up the blog. But something within still keeps me needing to express myself, and know what others are feeling. Will you indulge me a 'small rant'? Hope so......
Finally we're getting to the prime point of the matter. Oh I'm talking about the revelations about the source of Paula Deen's recipes and the cooking at her restaurants. Yes, racist or not, Paula Deen is a Fraud and a Thief.
Be sure you take the time to read the article copied below. Afterwards click the link to take a few minutes to read some of the interesting comments readers made on this subject after the article. The article is validating, in that it's written by a scholar who has written a book on the subject of what I call the 'Divine Food Alchemists', those magnificent Black chefs, the sisters at the roots of Southern cuisine.
My Subject title above refers to the fact, that I've come to realize that we as a people, have lost the ability to discern how and what to share, of the gifts
Creation chose to embody in our particular lives. Giving away freely is
not always intelligent, nor is it perhaps meant to be the right way to
'be in the world'.
Even Jesus, had his reservations about sharing his knowledge with
people that would not appreciate it's precious nature or attach a
wholesome value to the gift. That's where my Subject Title comes from. For to receive a gift, and only regard it from it's monetary worth or profitability or as a means to exercise power over another is not wholesome thinking.
In the case of my brother Jesus, he ignored a cry for help from a Gentile (non-Jew) woman of Canaan that came to seek his assistance with her demon-possessed daughter. He asserted that he was "sent to help the Jews, the lost sheep of Israel". Doubting her ability to understand and value what he was sharing with his followers he told her that, " it wasn't right to take the children's (Jews) bread and throw it to the dogs." If I recall the story, it was after her persistence and his feeling the sincerity in her response that "even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master's table", that his heart was changed, and he granted her request, healing her daughter. (Matthew 15: 22-28)
Ever since we were brought here, African-Americans have been programmed to only think of our genius, talents and abilities in regard to how they can serve in the plans and designs of others, rather than as the individually prescribed endowment/gift of Grace to the recipient.
Long ago I made up a saying that goes like this: We are all equally endowed, but we are not endowed equally. The Creative Life of the Universe gives something wonderful and unique to each of us, as It's way of showing up individualized in form. It's up to us to recognize 'that thing' that we do, better, or like no one else can do. This is ours. And these qualities, abilities and expressions of creative genius, can be a means of an income and livelihood. Of course, this all depends upon the time (era), place, values and type of society which one is born in. I say can be, because there's nothing that says they should or must be. Those are man-made ideas that are not set in stone.
How then does one cherish, value and develop the Gift, and share it,
without allowing it to be appropriated by others? Let me put it like
this...Have you ever heard of a Jew teaching a non-Jew how to cut,
measure, and deal diamonds? How have they been able to keep this solely
as a talent and form of financial security for themselves?
I'm posing these as questions, not claiming that any of what I'm feeling and receiving is absolute, or correct....I just know that this is something that a people as gifted and talented as we are...and yet as financially and politically impoverished and socially disunited --- relegated to the caste of jesters, athletes, and entertainers....This is something we need to think about. To look at honestly and figure out how to make our gifts Self-serving tools in our existence.
Sometimes I fear that people of African descent in America have lost our understanding of
self-preservation. I fear that some of our much needed animal nature has been bred out of us in this journey in this hemisphere. We don't protect and guide our young into successful adulthood. We have no understanding of how to make a good union that will strengthen us individually and collectively, so we can't even give that to our sons and daughters. At a time when we as a people are under great attack, we have great numbers of women and men, dealing with all of this alone ~ without a clue of the value of being in union and receiving the support of a mate.
We've given up the idea of directing and determining our own destiny, and have settled for our place in as Eldridge said, "the belly of the beast". We repeatedly follow and listen to anything and anyone, rather than our own inner selves truth, which would tell us, that there's a world out there, and we were once Master's of it. The discoveries, inventions and abilities we continue to demonstrate prove, that the potential to live more fully, as the Master of our own Gifts still exists within us.
Where....on earth, does our idea of heaven on earth or utopia exist? Where do we thrive? Where are we welcome to continue to bless humanity and the planet with our ideas, astonish others with our systems for harmonious progress, and feed ourselves and all with both the fruit of our wisdom and knowledge of the land? Where do we determine the values that we live by?
There's no one to blame. We have abdicated our responsibility to life, the planet and humanity. We have abdicated the throne of deep intuitive knowing, and accepted someone else's very limited and profoundly negative idea of our potential, power and abilities.
We've got to know Beloveds that we're so much better than this. And none of it is going to get better until we decide we deserve a better life, know that we want it, and put into motion with the right thoughts and energy to make it happen. We're the catalyst~ Living as our True Self. Our Good is a Blessing for the Whole.
lovu,
Kentke
The New York Times
July 29, 2013
The ‘Soul Sisters’ in the Kitchen
By REBECCA SHARPLESS
FORT WORTH — DORA CHARLES and Idella Parker, two black Southern cooks, were born nearly a half century apart and likely never met. But if they did, they would be soul sisters.
Ms. Parker, born in 1914, would understand Ms. Charles’s story of cooking for Paula Deen, whose downfall over charges of racism got a little steeper last week, when Ms. Charles detailed her own fraught history with the celebrity chef. She would understand the fabulous food drenched in butter and sugar, the 15-hour days on tired feet, the wages insufficient to pay for health care. She would understand the famous boss with romantic notions of the South and its cuisine.
What Idella Parker might not understand is how conditions could have changed so little since she left the kitchen of her generation’s Paula Deen, the author Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, in 1950. Ms. Charles’s and Ms. Deen’s conflicting accounts about their relationship loudly echo the experiences of generations of African-American cooks and their white employers.
Since the arrival of Europeans and Africans in the South in the early 17th century, black women have labored in kitchens controlled by white women, melding foods from three continents into a distinctive regional cuisine. And many of those white women have long taken credit for black women’s work, whether through their acclaimed “Southern” hospitality, their popular books about party hosting or their fortunes made from selling the food cooked by black women in taverns and restaurants.
Ms. Parker, like Ms. Charles, provided the means for her employer to shine as a food expert, cooking for Ms. Rawlings at her home in the village of Cross Creek, Fla., throughout the 1940s.
Ms. Rawlings, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of the novel “The Yearling,” brought New York literati and Hollywood stars to her orange farm to enjoy fine meals of the freshest local ingredients. In 1942, she published “Cross Creek Cookery,” a compendium of her favorite local recipes, like “Utterly Deadly Southern Pecan Pie.” The book made her one of the country’s foremost food celebrities.
When she published her memoir a half-century later, Ms. Parker recalled her participation in producing the cookbook. “Many of the recipes in the book were mine, but she only gave me credit for three of them, including ‘Idella’s Biscuits,’ ” she said. “And of course it was me who did most of the cooking when we were trying all the recipes out. All I ever got from the cookbook was an autographed copy, but in those days I was grateful for any little crumb that white people let fall, so I kept my thoughts about the cookbook strictly to myself.”
The pair’s experience was hardly unique. Long before the Food Network, cookbooks showcased the South’s culinary splendors. Black women, whether willingly or not, shared their recipes with white women, who wrote them down for publication and then claimed the credit. While the cooks knew they were sharing something of value, the authors had little regard for their intellectual property. Hundreds of cookbooks appeared with recipes, from collard greens to puff pastry, attributed to “Beppie” or “Aunt Polly” or even “Mammy,” 70 and 80 years after the end of slavery.
Sometimes even that meager credit was withheld. After the white cookbook writer Marion Brown asked a friend for her clam chowder recipe, she wrote: “Mrs. Clinkscales promised that she would let me have it, if she could persuade her Negro cook to give exact proportions. After a long period of waiting, the recipe arrived with the notation, ‘This is as near it as possible.’ ”
Ms. Brown titled the recipe “Mrs. Clinkscales’ Clam Chowder.”
Of course, white employers typically believed that their cooks loved them and cooked for them out of that love. When Ms. Deen claimed that she and Ms. Charles were “soul sisters,” she fell squarely into the tradition of declaring an employee to be just like a member of the family.
But black employees, like Ms. Charles, have always realized that the marketplace was squarely at the center of the relationships. They struggled to negotiate favorable hours, wages and working conditions, and turnover was frequent. Some cooks did stay for decades with the same families, as Ms. Charles did with Ms. Deen, but they were the exception rather than the rule. And racism permeated the homes of Southern employers, with the employees segregated into the kitchen with separate eating utensils.
Speaking out against this unequal system takes courage. Ms. Parker left Ms. Rawlings in 1950 and later became active in civil rights, but she held her thoughts about the famous author until she published her memoir in 1992. Ms. Charles has more to lose, going public against a media icon still beloved by many.
That risk, sadly, is something Idella Parker would also understand. And she would grieve to know that life in a Southern kitchen still resembles the one she walked out of more than 60 years ago.
Rebecca Sharpless, an associate professor of history at Texas Christian University, is the author of “Cooking in Other Women’s Kitchens: Domestic Workers in the South, 1865-1960.”
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References
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/25/us/paula-deens-soul-sister-portrays-an-unequal-bond.html?ref=opinion&_r=0
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/30/opinion/the-soul-sisters-in-the-kitchen.html?nl=opinion&emc=edit_ty_20130730&_r=0
