FERN’s Friday Feed: Frozen obsession
Welcome to FERN’s Friday Feed (#FFF), where we share the stories from this week that made us stop and think.
America’s most literary element
Literary Hub
“By the 1820s, the cubes that clinked in glasses of iced tea in Charleston, the ice that cooled hospitalized patients in Savannah; the ice that formed ice cream in the White House during the hottest months of summer—all of it from New England. Ice was so unusual (and expensive) in the South that locals called it ‘white gold,’” writes Amy Brady. “By the end of the nineteenth century, frozen water had become on par with coal in terms of importance. In an 1895 essay … published in the North American Review (a journal founded, by the way, by Frederic ‘the Ice King’ Tudor’s older brother William), Mark Twain muses on what sets the United States apart from other nations. He considers a range of temperaments and morals, but ultimately decides that ‘the national devotion to ice-water’ is the country’s most distinctive trait.”
The dramatic history of an underappreciated spice
New Lines Magazine
“For centuries, the story of any peppercorn was the story of all the peoples who might have touched it — drying it in the Indian sun, carrying it across Arabian waters and sands, haggling over it in Levantine ports and pushing it up transalpine passes to the far fringes of their world,” writes Anthony Elghossain. “For every sentry consuming pepper in the borderlands around Hadrian’s Wall or Northumbrian monk giving a gift of pepper on his deathbed, there was a royal or noble feasting on peppered fish and guzzling honey-peppered wine — or, upon the advice of Christian naturalists or Muslim polymaths, taking a bit of the black spice to arouse themselves and copulate … For every two-bit hustler in London reinventing themselves and their progeny as pepperers, then spicers, then grossers and then the ‘grocers’ we know today, people were moving pepper as middlemen in Venice, Alexandria, Aden, Ormuz and Calicut.”
Locals help fill the data gap in Salton Sea’s toxic collapse
High Country News
“Over the last 25 years, the Salton Sea has lost a third of its water due to an over-allocated Colorado River. As it shrinks, the sea’s salts plus pollutants from agricultural runoff reach higher concentrations,” writes Caroline Tracey. “As temperatures rise and the water retreats further, locals suspect that the contaminated sediments in the exposed lakebed are worsening air quality; the area’s childhood asthma rate is one of the highest in the state. But for several years, no government agency has monitored contaminant levels in the sea … And even where data exists, it can be hard for the public to access. Now, the Salton Sea Community Science Program is working to remedy this.”
My Benihana, myself
Eater
“The seventh point on the waiver I had to sign was ‘Please do not throw or toss food into anyone’s mouth, plate, etc.’ I felt cheated: This was the implicit promise of Benihana — Japanese Steakhouse and Place Where I Would Learn How to Flip a Shrimp Into My Friend’s Mouth. But I signed, and my apprenticeship began,” writes Jaya Saxena. “I am fascinated with teppanyaki chefs in the same way I am with dancers and competitive eaters; using the body for both work and performance feels like the exact opposite of what I do as a writer, and … I long to know what it feels like to make movement and coordination the means by which you pay your bills. To go home at night having caught 50 shrimp tails in your hat, banged your spatula and fork in rhythm between each course, spun an egg around a hot griddle, and know it was a job well done.”
The race to map the world’s seagrass — before it’s gone
The Washington Post
“Seagrasses — which range from stubby sprout-like vegetation to elongated plants with flat, ribbon-like leaves — are one of the world’s most productive underwater ecosystems,” writes Allyson Chiu. “The meadows are vital habitats for a variety of aquatic wildlife. Sometimes described as ‘the lungs of the sea,’ the grasses produce large amounts of oxygen essential for fish in shallow coastal waters. But, long overlooked, these critical ecosystems are vanishing. In fact, researchers don’t know exactly how many exist or have been lost. One recent study estimated that since 1880, about 19 percent of the world’s surveyed seagrass meadows have disappeared — an area larger than the size of Rhode Island — due, in part, to development and fishing.”