Tonight we have a special Top Comment.
From bronte17:
In Memory of our one and only ben masel... keep his memory and work alive says claude in Ben Masel Has Passed Away by tommurphy.
As Meteor Blades posted earlier today:
Masel has also been a constant presence at the Capitol protests over the past month, even defying a doctor's order that he remain in the hospital. "If I'm going to be deceased today, I can't think of a better place than in the rotunda," he told his doctor.
RIP Ben. We're eternally grateful for how you spent your dash. May your special torch be passed.
::
::
Top Comments strives to recognize and promote each day's outstanding comments through nominations made by Kossacks like you. Please send the comments you think should be recognized to
TopComments at gmail dot com (before 9:30pm ET).
Make sure that you include the direct link to the comment (the URL), which is available by clicking on that comment's date/time. Always include your Daily Kos user name in the body of your message so we can credit you properly. If you send a writeup with the link, we can include that, as well.
Please come in. You're invited to make yourself at home! Join us beneath the fold...
Let me say up front: If you were looking forward to reading a cooking diary, you are going to be disappointed. However, as promised, I have included Alice B. Toklas' famous marijuana-laced recipe below, and, if this diary is anything like some of my others, it may draw additional recipes in the comments. But when it comes to culinary pursuits, I'll leave those to asimbagirl. [CAUTION: Opening this link can cause weight gain in pregnant women, non-pregnant women, men, children, the elderly, and, especially, Kossacks.]
Anyway, this diary is really about Alice Babette Toklas (right), who was born on this date in 1877, making her a nice round 134 years old--reason enough for a Top Comments diary. I suspect that many Boomers like me first heard of her through the 1968 comedy I Love You Alice B. Toklas, starring Peter Sellers.
I think my brother was the one who first told me about Alice B. Toklas brownies. At some point I have eaten them, but my answer to any details about illegal drug use is always, "Senator, I do not recall."
Photo courtesy biographicon.com
I am sure I have never eaten any brownies made by the original recipe that appeared in The Alice B. Toklas Cookbook (1954). In fact, they are not even brownies. The recipe is actually for "Haschich Fudge" and was contributed by "a wiseacre painter friend named Brion
Gysin (below)". Here it is:
Take 1 teaspoon black peppercorns, 1 whole nutmeg, 4 average sticks of cinnamon, 1 teaspoon coriander. These should all be pulverized in a mortar. About a handful each of stone dates, dried figs, shelled almonds and peanuts: chop these and mix them together. A bunch of canibus [sic] sativa can be pulverized. This along with the spices should be dusted over the mixed fruit and nuts, kneaded together. About a cup of sugar dissolved in a big pat of butter. Rolled into a cake and cut into pieces or made into balls about the size of a walnut, it should be eaten with care. Two pieces are quite sufficient. Obtaining the canibus may present certain difficulties.... It should be picked and dried as soon as it has gone to seed and while the plant is still green.
Photo courtesy Wiki (For a kitchen-ready version, go here.)
Later on, in college, I found out who Gertrude Stein was and, by extension, more about her lifelong partner Alice B. Toklas. Of course, Stein's memoirs are deceptively entitled The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas (1933) because she tells of her own life from Alice's point of view.
According to Estelle C. Jelinek, Toklas's presence as the narrator legitimized Stein's role as memoirist. Placing Toklas, the most important person in her intimate life, in the center of the autobiography, she could pay homage to their story. Toklas is the observing partner, not the directly observed, but at the same time Stein controls the picture she gives of herself:
Photo courtesy contrasola.blogspot.com
There I went to see Mrs. Stein who had in the meantime returned to Paris, and there at her house I met Gertrude Stein. I was impressed by the coral brooch she wore and by her voice. I may say that only three times in my life I have met a genius and each time a bell within me rang and I was not mistaken, and I may say in each case it was before there was any general recognition of the quality of genius in them. The three geniuses of whom I wish to speak are Gertrude Stein, Pablo Picasso and Alfred Whitehead.
Source
Later, Toklas wrote her own "impressionistic" memoirs called What Is Remembered (1963).
Their last conversation in a Paris hospital [in 1946] has been much quoted: [While being wheeled into surgery, Stein asked Toklas,] "... What is the answer? I was silent. In that case, she said, what is the question?" After Stein died during surgery, Alice cherished Stein's reputation. In the end she found Catholicism, stating that she wanted a ticket into the afterlife, since she considered Gertude immortal – she would be reunited with her in Heaven. Toklas died on March 7, 1967. She was buried beside Stein in Le Père Lachaise Cemetery, Paris. [Her name is inscribed on the back of Stein's gravestone.]
Ibid.
I can't resist throwing in this linguistic tidbit:
[A] poem [from Stein] to Toklas, inspired by Cubism, was built around four sentences: "Do you really think I would yes I would", "Do you really think I could yes I could", "Do you really think I should yes I should", and "Do you really think I do love all you with all". Other sides of the crystallike poem are left "unvisible" – perhaps including the verbs "must" and "ought".
Ibid.
And this one:
Some believe that the slang term toke, meaning to inhale marijuana, is derived from her last name, though it is more likely to originate in the Spanish verb tocar, meaning to touch or taste.
Wiki
Alice's recipe lives on today, but more importantly her legacy as a pioneer in the LGBT movement is still being felt. The Alice B. Toklas Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Democratic Club has been "Proudly Serving the Community Since 1972" in San Francisco.
Distinguished dramatist and Yale professor emeritus Leon Katz recalls the months he spent going over Gertrude Stein's notebooks with the remarkable and complex Toklas:
Photo courtesy popartmachine.com
Happy 134th Birthday, Alice B. Toklas!
::
::
Thanks to tonight's Top Comments contributors. Let us hear from YOU when you find an escargot among the slugs.
TOP COMMENTS
From bronte17:
TheFatLadySings recalls how citizen attention was mobilized through her voice crying in the wilderness via a small newsletter in the diary Breaking - First ever demonstration against an ALEC event in Cincinnati by Ohiodem1.
From blueoregon:
Hannah is doling out wisdom again; I think everyone should partake. From Muskegon Critic's diary, Anonymous Hits Chamber!
From Hedwig:
This comment by deepfish in today's hate mail had me giggling...
From your humble diarist:
I liked this alternative energy source suggested by dougymi in the Saturday morning gem Animal NUZ #44 by the immensely talented ericlewis0.
In bink's diary Economic News Is Bad and It's Going to Get Worse, Gooserock identifies what ails the nation. Ritalin, anyone?