Serena Williams: The Greatest

Serena Williams won her 22nd singles grand slam title last Saturday at Wimbledon. She is without question one of the greatest athletes of all time. Williams has dominated her sport with a combination of exquisitely smart play, phenomenal accuracy, and cultivated strength. She is unmatched. Her will to rebound over tough losses and periods of uncertainty reflect a tenacity and discipline even rare in the world of elite international sports.

At a press conference last Thursday after her semifinal win against Elena Vesnina, Williams was asked this question by a reporter: 

"There will be talk about you going down as one of the greatest female athletes of all time. What do you think when you hear something like that?"

Williams' response:

"I prefer the word one of the greatest athletes of all time."

Here is Serena Williams reciting "Still I Rise," the poem by Maya Angelou that inspires and motivates her.

Remembering Ella Fitzgerald

Ella Fitzgerald by Carl Van Vechten. Source: Beinecke Library, Yale University

Ella Fitzgerald died twenty years ago today. She was the most versatile singer of the 20th century, a vocal virtuoso with perfect pitch. Her band reportedly tuned up their instruments to the sound of her voice. Ella Fitzgerald expressed the pantheon of human emotion with a clarity so acute she became the voice of postwar America and "the First Lady of Song." She was a flawless vocal tactician with the range of an orchestra. Fitzgerald could make her voice sound like the blaring of a trumpet, the plinking of piano keys, or the tsk of the high hat.

Every song she sang became an absolute truth. In Summertime, when she sang "your father is rich and your mother is good looking," that lyric became a statement of fact.

Her contemporaries had immense strengths as singers, but Fitzgerald was able to combine all their best traits and create magic. She had Dinah Washington's emotional heft and smoothness, Carmen McRae's gift of interpretation, and Nancy Wilson's light touch with a lyric. Ms. Fitzgerald sang with an enchanting confidence and easy manner. Tony Bennett still works in her style, sauntering through the world of Pop deploying a charm out of time with the unearned hauteur required of contemporary singers. 

Ella Fitzgerald was always the coolest person on stage. When she performed duets with Louis Armstrong, Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin, men known for their easy banter and confidence, they had to work up to her level of nonchalance.

Ms. Fitzgerald has been gone for twenty years, but her legendary voice is still here, a mesmerizing delight. 

Bessie Smith's Blues: A Playlist

Bessie Smith. Photograph by Carl Van Vechten, 1936.

Bessie Smith recorded her first song "Cemetery Blues" ninety-three years ago. Her ribald tales of good times and regret built Columbia Records into a powerhouse music label. Smith's powerful and plaintive voice gave her songs a particularly clear and visceral resonance that still touches listeners today. The tempo of early Blues is slow by contemporary standards, but her songs are incredibly fresh. People still fall in love and make a mess of romantic entanglements today like they have for thousands of years. In the decades since her death, some of her hits have been recorded by artists including Nina Simone, Ray Charles, Eric Clapton, Janis Joplin, Bobby Womack, and Van Halen.

Bessie Smith and her Blues singing contemporaries along with the female stars of Pre Code Hollywood films, were among the few women who openly expressed sexual desire in art forms enjoyed by mass audiences nationwide in the early 20th century. The frankness of the Blues provided riveting social commentary on the changing sexual, gender and political mores of the time. Straddling the Roaring 20s and the Great Depression, Bessie Smith's music was a soundtrack of the complex black experiences born of the Great Migration.

It is easy to dip into Ms. Smith's music and become enamored with her. The highs of love and the depths of loneliness and despair have been a constant in human experience. Smith's catalog lends itself to be mixed and matched to create a playlist to suit almost any mood. The following songs follow the story arc of a woman who has lived the high life of good booze and fine men and found herself destitute and alone. Bessie Smith's music is Blues at its finest, passion and pathos in song.

Everybody Eats

Read these three very different, but connected pieces about food culture. Whose cooking gets recognized, who do we trust to talk about food and why, once again, representation matters.

Eddie Huang on the Oppressive Whiteness of the Food World

Chipotle Now Says It Tried to Invite Latino Authors for Its "Cultivating Thought" Bag-and-Cup Series: Update

On Being Black in the Kitchen

Congratulations, Ms. Kalman

Source: kalman.blogs.nytimes.com

In honor of Maira Kalman receiving the 2016 AIGA Medal from the Professional Association for Design and Presidents' Day, here is Kalman's funny and enlightening story about George Washington. 

Watch Ms. Kalman talk about her love of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Recommended Reading

Source: chicagoreader.com

This is a great reading list for fans of humor and memoir. I've read "Bossypants," "I Like You: Hospitality Under The Influence," "Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me (And Other Concerns)," "Meaty," and "The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl." "Meaty" was my absolute favorite. Samantha Irby is uniquely hilarious. She can describe things you don't want to know about in excruciatingly detailed and vivid language. Her blog Bitches Gotta Eat will make you laugh, gasp and possibly cringe. 

Edna Lewis is the Touchstone

Source:ednalewisfoundation.org

“One of the greatest pleasures of my life has been that I have never stopped learning about good cooking and good food.”- Edna Lewis, “In Pursuit of Flavor”

Edna Lewis is credited as the first person to write about Southern food as a cuisine worthy of study and admiration. She was a committed “locavore” and practitioner of “farm-to-table” eating decades before those words became culinary buzzwords. The chefs and writers who operate in the world of Southern food owe a debt to Ms. Lewis for her scholarship and evangelism. Her influence can also be felt in the ethos of American culinary professionals and home cooks who revere the glories of simple ingredients cooked with techniques passed down from generation to generation.

Edna Lewis' culinary point-of-view on local food and seasonal cooking continues to be a philosophical cornerstone of American food culture. The genre of culinary memoir is imbued with her intimate storytelling style. Despite her monumental role in American culinary history she remains a niche interest like Dixieland Jazz.

 "Fried Chicken and Sweet Potato Pie" - Film

The recognition Ms. Lewis receives in mainstream publications is scant in relation to her enormous influence on American food culture. Francis Lam took a step to correct that error in a beautiful October 2015 article for The New York Times Magazine. The piece is a thoughtful examination of the forces that shaped her journey to becoming a culinary pioneer. It ends with a call to action by Ms. Lewis directed to "The Jemima Code" author Toni Tipton-Martin after the two had met at an event.

"I told her that I wanted to tell the world that there were more women like her than just her,’’ she [Ms. Tipton-Martin] said. A while later, Lewis sent her a letter, written on the same kind of yellow legal pad that she used to write ‘‘The Taste of Country Cooking.’’ ‘‘Leave no stone unturned to prove this point,’’ she wrote. ‘‘Make sure that you do.’’

Source: nytimes.com via Knopf

Writers like Ms. Tipton-Martin, Jessica B. Harris (“High on The Hog”), Adrian Miller (“Soul Food”) and Leni Sorenson took Ms. Lewis’ encouragement to “Leave no stone unturned to prove this point” very seriously. The effort to bring black cooks and chefs into the cultural consciousness is as relevant today as it was the day Lewis wrote to Ms. Tipton-Martin.

Interview with Chef Edna Lewis

The next generation of black women chefs and cooks influenced by the work of Ms. Lewis are cooking food steeped in Southern culinary traditions to create a new cuisine. The food they’re making has several diverse influences including the demographic shifts created by the Great Migration nationwide, post 1965 immigration to the U.S., the “Black is Beautiful” movement and the rise of “Foodie” culture. Here is a short list of some of the women working in this evolving tradition:

·         Jocelyn Delk Adams: Baker, author of “Grandbaby Cakes” and creator of Grandbaby Cakes blog.

·         Christine Arel: Creator of No Goji, No Glory blog and freelance food writer.

·         Erika Council: Creator of the Southern Soufflé blog.

·         Angela Davis: Creator of The Kitchenista Diaries blog and personal chef.

·         Tanya Holland: Chef and owner of Brown Sugar Kitchen, and author of “Brown Sugar Kitchen: New-Style Down-Home Recipes from Sweet West Oakland.”

·         Demetra Overton: Personal chef and creator of Sweet Savant blog.

·         Nicole A. Taylor: Author of “The Up South Cookbook: Chasing Dixie in a Brooklyn Kitchen,” principal of NAT Media, and creator of the Food Culturist.

·         Sanura Weathers: Creator of My Life Runs on Food blog and freelance food writer.