rubbernecks in broadway

(via)

On Carving

From Samuel Orchart Beeton's Etiquette for Families (1876):

A great deal of the comfort and satisfaction of a good dinner depends upon the carving. Awkward carving is enough to spoil the appetite of a refined and sensitive person. No matter how well the meats may be cooked, if they are mutilated, torn and hacked to pieces, or even cut awkwardly, one half of their relish is destroyed by the carver. Formerly in England there were regular teachers of the art of carving and Lady Mary Wortley Montague confesses that she once took lessons of such a professor three times a week. Besides the annoyance and mortification of bad carving it is a very extravagant piece of ignorance, as it causes a great waste of meats. In the seventeenth century carving was a science that carried with it as much pedantry as the business of school-teaching does in the present day; and fr a person to use wrong terms in relation to carving was an unpardonable affront to etiquette. Carving all kinds of small birds was called, to thy them; a quail, to wing it; a pheasant, to allay it; a duck, to rembrace it; a hen, to spoil her; a goose, to tare her, and a list of similar technicalities too long and too ridiculous to repeat.

 OR IS THE LIST JUST LONG AND RIDICULOUS ENOUGH?????

• allay a pheasant
• barb a lobster
• break a hare
• chine a salmon
• culpon a trout
• disfigure a peacock
• dismember a hen
• display a quail
• fin a chevin
• fract a chicken
• frush a chub
• gobbet a trout
• lift a swan
• mince a plover
• rear a goose
• sauce a capon
• scull a tench
• side a haddock
• splat a pike
• splay a bream
• spoil a hen
• string a lamprey
• tarne a crab
• thigh a pigeon
• thigh a woodcock
• transon an eel
• trench a sturgeon
• tusk a barbel
• unbrace a mallard
• unjoint a bittern
• unlace a coney
• unlatch a curlew
• wing a partridge

You're welcome. (carving terms via)

turkey trot

little eva 4eva.

Benjamin Franklin and The Case for Turkeys

From a letter to his daughter (1784):

For my own part I wish the Bald Eagle had not been chosen the Representative of our Country. He is a Bird of bad moral Character. He does not get his Living honestly. You may have seen him perched on some dead Tree near the River, where, too lazy to fish for himself, he watches the Labour of the Fishing Hawk; and when that diligent Bird has at length taken a Fish, and is bearing it to his Nest for the Support of his Mate and young Ones, the Bald Eagle pursues him and takes it from him.

With all this Injustice, he is never in good Case but like those among Men who live by Sharping & Robbing he is generally poor and often very lousy. Besides he is a rank Coward: The little King Bird not bigger than a Sparrow attacks him boldly and drives him out of the District. He is therefore by no means a proper Emblem for the brave and honest Cincinnati of America who have driven all the King birds from our Country...

I am on this account not displeased that the Figure is not known as a Bald Eagle, but looks more like a Turkey. For the Truth the Turkey is in Comparison a much more respectable Bird, and withal a true original Native of America... He is besides, though a little vain & silly, a Bird of Courage, and would not hesitate to attack a Grenadier of the British Guards who should presume to invade his Farm Yard with a red Coat on.

Other symbols Franklin suggested for his fledgling country: the rattlesnake, Moses and Pharaoh

fowl play

young turks

her ax to grind

feast your eyes on this butterball

feathers versus fur

about to go ham

howdy pardoner

plucky thing

turkey in the straw

by the Original Schnickelfritz Band (1942)