Pumpkin-carving season

Autumn is upon us, and with it comes pumpkin-carving season. Maybe you’re planning to load the family up into the car and head out to your local pumpkin patch to pick out the perfect decorative squash to adorn your front porch. I remember pumpkin carving with my dad and brother when I was a kid – Dad would roast the pumpkin seeds in the oven, and we’d enjoy the salty treat for days after.

I’m reminded, too, of one of the oldest and most beloved Halloween tales that even the youngest among us recognize to this day – “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” starring that most bone-chilling of villains, the Headless Horseman. The jack-o’-lantern features prominently in this story, which has spooked Halloween revelers for more than two centuries.

“The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” was originally published as a short story in 1820 by Washington Irving. Set in 1790 in a Dutch settlement in New York, it tells the story of Ichabod Crane, a lanky schoolteacher who also is highly superstitious. Ichabod plans to win the heart of a young woman named Katrina Von Tassel, the daughter of a local wealthy farmer, and secure the family’s riches for himself.

The Von Tassel family invites Ichabod to a harvest party, where he competes to win Katrina’s affections alongside Abraham Van Brunt, the town bully (think Gaston from “Beauty and the Beast”).

Headless Horseman

At the party, Abraham regales the crowd with the story of the Headless Horseman, which legend says is the ghost of a soldier decapitated by a cannonball during the Revolutionary War. The horseman is buried, he says, in a churchyard nearby, rising every night to look for his missing head. The horseman is only unable to cross a bridge that stretches across a stream along the way, barred by otherworldly forces.

Ichabod leaves the party on horseback later that evening after being rejected by Katrina; on his way home, he encounters a mysterious cloaked rider, who chases Ichabod and his horse. Ichabod crosses the bridge, while the horseman, unable to cross, hurls his severed head at the terrified schoolteacher and his horse.

The following morning, Ichabod’s horse is found, but Ichabod himself is nowhere to be seen. The story implies that the horseman was actually Abraham, Ichabod’s romantic rival, who flung a jack-o’-lantern at Ichabod as a false head – a smashed pumpkin was found close to the bridge.

September is National Library Card Sign-Up Month

September is National Library Card Sign-Up Month, and if you’re a lifelong reader like me, you know there’s no better feeling than getting settled down and started on a new story to inspire your imagination.

I was that kid who, every week in elementary school, would accompany his class to the school library and browse the stacks for a new book or two in which to lose myself. And when those Scholastic Book Fairs rolled into town? Hoo, boy, I was in hog heaven, taking my allowance to school and coming home with a book or two in hand.

As I got older, I enjoyed venturing out to our local library. I felt like such a “big kid” when I finally got my library card. It felt like a pass to magic and adventure. I loved walking into the library, soaking in the silence (except for the sound of the librarian pushing her cart of books across the floor). The smell of all of those old books was a comforting one, the feeling matched in intensity only by the feeling of excitement when I found a new tale to enjoy – or even an old tale, tried and true, that I had read dozens of times (hello, “Charlotte’s Web”!).

Libraries take on even greater importance

Today, libraries take on even greater importance when we view them as bastions for free thought and places where the battle against censorship rages every day. In recent years, they’ve been caught in the crosshairs of social and political upheaval. Read any news article or watch any news program these days, and you’re sure to come across at least one story about a book being pulled from shelves for one reason or another.

And yet, in spite of our changing social and political landscapes, libraries exist with the same missions as they always have.

“Across party lines and across the political spectrum,” writes Emily Drabinski, president of the American Library Association, in the ALA’s 2024 ‘State of America’s Libraries,’ “the vast majority of people love their libraries for the ordinary and extraordinary work we do each day: connecting people to reading and resources, building businesses and communities, expanding literacy across the lifespan, and making great Saturday afternoons.”

For generations, circuses have given the American public the chance to forget their troubles and be entertained by physical comedy, fantastic feats of derring do, and pure magic. And for more than a century, the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus has been synonymous with all three.

During a span of 50 years in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the circus had only existed as the Ringling Bros. World’s Greatest Shows. But in 1919, the Ringling Bros. circus merged with that of Barnum & Bailey’s Greatest Show on Earth. Created by the legendary showman Phineas Taylor Barnum and James Bailey, the merger occurred more than a decade after Barnum’s death. Much of today’s modern audiences were introduced to Barnum in the 2017 musical “The Greatest Showman, the title character famously portrayed by Hugh Jackman.

Earlier in his career, Barnum achieved notoriety as the creator of an immeasurable number of hoaxes to get people in his seats and their money in his pockets. Among his ludicrous claims – that one of his shows included an interview with George Washington’s 161-year-old former nurse. In reality, the 80-year-old woman was a blind and nearly completely paralyzed slave woman named Joyce Heth. When Heth died, Barnum charged onlookers a 50-cent admission to view her live autopsy.

Also part of Barnum’s circus was his “freak show,” a menagerie of human curiosities that included albinos, giants, exotic women, and little people, the most famous of whom, a young man with dwarfism named Charles Sherwood Stratton, was billed as “General Tom Thumb,” whom Barnum coached on performing in front of live audiences. Barnum took Stratton on a tour of Europe, where he met Britain’s Queen Victoria, and a tour of the U.S., where Stratton and his wife, a young lady named Lavinia who also had dwarfism, met President Abraham Lincoln at the White House.

From its beginning, Barnum and Bailey’s circus mesmerized audiences with a team of variety performers, acrobats, clowns, tigers, lions, and, at its center, “Jumbo,” who Barnum marketed as the world’s largest elephant. The circus traveled the world, surviving the Great Depression and by this time known for setting up its very own big tent at every tour site. The fun under the big top was affordable, too, a place of escapism to a Depression- and war-weary public.

After World War II ended and the 1940s gave way to the ‘50s, the circus came up against its greatest challenge so far – the advent of television. To keep the show’s expenses down as their audience numbers dwindled, circus executives abandoned the big-top tent that had become one of the show’s primary features, now moving their performances to indoor venues instead.

In 2024, July celebrates its 40th anniversary as National Ice Cream Month, so grab a spoon and enjoy a heaping scoop while I share a bit about its history.

July as National Ice Cream Month

President Ronald Reagan designated July as National Ice Cream Month in 1984, while naming the third Sunday in July as National Ice Cream Day (so, this July 21, help yourself to that extra scoop of butter pecan). It makes sense that Reagan, himself a lover of sweets like the classic jellybean, would bestow this honor upon the month.

Locally, one of my favorite events associated with ice cream is the annual Vaile Mansion Strawberry Festival in Independence, MO, which occurs every June. Besides scrumptious strawberry ice cream being served to attendees, the festival also includes craft and antique booths, a classic car show, and baked strawberry treats. Still, it’s the strawberry ice cream that always seems to be a hit every year.

Using ice cream as the unifying element of a welcoming party or community gathering (as in an ice cream social) only makes sense, since it’s so universally beloved. The ice cream social can trace its roots back to 1744, before the birth of America itself. Thomas Jefferson was the first president to host an ice cream social in 1802 at the White House.

Like so many other items we take for granted in today’s world, ice cream was once a treat reserved only for the rich and influential. However, like those same items, it became easier to produce and thus more affordable and more available with the arrival of the Industrial Revolution of the 19th century. It’s been a treat synonymous with summertime ever since – and we Americans delight in it, with the average American consuming about 20 pounds of it – that’s 4 gallons – each year.

The most popular ice cream flavor in the country

Proving that when it comes to sweets, Americans are largely traditionalists, a September 2023 article published on delish.com lists good ol’ vanilla as the most popular ice cream flavor in the country (President Jefferson is often credited as the first American to produce an ice cream recipe, actually). Chocolate takes the number two spot, with cookies ‘n’ cream at number three, and my favorite – strawberry – at number four.

Ice cream, of course, populates a special place in our memories of cherished summer days with loved ones. When I was little and my grandparents came to visit, my grandfather always took my brother and I to a small Dairy Queen store a few minutes away from home, where we’d lick vanilla cones while he would enjoy a banana split.

This month’s cover story relays the history of outhouses, those quiet but stinky outdoor private places where everyone did their business in the 19th century.

First, however, I’d like to fast-forward through time to the mid-20th century, a time when tackiness could be found in every room of one’s house, from aspic in the refrigerator to shag carpet in the living room. The bathroom wasn’t spared from trends on which we now can look back and laugh, either. Conversely, some of the bathroom trends with which you grew up are ones you may remember fondly.
Good or bad, here are a few trends you might recall:

Carpet: Like nearly everything made since the Industrial Revolution, as the volume of carpet produced rose, its price soon saw a dip. In the postwar era, carpet production boomed, and American families in the suburbs snatched it up as it became more affordable. Despite its new affordability, however, carpets seemed to convey luxury and comfort.

Sometime during the 1960s, wall-to-wall carpeting in one’s bathroom became a desirable option – heightened risk of mold growth be damned. By the 1970s, shag carpeting had made its way onto toilet lids and even toilet seats as well (I shudder with revulsion at the thought, don’t you?). The garish trend finally died out during the 1980s. And speaking of which:

Padded toilet seats:

Most sources seem to agree that David Harrison invented these in 1993, though I’ve always thought they were older. Maybe that’s because my grandparents had them in every bathroom of their house. I can still hear the pppfffttttt sound the seats made when I sat on them.

Colored toilet paper: Who wants to wipe their tuchus with boring white toilet paper when mint green toilet paper exists? It was one of a rainbow of pastel colors in which toilet paper was made. The 20-year period between the 1950s and the 1970s saw the use of toilet paper in colors such as pink, blue, green, brown, and another shade of brown. In the ‘70s, however, doctors warned of the dangers of the dyes found in these colorful rolls, and the paper was summarily flushed away, lost to time.