Flavors of History – Alma Boykin

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

*Note that this post is a re-run of a post first published in 12/8/2016. But it fits in well with our run of recent posts, and I thought it bore repeating*- SAH

Flavors of History – Alma Boykin

In the beginning there was vanilla, and it was . . .

OK, correction. In the beginning there was olive oil on flat bread with goat cheese, better known as Herodotus. He really does deserve the title of the Father of History, in the sense that he did research, interviewed people who had traveled, and made clear what he knew to be fact, what he had been told was fact, and what he suspected was conjecture. As far as Western history goes, he is the first general historian, and we might say the first social historian, since he wrote about unusual people way over there and what they did. He could also count as an anthropologist, back before the two sides parted company. In China, I’d count Sima Chin as the first historian who was not simply compiling king lists or writing on oracle bones. He is a political historian and intellectual historian, writing about monarchs and the good and bad things they did and if they accorded with his preferred philosophy. No, he wasn’t “objective” but back then historians weren’t supposed to be.

The next major Western historian was Thucydides, a military and political historian. In fact, political and military history dominated the field for quite a while, if you focus outside the Christian Church. People who could write tended to be churchmen and/or affiliated with royal or princely courts. The most important things going on involved ruling, challenges to ruling, inheritance, and how good the patron was. As a result, we tend to find pious descriptions of saintly monarchs (Alfred the Great) interspersed with descriptions of battles and marriages and offspring, or accounts of how horrible the previous monarch was and how G-d, in His mercy and grace, allowed the current claimant to the throne to overcome the bad monarch and replace him. Buried within the accounts, we find nuggets of what moderns consider history.

During the early middle ages (say, 1100s – 1300s or so) we find a lot more national histories written. These are descriptions of the long history of the Bohemians, or Magyars, or Britons (although the English and Welsh started early with Gerald of Wales and the Venerable Bede tracing things back to the Trojan War). The goal was to show how long a nation had been in the land, and how noble and dignified their ancestry was, thus locking in their claims to territory and respect from other, less worthy peoples and rulers. This is when the Magyars staked their claim to Pannonia based on descent from wandering ancestors related to the Huns and farther back, to the sons of a princess and an eagle. The Bohemians didn’t go quite that far, settling on a princess in the 600s or so (pre-Magyar and German) and a plowman. The Kieven Primary Chronicle dates to this period, skipping the mythology for the most part.

Until the 19th Century history focused on what we call today political and military history, with some diplomatic history wrapped in, and historical biography. When people grumble about “history is just dead kings and battles” they are thinking of this sort of writing. But the people writing histories were not interested in “objective” history. They were recording events in order to support a certain side, or to justify certain actions, or to explain why their side won (or lost). And the most important things to the literate people who were not businessmen and women, or clergy, were politics and wars. Politics and wars shaped everything in the world of the nobility and upper classes, international trade and diplomacy, and even some religious matters, so that’s what you wrote about. And that’s what interested the people who had enough extra money to hire scribes to write family histories and accounts of events. A few individuals wrote diaries and detailed accounts of events that they participated in, like Samuel Pepys (most famously), a latter-day version of the old monastic chronicles, but they were not writing history per se and did not claim to be.

Then along came the professional historians, first Gibbon, and then most importantly Leopold Von Ranke, who ordered his students to go into the archives and government documents and write down things as they really happened, no favoritism or glossing. And political history, diplomatic history, and nibbles of economic history appeared in the form of trade histories. The American diplomat George Perkins Marsh wrote the first environmental history in the 1890s, with the book Man and Nature where he compared the descriptions of the Classical world with what he observed as an ambassador, and described what he thought had happened and why. After WWI people began turning away from the older kinds of history, looking below the level of monarchs and ministries, to see what had been going on in departments, counties, parishes, and villages. The French in particular started combing through local records, digging up anything they could find and trying to make sense of it. Called the Annals’ School because of the title of the journal where the first of their work appeared, the French also began looking at the longue durre, the extended stretch of history of places and peoples.

After WWII, with the surge of new people coming into the universities and more access to archives and new tools to analyze things, history either exploded or shattered, depending on how you view things. Political and military history still led the field in terms of respect and number of practitioners, as the box on my office floor containing the full paperback set of Samuel Elliott Morrison’s history of the US Navy in WWII can attest. Governments still funded historical writing. But economic history emerged as an official specialty, and environmental history, women’s history, Marxist and labour history that looked back at the working classes, and peasants and slaves and serfs to tell their story (E. P. Thompson most famously), religious history that didn’t focus on the development of theology or advance a pro-denominational thesis, corporate history and industrial histories, much better histories of non-Western places with South Asia, China, Japan, and so on developing their own standards and patterns and conventions, geographically focused histories such as American West or Borderlands, and new takes on older writings. Medicine developed its own history that lapped into social and political history. Military history shifted from how battles were won and lost into the daily experiences of soldiers, and of civilians around the soldiers, to histories of logistics and supply, how warfare affected society and shaped culture (see Victor Davis Hanson’s early work), and war-on-the ground like John Keegan’s Face of Battle.

Historians also began nibbling, then gulping, the tools of other fields. We crunched numbers and developed Cliometrics, history based on statistical analysis that could be amazingly useful when it worked and miserable to read when it didn’t. We pestered the archaeologists and the Dark Ages turned into Late Antiquity as more and more continuity appeared in the historical and archaeological record, plagues, invasions, and the climatic downturn in the 500s-600s notwithstanding. We harassed geographers (OK, we’ve been doing that since Herodotus), plagued engineers, annoyed ecologists and foresters and naturalists, irked physicists and chemists, “borrowed” from archaeology and linguistics and hydrology and anyone else who forgot to lock up their journals and research notes, and came up with some wonderful results. And some not so wonderful results.

Today, late 2016, you can find a historian looking under pretty much any rock you mention. Music historians, art historians, historians of ideas, environmental historians, historians of sex (not as exciting as it sounds), historians who write about people and animals, historians of water, or fire (Stephen Pyne and yes, that is his real name. He was predestined to go into fire science and pyrohistory). Is this good or bad? It can lead to some pretty dead-end research, because the PhD requirement is to either find something new, or refute something old. Classics and political history especially have grown some pretty esoteric-to-questionable branches, in my opinion. But it also means that anything is fair game for anyone, and you can find works about all sorts of fascinating and odd and intriguing and “that is so cool!” things and peoples and places.

Of course, I’m the poster bad example for someone who could not focus in graduate school and who still refuses to specialize to the extent required by academic standards. So you might not want to follow my lead.

136 thoughts on “Flavors of History – Alma Boykin”

  1. Your last paragraph inspired a voice in my head to say “you are just retired, you are not dead yet.” I’ve refused to stay specialized up to now, so what next?!?

    1. Everyone absolutely should refuse academic-style specialization. Academia sucks.

      That said, if some particular thing is your jam and you WANT to specialize in it, by all means, do. Just remember that the modern academy is dedicated to two things above all: manufacturing compliant leftists and grinding human souls into fine powder to be dispersed on the wind. And there’s significant overlap between the two. (You’ve been around the block and no doubt already know this; it’s just my personal observation and advice to any who may be wide-eyed and innocent as I once was.)

      Also, I notice that the comment box is behaving more like the WordPress writing/composition interface…not sure I’d call that a good thing.

      1. Everyone absolutely should refuse academic-style specialization. Academia sucks.

        My aunt, post teaching retirement, which was post SAHM -ish (after youngest succumbed to birth defects, ’67 – ’80). Specialized in Family history, which tailors with Oregon History, and US history. The two books she has written have been distributed beyond family. But not much. OTOH most books written by academics don’t get distributed beyond the students they are teaching, if that.

        Her research has also put her on more than a few state commissions related to the topic. Also been invaluable to the maintenance of the historical graveyard. Who knew that the county is liable for keeping access roads to graveyards maintained, even ones surrounded by private land. The 501(c) has been putting down gravel on the hill approach to the graveyard, and occasionally on the farm/ranch road access from the highway, for decades (even before the 501(c) creation which then was paid for with “pass the hat”). Means the money can go to things like fence replacement to keep cows out. Or getting the historical highway reader board replaced. Turns out it was not legal for the 501(c) to replace the board, then it was, now PTB responsible finally got around to it. Suppose to be in place, finally. Whether it got put back where it was (which was a lousy location), or about 36′ yards north, will find out in May. At least the danger-to-the-headstones dead trees just over the property line are finally gone (again, not legal for the 501(c) to deal with, that had to be the current surrounding private land property owner, and yes they were informed).

        1. Yep, that’s the “unless.” And it’s also a pretty good answer to anybody that says history doesn’t have much practical use.

      2. I have just discovered a new YouTube creator called Books n Cats, which is what it says on the box. The lady is British and has a doctorate (I’m assuming English) and is using to talk about stories by authors such as Shirley Jackson and Anne Radcliffe (the creator of gothic fiction) in lovely, well-delivered plummy accents, with a tortie calico by her side.

        *This* is how you learn new things. You find an expert who loves to talk about them, and you listen to them.

  3. Food for thought, although some may promptly choke on it:

    SCOTUS
    Trump v. Anderson (23-719) (Per Curiam)
    Because the Constitution makes Congress, rather than the States, responsible for enforcing Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment against federal officeholders and candidates, the Colorado Supreme Court erred in ordering former President Trump excluded from the 2024 Presidential primary ballot.

    https://www.supremecourt.gov/

    1. “…as if millions of Red Leftroids cried out and were suddenly donkey-slapped…”

      1. Many, yes. Though given that the decision was unanimous, some lefties obviously had a modicum of common sense.

        Note that while the three leftie justices voted that the states couldn’t arbitrarily declared someone an insurrectionist, they didn’t join the opinion. They declared (understandably, imo) that a court conviction for insurrection would suffice.

      2. Sima Qian (Chin) is an interesting individual. He’s also known by his self-declared title of The Grand Historian.

        His History of the Grand Historian was his life’s work. As one might expect in ancient China, he worked as a court official. He was fired by the Emperor, and under Confuscionism, fired court officials were supposed to committ suicide. But Sima wanted to finish his history. So he took the only other option available, and had himself castrated. Being a eunuch allowed him to avoid the need to committ suicide.

        Talk about dedication…

        Good thing, too, as his History was the only (very biased) information we had on Quin Shi Huan, the First Emperor, up until a few decades ago.

  4. Oh, for the Love of Life Orchestra. This is just me, and it’s not as if I deserve your attention, but this little detail has grated for a long time: Why in the name of Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett does every (and AFAIK, it is every) consideration of the beginning of history as a field of learning IGNORE THE EARLY PROPHETS?! The books of Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings are nothing if not history, but they’re treated practically as mythology simply by virtue of being included in Scripture, and assumed to be entirely religious and propagandistic in intention, even less respected as sources than the early medieval national histories cited above. Well, anyone whose “goal was to show how long a nation had been in the land, and how noble and dignified their ancestry was, thus locking in their claims to territory and respect from other, less worthy peoples and rulers” would never have come within faxing distance of, e.g., the book of Judges, which reads as almost the exact opposite. As historians, Joshua, Samuel, and Jeremiah are quite the equal of Thucydides when it comes to maintaining a level of objectivity. So there.

    1. “We should study this dramatic known-fictional poem written hundreds of years later to figure out what they were going off of. But this history book over here? Nah, completely ignore it, and if we find something that seems to line up, ignore that, too, as tainted.”

      Yeah, annoys me, too.

    2. Judges, in particular, simply says, “so-and-so did such-and-such,” without much other commentary. And gives interesting little tidbits in passing – such as the patriarchal society having a female judge (Deborah) who must have been a pistol: when her chosen military commander, Barack, refused to go to battle unless she went with them, she said, “Fine, but now you won’t get credit for killing Sisera (the enemy general). He will be killed by a woman.”
      And so he was, by treachery -basically an assassination. But the scripture simply reports how it happened (and that Deborah made a victory song out of it).

    3. It’s interesting to read or watch those that include the Bible in their research. Since I will probably never visit the ME, I end up following various travelers, that do like the gentleman that has the Expedition Bible channel on YouTube.

      https://www.youtube.com/@ExpeditionBible

    4. In his several books on the Roman Legions, Stephen Dando-Colins does cite biblical sources for information on Legions.

      I recommend “Caesar’s Legion” a detailed look at the Tenth Legion, and “Legions of Rome” a history of every Legion.

      Great stuff.

      1. There’s also Josephus, who IIRC basically paraphrases much of the Old Testament/ Torah until it ends, and he’s forced to turn to other sources for his history.

    5. A couple of reasons that the Greeks and not Children of Israel get counted as the first historians. 1. Rome cited the Greeks, and far more people read Latin, and later Greek, than read Hebrew. 2. There were some questions about how factual the Jewish histories were as compared to the Greek and Roman accounts, because without archaeology, it was impossible to ground-truth the Torah and later books. 3. Jews didn’t get academic positions until the 1600s or later, so their understandings and knowledge were locked out of what became academic history.

      There’s also the language problem. Several Jewish scholars I’ve read or talked to are frustrated because Hebrew lost the meanings of some words. Later scholars and readers/speakers have the general sense of the terms, things like “wilderness,” but exactly what was meant, and why, are not as clear as for other languages. So there are some things in Judges, Kings, and Chronicles that might well be vital distinctions for political terms or diplomatic language that are unclear. Back in the 1800s and early 1900s, that was a much bigger problem for historians than it is today.

      Today, we struggle with the question of how much of the history portion of the Tanakh is oral tradition later compiled and perhaps shaded, and how much is trustworthy. With the medieval chronicles we can look at documents from surrounding polities as well as archaeology. Unless it is Egyptian, Mesopotamian, or perhaps Linear A or B, we’re at a loss for who was recording the history of the Levant besides the authors/compilers of Judges, Kings, and Chronicles.

      1. There was an incident when the Assyrians besieged Jerusalem, and eventually collected some tribute and went away. It made it into the Hebrew scriptures. But I’ve read a source that quoted the account of that siege in the Assyrian records. The Assyrians presented it as a glorious victory, in which they trapped the Jews in their city and then got tribute from them. But the scriptures also present it as a victory (for which God is to be thanked)—because the Assyrians went away, and Jerusalem was still standing.

    1. “environmental history”

      I guess they didn’t give a dam about the salmon.

      1. Check out Geoffrey Parker’s “Global Crisis” and Jonathan Schlesinger’s “A World Trimmed in Fur.” Some very cool stuff.

        And if you don’t care about salmon and their relatives, you lose freshwater pearls….

        1. obscure monty python reference snicker
          “But I didn’t have any salmon”

  7. Don’t forgot about Googles AI History, where anyone of consequence gets pigment “fortified” and actual facts may hurt someones feelings.

    1. It finally gave us the diverse Nazis that I’ve been predicting for the last few years.

  8. Off topic. Does anyone else think that the Biden regime’s ire toward Israel this week … see the camel’s latest spew …. has more to do with the regime wanting a ceasefire, any ceasefire, for Thursday’s State of the Union than an actual increase in their hatred for the Jooos? I note that they tried to tie the none of the above vote in Michigan to the kill the jooos crowd’s dissatisfaction about Gaza, but it seems it was the rank and file UAW and not the KTJC ™ which is why it’s gone from state media.

    1. Keep in mind that much of this year’s “paleo” protests are the same cosplay wannabe revolutionaries as in 2020.

      Different face-diapers, same turds.

    2. it’s a possibility. I suspect his handlers really, really want a Nobel Peace Prize to burnish his campaign.

      1. “And the Nobel Peace Prize for emptying Latin and South American Prisons goes to” drum roll, “Joe Biden” crickets from the crowd.

    4. Maybe. But I’m also remembering the problem that the administration is having with their anti-Israel / pro-Palestinian lobbies. These groups keep screaming about a genocide, and there was a big bunch of noise last week about the turn-out in Michigan (which apparently wasn’t all it was cracked up to be, based on the turnout for Obama in 2012, but still…). Going all in for Gaza will screw them over with the bulk of the voters, who are sympathetic toward the Israelis. Ignoring Gaza will get them in trouble with their own base.

      There’s probably also a feeling in the administration that it needs to be seen as doing something after the airman set himself on fire recently.

      1. And oh, hey, it’s another ad on YouTube that’s designed to tug at the heart strings for the Palestinians.

        I’ve been seeing a lot of them lately.

        1. We should tug on Ham-ass heartstrings.

          Like angry vengeful Harkonnen.

          (grin)

          “POP goes the weasel!”

          [1984 movie reference]

          1. Anybody got Mola Ram’s number? I’m sure he’d be happy to tug on their heartstrings.

            [Temple of Doom reference]

  9. And the Supreme Court *unanimously* ruled against Colorado removing Trump from their ballot. As someone commented, when you can get Ketanji-Brown and Clarence Thomas to agree on something…

    1. They’ll just get a federal judge in Hawaii or DC to do it. It was a very narrow decision based on federal supremacy and the leftists tried to dissent but couldn’t make it work. if they had been ANY basis in law they would not have voted for it. Those people are only in favor of consolidation of power in their hands and won’t share it with anybody. The states overstepped and had to be put in their place.

      Still, a good day.

      1. I don’t think having a Federal Judge in Hawaii or DC do it will stick, at least if they try to do it with a simple stroke of the pen. From what I understand, the majority opinion (yes, it was a unanimous ruling , but apparently the Leftist judges did not contribute to the opinion) stated that an individual needs to actually be convicted of insurrection in a criminal court before they can be declared an “insurrectionist” and removed from the ballot; a state legislature (and, presumably, a judge) can’t simply declare a person to be so.

        Now, having said that, I fully expect Trump to be indicted for insurrection in New York or Hawaii or D.C. within the next few days and railroaded through the most blatant kangaroo court show trial in over a century before the election, possibly before the Republican National Convention if they can move fast enough.

        1. The minority said a criminal court was required. The majority required an act of Congress, IIRC.

          1. I have a (stupid) question.

            Did President Trump stop being President on Jan. 6th? Or Jan. 20th when current flakes were sworn in?

            Just wondering.

              1. Even better.

                Then how is a President an insurrectionist?

                Asking for a friend who is confused.

                1. It can happen. Let’s say proof emerged that Biden was about to allow Chinese troops to set up garrisons in every major US city, and start policing them according to Chinese laws. I think that would qualify as presidential insurrection. It’s not likely, I don’t think the Chinese have the manpower to attempt it, and it would probably fail miserably even if they did. But it works as an example.

                  1. Another example that’s perhaps slightly more relevant (both due to recent history, and the threats that some people on the left have actually been making) –

                    On January 6, 2025, Congress gathers together to certify Trump’s election victory. Knowing that the Republican majority in Congress will correctly carry out its designated Constitutional role, President Biden orders a military unit recently deployed near DC to seize the Republican (and possibly some Democratic) members of Congress and block them from carrying out their duty. Only Democratic members of Congress that the administration believes will certify the election for Biden (despite the electoral vote tally) are allowed to participate in the process.

                    This, of course, is what the left claims Trump attempted to do on Jan 6, 2021, albeit with a mass gathering of protestors. It’s also what some on the left are declaring *should* happen if Trump wins in November.

        2. President Trump spent 2 months scrupulously following all the procedures laid out in the Constitution and the law for challenging a questionable election. He tried to present evidence of election fraud in multiple courts, all of which refused to even look at it. For this, he was attacked and vilified by the media, academics and most of the political establishment including the RINOs.

          [Gag] Hillary is celebrated for sniveling for the last 7 years that the 2016 election was ‘stolen’ but Trump is condemned for presenting evidence that the 2020 election was stolen.

          He also missed a golden opportunity in the first <i>farce</i> debate with Biden:

          Biden: “Will you promise that your supporters won’t take to the streets after you lose in November?”

          Trump (in an alternate timeline): “Wait a minute. Now wait just one damn minute. Whose supporters have been rioting and burning down our cities for the last 6 months? Huh? They’re not mine. That’s not my circus, and those are not my clowns, so whose are they? C’mon, man, tell me that. Whose supporters are they?”

  10. /Good post. But what’s this “NEW, IMPROVED!!!” commenting format? Is WP trying to out do Windows for increasing obscurity? Let’s see if this gets through…

    1. Well, it got through; looks like the WP-generated “/” can be deleted if all that’s wanted is simple text. Do the original emojis work? Let’s check a few and see… 😈 👿 😡 😉 🙂 😆

      And of course, WPDE.

      1. Oh. How does one get all these icons? Know how to get a couple. But not all.

        😈 👿 😡 😉 🙂 😆 (Copy works, obviously. But how to originate?)

        3. <I>Windows users on version 8 or newer have a special touch keyboard with emoji support. On the keyboard, press and hold the Windows button and either the period (.) or semicolon (;) until you see the emoji picker appear.</i>
          🍜🍥🍙🍘🌸

          🦊💥

          5. According to Hoyt – come for the carp, stay for the emoji wars. The Reader ducks.

            1. ❤💟💜💙💚💛🧡🤍💖🌸💐🏵🌹🌺🌻🌼🌷☘🍀🍁🍃🦊🐱‍🐉🐱‍👓🐾🦚🐉

              …

              Did you say something? I got kinda distracted…..

              2. Was I actually the first-in-thread to mention emojis?!? OMG, I believe I’ve created a monster! And it *works* It’s *alive*!!! BWAHAHAHA! 😜🤦‍♂️👀

                I need a drink…😉

            1. (Classic charger “vroom” and car-horn playing “dixie”)

              Narrator: “looks like they done released … the crackers….

              (Singing)”Just the Good ol boys… never meaning no harm….”

      1. Thanks; great and frightening changes (to coin a phrase 😉 ) indeed. And now I’ve discovered that I can still “just start typing” just as before; I don’t have to start with a “/” and then delete it.

        And it looks like there are new ways to format text that don’t require html – a benefit IMHO. Plus being to include angle brackets as simple text is nice; I’m used to using them to denote such things as <cough, cough…>, <nudge, wink>, etc.

  11. <I>historians of sex</I>

    Clearly they do not work at the British Museum. I burnout in museums. At first, I’m interested in everything but after the second hour or so, I’m practically running through the exhibits.

    To my great regret, I didn’t photograph the display of “baby bracelets” from a Roman outpost in Britain. They (yes, more than one) were well polished rings of stone that may indeed have fit on a baby’s wrist. Given their (apparent) weight and lack of clasp, I highly doubt that was the intended use.

  12. I remember a comment from my professor of Russian History and Military History in college, who made the statement that while his dissertation had been on Danzig 1939, he actually had learned more as an undergraduate.

    I toy with the idea of a second Master’s in Classical Studies, mostly for my own interest. Hopefully I can avoid too much specialization at that level.

    1. What I get a kick out of is some senors going back for the degree. Pushed their children and grandchildren into it, now retired, figured they needed to set example for great-grands. Now they are in history classes for periods They Lived Through. Granted for paternal grandmother she was auditing the class but when the professor brought up the depression years, or WWII ration cards, and imparted less than truthful information, lets just say there were leading questions and a lengthy discussion.

      I think I’ve mentioned that both sets of grandparents barely noticed the depression years. Because where they were there was no noticeable difference (deep rural Oregon, deep mountain Montana). Paternal grandfather might have been more aware of it, but IDK as he has been gone since I was 2 (1890 – 1959).

      WWII ration card usage for maternal grandparents in Steamboat Springs Colorado, was different than deep rural Oregon for paternal grandparents.

      1. Same thing for my parents and grandparents in small town Arkansas. They were close enough to where the food was grown (and lots of it, they were growing/ hunting/ gathering) that they could keep body and soul together.

        My mother’s family may have had more, just because they had to pay taxes on the farm.

        1. Growing up I always heard “can’t afford meat”. Child me? 🦌🎣You buy meat?

          Not that our backyard was particularly prolific garden (black berries variety, yes, everything else, not so much). But great-uncle was sure willing to share. Besides u-pick strawberries, green beans, and corn, were just down the way. There is a reason I do not can vegetables.

      2. Yeah, different stuff going on in different parts of the country. The sole nod toward any of that in my high school history book was a quick quote from a member of a family that hadn’t been hit too badly by the depression, but felt bad about seeing others in a bad situation due to it.

  13. Speaking of flavors of history… I recently discovered a You Tube channel titled Tasting History with Max Miller that attempts to recreate historical recipes — everything from Civil War era hardtack to the breads and stews consumed by the Roman legions to the “coronation chicken” salad created for Queen Elizabeth II, to the original spicy hot chocolate of the 18th century. Every episode is a combination cooking lesson and history lesson and the host has just the right balance of serious info and humor. One of my favorite episodes focused on coffee during the Civil War and the various substitutes soldiers and civilians (particularly in the South) came up with when real coffee was in short supply.

      2. One persons horror is another persons recipe book.

        Spending much of my childhood on the farm where the animals were raised, harvested, prepped, cooked, etc ,along with going on hunting/fishing trips which were for food, nothing of this startles me.

        One of my uncles father was a German Master Butcher before he came to settle in Texas, so we learned how to make/cook everything. Everything. 47 different types of wurst. 

        We almost never bought meat. Or veggies. Or bread. Everyone raised chickens include many with town jobs. Dairy farm was down the road. There were orchards within driving distance.

        One of my nieces still lives on a farm. Last time she visited, she harvested some of our fat suburban squirrels. Probably has already made blood bread, if not, she will be excited to try.

        1. I also grew up on a ranch.

          One where we were familiar with pathogens, and how they interact with a nutrient rich resource, as well as the various risks of different mediums.

          And that is before the I-shouldn’t-have-to-explain-it symbolism is involved, just as though I’m not Jewish I am disgusted by the idea of boiling a calf in the milk of its mother.

          Something does not have to be “startling” to be disgusting.

      3. I haven’t seen that one yet…. guess I’ll skip over it.

        Re Civil War coffee, some folks tried substituting various other grains or herbal plants with mostly disappointing results. During the show Max himself tried a substitute made with dried sweet potato and rye grains, which ended up tasting like sweet potato tea. The only wartime variation that survived is the chicory coffee that is still a thing in New Orleans.

      1. Grampa Pete was Danish, but he wasn’t into Viking food. OTOH, he loved Akavit, but I found it almost undrinkable. On the gripping hand, I’m starting to get a Jones for some lingonberry preserves. It’s been way too many years since I’ve had any.

        1. My wife loves them too; maiden name Landstedt, so not really surprising… 😊

          Search Amazon for “lingonberry preserves”; quite a few hits.

      3. That… hm. There’s a whole bunch of why would you even in that entire thing.

        I can almost understand on a “not wasting any available calories” level, but it really seems more like a “we do this to terrify our enemies” thing.

        It was interesting(?) how the proofed dough turned a light brown and the finished bread went back to red though.

        1. Given that they were going against Christians?

          Yeah, I’m betting it’s Scary Symbolism.

          And/or the blood was, er, specifically chosen. Given grave good.

          1. Oh, right. He did say it was found in a grave.

            How to convince the Christian thralls you didn’t use as ingredients that they can’t escape their master or the old gods no matter how hard they try?

        1. I do, and did. Had it as often as it was available when I was in Scotland.

          But I like black puddings and blood sausages of all kinds. I’m Odd.

          1. Taste of my childhood along with all the other piggy offal that comes of being the descendent of pork butchers. Packet is what they call it in Limerick. Drisheen is what the foreigners down in Cork call it. You eat it with tripe. Absolutely revolting if you haven’t been eating it all your life. It’s sort of gelatin like, unlike the normal black pudding that you fry up for breakfast.

            1. When we finished a largish project at HP, the leader would get us to a restaurant for lunch (charged to the project’s overhead, so better than burgers ‘n fries). One of those meals was a Dim Sum lunch. I liked most of it, but tripe was not what I wanted to eat.

              Not sure it went over well; didn’t hear of any Dim Sum repeats for other projects the person ran.

              (And the WP(DE) fancy text box didn’t show this time. WTF?)

    4. Love his channel. I’ve also watched a few of Ketchup With Max & Jose, the other channel with his partner who has the Pokemon stuff (and made a few) that are usually in the background.
      Also, I can’t hear “Hard Tack” without seeing him clacking two together in my minds eye.

  14. I started learning about history for two reasons. On one hand, I was a libertarian (and still am), and a lot of libertarian arguments focused on things like the historical meaning of the Constitution, the realities of the market economy as opposed to the folk history, and so on. On the other, I was in the first generation of Dungeons and Dragons players, and I wanted more detail on things like the costs of fortification in the Middle Ages than the third volume offered, so I started reading things like The Cambridge Economic History of Europe. Then both sorts of curiosity branched out, from economic history to legal history, military history, history of technology, history of science, social history (before it came Oppressed Minorities history), and eventually even back to political history. I’ve ended up doing some unsystematic but informative reading in scholarly sources—I prefer the good ones to popularizations, if only because I like the denser prose style, and the attempt not to say things that exceed the evidence.

    1. Public school did a pretty good job of giving me a reflexive aversion to “history.” Then, in my early 30s, I picked up a copy of “The Guns of Krupp” by William Manchester, thinking it might be about guns. It turned out to be a history of Germany from the early middle ages through WWII.

      It completely changed my view of “history” from rote and sound bites to viewing it as a stream of connected events.

      2. Took 2 history classes in college. First one had a huge text book required, Western Civ 101 (no not American history). Wasn’t boring reading. Class OTOH was boring as heck. Kept book intending to spend some time reading it once out of college. I think I still have it. The other was History of the Native Americans from pre east coast colonies through late 1800’s. Not boring class. Instructor kept the class engaged and entertained. No text books (darn it). Series of handouts, which have disappeared, darn it.

    1. The Reader read that. His take away is that Wolf is looking for the next group of ‘cool kids’ now that the left isn’t any more.

      1. Or, perhaps legitimately redpilled, at least enough to step away from the abyss.

        Note a key point in her writings. The left is vengeful, often savagely, of apostates and deviants. The modern Right is welcoming of folks moving in our general direction. We will debate and say “that aint right”. But we are not rending flesh over points of dispute among folks of goodwill, for the most part.

        Sure. Plenty of fair-weather friends and summer patriots.

        But you really cant tell until the snow is drifting who is a winter stalwart.

        1. The Reader has noted elsewhere that Wolf, Matt Taibbi, Joel Kotlin and others appear to be ‘purple pilled’. They pine for the era where it appeared that the model for the US should have been Scandinavia, or the 90s here. They are recoiling from the horror they see, and have become truthful chroniclers of that horror, but do not yet grasp their contribution to the creation of that horror. The Reader isn’t going to push them away, but he is a long way from embracing them as allies in the struggle to restore the Republic

            1. “The enemy of my enemy is my enemies’ enemy. No more, no less.”

              Rules for maximally effective mercenaries.

            2. Co-belligerents that the Reader believes we should encourage to go all the way to the ‘red pill’ with the understanding that many will not get there. For those here who read ‘The New Neo’ or American Digest before Gerard Van der Leun passed last year, you appreciate how hard that journey is.

  18. Specializing to academic standards…

    I’m not sure I’m for it, I am not sure that I am against it.

    It is functional, it gets results of the sort we have previously decided were good enough, and I have concerns about weird problems with surprising answers that need more of a generalist eye.

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