Mark Twain's wonderful food list (foods he missed when he was in Europe)

By Jack Brummet, Travel Editor

When Mark Twain wrote A Tramp Abroad, he spent a lot of time in Europe.  Apparently he was not a fan of Italian, Spanish, German, and other European foods.  He wrote out this list of all the American food he had been missing and wanted to eat as soon as possible:

"It has now been many months, at the present writing, since I have had a nourishing meal, but I shall soon have one—a modest, private affair, all to myself. I have selected a few dishes, and made out a little bill of fare, which will go home in the steamer that precedes me, and be hot when I arrive—as follows:

• Radishes. Baked apples, with cream
• Fried oysters; stewed oysters. Frogs.
• American coffee, with real cream.
• American butter.
• Fried chicken, Southern style.
• Porter-house steak.
• Saratoga potatoes.
• Broiled chicken, American style.
• Hot biscuits, Southern style.
• Hot wheat-bread, Southern style.
• Hot buckwheat cakes.
• American toast. Clear maple syrup.
• Virginia bacon, broiled.
• Blue points, on the half shell.
• Cherry-stone clams.
• San Francisco mussels, steamed.
• Oyster soup. Clam Soup.
• Philadelphia Terrapin soup.
• Oysters roasted in shell-Northern style.
• Soft-shell crabs. Connecticut shad.
• Baltimore perch.
• Brook trout, from Sierra Nevada.
• Lake trout, from Tahoe.
• Sheep-head and croakers, from New Orleans.
• Black bass from the Mississippi.
• American roast beef.
• Roast turkey, Thanksgiving style.
• Cranberry sauce. Celery.
• Roast wild turkey. Woodcock.
• Canvas-back-duck, from Baltimore.
• Prairie liens, from Illinois.
• Missouri partridges, broiled.
• 'Possum. Coon.
• Boston bacon and beans.
• Bacon and greens, Southern style.
• Hominy. Boiled onions. Turnips.
• Pumpkin. Squash. Asparagus.
• Butter beans. Sweet potatoes.
• Lettuce. Succotash. String beans.
• Mashed potatoes. Catsup.
• Boiled potatoes, in their skins.
• New potatoes, minus the skins.
• Early rose potatoes, roasted in the ashes, Southern style, served hot.
• Sliced tomatoes, with sugar or vinegar. Stewed tomatoes.
• Green corn, cut from the ear and served with butter and pepper.
• Green corn, on the ear.
• Hot corn-pone, with chitlings, Southern style.
• Hot hoe-cake, Southern style.
• Hot egg-bread, Southern style.
• Hot light-bread, Southern style.
• Buttermilk. Iced sweet milk.
• Apple dumplings, with real cream.
• Apple pie. Apple fritters.
• Apple puffs, Southern style.
• Peach cobbler, Southern style
• Peach pie. American mince pie.
• Pumpkin pie. Squash pie.
• All sorts of American pastry.
• Fresh American fruits of all sorts, including strawberries which are not to be doled out as if they were jewelry, but in a more liberal way.
• Ice-water—not prepared in the ineffectual goblet, but in the sincere and capable refrigerator.

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Poem: The man in the mirror

The Man In The Mirror
by Jack Brummet

There's a civil war in his head:
Lobe against lobe.

But even when you erase it,
Or stamp out the memory,

It's still
Out There,

Because it if it once was
It still is.
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Robert Shank and the first airmail plane crash (a Curtiss-Jenny JN-4H)

This is a photo of the first crash of a U.S. airmail plane.  Robert Shank was one the first four pilots hired to fly the mail and was assigned to a Belmont Park, New York, airfield.   He survived the crash in his Curtiss-Jenny JN-4H, which landed nose down in the woods.  That's Shank himself checking out the damage.

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Titanium Sporkestra's Big F***ing Show on East Marginal Way

By Jack Brummet, NW music editor

Kee-Kee and Daryle at the show

We went to a great show last night near Georgetown.  Titanium Sporkestra had a fund-raiser to fund their trip to HonkFest in Austin.  The benefit was in an old warehouse building in which they set up several performance spaces.  There were three or four bands in the various rooms and bars, and then Titanium Sporkestrta played two sets in a covered area outside, which I think is essentially a staging/loading dock area.  A barrel bonfire was roaring.  These are two video clips from Sporkestra's first set at midnight.

One of the tubas was illuminated inside the bell (you can see it in the vids), and on a couple of songs, several of the trumpets had gas jets just inside the bell, so the 'bones were shooting out flames as they played and marched around.   And to top that, they also had two teams creating DIY fireworks, using grinders and pieces of iron.  These grinders shot sparks and cinders about fifteen feet in the air, which *mostly* cooled off before they scattered over the crowd.  It was a little spooky, but fantastic to see these two streams of sparks cross-crossing over the floor as they band played and moved among the crowd.

It was a great show, with a fascinating crowd in a cool venue.  As part of the VIP admission we also got swag bags with a Sporkestra beer cozy, a sweet t-shirt, and a copy of their new album which they just released last night.  The pass also included free drinks from a rag-tag and hilarious bar.  The first drinks we had were probably triples or quadruples! 'Round about midnight, we saw our bartender clearly in his cups.

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Painting: Will you, Keelin Curran, claim your one million dollars?

By Jack Brummet


[acrylic, pen, and mixed media on canvas]

Not sure when I painted this (sometime in the 90's) or where it is now.  I think it may be in the Jerry Melin collection. . .

click to enlarge

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Richard Cebull the Federal judge who insulted President Obama, and his mother, apologizes (with a copy of the letter)

Letter To Obama

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Faces No. 273 - Mosaic

By Jack Brummet


[acrylic, charcoal, and pen and ink on raw canvas; scanned with tile effects added in Photoshop]

click to enlarge

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Circular poem

By Jack Brummet

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Oliver Voss's "Die Badende" a/k/a Hamburg water woman statue

By Jack Brummet, Visual Arts Editor

This (13 foot high and 98 foot long) statue of a woman is, or was, installed in Hamburg, Germany. Die Badende was created by the artist Oliver Voss.  I can't determine whether it is still there, or if the installation was just a temporary exhibition.  Pretty cool, in either case.  I like this.

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All This Is That contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We make these materials available to advance the understanding of political, economic, literary, artistic, and social issues. In some cases we satirize, parody, or lampoon materials from other sources. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of copyrighted material as provided for by section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit for research, educational, and entertainment purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', please read and follow our Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license and attribute the work to All This Is That, along with our URL (http://jackbrummet.blogspot.com).

Hold your noses and vote, GOP/Tea Party—there is no man on horseback on the horizon

Steve Schmidt, on MSNBC: 


"Four years ago with Democrats, the tension in that race was which of two historic candidates the Democratic party voters all liked. who were they going to put forward in the general election contest? They liked both of them. They would have been happy with both of them. The longer this goes on, Republican voters are saying, 'We don't like any of them, we want somebody new in the race.' And that new person isn't going to appear in the race."

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Election night rumination: BHO is going to win; Mitt Romney is desperately out of touch; Rick Santorum is in touch, but insane

By Jack Brummet, Editor-in-chief

Since Pablo Fanque, our National Affairs Editor and political whiz is M.I.A.(after promising to live blog the Michigan and Arizona primaries), I wanted to mention a couple of things.

In his speech tonight, Rick Santorum once again shows he has what it takes to connect with the voters.  I disagreed with nearly every clause of the speech, but he has a way of reaching out that Mitt Romney will never achieve.  Listen to the cadences and delivery of Mitt Romney's victory speech tonight.  It sounded like his basic $35,000 speech to an insurance convention. 

This should have been Mitt Romney's night. And he blew it.  He came from way behind in his home state to triumph.  But he never even talked about Michigan, or growing up there, or his deep connection to the people of that state.  He didn't mention it at all.  There was no real joy in his speech.  It felt like a candidate that resented he'd been forced to work so hard to win.  He should have laughed and expressed his great delight that his home state pulled through for him.  And he did not.  I don't think Mitt Romney's a scary guy, but I do think he is seriously out of touch, as we've seen over and over again in his foolish, unscripted, utterances. Mitt needs a new speechwriter.  He needs to think about retail politics.  He needs to read Chris Matthews's masterful book on political strategy, "Hardball."

Tonight President Obama delivered a masterful speech to the U.A.W. in Washington (the other Washington).  It was brilliant, inspiring, and it reached out to the voters. . .and connected.  BHO, like Romney, needs to remember to connect.  And he can; it's second nature to him.  Unfortunately, this is the only clip that's online at the moment.  If you get a chance, check out the entire speech.  The crux of it was that "you, the American people, did this."  He didn't talk about his brilliance as a manager; he talked about how people pulled together.  The President is back.  Now, it's on to November 6th!

If you get the chance, look for the entire speech...

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All This Is That contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We make these materials available to advance the understanding of political, economic, literary, artistic, and social issues. In some cases we satirize, parody, or lampoon materials from other sources. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of copyrighted material as provided for by section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit for research, educational, and entertainment purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', please read and follow our Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license and attribute the work to All This Is That, along with our URL (http://jackbrummet.blogspot.com).

Now, with 8% reporting, the gap is closing in Michigan (Santorum still leads, by 1%)

Santorum 40% 28,537

Romney 39% 27,968


/pablo