What’s Eating You Is What You’re Eating

WHAT YOUR FOOD ATE is the startlingly portentous title of a new study by the married team of David Montgomery and Anne Biklé, a book that takes a remarkably thorough look at how and why humans interact with food and how that food interacts with other substances. Folk wisdom declares that the dirt you inadvertently consume serves to keep you healthier; this book reveals that there’s more truth in that than you might suspect.

Except that you don’t have to eat dirt to get those benefits – you just have to eat minimally processed food that has been allowed to grow in a healthy, natural environment. Trouble is, that food is becoming ever more difficult to find.

Montgomery, who is a professor of Geomorphology, and Biklé, a biologist, have covered these topics in their previous books, The Hidden Half of Nature, Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations, and Growing a Revolution: Bringing Our Soil Back To Life, each of which has been reviewed on this site. But their new book not only weaves together a more complete overview of those topics, it also provides sound scientific study to support their conclusions, enough, I hope, to persuade those who might still be skeptical about the conclusions found herein.

The conclusions are simple. And profound. Our bodies have an innate nutritional wisdom. We figured out, through the trial-and-error that informs evolution, what kind of diet is needed to maintain health and fight disease. We began farming and penning animals ten thousand years ago and our bodies adapted to the dietary changes. Now, in this most modern of modern ages, we’re more likely to suffer from micronutrient malnutrition and resultant disease.

Rags Are Riches

WILLIAM BOLCOM’S INTEREST IN RAGTIME began in 1967, when he learned of a vanished ragtime opera by Scott Joplin – a name he’d never heard – and discovered that Queens College associate Rudi Blesch had a vocal score of it. Blesch was co-author of They All Played Ragtime, the definitive book on the topic, and soon Bolcom was learning and performing the ragtime repertory. I think we can credit him with planting the seed that grew into the ragtime revival: he played some Joplin for Joshua Rifkin, who went on to record excellent interpretations of Joplin rags on Nonesuch LPs. The records sold well, and when film director George Roy Hill heard one of them, he decided to use Joplin’s music in the “The Sting” in 1973. The world became ragtime-suffused, to the point where I saw Benny Goodman mock “The Entertainer” at a late-‘70s Carnegie Hall concert.

Even as he was performing classic ragtime pieces, Bolcom began writing his own take on the genre, joining a number of fellow composers in the late ’60s to renew the literature of this engaging form. At first, he pieces were Joplin-like, but very soon he branched out into more Bolcom-esque works.

A somewhat heavy-handed recording of the then-complete Bolcom rags played by John Murphy came out in 1998; Spencer Myer released a single-disc collection of 16 Bolcom rags in 2017, and it’s a fine recording, but Marc-André Hamelin has just released a two-CD set that not only gives you everything Bolcom considers a rag but also presents them in a thoroughly idiomatic way. Hamelin sounds like he’s channeling Joplin by way of Bolcom, a testament to the skill both of composer and performer.

The 27 pieces included on these discs were written between 1968 and 2015, the majority of them before 1972. “Incineratorag,” one of the earliest, could pass for a 1902 piece except for some of the unusual (for that time) harmonies. In keeping with Joplin’s own admonitions, the sheet music for this one is headed, “For Heaven’s sake, not too fast!”

I’ve Got a Secret

RUSS WALTER’S BUSINESS MODEL probably would send an economics consultant screaming out of the room. Walter has been writing and selling The Secret Guide to Computers for 50 years, revising it frequently to keep up with changing technology. But he doesn’t sell it through the usual outlets – he sells it himself. And he gives exponential discounts when you buy multiple copies, and lets go of earlier editions for a song. And he offers free tech support. Like the big companies, it’s available any time of the day or night; unlike them, he takes the calls himself.

The book itself is packed with text, laid out on a two-column page with little of the usual relief for the eye. But you’ll want it by your computer or your bedside or somewhere very convenient. Let me tell you how invaluable this book is.

I got pushed into the world of personal computers in 1985. The magazine I was writing for no longer wished to transcript typescript, so the publisher worked up a deal to get his staff and writers a discount on the purchase of an Epson machine running the latest iteration of the Intel 8088 chip and offering two 5 1/4-inch floppy disk drives. If this means nothing to you, you’re in good company. It meant nothing to me at the time, and, because the damn thing just sat there blinking its stupid green “A:” prompt, I decided to get rid of it.

“Other people have learned to use these things,” my wife observed. “Why can’t you?” With my intelligence thus impugned, I sought help. From books, my usual educational conduit, and computer-oriented magazines that lately had been appearing on the newsstands. In one such magazine, I read a review of The Secret Guide to Computers, a review noting that Walter sold the book himself, alongside offering free tech support by phone any time of the day or night. I called and ordered the book.

The Fable of Paducah’s Favorite Comedians and the Mildewed Stunt

 Guest Blogger Dept.: It’s George Ade again, a regular visitor to these e-pages, with another fable in slang. It describes details of the vaudeville era, and names some of its stars. I’ll save you the trouble of looking them up: Francis Wilson was a singer and comedian who started in minstrel shows. He was founding president of Actors Equity. Nat Goodwin moved between stage shows and vaudeville, and played Fagin in a 1912 film of “Oliver Twist.” British-born Richard Mansfield was renowned for his Shakespeare performances, and his too-convincing portrayal of “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” in 1888 led people to suspect he could be Jack the Ripper. And a burgoo picnic remains a popular Kentucky outing, in which a free-form stew is the culinary center of the event.

                                                                                             

ONCE UPON A TIME there was a Specialty Team doing Seventeen Minutes. The Props used in the Act included a Hatchet, a Brick, a Seltzer Bottle, two inflated Bladders and a Slap-Stick. The Name of the Team was Zoroaster and Zendavesta.

These two Troupers began their Professional Career with a Road Circus, working on Canvas in the Morning, and then doing a Refined Knockabout in the Grand Concert or Afterpiece taking place in the Main Arena immediately after the big Show is over.

When each of them could Kick Himself in the Eye and Slattery had pickled his Face so that Stebbins could walk on it, they decided that they were too good to show under a Round Top, so they became Artists. They wanted a Swell Name for the Team, so the Side-Show Announcer, who was something of a Kidder and had attended a Unitarian College, gave them Zoroaster and Zendavesta. They were Stuck on it, and had a Job Printer do some Cards for them.

By utilizing two of Pat Rooney’s Songs and stealing a few Gags, they put together Seventeen Minutes and began to play Dates and Combinations.

Zoroaster bought a Cane with a Silver Dog’s Head on it, and Zendavesta had a Watch Charm that pulled the Buttonholes out of his Vest.