Aileen Jeffries

I do not pine for olden days. This is by far the best time and place to be alive in human history. To defend this stance, I need only mention a handful of inventions: anesthesia, birth control, democracy, the Internet.

Simply put, there was no “Golden Era” of anything. Half the population of 1917 would be considered mentally retarded by today’s measurements. If a particular population had it good during a decade of yore (consider white men in the 1950’s or, oh, ever), it was at the expense of someone else.

That said, not everything about history is terrible. There are exactly three things I’d like to revive and incorporate into my otherwise contented, modern existence.

1. Wallpaper.

2. Desserts made with gelatin. Even in our modern times, gelatin is derived from the collagen inside animals’ skin and bones. There’s something satisfyingly thrifty about making food with scraps. My favorite is panna cotta topped with cherries. Made with cream, yogurt, almond extract, and honey. And domestic animal by-products.

3. Silhouette portraits. Popular before photography, I imagine the process originally involved a flickering candle as the only light source and tracing the shadow on a barn door or traveling circus tent with a lump of charcoal from the campfire.

Digital cameras, electricity and Photoshop make silhouette portraiture easier these days. Squirming, unruly subjects – in my case a toddler – add just enough challenge to keep it interesting.

There are seven types of E. Coli, I’ve learned. The kind that can kill people lives in meat (well, more specifically feces-contaminated meat) and there’s even a beneficial strain.

The waterborne type isn’t usually deadly. Which is good, because I drank ever-so-much of it the week before Thanksgiving. I was
attempting to rehydrate after an evening o’ food poisoning. Turns out West Portland’s always-delicious tap water was tainted. With POO.

On the plus side, I lost about 4 pounds. And it wasn’t even that bad, nothing like actual food poisoning. There must be a way to market this.