Mimsy Were the Borogoves

The best time to start reading Mark Steyn was twenty sod-bollicking years ago. The second best time to start reading Mark Steyn is right now.

The best in music, literature, current events, and civilizational collapse.

Google has come a long way from when I wrote my last post about Google and ads back in 2007. At that time Google had only recently acquired YouTube. Nearly twenty years on, I now watch a lot of YouTube videos. Three days a week I spend an hour and a half on the treadmill, watching nothing but videos on an Apple TV. I start with my YouTube watchlist and only move on to what I’ve recorded on my DVR after my watchlist is empty. Given all of the wonderful vintage cooking, history, and science shows on YouTube, this rarely happens.

I’ve been doing this now for over half a decade, which means that Google has massive amounts of information about what videos I watch, how I watch them, what ads I watch, what ads I skip, and when I skip them.

And yet they still can’t tell what I might be interested in, whether to buy or to learn more about. At best, they seem to be completely ignoring the very obvious data that they have on me. But more and more it seems as if they are deliberately showing me ads that they know I’m not going to watch—and that they know are going to convince me not to watch any subsequent ads in that ad block, too.

They know what videos I watch. They know I watch physics videos, space videos, vintage cooking videos, Apple videos, old movie videos, the making of movies, roleplaying games, unique firearms and medieval weapons, Italian news, history, music, vintage computers, and various combinations of the above.

You could probably sweep my very limited demographic by starting a channel focused on the history, food, and culture of the American west as depicted in spaghetti westerns. Especially if you made it on an iPhone and also talked about fiddly tech bits and illustrated your points with an old west roleplaying game managed by a TRS-80 Model I.

They have never seen me watch a video about dogs, cats, children, cleaning up messes, incontinence (it only now occurs to me to wonder if those two are related), or new cars.

They do, however, know that I often watch low-information-density videos—mainly videos by people who talk slowly—at +25% or even +50%. And yet they still show me ads that literally provide no information at all for the first five to ten seconds—or sometimes ever.

I have no idea what those ads are selling: I skip them when given the opportunity, and, when not given the opportunity, I turn my attention elsewhere.

During the 2024 Presidential campaign, when President Trump survived an assassination attempt by no more than a glance at a computer screen for data, turning his head just enough to avoid a bullet to the brain, there was a lot of talk about Divine Providence. President Trump’s miraculous survival is not, however, the first time that the nation buzzed with the talk of Divine intervention in the lives of former presidents.

The first historical marker on State Highway 29 west of U.S. Route 183 is very close to Route 183, in Liberty Hill. It’s on the left side of the street going west, so I visited it on the way back when I took the road trip with my dad. It’s not a street I’m interested in crossing on foot.

Is J. A. Bryson related to the Brysons who helped build the cemetery?

Liberty Hill Cemetery

Weathered gravestones show usage of this spot for burials since 1852, when the earliest settlers were establishing homes in area [sic]. The first formal grant of land here as a community burial ground was made by John T. and Amelia Edwards Bryson in 1875, when three and one-half acres were deeded to the Liberty Hill Cemetery Trustees: T.N. Bryson, C.C. Chance, W.H. Poole, J.B. Roddy, and T.S. Snyder. This acreage was protected by a stone fence built with their own hands by the Brysons and their neighbors. Additions to original plot include land formerly owned by John T. Bryson and donated by Dr. and Mrs. H.L. Fowler. Royal Arch Masons in 1932 established an adjacent three-acre Masonic cemetery, later transferring title to the Liberty Hill Lodge no. 432, A.F. & A.M., which gave it in 1959 to the Liberty Hill Cemetery Association.

By later land purchases, the cemetery now contains more than twenty acres. Funds have come by bequests from Walter Gardner, Arthur Gray, and T.L. McDaniel. Many other persons have also contributed to funds for the cemetery. In 1953 the Liberty Hill Cemetery Association was incorporated, with Dr. J. Gordon Bryson as president; C.L. Chance, vice president; C.F. Hickman, treasurer; and Mrs. Letitia Russell, secretary.

(1971)

While the rest of the historical markers on State Highway 29 are easily looked at by the side of the road, Liberty Hill Cemetery is the perfect stop for when you need to get out and walk around a bit. There are some fascinating gravestones here, and monuments or semi-monuments.

An October 1, 1956 ad for WNBQ in Chicago highlights “Bob Murphy, Kay Westfall and Chef Eddie Doucette” as the station’s top sellers. (Click for full ad.) (JPEG Image, 360.5 KB)

I’ve just published the third printing of Tempt Them with Tastier Foods. With this release my collection of Eddie Doucette recipes exceeds a hundred pages. It is available as a free download in PDF (PDF File, 12.5 MB) and ePub (ePub ebook file, 10.9 MB) formats, as well as in print.

The new recipes come from several sources. I continue to be notified whenever a new reference to Eddie Doucette shows up on newspapers.com. And I continue to look for references on more general searches, which, among other things, netted a couple more matchbook recipes.

I managed to find a copy of his All-American Hog Dog pamphlet. I included recipes from images of it in the second printing, but it turns out there are recipes on both sides. The new, reverse-side recipes are now included in that section of the book. They include a fascinating-looking Hot Dog Pate and a Frank ’n’ Kraut Shepherd Pie that is very similar to the Oktoberfest Sauerkraut in the original printing but with hot dogs added.

I also decided to take a look at which newspaper most of the recipes came from, and then follow their IGA advertisements all the way through the sixties and into 1971. That turned out to be The Idaho State Journal of Pocatello, Idaho. A week in the newspapers.com archives netted several new recipes from the Journal’s regular Thursday IGA ads.

The image links to the Great Anniversary Festival recipe cards (PDF File, 4.5 MB), but this particular recipe is available in A Sestercentennial Cookery.

Sarah Hoyt invited me to post something about Bi/Vi/Centennial food on According To Hoyt, and it’s now up. Please read Food for the Great Anniversary Festival there! It features a special collection of Centennial-friendly recipes just for Hoyt’s Huns, and includes recipes not in A Sestercentennial Cookery. There are also different takes on the history of some of these books and foods than I put into the break-out posts.

If you came here for the Great Anniversary Festival recipe PDF (PDF File, 4.5 MB), you can download it by way of this link (PDF File, 4.5 MB)!

I’ve also linked the other eighteenth and nineteenth century cookbooks below.

The first four presidents. Two of them died on the Jubilee of the Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1826.

On July 4 we celebrate the Semiquincentennial anniversary of the Declaration of our Independence from Great Britain. Two hundred and fifty years have passed since the Declaration was adopted. John Adams predicted it would be celebrated with wild abandon… if it proved successful.

The 4th of July, 1776, will be a memorable epoch in the history of America. I am apt to believe it will be celebrated by succeeding generations, as the GREAT ANNIVERSARY FESTIVAL! It ought to be commemorated as the day of deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to the Almighty God. It ought to be solemnized with pomp, shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires and illuminations—from one end of the continent to the other, from this time forever!¹

Exactly two hundred years ago, fifty years after the Declaration, another momentous event rocked the country. Thomas Jefferson died in the afternoon, and John Adams in the evening. On the fiftieth anniversary, the Jubilee, of the document they had created, both died within hours of each other.

There were probably more orations after Independence Day than on the day itself, due to that amazing coincidence. As the news spread throughout our then-small country there were eulogies, commemorations, and the beginnings of legends. There were enough joint eulogies that at least one publisher announced a book collecting them. I collected two of them in A Sestercentennial Cookery: Edward Everett’s eulogy of August 1, 1826, and the semi-anonymous “Lady of Richmond’s” July 14 Lines on the Deaths of Thomas Jefferson and John Adams.

There’s even a children’s book about how much of a foodie Jefferson was.

The Fourth of July celebrates the signing of the Declaration of Independence. The Declaration was drafted by Thomas Jefferson. Why not add a couple of Jefferson’s or his family’s recipes to your celebration?

If there were a patron of American foodies, it would be Thomas Jefferson. He famously designed and possibly built his own pasta machine after enjoying pasta on an overseas trip to Italy. He is credited with introducing such varied foodie delights to America as waffles, macaroni & cheese, and vanilla pods.

His ice cream recipe from his time in France is widely copied and possibly the most common example of the foods he popularized. As reproduced by the Thomas Jefferson Foundation’s web site for Monticello, it is simple and likely very good, using cream, separated eggs, and sugar. It is churned using a “sabottiere”, which appears to be an early form of ice cream churn, a “sorbetière” in modern French.

And Jefferson didn’t just bring foreign foods to America. He also brought American foods to foreign lands. He considered the apples of France “vastly inferior to his prized Newtown Pippin from Virginia. So began a five-year mission to introduce his French colleagues to the great delicacies of his homeland.”