Welcome to FERN’s Friday Feed (#FFF), where we share the stories from this week that made us stop and think.
Wine’s beauty is wasted on the rich; the pandemic won’t change that
Esquire
When sommelier Amanda Smeltz briefly lost her sense of smell to Covid-19, she wondered if the pandemic might make people appreciate the “nuances of history and lore, viticulture, [and] fermentation” more than how much a bottle costs. “But with … the temporary loss of the ability to sense wine altogether, and perhaps with it a job, I was reminded, sharply, that our culture does not teach us what is important outside of the practice of amassing wealth and fancy goods … And even after the pandemic exposed again all the intense economic imbalances involved with wine and restaurants, I don’t know that our culture will agree to relinquish the tight connection between money and wine.”
Poultry giant Mountaire is using the pandemic to strip workers of protections
The New Yorker
“For the previous forty-two years, a thousand or so laborers at the local processing plant, in Selbyville, had been represented by Local 27. Just two years earlier, the workers there had ratified a new five-year contract. But, Hill told the crowd, in the middle of the pandemic, as the number of infected workers soared, the plant’s owner, Mountaire Corporation — one of the country’s largest purveyors of chicken — conspired, along with Donald Trump, to ‘kick us out.’” The resulting legal fight, Jane Mayer writes, could overturn precedent protecting union elections dating back to the New Deal.
How food media helped create ‘monsters in the kitchen’
The New Republic
“Celebrity chefs and food writers need each other — to build their brands and ‘do numbers,’ whether online (for the writers) or at the point of sale (for restaurants),” writes Kate Telfeyen. “The food media is complicit in the creation of kitchen tyrants, building their profiles, massaging their egos, exploiting their personalities for clicks — and chefs, in turn, help elevate the careers of food writers with access and exposure. In this sense the food world represents the marriage of two uniquely flawed industries: restaurants and the media.”
The ‘anguished underside’ of Savannah’s sweet treats
Gravy
“Sugar, like liquor, soothes. But unlike liquor, it isn’t charged with sin, at least not in the South just yet,” writes Imani Perry. “Though living off the land, fresh vegetables and fruits, and farms are within hands’ reach, so are the sweetnesses of extra-processed cane, beets, and corn. I imagine that during Prohibition, and between bouts of religious temperance, sugar often filled the yearning for a respite until backsliding crept up. In fact, I don’t just imagine it. I know it.”
How the ice-cream truck made summer cool
Smithsonian Magazine
In 1920, when Harry Burt invented ice cream-on-stick — the Good Humor Bar — it revolutionized the creamy treat. But, as Colin Dickey writes, “Burt’s contribution to the culture was bigger than a sliver of wood. When he became the first ice cream vendor to move from pushcarts to motorized trucks, giving his salesmen the freedom to roam the streets, his firm greatly expanded his business (and those of his many imitators) and would change how countless Americans eat — and how they experience summer.”