News, Notes, and Notions for 23Jun24

A good, old fashioned, American biscuit rant re-upped, video of me unable to talk right, plus things worth reading, listening to, and watching from the week that was

Photo by Andrew Donaldson. No hammers where harmed in the making of this photo, but it was a near miss.

Friends, ramen eaters, cohorts of the interwebs, lend me your clicks…

While mostly I use food as a positive on the various platforms I use, every so often something happens in the food world that is so egregious that honor and decency demands I go all Act III, scene II Julius Caesar on it. So it was with the once mighty Kentucky Fried Chicken biscuit a few years ago.

With company imminently coming to my own household, the prospect of feeding double-digit overnight guests immediately had me turning to the soft quick-bread pillowy glory of American biscuits. The poor unfortunate souls of the old world who did not throw off the yoke and whip George III call cookies biscuits, but we will leave God to sort that out for correction in His own good time.

It used to be that you could go to a KFC and order a mess of biscuits and not embarrass yourself or the honor of your house. I have written separately defending those who show up for the potluck, hotdish, family gathering, church supper, what have you with a bucket of the Colonel’s finest to plop down on the table of plenty for all to see and partake in. Nothing wrong with that. But no longer so with the hockey puck putridity of what Pepsico’s chicken joints are slinging in the Year of Our Lord 2024.

So, I come to bury the KFC biscuit, not eat it, since your tax dollars through the VA fixed my front teeth and it would be a misappropriation of funds to break them off on the abomination that is the current KFC biscuit. Here is my original rant from the Yonder & Home vault:

---

Some things boggle the mind. Occurrences in our everyday lives that defy the explanation of common sense and reason. Things that, for a lack of a better way to phrase it, make you go “hmmmm.” That make you question the order of all things, your own belief system from the inside out, that makes you checks the filters on how you view the world to make sure they aren’t adversely affecting your world view.

Such as how, in the year of our Lord 2019, can Kentucky Fried Chicken’s biscuits be so god-awful horrible.

How? How can a food icon, emblazoned with the visage of an American original and legend in Harland Sanders, proffer the culinary hockey puck that they criminally try to pass off as a biscuit? The man who not only monetized his recipe for fried chicken, but patented the method in which to make it in a rapid enough fashion to create a fast food empire, not develop the most basic staple of southern sustenance? When the Colonel sold his first franchise, it was in Salt Lake City, where operator Pete Harmon pitched the fine folks of Utah on a southern specialty. He was referring to the fried chicken of course, but biscuits went along for the ride.

But that’s the problem. In the south, a biscuit is not just a side item. It’s darn near a sacrament. In the antebellum south, and for long afterward, the biscuit was reserved for Sundays. For the working poor, the biscuit has long been both a staple and a respite, while also being a vehicle for whatever else was on hand. If you were really fortunate, jams and jellies were an option, or a piece of sausage or tenderloin. Biscuits and gravy has long been a favorite, whether that gravy was straight up, bacon/sausage fat, or for the real working class, red-eye. Fast food joints have taken the breakfast biscuit in many directions, and with food and cooking being mass media cash registers these days, making or acquiring your own great biscuit is only a Google search away.

Fellow speedy food chains Bojangles and Popeyes have excellent biscuits that folks were arguing over flaky supremacy long before the chicken sandwich debate of late. Chick-Fil-A can even manage a respectable biscuit to accompany the breakfast version of their chicken. There are scores of others.

Which returns to the base question, how in the world can the chain that flew the southern food flag first as a franchisable expansion of culinary delights screw up their biscuits so bad? The didn’t used to be this bad, or perhaps that is just the wistful memories of childhood. Granted they weren’t as good as what came out of Mamaw’s biscuit drawer, but you could get enough honey on them to enjoy it. Perhaps it is the same quality and labor issues that have plagued the fast food industry as a whole. But that doesn’t hold up with others doing it well. Did KFC as a collective just stop caring about what gets thrown in the box with the buckets, bowls, and other fixins’?

Whatever it is, it is a disgrace. Look, no one expects white linens and Michelin Stars when rolling through the Colonels on a Tuesday night. But some pride, some semblance of heritage and respect not only for a well-known brand but for the type of food getting slung out of the KFC kitchens, calls for something better than Home Depot could sell to drive nails with. We understand our grandmother isn’t back there taking two hours to make them, but can we get something with a modicum of a give-a-damn attached to it?

We aren’t asking for a reinvention of the wheel here, such as when Harlan Sanders swapped the rubber o-rings out of his pressure cooker for metal ones, enabling the pressure frying in oil of chicken. That innovation cut the cooking time significantly, allowing fried chicken to go from an all day affair in the family kitchen to a fast food item made to order. If Col. Sanders can change the world, or at least get things like “Finger lickin’ good”, “11 herbs and spices”, and “bucket of chicken” into not just in the American lexicon, but as staples of American life itself, KFC can at least innovate their sorry excuse for a biscuit.

Or has KFC ceded the biscuit to others, never to mount a challenge in the side order of choice for generations to come? If so, for shame. What would Harland think?

Heard Tell Episodes:

I took the week off from releasing Heard Tell Episodes, but have several that were worked on during the week. In the meantime, since this past week was West Virginia Day, wanted to reup one a favorite talking about my beloved home state, and specifically education and some history of the Mountain State and Appalachia: On this Heard Tell Good Talks our guest is Dr. Bob Hutton, professor of history and Appalachian studies at Glenville State University talks the past, present and future of higher ed in Appalachia and West Virginia, talks how campuses can bring both culture shock and diversity to a local community, how outside students take to Appalachia, and addresses the issues facing colleges and universities in coming years as closures and budget cuts come along with declining enrollment.

Media Appearances:

Watch me trip all over the word “monetizing” and have a muted mic moment among my other Talking Head tricks in this clipped down version of me on the long form discussion Armstrong Williams show: Not my best effort, but we keep it real and own our mistakes on this here SubStack.

Worth Reading:

A sliver of possible good news in the horrific opioid epidemic that has rampaged through West Virginia, from Caity Coyne at West Virginia Watch:

Annual drug overdose deaths in West Virginia appear to be continuing to slow after a 2020 spike, according to preliminary data from the state’s Office of the Chief Medical Examiner.

According to the data — which is subject to change as more information is released — at least 1,383 people fatally overdosed in West Virginia in 2023, which is about 77 overdoses per 100,000 people. That’s nearly a 2% decrease from 2022 but still more than double the national rate, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

It’s the second consecutive year with a decline — albeit small — in the total number of fatal overdoses in the state.

The overdose data is compiled from causes of death reported on death certificates certified by the Office of the Chief Medical Officer and are not final, meaning numbers could rise as more death certificates are analyzed.

Many overdose deaths include more than one drug, and, while total overdose death numbers are not duplicative, the data set lists any drug contributing to the death, according to the state. 

Prior to 2020, overdose deaths in West Virginia peaked in 2017, breaking 1,000 for the first time as 1,019 residents reportedly died that year. More than 85% of overdoses that year included an opioid. Rates declined in both 2018 and 2019.

But when the pandemic came, overdose rates rose alongside it, hitting a new record as 1,343 people died from overdoses in 2020. That increase continued into 2021, as 1,537 people died.

For 2023, McDowell County led the state again in the number of fatal overdoses per capita, with 183 fatalities recorded per 100,000 people. It was followed by Cabell County (with 174 fatal overdoses per capita), Mercer County (153 fatal overdoses per capita), Raleigh County (152 fatal overdoses per capita) and Wyoming County (122 fatal overdoses per capita).

Only two counties, Tyler and Gilmer, have so far reported no overdose deaths for 2023. In both 2023 and 2022, 26 West Virginia counties saw declines in the rates of fatal overdoses, per the data.

While the number of overdoses is trending down, the percentage involving opioids has remained high, at about 86% in 2023, compared to about 85% in 2022. That rate hit its lowest in 2019, when just 76% of fatal overdoses in the state involved an opioid.

From our friend Michael Siegel regarding the kids, the olds, techology, and the Surgeon General:

As Greg Lukianoff likes to point out, we are subjecting a generation of children to a sort of reverse cognitive behavioral therapy. CBT, a method I have used to get my own anxiety under control, is a broad sweep of psychological methodology but the TL;DR version is that you identify distorted thinking; ways you are making yourself anxious and depressed when you don’t need to be. An example I often am prone to is mind-reading: assuming that if someone, for example, doesn’t respond to a text, it’s because they are angry at me or don’t like me or are offended. But, in reality, I have no way of knowing what they are actually thinking; I’m pretending I can read their mind and assuming the worst. CBT helps people identify those kinds of “cognitive distortions” that make them more anxious and depressed about the world than they need to be.

But this is the opposite of what we are doing with teenagers these days. Crime rates are low and a child is never safer than when they are in school. Yet we tell them they are in constant danger of getting gunned down and subject them to traumatizing cosplay “live shooter drills”. The environment is cleaner now than it has been for over a century; yet we tell kids that global warming is going to destroy the world and they shouldn’t bother to have kids of their own. The nation’s economy is strong; yet we tell them they’re on the brink of poverty. Every shift in the Ukraine War is supposedly a precursor to World War III. Every economic hiccup supposedly presages a recession. Every flu bug is the next COVID. We are constantly, incessantly terrifying younger generations with various boogeymen. And then we’re surprised they’re anxious.

It’s not that problems don’t exist; global warming, for example, is all too real. But most of the problems we face today are solvable problems and relatively manageable compared to the calamities previous generations endured like smallpox epidemics, world wars and decades-long global depressions. Maybe I’m a bit of a pollyanna on this since most of the young people I deal with are college students. But I don’t actually worry too much about young people; they show every sign of being able to rise to the challenges that our remaining problems present.

My point here is that it’s easy to identify a menace like “social media” and decide that is the main problem facing kids. And, to be honest, I am not opposed to banning or restricting phone use in schools and think age minimums on social media are appropriate. But I think the people clamoring about the perils of social media — itself yet another moral panic designed to terrify younger generations — need to take a long hard look in the mirror. It is our responsibility to build a world where children feel safe but challenged. We aren’t doing that because there’s money and fame to be made in sowing panic and terror over crime, immigration, global warming or whatever. To the extent that social media is a problem, it is because they amplify efforts to instill young people with a constant sense of dread.

Maybe knock that crap off. Then we’ll talk about Instagram.

Behind the scenes of Antique Roadshow, from the Washington Post:

“What gets you onto ‘Roadshow’? You’ve got a good story, let’s start there,” says Bemko. “Story is king.” It helps, of course, if your item turns out to be worth a lot, or if there’s a big chasm between what you paid and how much it would sell for at auction. And the appraiser has to be able to tell the owner new information, even in the age of online research.

One person Bemko picks for filming in Baltimore is a descendant of a Delaware governor who brought a silver pitcher, and had a sense it might be valuable. “He thinks he knows things and he does know a lot,” she says. “But we know a little bit more and we’ll tell him.”

Despite the oppressive heat, the crowd at the roadshow buzzes with excitement. Perhaps it’s the incredibly high ratio of oddities per minute in your sightline. There’s something especially pleasing about knowing that people are toting around objects of significance or curiosity to them, like a life-size sculpture of a naked woman collaged with patterned paper, or a collection of comics that rarely get fresh air.

Now in her 25th year with the show, Bemko has seen trends come and go. Victorian furniture pieces that once sold for thousands now might appraise for $500. Even some of the categories over at the triage tent have adjusted over time, which she says reflects “changing tastes with the changing demographic.”

That’s why Pokémon cards and other trappings of ’90s childhoods have recently made their way onto the show. “My official job now is just to make millennials feel old,” says Travis Landry, director of pop culture for Bruneau & Co. Auctioneers. “People always want to collect what they have or what they can remember having.” He’s been an appraiser for the show for eight years, since he was 20, and grew up watching it.

When filming in Arizona, a woman plopped down a binder filled with Magic: The Gathering cards, including ones he immediately recognized as extremely rare. “Those genuine reactions of when people have no clue, and then you get to tell them they have $100,000 worth of trading cards, [that’s] the best,” he says. (Those cards have at least doubled, and potentially tripled, in value since the appraisal.)

Worth Listening To/Watching:

I find these sorts of things fascinating, and poignant, watching the keepers of lost crafts going about their work against the tides, quite literally in this case: From DW Docs

Lorenzo Ucañan is a reed boat fisher. He comes from Huanchaco, a fishing village on the northwestern coast of Peru. Following tradition, he builds his reed boat, known as a ‘caballito’, himself. But he can no longer feed his family, due to the sharp decline in fishing yields. In Huanchaco, a fishing village on the northwestern coast of Peru, Lorenzo Ucañan walks to the reed beds.

He’s a fisher who learned the traditional craft of reed boat building from his father. The fishers of Huanchaco have been working in reed boats since time immemorial. Known as ‘caballitos’ or ‘little horses’, they make light work of the waves. People say that surfing was invented here 3,000 years ago; that the young men of the Chimú culture were sent out to sea in the boats to test their sailing skills.

Lorenzo builds a new boat every month. The craft could hardly be more sustainable: it’s made from natural materials, it doesn’t need any fuel, it doesn’t make any noise and when it’s no longer seaworthy (after about a month), it’s completely biodegradable. But in Huanchaco, more and more of the caballitos stand idle, an attractive addition to the beachscape. Fishing stocks and yields have seen rapid decline; the fishing profession is dying out. Out at sea, it’s tourists who ride the waves on brightly colored Hawaiian boards. The locality is changing into a surfing hotspot.

Lorenzo’s sons are keen not to miss out and work as surfing instructors. The older fishers view the decline of their craft with melancholy. While they desperately try to at least save the traditional "Fisherman’s Day” in honor of Saint Peter, Lorenzo’s son Joel organizes a big surfing competition. He has no trouble finding sponsors, whereas the fishers struggle to generate any interest in their celebration. But they go through with it anyway, demonstrating the tenacity they learned from the sea.

It is serious and these turnips should be put in prison, airports are secure areas for very good reasons, but I just can’t stop laughing at how incompetent and stupid these very-well funded loons are. Brad Palumbo explains:

Our friend Molly McCluskey has an ongoing series about how in the small Alaskan town of Skagway, a unique twist on the housing crisis combines geography, cruise ships, locals, and seasonal workers into a big hot mess in the north:

Like many Alaska towns, Skagway has been dealing with a housing shortage for years. Unlike other towns, Skagway has little room for expansion and the number of housing units available doesn’t change much year over year, even as the ships get bigger, and more seasonal employees are needed to serve them. Recent changes have residents unsure how much longer it can go on. Molly McCluskey is a former reporter for The Skagway News, and she returned to report on Skagway’s housing challenges and some possible solutions. Tune in to the KHNS local News Wednesday Evenings and Thursday Mornings for this limited series; “The Skagway Shuffle”

Click here to listen