Hey oldies, remember this one?
WHO CAME UP WITH THIS MARKETING? Why on earth did someone say “we should name our underwear company Fruit of the Loom”??? Also: did these guys go on to acting careers? Does it say “underwear grapes, green” on someone’s resume?
I was at dinner with foodie friends and we got into a discussion about prunes and plums, raisins and grapes, and apricots and…apricots….dates and dates….figs and figs…given so many dried fruit are nothing like their juicy fresh versions, why are only plums and grapes called a different thing in English when they are dried? (We are leaving Craisins off this list because that term is so obviously a marketing ploy to sell dried cranberries). The question was raised: in other languages are there different words for different dried fruits?
There is no answer!
I looked it up and “raisin and prune” are nothing but the French word for grape and plum - so that wasn’t helpful (unless the dried version came from France in medieval times and no one in England could figure out how they got their grapes and plums to be so dark and sweet? Hard to know since there doesn’t seem to be any real etymology of it beyond “it’s french” - but I did discover that currants and sultanas and raisins are all particular grapes and prunes are particular plums. Here’s the article.
A random Facebook Group called the Dull Men’s Club had the best response I’ve seen: “A lot of those things are dried in modern techniques like freeze drying. And could not have been dried before them. Sultanas and some others were dried in the past for long storage and got their names from that system/process. Sultanas were specifically made from the green grapes of a region in Turkey that had the most delicious and sweet ones. They dried them out to be able to send them further. And named them after the Sultans wife.” — so thanks to Facebook’s Tim Hanslow who I do not know, and Facebook’s bizarre algorithm allowing us to see probably private threads when you look up the right thing, here’s the discussion.
WRITING
More and more my writing is relegated to this blog and other short essays that I post, send out or publish on my Medium site.
I do have a story coming out! It should go live on August 1 so watch this spot!! I’ll link to it of course - I love it, it’s a very quirky fantasy about a dragon. I never write dragons and I’m quite pleased with this one!
This week’s excursions included seeing The Outsiders (thank goodness for living in NYC when you can just pop in to a Broadway show when you want to go out with a friend) — I would say that The Outsiders will appeal to teenagers, particularly anyone who loves looking at calendar boys.
The night I went there were many cast substitutions and I’m going to give them some grace. The show is a mashup of Grease and West Side Story - so anyone under the age that they saw these live will absolutely flip over it and think it is the most original, meaningful, amazing commentary on class division in the universe. The rest of us will enjoy the eye-candy. And to be honest, I don’t know how much I would have liked it had I not been deeply familiar with the book before seeing it - but that said, the teen girls surrounding me in rows behind and in front were ALL weeping copiously. So the story still works.
Saturday, spent the morning on Governor’s Island at the New York Poetry Festival - what a lark!
Random Final Thought
I went to a concert of OMD (Orchestral Maneuvers in the Dark) and that was such a throwback - butI would hate to be a rock star now. The fans could be jumping and singing and then the second your biggest hit, your most beloved, most popular song comes on, the whole audience immediately comes to a standstill and their phones come out and they just stand there, filming.
Enjoy your week!