Same here. Ordinary name, but with an extra vowel. Every once in a while, I read about someone with “our” name and feel like I should reach out to them.
But then I remember that I’m easily overwhelmed by the number of people I’m closely related to… (NO, 23 and Me, I do NOT want to know about MORE relatives!)
Here is the list of living people with my last name that I have met: my ex-wife, my stepmom.
Here is the list of living people that I have met that used to have my last name: my sister, my mom.
Here is the list of deceased that I have met with my last name: my dad, my grandmother.
Anthropologist Marvin Harris claimed that a large portion of the US corn crop in the 19th century was used as feed for animals, chiefly pigs, and that it was “walked to market” in form of hogs that would be butchered for their meat. Evidently pork was a much bigger deal than beef was back then, and corn was an ideal pig fattener. Of course, a lot was converted to whiskey, as well, but I have no idea what the proportions were. Whiskey took up less room, and was easier to transport than corn itself was. It was worth more, too.
Even today I think that corn for human consumption is a minor part of the market. Some goes to animal feed, but a lot is raised for high fructose corn syrup and for fuel ethanol. I suspect those two uses have absorbed a lot of the market that used to be chiefly whiskey.
AIUI, they don’t use the big toe, because it’s too big. Instead, they use the second toe because it’s closer in size to the patient’s thumb.
Prior to WWII, Americans ate more pork than any other meat. Hence the phrase “living high on the hog.”
…unless you advertise the token price on Craigslist. They’ll still sell, but the buyer will want to talk you down to $1.50.
There’s a species of crow native to Hawaii called the alala that went extinct there and are only recently being reintroduced.
Neither is Budweiser but people drink it anyway HEYOOOOOO
Why after WWII did Americans change from predominantly eating pork to eating some other meat, presumably beef or chicken?
That is an interesting question. Having just finished this book
I have learned that pigs were an important part of home waste management: many pigs were kept even in cities and slaughtered after fattening them on food waste. This custom has almost completly disappeared in the USA and Europe.
Chicken were also kept, and in some places rabbits, but they were less prevalent, ate a more restricted diet, and were often stigmatized with racial and social stereotypes.
After WWII Germans received a lot more pork – mostly canned – in the so called CARE packages than they used to consume before the war. Also corn (maize), which was used as feed until then. And I know that correlation does not imply causation, but that is when coronary diseases took off.
Harris addresses the issue in his book on foodways, Good to Eat (AKA The Sacred Cow and the Abominable Pig)
I’d tell you, but it’s been a few years since I last read it.
Thanks. I’d never heard this before, but I’m guessing it had something to do with factory farming in the 1950s, which made chicken and beef cheaper, and the idea that they are both healthier than eating pork. Just a WAG.
Tiswin/Tizwin is an alcoholic beverage made from corn by native Americans. It is supposed to be pretty nasty tasting.
I saw a video claiming this is why cultures have a prohibition against eating pork … they were you’re neighborhood’s sanitation department.
A related bit of family lore: My grandfather was a farmer in central Kansas who was raised in a German-speaking home. During WWII, there was a German POW camp about 20 miles from his farm. For a couple of summers, he (and other neighbors) hired the POWs to work on his farm, and his ability to speak German was definitely an asset. My aunts and uncles who were still at home at the time told us kids that the POWs loved Grandma’s cooking, but they would never eat corn-on-the-cob, calling it ‘futter für schweine’, or ‘fodder for pigs’. (I think I remembered the phrase correctly.)
Certainly for chicken. Remember: in 1938 Herbert Hoover promised “A chicken in every pot,” which would indicate that chicken was not an everyday meal. According to the USDA, pork was still number one in 1950 (barely), with beef overtaking it in 1955. Chicken pulleted ahead in 1995 and has stayed that way.
ISWYDT.
Discourse bites.
Same thing the the King Henry IV of France promised in the 17th Century, thus the traditional recipe “poulet au pot du bon Roi Henry”, which even has a wikipage on its own (in French, of course). The measure was so popular that the king was called “le bon roi”, i.e. the good king. Very good propaganda. Did it work as well for Mr. Hoover?
The Great Depression pretty much wiped out any good will associated with Hoover.
After the edit window:
ETA: Cite in Engish for the recipe. And it did not really work so well for the king, who was murdered in 1610 by a Catholic zealot who did not like chicken. The first time the quotation « Si Dieu me donne encore de la vie, je ferai qu’il n’y aura point de laboureur en mon Royaume qui n’ait moyen d’avoir une poule dans son pot », ou « Je veux que chaque laboureur de mon royaume puisse mettre la poule au pot le dimanche. » (something like: “if God gives me enough time I will see that there is a chicken in every pot for the labourers of this country on any given sunday”) does not appear in written form before 1661, so it may well be completely made up.
At the dawn of the French Revolution, a song went:
Enfin la poule au pot va être mise,
On peut du moins le présumer,
Car, depuis deux cents ans qu’elle nous est promise,
On n’a cessé de la plumer.
At last the chicken will be put in the pot,
We can at least presume it,
For, for two hundred years since it was promised to us,
We haven’t stopped plucking it”.