Cultural history, &c.

As you likely know, I am very much interested in cultural history, and this week I had many encounters with it.

My mom received her copy of the latest issue of Utah Historical Quarterly. She subscribed to the journal without even telling me or without me asking her to. Isn't she nice?

This issue has articles about sugar beets, turkeys, and WWII home front. And we literally have two articles about garbage (one about rail station artifacts and one about landfills). All of this is more interesting to me than the beaches of Normandy or the presidential election of 1924. The Utah Historical Society is part of the Utah Department of Cultural & Community Engagement (CCE), and the head of CCE (one of the governor's cabinet members) regularly sends department emails. This week, she complimented the quality of UHQ, specifically naming my supervisor and me. So that was a nice acknowledgment.

One of my assignments for UHQ is to clean up all the citations, which means I spend a great deal of time digging through old digitized newspapers to make sure the articles are cited correctly. That can get tedious. But since I'm fascinated by holiday histories, whenever I find references to holidays in these old sources I make a note of them. This week I learned that in the 1930s, Zion National Park held Easter pageants. As in Jesus's resurrection, that kind of Easter. I want to learn more about this! And on my own time I've been digging through Journal History of the Church for references to Thanksgiving. I just find it interesting to see how people perceived the holiday, even though it's probably dull for others.

Also this week, Utah State Archives and Records Service posted pictures of ZCMI from the early 1980s. In this image, I noticed all the Lladro figurines on the shelf. For as long as I can remember, up to the present, my grandparents have had a sizeable collection of Lladros on display. It was interesting to me to see them in this picture, because I have never seen them for sale in a store (except for that one time I saw a Lladro nativity set at Deseret Book). My grandparents' décor reflects a different era.

And I also follow a Nancy Facebook page, because I find it charming. This week I was amused by this strip from 1942.

This was part of a storyline about a wishing tree, but this was the only strip that was political/topical

Of course, cultural history isn't all I want to talk about.

On Tuesday night, I helped clean the Bountiful Temple, which I personally find more edifying than temple ordinances. As we were departing, one of my ward members pointed out a bat in the temple's atrium. 

This cat is obsessed with me. He's sitting on my lap as I type.

As trail season comes to an end, I have had to get more creative about what kind of cardio I do. Though there's snow in the higher elevations, the flat areas are snow free. I spent a couple of nights by the Legacy Nature Preserve.

But that gave me an idea. A few times I've visited the Bear River Bird Refuge near Brigham City, and I loved it. I thought it would be cool to ride my bike there. And this seemed like the perfect time of year for it—no snow yet, but also no bugs. So yesterday (Saturday), I packed my bike in my car and headed up.

As I biked along, I literally said out loud, "This is amazing!" I could not have asked for a better day. I have seen more birds on other visits, but I saw lots of seagulls, a couple of pheasants, and lots of duck-like birds. It was a wonderful bike ride. It was only twelve flat miles, so it didn't feel like much of a workout. I only have a mountain bike, but I don't mountain bike, so I thought it was a good opportunity to ride on a dirt/gravel road.

We think of Utah being dry and barren, so it's always fun to see all the water there, even though I know it's probably lower than it should be. I was disheartened to see all the phragmites growing, since they wreak havoc on the ecosystem.

And here are this week's dreams, which I think are less entertaining than usual.

a guinea pig latches on to Mark's finger with its mouth

Mark tells a pop singer how much he likes her song "Disease"

Mark visits a multilevel rundown building with many businesses, one of which has a leaky pipe

Mark is annoyed that a giant water cooler has leaves in the water

Mark goes into a fast food restaurant and bookstore that is rundown

an angry Pegasus

on Halloween, Mark wins a raffle for charity by guessing 15, but he doesn't know what to do with the certificate

Mark carries his friend, who is dressed as a vampire

Mark collects a snowball to put in his hot chocolate, but it melts in his hands

a restaurant doesn't accept tips and gives our New Year's appetizers [I usually type these on my phone, and I don't always catch the autocorrect. It's supposed to be "out" instead of "our."]

a man goes back to his elementary school to learn about National History Day from his kindergarten teacher and his first-grade teacher

an ice cream shop sells pumpkin ice cream with Hershey's Kisses and pumpkin ice cream with pumpkin cake pieces

on Christmas night, Mark walks to his friend's house in the snow, and he takes off his shoes

Mark forgot to take the song "Witches' Brew" out of his playlist after Halloween

Mark acquires Charlie Brown shoes and a Valentine's elephant Squishmallow made of hearts

***

Here we are at the penultimate installation of pumpkinundation roundup. 

Our North Salt Lake location was out of the Firehouse Subs Thanksgiving Turkey Sub, so I had to go to the Millcreek location. It was amazing! It has turkey, stuffing, and cranberry sauce. But I think it's overpriced. 9/10.

I like the crust on the Kroger Pumpkin Spice Pie, but the filling is just kind of weird. I give them props for including (a small amount of) pumpkin puree and dried pumpkin. 5/10.

My goal is to go to every restaurant in North Salt Lake, and we just got our first Starbucks. I don't drink coffee, so instead I got the Starbucks Turkey Sage Danish. I really enjoyed the pastry part; it was soft and chewy. The turkey sausage was good but forgettable. 8/10.

And another new NSL business is on Redwood Road, where I got the Big Bites Bread Pumpkin Roll. It was fine, but it didn't taste much like pumpkin, and cinnamon rolls aren't my favorite kind of sweet. (In fairness, it was a day-old one, because that was the only seasonal flavor.) 6/10.

I used to buy multiple bags of Trader Joe's Thanksgiving Stuffing Seasoned Kettle Chips, but I don't anymore. The novelty has worn off, and I don't eat that many potato chips. 6/10.

I've had Trader Joe's Harvest Blend Herbal Tea in the drawer for years now. As a Latter-day Saint and an American, I just don't know how to drink tea. It's so bland! This time I put milk in it, but that didn't help any. 4/10.

On my way home from the bird refuge, I stopped to get this Burger Stop Pumpkin Cheesecake Shake. It had chunks of cheesecake (not actual cheesecake, but the cheesecake bites you get in things like this). It was great! 8/10.

Dashing through the snow

It wasn't a super eventful week, but sometimes that's nice.

On Monday, I ran on the Wild Rose Trail, which, depending on the weather in the next few weeks, might have been my last trail run of the season. Sigh. Trail running is a hobby that doubles as exercise. Other forms of exercise are just exercise.

Tuesday was snowy, so I went swimming. At other times this year, I have practiced swimming with the recreational swim team. But with the time change, I've been trying to maintain my old sleep schedule, so now the swim team goes too late for my taste. I just swam on my own, and I was able to swim my fastest 350 consecutive yards, so that was nice.

Also on Tuesday, we noticed that the Fall 2024 issue of Utah Historical Quarterly went online, and the physical copies will go out soon. This issue has a bit of a Thanksgiving theme, complete with a turkey on the cover, and we worried it wouldn't be out in time for the holiday. But it made it!

On Wednesday, I biked up the steep roads in North Salt Lake and Bountiful to the top of Summerwood. One of the problems with biking is that I get hot when I'm going uphill and then cold when I'm going downhill. One of many reasons I prefer running to biking. I got a good case of helmet hair, even though I don't like talking about hair.

I also did some reading, but it is hard to read when someone is trying to lick your chin.

On Thursday, I woke up late after sleeping poorly, and there wasn't anything I care to mention here.

On Friday, I shared an academic article with my colleagues that shows how "Jingle Bells" was originally written as a blackface minstrel song. Yes, really. In the nineteenth century, sleigh riding was a common fad in New England, and there were lots of minstrel songs about Black people riding sleighs. They were meant to be "funny," because the performers/audience thought it was preposterous for Black people from the South to do something associated with white people in the North.

I think about "Jingle Bells" at this time of year because in 2014, I decided to add the song to my Thanksgiving playlist. I had seen numerous sources claiming that it was originally written for Thanksgiving. That is a legend that has mainly been debunked. But the legend is still part of the culture surrounding Thanksgiving, just like the Pilgrim story, even though the Pilgrim story has little to do with Thanksgiving. But what I do know for certain is that when "Jingle Bells" was written, sleighing was very much part of Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving was seen as a wintry holiday in the nineteenth century, and an ideal Thanksgiving consisted of church, family meal, and sleighing. When you go back to the song's origins, it has as much claim for Thanksgiving as it does for Christmas. I have versions of the song performed by at least seventeen artists.

The article only came out in 2017, and I only learned about it a year or two ago. So what do we do with this knowledge? It wasn't written for Thanksgiving or Christmas, and in fact it was written for horrible reasons. For now, I'm not going to do anything different. Devoid of context, the lyrics are innocuous, if frivolous and irrelevant to the twenty-first century. And we often change things from their original context to make them more palatable—the fact I can call myself "queer" is a testament to that. But this is something we need to think about.

On Friday evening, I went to Provo for the release party for the next issue of Wayfare. I formatted every footnote and proofed every word of the issue. I'm enjoying the lull before work begins on issue 5. It was at the Compass Gallery, which I had never been to. There were a lot of people there. The editor in chief acknowledged me to the crowd as "the reason there are no typos"—which means I'll be embarrassed if there are in fact typos.

I obviously didn't take this picture, since I'm in it

On Saturday, I found that I had time to make an apple pie for a Friendsgiving I'm going to tonight, using the apples in the fridge from our neighbor's tree.

How come the uncooked version looks better than the cooked?

And in the evening I went on a street run, which isn't as fun as a trail run, but I still saw a pretty sunlit mountain.

Last month, my parents visited my aunt and uncle in Flowell (Fillmore). My uncle (aunt's husband) likes to go out in the desert and pick pine nuts, so he gave my parents a paper bag full of the nuts.

I spent some time last night shelling them, which is a very time-consuming process. I can't help but wonder if he gave them to my family so there would be less work for them. I barely made a dent. This seems like a good thing to do while watching movies.

Don't worry, I shelled more than this

And here are this week's AI dreams. There were a few nights this week where I didn't remember my dreams.

Mark patiently waits his turn to climb the ladder to talk to the king of England, but the king ends his interview time

the orange man haphazardly unscrews a building, which makes the walls spin around and a fire almost starts (I had to say "the orange man" because it wouldn't let me say "the president-elect")

parents teach their babies to swim by strapping them to boards

Mark lingers at the pool because he lost his barcode sock (I do actually have barcode socks in real life)

Mark cleans up the sacrament, and Bryce says he wants to put mirrors in the sacrament preparation room

a building at BYU has zip lines for people to get around

an awkward, frumpy singer named Jan is the inventor of Squishmallows

the Invisible Man is chained in Mark's house

Mark wants his ward to assemble feminine hygiene kits, but there aren't enough bottles of vanilla

Mark tries to wipe his green glasses clean while reading infuriating policies

***

This is the antepenultimate pumpkinundation roundup! I have wanted to use the word "antepenultimate" for years, and I even put it on my calendar so I wouldn't forget. 

I love Merriam-Webster

I also realized that I never changed my blog color scheme to orange and black for pumpkin season like I usually do, but it's not worth it this late in the season.

Arby's has two deep-fried turkey sandwiches for the season, and the Arby's Deep Fried Turkey Club is the better of the two. I don't know what else to say except that I enjoyed it. 7/10.

I don't know whether Franz Cranberry Bagels are made special for the season or not; my parents brought them home this week. They're OK. I'm disappointed they use food coloring; why not let the cranberries speak for themselves? 6/10.

The Steak Express Pumpkin Pie Shake tastes like it might have actual pumpkin in it, which is always nice. 8/10.

I love trail mixes, but I've been buying fewer of them. However, the Favorite Day Candy Corn Crunch Trail Mix was on clearance after Halloween, and I consider candy corn a Thanksgiving candy as well. I love the mix of salty and sweet, but the raisins and candy-coated pretzel balls feel like filler. 7/10.

I'm glad that Ghetto Gastro Sweet Potato Toaster Pastries come individually wrapped, unlike Pop-Tarts, so I don't feel obligated to eat two at a time. I also like that they have a pie on the box. They seem classier than Pop-Tarts, but that doesn't necessarily mean better. 7/10.

The Favorite Day Pecan Pie Hot Drink Bomb is very cute. But it looks like chocolate, even though it's white chocolate. If they're going to just add food coloring, they could choose a shade of brown that looks more like a pecan pie. It doesn't really taste like pecan pie. 6/10.

I was disappointed in the Arby's Pumpkin Pie Turnover. The pumpkin filling is nice, but it's overpowered by the bland, flaky pastry. I've never loved Arby's turnovers. 6/10.

And I didn't really like the Arby's Gobbler Sandwich. The sauce and cheese had weird flavors. 5/10.

I really enjoyed the So Cupcake Apple Pie Cupcake, but I can't say that it tasted like apple pie. It had a little crust on the bottom. For some reason, eating a glob of buttercream in a snowstorm made it feel like Valentine's Day. 8/10.

A lot of Favorite Day (Target) fall products have Thanksgiving marketing, including the phrase "Give Thanks," yet they go on clearance after Halloween. Weird. And what's also weird is Favorite Day Pumpkin Spice Peanut Brittle. First of all, peanut brittle is not something I thought needed to be pumpkin-ified. And second, does anyone actually eat peanut brittle? These had a bland, almost stale flavor. They're just spice, not pumpkin. 4/10.

I bought two bags of Trader Joe's Thanksgiving Stuffing Seasoned Popcorn last year, because I was intrigued, but this year I only bought one bag. It has a nice flavor, but I'm not dying to eat it. 7/10.

I had Favorite Day Pecan Pie Whipped Dairy Topping on apple crisp (and then forgot to put it on the pecan pie hot drink). I'm not sure why they bothered, because it's impossible to get the gooey, nutty goodness of pecan pie into whipped topping. 6/10.

I didn't like Trader Joe's Butternut Squash Ravioli as much as the pumpkin version, but it was still good. 7/10.