Tuesday, December 29, 2015

Familiar Flavors

Grandma Madie and me with the day's catch.
Kannapolis, N.C., c. 1972.
When I moved to Sapelo Island, Ga., in 2005, my new husband began trying to teach me about the old ways of hunting and cooking and eating. I had to let him know that, although I was a city girl, I grew up fishing with my dad, and I watched him and my uncles go hunting early in the morning in North Carolina, and bring back sacks of rabbits and what-not. I looked on as my grandmothers battered and fried fresh fish and cooked possum, rabbit and squirrel. My grandparents had large gardens with greens and tomatoes, beans and peas, and they cooked from scratch. These experiences, these flavors and foodways made Sapelo feel like home to me. 

Monday, December 7, 2015

Slave Ship Animation

Stowage of the British slave ship Brookes under the regulated slave trade act of 1788
Library of Congress Prints & Photographs
A lot of websites claim they'll blow my mind. I'm usually disappointed. But the slave ship animation on the site Voyages: The Transatlantic Slave Trade Database got my attention.

Each dot represents a ship packed with kidnapped and tortured human beings -- mothers and daughters, sons and fathers -- leaving Africa, crossing the Atlantic to the Americas to be enslaved.

I watched from beginning to end, and I will never be able to wrap my mind around it.

Click on the "Animation" tab.