Popular culture and forgetting

Ah, I bet he's too distracted by the Biennial to cause much (if any) damage here.

Following a bout with thyroid cancer in 1987, Morgan went to work for New Magnetic Products, a health equipment company.

SAWYER: And he took his mop with him. He carried his mop into graduation as a way of thanking everybody there who had helped tutor him and helped get him through. And you have that in one segment and then we had Marabel Morgan. Do you remember the woman who polarized...

GIFFORD: Marabel Morgan is a dear friend of mine.

SAWYER: Well...

GIFFORD: When you did the trivia question the other day that said, who said your husbands should be met by their wives wrapped in Saran Wrap, I said, oh, Marabel, 1977, "Total Woman."

SAWYER: That's it.

"His father left in a desperate search for work. The food supply diminished until all that was left were a few pinto beans and a single egg, which no one would eat. E u e l l, then teen-aged and one of four children, took a knapsack one morning and left for the Horizon mountains. He came back with puffball mushrooms, piñon nuts, and fruits of yellow prickly pear. For nearly a month, the family lived wholly on what he provided"

As an adult Euell Gibbons lived in many states including California, Washington, Hawaii, New Jersey, Indiana, and finally in Pennsylvania. On his visit to Hawaii from 1947 to 1951, he met and married Freda Fryer. E u e l l longed to be a fiction writer but evidently could not get published.
During his lifelong travels he was a cowboy, hobo, carpenter, surveyor, boat builder, beachcomber, newspaperman, school teacher, farmer, and an educator. All along, building on the wild food foundation he got from his mother. My impression, from his writings, is that he learned a lot from his hobo days. Those days where he foraged both from society and nature to acquire his sustenance.
He would visit libraries to research wild foods. He would become acquainted with people in small towns and ask them about their uses of wild foods. He would seek out local experts and exchange information. And finally, he would experiment and invent new ways to process wild foods. His family, friends, and neighbors were the taste-testing guinea pigs for new recipes he would invent.

His first book in 1962, "Stalking the Wild Asparagus", became an instant hit. The content evidently touching a chord with a burgeoning back-to-nature movement. This and his next two books (See reviews of Euell's best three books) were packed with information on how to find, gather, and prepare wild foods. Many magazine articles followed, either written by or about E u e l l. He wrote for Organic Gardening and Farming, National Geographic, and National Wildlife Magazines, among others.
Euell Gibbons helped found, and was a charter member of such groups as the National Wild Food Association (West Virginia), Foraging Friends (Chicago), and I'm sure many others. By 1971, E u e l l's books became more philosophical and less about wild foods - all still good reads. Even though he had only a sixth-grade education, E u e l l was awarded an honorary doctorate from Susquehanna University.
As he received more literary notoriety, E u e l l became somewhat of a celebrity. He made appearances on talk shows (The Johnny Carson Show), variety shows (The Sonny & Cher show), and television commercials for Post Grape Nuts cereal. E u e l l displayed a great sense of humor. At one point, to everyone's surprise, he began eating a wooden plaque awarded him on the Sonny and Cher television show. The plaque was really a prop made out of hard chocolate or some other edible substance.
This fame was a double-edged sword. On the one hand it had the effect of exposing more people to the topic of wild foods. On the other, E u e l l became ridiculed by many of his readers/followers who felt like he sold out to big business and the commercial world. To many, he was reduced from a respected naturalist icon to a laughable pitch-man for a cereal company. To those in the know, however, he remained a respected naturalist.
His last residence was in Beavertown, Pennsylvania, where he lived with Freda until his death on December 29, 1975. He was 64. He died of a heart attack - probably a result of cardiovascular disease. In E u e l l's day it was not unusual to smoke cigarettes or to add high amounts of saturated fat (bacon grease, butter, egg yolks) to his wild foods. These risk factors combined with his hard life and lack of exercise in his later years (arthritis pain limited his movement) undoubtedly contributed to his death.
E u e l l's legacy is the treasure of lifelong experiences and knowledge he left us regarding foraging and unusual culinary delights. Boston University is maintaining a collection of his personal journal entries and notes, and Alan Hood has reprinted his first three books.
E u e l l, more than anyone else in North American history, got people thinking, talking, and eating wild foods. Many wild food writers give us the menu, E u e l l gave us the meal.

Ozymandias, Tracer?

our library has all of these! i'll have to take a look at them when i'm next there.

Born Rona Berstein to a Jewish family in New York, New York, she was diagnosed with a rare form of muscular dystrophy at age 9. When she was 13, she became the nationwide coordinator of singer Eddie Fisher's fan clubs. Her date for the high school prom was singer Steve Lawrence. She majored in pre-law at college, until her uncle, a judge, advised her to switch to journalism.

Barrett became a gossip columnist for the Bell-McClure newspaper syndicate in 1957. In 1966, she began broadcasting Hollywood gossip on the Los Angeles television station ABC. She appeared on TV regularly, going on to appear on ABC's five owned and operated stations around the country. Not everyone was thrilled with the arrangement. WABC-TV in New York put her pre-recorded gossip segment into its nightly local news, but anchor Roger Grimsby would generally introduce it by scowling and insulting Barrett. Still, Barrett's inclusion was a surefire way to boost ratings. Barrett made the enemies list of Frank Sinatra by criticizing his personal life, particularly his relationships with his children.

She developed the first in-depth personal TV specials about the celebrities of motion pictures, television, music, sports and politics, and had a series of magazines on the entertainment industry that were top-rated at newsstands, including Rona Barrett's Hollywood. As such she paved the way for Barbara Walters and many entertainment reporters.

Barrett has had one husband, Bill Trowbridge; they were married on September 22, 1973 and remained so until his death on December 7, 2001.

In 1972, her novel titled The Lovo-maniacs was published. Her autobiography, Miss Rona, was published in 1974. It memorably began: "Just an inch, Miss Rona, just let me put it in an inch!" as a famous-but-unnamed movie star pleaded to be allowed to experience a modicum of sexual intercourse with her. In the book she also acknowledged having a nose job. She wrote two other books, How You Can Look Rich and Achieve Sexual Ecstasy (1978) and The Man Who Will Be King, Unauthorized Biography of Prince Charles (1980).

Barrett began appearing on Good Morning America in 1975. She was signed in 1981 to co-star with Tom Snyder on NBC's Tomorrow, but dropped out before the first show was completed. In 1986, she bought a ranch at Santa Ynez, California, and began commuting back and forth to Los Angeles. In 1991, she retired full time to her ranch, where she began planting fields of lavender.

She found marketing lavender flowers was not so easy and decided Paul Newman had the right idea with his successful Newman's Own products. She then founded the Rona Barrett Lavender Company offering lavender-based skin care, gourmet food, and aromatherapy products. She also started The Rona Barrett Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to the aid and support of senior citizens in need that is supported by a 2% portion of the profits from her lavender business.

Rona Barrett continues to reside in Santa Ynez with her three dogs and two cats.

About three weeks ago I was browsing in the Poetry aisle of Powell's Books (they actually have two full aisles of poetry - thousands of volumes) when an older couple (perhaps in their early sixties) arrived and started rather talkily searching the shelves for something.

The woman kept mumbling variations on something that sounded like "Mukown...Mikeen...Macken" as she bobbed her head around, looking quite intimidated by all the poetry books. He husband was having a ball, saying the names of authors aloud, pulling books off the shelf, nudging her in the ribs, making little jokes, and smiling in a thoroughly impish manner. From their clothes and manner it was easy to see they were working class and from a rural small town, up visting the big city.

I offered to help. Did she know the name of the poet she was looking for? She shyly said that she wasn't quite sure how to pronounce it but it sounded a bit like Rod Mukown or something like that. So I showed her where several volumes were shelved together and she thanked me. I moved down the aisle a bit.

Her husband sat down on the floor, cross-legged, opened one of the books and read aloud, with evident feeling, one of the poems - then looked up, smiling at his wife very lovingly, and said 'that was for her'. It was touching.

P.S. They didn't buy the book.

I almost jumped out of my seat just now when I read something saying that Link Wray supposedly played on "Seasons In The Sun," but then the roller coaster pulled me back down when I read that he denied this.

I mean, to take one salient example, *I* know there's not a single #1 song from the '70's I haven't heard on the radio well after its peak, and I can't think of a big-time movie from the same period that didn't eventually make it to DVD, except maybe exploitation documentaries like Beyond and Back, In Search of Noah's Ark, and so on.

about how thoroughly bestselling books and authors can disappear.

Quite probably, but there's also the industry of nostalgia to support. Sadly, books don't quite have the instant glow of recognition that an image from a movie or a snatch from a hit song has.

But I'd argue that an idea from a book can have that power: Marabel Morgan at least has the Saran Wrap going for her, if nothing else.

Wait, huh? Mike, isn't this like asking (allowing for the differences in time) "Now why is it that the Eagles sell so much more these days than Jesus Jones?"

R: I mean, the closest equivalent to that in America today would be if Kathy Acker wrote a book and sold a hundred million copies of it in hardcover.

Three words: School Reading Lists

Then substitute Nirvana, who seem to have an endless well. ;-)
-- Ned Raggett (ne...), March 8th, 2006. (later)

or tupac ...

It seems as though authors, once sufficiently well-known, can sell any old crap as long as it has their name on it. A James Patterson book will almost always go to No. 1. Musicians and rock bands seem much more subject to sudden disaffection, i.e. The Strokes or what have you

Yet, despite this contrast, I imagine Strokes records will be very easy to find in 10-15 years, while James Patterson novels will not.

(i know that that sounds like a joke question, but it is a serious question -- this is the 1st that i've ever heard of this phenomenon.)

The most celebrated of Marabel's specialties is the suggestion of erotic costumes in which to welcome the husband home from work. "Take your bubble bath shortly before he comes home. Thrill him at your front door in your costume. A frilly new nighty and heels will probably do the trick as a starter." Marabel's readers have apparently followed these instructions to all sorts of conclusions. One woman greeted her husband in a costume of nothing but Saran Wrap bound up with a red ribbon. Another wanted to greet her husband "a la gypsy with beads, bangles and bare skin," but when she went to the door, she was surprised to confront an "equally surprised water-meter reader." Marabel admits, moreover, that she herself "looked foolish and felt even more so" the first time she dressed up in "pink baby-doll pajamas and white boots after my bubble bath." —TIME, March 14, 1977

70s gossip queen still alive
https://www.buzzfeed.com/annehelenpetersen/all-the-dirt-on-rona-barrett-the-forgotten-gossip-girl?utm_term=.ngbwAQKApj#.gagw6LP6rY