The Long-Legged House

"Yesterday snow fell all day and covered the ground. This morning, though the sun came up clear, the thermometer read four above - a good morning to sit in the warmth of the stove and the brisk snow light from the big window over the table. It is a morning for books and notebooks and inviting blank pages of writing paper.

"For people who live in the country there is a charming freedom in such days. One is free of obligations to the ground. There is no outside work that one ought to do, simply because, with the ground frozen deep and covered with snow, no such work is possible.

"Growth has stopped. There is plenty of hay and grain in the barn; the present has abated its urgencies. And the mind may again turn freely to the past look back on the way it came.

"This morning has been bearing down out of the future toward this bit of riverbank forever. And for perhaps as long, in a sense, my life has been approaching from the opposite direction. The approach of a man's life out of the past is history and the approach of time out of the future is a mystery. Their meeting is the present, and it is consciousness, the only time life is alive. The endless wonder of this meeting is what causes the mind, in its inward liberty of a frozen morning, to turn back and question and remember. The world is full of places. Why is it that I am here?"

The Long-Legged House

by Wendell Berry

Counterpoint, 2012

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Calamity Jane: Legendary Western Poverty

"Her career may offer the best case study of legend-making in the history of the American West simply because there was so little on which to build; she arrested no outlaws, robbed no banks, and killed no Indians. Instead, hers is a bleak story of poverty, alcoholism, and an unsteady domestic life. She worked as a dance-hall girl, prostitute, waitress, bartender, and cook; she lived with various men she called husbands and expressed affection for her children. Rather than displaying legendary ingredients, her life illustrates a part of western history not often told, the existence of the poor."

Calamity Jane

The Woman and the Legend

by James D. McLaird

University of Oklahoma Press, 2012

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Review: Let the Meatballs Rest

This is a collection of 100 brief essays discussing specific foodstuffs, their histories and how they have helped shape the human societies that include them in their diets.

Potatoes, for instance, were introduced to Europe in the 16th century but their bland flavor and "subterranean nature" made them unappealing. Only when other crops had failed and starvation loomed did farmers turn to widescale production of the easy-to-grow spuds.

Garlic, likewise, was once considered fit only for peasants. Eating such strong and foul-smelling food was a damning mark of poverty in the 10th century.

And eggplant, first brought to Europe by Arabs, was long associated with "the lower class and Jews." Yet the peasant cuisine that emerged from their use would later be co-opted by the upper classes.

Let the Meatballs Rest

And Other Stories About Food and Culture

by Massimo Montanari

Columbia University Press, 2012

Cover Art: Let the Meatballs Rest
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Well Read Books: The Mind Benders

The Mind Benders explores the murky lower depths of the drug user, opening a strange world of sex and fantasy to the reader.

Can LSD change quiet afternoon teas into wild orgies?

Will marijuana turn frigid virgins into nymphs?

This book presents a sensationalized discussion of the aphrodisiac effects of speed, marijuana, opiates, heroin, LSD and other drugs.

The Mind Benders

by Jonathan Smith

Triumph News Co., 1967

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Curt Flood and Marvin Miller

Marvin Miller, the legendary leader of the Major League Baseball Player’s Association, passed away yesterday at the age of 95.

Curt Flood's challenge of the reserve clause and the subsequent creation of free agency will forever be part of his legacy.

In Curt Flood in the Media, the celebrated ballplayer reflects on his decision to sue the owners:

"It had been germinating in me for weeks. Sooner or later, someone would challenge baseball's right to treat human beings like used cars. 'I want to sue baseball on constitutional grouns,' I told [Marvin Miller]. His eyebrows rose. 'I want to give the courts a chance to outlaw the reserve system. I want to go out like a man instead of disappearing like a bottle cap.'"

Curt Flood in the Media

Baseball, Race, and the Demise of the Activist Athlete

by Abraham Iqbal Khan

University Press of Mississippi, 2012

• artwork: 1994 Upper Deck Marvin Miller Baseball Card
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Reading the History: Kit Carson

History has portrayed Christopher "Kit" Carson in black and white. Best known as a nineteenth-century frontier hero, he has been represented more recently as an Indian killer responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Navajos. Biographer David Remley counters these polarized views, finding Carson to be less than a mythical hero, but more than a simpleminded rascal with a rifle.

This biography strikes a balance between prevailing notions about this quintessential western figure.

Kit Carson

The Life of an American Border Man 

by David A. Remley

University of Oklahoma Press, 2012

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Reading the History: Calamity Jane

Forget Doris Day singing on the stagecoach. Forget Robin Weigert’s gritty portrayal on HBO’s Deadwood. The real Calamity Jane was someone the likes of whom you have never encountered. That is, until now.

This book is a definitive biography of Martha Canary, the woman popularly known as Calamity Jane.

Calamity Jane

The Woman and the Legend

by James D. McLaird

University of Oklahoma Press, 2012

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