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Buell's Mercantile Cypher (1860) appears on eve of the Civil War and near the end of the canal transport for which it provides language. Code compilation was still tentative at this time; its phraseology is practical but too specific and even politely long-winded, giving it the tone of an exercise book. The nature of the markings throughout the present copy suggest that it was used for preparation for another code, based on and incorporating some, and rejecting much else, of its content.
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The codes did not appear out of nowhere. Their immediate tributaries were nautical and coastal signal systems (typically involving flaghoist combinations), and visual telegraphs such as the Chappé optical telegraph system that operated across France from the mid-1790s well into the 1840s. With all of these systems, each sign or combination of signs represented a word or phrase in a code dictionary.
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It turned out that what I had instead was a commercial telegraphic code. From the 19th through the mid-20th centuries, telegrams were integral to business and personal communications. Telegraph codes proliferated as a way to correspond economically and privately. Readily available code books such as the ABC Universal Commercial Electric Telegraph Code, not to mention many others, were published, with many businesses creating in-house codes. According to telegraphy historian-enthusiast John McVey, “Thousands of codes were published or issued privately, but they are largely forgotten now. They present a finely-grained window into their respective domains and their time. And they provide instances of sometimes stunning visual, technical, lexicographic and unwitting poetic achievement.”
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You might even call it “utopic” in Thomas More’s wry sense: a seemingly good or perfect place which is really no place at all. Computers displace us. They displace us physically - they enable us to talk to anyone, anywhere, and so forth - but they also displace us emotionally and intellectually. They confuse and distract us.
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Logan's alternative is nimbly and seductively argued. He shows a map in which the distribution of early settled societies throughout the temperate zone appears exactly to coincide with the geographical spread of the 400-odd species of oak. He cites many cultures - in north America, ancient Mesopotamia, the highlands of Mexico - where a style of living midway between nomadic gathering and rooted agriculture was evident long before the advent of cereal farming. You could, I suppose, call it fixed foraging, the communal exploitation of a long-lived local resource. The resource was the oak tree, always there in one form or another - just above the waterline, if you were fisher-people, just below the uplands if you were hunters. And its first and most fundamental gift was the acorn, prolific, nutritious (you just needed to leach out the tannin with water), storable, cookable.
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In my memory, I don’t think I liked the seasoned acorn jelly that much because of its bitter taste, but now I love it, it is like an adult appreciates good food more than a child. It has a slightly bitter taste from the acorn jelly and a slightly sweet and salty taste from the sauce, which I love, and this recipe is like that.
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1. From an early age I was taught what was good to eat in the north woods and how to find it. If you're walking with me and suddenly I dive into the bushes and come up with a handful of berries, you'll understand. Locally this means that the first day of blueberry, raspberry, juneberry, and strawberry season are holidays, and I employ a small army of berry-picking advance scouts to keep me informed of when opening day is and how conditions are.
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When all are done, get out your food grinder. Put a fine knife on the grinder and run the shelled acorns through it. This makes a coarse meal. Place this in a large crock or glass bowl. Then add boiling water to cover and let stand an hour. Drain and throw away the brownish, unappetizing water. Repeat. Then taste the meal. It should have a bit of a bitter tang, then taste sweet as you chew a piece. Continue leaching out the tannin as long as necessary.
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To get the tannic acid out of acorns, you need to leech them, that is stick them in boiling water for a few minutes, pour the water out, then repeat repeat repeat perhaps 25 times. Leeching is facilitated if you shell (obviously) the acorns and also chop them into fine pieces. Make sure to cut out any discolored or rotten portions of the nuts, and any grubs (unless you want to eat those too- I can vouch that they aren't poisonous but I don't know about the little cells that they build around themselves).
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The reason I ask this: When I was a child, my grandfather had me pick up a small bucketful of acorns from under our pin oak tree. A day or two later, he asked me to come over to his house and he fed me acorns. The only problem I have is he never told anyone how in the world he prepared them.
Here is some information about eating acorns or rather acorn meal. The tannins have to be removed to avoid the bitterness. I don't know what your grandfather might have done to remove the tannins in whole acorns unless the type of acorn had less tannins to begin with and could have been removed by soaking the whole acorn.
It’s a very complicated system. Oaks have “mast” cycles, which means that some years they produce tons of acorns and some years they produce few or none. Our oaks in Michigan do this as well. Mice eat acorns, and not surprisingly, in the New York study mouse numbers are linked to the mast cycles. More acorns, more white-footed mice.
My friend Katie told me about a recipe she found for making acorn cookies. I’ve been excited to try them and found a recipe and changed it a little last night. The kids and I shaped the acorns, dipped the tops in chocolate, and then rolled them in ground walnuts. I added some finely ground coffee beans in with the walnuts for a coffee/walnut sort of flavor. The kids preferred their cookies just dipped in chocolate. If you have a nut allergy or just don’t like nuts you could try crushed cookies or something similar.
Vacuum
I am a leader by default, because nature abhors a vacuum. (Desmond Tutu)
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