Entertaining

Julia Sneden wrote: "Being outdoors on a humid North Carolina night amid fireworks and fireflies has become my favorite July Fourth memory. Oh, these days I am happy to watch the various displays on television, in air-conditioned comfort, but it can’t replace seeing my boys’ awed faces, or the sound of their “oohs” and “wows!” or the relaxed, casual feel of the impromptu crowd. It was Carl Schurz, a 19th century German immigrant who grew up to become a US Senator and later on was the Secretary of the Interior, who gave us the famous remark: 'My country, right or wrong: if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right.'  " more »

"Newspapers were still read on trains and in libraries, but the contest for news supremacy lay in the domestic space. News was something that came to us, that occupied our homes. It tied us constantly to the turn of events happening outside our protective four walls. Local radio and television arose, following newspapers in serving audiences who understood themselves as much regionally as nationally. The multi-format, domestic model began to be overturned at the turn of the century. The Internet has become a platform for all established news media (press, television, radio) and has led to the creation of new news media forms. Social media combines personal and general information, serves as a distribution platform for stories from the other news media while delivering original content as well, and supplies content on which all news media now depend." more »

"Menus are minor, transient documents that tell us how people have dined outside the home over time. Examine one and be transported back to the everyday life of the past - whether to a lavish banquet in the Gilded Age or a food-relief eatery during the Great Depression. They aid our cultural memory by providing historical evidence, not only of what people were eating, but what else they were doing and with whom they were doing it; and what they valued." more »

"Imagine walking into your local grocery store on a frigid January day to pick up freshly harvested lettuce, fragrant basil, juicy sweet strawberries, and ripe red tomatoes – all of which were harvested at a local farm only hours before you’d arrived. You might be imagining buying that fresh produce from vertical farms where farmers can grow indoors year-round by controlling light, temperature, water, and oftentimes carbon dioxide levels as well. Generally, fresh produce grown in vertical farms travels only a few miles to reach grocery store shelves compared to conventional produce, which can travel thousands of miles by truck or plane." more »