Carolina Country-Style Ribs

Why not go “whole hog” and cook up some ribs to go with your potato salad? This delectable recipe comes courtesy of the National Pork Board.

Carolina Country-Style Ribs
Ingredients

Directions

Place ribs in a large bowl or resealable plastic bag; set aside. In 4-cup glass measure, stir together vinegar, water, oil, molasses (or brown sugar), salt, red pepper flakes, and cayenne pepper until salt is dissolved. Remove 1/2 cup marinade; set aside. Add remaining marinade to ribs. Seal bag and marinate for 4 to 6 hours in the refrigerator. Remove ribs from marinade; discard marinade.

Prepare medium-hot fire. Grill ribs over indirect heat for 50 to 60 minutes or until pork is tender and the internal temperature reaches 160º F. Baste ribs twice with reserved marinade during last 15 minutes of grilling. 
Serves 6.

Calories: 198 calories

Protein: 14 grams

Fat: 14 grams

Sodium: 355 milligrams

Cholesterol: 51 milligrams

Saturated Fat: 5 grams

Carbohydrates: 2 grams

Fiber: 0 grams

Meet the Cartoonist: Dave Carpenter

“Improve Your Memory”

 “Improve Your Memory”
From Sep/Oct 2001

Self-improvement is a noble endeavor, as in this cartoon that appeared in the Post in 2001. Unfortunately, the woman still doesn’t remember leaving a pot burning on the stove. Dave Carpenter has enjoyed drawing since childhood, but he didn’t consider becoming a professional cartoonist until the 1970s while he was in college.

“This car was paid for by the last driver who tailgated me.”

Bumper Sticker: “This car was paid for by the last driver who tailgated me.”
From Mar/Apr 2004

I want this bumper sticker! Like many cartoonists we’ve met, Dave had to work a full-time job while trying out his craft. “In the early years I primarily sold cartoons to trade journals and eventually worked my way up to national publications.” His first sale was to Skin Diver magazine for $10.00. Those first victories are sweet, even if not particularly lucrative.

“This is fun, Henry. Why don’t you catch one?”

"This is fun, Henry. Why don't you catch one?"
From Oct 1987

Dave “began studying a cartoon correspondence course evenings and weekends. After graduating I went to work full time at a grocery store and started cartooning on a part-time basis. I began to sell to a few smaller publications and eventually went full time as a cartoonist in 1981.” He sold his first cartoon to The Saturday Evening Post in 1987, and has also appeared in Reader’s Digest, The Wall Street Journal, and other publications. This fishing cartoon from October 1987 is one of the first Dave did for the Post.

“The pharmacy said bring back your medication and they would be happy to put on a non-childproof cap.”

 “The pharmacy said bring back your medication and they would be happy to put on a non-childproof cap.”
From Sep/Oct 2006

Dave hits the drawing board in his home studio around 10:00 a.m. “after visiting with the morning gang at the coffee shop” and works unit 5:00 or 6:00 p.m. “I also work a number of evenings (unless there is a good football game on TV).”

“Waiting Room Tic-Tac-Toe”

 “Waiting Room Tic-Tac-Toe”
From Jul/Aug 2007

Well, just how many old magazines can a person read while waiting for the doctor? “Over the years, I have seen a lot of changes in the business, especially with today’s technology,” says Dave. “I still do all my drawing and painting on the drawing board (not computer), though, I must confess, I recently found a ‘paint’ program on my computer that allows me to touch up the drawings.”

“Louise, maybe you’re overdoing the ‘forest’-scented air freshener.”

 “Louise, maybe you’re overdoing the ‘forest’-scented air freshener.”
From Mar/Apr 2006

Nothing like that fresh pine scent. Just ask the moose at the window. And the bear. “For the beginner, I would recommend studying your markets before submitting,” Dave suggests. “Seeing what type of cartoons the editors prefer increases your chance of selling.” I’ve noted before how frustrating it is for editors to wade through material that isn’t even appropriate to their publication. Thanks for the advice, Dave. And for the laughs!

Why Fallout Shelters Never Caught On: A History

At the height of the Cold War, around the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis, both the U.S. and the Soviet Union bristled with nukes. It was a terrifying period. What was the average American supposed to do if our worst nightmare, nuclear war, actually came to pass?

“Just dig a hole!” the government told us. According to authorities, building a fallout shelter — this is assuming you had a back yard to build one in — would greatly increase the chances for surviving a nuclear attack. But Post author Hanson Baldwin, in 1962, was on hand with a little reality check. Sure we are all scared to death, but, he pointed out, living in a shelter wouldn’t protect us. Even if we survived the explosion, what were we supposed to do next?

It is utter hokum to claim, as some have done, that more than 90 percent of the population could be saved by a national shelter program designed to protect against radioactivity alone.

The survivor may emerge into an area uninhabitable for days, weeks, months, years, or a lifetime. His immediate need is to know where to go to reach an area relatively uncontaminated by radioactivity. If he has to walk, he may receive a lethal dose of radioactivity before he reaches safety. [“The Case Against Fallout Shelters” March 31, 1962]

Baldwin quoted a director at Consumer Reports who had examined the commercially available models of fallout shelters.

“Fallout shelters of the type widely proposed to date are … costly and complex in their requirements [oxygen supply, water, power, heat, food, sanitary arrangements, and so forth] … limited and unreliable in usefulness, and … generally dependent on variables and unknowns.”

After all the debate and arguments about shelters between 1961 and 1962, only about 200,000 shelters were sold nationwide — a small number for a population of 180 million. As another Post article described in 1965, the failure of the shelters to catch on ruptured the entrepreneurial dreams of one James J. Byrne. In 1961, this Detroit plywood dealer purchased a truckload of build-it-yourself shelters, which he planned to sell to eager homeowners. As he expressed it:

“I didn’t see how I could miss.”

He liked the shelter’s design — three hollow walls and a hollow ceiling (to be filled later with a mixture of sand and gravel) … When placed against a basement wall, it provided shelter space about six feet high and eight feet square. … It was so sturdy that, the [manufacturer] assured Byrne, it would withstand even the collapse of a house on top of it.

Furthermore, it could be bought in kit form — 73 major steel components, none weighing more than 150 pounds — for about $430 wholesale and sold for a retail price of $725.

The first hint of trouble came when [Byrne] detailed four employees to assemble the display shelter on a company truck. According to the salesman, two men could do the job in from two to four hours. Byrne’s workmen took ten.

Had they been installing the shelter permanently, they would also have had to dump a small mountain of sand — four to five cubic yards — into the eight-inch hollow between the walls and between the ceiling panels. This task, Byrne had been told, would require another ten hours. But upon thinking it over, Byrne was not so sure.

“You are filling a space nearly seven feet high, and there are only a few inches’ clearance between the shelter and the basement ceiling,” he says. “How are you going to get the sand in there? With a spoon? And how can you pack the ceiling panels without having the sand run right back in your face?” [“Anyone For Survival?” May 27, 1965]

Despite his misgivings, Byrne hired a sales director and drove the shelter on a flatbed truck around the region. According to the sales director,

“Thousands of people streamed through the display but nobody bought… People would listen to their pitch … take all the literature they could get, ask questions, then say something like, ‘We can’t afford it now,’ or ‘I guess we’ll see how things turn out.’”

“People were confused, frightened, angry,” [Byrne] says. “I was accused of profiteering, war-mongering — you name it. P

They didn’t make a single sale.

Eventually Byrne had to write off his investment as a loss. He announced he would give away the shelters, but still there were no takers.

The idea of building a fallout shelter is generally a subject of humor these days, but at the height of nuclear fears, why didn’t more Americans take up the idea? Some thought that building everyone a hidey-hole was tempting fate. Byrne: “One woman shouted at me — shouted— ‘Don’t you know that the more shelters we have the more likely someone is to start a war? Why do you do this to us?'”

Others opposed them on religious grounds. Byrne again: “People who believed in predestination called me sacrilegious. My minister was angry with me. Even my wife disapproved. ‘I don’t believe God ever intended for people to live like that,’ she told me.”

And of course, there’s the prospect of spending weeks, months, maybe even years living in 60 square feet of space with, gulp, family members!

Spicy Apple Tea & Marion’s Dream Bars

In her book Tea Culture: History, Traditions, Celebrations, Recipes & More, Beverly Dubrin gives a history of tea while also presenting some tea recipes (and some recipes for snacks to go with the tea). Here are two delicious recipes we tested for our very own tea party.

Spicy Apple Tea

Makes 1 cup

Ingredients

Instructions

1. Bring water/apple cider mixture to boil. Remove from heat.

2. Add tea and steep for 3 to 5 minutes. Remove tea bag or strain, if using loose tea.

3. Serve immediately. For added sweetness, add a cinnamon stick to each cup of tea.

Marion’s Dream Bars

Makes about 30 bars

Ingredients for Crust

Ingredients for Topping

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 350° F.

2. Prepare crust by blending butter, sugar, and flour until they form a dough. Pat the dough into a 9×9-inch baking pan. Bake for 15 minutes until slightly brown.

3. Cool crust to room temperature.

4. Prepare topping by beating eggs lightly. Add brown sugar and beat well. Sift in the flour, baking powder, and salt. Stir to mix together.

5. Add coconut, walnuts, and vanilla to topping mixture. Pour batter over baked crust.

6. Bake at 350° F for 30 minutes. Test with toothpick or cake tester in middle of pan. If it doesn’t come out clean, continue baking for another 5 minutes, then test again. If the tester still doesn’t come out clean, bake for a further 5 minutes.

Rockwell’s School Teachers

“Happy Birthday, Miss Jones”

Happy Birthday, Miss Jones By Norman Rockwell March 17, 1956
“Happy Birthday, Miss Jones”
by Norman Rockwell
March 17, 1956

Rockwell arranged this “surprise” party for Miss Jones, of course. He posed the children in their seats and arranged the humble birthday gifts on the desk: an apple, an orange, a flower or two, and packages tied with string. I like the “Happy Birthday Jonesy” on the blackboard. Also the Rockwell details: an eraser and chalk dust on the floor indicate there was an eraser fight while waiting for the teacher to show up. The kid with the red shirt still has an eraser on his head.

But just as with the 1935 cover (below) of a teacher, Rockwell received complaints about how he portrayed teachers. Although a reader wrote that the artist captured “the full loving beauty of what is called ‘teaching’ in that sweet face,” another complained, why did he “make the schoolteacher so mousy looking”? Alas, even Norman Rockwell couldn’t please everyone.

“First Day of School”

First Day of School, by Norman Rockwell, September 14, 1935
“First Day of School”
by Norman Rockwell
September 14, 1935

Rockwell loved costumes such as these 1870s dresses, but moved away from that since people just didn’t care for these covers as they did the modern covers that depicted everyday life and dress. The artist felt that every schoolteacher in the country complained about how homely he made this schoolmarm. One must observe that the contrast with the friendly, pretty mother is significant. One might also think the teacher may seem a little eager to use that stick behind her back for any errant behavior. The pupil with his “boys-will-be-boys” bandage may have met his match.

“After School”

After School, by Norman Rockwell, October 27, 1917
“After School”
by Norman Rockwell
October 27, 1917

Back in 1917, Rockwell painted a very attractive teacher. The boy has to stay after school and write, “Knowledge is Power” on the blackboard an infinite number of times for some misdeed. It appears the student has acquired some unintended knowledge. A suitor (notice the box of candy behind his back) calling on a schoolmistress was juicy stuff indeed.

“First in His Class”

First in His Class, by Norman Rockwell, June 6, 1926
“First in His Class”
by Norman Rockwell
June 6, 1926

Rockwell was not terribly fond of school himself, which was perhaps why he depicted this young scholar as a nerd. To have the schoolmaster drone on and on about your intellectual achievements? I suspect Rockwell would have preferred having to write something on the chalkboard a bazillion times.

Making a Case for Pro Football

It was with good reason that newspapers covered the National Football League (NFL) lockout this year in both the sports and finance pages. Professional football is very big business. In 2010, NFL revenues exceeded $9 billion. (In contrast, the revenues for Major League Baseball were $7.2 billion and $4.1 billion for the National Basketball Association.)

Success on this scale would have been unthinkable when the NFL was founded 91 years ago this week. Back then, pro football was struggling for acceptance. Americans loved the game, but only when played by college teams. For years, the NFL struggled to build a following for the professional sport, which was considered inferior to the college version. This misconception led one of its star players to write in its defense for a 1932 issue of the Post.

“Do you believe a great college team could beat one of the good teams in the National Professional league?”

That’s a question people ask me frequently. My reply is that I believe the college eleven would have little, if any, chance of winning. I add that the professionals’ margin of victory should be more than one touchdown. So saying, I bare my reddish locks to the storms of criticisms that will fall on my head.

Those reddish locks belonged to Harold “Red” Grange, formerly the star halfback at the University of Illinois. At the time of writing, the “Galloping Ghost”played for the Chicago Bears, helping to lure fans of his college performance to the pro games.

My belief in pro superiority … is grounded on the experience of three years of comparative skylarking on college gridirons and six bruising years in professional football.

Professional footballers, Grange says, play a longer season. They don’t have many of the advantages college players enjoy, like some of the best coaches in the game. And they are powered by—

The gentleman very much in action is Tennessee's Bad News Cafego.
The gentleman very much in action is Tennessee’s Bad News Cafego.

a pregame emotional frenzy created by publicity, campus tension, the bands, and the fire-eating alumni.

In my own university days, I was convinced that the fate of the nation hinged on whether we defeated Michigan. I believed that my dad … might have a stroke if we lost.

But a fanatical desire to win and the inspiration of a coach won’t take a halfback over, around, or through a hard, fast line which averages 220 pounds from end to end. That’s what you face when you line up against the Green Bay Packers, for example.

Professional ball players must face tough, hardened veterans who know all the tricks and feints, which are so effective among college players.

The pros work out five days each week; they play on the sixth, and have their day off on Monday, instead of on Sunday, as is the case in college. The three hours of practice are largely devoted to football fundamentals, even though most of the men have played for years.

The professional footballer, Grange adds in those innocent days, had to really like the game to stick with it.

The pay isn’t large and there are easier ways to make a living. The average pay for a professional squad is about $125 per player, per game [$1,900 in current dollars]; a team plays from fourteen to eighteen games each season. The highest salary any player in the league receives, I believe, is about $10,000 a season. [$160,000 in today’s money.]

[Just as revenues have grown since 1932, so have salaries. The median income for NFL players is over $750,000 a year. The highest annual salary is $18 million.]

In conclusion, there is one thing in which I take plenty of pride. It is not in the fact that I gained more than two miles of ground in my twenty games at Illinois—thanks to superb blocking by the Illini.

I do take pride in the fact that during 1931 I led the Chicago Bears, for the season, in average gains from scrimmage, carrying the ball 605 yards in 114 attempts, an average of 5.3 yards on each try. On many of those yards I carried a 225-pound lineman on my back for company. If ball carrying in pro football gets any harder, I’ll simply have to take up bridge.

This action photograph taken during a professional game in Chicago would seem to indicate that the pros leave little, if any, of their boyish enthusiasm behind them when they leave college. Grange is shown carrying the ball. On the left side of the page Grange is shown in a game between the Chicago Bears and Brooklyn.

The Art of Frances Tipton Hunter

“Here Boy!”

Here Boy! by Frances Tipton Hunter December 5, 1936
“Here Boy!”Frances Tipton Hunter December 5, 1936

Now, where is that dog? A reader recently requested information about cover artist Frances Tipton Hunter (1896-1957). Hunter’s career spanned the 1920s through 1950s, and like many female artists of that time, she frequently focused on children and pets.

“Girl and Boy at Soda Fountain”

Girl and Boy at Soda Fountain by Frances Tipton Hunter June 6,1936
“Girl and Boy at Soda Fountain”Frances Tipton Hunter June 6,1936

This was Hunter’s first cover for The Saturday Evening Post. The expression on the little boy’s face when he realizes he forgot (or lost) his money makes this a favorite of mine. Hunter’s artistic talent revealed itself during her high school years. She graduated with honors from the Philadelphia Museum of Industrial Arts and did the same at The Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and the Fleisher Art Memorial. She moved from Pennsylvania to New York where she illustrated children’s fashions for department stores.

“Boys in Principal’s Office”

Boys in Principal’s Office by Frances Tipton Hunter September 12, 1936
“Boys in Principal’s Office”Frances Tipton Hunter September 12, 1936

In 1936, like today, when little boys get in fights, a trip to the principal’s office is in order. I love the anxious expression on the blond boy’s face. In the 1920s Hunter created a series of paper dolls for Ladies Home Journal that became so popular that a compendium of her doll artwork was later published. She also illustrated for Collier’s, Women’s Home Companion, and Good Housekeeping as well as being known for her work in advertisements, puzzles, and calendar art.

“Boy and Girl at Candy Counter”

Boy and Girl at Candy Counter by Frances Tipton Hunter August 19, 1939
“Boy and Girl at Candy Counter”Frances Tipton Hunter August 19, 1939

Oh, gracious, this takes me back! I can remember having a few pennies to spend on candy and taking forever to make the momentous decision. Hunter was said to imitate Rockwell in her idealized visions of children. Perhaps this is because she never had children of her own.

“Little Boy and Winter Underwear”

Little Boy and Winter Underwear by Frances Tipton Hunter Feb 27, 1937
“Little Boy and Winter Underwear”Frances Tipton Hunter,br /> Feb 27, 1937

The life of an artist! Post editors suggested this idea for a cover, and the artist liked it. She wanted to sketch it from real life, so she found a spot in a Philadelphia department store and waited. “Well, she waited and waited,” editors wrote in this 1937 issue. “Little girls came in, with large mothers, and stolid, big boys with small mothers, but not a small boy in the lot. Hours passed, with Miss Hunter waiting patiently in her corner. Finally, when all seemed lost, in came the pair you see on the cover of this issue. Miss Hunter sat bolt upright, all eyes, sketch pad ready. She wanted the expression on the youngster’s face, particularly. And then came the big moment—the small fry glowered and muttered: mother held the despicable woolies. Miss Hunter poised her pencil.

“‘Turn around, Richard,’ said mother, ‘and I’ll measure these against your back.’” Sigh. Somehow our dedicated artist caught the perfect expression and the cover came out great.

“Girl and Boy on School Steps”

Girl and Boy on School Steps by Frances Tipton Hunter May 25, 1940
“Girl and Boy on School Steps”Frances Tipton Hunter May 25, 1940

Hunter painted big kids, too. In this 1940 cover, the young lady is concentrating on teaching her classmate the math formulas and he is concentrating on … well, I think you can guess. When Frances Tipton passed away in 1957, she left her artwork to be divided between the James V. Brown Library and the Lycoming County Historical Museum, both in Williamsport, Pennsylvania.

“Kids Riding Trolley”

Kids Riding Trolley by Frances Tipton Hunter July 20, 1940
“Kids Riding Trolley” by Frances Tipton Hunter July 20, 1940

This 1940 cover of a boy and girl was another of eighteen covers Hunter did for the Post. For others, see the Curtis Publishing website.

What does any of this have to do with Ogden Nash? Just this: I found an illustration by Frances Tipton Hunter for a poem called “Remembrance of Tings to Come” published by Nash in the August 29, 1936 issue of the Post. Here is a link to that poem, with Miss Hunter’s illustration:

Limerick Laughs Contest Winner and Runners-Up for May/Jun 2011

The staff of The Saturday Evening Post is pleased to announce the winner of the May/Jun Limerick Laughs Contest, Neal Levin of Bloomfield, Michigan! For his excellent poem describing the picture to the left, Neal wins a cash prize—and our gratitude for a job well done. If you’d like to enter the Limerick Laughs Contest for our Sep/Oct issue, you can submit your entry via the form at the very end of this post. Now, without further ado, here is Neal’s masterpiece:

The little boy storms through the door,
Excited like never before.
He worked extra hard
On his Mother’s Day card,
But his true art’s all over the floor.

Of course, Neal’s limerick wasn’t the only one we liked! Here are a few of our favorite runners-up, in no particular order:

He blew in—this small hurricane—
Tracking mud on the rug, dripping rain.
He had made her a card
And was smiling so hard,
That Mom knew she just couldn’t complain.

—Barbara Blanks, Garland, Texas

It’s not that mothers are lax,
It’s just one of life’s little facts.
When she sees all the joy
On the face of her boy
We know she won’t mention the tracks.

—Maudie White, Erie, Pennsylvania

He’s bringing home dirt from the yard
And also a Mother’s Day card!
The one is no pleasure,
The other a treasure.
Forgiving will not be so hard!

—Virginia Wilson, Port Orange, Florida

There’s water and mud on the floor
From the boy and the dog at the door.
But the joy that they bring
Makes it just a small thing.
After all that’s what Mom’s mop is for!

—Teena Marino, St. Peters, Missouri

So excited to give Mom a treat,
He forgot to wipe off his feet.
Though her floor was defiled,
His mom only smiled,
For the card her son brought was so sweet.

—Mary C. Ryan, Bradford, Pennsylvania

This duo with smiles galore
Just tracked a big mess on the floor.
But when Mom sees the card
She won’t take it too hard,
Though her blood pressure may start to soar!

—Rose Hester-Lavenburg, Brooklyn, New York

They cut through the garden, just dug,
And made a big mess on the rug.
But the card from the boy
And the look of pure joy
Will for sure guarantee a big hug.

—Joyce Petrichek, Finleyville, Pennsylvania

When it comes to a son there’s no other
Can melt a mom’s heart like soft butter.
Even covered with mud,
She will give him a hug,
And willingly clean up the clutter.

—Evelyn Vibbert, Fishers, Indiana

When her son came home with his card,
Mother knew he had worked very hard.
And the joy on his face
Seemed to erase
The muck he tracked in from the yard.

—Dorothy Ford, Chanute, Kansas

Meet the Cartoonist (and Author): Joe Farris

“I heard they were cutting back on the length of stays.”

from Jul/Aug 2000 – "I heard they were cutting back on the length of stays."
From Jul/Aug 2000

Boy, hospitals aren’t messing around these days. Don’t let the door hit your stitches on the way out. This is from cartoonist and author Joe Farris. His new book, A Soldier’s Sketchbook, is about his experiences as a young soldier in World War II. We’ll show a sneak preview below.

“What a coincidence! I defended myself in court, too!”

from Nov/Dec 2001 – "What a coincidence! I defended myself in court, too!"
From Nov/Dec 2001

Okay, any second now, this guy will remember the old saying “a man who defends himself in court has a fool for a lawyer.” Joe is an artist and a sculptor who has had many one-man shows and has also appeared in group exhibits.

“August! My gosh, I really overslept!”

from Jul/Aug 1997 – "August! My gosh, I really overslept!"
From Jul/Aug 1997

Gee, is it August already? This appeared in the Post in 1997. Joe is a staff cartoonist and cover artist for The New Yorker. His work appears in many other venues such as Time, Newsweek, and The New York Times.



A Soldier’s Sketchbook

A Soldier’s Sketchbook
Courtesy National Geographic

I’m always pleased to show off another great cartoonist and his work for the Post, but I also get to let you know about Joseph Farris’ new book from National Geographic: A Soldier’s Sketchbook. His close-knit family kept 18-year-old Joe’s letters home, which the author intersperses with his sketches and paintings.

Aboard the U.S.S. General W. H. Gordon, 1944.
From A Soldier’s Sketchbook
 Courtesy National Geographic

Joe describes this sketch: “On board the U.S.S. General W.H. Gordon on the way to Marseilles, France, October, 1944.”

“This watercolor shows one of the most dangerous moments in our battle for the Maginot Line. The Germans had bracketed our position, and we anxiously feared the next shell would zero in on us.” p. 120
from A Soldier’s Sketchbook
Courtesy National Geographic

It’s difficult for me to imagine that the “hardened soldier” participating and sketching these events was still a teenager. The caption says, “The dash to Ft. Freudenberg – Maginot Line. Bitche, France – December 1944.”

We thank the team at the Book Division of the National Geographic Society for the sketches and cover for A Soldier’s Sketchbook, which will be released in November. It’s a always a treat to show off our talented cartoonists—but it’s also an honor to remember a World War II veteran.

American Schools in Crisis

If you read the news magazines or watch TV, you might get the impression that American education is deep in a crisis of historic proportions. The media tell you that other nations have higher test scores than ours and that they are shooting past us in the race for global competitiveness. The pundits say it’s because our public schools are overrun with incompetent, lazy teachers who can’t be fired and have a soft job for life.

Don’t believe it. It’s not true.

Critics have been complaining about the public schools for the past 60 years. In the 1950s, they said that the public schools were failing, Johnny couldn’t read, and the schools were in a downward spiral. In the 1960s, we were told there was a “crisis in the classroom.” For at least the past half-century we have heard the same complaints again and again. Yes, our students’ scores on international tests are only average, but when the first such test was given in 1964, we were 12th out of 12. Our students have never been at the top on those tests.

The critics today would have us believe that our future is in peril because other nations have higher test scores. They said the same thing in 1957 when the Soviet Union sent its Sputnik into orbit and “beat us” by being first. At the time, the media were filled with dire predictions and blamed our public schools for losing the space race. But we’re still here, and the Soviet Union is gone.

Maybe those tests are not good predictors of future economic success or decline. Is it possible that we succeeded not because of test scores but because our society encourages something more important than test scores: the freedom to create, innovate, imagine, and think differently?

We should, as President Obama said in his 2011 State of the Union address, ignore the naysayers because “America still has the largest, most prosperous economy in the world. No workers are more productive than ours. No country has more successful companies or grants more patents to inventors and entrepreneurs. We are home to the world’s best colleges and universities where more students come to study than any other place on Earth.”

Norman Rockwell visits a Country School

Since the 1840s, our public schools have been a bulwark of our democratic society. Over time, they have opened their doors to every student in the community regardless of that student’s race, religion, language, disability, economic standing, or origin. No one has to enter a lottery to gain admission.

With this openness, there is a price to be paid: Our public school teachers have one of the most difficult jobs in society. Their classes include children who are recent immigrants, many of whom don’t speak or read English; they include children who have social, emotional, mental, and physical disabilities; they include children who live in desperate poverty.

Let’s be fair to our schools and our teachers. As our society has changed, the schools have had to deal with escalating social problems. Compared to schools today, the schools of the 1950s were tranquil. Teachers were uncontested authorities in their classrooms. They were free of the mandates now regularly issued by Congress, the courts, and state legislatures. If students misbehaved or failed repeatedly, they were likely to be suspended or expelled. Only half of the students who started ninth grade eventually graduated high school, and responsibility for their success or failure was shared equally by family and school.

In the mid-20th century, most children lived in two-parent families; today, single-parent families are the norm in many communities, and many children come home to an empty apartment or house. Our popular culture has changed dramatically, too. Television, cell phones, and the Internet have connected children to the outside world, and the outside world often sends messages that contradict parents’ efforts to create sound values and a work ethic.

In the years after World War II, the American economy grew steadily, and there were plenty of good jobs for people who did not have a high school diploma. Now most of those jobs, whether clerical or in manufacturing, have been replaced by new technologies or by outsourcing. Back then, it was no shame to leave school without a diploma. Today, it is expected that everyone must graduate from high school, and anyone who does not is stigmatized socially and economically.

The good old days were not that good if you were black or disabled. Public schools routinely excluded children with disabilities, and schools in many parts of the nation were racially segregated, either by law or by custom.

Our schools are now expected to educate all children, whatever their condition. In 1975, Congress mandated special education for children with disabilities. It promised to pay 40 percent of the cost but has never followed through. When politicians complain about the high cost of education, they fail to acknowledge that most of the new money spent on the schools has gone to pay for services for children with physical, mental, and emotional problems.

Since the Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954, which banned racial segregation in the schools, the basic principle of American education has been equality of educational opportunity. Starting in 1965, Congress passed legislation to send extra resources to districts that enrolled the poorest children—resources that benefited children of all races. Meanwhile, as white and black middle-class families moved to the suburbs, urban districts had school systems characterized by heavy concentrations of students who were both racially segregated and impoverished.

In 2001, after the election of President George W. Bush, Congress passed a law called No Child Left Behind (NCLB), which changed the federal role in education. Instead of seeking equitable funding, Congress decided that it would impose a massive program of school reform based on standardized testing. The new law required states to test every child in reading and math from grades three through eight. The theory behind NCLB was that teachers and schools would try harder and see rapid test score gains if their test results were made public. Instead of sending the vast sums of money that schools needed to make a dent in its goal, Congress simply sent testing mandates to every school. It required that every child in every school must reach proficiency by 2014—or the schools would be subject to sanctions. If a school failed to make progress over five years, it might be closed or privatized or handed over to the state authorities or turned into a charter school. There was no evidence for the efficacy of any of these strategies, but that didn’t matter.

Educators knew that the goal of 100 percent of the students reaching proficiency was wildly unrealistic, but no one asked their opinion. So they kept their mouths shut. Over the past decade, districts and states have committed billions of dollars to testing, test preparation materials, and data systems. The results have been meager. Test scores have gone up in some districts and states, but federal audit tests do not reflect the same rate of improvement. That’s because most state tests have lower standards than the federal tests, and some states have since lowered their standards in an effort to show the kind of improvement the federal government has mandated.

NCLB was a radical plan of action, particularly because there was no reason to believe that annual tests—coupled with fear and humiliation—would produce the miraculous goal of 100 percent proficiency, a goal not reached by any nation on earth. The law treats public schools as though they were shoe stores: Make a profit or else. If you don’t, you might be fired, you might get new management, or you might be closed down. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan recently predicted that more than 80 percent of our public schools would be declared failures by next year based on federal standards.

Setting an impossible goal, providing inadequate resources to pursue that goal, and then firing educators and closing schools for failing to reach it is cruel and unusual punishment.

In 2009, the Obama administration launched its own radical school reform plan called Race to the Top. In some ways, it is worse than NCLB. Like NCLB, it assumes that higher test scores mean better education, even when those scores have been purchased by intensive test-prep activities. (What’s misleading about this kind of gain is that aggressive test-prep activities may lift scores without improving students’ knowledge or skills. In fact, some districts have seen scores and graduation rates rise while college remediation rates remained the same.) More than NCLB, Race to the Top blames teachers if student test scores don’t go up, which has demoralized millions of teachers. The program dangled nearly $5 billion in front of cash-hungry states, which could become eligible only if they agreed to open more privately managed charter schools, to evaluate their teachers by student test scores, to offer bonuses to teachers if their students got higher test scores, and to fire the staff and close schools that didn’t make progress.

Again, not one of these policies—not one—has any consistent body of evidence behind it. The fundamental belief that carrots and sticks will improve education is a leap of faith, an ideology to which its adherents cling despite evidence to the contrary.

Charter schools on average do not produce better academic results than regular public schools. As charters proliferate, regular public schools lose students and funding, and many charters try to avoid the students who are most costly and difficult to educate. Merit pay has failed again and again. Most testing experts agree that it’s wrong to judge teacher quality by students’ test scores. The promise of Race to the Top is that billions more will be spent on more tests, and districts will reduce the time available for subjects (like the arts and foreign languages) that aren’t tested. Piece by piece, our entire public education system is being redesigned in the service of increasing scores on standardized tests of basic skills. That’s not good policy, and it won’t improve education. Twelve years of rewarding children for picking the right answer on multiple-choice tests is bad education. It will penalize the creativity, innovativeness, and imaginativeness that has made this country great.

What the federal efforts of the past decade or more ignore is that the root cause of low academic achievement is poverty, not “bad” teachers. Children who are homeless, in ill health, or living in squalid quarters are more likely to miss school and less likely to have home support for their schoolwork. The most important educators in children’s lives are their families. What families provide in the way of encouragement, experiences, expectations, and security has a decisive effect on a child’s life chances. The most consistent predictor of test scores is family income. Children who grow up in economically secure homes are more likely to arrive in school ready to learn than those who lack the basic necessities of life.

Of course, no school should have any bad teachers. But bear in mind that administrators usually have three to four years to decide whether to grant due process rights (often called “tenure”) to teachers. In the years before a teacher gets due process rights, the teacher may be fired without any reason or cause at all. After a teacher wins due process rights, it doesn’t mean life tenure—it means that teachers have the right to a hearing before they may be fired. Teachers don’t hire themselves, don’t evaluate themselves, and don’t grant themselves due process rights. If there are bad teachers, we should ask why administrators are not doing their jobs, and the district should demand speedy resolution of any charges against teachers.

Most of what is called school reform these days consists of privatization and de-professionalization. The charter industry is growing rapidly and competing with regular public schools; it has ample resources to air television commercials and print ads to attract new “customers.” This competition has not proceeded on a level playing field because the charters frequently have smaller proportions of English-language learners and children with disabilities than the neighboring public schools. In addition, many charters are subsidized by additional millions of dollars in private donations, which enables them to market their wares and provide services that regular public schools cannot afford such as tutoring and mandatory summer school.

Some conservative governors—such as Mitch Daniels in Indiana, Scott Walker in Wisconsin, and Tom Corbett in Pennsylvania—have taken privatization to the next level and are pushing voucher programs, which will send public dollars to private and sectarian schools, possibly even to home-schoolers. This will divert many millions of dollars from the regular public schools.

At the same time, some states are lowering the standards for entry into teaching, ironically under the banner of improving teacher quality. Some, such as New Jersey, are proposing to remove certification as a requirement for teaching; others, such as Florida, are removing any stipends for experience. In Texas, a person can become a teacher by taking courses online. Still other states seek to make it easier for novices to become not only teachers, but also principals and superintendents.

Two major reports were released in spring 2011 that showed what a risky and foolish path the United States has embarked upon. The National Research Council (NRC) gathered some of the nation’s leading education experts, who concluded that incentives based on tests hadn’t worked.

In other words, the immense investment in testing over recent decades, the NRC commission said, were based on intuition, not on evidence—and faulty intuition, at that. The other report, by the National Center on Education and the Economy, maintained that the approach we are now following—testing every child every year and grading teachers by their students’ scores—is not found in any of the world’s top-performing nations.

It’s important to remember that this is not simply an abstract matter for ivory tower policy wonks to be nattering over. Our present course endangers one of our nation’s most precious institutions: our public schools. Surely they need improvement, but they don’t need a wrecking ball. Our policymakers’ obsession with standardized testing has proven to be wrong; not only does it lack scientific validation, but any parent or teacher could have told the policymakers that a heavy reliance on multiple-choice tests crushes originality, innovation, and creativity. As the federal government ratchets up the stakes attached to the tests, they become an even greater burden on students, teachers, and the quality of education. In addition, the higher the stakes, the less reliable the tests become as measures of learning. When everything rides on test scores, schools will encourage “teaching to the test” and even cheat to avoid being closed.

We are now at a fork in the road. If we continue on our present path of privatization and unproven market reforms, we will witness the explosive growth of a for-profit education industry and of education entrepreneurs receiving high salaries to manage nonprofit enterprises. The free market loves competition, but competition produces winners and losers, not equality of educational opportunity. We will turn teachers into “at will” employees, not professionals, who can be fired at the whim of a principal based on little more than test scores. Their pay and benefits will also depend on the scores. Who will want to teach? Most new teachers already leave the job within five years—and that figure is even higher in low-income districts.

What we will lose, if we move in that direction, is public education. Just as every neighborhood should have a good police station and firehouse, every neighborhood should also have a good public school.

If we are serious about closing the achievement gap, we should make sure that every pregnant woman who is poor has good prenatal care and nutrition and that every child has high-quality early education before arriving in kindergarten. The achievement gap begins before the first day of school. If we mean to provide equality of educational opportunity, we must begin to level the playing field before the start of formal schooling. Otherwise, we will just be playing an eternal game of catch-up—and we cannot win that game.

It is worth remembering that the reason we first established public education was to advance the common good of the community. It began in small towns, where communities agreed that all the children should be educated for the good of all and the sake of the future. Public schools have a civic mission: They are expected to prepare young people to become citizens and to share in the responsibility of maintaining our society. As political forces tear them apart, creating opportunities for entrepreneurs and for profit, it diminishes our commonwealth. That is a price we must not pay.

Diane Ravitch is a historian of education and a professor at NYU. She’s the former U.S. assistant secretary of education. Click here for a comment on this article by our Publisher, Joan SerVaas.

More on education in America:

Online Testing Doesn’t Work
When it comes to exams, this high schooler wants to stick with good old-fashioned pencil and paper. Read more >>

Teaching to the Test Gets an ‘F’
A conversation with Sir Ken Robinson, a leading thinker in the field of education and human potential. Read more >>

The Problem with Testing
Your child is more than a score. Here’s what one parent and researcher learned about the standardized assessments administered to students, teachers, and schools.
Read more >>

God vs. Science

John Polkinghorne remembers the day when some of his colleagues thought he had lost his mind. He was already famous as a physicist at Cambridge University for his work in explaining the existence of quarks and gluons, the world’s smallest known particles. He had won heaps of awards in his 27 years there, including membership in Britain’s Royal Society, one of the highest honors that can be bestowed on a scientist.

It was the end of the academic year, and he had invited some colleagues to his office for a meeting. At the conclusion, they gathered their papers, ready to leave. “Before you go,” Polkinghorne said, “I have something to tell you.”

The audience settled back into their chairs. “I am leaving the university to enter the Anglican priesthood. I will be enrolling in seminary next year.” Stunned silence filled  the room for several seconds until one of his colleagues, an atheist, finally uttered what was probably on everyone’s mind: “You don’t know what you’re doing.”

A few others were supportive of his personal choice, but there was a muttered consensus that this beacon of the scientific world had just committed intellectual suicide.

Can religion and science co-exist? Many would say no. Science, after all, deals with what can be measured, tested, and verified. Religion deals with things that can, by definition, only be taken on faith. Today, John Polkinghorne inhabits both worlds, but he understands why this is confusing to some.

“When you say that you’re a scientist and a Christian, people sometimes give you a funny look, as if you’d said, ‘I’m a vegetarian butcher.’ Many people out there think science and religion are actually at war with each other, but I believe that science and religion are friends, not foes.”

Science and religion are not mutually exclusive, Polkinghorne argues. In fact, both are necessary to our understanding of the world. “Science asks how things happen. But there are questions of meaning and value and purpose which science does not address. Religion asks why. And it is my belief that we can and should ask both questions about the same event.”

As a for-instance, Polkinghorne points to the homey phenomenon of a tea kettle boiling merrily on the stove.

“Science tells us that burning gas heats the water and makes the kettle boil,” he says.

But science doesn’t explain the “why” question. “The kettle is boiling because I want to make a cup of tea; would you like some?

“I don’t have to choose between the answers to those questions,” declares Polkinghorne. “In fact, in order to understand the mysterious event of the boiling kettle, I need both those kinds of answers to tell me what’s going on. So I need the insights of science and the insights of religion if I’m to understand the rich and many-layered world in which we live.”

Seeing the world from both the perspective of science and the perspective of religion is something Polkinghorne describes as seeing the world with “two eyes instead of one.” He explains: “Seeing the world with two eyes—having binocular vision—enables me to understand more than I could with either eye on its own.”

Polkinghorne was just 47 when he left Cambridge to become a priest in the Anglican Church. The year was 1979. The reason he left his physics post was multi-faceted. He had been part of a neighborhood Bible study and wanted to participate more in the sacraments at his church. Plus, he was ready to move on. “I had done my bit for physics,” he asserts, “and, unlike some other things in life, one doesn’t necessarily get better at physics the older one gets.”

John Polkinghorne in a library.
The debate about God’s existence is “the single most important question we face about the nature of reality,” says Polkinghorne.(Photo courtesy Dean Nelson)

After being ordained, he first served in the village of Blean, just up the hill from Canterbury Cathedral. At first parishioners were leery that this towering intellect would be difficult to understand. But Polkinghorne soon won them over with clarity and reason (that metaphor about the boiling teapot is recalled by one church member), and so his presence was welcomed into the community. In 1986, he returned to Cambridge, first as a chaplain to one of the colleges and eventually as president of Queens’ College,  a position he held until he retired in 1996.

Over the years he has preached his unique “binocular vision” theory to explain how a person committed to scientific inquiry could also be committed to the teachings of the Bible. He’s written many books on the harmony of religion and science, served on boards concerned with ethical standards for medical research, and received numerous honors. For his contributions, Polkinghorne was knighted by The Queen. (As a priest, however, he cannot be addressed as “Sir Polkinghorne.”) He’s also a highly regarded public speaker, putting into words a philosophy that is so moderate and reasonable that it was bound to make enemies on both ends of the religious spectrum.

Religious fundamentalists—those who believe in a six-day creation, a literal Adam and Eve, and an earth that is 6,000 years old—tend to repudiate Polkinghorne’s acceptance of evolution, the Big Bang, and a universe that is billions of years old. Bill Hoesch, curator of the Creation and Earth History Museum in Santee, California, derides Polkinghorne’s beliefs as “idol worship.”

Hoesch doesn’t see how scientific theory can enter the picture when the subject is the miracle of creation. “Is [Polkinghorne] just wrong? Yeah. He’s been deluded,” says Hoesch. (Polkinghorne actually toured Hoesch’s museum last November. While there, he stopped at a poster that claimed there was no suggestion of death in the Bible until the sin of Adam and Eve. “It may not be in the Bible, but the evidence is everywhere else,” Polkinghorne said, shaking his head.)

On the other extreme, atheists don’t exactly cotton to his ideas either. “In the very difficult context of theoretical mathematical physics, John made a real contribution,” allows Steven Weinberg, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist from the University of Texas who is also Polkinghorne’s friend and debating partner. “As for his religious interests, I’m sure he means well, but I don’t find his search for common ground a good thing. There is a relationship between science and faith, I suppose, but science tends  to weaken faith.

“I don’t want to see John go away,” Weinberg adds, laughing. “Just his beliefs.”

Religion doesn’t have all the answers, Polkinghorne agrees. He points out that magical Biblical explanations for lightning and plague were long ago debunked by science—and that the problems were solved with lightning rods and rat poison. “That’s one of the ways science has been helpful to religion,” notes Polkinghorne. “Religious explanations make mistakes, and science helps us see that some things are a natural phenomenon. That’s helpful to religion. Truth is very beneficial to both sides and helps both see more clearly. It helps and corrects some mistakes. But that doesn’t mean all religious belief is a mistake.”

And therein lies the key to Polkinghorne’s uniqueness: He addresses challenges—even rude ones—from both sides with such grace that it’s nearly impossible to be angry with the man, whatever your point of view. “There is no one else in the world like him,” said Darrel Falk, biologist, president of the BioLogos Foundation, and author of the book Coming to Peace with Science. “He is the best representative of the dialogue between faith and science because he has struggled with—and achieved so much in—both fields. He’s the most respected voice out there.”

As to the question of which has the clearer view of reality—faith or science?—Polkinghorne answers that it’s a false question. “You have to be two-eyed about it. If we had only one eye, then we could say it’s religion, because it relates to the deepest value of being human. Science doesn’t plumb the depths that religion does. Atheists aren’t stupid—they just explain less.”

Polkinghorne thinks atheists fail to consider the possibility that there might be more to life than what we can see and test and verify—that life might have transcendent and ultimate meaning. In addition, Polkinghorne argues, atheists have faiths of their own—beliefs that aren’t visible, testable, or verifiable any more than religion is, yet they inform one’s point of view in a manner similar to religious faith.

Ultimately, people of faith should not be afraid of science because both pursue truth. “Because people of faith worship the God of Truth, they should welcome truth from whatever source it comes,” Polkinghorne says. “Not all truth comes from science, but some does. It grieves me when I see Christian people turning their backs on science in a willful way, not taking seriously the insights it has to offer. All truth interacts with each other, and all truth is helpful.”

Likewise, people of science do not need to be afraid of faith. “Science doesn’t tell you everything. Those who think it does take a very diminished and arid form or view of life.”

For Polkinghorne, science made his faith stronger, and that faith made him a better scientist. Both approaches fulfill one of his favorite verses in scripture, I Thessalonians 5:21, which the esteemed physicist paraphrases: Test everything. Hold fast to what is true.

Looking for the Real Davy Crockett

Davy Crockett came onto the national stage at a time when the country was looking for legends. The young Congressman from Tennessee was happy to step into the role of the rugged, high-spirited backwoodsman. Soon newspapers were carrying tales of his mythical exploits, like this item from the Dec. 31, 1831, Post.

Col. Crockett happened once to be travelling in a steamboat when, discovering the vessel went too slow for his calculation, he ordered the boat ashore, took it up under his arm, and trudged off through the woods at the rate of ten knots an hour. It is said, he was so well pleased with this performance, that he grinned the bark off three large trees in succession.

Davy Crockett by John Gadsby Chapman photo from wikipedia

Unfortunately, all the tall tales and comic speeches attributed to Crocket have obscured the facts of his life. He was born in poverty and received minimal education. He enlisted in the Tennessee Militia during the Creek Indian wars. His popularity, combined with a skill in hunting that kept his troops fed, enabled him to leave the service as a lieutenant colonel. It also helped him win election to Congress in 1827. Defeated the next term, he was re-elected in 1833, lost again, and decided to head west to Texas.

As Crockett became known in Washington, newspaper writers and editors fastened onto him as the embodiment of the pioneer spirit. Crockett didn’t seem to mind. In fact, with his talent for story telling, he probably contributed to his own legend. Soon Crockett stories, comic pamphlets, and Crockett almanacs were appearing throughout the states. They were full of humorous folk takes like this one found in an 1833 Post.

As I was walking out one night, looking carelessly about me, I saw a racoon planted upon one of the highest limbs of an old tree. I though I’d bring him down, in the usual way, by a grin. I set myself but, after grinning at the ‘coon a reasonable time, found that he didn’t come down. I wondered what was the reason. I took another steady grin at him. Still he stuck there. It made me a little mad; so I felt round and got an old limb about five feet long. Planting one end upon the ground, I placed my chin upon the other and took a rest. I then grinned my best for about five minutes, but the ‘coon hung on.

Illustration from “Davy Crockett on the Track” serial from the Post .

I determined to have him. I went over to the house, got my axe, returned to the tree, and began to cut away. Down it come, and I run forward, but the ‘coon was nowhere to be seen. What I had taken for one was a large knot upon a branch of the tree—and upon looking at it closely, I saw that I grinned all the bark off, and left the knot perfectly smooth. [May 4, 1833]

Later that year, the Post offered this account of Crockett’s dinner at the White House.

I walked all round the long table, looking for something I liked. At last I took my seat just beside a fat goose, and I helped myself to as much of it as I wanted. But I hadn’t took three bites when I looked away up the table [where] a man was talking French to a woman on t’other side of the table. When I looked back again, my plate was gone, goose and all.

I cast my eyes down the table, and sure enough I see a man walking off with my plate. I says, “Hello, mister, bring back my plate.” He fetched it back in a hurry.  Says he, “What will you have, sir?” And says I, “You may well ask that, after stealing my goose.”

I then filled my plate with bacon and greens; and whenever I looked up or down the table, I held on to my plate with my left hand.

This time, it seems, the stories went too far, and the Post published Crockett’s request to set the record straight.

Mr. James Clark, a member of Kentucky who sat opposite to Mr. Crockett at the dinner table, declares his behavior was “marked with the strictest propriety.”

But the temptation to embellish Crockett stories seemed hard to resist. When the Post reported a speech by Crockett, it gave him a backwoods dialect, even giving his spoken word folksy misspellings.

I know a good many things has been said about me, but one half of ‘em is not true. You see me, I’m but a plain man, and have got no education to boast of. Thirty-four years ago, I visited this ‘ere same city. I was then only thirteen years of age, and had jist got education enough to spell “baker”—that was the biggest word I ever spell’d in them times.

But when the Post reported another speech by Crockett the same year, it hardly sounds like the same man.

I am travelling for my health, without the least wish of exciting the people in such times of high political feeling. I do not wish to encourage it. I am unable at this time to find language suitable to return my gratitude to the citizens of Philadelphia. I am almost induced to believe it flattery. This is new to me, yet I see nothing but friendship in your faces; and if your curiosity is to hear a backwoodsman, I will assure you I am ill prepared to address this most enlightened people.

“The Fall of the Alamo” by Robert Jenkins wikipedia.org

In 1836, however, man and myth intersected when Crockett joined the doomed garrison of Texans at the Alamo. In death, more than in life, Crockett became a legend. And, as we know, legends never die, as the Post suggested in 1840.

The Story of Colonel Crockett being alive, and a captive in one of the Mexican mines, is being revived. An extra of The Austin Gazette contains a letter written to the editor by an American in Mexico, giving the particulars of an interview which the writer had with Crockett, in the mine where he is a captive.

Individual Chicken Pot Pies

In our Sep/Oct issue, Christopher Kimball, host of PBS’ America’s Test Kitchen, shares a couple of family-favorite recipes scaled back to serve two instead of six. Here’s an additional, web-exclusive, just-for-two dinner—individual chicken pot pies. For more great recipes, check out America’s Test Kitchen’s Cooking for Two 2011 cookbook.

Individual Chicken Pot Pies

“Skip cooking and breaking down a whole bird,” Kimball says, “all you need is a single boneless chicken breast to make our pot pie for two. Poaching the chicken directly in the sauce and then shredding it keeps the process simplified. Using a pair of 12-ounce ramekins [small bowls like you might use to serve crème brulée or French onion soup] to hold the filling guarantees each diner gets a substantial, hearty serving.”


Individual Chicken Pot Pies

Ingredients

Directions

Adjust oven rack to middle position and heat oven to 450 degrees.

Roll out dough on parchment paper to 12-inch round, about 1/4 inch thick. Use ovenproof 12-ounce ramekin as guide to cut out two rounds of dough, about 1/2 inch larger than mouth of ramekin. Fold under and crimp outer 1/2 inch of dough, then cut 3 oval-shaped vents in center of each crust. Slide parchment paper with crusts onto rimmed baking sheet and bake until crusts just begin to brown and no longer look raw, 10 to 12 minutes for homemade pie dough or 7 minutes for store-bought dough; set aside.

Meanwhile, melt butter in medium saucepan over medium heat. Add carrots, onion, celery, and 1/2 teaspoon salt and cook until vegetables are softened and browned, 8 to 10 minutes. Stir in garlic, thyme, and soy sauce and cook until fragrant, about 30 seconds. Stir in flour and cook for 1 minute.

Slowly whisk in broth and cream, scraping up any browned bits. Nestle chicken into sauce and bring to simmer. Cover, reduce heat to medium-low, and cook until chicken registers 160 to 165 degrees on instant-read thermometer, 10 to 15 minutes. Transfer chicken to plate, let cool slightly, then shred into bite-size pieces.

Meanwhile, return pan with sauce to medium heat and simmer until thickened and sauce measures 2 cups, about 5 minutes. Off heat, return shredded chicken, with any accumulated juice, to pan. Stir in peas, parsley, and lemon juice and season with salt and pepper to taste.

Divide filling between ramekins and place parbaked crusts on top of filling. Place pot pies on aluminum foil-lined baking sheet and bake until crusts are deep golden brown and filling is bubbling, 10 to 15 minutes. Let pot pies cool for 10 minutes before serving.

Calories: 1090

Fat: 70 g

Sodium: 834 mg

Carbohydrate: 74 g

Fiber: 5.3 g

Protein: 41 g

Diabetic Exchanges: 2 carbohydrate, 0.75 nonstarchy vegetable, 3 lean meat, 5.5 fat

Meet the Cartoonist: Harley Schwadron

“Sorry, but ‘What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas’ is not a recognized legal precedent.”

from May/June 09
From May/Jun 2009

There’s that guy in the pin-striped suit! You’ll see him in The Wall Street Journal, Barrons, and Harvard Business Review—and very often in The Saturday Evening Post. “I started doing business cartoons because I was following the lure of the existing cartoon markets,” says Schwadron (pronounced “Sway-dron”). So the character I’ve dubbed “pin-stripe guy” has been good to him.

“U.S. Postal Service: When it absolutely positively has to be there this year!”

from Oct 84
From Oct 1984

Ouch. The poor post office gets no respect. “My first big cartoon sale when I was starting out was to The Saturday Evening Post!” says Harley. I wonder if it was this one from 1984.

“House protected by not having anything of value inside.”

 “House protected by not having anything of value inside”
From Sep/Oct 2010

“I’ve been drawing cartoons since I was eight years old,” Schwadron reports. “However, I never thought I could earn a living at it.” So he got a master’s degree in journalism and worked as a reporter and later editor for Michigan News Service. He drew cartoons in his spare time and “in 1985 I took a chance and started doing cartoons full-time. I’ve been happily at it ever since!”

“The correct response is ‘I do’—not ‘it’s worth a try.’”

“The correct response is ‘I do’—not ‘it’s worth a try’.”
From Jan/Feb 2008

Maybe we can place bets on how long this union will last. “There are a lot of rejections,” in the cartoon business, Harley says. “My routine is to turn out a regular amount of cartoons each day, send them out, and hope for the best.”

“Someone in our neighborhood must have won the lottery.”

“Someone in our neighborhood must have won the lottery.”
From Jul/Aug 2007

Good guess based on the appearance of the three major news networks and the IRS. Harley may not have won the lottery, but as a cartoonist, he has arrived: “I recently built a studio on the back of my house. You have to be a ‘serious’ cartoonist to go to the expense and stress of building a home studio.” Another perk of the job: “If I feel like it, I can work in my pajamas and no one cares.”

“This is your captain. In the event of a drop in cabin air pressure, the oxygen mask will drop down, and you will be billed $2 per breath.”

 “This is your captain. In the event of a drop in cabin air pressure, the oxygen mask will drop down, and you will be billed $2 per breath.”
From Jan/Feb 2010

I hesitate to show this cartoon from last year, lest it give the airlines ideas. “My niche seems to be business and topical cartoons,” Harley says. He advises aspiring cartoonists to “do the kind of cartoons you like and to find a niche that you enjoy doing.”

“I don’t care if you’re tired, Gerald. Get down at once!”

“I don’t care if you’re tired, Gerald. Get down at once!”
From Mar/Apr 1998

Harley lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan, (where, presumably, he behaves himself in grocery stores) with his wife, a psychiatric social worker. They have two grown children.

190 Years Ago: The Post Covers The Death of Napoleon

As the country’s most popular, most widely read magazine, The Saturday Evening Post became an American institution in the 20th Century. But, as our 190th birthday reflects, our history goes far back, starting 95 years before Norman Rockwell ever entered its offices.

You get a sense of how old the publication is when you consider that the biggest news story in its first issues was the death of Napoleon Bonaparte.

The death of Napoleon Bonaparte is placed beyond a doubt. News has been received from Liverpool dated July 8th. The Ex-Emperor died of a cancer in the stomach, and was buried on the 7th of May.

In that summer of 1821, the news of the ex-emperor’s death sparked many debates at dinner tables across America. Was Napoleon a liberator or a tyrant?

The Post picked up the story in August and was still running related items into October.

The illness of the ex-emperor lasted in the whole, six weeks. During the latter days of his illness he frequently conversed with his medical attendants on its nature, of which he seemed to be perfectly aware.

As he found his end approaching, he was dressed, at his request, in his uniform of Field Marshal with the boots and spurs, and placed on a camp bed, on which he was accustomed to sleep when in health.

In this dress he is said to have expired. Though Bonaparte is supposed to have suffered much, his dissolution was so calm and serene that not a sigh escaped him or an intimation to the bystanders that it was so near.

Napoleon's withdrawal from Russia
Napoleon’s withdrawal from Russia, a painting by Adolph Northen.

Still widely revered in France, Napoleon had many American admirers who regarded him as a champion of liberty. Most of the world hated and feared him, though. Napoleon had kept Europe at war for twelve years. His struggle for empire had cost the lives of 6 million soldiers and civilians. He had been defeated and imprisoned, but escaped and narrowly missed becoming the ruler of Europe.

Despite his past, and the destruction he caused, he seemed to enchant people. He made admirers out of most people who met him—even his enemies. Since his re-capture in 1815, journalists had been writing of his intelligence, his vision, and his destiny. Now that he was safely dead, and could never again escape from exile, it became easier, and safer, to sing his praises.

The Post quoted one particularly fawning passage from a British newspaper.

“[Napoleon’s] person was well-turned, broad in the shoulders, and, till he grew fat, very elegant downwards. The late Mr. West told us that he had never seen a handsomer leg and thigh.

His head was somewhat too large for his body, but finely cut, as we may all see in his medals. It looks like one of the handsomest Roman emperors. His face [had] a forehead of genius, and mouth and chin of resolute beauty.

Napoleon was of a warm temperament, generous and affection…. His abilities, independent of his warlike genius, were considerable. His intellect was strong and searching, and he acquired so much information that he could converse with all sorts of men on the topics which they had particularly studied.

[A Swiss historian who met Napoleon] says, “quite impartially… I must say, that the variety of his knowledge, the acuteness of his observations, the solidity of his understanding… his grand and comprehensive views filled me with astonishment, and his manner of [conversation], with love for him.”

While the Post reprinted such hero worship, it wasn’t buying any of it. The editors, being sturdy champions of the republic, viewed Napoleon dispassionately:

Thus has terminated the life of perhaps the most extraordinary man who has ever figured upon the stage of history. Born obscurely, and without evident means of advancement, he rose to supreme power, not only over France, but over the continent of Europe, and his authority was extended to both hemispheres.

Disdaining man but as the means of his own exaltation, he probably surpassed all other rulers in his ascendancy over everyone who came within the vortex of his personal influence.

After having dethroned kings and overthrown empires, he himself became the football of fortune, was dethroned and exiled to a high rock in the midst of the ocean, under the guard of the greatest powers of Europe.

There he was imprisoned, and there he has expired—a striking example of the inevitable destruction attending an uncontrollable ambition, and a warning to despots.

 

 

The Post’s editors, Messrs. Atkinson and Alexander, knew that celebrity news would sell papers. But they recognized that Napoleon Bonaparte, like most celebrities, was best admired from a distance.

Oreo Cupcakes

In the mood to toss your diet aside (for a day or two)? Why not try these delectable cupcakes spiked with crushed Oreos? This easy-to-make recipe comes to us courtesy of Cupcakes, Cupcakes, & More Cupcakes by Lilach German, a 144-page, softcover cookbook from Imagine Publishing. I hope someone brings these to my annual Labor Day cookout (hint, hint).
Oreo Cupcakes (makes 12 )

Ingredients for Cupcakes

Ingredients for Frosting