Two from Smithsonian Magazine

From "Food from the Age of Shakespeare":

The Folger’s collection of several dozen receipt or recipe books offers a fascinating window into life during Shakespeare’s era on medical practices, women’s literacy and popular foods. Recipe books were often circulated among family members, and it’s not uncommon to see handwriting from several individuals in one book, says Rebecca Laroche, who curated the exhibition. As I scanned the neatly hand-scripted books by housewives Elizabeth Fowler and Sarah Longe, I ghttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifot the urge to try some of their recipes. We know little about these women; they were literate, of course, and because Longe calls herself “mistress” and refers to King James I and Queen Elizabeth I in her book, historians surmise that she was informed and fairly well off, though not a member of the nobility. The notebooks, however, give us glimpses of the authors’ personalities.

Fowler had written her name and the date, 1684, on the cover and embellished them with swirls and curlicues. Her 300-page compendium includes poems and sermons. With an eye for organization, she numbered her recipes. Her recipe titles reflect her confidence in the kitchen: “To Make the Best Sassages that Ever was eat,” she labels one.

(You'll find more Shakespearean goodness filed under "Bardolatry.")

And from "An Unforgettable Photo of Martha Graham":

Thus when Graham and Morgan met, in 1935, they found they had a shared interest. Indeed, they had much in common. Both were dedicated modernists and hence, at that time in America, bohemians, iconoclasts. In addition, both were highly idealistic, given to pronouncements on the Spirit, the Essence and so forth. According to the philosopher Curtis Carter, a friend of Morgan’s who has curated three exhibitions of her work and written most of what we know about her, Morgan had first seen Graham’s work several years earlier. We don’t know if Graham had seen Morgan’s work, but apparently she sensed a kinship. Within a short time Morgan proposed to do a book of photographs of Graham, and the choreographer said, “Fine, let’s do it.”

It was not an easy project. “She was a terror,” Graham told an interviewer years later. “I’d do it, and then she’d say, ‘Well, the dress wasn’t quite right,’ and then we’d have to do it again. First she would make me lie down on the floor and rest. So off came the dress (it mustn’t get dirty, you know), and then we’d start all over again.”

(Graham-related entries here and here.)