|k| clippings: 2015-07-23 — sugar, spice and the not-so-nice

WORK

“Do you urge immorality against these ice-cream shops?” he was asked.

“I should not like to urge it, but it is known,” came the answer.

Among the more egregious crimes committed by the shops’ proprietors was that of allowing young people of both sexes to intermingle and smoke. One inspector had said that he had seen girls of “tender years” smoking cigarettes in the shop. They were also seen dancing to “music supplied by a mouth organ.” Even worse, some of these young girls had become prostitutes.

Another inspector was asked: “Do you ask us to believe that the downfall of these women was due to ice cream shops?”

“I believe it is,” he replied.

It was concluded that ice cream shops embodied “perfect iniquities of hell itself and ten times worse than any of the evils of the public house. They were sapping the morals of the youth of Scotland.”

—Christine Baumgarthuber
—from “It Ought to Be Called Vice Cream”

WORD(S)

zeppole /ZEP-oh-lay/. noun. May refer to two different Italian pastries. The first is a deep-fried dough ball usually topped with powdered sugar and filled with custard, cream or honey-butter. The second is a baked cream puff made from choux pastry (or pâte à choux). The latter may be sweet—filled with ricotta and chocolate, candied fruits or honey—or savory, filled with anchovy. See also the US crispelli. Italian zeppole, plural of zeppola (fritter).

“For the common people of Naples, Christmas is a festival of eels, Easter a revel of casatelli; they eat zeppole to honor Saint Joseph; and the greatest proof of affliction that can be given to the dying Saviour is not to eat meat.” (Marc Monnier)

“Vinny preferred eating to talking. And the only white powder he liked was the sugar on his zeppoles.” (F. Paul Wilson)

“There were roulette wheels, zeppole and sausage stands, and a big glass cotton-candy machine in which sugar was spun into billows of flyaway, pale blue hair.” (Meg Wolitzer)

“Zeppole man across the street began to sing. Angel and Geronimo started to sing. The band across the street acquired an Italian tenor from the neighborhood…” (Thomas Pynchon)

WEB

1. “War and Peach” anyone? That’s just one of a half-dozen book-inspired ice-cream flavors. Or perhaps “S’Moria Steinem” is up your alley, in which case there are 10 Solutions to Ben & Jerry’s Women Problem flavors. Or, since I’m trying to stay away from the stuff, there are horror-inspired flavors like “Human Centipeach.”

2. Keats, Lincoln, Coleridge and many more faces in the Pictorial Guide to the Laurence Hutton Collection of Life and Death Masks.

3. A non-French speaker just won the French Scrabble championship [no surprise to any of us who have lost at Words With Friends to possibly-illiterate opponents].

4. Scientists are using DNA origami to 3-D print structures just nanometers across

5. Today in 1904, according to some stories, Charles Menches comes up with the idea of filling a pastry cone with ice-cream. His title as the emperor of ice-cream cones is in dispute, though, as other vendors at the St. Louis World’s Fair—at which the “cornucopia” waffle cone came to prominence—laid claim to this most wonderful invention as well. In fact, the Menches brothers of today, descendants of Charles and his brother Frank, claim their ancestors also invented the hamburger.

WATCH/WITNESS

On January 15, 2014, Alex Honnold free-soloed El Sendero Luminoso (The Shining Path) in El Portrero Chico, Mexico in a little over 3 hours. The climb rises 2,500 feet to the summit of El Toro. It could be the most difficult rope-less climb in history.

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader W. supplements last issue’s WORD with, well, the Word: “As you probably know, the most common use of ‘imago’ is theological: the ‘imago dei’ or image of God that symbolizes how we are fashioned in God’s image and therefore should love one another as we should love Him. If you believe in that kind of thing. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.”

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