Reading and writing

I was going to title this post "But is it ableism?"

Sadly, that would imply a completely different meaning after the BAFTAs. (Though I have some thoughts on those as well.)

Anyway, ableism does come up a lot in cooking discourse. Another type of discourse that comes up a lot is things that are wrong with students.

This started with a teacher and author posting that he talks to students who want to be novelists but don't read novels:

https://x.com/AmericanGwyn/status/2023820821182247127

You can try reading about it from that thread, but there were so many replies that it is hard to follow.

He later adds that the students are generally taking their inspiration from video games or manga. That makes the reasonable follow-up question why they want to write novels instead of manga or video games; maybe they don't think they can, but that process would involve collaboration with artists or programmers or something; Only being able to create the story is not the end of the world.

Not enjoying novels does seem like a pity, and there is plenty we could say about the benefits of reading fiction and the influences that are causing that to become less common. 

Right now, there are two different paths I want to follow. You can find both of them in the next link:

https://x.com/iproposethis/status/2024542646342209690 

I had thought about Ana Mardoll before someone posted that infamous thread in the replies, but first the person offended by that: Joanna Schroeder, parenting writer who lists her excuses for not reading but still writing, and feels that Gwyn's take is privileged, if not ableist.

What she soon admits is that she does read 40 - 60 books a year, related to her work. 

I don't think anyone was implying that you need to read novel to write non-fiction. With that level of reading, she should be getting pretty well-versed in the style of writing that she is doing. That makes sense.

There may be a little resentment about not having time to read for pleasure, and maybe some implication that she doesn't enjoy her work, but I don't think anything there is invalidating her ability to do her job.

On to Ana!

The first time I saw any posts by Mardoll, they seemed fairly reasonable. There was context missing and then weirder tweets until eventually I think they left the site and later got back on with a protected account. 

This post -- which you can see in the second link -- is one that a lot of people were merciless about.

There's a thread going around mocking writers "who don't read very much" and I'm trying not to haul out my soapbox but... this is ableist? Not everyone can read for pleasure (or indeed at all) and some of those people are writers.

I spent some time thinking about it, wanting to give the benefit of the doubt. 

At the time, the most likely scenario in my head -- focused on disability -- was someone who had once read a lot and started writing, but had suffered something debilitating that made doing so harder. I've known people who have lost a lot of their ability to function where they have to choose what they are going to do with the limited time they have.

Laura Hillenbrand might be a good example, though I don't know how much ME affected her ability to read. I know she had to make other choices for how to do things. 

Regardless, if writing is your profession, you might have to prioritize that over reading, but you would probably have still read a fair amount before.

More recently it occurred to me that someone from an oral storytelling tradition might have words to put down, without having done a lot of reading. However, there are conventions like dividing into chapters and things where it is really helpful to have experience with how other people do it. That could also mean collaborating with someone rather than starting to read a lot in preparation. 

Of course, back when Mardoll that, AI wasn't really a thing, whereas NANOWRIMO allows it now. I have always had an attitude about that anyway, so my first reaction is a hearty "Whatever!", but if you're going to write, write.

And also, yes, if you want to write, read. But if you want to write and have not read, why do you want to write? Maybe you actually want something different, and figuring that out will help you.

While I do think Gwyn is a bit condescending about his students (and possibly other people too), I agree that reading a lot of what you want to write is a good idea. Maybe that should be combined with reading about the field as well. 

Celebrities often get opportunities to write children's books. They often show that they do not know much about what makes a children's book good.

Mainly, I hope when those students think that they want to be novelists, that it is not because they believe that is a path to being rich and famous.

I truly believe that there are many rewards to the writing process, but they aren't financial nearly as often as you'd hope. 

More literature centered on Black children!

This started with an article in Esquire about James Baldwin as remembered by his nephews:

https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/books/a61751831/james-baldwin-nephews/ 

That introduced me to the book Little Man, Little Man, Baldwin's 1976 children's novel, illustrated by Yoraz Cazac.

Of course I needed to read that, and I did. There was an introduction that mentioned other significant works, sending me to read more, but then it becomes more complicated, especially with chronology. 

To Be A Slave by Julius Lester (1968) 

The Big Box by Toni Morrison and Slade Morrison, illustrated by Giselle Potter (1999)

Those two are pretty straightforward, but you might wonder how much they are influencing each other spread so much apart.  

The Pasteboard Bandit by Langston Hughes and Arna Bontemps (1997*) 

This was written in 1935, but it took a long time to get published.

Then, what puzzled me the most: The Brownies' Book.

I did not initially find a book called that. 

In fact, it was a children's magazine, spun off from the NAACP magazine, The Crisis.

It only lasted for two years, being well-received but not getting enough subscribers to self-fund (the Depression did not help). It did influence other magazines at the time, and contained early writing from Langston Hughes, including at least one recounting of a trip he took to Mexico like the one that inspired The Pasteboard Bandit.

As 100-year anniversaries for The Brownies' Book were reached, it inspired other efforts.

A Centennial Celebration of The Brownies' Book edited by Dianne Johnson-Feelings and Jonda C. McNair

The New Brownies' Book: A Love Letter to Black Families by Karida L. Brown and Charly Palmer

A Centennial Celebration starts with the first issue, includes several scholarly articles, then ends with the final issue. The Love Letter creates new art to recreate the effect. A lot of the visual art is quite good, but some of the writings are less so, especially the play about the early contributors.  

There is such a wide variety here that it is hard to make any comparisons, but the thing that may have been most important was being reminded of the necessity. When The Brownies' Book originally started, there were not many positive representations of Black children. Now there were not only stories, poems, and historical highlights, but children could send in letters and poetry of their own and pictures. 

Representation still matters. 

That makes it nice that one of the literary articles in A Centennial Celebration introduced me to a new book, Marley Dias Gets It Done: And So Can You! (2018),

In her own words, Marley Dias tells about getting inspired when she was 11 to do a #1000BlackGirlBooks drive after finding that all of the assigned reading focused on white boys and their dogs.

She is a kid, and the writing sounds like a kid talking, but she did something extraordinary, and something that was still necessary.

There is still plenty that needs to be done. 

Food heritage

I think I need to write two more background pieces before I get to the ridiculousness of decanting olives.

This is one of them.

I keep remembering this time in Modesto when an older couple was going to have us over for dinner. The wife asked about our likes. I didn't want to be demanding, so I responded that anything was fine, casseroles or what not.

She looked so puzzled.

She had never made a casserole; they were really meat and potatoes people.

I had a companion around then who was totally into that. I remember thinking that maybe these food preferences were regional. She was from Minnesota and while we were in California then, maybe the older couple were transplants. 

Of course, Modesto was also where I got a handout for the basic elements of casseroles, so I think the one woman would have encountered them before. 

Also, apparently casseroles are big in Minnesota, but they are more likely to be called "hot dish".

I'm not saying that the region doesn't play a role, but that there are many other factors, like family background or economic level or job.

My mother was Italian, but she was from the North where the sauce tends to be less meaty and spicy. Also she was the youngest and got married at seventeen, so she did not have as much Italian cooking knowledge as any of her sisters. The most complicated dish that she made from there was gnocchi, one that her father made, instead of her mother. I suspect his cooking process was more visible.

(That is gnocchi, and I learned that more from observing her than being actually taught as well.) 

My parents' cultures melded somewhat over cornmeal mush. It's kind of like polenta, popular in Northern Italy, but was also poor people food, except then you add milk and raisins. (I know it's a thing, but we never fried it.) 

A lot of Mom's recipes came from women she knew through church. If there was a fair amount of casseroles in her repertoire, I assume part of that was because of their convenience.

The growing popularity of the casserole in the '70s is associate by at least one food critic with "the beginning of the dark ages of American culinary culture."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casserole 

It's easy to look down on someone else's food. Don't do that.

I remember reading once that you should never eat anyone's meatloaf except for your Mom's. I think I have seen that about potato salad, too.

I am not really a big fan of either, but I get that there are things that can seem right or not, and memory and legacy is a big part of that.

The message yesterday was that you do not have to cook, but if you want to and don't know how, that can be changed.

Part of that freedom is the flexibility. There are lots of different types of foods with different ingredients and different cooking methods. If there is something easy to cook, but you don't like it, or something that you love but not enough for it to be worth the effort, those points and various others can all be valid.

There is more to it than equipment and recipes.

I'd like to teach the world to cook

This will seem like a tangent, but I promise it will relate.

There was another outbreak of cooking discourse on Twitter. This one got a little weirder. There was also some racism involved, but that part is pretty normal.

Regardless, there is some groundwork I want to lay down before getting too specific.

Let me clarify that I don't really like to cook. I don't hate it, and I get some satisfaction from being able to do it, but a lot of my motivation for cooking is really just that you can eat better and more economically that way. It can also be more convenient, though that's not a given.

My first tangent here should be that there will be people who swear it is more expensive to cook at home than to eat out. 

Usually they make this case by listing every ingredient in the purchasing quantity. If you needed to buy a new bottle of Worcestershire sauce every time you made Sloppy Joes, and you bought the fancy Lea & Perrins, that would add about $7 per dinner. However, it is a shelf-stable ingredient (it does need to be refrigerated after opening) where a small amount will last a long time, it can be used in multiple dishes, and you can get the store brand for much cheaper. 

It's like when Republicans try and show prices are out of control by pricing a Thanksgiving dinner where they include a sack of flour because they will need a few tablespoons and also the turkey is organic and fresh, or Dr. Oz being outraged about the price of crudites... lots of people are spending a lot less and getting more bang for their buck.

The next area that I want to address (though it feels too germane to be a tangent) is that cooking is not some arcane lore that requires years of studying and expertise, even as it does become easier with practice.

I think sitcoms play a part in this. (Okay, this part may be a tangent.)

Once upon a time, sitcom families like the Cleavers had wise fathers and mothers who were perfect housekeepers. As things got more modern, writers and producers wanted to change that up. The first thing that happened was that many sitcom fathers became buffoons, though generally well-meaning ones.

I have seen many men express displeasure with this because it's disrespectful. Maybe, but very few fathers for my generation were as wise and caring as Ward Cleaver; biased and volatile doesn't always work for humor. 

Maybe for Titus.

The other thing that happened, though, was that television mothers became notoriously bad cooks. 

I don't remember seeing many women offended by this. If you could cook, it wasn't insulting you; just that one particular woman, for laughs. If you couldn't cook, maybe you sympathized, especially if you had a Marie Barone mother-in-law who was a great cook and pretty insulting. 

Maybe there was also a rebellious part that was thinking it was unfair that the husband never had to cook. Regardless, I suspect that the growing depictions of women who could not cook helped make a lack of cooking skills seem practically inevitable. Besides, who has the time?

This is where it was important that I mentioned that I don't particularly enjoy cooking; there are a lot of possible shortcuts.

Sloppy Joes? I have made them from scratch, but now if I am going to do it, I use a canned sauce. (I do add Johnny's seasoning when I am browning the ground beef, and add brown sugar when I pour the sauce on.)

There are a lot of things that I know I can make from scratch -- because I have -- but I simply don't find it a good use of my time. For other foods that does matter.

My point is that cooking can be as easy or as complicated or as quick or as laborious as you want it to be.

The caveat is that you can't always choose what to simplify. 

I tried making tiropita once, which I like but I only ever find at Greek Fest. I am sure there are people with different skills for whom it would be easier, but it is not going to be easy enough for me to justify making it again. 

I once looked at taking an Indian cooking class and I had a cookbook. Looking through it, I realized that I was happier going out for Indian food. However, I do buy jars of sauces that are meant for using with chicken. I used them with sliced potatoes, and sometimes I will put in some apples or green beans or whatever is around. That's easy.

I did take a Chinese cooking class. I learned some good techniques from it, but the only thing I regularly make is fried rice, which is easy. I don't want to spend the time on some of the other things. 

Keeping soy sauce or teriyaki sauce around isn't a problem, and sometimes I will go wild and buy some hoisin sauce or something, and that's fine too. (The stir frying I do is more like teppanyaki, so I guess more Japanese-style, and probably not really Mongolian.)

It can be a completely reasonable decision to not cook some things, but there may be other things that you could totally cook. Maybe that would take some practice or watching a video or taking a class at the rec center. 

It can also be completely reasonable to not pursue cooking if it doesn't interest you. It may be worth considering whether you are getting good nutrition or spending too much, but if ordering in or going out works for you, fine. 

There may be options that you have not thought about yet that would work for you. 

Stay open to that. 

Career concerns

While my current term ends June 30th, I hope to finish up my coursework in April. Then I will need to enter the workforce once more.

Because my schooling is being paid for through the Trade Act, I had to submit various things when I was applying, including openings for jobs in the new field and what salaries they listed. At the time (early 2024), there were lots of good jobs available, all earning more than I had made with my previous education and experience level.

Then a horror of a human being associated with racism and violence was re-elected.

Sure, things like Linda McMahon being appointed to Education and a general hostility to knowledge were concerns, but instructional designers don't have to work for public schools. There is a large need for corporate training. I assumed there would still be opportunities in the private sector.

Well, one major corporation's cost-saving measures have -- in addition to lots and lots of layoffs -- eliminated any "unnecessary" training. This includes cutting the fairly standard yearly ethics refresher.

That is something I have taken in both the tech and health sectors. While I acknowledge that a fair amount of it is obvious -- and a lot of the examples were not going to come up for me in my positions -- I thought it was a good reminder. For one thing, they kept using examples of things that really happened. Maybe they didn't happen at your company, but someone out there either did not realize it was a violation or didn't care that much about being unethical.

It then becomes hard to believe that the motivation for ending yearly ethics training is so much that it is unnecessary and wasteful as that some people want to eliminate scrutiny on their actions.

After all, when DOGE goes through and ends software licensing that causes redacted information to become easily viewable and that is highlighted through a case where the rich and powerful just keep getting away with horrific abuse, this does not increase confidence in anyone's ethics or commitment to actually learning and understanding anything.

Add to that the general apparent increase in ignorance and lack of interest in expertise, with lots of shameless lying and artificial intelligence making it much easier to obfuscate and to avoid actually doing your homework and also apparently killing a taste for literature of educational reading...

That then becomes adjacent to an area of more existential dread.

I get why the wealthy and powerful would like to keep others ignorant and averse to changing that ignorance, but I am disappointed in how little resistance there seems to be. 

All of which is to say that while I am still planning on graduating and keeping notes of what I can add to my resume, I am a little worried about my chances of becoming gainfully employed. 

Or my chances of not being constantly angry. 

Checking in with the Pinkneys

I have not finished the Spooky Season writing yet, but we are in Black History Month and I have been doing so much with children's literature that maybe this is a good time to spend some time on that.

I also have not finished reviewing all the works of Jerry Pinkney. I have gotten closer, but he had a long career that spanned decades, including some works that are quite hard to find.

However, I did find another subset among the children. 

Previously, son Myles Pinkney -- a photographer -- had contributed to two of his mother's books:

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2024/06/spotlight-on-gloria-jean-pinkney-black.html 

It turns out that Myles has also done a few books with his wife, Sandra L. Pinkney:

Shades of Black: A Celebration of Our Children (2000)

A Rainbow All Around Me (2002)

Read and Rise (2006)

I Am Latino: The Beauty in Me (2007)

Read and Rise was a collaboration with Scholastic and the National Urban League, celebrating reading. A Rainbow All Around Me highlights lots of other colorful objects, not just people, but the other two are very much about celebrating the beauty of children who might not automatically have their beauty and value recognized.

Sometimes it is easy to forget the progress that we have made. Less so now, but I will also write about that some next week.

Although books are not their primary career focus, they have connections through their family and they use their gifts in supportive ways.

It also occurred to me that Brian and Andrea might have new books too. They did.

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2024/04/spotlight-on-brian-pinkney-black.html 

Brandon and the Baby by Brian Pinkney (2024)

Their kids are pretty well grown now, but Pinkney still shows a good understanding of children's issues, in this case about potential jealousy of a new sibling.

Maybe by now there are grandchildren.

And She Was Loved: Toni Morrison's Life in Stories by Andrea Davis Pinkney, illustrated by Daniel Minter (2025)

I remember the last time I was going through Andrea's work, I was looking for this one, then saw it was not published yet. That's been about three years.

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2023/06/spotlight-on-andrea-davis-pinkney.html 

Over the time I have been doing this, I have read a lot of children's books about very grown-up adults. This one is remarkably balanced, giving a pretty good introduction to The Bluest Eye, and it is beautiful and poetic... I was impressed.

It also reminded me that Morrison has written a few children's books herself.

We will deal with that a little bit next time. 

Along the path

Friends have asked what I want to do after I have graduated.

My most honest answer is that I want to gain all the knowledge of the world and share it with everyone without charging them.

I know this isn't a solid career plan. For one thing, my future desires include continuing to have food and shelter and going on vacations. Maybe getting into clothes that I like better.

Whatever I end up doing to support myself, that will certainly still be a hobby.

I got my BA in 1996, but of course I kept on reading and learning, taking learning very seriously. 

Over time I started noticing how information could support other information. If you knew this piece over here first, when you came across that other piece it would make more sense. My ideas were mostly about putting the pieces together in a helpful order.

Once you start learning about instructional design, that's a relatively small part of it. Then it becomes more about how learning works and what conditions suit it best. What is the essence and what is a distraction? Does the information you are providing and the way you are providing it serve the desired outcome? How do you know if you are achieving the goal?

Realistically, a lot of the job is more about working with people who know the subject; then you help them with the imparting of what they know.

This is fine, as me actually getting to know everything myself isn't really plausible. 

Yesterday I posted about how I would still blog. I could blog about things that I know about, even without creating a full learning module.

That can go beyond blogs. There are books and podcasts and Youtube videos and TikToks and all sorts of ways of getting information out there, some of it interesting and valid and some of it less so.

I have taken a lot of the big online classes through Coursera and other platforms. I had thought of putting out information in ways similar to a PowerPoint presentation. Those classes are a lot like that, except they usually have some quizzes rolled in and maybe some assignments. 

Those are usually peer-reviewed, if anything, because if you want the instructor (or the instructor's graduate assistant) to pay any attention, you need to pay, which I generally wasn't doing.

It's the assignments and tests where the learning tends to really come together. Assessments.

If you just want to give information away, people may not value it, they may not do the work, and they may not actually learn.

It doesn't have to be that way.

Many years ago my friend Rose and I took some classes through the rec center, learning how to make salsas, chutneys, and flavored oils and vinegar.

Learning about the extension service, we wanted to learn more. I ended up becoming a Master Food Preserver and she was going to become a Master Gardener, but I think she moved before she could finish that.

Before that, we put the knowledge into practice. We canned pears together and we picked raspberries and made freezer jam. I later taught a class on how to make salsa, but I seem to remember her making a batch also.

You can do things with knowledge, whether someone is checking up on you or not. 

Of course, you have to want to do so. 

There seems to be less of that around. That's a constant worry.