next spring had a sizeable spray of pleasant smelling and surprisingly fierce lemongrass. This stuff will cut you up, seriously. So, I pulled it up and divided the clump into three, harvesting a handful of it without really knowing what I was going to do.
After pondering for a while, I decided to make a tea that I could add to moisturizers, astringents, and facial refreshers that I was making.
Of course I looked online for ideas and no, I wasn’t going to make a hydrosol or attempt to extract the essential oil, because I didn’t have the equipment or the patience for all that. A tea would be good enough. It wouldn’t necessarily have the shelf life of other permutations but I would deal with that.
And all of this would’ve been fine if I didn’t start by over steeping the tea. I don’t think it really ruined it for what I wanted, but it got way past the point where it smelled lovely like lemongrass cosmetics. The first thing I did, of course was clean the stalks off. Then I bruised them and chopped them up and put them in a big ole pot of water to simmer slowly. I can’t even tell you how long but I did remember to take pictures of the process. Pic B would’ve been perfect. Pic C was overcooked, really, but was like tea that you’d get from a teabag when making the concentrate for iced tea, complete with the oils that sort of float on top before you dilute it with an equal amount of water.
So, in the end I did use it, but not all of it, to make a nice facial wash and it was sort of pleasant. Lemongrass is an anti-microbial, anti-bacterial, and fungicidal herb, so it is really good at warding off infections, acne, rashes, etc. Lemongrass tea can also be drunk, of course, but I made it a bit too strong and that lovely aroma just sort of ends up tasting like soap in large quantities.
The three bunches of lemongrass that I replanted after dividing are now as big as the original clump and it’s only been a season. I’m going to have to get better at using it for all sorts of things. And, I’m going to need to get some gauntlet gloves probably. The cuts from lemongrass aren’t quite as bad as when a pineapple gets ya, but they are much harder to avoid.
We are a movie watching household, so there is never anything quite so satisfying as being able to gear-up for and celebrate a holiday with some evening viewing. This is the second in a series where I pull out the movies we watch for those holidays that aren’t Halloween and Christmas. The first were Thanksgiving and New Year if you are in to this holiday thing.
Easter
After finishing his book, A History of New-York from the Beginning of the World to the End of the Dutch Dynasty, in 1809, the well known and celebrated Dutch historian Deitrich Knickerbocker disappeared from his hotel. He was well-loved by his friends, though described as ‘crusty’ and perhaps a bit disheveled, as he was known for wearing his cropped pants very baggy. The proprietor of the hotel from which Knickerbocker disappeared posted a notice that if he failed to return and pay his bill, the proprietor would publish the manuscript that Knickerbocker left behind.
Another notice attempted to put to rest rumors that Mr. Knickerbocker was a fake and that his manuscript was not authentic. A letter by his close friend, Ludwick Von Bynkerfeldt calls the rumors malicious and driven by envy at the projected success of Knickerbocker’s manuscript. Eventually, public concern grew to an extent that New York city officials began offering a reward for Knickerbocker’s return. This public concern made Knickerbocker’s history, a satire both on histories and the politics of contemporary New York, an immediate success as soon as it was available to the public.
Never before wan an original, first work by a young author received so well with the American public, proclaimed the young author himself, Washington Irving. Yes, Dietrich Knickerbocker was a hoax, perpetrated to gain authorial renown, by the man who would write one of the best spooky American ghost stories. Irving’s ploy worked, though most people today do not remember Washington Irving for A History of New-York from the Beginning of the World to the End of the Dutch Dynasty, by Diedrich Knickerbocker. He is best remembered for the Legend of Sleepy Hollow. But, Irving’s hoax did have a lasting impression on American culture. Baggy-ish cropped pants are called knickerbockers. Knickerbocker is a nickname for Manhattan residents, and the New York Knicks, is actually short for the basketball team’s full name, the New York Knickerbockers.
I came across this fabulous story while preparing for my guest spot discussing all things Sleepy Hollow on Hello! This is the Doomed Show. I am now sad that I did not get to know more of Washington Irving when getting my English degree. I am making plans to remedy that situation.
Some original characters from the world of my No Evil comic. They may deserve a story of their own…
Some holidays are harder to curate watching for than others. St. Patrick’s Day is one such challenge. According to Wikipedia’s ‘list of films set around St. Patrick’s day’ there are plenty of titles to choose from – some I’ve seen, many I haven’t. But there aren’t too many that I would want to make part of my yearly celebration. Clearly, this list is going to have to evolve, but for now we will be enjoying:
Now on revisit, I can’t say the above were all repeaters. But we are hurting for a selection of movies to celebrate with instead.
Check out the other Holidays in the Movies posts.
