New and Old #138
Friday roundup and commentary
Olive Oil Producers Turn to Tourists to Combat Soaring Costs, Extreme Weather, Bloomberg, Andrew Davis, November 22, 2023
Extreme rains across Italy in the spring knocked many of the olive flowers off Macchia’s 900 trees before the fruit could form, and she’s expecting this year’s oil output to plummet by about three-quarters. To help make up some of the earnings shortfall, Macchia has been hosting groups of tourists, organized through the Rotterdam-based vacation planners Triptoscana. The visitors stay on her farm and help pick the olives and explore the region during down time. At the end, they get a half-liter bottle of oil to take home.
I wrote about a couple of olive oil producer visits we did in Sicily, here and here, and they haven’t had a bad harvest there. It is true that there isn’t a whole lot of olive oil tourism the way there is for wineries, and it would be cool to see more of it. It’s a shame that the reason would be poor harvests, though.
In fact, the oil producer profiled here offers a much more in-depth, and expensive, opportunity than most wineries!
Triptoscana’s five-day tour costs €745 ($810), including two days of picking and a visit to the frantoio—the place where the bitter-tasting fruit is pressed into the liquid gold that is extra virgin oil. Macchia benefits from booking apartments at I Moricci that might normally be empty during off-season; she also has free labor helping her harvest the olives. Our group spent about six hours in the field each day; the roughly 500 kilograms (1,100 pounds) we picked over the two days would yield about 70 liters of oil.
When Thanksgiving Was Weird, NPR, Linton Weeks, November 23, 2014
People — young and old — got all dressed up and staged costumed crawls through the streets. In Los Angeles, Chicago and other places around the country, newspapers ran stories of folks wearing elaborate masks and cloth veils. Thanksgiving mask balls were held in Cape Girardeau, Mo., Montesano, Wash., and points in between.
In New York City — where the tradition was especially strong — a local newspaper reported in 1911 that “fantastically garbed youngsters and their elders were on every corner of the city.”
For Thanksgiving, that is!
And after a whole history and a bunch of details that sound very odd today, this:
Ragamuffin parades continued to be popular into the 1950s, but they were eventually overpowered by another burgeoning tradition catapulted into prominence by the 1947 movie Miracle on 34th Street. The new symbol of Thanksgiving also showcased people in fantastic masks and costumes and, in addition, hoisted giant character-based balloons. It was called Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.
History is fascinating.
There’s an is and a should be here: cities are often expensive and difficult places to raise kids, and there’s an ingrained narrative, at least in the U.S., that you enjoy the city while you’re young and single, and then, if you get married and have kids, you move to the suburbs. Does that say something about what cities are in essence? Or is it a solvable problem? (The latter.)
This is a fun suggested itinerary, and it points out that you can take the train from D.C. to Virginia Beach, too. Apparently quickly enough for a full overnight visit. Now if you go the train route (plus a bus to get you to the beachfront), the restaurant and activity recommendations are good. But if you have your car, here’s my advice: spend a couple of hours petting and feeding animals and birds here, and then eat at Noodle Man, Judy’s Sichuan, and Captain George’s.
Related Reading:
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The NPR article describing the disguises in 1899 mentioned costumes of (among many others) soldiers, sailors, Filipinos and Boers, both theaters of war at the time.