Thursday, April 21, 2011

No Nukes

Oregon & California, 
1976-1978


The anti-nuclear movement has been revived by the recent catastrophe in Japan, “putting governments on the defensive and undermining the nuclear power industry’s recent renaissance,” according to the Washington Post.1 Menus from dinners held backstage at two anti-nuclear benefit concerts on the West Coast during the 1970s recall an early phase of the movement. Although the efforts opposing the use of nuclear technologies have been ongoing, one of the ideas about food reflected on these menus has already entered the mainstream of American society.

Monday, April 11, 2011

Dry Monopole by Half a Length

New York City, 
1886


Dry Monopole, a small, athletic horse named after a brand of Champagne, won the first stakes race run on turf in the United States. Called the Green Grass Stakes, it was the sixth and final race at the Sheepshead Bay Race Track in Brooklyn on June 10, 1886.1 Going off at 6-1 odds in the field of ten, the three-year-old thoroughbred won the one-and-an-eighth-mile race in 1:57.  Dry Monopole was the “class of the grass,” using the parlance of future generations of racing fans