Monday, January 20, 2014
CONTACT ME AT: manessmorrison2@yahoo.com


News Clips For The Day



Class divide on campus: Adjunct professors fight for better pay, benefits – NBC
By Nona Willis Aronowitz, NBC News Contributor

Marcia Newfield and Rosalind Petchesky are both professors at the City University of New York. They both have advanced degrees. They both have been teaching for decades and are in their seventies.

But there's a big difference between the two: Petchesky is a distinguished professor, and Newfield is an adjunct.
That means Newfield makes a fraction of what Petchesky makes: After 26 years, Newfield still only earns $3,622 for each of the two classes she teaches per semester at Borough of Manhattan Community College, hardly a living wage in the most expensive city in the country, but above the average of $2,987 per course for adjuncts nationwide.

At the same time, public records show that CUNY's distinguished professors, like Petchesky, make around $144,000 a year. Petchesky's tenure—meaning she can't be terminated without just cause—renders her one of the most protected workers in the nation. Newfield's course load could be eliminated for any reason, even after classes begin. Through the Professional Staff Congress' Welfare Fund, adjuncts have health insurance (for now), but Newfield has no job security, disability benefits, permanent office, or input in her department's curriculum, and only a meager pension. Petchesky has time to do her own research thanks to sabbaticals and a reasonable course load; Newfield has had to hustle to make ends meet.

"To students, everyone is just 'professor,'" Newfield said. But long-term adjuncts like her "are in a different class. They're poor. There's no other way to explain it."
The CUNY system employs about 7,000 full-time faculty and 13,000 non-tenure-track faculty—3,000 of which are cobbling together their living teaching a full course load. This isn't uncommon—the ratio of adjuncts to full-time professors has been growing for decades, creating a microcosm of the wealth gap worsening across the country.

While adjuncts struggle to pay basic expenses, some tenured professors teaching in the same classrooms are recruited to campus with lucrative salaries well into the six figures, sometimes lured by luxurious homes subsidized by the university. While tuition has skyrocketed by almost 80 percent in the past ten years, parents and teachers may not realize that their money is partly going into the pockets of the "academic one percent": a handful of well-paid superstar professors and administrators. (The chancellor of CUNY, which has steadily lost state funding, made $574,004 in 2012.)

Meanwhile, a growing majority of precarious, struggling faculty are teaching the next generation.

Adjuncts look to unions
Adjuncts are a diverse group: graduate students building their resumes, professionals making money on the side, and long-time faculty like Newfield who simply never managed to score a tenure-track position. The position of "adjunct" was popularized in the 1960s in response to a shortage of qualified professors wielding a Ph.D. Nowadays, there's a surplus. According to the American Association of University Professors, the ratio of tenure-track openings to new doctorates is around 1 to 4. Universities, particularly cash-strapped public schools, have responded in kind. Three quarters  of American college and university instructors fall into a contingent faculty category.

On a growing number of campuses across the country, adjuncts are unionizing to demand a living wage and benefits, some with the help of a recent national campaign run by the Service Employees International Union. Still, these victories haven't yet reversed what has long been a reality in academia: a two-tiered university system for professors who have virtually identical job descriptions.

Take Kip Lornell: He's been teaching ethnomusicology at George Washington University since 1992, has his Ph.D., and has published 14 books. As a regular part-timer, his course load is limited to three classes plus service work, for which he receives $23,000 per year. "Those are poverty wages," he said.

Lornell does intellectual property research for Smithsonian Folkways to make ends meet, and if it weren't for his wife, he said, he wouldn't be able to provide for his two kids, especially in a pricey metropolitan area like Washington, D.C. He's been involved in unionizing the adjuncts at GWU, and he knows many full-time faculty who are "quietly neutral to supportive." But the university's "top down" approach assures that "they're not really involved in the process. It's more a quiet solidarity than anything else."

In some cases, the conditions of adjuncts are often outright ignored by full-time faculty. Cary Nelson, a tenured professor at the University of Illinois-Urbana Champaign and the editor of the anthology "Will Teach For Food," said that on a large campus like his, contingent faculty are "sort of invisible. The two groups just don't interact with one another."

Adjuncts usually aren't allowed in departmental meetings. They often live far from campus. They teach night classes, or juggle side-gigs, or commute to jobs on several campuses. Meanwhile, "so many tenure-track faculty are like racehorses—they have blinders on left and right," said Nelson.

Some chalk this up to the nature of the profession. Academia can be "very individualistic," said Mike Fabricant, who is a tenured professor at Hunter College's School of Social Work (and, according to public records, makes six figures). Many professors choose to "focus on their own research" rather than "disrupt their work life, even when they're working alongside folks who are being exploited terribly."

Fabricant said some "believe strongly in a meritocracy, that adjuncts are lesser versions of themselves." No tenured professors would go on record with NBC News saying they believed this. But a handful declined to comment, citing limited knowledge or opinions about adjuncts at their institution.

Disagreement in the ranks
Of course, there are plenty of full-time professors speaking up for more equity in the university system. Andrew Zimmerman, a tenured professor at George Washington University who has attended a few meetings with adjunct organizers, said tenured faculty like him "have a responsibility to speak out against" the marginalization of adjuncts, and that "given the protection of tenure, we have no excuse."

Petchesky, the distinguished professor at Hunter College, agrees. She posted an open letter online in 2010 addressed to "all my full-time colleagues," urging them to stick up for contingent faculty. "The two-tier labor system in public higher education weakens and destabilizes working conditions for us all," she wrote. "As long as management can be assured of a huge, vulnerable contingent workforce… it can resist the demands of full-time union members."

In the last few years, CUNY professors have joined protests and donated award money to the Adjunct Project, a crowdsourcing effort to chronicle adjuncts' wages across the country.

To many, the first step is getting everyone on the same page, since even the two-tiered system has tiers within it. Petchesky said that graduate student adjuncts can be disengaged "because they are still thinking of this as a temporary stage," even though "you also have adjunct faculty for whom this is a dead end." Jack Dempsey, a long-time adjunct at Bentley University who supplements his paltry contract by raking leaves and editing books, thinks "it's important for full-time faculty to know what adjuncts make." Many, he said, don't have a clue.

The contingent sect of the university system is so diffuse that even adjuncts can't agree on the best solution to their plight. In October 2013, Bentley's adjuncts narrowly voted against joining a union. Paul Mark, a CPA who teaches one class during the summer, sent out a faculty-wide email announcing his plans to vote "no."
"I have never believed that unions were created to represent white collar workers," he wrote. "If ours was an industry such as mining or construction, I would fully support a unionization drive…However, as university professors, we are far from such worlds."

Dempsey begs to differ. "It's wishful thinking that a Ph.D. is still a mantle to the upper-middle classes," he said. For a shrinking tenured population, that's still the case. But "when you're making minimum wage, you're simply another wing of America's low-wage workforce."



This is startling. I understand graduate students making lower wages, but people with PhDs should have at least $30,000.00 or so, it seems to me, even as a starting salary especially if they are teaching full time. It costs lots of money to get a PhD. Would they make more money, I wonder, if they went to high schools to teach? Of course high school teachers have the reputation of being underpaid, too. We just don't value teachers in our society, and academic pursuits in general. Maybe they would get more if they went into business – sales or advertising, for instance – or were able to find a position with a non-profit of some kind. Of course, if the individual had a strong desire to teach, such a job would be a severe let down.

I have long thought that white collar people of all kinds, including those who work lower level positions in business offices, should have access to unions. I worked in one “union shop,” the National Bank of Washington, which was owned by the United Mine Workers, and it was a very good place to work. The pay was acceptable and the relationship of management to the workers was fair and generally friendly. I looked on Google for “academic workers unions” and did find four or five on the first page of entries, so maybe if some non-tenured workers at each college would get together they could contact the unions and join individually or set up a union shop there. Of course, if those colleges are like many private businesses, they will resist a union strongly and even fire the workers who try to set it up. Power rarely gives up the territory it holds with a good grace.





Ambassador Caroline Kennedy 'concerned by inhumaneness' of Japan dolphin hunt – NBC
By Arata Yamamoto and Henry Austin, NBC News

TOKYO -- Caroline Kennedy has expressed her deep concern at the "inhumaneness" of an annual dolphin hunt carried out by fisherman in Japan, where she serves as U.S. ambassador.

Long a source of controversy,  fisherman from Taiji drive hundreds of dolphins into a secluded bay where they select some for sale to marine parks, release some back into the sea and kill the rest for meat.

"Deeply concerned by inhumaneness of drive hunt dolphin killing," Kennedy tweeted on Saturday, adding that the U.S. government opposes drive hunt fisheries.
More than 250 bottlenose dolphins have been rounded up this year, according to Sea Shepherd Conservation Society.

The hunt became infamous after the 2009 release of "The Cove," an Oscar-winning documentary that was directed by former National Geographic photographer Louis Psihoyos.

The film followed eco-activists who struggle with Japanese police and fishermen to gain access to the location of the hunt.
The movie met with fierce opposition in Japan from groups saying it was "anti-Japanese" and an affront to traditional culture. 

Japan has long maintained that killing dolphins is not banned under any international treaty and that the animals are not endangered, adding that dolphins need to be culled to protect fishing grounds.

Defending the practice, local officials that they were conducting a legal and traditional fishing practice while at the same time adhering to the regulations and the quotas established by the Japanese government. 


http://www.wwf.org.uk/what_we_do/safeguarding_the_natural_world/wildlife/dolphins/


There are more than 30 species of dolphin. Most live in oceans around the world, but there are also six species of river-dwelling dolphins, found in Brazil, China, Colombia, India, Nepal and Pakistan.

Some species of dolphin are classified as endangered or critically endangered on the IUCN Red List, and a lot more are known to be in serious danger but haven't been formally assessed yet.

Dolphins are generally social animals, sometimes living in pods of several hundred.
They 'echolocate' by producing clicking sounds and then receiving and interpreting the returning echos. From this they can tell the size, shape, distance, speed and direction of objects – especially their favourite food, fish and squid.

Dolphins are larger than porpoises and have cone-shaped rather than spade-shaped teeth. They have a dorsal fin shaped like a wave, instead of the porpoise's triangular fin, and often have a beak-shaped nose which porpoises never do.

Why dolphins need help
One of the biggest threats to dolphins is accidental entanglement in fishing gear – which can cause them to drown. Known as bycatch, this causes the deaths of more than 300,000 cetaceans (dolphins, porpoises and whales) every year.

Another reason for dolphin decline is depletion of its prey as a result of unsustainable commerical fishing.



According to the WWF, dolphins are in fact endangered. This WWF article also said that one of the reasons they are endangered is because commercial fishermen are killing off the prey fish that the dolphins need to survive, plus the “collateral damage” done to dolphins as they are entangled in fishermen's nets and drowned. I hope Ms. Kennedy will make a strong stand about the hunt and the unethical actions of fishermen in general. The fishermen use pods of dolphins to help them find schools of fish, watching when they start to hunt and encircling the whole group of dolphins and fish with huge boat-drawn nets. Getting the dolphins in the net is no accident. It is truly inhumane.





Obama: Pot not 'more dangerous' than alcohol – NBC
By Tom Curry, National Affairs Writer, NBC News

President Barack Obama says smoking pot isn’t “more dangerous” than drinking alcohol.

“As has been well-documented, I smoked pot as a kid, and I view it as a bad habit and a vice, not very different from the cigarettes that I smoked as a young person up through a big chunk of my adult life,” Obama said in a lengthy profile in the current issue of the New Yorker magazine. “I don’t think it is more dangerous than alcohol.”    

Pressed by author David Remnick on the comparison, Obama said he thinks marijuana is less dangerous “in terms of its impact on the individual consumer.”  But he added, “it’s not something I encourage, and I’ve told my daughters I think it’s a bad idea, a waste of time, not very healthy.”

Obama also told Remnick that he is troubled that “middle-class kids don’t get locked up for smoking pot, and poor kids do. And African-American kids and Latino kids are more likely to be poor and less likely to have the resources and the support to avoid unduly harsh penalties.”

He did caution that the movement for legalization of marijuana raises “some difficult line-drawing issues. If marijuana is fully legalized and at some point folks say, ‘Well, we can come up with a negotiated dose of cocaine that we can show is not any more harmful than vodka,’ are we open to that? If somebody says, ‘We’ve got a finely calibrated dose of meth, it isn’t going to kill you or rot your teeth,’ are we OK with that?”

“Those who argue that legalizing marijuana is a panacea and it solves all these social problems I think are probably overstating the case,” he said  “There is a lot of hair on that policy. And the experiment that’s going to be taking place in Colorado and Washington is going to be, I think, a challenge.”
The president also weighed in on the dangers of playing football, saying that professional players “know what they’re buying into” when they play the sport and risk concussions and brain damage.

When asked whether he felt “at all ambivalent about following” professional football, Obama responded by saying, “I would not let my son play pro football.” He added, “but, I mean, you (Remnick) wrote a lot about boxing, right? We’re sort of in the same realm.”

“At this point, there’s a little bit of caveat emptor,” Obama said. “These guys, they know what they’re doing. They know what they’re buying into. It is no longer a secret. It’s sort of the feeling I have about smokers, you know?”
In the piece, Obama also comments on the role he believes racial prejudice plays in American politics.

“There’s no doubt that there’s some folks who just really dislike me because they don’t like the idea of a black President,” he said. “Now, the flip side of it is there are some black folks and maybe some white folks who really like me and give me the benefit of the doubt precisely because I’m a black President.”

He also argues that conservatives’ preference for policies being decided by state governments can’t be separated from the intertwined history of states’ rights and slavery in the years leading to the Civil War and racial prejudice since then.
“You can be somebody who, for very legitimate reasons, worries about the power of the federal government—that it’s distant, that it’s bureaucratic, that it’s not accountable—and as a consequence you think that more power should reside in the hands of state governments,” he said.

But Obama said “that philosophy is wrapped up in the history of states’ rights in the context of the civil-rights movement and the Civil War and (South Carolina Sen. John C.) Calhoun. There’s a pretty long history there.”

He urged progressives to not “dismiss out of hand arguments against my Presidency or the Democratic Party or Bill Clinton or anybody just because there’s some overlap between those criticisms and the criticisms that traditionally were directed against those who were trying to bring about greater equality for African-Americans.”
On the other hand, he said conservatives should see that “if I am concerned about leaving it up to states to expand Medicaid that it may not simply be because I am this power-hungry guy in Washington who wants to crush states’ rights but, rather, because we are one country and I think it is going to be important for the entire country to make sure that poor folks in Mississippi and not just Massachusetts are healthy.”



I didn't find one thing in the president's comments here to disagree with basically, but I would have to say that just because marijuana is not “more dangerous” than alcohol, I know it does do brain damage to the user and undoubtedly destroys the lungs, so why introduce yet a third legal but dangerous product to our society? The second product of course is tobacco, whether smoked or chewed. Humans are prone to addiction, on all social and economic levels, and in those early young adult years, we are likely to want to experiment and “have fun.”Before we know it we're hooked.

It really is a shame that the poor and those who are “second class citizens” – still today, despite the Civil Rights movement – are almost automatically given harsher prison sentences for the same crimes, and are not as likely to be sent to a genteel rehab center for their drug use as a rich or white kid. Thank goodness Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous are both available almost everywhere, and are very helpful in stopping people from using drugs, free of charge and socially wide open to all races, economic levels and religions. They also offer a philosophically enlightened path to a better and happier life.





Iraq launches offensive to purge al Qaeda militants controlling Ramadi – NBC
By Alexander Smith, NBC News contributor

Fierce clashes raged in the Iraqi city of Ramadi on Sunday as government forces launched an all-out offensive to push back al Qaeda militants who have taken control, officials said.

Iraqi forces and allied tribal militias targeted militants who have seized parts of the capital of the largely Sunni western province of Anbar since December.
The militants also control the center of the nearby city of Fallujah, along with other non-al Qaeda groups that also oppose the Shiite-led government.
Iraqi army Lt. Gen. Rasheed Fleih, who is heading the offensive, told The Associated Press that on Sunday his forces retook al-Bubali, a strategic village between the two cities.

At least 24 people have been killed and 58 wounded in after half a dozen bomb blasts went off in Baghdad, Iraq,

Militants booby trapped houses before retreating and an official told The Associated Press that some 20 police officers and government allied tribesmen were killed or wounded in the fighting.

On Monday, one day after the push, seven bombs hit the capital Baghdad, killing at least 26 people and wounding 67, officials told Reuters. No group claimed responsibility.

The head of the al Qaeda group in Iraq, known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, urged Iraqi Sunni Muslims to join the militants in an audio message on Sunday.
"This is your chance, so do not miss it. Otherwise you will be finished," Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi said, according to the AP.

Elsewhere Sunday, gunmen opened fire on a checkpoint run by an anti-al Qaeda militia outside the city of Baqouba, killing the local leader and four assistants, officials said.

Iraq has just been through its worst 12 months of violence in five years, reaching levels not seen since it was emerging from its most turbulent post-invasion period and teetering on the brink of civil war.



I'm glad to see that a real fight is being waged against al Qaida. Each nation will have to oust them, as they send in forces to every weak or disorganized nation that they come across. The Sunnis and the Shias both need to stop fighting and live together in peace. Many of the countries in the poorer regions of the world are involved in violence due to al Qaida's influence. I would love to see democracy and fair societies flourish over there, but I'm sure that won't happen any time soon. I would hate to live in an Islamic society. With tribal social customs like “honor killings,” their religion – even if it does preach peace – can rarely produce a modern, advanced society.




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Police, Banks Help Undocumented Workers Shake 'Walking ATM' Label – NPR
by Laura Sullivan
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On a recent Friday evening in Langley Park, Md., police officer Juan Damian drives his patrol car past fast food restaurants, discount stores and Hispanic groceries.
Damian estimates that at least two-thirds of the people here are undocumented, and that has made it a magnet for robberies over the years. Gangs know undocumented day workers are especially lucrative targets, he says. Their pockets are often stuffed with a day's or even a week's worth of wages. The street term for these men: "walking ATMs."

Damian says workers are afraid to leave the money where they live because they may be sharing an apartment with a dozen or so others.
A thief will "see people walking down the street, ask them for the money and rob them for whatever they have, get in the car and leave because they don't call the police," Damian says.

The Prince George's County Police officer is concerned with stopping sometimes deadly assaults and robberies, not with their immigration status, and insists he will never ask a victim whether he or she is here legally. But it's been hard to build that trust. So in the past couple years, Damian and community leaders have come up with other ideas. They've beefed up patrols and trained other officers to understand it's possible for a man wearing dirt-covered pants to have been carrying hundreds of dollars in cash. And they've been turning to local banks.

Casa de Maryland, a local advocacy group, has been holding seminars for immigrants to show them how to open bank accounts. The group brings residents together with banks like Bank of America, Wells Fargo and Capital One.
"Banks have been happy to partner with us," says George Escobar, the director of health and human services for Casa de Maryland. "They have a big and easy base for them to do a lot of bank account enrollment."

Because this community, a suburb of Washington, D.C., is a portal — where thousands of immigrants start when they first come to the states — new people are always coming. Escobar says his group constantly schedules new seminars. On some nights banks will enroll hundreds of new customers.

"The demand is overwhelming," Escobar says. "At all of our clinics, the bankers are completely busy and can barely deal with the demand of people coming to enroll with them."

Oakland To Issue IDs That Double As Debit Cards
It's actually not illegal for undocumented immigrants to open a bank account. Lots of foreigners bank with U.S. financial institutions. Immigrants need their passport or ID and a U.S. taxpayer identification number, which you can get regardless of your status.

The banking efforts mixed with community policing seem to be working. Numbers are hard to come by for a crime that victims are afraid to report. But according to police data, known robberies at least have been cut in half in the past five years in this one area. And police say the number of arrests is up, too, meaning immigrants have come forward to describe their attackers.

Dora Escobar, who's not related to George, came to the U.S. several decades ago from El Salvador. She now owns nine popular check cashing businesses. Recently people milled about inside one of her stores buying phone cards and talking. She says she worries about her customers at night and hopes they open bank accounts.
"It's worrisome," she says in Spanish, "but with an ID they can open their own accounts."

She says she's appreciative of the recent police efforts to protect the people in the community, but most undocumented workers still do not trust the police.
"It's working," she says, "but there's more work to be done."

Community leaders hope if they can get the cash out of people's pockets, it will keep the entire community safe, whether they are here legally or not.



I had never thought of this problem before. I have never understood why some people don't open bank accounts. Some black people don't have one, I've noticed. Of course, if the bank charges a $10.00 fee each month unless you keep a minimum account balance, that could be the reason, plus the $35.00 charges if you overdraw. Even if they do charge a fee, however, it is safer than having your pockets full of cash all the time. That alone could explain why crime rates have gone up where many illegal immigrants live. I'm glad the banks have stepped up to help people get enrolled in accounts. I'm sure it gives the bank extra income, but it is still a community-minded thing to do – not something that big businesses are really known for doing.




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Cooking With Conifers: An Evergreen Trick That's Newly Hip – NPR
by April Fulton
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If you still have your Christmas tree up in your living room because you just can't bear the thought of throwing out all that fine pine scent, then you may be an evergreen addict. If you still have it up because you're too lazy to take off the ornaments, then you may be a hoarder, but that's another post.

Fear not, conifer connoisseurs. You don't have to wait for the holidays to surround yourself with spruce. American chefs from coast to coast are using evergreens to develop unique flavors in dishes, from white fir and sorrel broth to pine needle vinegar to smoked mussels.

Don't Waste That Christmas Tree: Turn It Into Spruce Beer
As we told you last year, using spruce shoots in beverages is newly hip, yet centuries old. The practice has been around since the ancient Scandinavians first surveyed their vast forests, looking for something to ferment into alcohol. And 18th century English sailors were practically required to drink spruce beer in an effort to prevent scurvy. It didn't really work, but they enjoyed drinking it anyway.

The smell of burning pine needles evokes such nostalgia for Prune chef Gabrielle Hamilton of New York City that she recently wrote a piece in Saveur magazine about a childhood dish of smoked mussels that developed as cousins spent the afternoon hunting for dry pine needles on a French forest floor. She reminisced:
"There is a riveting and quick explosive roar of fire as you set match to the dry pine needles now scattered over those mussels, which have been neatly and tightly packed together between two large nails at either end of the wet plank, so tightly set in, with their hinges up, not down, that even when boiling inside in their own liquor, they can't open and lose their juices because they have been arranged just so. And it ends, perfectly, with you and your friends and family, in the chalky blue air of sunset, brushing away the pine ashes, and pulling out the smoky, juicy mussels and sucking them right from the shells, your sooty hands gripping a cool glass of white burgundy from, ideally, just a few villages away in the winier parts of the Languedoc."

For CJ Jacobson, executive chef of Girasol in Los Angeles, the evergreens-as-food trend is an extension of his personal efforts to get out and hike more, and his professional efforts to incorporate local plants and products into his dishes. He seeks out not only the plants that are grown in the state, thanks to all the water being piped in, but the ones that have always been native.

"California's great. We've got the farmers markets. But it's not just giant heirloom tomatoes ... there's got to be more of a terroir here," he tells The Salt.
Photograph – Hamachi with cattail, verbena, finger lime, white fir and sorrel broth at Girasol in Los Angeles.

Jacobson became smitten with evergreens specifically after he did a training stint at noma, the Copenhagen restaurant famous for turning foraged food into high art.
"They use pine in a lot of different capacities. They use it like any other herb," he says.

The tender needle shoots and tips of the white fir "taste like tangerine," Jacobson says, and he uses them to brighten a stock with wild sorrel, goat cheese whey and lemon juice to be ladled over hamachi.

Jacobson also incorporates white fir and pine needles into butter, which he mashes into simple baked potatoes.
John Critchley, executive chef at Washington, D.C.'s Bourbon Steak, considers using pine needles a return to his roots. A native New Englander, he says it is still a common practice there to incorporate the forest on the plate.

"If you're a fan of mushrooms, the taste is very similar," he says. "It doesn't taste like you're eating sap or anything – it just gives you the aroma of the woods."
He covers glass jars of the shoots with cider or brown rice vinegar in early spring, allows them to sit all summer, then uses the vinegar to brighten his fall and winter dishes. He's currently using pine and spruce vinegar in a sauce with hedgehog mushrooms, which he adds to a seared tuna and black truffle ravioli dish.

If you want to try this at home, the recipe is super simple. Here it is, courtesy of Critchley.

Pine Or Spruce Vinegar
About 1/2 lb. pine or spruce shoots
1 gallon mason jar
Enough brown rice vinegar to cover
Cover the shoots with brown rice vinegar, cap, and let sit for one month.
When ready to use, strain the liquid through a cheesecloth and discard the shoots.




I've never heard of anyone eating members of the evergreen family, although I knew that juniper berries are used to make gin. My parents both came from farming backgrounds, though, and ate some interesting things that you wouldn't think of. They didn't have a super market to go to, or a car to go there, so they limited their trips to town and used things from the woods surrounding their house. They grew a variety of crops like sunchokes and their own oats, which modern farmers don't do, and they cultivated a number of fruit trees. From the woods they ate a wild relative of tomatillos called “ground cherry,” several kinds of berries in season from wild strawberries – tiny and delicious – to huge round sweet blackberries, hickory nuts, “muscadines” (wild grapes), hickory nuts and black walnuts, magnificently delicious wild persimmons, peppery-tasting wild cress greens (called “creasies”), wild passion fruit (called “Maypop”), and the early spring leaves of poke weed. It has been pointed out to me that some of those things, especially the poke greens, which had to be parboiled at least once with the pot liquor poured off and then again with fresh water, were what is called “starvation food.”

The early 1900's in the rural south were pretty primitive times in many ways. You had to know a good many things just to survive. Except for the poke greens, I have tasted all of those things. I consider myself lucky in visiting the farms while my grandparents were alive, and experiencing some of the things that my forefathers did. It makes their stories richer and more pleasant to me.