Robin R. Cutler's Blog

Such Mad Fun–An Audible Challenge

“Congratulations! You’re invited to participate in KDP’s beta for audiobooks.” The April 3 email offered me (apparently one of a select group of randomly chosen authors) the chance to produce an audiobook version of Such Mad Fun using virtual voice narration. Perhaps I didn’t focus enough on the word “beta.” What that meant is that Kindle Direct Publishing’s process of using virtual voice for eBooks was in its final stages of development and “may not function perfectly.” The offer was tempting. I had thought about an audiobook, but the cost seemed prohibitive. This was free. So I decided to try it out.

The first challenge was choosing a voice. This particular story needs a feminine narrator. Did I want one between 30 and 40 years old or between 40 and 50 years old? Should she speak in an American English, southern American English, British or perhaps an Australian English voice? (I have a British voice talking to me on Alexa and it’s very refreshing.) After testing out a few voices, I chose an American English 40 to 50 year-old — selection number eight.  

The second challenge was correcting pronunciation that Ms. 8 did not get right. That took weeks though listening to the whole book takes just eight hours and 40 minutes. You can also add pauses and eliminate things that occur in print but sound strange in an audiobook like the word “sic” when something is misspelled in a quote. It’s not perfect, but most of the book is smooth listening. When reading a poem, or the caption of a picture that the listener cannot see it’s a little clunky. There may still be a few mispronunciations that have slipped through. And of course there are no appendices, bibliography etc. in the audio version. 

This whole process got me thinking about all of the voices that are now on the devices in our lives and where they come from. Virtual voices are a specific application of AI-powered text-to-speech technology. What are we learning from the ubiquitous voices like those of Jessie on TikTok, Siri on your iPhone (both based on recordings by real people) or on Alexa where most users choose a female voice?

I highly recommend a provocative article in T, The New York Times Style Magazine (5/18/25) by Susan Dominus. The print title is “How Should a Woman Sound?”  The online version asks “Has the Internet Changed How Women Sound?” The voices we hear on a daily basis on our devices may impact the way women are perceived. In many cases, that’s deliberate.

Susan Dominus refers to an early-20th-century guidebook for telephone operators who needed to keep their voices “soft, low, melodious,” and, above all, the operators were always to be nice and helpful.* Those guidelines have not completely changed as is evident when you use Siri and Alexa, “both forever placating, always even-keeled.” Jessie (TikTok) on the other hand is “loud and proud; she’s a pill, so wholly artificial she’s transcendent — entirely above seeking male approval.”

There is now an audible version of Such Mad Fun available on Amazon, Audible and Alexa for $4.99. If you do not subscribe to Audible there’s a chance Amazon might up the price, but so far that hasn’t happened. You can hear a free sample of the Such Mad Fun audible book on the Amazon sales page for the book.  Ms. 8’s voice seemed the closest to Jane Hall’s voice. Not at all shrill, somewhat low and melodious. Not a bad listen if you would like to be immersed in the magazines and movies, women’s aspirations, and popular culture of the 1920s through the 1960s. 

*One of Dominus’s sources was the PBS American Experience program on the History of the Telephone

Not All Memorials are Monumental: A 1917 Captain’s Tale and a Red Poppy

Not all Memorials are Monumental, Paris 1917

August, 1917      Not All Memorials are Monumental– The Red Poppy

He called himself Andy. He was an American Army captain from southwestern Virginia on a journey in the French countryside. When he picked up his pen with its fine point on August 21, 1917, to write to Rose Sutton Parker, he had apparently just traveled into the country by auto from one of the finest hotels on the Left Bank. The Hotel Lutetia, completed in 1910, was the proud creation of architects Louis-Charles Boileau and Henri Tauzin. The Art Deco façade has now survived two world wars and its rooms have been home to dozens of artists, literary figures and refugees who fled from the Germans during World War II. https://www.hotellutetia.com/

Andy’s handwriting on the letter (transcribed below) is elegant and the stationary is as well. He wrote to Rose only using her name on the envelope. Perhaps he did not want to write “My dear Mrs. Parker,” as might have been expected. Rose was then, at thirty-four, separated from her husband, Lieutenant Hugh Almer Parker. She adored Europe and, between 1912 and 1917, spent much of her time in France, England and Spain. And through the decades she kept this letter until she died in 1958.

The captain enclosed a red poppy from the fields of France in his letter to Rose. I am deeply touched at the sight of this flower in perfect, if flattened, condition more than a century later.  We grapple now with new kinds of war, with illness, deprivation and violence that remains as shattering to the human spirit as World War I. Our current wars are so hard-edged and high-tech. There is no room for pressed flowers in news reports of these conflicts. This letter, like so many others written by hand in the last century, adds a touch of civility and humanity to the situation it describes. Andy is present on the narrow pages of his four- sided hotel stationary in a way that cannot be replicated on a computer. In a few decades, what will remain of the e-mail correspondence or text messages from our troops? We cannot e-mail or text a flower.

Two years after receiving this letter, Rose married another man, a Virginia gentleman and attorney Robert Randolph Hicks. A few years later, just before the Depression hit and decimated their savings, they created a small slice of Europe in the Virginia countryside that is now Poplar Springs Manor. The Hotel Lutetia, where a small, temporary bond was created between a black-eyed ebony- haired beauty and an Army captain, remains a four-star hotel to this day.

But who was Captain Andy—is that Andrew? — and where is his family now? Who is writing  poetry from our current steel-edged conflicts?  Robert Service, whose work he recommends to Rose, was a British- born Canadian poet whose brother died in France in August, 1916. I’m still looking for the Robert W. Service poem that mentions the poppies.

And I still remember my mother, Jane Hall ,reciting the Service poem, “The Shooting of Dan McGrew,” which this eloquent, sensitive captain wanted his new friend, my great aunt and surrogate grandmother to read.* Though foxholes, rodents and vermin have been replaced by IED’s and high tech weapons, the poppy remains a symbol of  hope and remembrance to this day.

Red poppies sprang up all over the graves of fallen soldiers in World War I. They are memorialized in a famous poem called “ In Flanders Fields” (1915) from another Canadian poet, John McCrae. A remembrance poppy is still worn in the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth in honor of military veterans who died in war.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47380/in-flanders-fields

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45082/the-shooting-of-dan-mcgrew

*Rose and her husband adopted my mother and her brother when they became orphans in 1930.

 

A TRANSCRIPT OF THE LETTER FROM FRANCE August 1917

Envelope

Mrs. Rose Sutton Parker

100  Boulv.  Montparnasse

Paris, France

Hotel LUTETIA   Square du Bon Marche   43 Boul. S  43 Boul. Raspail  Paris

Aug [ust] 21, 1917

You should see your “cher capitaine” maintenant, seated at a rough table on a chair converted from a box and smelling the smell of stables, pigs et “tout les choses.” Really though this trip is the most wonderful experience of my young life. Sunday morning about ten we left the train and went by auto to the Headquarters 10th French Army. It was a trip of 40 kilometers through a country tres tres jolie. Rolling country, divided into many fields, large trees and excellent roads. The landscape in general is not unlike that of my own Southwest Virginia – you know I came from the mountains, not the flat cotton peanut part of the state – it was hard to realize that the peaceful country colored green and brown by God’s hand was three years ago laid waste by hands of hostile Huns and that only 20 kilo distant great guns were belching forth death and destruction with their tons of lead and iron.

My melancholy, serious thoughts did not last for long and soon I was dreaming just of the country without any thought whatever of people or things, other than very personal and intimate things. I thought about Italy and I dreamed a foolish wonderful dream of two people being sent to that country for special services. In my romantic hours I dream of being connected with plots, intrigues, and of combating secret agents. In the land of dreams I will live in a château and will profess adoration for a beautiful someone who has lots of information and I will buy the secrets of a nation with just smiles. This seems to be the most foolish letter I ever wrote and I write things that I never say. I’m a sort of modest person you know and can’t say very well the things I dream.

Sunday afternoon we went to the front, that is the artillery front, and stood by while cannon thundered and roared. Boom-szzz-a flash then a cloud of dirt and smoke and I wonder how many legs and arms were smashed and thrown up into the air. One of our aeroplanes would fly over and soon several black puffs would appear in the sky. No sound of powder or sight of fire but a realization that death was very near for someone. When a German plane came we could see our batteries fire and watch the explosion of our shelves.

We went to a ruined château that had one time been in “no man’s land.” It must have been a wonderful place before the war. There was an artificial lake that had been surrounded with statuary. Everything was broken and ruined. A marble woman lay on the bottom of the stone steps. Her head lay ten inches from her body, her right arm, shoulder and half her breast was gone. The break was very clean as if it had been cut away with a sharp sword. Her legs and lower trunk lay in the water and was covered with green stuff so I was foolish enough to imagine that her skin was gone in spots and that the green stuff was powder gangrene. People who live in the U.S. and people who live even in Paris don’t know what this war is. What had been a beautiful lawn in front of the house was torn to pieces with shell holes and though I didn’t see any, I imagined pieces of humanity covered and buried in the debris. Have you read the poem (Service’s) about the Red poppies of No Man’s land.  [?] I picked this one for you.

This place where I live was the house of the village butcher. I have a bed about 5 feet from the floor. The principal covering is a big red feather bed. We eat at the artillery Hdqrs. Mess 10th Army. I like the open country with the pretty fields and beautiful trees but I hate those dirty little towers.

Yesterday we saw some more anti-aviation batteries and inspected many dugouts. For the most part they are the same. Merely a hole in the ground with some straw. It will be hard for me to live in a hole with a great grey rat – or several – for a bedfellow. And the little grey bugs – a skunk is better than a man in the trenches because God gave him powers for combating such vermin.

You must read the poem “The Shooting of Dan McGrew” because he tells how dirty a man can get “all covered with hair” and “in a buckskin shirt that was glazed with dirt, he sat, and I saw him sway.” That means that the man was dirty but it might be called a “clean earthy dirt” while our soldiers are filthy with vermin.

Lady, pretty soon I’ll have you feeling crawling things and wanting a bath, so I shall stop. Really I have written a very long letter don’t you think?

We will probably return to Paris on Friday and I hope I can see you Saturday evening. We will be in Paris next Sunday.

Sincerely yours,

Andy   [post script] The flower seems to stick to the card

Immigration in Context

To my readers:  I have not posted for a long time but hope to do so more frequently in the coming months. Various medical adventures and other distractions of living on the west coast through the pandemic have kept me from focusing on this blog. My grandsons are now teenagers; actually on a college tour as I’m writing this. And a lot of my time has been spent sorting through boxes of family papers that have some interest outside this family and sending them “home” to archives in New York, Arizona, Southern California and Virginia. More on these papers soon.  In the meantime, thank you all for hanging in here. I came across this post that I wrote in June 2018. Unfortunately, it seems to resonate even more today.  For some of us, the current situation in the United States is discouraging and quite scary right now, whether we are recent immigrants or had families arrive centuries ago.

While exercising in a pool several years ago, I noticed a small brown beetle floating in the water that was still alive. There was a toy football on the edge of the pool, so I let the beetle climb on it and placed it in the shade. It seemed relieved. Not two minutes later a four-inch lizard came out of the bushes and grabbed the beetle; it stood staring at me for quite a while with the creature in its mouth. Then it flicked a sassy tail and proudly carried it away. Relief? Pride? Is this too much anthropomorphic thinking? In any case, what a no-win situation for a desperate beetle. 

I’d been watching the news before I went to the pool that day. (Oh how I miss that condo and pool.)  Perhaps inappropriately, this little incident made me think of all the anguished parents and children struggling to stay alive in perilous conditions, coming here to the USA to be rescued and not finding a safe haven; instead they have been swallowed up in our chaotic bureaucracy. And now, in 2025, they face even more peril.

Yes, immigration has been on our minds lately. (And it’s even more on our minds seven years later.) The unending humanitarian crisis is one that, for most Americans, tears at our heartstrings. Still it is useful to put this refugee crisis in some historical perspective and to understand the way our debates over this subject in the past reveal who and what we are as a nation. Two articles I came across gave some broader context to the thousands of men, women and children streaming into the U.S. from Central America. Yesterday’s New York Times (6/23/2018, B1) looks at migrants on the rise around the world and the myths about them that are shaping our attitudes. One conclusion is that “people perceive there are more immigrants than there really are.”

The late Peter J. Duignan wrote a thoughtful survey of the complex history of immigration in America (1780-2003) for the Hoover Institution.  No matter what your perspective is on what we should do about immigration, the historical background provided in this study is invaluable in 2025 just as it was in 2018.

I was also curious about attitudes towards those who hoped to escape from persecution by coming to the U.S. during the late 1930s when my mother Jane Hall worked on screenplays for Louis B. Mayer in Hollywood. According to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum website, after World War I, “America’s restricted immigration laws reflected the national climate of isolationism, xenophobia, anti-Semitism, racism, and economic insecurity.” The 1924 Johnson Reed Act—in place until 1965—set quotas on the number of visas available for specific countries. “The quotas were calculated to privilege ‘desirable’ immigrants from Northern and Western Europe. They limited immigrants considered less ‘racially desirable,’ including southern and eastern European Jews. Many people born in Asia and Africa were barred from immigrating to the United States entirely on racial grounds.” And there was no formal refugee policy at all. In late November 1938, 72% of Americans responded “no” to this question: “Should we allow a larger number of Jewish exiles from Germany to come to the United States to live?” And, after July 1941, when “the State Department centralized all alien visa control in Washington, DC . . . emigration from Nazi occupied territory was virtually impossible.”  We know how that turned out. And in the light of recent comments by our current vice president made in Germany in the last week, maybe we should pause and reflect on this history again. 

These brief forays into our immigration past revealed that much of the language being used in 2018 and even more in 2025 in our heated and bitter current debates, both pro and con immigration, is language that has been used before. Those who wanted to put the most stringent limits on immigration have often stoked fear in the minds of Americans that their jobs will be taken away, or that their neighborhoods will be threatened by crime. But the opposite of anthropomorphizing is dehumanizing. In none of the bare-bones research that I did was there any reference to an American president who described families seeking freedom and safety within our borders as “animals” who want to “infest” our country. That was seven years ago. And it’s heartbreaking to hear the language being used by the same president now in power again.  We have a border crisis that must be solved. With humanity. 

A note: For those of you wondering where moral leadership and the “better angels of our nature” lie in these divisive times, I STILL highly recommend Jon Meacham”s best seller The Soul of America. 

Indian America: A Gift that Keeps on Giving

This blog has been fairly quiet since I moved to the West Coast along with the pandemic in March 2020. It’s been a complicated transition! But what a joy to be nearer my daughters and their families.

Growing up in New York and Virginia, I remember my mother’s interest in Native American culture, particularly that of the Hopi Tribe, a northeastern Arizona sovereign nation. Jane Hall adored her childhood home in Arizona; she had learned about the Hopi from her father, Dick Wick Hall, who spent time with the tribe as a young man. She often supported Native American causes. A hand painted sign with green lettering was propped up over the kitchen sink admonishing us never to judge anyone until you have walked a mile in their moccasins. That worthy sentiment may or may not have had a Native American origin.  

So when I roamed around my great aunt’s farm as a naive early tween hoping to spot an arrowhead in the tilled soil, I was torn between pretending to be an Indian brave or Hopalong Cassidy with silver cap pistols. Usually the brave won out. At age nine I had a stereotypical image of what it meant to be Native American. But I made my own bows and arrows out of pliable lilac bush branches, and often clambered up on the rusty tin roof of an equipment shed near the barn to shoot these limp arrows at the farmer. On one grim occasion, he had just chopped the head off a chicken. I watched in horror as the headless bird ran around the yard.

Fast forward to the 1980s when I was a program officer at the National Endowment for Humanities in Washington, D.C.  Working in public programs, I noticed how few film, television and radio stories were told from a Native American perspective. One of my first adventures on leaving the Endowment in 1989, thanks to the generosity of the Rockefeller Foundation and NEH, was a journey to Neah Bay, WA, a census-designated place on the Makah Reservation, at the northwestern tip of the United States.

Over the next few years we had the privilege of working on a documentary film with the members of an extraordinary community. Our production team included Native Americans and non-Indians. Collaborating with the Makah was an unforgettable experience for all of us. These were not Native Americans who used bows and arrows or fit any of the TV and toy store stereotypes of Indians that had been so prevalent when I was a child and long afterwards. That’s why it seemed so important then (as now) to have their story reach a large public audience. This past June the significance of the Makah’s Ozette archaeological site was examined in depth by Brendan Sainsbury for the BBC in a lengthy illustrated travel article, “Ozette: The US’ lost 2000-year-old village”.

As Sainsbury notes: “The Ozette dig lasted from 1970 until 1981 and ultimately unearthed around 55,000 artefacts from six beachside cedar houses covered by the slide. The Makah, like many indigenous groups, have a strong oral tradition, with much of their history passed down through storytelling, song and dance. The evidence unearthed at Ozette affirmed these stories and added important details. “It was a spectacular place to excavate; the preservation and richness was extraordinary,” recalled archaeologist Gary Wessen, a former field director at the site who later wrote a PhD dissertation on the topic. “Ozette is what we call a primary deposition. We have all these materials preserved in the places where they were actually used. It helps tell us more about the social and spatial relationship of the people who lived in the houses.”

The Ozette site is also the focus of A Gift from the Past, which aired on PBS nationally in 1994. The film is still shown daily at the Makah Museum.  I just learned it’s  (Click to see the film.) This link will give you an opportunity to explore a unique culture and an archaeological discovery that was unlike any other in American history. All of the 16mm film footage for A Gift from the Past was donated to the Makah.

Not everyone you see on the screen is still here, but they are alive in our hearts. We are grateful to have met these remarkable people many years ago. One of these was Isabell Ides who lived to be 101. The little girl in the picture on the left is her granddaughter, also Isabell Ides, who lives in Neah Bay with a son about the same age that she was when the film was made.

To order a DVD of this 58 – minute documentary contact  makahmuseum@centurytel.net  <> Better still try to visit Neah Bay, WA

Happy Holidays and thanks to all of you!  We will be back soon with more unusual journeys through history.

 

 

For Native American Heritage Month: A Gift that Keeps on Giving

This blog has been fairly quiet since I moved to the West Coast along with the pandemic in March 2020. It’s been a complicated transition! But what a joy to be nearer my daughters and their families.

Growing up in New York and Virginia, I remember my mother’s interest in and appreciation for Native American culture, particularly that of the Hopi Tribe, a northeastern Arizona sovereign nation. Jane Hall adored Arizona and had learned about the Hopi from her father, Dick Wick Hall, who spent time with the tribe as a young man. She often donated to various Native American causes. A hand painted sign with green lettering was propped up over the kitchen sink admonishing dish washers never to judge anyone else until you have walked a mile in their moccasins. That worthy sentiment, which I took to heart, may or may not have had a Native American origin.  

So when I roamed around my great aunt’s farm as a naive early tween looking for arrowheads in the tilled soil, I was torn between pretending to be an Indian brave or Hopalong Cassidy with silver cap pistols. Usually the brave won out. As you can see from the snapshot on the left, at age nine I had a stereotypical image of what it meant to be Native American. But I made my own bows and arrows out of lilac bush branches, and often clambered on the rusty tin roof of a shed near the barn to shoot these limp arrows at the farmer, who, on one grim occasion, had just chopped the head off a chicken. (I’m still rooting for the chickens.)

Fast forward to the 1980s when I was a program officer at the National Endowment for Humanities in Washington, D.C.  Working in public programs, I noticed how few film, television and radio stories were told from a Native American perspective. One of my first adventures on leaving the Endowment in 1989, thanks to the generosity of the Rockefeller Foundation and NEH, was a journey to Neah Bay, WA, a census-designated place on the Makah Reservation, at the Northwestern tip of the United States.

There I had the privilege of working on a documentary film with an extraordinary community.

A Gift from the Past, which aired on PBS nationally in 1994, is now  Our production team included Native Americans and non-Indians. Collaborating with the Makah was an unforgettable learning experience for all of us. For decades A Gift from the Past was shown at the Makah Museum. For their story is timeless. Hopefully, the link above will give you an opportunity to explore a unique culture and an archaeological discovery that was unlike any other in American history. All of the film footage for A Gift from the Past was donated to the Makah. Not everyone that you see on the screen is still here; we are so grateful to have met them many years ago.

And after the holidays, I hope to be back on track with more journeys through history.

Happy Holidays and thanks to all of you!

 

 

Such Mad Fun- Travel back to the Golden Age of Hollywood in this unforgettable award-winning story

What determines who a woman will become?

Jane Hall was an orphan at fifteen and a “literary prodigy” according to the press. How did this daughter of Arizona’s most popular humorist become a Depression-era debutante, a successful author of magazine fiction, and a screenwriter at Hollywood’s most glamorous studio? Jane soon found that her ambition conflicted with the expectations of her family, her friends and the era in which she lived. Devastated by the loss of her parents, how long would it take Jane to trust her emotions and love again?

Read the full story in the new book Such Mad Fun: Ambition and Glamour in Hollywood’s Golden Age by Robin Cutler.

“A valuable, absorbing contribution to the history of women, golden-age Hollywood, and America’s magazine culture of the 1930s and ’40s.”
— KIRKUS starred review and a Kirkus Indie Best Book of 2016

Unsure? There are even more sample  reviews.  

Such Mad Fun was the 2016 Foreword Indies Gold Award Winner for biography.

See https://awards.forewordreviews.com/books/such-mad-fun

And see this excerpt in Vanity Fair!  

Contact the author through this website

BOOKSELLERS MAY ORDER FROM INGRAM

Amazon

Hardcover Paperback Kindle Barnes & Noble Hardcover Paperback Nook iBook iBook Store Kobo Kobo Store

 

The Power of the Press in the Sutton Case

THE ICONIC MAHAN HALL OPENED IN 1907. ORIGINALLY BUILT TO HOUSE THE MAIN LIBRARY AND AUDITORIUM WHERE PLAYS AND LECTURES TOOK PLACE, IT IS A LECTURE HALL AND HOME TO THE USNA MASQUERADERS. 

“Governmental actions should be neither secret nor unjust. . . . If we cannot get justice through the courts, every newspaper in the United States shall have the facts as we have them and then see what the opinion of the world will be.” Rosa Brant Sutton

A Soul on Trial  Rowman & Littlefield  (2007)

Rosa Sutton’s statements reveal why this story mattered so much a century ago—and why it should now. The need for government transparency on matters unrelated to national security is central to democracy. In this extraordinary case, the secret element was what was not examined and what was not said at the initial 1907 naval investigation into Sutton’s death (or what was not in the official record).  Secrecy is often behind a person’s alleged failure of memory when that failure is convenient. And Americans’ weapons against government reticence have long been its journalists.

In this case, an unknown Oregon housewife had opportunities that her mother would not have had a generation earlier. At the end of the nineteenth century, the nation had become a neighborhood, and its newspapers proliferated. New modes of transportation and communication led to the exploding population of America’s cities. “Public opinion” was no longer confined to the educated middle classes—a vast urban and immigrant population now turned to morning, afternoon, and evening papers for information and entertainment. For reporters, the story of a heartbroken mother confronting a military bureaucracy proved irresistible; the paranormal aspects of the Sutton story only added to its potential to fascinate.

It was the job of the papers to be guardians of democracy and the legal system that is key to making democracy work. A century ago, men and women, including public figures, depended on the newspapers for the most basic information—even information about their own family members. Telephones were still not used widely. In a very real sense, the press corps became a third protagonist in this story.

Rosa Sutton’s story would compete for attention on the new wire services with the Wright brothers’ daring flights, urban calamities, or any one of several grisly criminal trials. All the major New York papers followed her campaign, including respectable ones such as the staid Evening Post and the New York Times. The case also stimulated the decade-old circulation war between Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World and William Randolph Hearst’s New York Evening Journal.

The 1909 Sutton Inquiry into the cause of Jimmie Sutton’s death highlighted the distinctions between civilian and military justice a century ago. Naval Justice – spelled out in the Articles for the Government of the Navy – was unfamiliar to most Americans, until this “trial” became a headline story across the nation as reporters flocked to the makeshift courtroom at Mahan Hall in Annapolis for an unforgettable drama.

Watch the Trailers for Movies Featured in Such Mad Fun

Movies Jane worked on in Hollywood still play on Turner Classic Movies! Look for:

HOLD THAT KISS, THESE GLAMOUR GIRLS,  IT’S A DATE   NANCY GOES TO RIO  

Often they are for sale on TCM, Amazon or Ebay especially THESE GLAMOUR GIRLS which features Lana Turner in her first starring role. The movie is based on Jane’s book-length Cosmopolitan novel. At MGM she was hired by top producers like Sam Zimbalist and Joe Pasternak.

 

 

A Depression-Era Thanksgiving — Just as Many Calories Circa 1932

I came across an article recently about Thanksgiving in the 1930s thanks to journalist Julie Chang. She notes  that, for those who could not afford to dine in an elegant hotel or club, making recipes from scratch compensated for inflated food prices during the Depression. And many Americans remained optimistic despite their troubles.  At that point, at least in Texas, “the average cost of Thanksgiving for a family of six was about $5.50.” That’s close to $110.00 today — if you cook at home and shop the sales.

Writing for the Southeast Texas-based Beaumont Enterprise several years ago, Chang reproduced recipes that were published in the Beaumont Journal on November 21, 1932, by a Mrs. Alexander George “who advised that Thanksgiving no longer had to be a ‘trial to the housewife in the matter of cost or labor involved.’ Although we don’t doubt that Mrs. George meant well by her menu and recipes, they seem a little labor-intensive today. You Thanksgiving chefs out there can be the judge:”  (Recipes below are exactly as published.)

Chestnut Stuffing
1 pound of chestnuts
6 cups of bread, crumbled
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon pepper
1 teaspoon poultry seasoning
1 tablespoon chopped parsley

Cover nuts with water. Cook slowly 15 minutes. With knife, make slits in side of nuts. Remove meats and press through a sieve and potato ricer. Add to rest of ingredients and lightly stuff fowl.

Asparagus Swiss Serving 6
4 tablespoons butter
6 tablespoons flour
3 cups milk
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon pepper
1/2 cub cheese, cut fine
2 hard cooked eggs, diced
2 tablespoons chopped pimentos
2 tablespoons chopped celery
1 teaspoon finely chopped onion
2 cups cooked asparagus
2/3 cup (bread) crumbs
3 teaspoons butter, melted

Melt 4 tablespoons of butter and add flour. Mix well and add milk and cook until creamy sauce forms. Add seasonings, cheese and eggs. Mix and add asparagus and pour into buttered baking dish. Cover with crumbs which have been mixed with melted butter. Bake 20 minutes in moderate oven. Serve in dish in which cooked.

Candied Sweet Potatoes
10 medium sized sweet potatoes, peeled
1 cup dark brown sugar
4 tablespoons butter
1 cup water
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon pepper

Mix ingredients and pour into shallow pan. Bake 50 minutes in moderate oven. Turn potatoes frequently to allow even cooking and browning.

Spiced Cranberry Jelly
6 cups berries
3 cups water
4 whole cloves
1 tablespoon broken cinnamon bark
1/4 teaspoon salt
3 cups sugar
1 tablespoon lemon juice

Mix berries, water, spices and salt. Cover and cook slowly 10 minutes. Strain and add sugar. Boil 4 minutes. Pour into molds and chill until stiff.

Colonial Pumpkin Pie
2 unbaked pie crusts
3 cups cooked mashed pumpkin
1 2/3 cups sugar
1 teaspoon salt
3 teaspoons cinnamon
1 teaspoon cloves
1 teaspoon nutmeg
1 teaspoon mace
1 teaspoon ginger
4 eggs, beaten
1/2 cup cream
2 1/2 cups milk

Mix pumpkin, sugar, salt, spices, eggs, cream and milk. Pour into unbaked crusts. Bake 10 minutes in moderate oven. Lower fire and bake 45 minutes in slow oven. Have crusts deep so that thick pie will result when it is done.

Today, Julie Chang is an education reporter for the Austin American-Statesman. For Julie or for anyone who is tackling Thanksgiving dinner at home, the task may be made far simpler by  using some carefully chosen prepackaged shortcuts and to-go options for everything including the turkey, options that did not exist 80 years ago.

My immediate family includes at least two vegans, two seafood lovers who do not eat meat, and three who favor turkey so we will be unified in gratitude if not in culinary tastes. Here are some guaranteed- to-be healthy vegan recipes for Thanksgiving  

Depression-era recipes “that are good enough to eat today” try this link.

And just for fun, click here for some shots of a 1930s Macy’s Thanksgiving day parade. 

HAPPY THANKSGIVING TO ALL!

Honor, Military Reputations and the Truth in the Sutton Case

Major Henry Leonard

The influence of a gaping and curious public can have no effect on the conduct of the Judge Advocate in this matter. . . . The hallowed grave of a dead son is no more sacred than the grave of a military reputation and there are a great many military reputations at stake in this hearing. —Major Henry (Harry) Leonard 

A 33-year-old hero who had lost his left arm in the Boxer Rebellion, Major Leonard proved to be a formidable judge advocate and an ideal one to handle Rosa Sutton in what was supposed to be an unbiased investigation into the facts surrounding Sutton’s death. As it turned out, Rosa needed to be handled—she was strong minded, a devout Catholic, and just as determined as he was to defend values that were (and are) sacred to a large number of Americans.

The “curious public” egged on by the press was one reason for the 1909 Inquiry. How much impact did public opinion really have on Leonard’s actions in the summer of 1909? His comments reveal his concern about his own reputation, and also his awareness that his duty was to be impartial. Was that possible? As a Marine Corps officer, his actions were also driven by his loyalty to his fellow marines. So Leonard hoped the accused marine’s attorney could attack Rosa Sutton’s credibility. Arthur Birney would go after her mental stability, and, aware that many spectators were empathetic to the military, he proclaimed: “We know what an officer’s honor is to him. It cannot be stained without the same kind of injury which is done to a woman’s honor when it is stained….”

The case became a battle between protagonists who fought hard for sacred reputations and for their own versions of the truth. This timeless conflict has often governed the exigencies of military justice; it plays out in this case in a way that makes the subject fascinating and telling. In 2007, when A Soul on Trial was first published, journalists were following other families whose sons died in the military under questionable circumstances. Their mothers faced evasive answers in the face of devastating tragedy. (One high profile example was the case of Patrick Tillman.) Today, with the proliferation of misinformation online and by high profile public officials, searching for truth is even more complicated.

America’s service academies—then as now—are always scrutinized more than other institutions of higher education in this country. Because so many citizens had a stake in what happened in the Sutton case, the government’s representatives fought for the hearts and minds of Americans inside this military courtroom. The Marines’ code of conduct was just as important to them as Rosa Sutton’s spiritual mission–to ensure Jimmie would have a place in Heaven– was to her. So, to a large extent, it was almost inevitable that the nation’s newspapers shaped the public dialogue and the lawyers’ closing arguments both in the makeshift courtroom in Mahan Hall and outside of it.