February 2019 – Page 2 – Ann S. Epstein Writer

Learn History Through Fiction: Oz’s Horse of a Different Color

In the 1939 Hollywood classic The Wizard of Oz, the horse pulling Dorothy and her friends around Emerald City changes from white to purple to red orange to yellow. The ASPCA would not let the crew paint the horse, so they tried food coloring and liquid candy but it was too pale and tasted so good that the horse licked it off. Arnold Gillespie, in charge of special effects, finally used paste made with Jell-O powder. The horse still licked it, but with frequent touch-ups, the paste stayed on long enough to complete the filming. Read more about the movie in A Brain. A Heart. The Nerve. (see NOVELS).

A horse of a different color, thanks to grape-flavored Jell-O powder

A Brain. A Heart. The Nerve. (Alternative Book Press) by Ann S. Epstein

What I’m Reading: The Library Book by Susan Orleans

My Amazon and Goodreads review of The Library Book (Rating 5) – Ablaze With Affection, Awe, and Archives. If you love to crack open a book, you will consume this attempt to crack open the case of the conflagration that consumed the Los Angeles Central Library in 1986. In Susan Orlean’s entertaining and absorbing The Library Book, the story of the fire is interwoven with the library’s history, its diverse patrons and their sprawling city, the impressive past and creative hope of tomorrow’s libraries, a cast of dedicated and endearingly eccentric librarians, the science of book burning and salvage, and the author’s early memories of visiting the library with her beloved mother. Orlean’s usual talent for empathy, imagination, and solid research glows here, luring you inside a subject you never thought you’d be curious about but are delighted to have discovered.

Learn History Through Fiction: When Donkey Labor Pressed Olives

Pressing when olives are at their maximum freshness produces vibrant flavor and a bright yellow and green color. Huge stone wheels, six feet in diameter, grind the fruit. Unlike the grindstones of a flour mill, which are horizontal and turn one atop the other, the grindstones of an olive press are vertical and rotate in a tub, crushing the olives against the floor. The mill (frantoio) is chilly, to keep the fruit fresh. In the early 1900s, in the olive-growing regions of Italy, local fruit growers brought their olives to a communal mill, where donkeys turned the presses. Today the process is largely automated, but some presses are still turned by hand to minimize the bruising of the fruit. Read more about olives and olive farming 100 years ago and today in Tazia and Gemma (see NOVELS).