Immigrant Fridays: The Insane Immigrant

Immigrant Fridays turned into Saturday.  I wrote too soon when I promised regular theme days.  The semester started and, as always, hijacked my life.

Toward the end of the 19th Century, examinations of immigrants began at places like Ellis Island.  To this day, immigrants with certain diseases like syphilis, tuberculosis, and HIV/AIDS [the last one until 2010 when Obama got rid of it--thanks Ben!] are barred from legal residency.  Back in the day, insanity and idiocy were also on the list ("insanity" differently defined is on the list now too) and I often wondered how officials determined the two.  I found a 1903 volume titled Book of instructions for the medical inspection of immigrants by the U.S. Public Health Service ("Prepared by Direction of the Surgeon-General"), which answered my questions not at all, but was entertaining enough especially since it contains a reference to "ignorant representatives of emotional races." This last one goes unexplained so I guess everyone knew who they were talking about.

Here are some of the instructions:

The medical examination should be made by daylight and never, except in an emergency, attempted in poorly lighted rooms or by artificial light. The preliminary line inspection should be conducted on an even, level surface, so that the passengers may not be tempted to look where they are stepping. ... Care should be taken to prevent crowding, to maintain a single file evenly spaced, with the individuals well separated (10 feet).

Good to know about the lighting.  You can't see crazy in the dark. 

Below are two of the document's subdivisions.  One on insanity and the other on "idiots."  Both of them pose ethical issues today, but how in the world did they determine these at the turn of the century (daylight notwithstanding)?  How could English-speaking officials, with few if any translators, keep an ear out for illusions or hallucinations?

Subdivision III.—Insane persons.

The following definition of insanity may be accepted for guidance: Insanity is a deranged and abnormal condition of the mental faculties, accompanied by delusions or hallucinations or illusions, or manifesting itself in homicidal or suicidal tendencies or persistent mental depression, or inability to distinguish between right and wrong.

In the case of immigrants, particularly the ignorant representatives of emotional races [!!!], due allowance should be made for temporary demonstrations of excitement, fear, or grief, and reliance chiefly placed upon absolute assurance of the existence of delusions or persistent refusal to talk or continued abstinence from eating.

Persons suffering from acute attacks of delirium tremens should be certified as insane. Those presenting less active evidence of alcoholism should be regarded as coming under the heading of likely to become public charges, as should also all cases of simple epilepsy or hysteria.

At least two officers should concur in a certificate of insanity, and when this is impracticable the medical officer should recommend the employment of a local physician in good standing, and they shall jointly sign the certificate.

The evidence on which a certificate of insanity is based should be made a matter of permanent record. It should always include, among other things, the physical appearance, character of hallucinations, delusions, or illusions, and a brief history of the peculiarities noted while the case was under observation.

Subdivision IV.—Idiots.

The following definition of an idiot may be accepted for guidance:

An idiot is a person exhibiting such a degree of mental defect, either inherited or developed during the early period of life, as incapacitates the individual for self-maintenance or ability to properly care for himself or his interests. (Richardson.)

Idiocy is a defect of mind which is either congenital or due to causes operating during the first few years of life, before there has been a development of the mental faculties, and may exist in different degrees. (Standard Dictionary, by Maudslev; Responsibility in Mental Diseases, chapter 3, p. 66.)

In case of persons of impaired mentality to whom the term " idiot" or " insane," as above defined, is inapplicable, certificates should be made in such terms as may be deemed best calculated to convey an idea of the degree of disability in each particular case.

Dumb Cinderella

It's only been a little over a week since I've been back and though I don't long for my granny telling me what to wear, there are already things I miss.  People, obviously.  My niece is growing so fast.  A couple of days before I left, I was reading Cinderella (Kopciuszek in Polish) to her and during the scene where the poor girl loses her slipper, Emilia says, "She shouldn't have worn heels.  She should have worn shoes that lace up."  No shit Cinderella! Note ladies, you wear no heels, you get no prince, and I'm never reading that story to her again.

I miss appropriately sized ice cream so you feel like you're eating dessert and not a meal (the Statue of Liberty flavor).

 

Wild blueberries the color of ink.

 

Waffles with powdered sugar for dessert (to go!).

Smoked cheese, highlander style.

Immigrant Fridays: "Its Evils and Consequences"

Going a couple of decades earlier than the promised 1880s because of an 1856 volume informatively titled Immigration: Its Evils and Consequences by Samuel Busey, M.D.  The title leaves little to the imagination and the contents confirm Busey's attitude.  

Busey writes that unless evil German, Irish, and British immigrants are stopped, we shall see the end of American institutions and freedoms for while the Germans organize German associations, the Irish elect their own, and the Brits kowtow to the Queen ("Once an Englishman, always an Englishman").

Busey outlines familiar suspects as complicit in destroying the very fabric of America woven so carefully by "our forefathers" (methinks 1856 is a bit early to be talking about "forefathers."):

• they send their money home instead of investing their earnings in America
• they take jobs away from Americans, work for less and "depreciate the value of American labor."
• they have too many children thus engendering "absorption, either partial or complete, of the American character."  
• they are criminals and paupers
• they bring "disease, disorder, and immorality"

On a related note, one of my favorite segments of The Daily Show was the one where Stewart took on the leprosy scare of 2007 shored up by media outlets and politicians:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Immigrant Disease
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog The Daily Show on Facebook

Yeah, it's that ridiculous.  Hodgman and Stewart are not exaggerating.  

Recipe Day: Pickled Curry Cucumbers (updated)

Recipe Sunday turned into recipe Monday, but better late than never.  I made a few jars of a curry cucumber salad.  I got the recipe from my sister who got it from someone else who got it from yet a different person.  I tried it when I was in Poland and it was delicious and it's easy to make even if somewhat time-consuming.  I am not totally sure about the amount of cucumbers you'll need so just eyeball it.  I think I bought about three pounds and used the following amounts of the other ingredients:

2 large onions

2 tablespoons of mustard seed

2 tablespoons of curry powder

2 tablespoons of salt (I use sea salt cause it's better)

1 cup of sugar

1 cup of white vinegar

1 cup of hot water

First, peel and thinly slice the cucumbers (I used a mandolin slicer) and slice the onions.  Then mix all of the other ingredients and pour the hot liquid over the cucumber and onion slices.  This needs to sit for a while.  At least 5-7 hours or up to 24 hours).  

Once it's sat around for a while, get your glass jars ready.  First, put them into boiling water so they can get disinfected properly.  Then, once they're cool enough to touch, stuff them full of the cucumber slices in the curry juices.   Close the lids tightly.   Put a pot of water on with a rag of some sort on the bottom of it so the jars don't sit directly on the metal bottom.  Put the jars into the water when it's still cold so you don't break them.  The water should reach up to about 3/4 of the jars.  Once the water starts boiling, set the timer for 7-10 minutes.  Finally, take the jars out (don't burn your fingers!) and set them upside down.  If the lids stayed on and the jars aren't leaking, you've done the job right.

Disclaimer: I have to wait at least one week before I open one of the jars to try the salad.  Thus, I don't know if my own concoction worked.  If it did work, I'll try the same thing with zucchini.  It's supposed to be just as delicious.  Will keep you posted. 
Update: It worked!  They came out pickled, but I used too much curry.  The recipe above turns out to be for many more cucumbers--so either use less of the pickling juice or more cucumbers, and you're golden.

Immigrant Fridays

I've decided to have some regular features, things related to a single theme.  Fridays will be related to things immigrant and some days to food (mostly grandma's recipes but not only).  

Immigrant Fridays are my way of A/ keeping up with immigrant news; B/ digging into the past via books written between 1880 and 1924, years when immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe was at its height.   I'm interested in the latter as at this time anti-immigrant feelings ran high, reminding me of what's going on today.  The target's changed but the game remains the same.  Whenever something's not right politically or economically, we run over the most disenfranchised members of society, blaming them for whatever ails us.  It's like we'd rather blame "illegals" now for the state of the economy than Wall Street.  WTF, right?

Problems in American Democracy by Thames Ross Williamson was published in 1925 and lists "Immigration and Assimilation" as one  of its chapters in the section of the book called "American Social Problems."  Some of the other chapters in this section include "Crime and Corrections," "The Negro," and "Industrial Relations."  Enough said. 

Even before the Act of 1924 which restricted all immigration to a mere Northern and Western European trickle, Act of 1917 excluded anarchists, criminals ("except those who have committed political offenses not recognized by the United States"), "insane persons, idiots, epileptics, beggars, and other persons likely to become public charges."  Oh yes, and also no "contract laborers" and no persons over 16 years of age who "cannot read English or some other language."  Just imagine the testing going on at Ellis Island to determine, for example, whether someone was a beggar or an idiot.  We all know what administrative bureaucracy does, even today with all of the technological know-how, so I can only imagine what it did then.

Copyright 1997 State Historical Society of Wisconsin

Williamson explains why Japanese and Chinese immigrants were not welcome by pointing to their supposed racial and cultural differences: "The most important social reason for the exclusion of these two races is that the differences of race and religion existing between Asiatics and native Americans render assimilation of the Chinese and Japanese extremely difficult if not impossible."  This 150 year old stereotype of the inassimilable ethnic persists even today and Asian Americans get complemented on their English.

1886 advertisement for detergent

Williamson (and he was not alone in this) maintains that the "new immigration," which began around 1880 and came primarily from Eastern and Southern Europe was very much unlike the "old immigration" hailing from "Great Britain and Ireland, Germany, and the Scandinavian countries" (this reminds me of current immigration debates which mistakenly posit Mexican immigrants as unlike those who came before them).  Why?  For one, the "the old immigration was largely made up of individuals who were similar to the original American colonists in political ideals, social training, and economic background."  However,

Those who make up the new immigration have assimilated less rapidly: they are relatively unlike the native stock in language, race, and customs; the volume of immigration is very great; and rather than being uniformly distributed, the new immigrants tend to concentrate in cities, where they are often little subject to contact with natives.

This also erroneously implies that there was no protest against the earlier, "old" immigrants and that they were indeed welcomed with open arms.  Not the case as we know from the Irish immigrant experience and the Chinese and Irish immigrants of the mid-19th Century were represented as equally dangerous.  

Aside from the immigrant/ethnic groups accused of not assimilating, how is this different than today's outrageous debates around "illegal" immigration?  Just as a century earlier, today's anti-immigrant sentiments have little in common with facts.

Return Flight

Back from the motherland. Unlike my flights there, I wasn't lucky this time, neither in terms of seating nor in terms of connections.  While I realize how lucky I am to fly across the world to visit family, I cannot help but complain (I'm not Polish for nothing.  We're not known for positive thinking).  No one in immigration processing, for instance, cares that you have a connecting flight to catch.  Everyone you encounter as you run to your gate, however, assures you that it's possible only if you hurry.  So you have the bright time-saving idea to keep your shoes off after passing security.  You thus discover how inadvisable it is to run barefoot, even if in socks, on moving walkways.  While the first feels uncomfortable, the third feels like hot coals.  I arrived at the gate with shoes in hand about five minutes too late and got rerouted to another flight.  On a positive note, when you're sweaty and miserable, you get to ride to your new gate in a special needs vehicle.

The Lufthansa flight I took from Munich to Charlotte was on a giant airbus where all six bathrooms were downstairs.  Freaky.  I did have an individual video screen and watched four films (shut up!  It was a ten hour flight!).

Water for Elephants: a circus elephant named Rosie who understands Polish.  Enough said. [I'm also a sucker for films framed as memories of old men.  Except for The Notebook.  That sucked.]

Beastly: Beauty and the Beast with a pervy teenage twist.   Also, disturbing racial and disability dynamics.  I doubt the youth of today learned that beauty's on the inside.

Paul: a surprisingly illustrious cast for a cartoonish alien flick.  Refreshingly pro-science and anti-creationism.  Funny as shit!

Thor: gods learn life's lessons super fast thus becoming kings of heaven. No matter how bad, however, I enjoy a comic book-based movie.  Also, Natalie Portman's range now includes Your Highness, The Black Swan, and Thor. 

On an unrelated note, beware of American friends' love of vodka and furry slippers.  They're liable to start on both in the middle of a hot summer morning.

The Suspicious Pickle

The pickle was featured in a New York Times op-ed (Jane Ziegelman, author of 97 Orchard: An Edible History of Five Immigrant Families in One New York Tenement) a day after I wrote about pickling and souring here.  Germ found the article and sent it my way.  Though now that I think about it, I'd rather be associated with something less pungent. 

My grandma prepared this jar of pickles for immediate consumption. They take only a few days to sour in a mixture of water, garlic, and dill.  The furry stuff is washed off beforehand.

Anti-immigrant feeling at the turn of the 20th Century was as rank as a furry garlicky pickle.  As Ziegelman points out, many anti-immigrant crusades were fought on the battlefield of food.  Immigrants, it was believed,

used too much garlic, onion and pepper. They ate too many cured meats and were too generous with the condiments. Strongly flavored food ... led to nervous, unstable people. Nervous, unstable people made bad Americans. 

I wonder what the reform experts noticed first, the pungent foods or the nervous people, as I have no doubt that immigrants were nervous.  They were new to the country, confused by its rules, and poor.  Many came from places torn apart by wars, and the Jews of Eastern Europe, having escaped anti-Semitism there, had to deal with it here.  

Immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe were acknowledged to be somewhat assimilable since they were, after all, somewhat Caucasian.  The Slavs' assumed lack of mental acumen, however, was under much discussion while their drinking habits scared the crap out of the temperance movement.  In a 1906 The Incoming Millions, Howard Grose mentions that "they tell us that the Slavs are mentally, socially, and morally undeveloped; that they live like beasts, lower the tone of the community, and are possessed of but one virtue — courage."

As the NYTimes op-ed points out, the pickle became enemy number one in the tenements of New York.  It stunk and was sour, had none of the sweetness of applesauce, and was the preferred snack of the poor and disenfranchised Jews of Manhattan's Lower East Side.  I think the shape of the pickle had something to do with it too and these do-gooding reformers couldn't get their minds out of the gutter.  

The pickle has gained favor, but immigrants keep taking turns getting the short end of the stick.

Barry Deutsch

Pickle Redux

My previous post has brought some criticism from my brother cousin (this may sound all True Blood werepanther inbreeding-like but it's not.  He's my first cousin and as such, he can be referred to either as a brother or a cousin.  I prefer the double designation because it sounds creepy). 

First of all, the term for "szatkowanie" is simply shredding.  Secondly, and most importantly, once you layer and stomp the shredded cabbage in the barrel, you leave it inside the house.  It must be in a warm place for a few weeks so that fermentation can take place.  As both my sister and my brother cousin pointed out, that place in our house was usually near the radiator in the kitchen, which meant only one thing: an unbelievably not subtle fermenting aroma, an aroma that often wafted up to the second floor.  If one was unaware of cabbage souring, one could have easily assumed unsavory things about the homeowner. 

The Old School Pickle

Polka Dot Jr. aka my younger sister has gone old school.  Following in our grandma's footsteps, she's begun to jar and preserve foodstuffs for winter.  Today, she spent all morning making and jarring tomato sauce and a delicious cucumber salad (I tried last winter's jar a few weeks ago and it was really tasty).

Since Sweet Lady and I have been discussing a cookbook for a couple of years now (we have Communist grandmas in common--her grandma was Cuban), I need to start recording these cooking and eating ideas.  Going through my grandma's recipes, however, may prove challening:

Jarring and preserving was huge during the pre-1989 Communist era since there was little to be found in stores and even less so during the winter.  Fruits and vegetables were grown in gardens and/or purchased from villagers so supplies were made in large quantities.  My grandma used to make jars and jars of black and red currant jams, for instance, from those that grow in our garden. 

Cucumbers were pickled for both salads and soups.  My favorite memory is of cabbage pickling or souring.  Cabbage, no matter the market paucity, was pretty much always available.  It was purchased in large quantities as in about 100 kilograms at a winter (my grandma didn't grow it), then sliced up.  This was not done with a knife since that took forever but with a special slicer upon which the cabbage head was placed and pushed back and forth--here's where my English fails me--the process in Polish is called "szatkowanie:" 

http://polska-peerelu.blog.onet.pl

The cabbage shavings were then placed in an oak barrel but not all at once.  They had to be stomped on each time a layer was placed down much like grapes in the making of wine.  There were all sorts of jokes about how dirty feet contribute to better souring, though of course feet had to be clean and, as an article I found on Polish google proclaims, no wooden or metal implement can substitute for a pair of clean feet in the souring of cabbage. Once the barrel was packed full, it was placed in a cold cold cellar where it stayed all winter long and, as my grandma always said, got better and better as it aged so that every time you got a bunch out it was tastier than before.  Sauerkraut is used for soups, warm or cold salads, and pierogis.  My grandma loves herself some sauerkraut juice and swears by its probiotic properties.  Unfortunately, Polka Dot Jr. has given up cabbage souring since it's simply too much work and with Communism being a distant memory, sauerkraut can be easily and cheaply purchased in stores.

Wild mushrooms were another easily acquired favorite.  When we were little, we often went mushroom hunting.  How adults trusted us to find the right kind I have no idea, but we did (our bounty was, of course, inspected upon return).  Some of the mushrooms would be jarred and some would be dried.  The pickled mushrooms were served as side salads with dinner and dried mushrooms were used for soups.  The mushrooms could be also purchased by the side of the road outside of town where local children made a few extra zloty (they still do).  I took Emilia mushroom hunting today, but since she's five, we couldn't get very far.  We found only a few inedible ones.

I hope to buy some mushrooms on the way to visit Villa Akiko at the end of the week.  If the past is any indication, we should encounter at least a few mushroom hunters selling their finds by the side of the road.

The Bulldog Factor

My sister got a French bulldog puppy a few years ago.  She named him Lolek (dimunitive of Karol).  He's seven now.

He's not the most attractive of dogs but he's super good with children and really protective.  In fact, we credit him with potty training my niece Emilia.  Poles, like the Chinese, begin potty traning children rather early.  Emilia began the process at a tender age of eight months.  My sister would put her down on the potty a few times a day.  Emilia would naturally get bored out of her mind so Lolek started keeping her company.  He'd sit down next to her and would remain there unless the ear tugging got too painful.  His tail was safe since he doesn't have one (Grover's tail, on the other hand, provided hours of entertainment when we visited a couple of years ago).

Emilia stopped wearing diapers by about two and hasn't looked back.  Lolek, however, still keeps her company.  She even "reads" to him from time to time and shows him her drawings and new toys.  Sadly though I think she's begun to realize that he doesn't understand human speech (she used to ask him questions and would say things like "You know, Lolek, this is what it looks like to swim in the sea"--this after she returned from her first seaside vacation three years ago and plopped belly down on the kitchen linoleum).  Before she ever spoke her first words, Emilia imitated Lolek's snore-like breathing and growls (French bulldogs don't breath silently or easily, snoring instead like old men with nasal issues).