The Hammock Papers: Veritas.

20 July 2021

Veritas.

"The Fishy Pride of Northern Michigan" ...

When French settlers came to the Upper Peninsula (UP) in the 1700s, the vast wilderness surrounded by three Great Lakes was populated by nomadic groups, mostly from Chippewa and Menominee indigenous tribes. Generations before fish processors’ smokehouses beckoned locals with wafting aromas, indigenous tribes dried fish over fires (imparting that same blessed smoke) and packed them into fish-skin pouches to subsist on through winter and trade within their vast networks, including a growing cohort of French and, later, English settlers.

The Carlsons emigrated from Norway to the then-shipping hub of North Manitou Island in the mid-1800s, where they sold lumber to ships and grew produce to sell to the ships’ cooks before relocating to Fishtown, where they started fishing. They were part of a wave of some 400,000 foreign immigrants who came to Michigan between 1860 and 1900.

Indeed, that smoked fish dip also bears striking similarity to the Jewish deli whitefish salad is no coincidence; Ashkenazi Jews who settled in Detroit during those decades sought whitefish for its kosher designation, especially during the fall high holidays, when it’s harvested.

This salty spread is a microcosm of the region’s historical and cultural geography.

“For over a hundred years, to cater to the markets for Jewish customers in big urban centers like Chicago, Detroit, and New York, where most Jewish people settled, commercial fishermen made sure that they had whitefish and roe available for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur,” says Gilmore, who spent time interviewing commercial fishermen around the UP’s Garden Peninsula. “They coordinated with truckers who’d take the fish to those various markets, and with rabbis who’d fly in each year to inspect the processing areas.”

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Salmon knowledge from The Temple ...

A small sign hangs behind the counter at Russ & Daughters, one of the last old-school emporiums of cured salmon and sundries on Manhattan’s Lower East Side; it reads LOX ET VERITAS—salmon and truth. And that’s exactly what I happened to be looking for on a recent visit to the store.Russ and Daughters'

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"The Meshugge," sturgeon, sable, and salmon ...

"How Lox, Whitefish and Herring Became American Staples" ...

Unlike Acme and Russ & Daughters, Barney Greengrass on the Upper West Side hasn’t expanded since 1938, when it added its restaurant section. “We’re in the same four walls,” said second-generation owner Gary Greengrass, but “pushing the walls as far as they can go.” The store retains its unpretentious charm: Refrigerators are stocked with fresh horseradish, and shelves are lined with Kedem grape juice. The customer base has expanded, but the regulars keep coming back.

“As I get older, people that were little kids—now they’re parents themselves,” he said. His son, Moe, takes time off from the eighth grade to help get customers their orders for Yom Kippur, the store’s busiest day of the year.

Like all delicious things in America, smoked fish is no longer the domain of any single ethnic group. The Jewish High Holiday season, including Rosh Hashanah, the New Year, and Yom Kippur, aren’t necessarily the biggest sales events of the year for Acme or Russ & Daughters. Christmas is as big, if not bigger, said Richard Schiff, vice president of Northeast sales for Acme.

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WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART

"When I am, as it were, completely myself, entirely alone and of good cheer – say travelling in a carriage or walking after a good meal, or during the night when I cannot sleep – it is on such occasions that my ideas flow best and most abundantly. Whence, and how, they come I know not ; nor can I force them. Those ideas that please me I retain in memory and am accustomed, as I have been told, to hum them to myself. If I continue in this way, it soon occurs to me how I may turn this dainty morsel to account, so as to make a good dish of it. That is to say, agreeable to the rules of counterpoint, to the peculiarities of various instruments etc. All this fires my soul, and, provided I am not disturbed, my subject enlarges itself, becomes methodised, and defined, and the whole, though it be long, stands almost complete and finished in my mind, so that I can survey it like a fine picture or a beautiful statue at a glance. Nor do I hear in my imagination the parts successively, but I hear them, as it were, all at once. What a delight this is, I cannot tell."

MARCUS AURELIUS

"Is your cucumber bitter? Throw it away. Are there briars in your path? Turn aside. That is enough. Do not go on and say, 'Why were things of this sort ever brought into this world?' neither intolerable nor everlasting - if thou bearest in mind that it has its limits, and if thou addest nothing to it in imagination. Pain is either an evil to the body (then let the body say what it thinks of it!)-or to the soul. But it is in the power of the soul to maintain its own serenity and tranquility."

VINCENT van GOGH

"What am I in the eyes of most people? A nonentity or an oddity or a disagreeable person — someone who has and will have no position in society, in short a little lower than the lowest. Very well — assuming that everything is indeed like that, then through my work I’d like to show what there is in the heart of such an oddity, such a nobody. This is my ambition, which is based less on resentment than on love in spite of everything, based more on a feeling of serenity than on passion. Even though I’m often in a mess, inside me there’s still a calm, pure harmony and music. In the poorest little house, in the filthiest corner, I see paintings or drawings. And my mind turns in that direction as if with an irresistible urge. As time passes, other things are increasingly excluded, and the more they are the faster my eyes see the picturesque. Art demands persistent work, work in spite of everything, and unceasing observation."

DAN CAMPBELL