From the readers: Late summer edition

Time for another roundup of your feedback and insights! 

Great links: "A Wrinkle in Time" mystery is solved: Commenting on Facebook, Sarah Elizabeth writes: "Hi! I am the Sarah Elizabeth that blog post mentions! AND you may be interested in knowing that I have a new art book out, and because we finally got to the bottom of the cover artist mystery for this book, I was able to include it in the book! ... If you are interested, look up The Art of the Unknown: A Visual Treasury of the Esoteric, Uncanny and Unexplained!"

Thanks for commenting. And I always love hearing news about new books!

The Perry Pictures: Robert E. Lee: Leigh Perry shares this great story: "Funny story about Perry Pictures. My grandparents, long gone, had a print on their wall in Virginia, but we'd never looked at it closely until years after their death. (We thought it was a photograph of a family member.) It ended up in my father's house in Charlotte, NC, and we finally examined it in 2014. We were confused by the Perry Pictures caption because our last name is Perry. Further research showed it was a different branch of Perrys. Then we found out the company was in Malden, Mass., which made us all laugh. Though I'm from NC, I'd been living in Malden for years at that point. With my father's permission, I brought it back home to Malden."

Postcard mailed from Addison, Pennsylvania, in 1912: Beverly writes: "I just got postcard of Swallow Falls in Garrett County, Maryland, addressed to this same Almeda. It came from her brother, Charles. He mentioned then about the food there, too. He was a well-known lawyer."

"Steal not this book my honest lad": John Duel shares this: "From a 1938 Technical Mathematics book inside front cover: 'Steal not this book my honest friend. For fear the gallows will be your end. On that day the Devil will say, where is that book you carried away. And if you say you do not know, the Devil will say just step below.'"

I love that we can help to preserve more of these inscriptions!

Take a ride with Edwards Motor Transit Co.: Bob Taylor left a series of comments showing his amazing memory and providing some great historical detail:

"Bob Taylor here. I worked in the Dubois garage on Hoover Avenue from approximately 1970 till garage closing in mid 70s. Since I was only 19 at the time, I believe I am only one of 2 guys still standing. I will try to name each one starting in the shop: Lloyd Burkett Sr., Lloyd Burkett Jr., Joe Atkinson, Everett McFall, 'Linc' Lingenfelter, Bernard Harriger, William Carlson, Earl Kalgren, Earl Snedden, Allen Bell. ... I forgot one shop employee, Lloyd Getch, and 2 part-time, Ed Swanson and Adam Tschopps.

"As far as the terminal crew, it consisted of Bill Schindley, Floyd Brown, Irene Malaskey, Chuck Smith, Linda McNutt and Gary Patton.

"As far as the drivers as I remember them, some were still wearing the tan uniform including a hat: Albert 'Swede' Carlson, Lamont 'Monte' Marshall, George Lindberg, Dale Hynds, Bob Wilson, John McNutt, Bob Peck, Tom Fairman and Bill McMahon. These were the Buffalo and Pittsburgh drivers. The Cleveland/NewYork City drivers were based out of the Williamsport shop. I only remember a few: 'Woody' Yeich, Walt Muzzy, Bill Taylor ... I hope that I didn't forget someone. It's been 56 years."

Alan Ormsby's 1970s: Summoning zombies and a Scholastic book: John Michlig writes: "Excellent article about a pretty life-changing book! I was lucky enough to correspond with Mr. Ormsby and assure him that my 4th grade Frankenstein mask (based on his paper bag recipe) worked like a charm!"

And Wampa Girl shouts: "I MADE MY MONSTER CAFE SALTILLO FROM HAVING THIS BOOK AS A KID."

Book cover & school days memory: "Arthur's Christmas Cookies": Anonymous writes: "I remember my pediatrician had a copy of this in one of his rooms, I was thinking about it today but I couldn't remember the title."

Obscure nostalgia: 1970s plastic mugs from Whirley Industries: Jose Alb writes: "I had the My Mug version since before I could walk, growing up in the Dominican Republic. We moved around, I kept it through my teens, all the way until right before I left for the US with my wife around 2012, where my mom admitted she might have thrown it away by accident. Fast forward to July 2026. Returned to the Dominican Republic on a sad note (father passed away suddently, cancer). After they got divorced, my mom came to the U.S. and Dad stayed in the old apartment. Picking up and organizing what felt like hundreds of science books and curiosities left behind, there in a cabinet with family heirlooms was my mug! I brought it to the States and gave it to my son, with a story. Thanks for keeping The Mug alive. Forgot to add: I'm 45. Had it since early 80s."

And thank you for sharing this story, which is also helping to keep My Mug memories alive!

Memory from the Gettysburg Times: Kate Shoemaker Mayer writes: "I stumbled upon this post while visiting Gettysburg College with my son. Don was my father. This anecdote warmed my heart and accurately represents my dad. I wonder what he would think about technology today? Thank you for sharing!"

I'm so glad you found this post and journalism anecdote about your dad! He was such a terrific person and colleague, and, yes, this accurately reflects how he felt about unreliable technology. Glad I could help in a small way for the memory to live on. 

Madeline Brandeis revisited

I had almost forgotten that I wrote about some of Madeline Brandeis' books ten years ago. I guess that's par for the course for my brain, which has been turned to oatmeal by current events, these days.

I thought I had just this week learned that the children's author was also a director, taking the helm of 1918's silent fairy tale film The Star Prince. But I guess I had known that, too, as I wrote in 2015: "In her amazing and too-short life, she was also a pioneer filmmaker. You can read about those efforts at the Women Film Pioneers Project." You can also read about Brandeis' The Star Prince in this review from one of my favorite film bloggers, Movies Silently. That review notes: "The story is heavily influenced by fairy tales and there are bad aspects to that as well as good. Equating beauty with goodness is not such a great lesson, nor is making the main villain a dwarf. I think Brandeis’s heart was in the right place but some of the decisions do not exactly work."

Anyway, I was reading up (refreshing my memory) about Brandeis because I'm selling some of her books on eBay as part of Resimplify Me. It's a small collection that includes volumes from her Children of All Lands and Children of America series for younger readers. Hopefully they will make nice additions to someone's collection.

As part of putting that listing together, I came across these neat old inscriptions in a few of the Brandeis books, which I'll share here for posterity...

Above: Inscription inside The Little Dutch Tulip Girls

Above: Inscription inside Little Rose of the Mesa.

Above: Inscription inside Little John of New England.

1910 letter inside "Legends & Tales of Old Munich"

This letter, dated May 27, 1910, in Munich, was typed and placed inside a gift copy of Legends & Tales of Old Munich, told by Franz Trautmann (1813-1887) and translated by Amelia Curtis Stahl. 

The letter states: 

"To one who knows, loves, and embellishes the ancient, historic, and beautiful City round which the legends therein contained cluster, THIS BOOK is offered, for her gracious acceptance, by Her sincere friend,"

The last name on the signature looks like Soltau.

As to the recipient, it may be the name written on the title page (see below). I can't figure out the first letter, so it could be Meülholtz or Neülholtz or Heülholtz, or ... 

But none of those is a common German last name, so I'm clearly misinterpreting the century-old German cursive. If we toss out the first "L," the most likely name would be Neüholtz. Anyone wish to weigh in?

The chapter titles include: Concerning the Origin of the City of Munich, The Cross in the Wieskapelle, The Little Faust Tower at Sendling Gate, Dragon Corner on the Market-Place, The Spoon Landlord behind the Rathhaus, The Black Footprint under the Organ of Unser Franen, The Monkey on St. Laurenz, The Hunger Bell in Theatine Monastery and the Theatine Clock, and Concerning Ghosts and Apparitions in Munich. 

There are no online reviews of this 1910 book, but, just last summer, Lunte Books in Eugene, Oregon, did a 23-minute examination of the book on its YouTube channel. Very cool and valuable for the historic record! 

A commenter on the video states: "Now this is the kind of travel book that I truly enjoy — To learn about a country's culture, and not just see sites or read descriptions of buildings — This fuller picture makes the destination much more compelling. Thanks for discussing this book, and for giving so many fascinating details."

Book cover & inscription: "A Confederate General from Big Sur"

It's been 13½ years since there was a post that was fully about a Richard Brautigan book, so I think it's high time for another. 

• Title: A Confederate General from Big Sur
• Author: Richard Brautigan (1935-1984)
• About the cover: The wave is a portion of the 1831 woodblock print "The Great Wave off Kanagawa" by Katsushika Hokusai. That's Brautigan himself holding the umbrella. I have searched the internets far and wide, but cannot determine who the woman is. Please leave a comment if you know!
• Back cover promotional text: "An amazing story ... You'll feel better about the whole world after reading this." — Los Angeles Herald Examiner
• Original publication date: January 22, 1965
• This edition: This is the Ballantine Books paperback. First printing, June 1973.
• Format: Paperback
• Pages: 160
• Cover price: $1.50. (A little pricey for a 1973 paperback! That's the equivalent of about $10.50 today.)
• Dedication: "to my daughter Ianthe"
• First sentence: "When I first heard about Big Sur I didn't know that it was a member of the Confederate States of America."
• Last sentence: "Then there are more and more endings: this sixth, the 53rd, the 131st, the 9,453rd ending, endings going faster and faster, more and more endings, faster and faster until the book is having 186,000 endings per second."
• Random excerpt #1: "I went downtown to see three movies in a Market Street flea palace. It was a bad habit of mine. From time to time I would get the desire to confuse my senses by watching large flat people crawl back and forth across a huge piece of light, like worms in the intestinal track of a tornado."
• Random excerpt #2: "She went down to the pet shop and came back with two alligators. We asked her why she'd gotten two alligators and she said they were on sale."
• Rating on Goodreads: 3.98 stars (out of 5)
• Goodreads review: In 2007, Kyle wrote: "The best use of weird metaphors, brilliant and silly and vulgar and nothing to do with anything. You can read it in two hours and it will make you happy and sad and think differently about alligators, motorcycle parts, hippies, and hitchhiking down highway one to Big Sur."
• Amazon review excerpt: In 2011, Michael H. Jones wrote: "I first read this novel forty years ago while working as a poll watcher in New Jersey. I forget what party I was supposedly 'watching' for, but my dad and I were the only ones in town. During the long, boring day I read Confederate General and laughed so hard at different times that I cried, and snot dripped down my face. I am sure the other party's watchers are still convinced that Democrats are mental."
• Twitter memory (I'm not calling it X): In 2022, @DougieTraill tweeted: "A Confederate General from Big Sur. It was my gateway to Richard Brautigan. My dad recommended it to me, and let me read through his Brautigan collection. Gave us a shared interest to talk about, and brought us a bit closer when I was being a moody 14-15 year old dickhead!"

Bonus: The inscription in this copy of the book

How about a Bloody Mary and some catfish terrine?

Another find on my trip to the Queen Creek Goodwill store was this copy of 1990's The Evolution of Cajun & Creole Cuisine. If I were still a book picker who was targeting finds for resale, this might have been a decent find, flippable for a few bucks more than I paid for it. But I bought it because I wanted to share the inscription on the inside front cover. It's a short list of ingredients for Eddie's Bloody Mary Mix! (Their exclamation point, not mine.)

• 46 oz. V-8
• 16 oz. Vodka
• lemon juice
• 2T Worcestershire 
• 1T Tabasco
• 1 t. Horseradish
• 15 dashes salt
• 15 dashes pepper
• 2 dashes celery salt

I've never had a Bloody Mary, so I have no idea whether this is a typical, superior or inferior recipe.¹ According to a cursory browsing of the internet, some suggested ingredients to take a Bloody Mary to the next level include pickle juice, garlic powder, Old Bay, orange juice, Clamato and beef bouillon. But please mix responsibly and, especially, drink responsibly.

Another fun thing I found in flipping through the book was the above photo of Terrine of Smoked Delta Pride Catfish. Terrine is basically in the same family as gelatins and aspics, which received a lot of coverage back in the early days of Papergreat, about a decade ago. Here are the links if you want to check out some of those horrors:

• Halloween Countdown #3: Things you shouldn't put in Jell-O
• Horrifying ephemeral images that will haunt you this Halloween
• Partial label from Ecco Tomato Juice and the Tomato Twinkle recipe
• 1952 advertisement for Royal gelatin desserts
• A handy Christmas cape that doubles as a tree skirt
• What's worse than using gelatin in your dinner mold recipe?
• Scary images from "a completely new guide to Gel-Cookery"

Footnote

1. I'm more interested in the origin of the name Bloody Mary than I am in drinking one. Interestingly, there are way more contenders than the obvious idea that it's tied to the monstrous Mary I of England, who had a lot of her subjects killed. In a 2002 Chicago Tribune article, Andy Badeker writes: "It was named for (pick one) Mary Tudor, the 16th Century English queen with a heretic-burning habit; the actress Mary Pickford; a bartender's girlfriend who was regularly late; or Chicago's Bucket of Blood club, where 1920s newsmen went to have their livers hardened. These credits come from John Poister's 'The New American Bartender's Guide' and Salvatore Calabrese's 'Classic Cocktails.'"

"A Treasury of Witches and Wizards" — briefly annotated

That's Phantom. Isn't she pretty?

This book was one of my recent finds at the Goodwill store in Queen Creek, Arizona. Published in 1996 by Kingfisher¹, it's A Treasury of Witches and Wizards, as chosen by David Bennett. This particular book is interesting because: (1) it collects the Ruth Manning-Sanders retelling of the Tyrolean tale "Gold," from 1966's A Book of Wizards; (2) one of its previous owners — a parent? a teacher? storyteller?  — has annotated the table of contents to provide some subjective thoughts on the 15 stories.

Here's the table of contents and its annotations:

• "The Hare and the Black and White Witch" by Lynne Reid Banks — No!
• "Petronella" by Jay Williams — fair, long
• "Gold" by Ruth Manning-Sanders — fair to good, long
• "The Mean Pear Seller" by Floella Benjamin — OK to good lesson, short
• "The Boy with Two Shadows" by Margaret Mahy — kinda cute
• "The Not-Very-Nice Prince" by Pamela Oldfield — fair 
• "Yashka and the Witch" by Stephen Corrin — fair
• "The Improving Mirror" by Terry Jones — fair to good
• "Jack My Lad" by Alan Garner — fair to good
• "The Fat Wizard" by Diana Wynne Jones — too long
• "Glooskap and the Sorcerer" by Gillian Osband — fair - 
• "Lizzie Dripping and the Witch" by Helen Cresswell
• "The Tale of the Three Tails" by Charles J. Finger — good but long
• "Hamish and the Wee Witch" by Moira Miller — good for Halloween, adapt & shorten
• "Anancy, Old Witch and King-Daughter" by James Berry — fair

Final note: The cover illustration is by Virginia Chalcraft and the interior illustrations, including those on the table of contents, are by Jacqui Thomas.

 

Footnote 

1. The publisher's full name is Larousse Kingfisher Chambers Inc., and I'm unsure whether it's still in business.

Peering inside and preserving 1962's "Dragons, Fairies and Fun"

For a book published in 1962, Dragons, Fairies and Fun by Dora Broome seems to be fairly obscure. It was published by Cultural Publications Ltd. of Nottingham, England, and it's a small-size, 152-page hardcover, measuring 5 inches by 7.5 inches. As of this writing, I can't find any other copies for sale online, and there are no reviews or websites that discuss it, to my knowledge. Perhaps documenting it here will help in a minor way to preserve it for history, lest it fade away completely. And if anyone in the United Kingdom has memories of this book, I'd love to hear them in the comments section. 

There are some signs of provenance inside the book. Pictured above is the plate that's been affixed to the inside front cover. Written in Welsh, it explains that the book is part of the Ceredigion school library and provides details on how students can check out the book, in similar fashion to the way we do so in the United States.

The message is signed by Alun R. Edwards (1920-1986), who was a longtime librarian in Wales. In fact, he's been remembered at a ceremony next month (August 2, 2022). The Ceredigion County Council website notes that Edwards "was first appointed librarian for Cardiganshire in January 1950. Over the next quarter century, he revolutionised Ceredigion's library services and indeed the book industry in Wales as a whole. Among his visions that were realised were the expansion of travelling library services, the College of Librarianship in Aberystwyth, the counties’ book purchasing scheme, the Welsh Book Council and the establishment of reading and discussion groups. Following the re-organisation of local government, he was appointed Librarian of Dyfed in 1950. He worked as the County Librarian for 30 years until he retired in 1980."

On the next page is a faded purple stamp indicating that the book has been withdrawn from circulation at Myfrgall Dyfed Library [?] and is available to buy for 10c. And on the page after that, pictured below, a child long ago indicated their clear ownership of the book. (I believe we all did this at times during our childhoods.)

Here's a rundown of the book's stories from the Contents page:

• Hezekiah's Dragon
• The Knight of the Dustbin
• Hey Diddle Diddle
• Will o' the Wisp
• Aunt Quenelda and the Magic Mirror
• The Magic Carpet
• Little Bess
• The Story of Odd
• The Sugar Plum Fairy
• Buffy
• The Chimney-Sweep and the Mayor's Procession
• The Cuckoo that went on Strike
• The Fish Maid
• Goodfellow
• The Travelling Glow-worm
• Mrs Goblin's Christmas Shopping

The illustrator is listed as B. Gerry, and I can't find any solid information on them, given that little information. For that matter, I can't find much about the life of author Dora Broome, either. She wrote 1951's Fairy Tales from the Isle of Man and 1970's More Fairy Tales from the Isle of Man, and her other titles include The Magic Journey, The Lifeboat Fish, Matilda the Radio Mouse, Lancashire Tales, Mary-Jo's Elephant, Royal Peke, Circus Pony, Ship's Monkey and Fairground Billy. With her mixture of interest in both fairy tales and the circus, she seems to have much in common with Ruth Manning-Sanders!

Gerry's cover illustration of the dragon is probably the best of the lot. There's little that's fantastical about most of the other illustrations, beyond perhaps this one.

And that's pretty much it. Again, I'm sure there are some folks out there with memories of this book. It would be great to hear from you and to share your thoughts for posterity. 

1911's "The Isle of Wight," its provenance and Joseph Sadony

Today we're taking a look at The Isle of Wight — "pictured by Ernest Haslehust" (E.W. Haslehust on the title page) and "described by Edward Thomas." It's interesting that illustrator Haslehust gets a higher credit on the cover than poet/author Thomas, who was killed in action in World War I in 1917.

There's no date of publication printed inside the book. According to WorldCat, which keeps a database of institutional library collections, it was published in 1911. Other online listings state 1915, 1915[?] and "circa 1920." There's a lot of sloppiness and misinformation on the internet, of course. I think we should go with WorldCat. Additionally, a previous bookseller has written "1911 1st ED" on one of the first pages of this copy.
 

The 64-page hardcover book was published by Blackie and Son Limited of London, Glasgow and Bombay. Wikipedia tells us that this publishing house was in business from 1809 to 1991. Some of the series it published over the decades include Beautiful England, Beautiful Ireland, Beautiful Scotland and Beautiful Switzerland. The Isle of Wight is part of the Beautiful England series, which was originally published from about 1910 through the 1925, but apparently saw reprints through the 1950s. According to Wikipedia, Haslehust was the illustrator for the approximately three dozen volumes.

Moving to the inside front cover, there are some inscriptions of provenance:

• Mrs. Paterson from Mrs. Mitchell. Blenheim. Newport. Isle of Wight. June 23, 1920.
• Written by Mrs. Kemp. The Cedars. Carisbrooke I.W.
• Pres of I. of W. Co. Union.

I'm not sure what/which Blenheim is referred to in the first inscription. That's the name of at least two places in the United Kingdom. Newport and Carisbrooke are located on the Isle of Wight, a 148-square-mile island off the southern coast of England.

At first I thought The Cedars might be a neighborhood within Carisbrooke. There's no mention of it as such in Wightpedia (the wiki of Wight history) or elsewhere that I can find. But The Cedars is the name of a cozy pub on the Isle of Wight that looks like it could easily date back more than 100 years and could have also served as a residence. A 1903 church directory lists a Mr. A. Kemp at The Cedars in Carisbrooke, for what that's worth.

Then we have the bookseller's label for A.G. Bird, Bookseller, Newport, I.W. I found an obituary for Archibald Gaydon Bird that was published by Isle of Wight County Press on October 10, 1959. It states, "Mr. Bird was a native of Barnstable, where his father was a wine and spirit merchant. He spent some time in business at Croydon before coming to the Island, and in 1908 he purchased the old-established business of bookseller and stationer hitherto carried on by the Gubbins family at premises in High Street, Newport. The business has since become well known all over the Island under the style of A. G. Bird, and has now been carried on unbrokenly for well over a century."

Also in terms of provenance, there's an embossed stamp from a previous owner on the title page. It states "JOSEPH A. SADONY" and "PRIVATE." I have on my shelves another book with his stamp, Swedish Life in Town and Country (1904). Assuming I have the correct Joseph A. Sadony, he lived from 1877 to 1960 and was quite an intriguing figure. Buckle up.

First up, the Michigan estate he lived at was called The Mouth. The website SelfDefinition.org features Sadony's 1960 obituary from the Muskegon Chronicle. An excerpt:

Joseph A. Sadony, enigmatic sage of the Valley of the Pines in White River Township, died Friday evening at Hackleys Hospital, Muskegon. He was 83 years old.

"One of the best known and least understood men in Michigan," that was the opening statement of an article on Mr. Sadony in the Muskegon Chronicle on his 83rd birthday anniversary last Feb 22.

Mr. Sadony, in his cloistered life on his estate at The Mouth, devoted his years to the study and development of his theories as to the physical sciences, his theories as to the working of the human mind, and his theories as to the spiritual side of man. The insatiable curiosity of his unusual mind ran the gamut of all facets of human existence.

It was in the realm of mental phenomena that Mr. Sadony aroused the greatest curiosity and interest as to his theories. He was considered one of the world's foremost authorities on the subject of mental phenomena. It was this phase of his work which sometimes led to a misconception of the man. Mr. Sadony contended his theories of mental phenomena were based on sound psychological grounds, that there was nothing of the "clairvoyant" or "supernatural" about his mental capacities.

Sadony was the author of several books. Perhaps the most notable was his 1948 autobiography, Gates of the Mind. A review of the book at the website SearchWithin.org offers this conclusion: "What was Sadony's overall purpose for writing Gates of the Mind? He wanted to 'rescue the truth,' as he puts it, by exposing the charlatans and psychic racketeers who deceive us with tricks. He diligently demystified clairvoyance, extrasensory perception, precognition, telepathy, etc. by explaining and illustrating such phenomena in ordinary terms, and through personal examples in his life. Most of all, he wanted to show that inspiration and feeling compose the core of our heart, without which humanity would be but uninspired automatons with no purpose."

Meanwhile, there's also part of the estate called Mouth Cemetery. Jennifer Jones writes on The Dead History website that the ruins of Sadony's laboratory are visible from the cemetery. (Now this is sounding like a James Whale film.) Jones' post gets into all kinds of weirdness that goes beyond what I've already presented here, and is a fun read.

This is really only the tip of the iceberg on Sadony, who's a bit of a cult figure in certain circles. There's a website called The Valley of the Pines, The Official Joseph A. Sadony Website! (The exclamation point is theirs, not mine.) It's the official website of Sadony's estate, which is said to include "thousands upon thousands of pages of letters, books, photographs, scrap books, articles [and] journals." But it's not clear that anything new has been posted to the website in over a half-decade. There are some interesting photos, past and present, of the shops, barns, chapel, laboratory, cabins and more that are part of the estate. I'm not sure when the 30,000+ volumes from his library began trickling into the public sphere for sale as used books, but it's kind of neat that two of them have found their way to my shelves. 

Well, we've veered all the way from picturesque, century-old views of the Isle of Wight to cemeteries and psychics in Michigan, but that's what can happen when you investigate an old book's provenance. Let's finish by returning to one of Ernest Haslehust's bucolic illustrations.

Annotated edition of "The Treasure of the Superstition Mountains"

We recently moseyed over to the library in our new town, the very nice Florence Community Library. I got my myself a library card, and the first book I checked out was 1973's The Treasure of the Superstition Mountains.

The Superstitions are a nearby scenic mountain range, located to the north of us, and to the east of Phoenix. (Check out my mediocre snapshot at the bottom of the post.) As with many mountainous regions of the American Southwest, there are legends that there's "lost gold" to be found within, hence the "Treasure."

This book was written by Gary Jennings (1928-1999), who had a quirky and successful career as an author, mostly of historical fiction. The Treasure of the Superstition Mountains came toward the beginning of his writing career. It seems to have been well-received. It has 4.1 stars (out of 5) from Amazon reviewers. In a review that appeared in The Kansas City Times in January 1974, Rudolph Umland wrote:

"'The Treasure of the Superstition Mountains' might well be the definitive book on the Lost Dutchman mine. It gives a description of the history of the entire area of the Superstitions and of the towns around. Gary Jennings has crammed all the facts and all the legends known about the mountains and the mine into his book. He not only spent long hours poring over everything written about the mountains and the mine but made excursions by foot and horseback over much of the terrain."

One reviewer, however, wasn't very impressed with Jennings' book. And that's the unknown critic who wrote marginalia on the pages of the copy I checked out of the Florence Community Library. I decided to take snapshots of his comments and snarkiness for posterity, so here we go...

Page 72. (Ironically, the marginalia is wrong, too. It's javelinas.)

Page 81. (A disagreement over chollas.)

Page 84. ("Completely unsupported claim")

Page 85. ("unsupported," with regard to the Hohokam)

Page 87. ("600 years is not long enough for anything to petrify")

Page 95. ("Not true! If that were true they would still be fighting!")

Page 109. ("You are really reaching Jennings." Note: I agree.)

Page 118. ("Oh come on!")

Page 126. ("So what!")

Page 133. ("Not true! Artifacts can still be found there.")

Page 155. ("Not true!")

Page 156. ("Guessing?)

Page 224. ("Probably very few")

By the way, please do not write in library books. If you want to write marginalia or sonnets or grocery lists in your own books, that's fine. But I do not condone defacing library books.

My snapshot of the Superstitions...

Taken from the car on June 28, 2021, near Gold Canyon, Arizona.

Poignant inscription discovered at a bookstore

I didn't buy the book, but I had to snap a photograph with my iPhone.¹ I spotted this 1981 inscription inside The Art Treasures from Moscow Museums, which was on the shelves of Bookmans Entertainment Exchange in Mesa, Arizona. 

Carol and Richard had something special 40 years ago, for a moment in time.

Footnote

1. The only book I did buy was a very nice 1969 first edition of Clifford Irving's Fake! The Story of Elmyr de Hory, the Greatest Art Forger of Our Time, complete with dust jacket, for just $4. As a big fan of Orson Welles' F for Fake, I was quite pleased with this find.

Dessert recipes that Emma Smith passed around to her friends

I have a copy of The Pennsylvania Dutch and their Cookery (subtitle: "Their history, art, accomplishments, also a broad collection of their food recipes") that seemingly received wide circulation among a group of friends in 1937 and 1938.

 

The book was written by J. George Frederick (author of Cooking as Men Like It, For and Against Technocracy, How Bright Is Your Child? and Humanism as a Way of Life, among other titles) and published in 1935 by The Business Bourse of New York. When Frederick died in 1964, his obituary noted that he was also the president of the Gourmet Society of New York.

On the blank first page, someone — we might presume that it was Emma Smith — pasted a sheet of paper to serve as a circulation sheet. The book went first to Helen Raub and then continued to others on two-week intervals from late 1937 through the summer of 1938, when it was scheduled to return to Emma Smith.

Here are the other names on the list: Edna Eshleman, Della Book, Grace Hassler, Joe Groff, Anna Miller, Velma Aument, Blanche Eshleman, Ethel McClure, Olive McClure, Edna Miller, Rebecca Pollock, Vera Forbes, Margaret Groff, Mary Boyce, Edna Groff, Sena Reynolds, Mary LeFevre, and Winona Newswenger.

I wasn't 100% sure that Sena was correct for that one first name, but there was a Sena Groff Reynolds who lived in southern Lancaster County during this time period, so I think I'm correct. Many of these, in fact, are traditional Lancaster County family names. 

In the preface, the author writes: "Let us make no mistake about it: The Pennsylvania Dutch provided a far greater proportion of the bone and sinew of American tradition and value than the small size of their territory would indicate."

And that brings us to some recipes! While the book collects recipes for everything from Dutch Eel Soup to Sauerkraut Tulpehocken, I thought I'd merrily focus on some sweets that would certainly be appropriate for the Christmas season.

Philadelphia Pudding

• 6 or 8 apples
• 1 or 2 tablespoons sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 cup cream (or milk)
• 1/2 cup raisins
• 2 tablespoons butter
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 2 cups flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder

Wash and core but do not peel the apples (of the tart kind). Arrange in bake pan with plenty of space. Dot each apple with butter, sprinkle with sugar and cinnamon, and put some raisins in the cores. (If there is cider, pour some in each core). Bake until soft. Then make a batter of the egg whites, the sugar mixed with the egg yolks, the cream or milk, almost a tablespoon of butter and the flour into which the baking powder has been sifted. Pour this batter over the apples and bake until brown. Serve hot  — perhaps with hard sauce.

Schwingfelder (Potato) Cakes

• 1 cup potatoes mashed
• 1/2 cup lard
• 1/2 cup butter
• 1 yeastcake
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 3 eggs
• 2 cups sugar

Mix 1 cup of sugar and the hot mashed potatoes; after cooling add 1 cup flour and yeast, dissolved; beat and let rise 3 hours. Mix lard, butter, 1 cup of sugar, eggs and salt; mix this with the sponge and beat vigorously, and stir stiff. Let rise overnight, roll out, cut, place biscuits in pans, spread with melted butter, sift brown sugar over them. Bake 20-30 minutes in moderate oven.

Blitz Kucha, Ephrata

• 2 eggs
• 1 cup sugar
• 4 tablespoons butter
• 1⅓ cups flour
• 1/2 cup milk
• 1½ teaspoons baking powder
• 1/4 cup black walnuts, chopped
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

Cream the sugar and butter, blend with the eggs, beaten. Sift together the flour, baking powder and salt, and then add alternately the milk and the vanilla. Pour into a bake pan, sprinkle with the cinnamon and the sugar and the chopped walnuts. Bake for 30 minutes in a moderate oven.

For more seasonal recipes, see the Holly Jolly Papergreat Directory of Christmas Posts and scroll down to "Recipes." 

Bonus Photo #1

From the photo shoot for this post.

Bonus Photo #2

My assistant complicated the writing of this post.