About a decade ago, I spent a large part of a holiday taking an oral history with my grandfather. It was a fantastic experience and I recorded around 20 hours of tape. Over the years, I managed to transcribe the tapes…a slow and painstaking process. I’m not a bad touch typist, but I’d never learned transcription skills.
This year, I finally managed to edit and format the content (still not perfect – my proofing is inconsistent) and transform it into an actual book using Blurb.com self-publishing software. The book itself wasn’t that expensive, but I think it turned out fairly nice. I gave copies to my mother and aunt, my brother and two cousins – and my great-aunt – my grandfather’s sister for Christmas.
I’m not making any money on the book, but the beauty of blurb.com is that I could add a surcharge onto the price of the book – which I’d get to keep as ‘profit’. I probably won’t add anything to the price – but I might – I reserve the possibility. But I definitely won’t do so before 1 April 2010 – I’d like my more distant Powell cousins that I didn’t give copies to the option to buy their own at cost.
And there will always be a free version available to download, too. Here’s a version hosted on Scribd a document sharing website. The content itself has been published under a Creative Commons license – meaning that others can use and re-publish it for non-commercial purposes.
What’s in it?
There’s a lot of family history within the book – but within that there’s an interesting portrait of life in the rural South during the 20s and 30s. It covers my grandfather’s college days at the University of Tennessee, his time working for one of FDR’s government agencies – the Farm Security Administration designed to relieve hardship during the depression, and his time fighting during WWII. It covers his life as a businessman and a local politician in the 50s and 60s – including a period of labor unrest in Lawrenceburg, Tennessee – the Murray Ohio strikes. And if I do say so myself, it’s a pretty good read.
Chocolate blind spots
The British are awfully fond of their own chocolate. And why shouldn’t they be? It’s made to their own tastes and preferences. But they’re wickedly derisive of American chocolate…or as it’s often phrased “your so-called chocolate”.
Bill likes British chocolate
As Cadbury’s the British chocolatier for the masses faces a hostile takeover by Kraft or a possible friendly-ish merger from Hersheys the American chocolatier for the masses, chocolate is a hot topic in the news. Yesterday’s PM news on BBC’s Radio 4 featured a blind taste test with an expert chocolatolgist to decide which was better, Cadbury or Hershey. The chocolate dude admitted that a blind taste test was pointless, given that he knew which was which. And then he went on to slate the Hershey bar for texture, taste and a dubious set of ingredients. And oddly he criticised it as well for the rampant sweetness of the Hersheys (which is the same criticism I have of Cadbury’s chocolate – at least with Hersheys I can taste some cocoa).
I grew up on Hershey Bars. I like them. I prefer them. Given a plain Hersheys or a plain Cadbury’s Dairy Milk – I’ll take the Hershey’s every time. A Hershey’s kiss – chocolate perfection*. The pleasure of unwrapping, the cute little paper flag, the perfect not-too-melty-but-not-too-solid plop of choc on the tongue.
I don’t want to diss British chocolate – it’s alright. But I just want to make a defense for American chocolate. It’s yummy. It doesn’t deserve the criticism it receives this side of the pond. And it may just be the thing that saves the integrity of British chocolate.
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* Well, it was until my palate was educated with really good chocolate, boutique confections from the Continent – and occasionally from the UK.
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Posted in current events commentary, expatica
Tagged Cadburys, chocolate, expat, food, Hersheys