Author Archives

Mike Dang
Editor-in-chief, Longreads | Editorial, Automattic and WordPress.com

How a Calf Head Roasted in a Pit Became a Popular Mexican Delicacy

“The historical method of preparation of calf head developed from the practice of baking an entire calf in the ground overnight, a practice designed to feed a significant number of people with a single large protein source, baked in the only structure available everywhere for free: the earth itself. This was a crude but effective technique: a hole was dug in the ground and lined with porous or volcanic stones or bricks to absorb heat, then a large bonfire was set alight inside it and allowed to burn down to coal, at which point the calf would be wrapped in leaves and tossed in and the cover sealed so no oxygen could enter the pit. The fuel, the material used to line the pit, and the material used to cover the pit all vary from culture to culture, but the basic principles are found in native cookeries the world over, from the Polynesian brick-lined pits used to cook entire pigs to the tandoors used across the Indian subcontinent.

“Where did the below-ground method originate? It’s difficult for either archaeologists or anthropologists to pinpoint, but in the New World, the method tends to correspond to a map of Spanish colonialism, so it isn’t entirely outside the realm of possibility that Native Americans, who had previously been roasting their kills over an open fire, learned to bake whole animals in the earth from the conquistadores. On the other hand, the method also shows up in places like Maine, where they cook beans and clams in the earth, and I don’t think Cabeza de Vaca quite made it up to Bangor, so the origins remain firmly in the scope of speculation.

“At any rate, the traditional method of preparation, which included the entire animal, eventually gave way to a predilection for the soft tissues of the head. The word ‘barbacoa’ is actually a corruption of the phrase ‘de la barba a la cola,’ which translates into ‘from the beard to the tail.’ In South Texas bricks or stones line the pit, mesquite is the heat source, and the whole thing is covered with sheet metal. When I was a kid, the barbacoa that emerged was composed of three parts: cachete (cheek), lengua (tongue), and mixta (a mixture of brains, lips, eyeballs, and probably, if you’re not careful, ears).”

– In Texas Monthly, National Book Award finalist Domingo Martinez recalls eating barbacoa with his family in South Texas, and examines how the meat was traditionally cooked and served. Read more food stories in the Longreads Archive.

***

Photo: Neil Conway

We need your help to get to 5,000 Longreads Members.

Join Longreads now and help us keep going.

Who Invented Skiing?

“Serik describes a hunt when Tursen skied down on a bounding deer, leaped on its back, grabbed its antlers, and wrestled it down into the snow, the animal kicking and biting. It is a scene that has been repeated for thousands of years in these mountains. Within the Altay, a handful of petroglyphs have been discovered depicting archaic skiing scenes, including one of a human figure on skis chasing an ibex. Since petroglyphs are notoriously hard to date, it remains a controversial clue in the debate over where skiing was born. Chinese archaeologists contend it was carved 5,000 years ago. Others say it is probably only 3,000 years old. The oldest written record that alludes to skiing, a Chinese text, also points to the Altay but dates to the Western Han dynasty, which began in 206 B.C.

“Norwegian archaeologists also have found ski petroglyphs, and in Russia, what appears to be a ski tip, carbon-dated to 8,000 years ago, was excavated from a peat bog. Each nation stakes its own claim to the first skiers. What is widely accepted, however, is that whoever first strapped on a pair of skis likely did so to hunt animals.”

– In National Geographic, Mark Jenkins travels to the Chinese Altay Mountains to join a semi nomadic hunting party who may be descendants of the first skiers. Read more stories from National Geographic.

***

Photo: Sheffield Tiger

We need your help to get to 5,000 Longreads Members.

Join Longreads now and help us keep going.

Reading List: Religion Gone Extreme

Emily Perper is a word-writing human working at a small publishing company. She blogs about her favorite longreads at Diet Coker.

Each of these stories this week is about a facet of religion gone extreme, and each is an example of why these pieces of longform journalism are important. There is detailed, professional storytelling, gripping subject matter, the opportunity to delve behind-the-scenes and try to get at the truth. It’s so easy to make assumptions about folks who don’t take their sons to the doctor, or the daughters of cult leaders, or the woman who studies the daughter of cult leaders, but good reporting forces us to reassess our assumptions.

1. “The Fall of the House of Moon.” (Mariah Blake, The New Republic, November 2013)

Though his espoused family values and extreme legalistic moralism attracted the Republican Party, Rev. Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church enforced harmful sex rivals and fostered an environment of bitter sibling rivalry, drug abuse, and adultery. I’m in awe of Blake’s thorough investigation. I read most of this article to a friend of mine as she gaped.

2. “Why Did the Schaibles Let Their Children Die?” (Robert Huber, Philadelphia Magazine, October 2013)

Herbie and Cathy Schaible lost two young sons to treatable illnesses because their independent Baptist denomination does not believe in man-made medicine. They believe unacknowledged sin, not lack of medical treatment, caused their sons’ deaths.

3. “Caught Up In the Cult Wars: Confessions of a New Religious Movement Researcher.” (Susan J. Palmer, University of Toronto Press, 2001)

Cult-lover or sympathetic scientist? In courts of law, Susan Palmer is summoned to explicate her studies of New Religious Movements (NRMS). In this (delightful!) bear of an essay, she discusses the ethical dilemmas of investigating NRMs.

4. “A Year After the Non-Apocalypse: Where Are They Now?” (Tom Bartlett, Religion Dispatch Magazine, May 2012)

When your leader’s prophecies don’t come true, what do you do? Bartlett interviewed followers of doomsday herald Harold Camping. It’s a solid companion to Palmer’s essay about NRMs.

Photo: Wikimedia Commons

•••

Longreads has featured each story included my list this week, and is in the midst of its Member Drive. Our goal is 5,000 subscribers, who’ll receive weekly updates and exclusive access to some of the best journalism today. I’m a member, and I hope you will consider becoming one as well.

Join Longreads now and help us keep going.

Sasha Belenky on Jeanne Marie Laskas's 'The People V. Football'

sasha
Sasha Belenky is a senior editor at The Huffington Post.

Whether it’s negotiating murder-for-hire with a fake hit man or visiting old stomping grounds with the vice president of the United States, if you’re in the car with Jeanne Marie Laskas, you’re pretty much guaranteed that the story will be good. I’ve found myself most riveted, however, by her 2011 profile in GQ of Fred McNeill, former star linebacker for the Minnesota Vikings — which similarly begins in the car. It’s a heart-wrenching scene, with McNeill’s wife, Tia, fighting his dementia along with the Los Angeles traffic, and it’s a great example of Laskas’ gift for capturing language. As journalists continue to shed light on the concussion crisis in football, Laskas’ article stands out as one of the most personal, most devastating accounts of the long-term damage being done on the field.

•••

We need your help to get to 5,000 Longreads Members.

Join Longreads now and help us keep going.

How Scientists Are Using Fruit Flies to Find Alternative Cancer Treatments

“His name was Ross Cagan. He did not work for Schadt; he worked as a professor at Sinai. But they met every week, and after Schadt called on October 1 to tell Cagan about Stephanie Lee, he listened to Cagan’s idea for her. A month earlier, Cagan had started doing something that he said ‘had never been done before.’ He started creating ‘personalized flies’ for cancer patients. He took the mutations that scientists like Schadt had revealed and loaded them into flies, essentially giving the flies the same cancer that the patient had. Then he treated them. ‘Why a fly? You can do this in a fly. You can capture the complexities of the tumor.’

“A day after Cagan spoke with Schadt, Stephanie became the fifth person in the world to have a fly built in her image—or, rather, in the image of her cancer. In an ideal world, Cagan would have created as complex a creature as possible, burdening the fly with at least ten mutations. He gave Stephanie’s fly three, because ‘Stephanie is on the shorter course. We’re making the fly as complex as possible given her time.’ By October 11, however, Cagan already had ‘one possible drug suggestion for her’—or one possible combination of drugs, since he always tests at least two at a time. ‘In this center, the FDA will not allow us to put a novel drug in patient. To get a novel drug into a patient, we have to do a novel combination of [known] drugs. We have to use novel drug combinations that people have never seen before'”

– In Esquire, Mark Warren and Tom Junod tell the story of an Iraq War widow named Stephanie Lee who was diagnosed with terminal colon cancer, and how scientists at Mount Sinai are using her genetic data to find personalized treatments for her. Read more stories about fighting cancer.

***

Photo: John Tann

We need your help to get to 5,000 Longreads Members.

Join Longreads now and help us keep going.

The Birth of the Modern American Suburb

“The land Levitt found was in the largely empty farmland of Hempstead, Long Island, and Levitt amassed thousands of acres. His timing could not have been more perfect. Sixteen million G.I.’s were returning from the war, many needing a place to live. There were abundant hard-luck stories of couples living with parents, sleeping in back rooms, or, worse, in tents, boxcars, or the fuselages of old Army bombers. What’s more, the federal government had passed the G.I. Bill, which, among other benefits, gave ex-soldiers access to cheap loans. Perhaps most important, the banks were rolling out a product that was just as world-changing as the smartphone: the 30-year fixed mortgage. It made buying a house, which, for most Americans, had been a carrot on a stick—always chased but hardly ever caught—suddenly seem like no big deal.

“Levitt broke ground in Hempstead in 1947. His method was the one he’d pioneered in Norfolk—the modern suburb, with its rows of cookie-cutter sameness, is, like so many modern institutions, a relic of the Second World War. He laid the building materials every hundred feet, the 27 teams with their 27 tasks moving across the waste. It took thirteen minutes to dig a foundation. Then came walls, the roof, a refrigerator. By 1948, the Levitts were finishing 30 houses a day. One day in 1949, Levitt wrote 1,400 contracts. He worked the desk himself, says Simone. ‘He was a humble man. As brilliant as he was, he would stand there, take the hundred dollars, thank the customers, and wish them good luck.’ Four years after breaking ground, the last house in the development sold—number 17,447. By then, the village had changed its name from Island Trees to Levittown.”

Rich Cohen (New York magazine) on Simone Levitt, the wife of Bill Levitt, father of the modern American suburb. Read more profiles from the Longreads Archive.

***

Photo: Wikimedia Commons

We need your help to get to 5,000 Longreads Members.

Join Longreads now and help us keep going.

The Church That Doesn’t Believe in Seatbelts or Eyeglasses

“In the 20 years Nelson Clark has been First Century Gospel’s head pastor, the church’s message has also changed very little, especially in its core beliefs. Pastor Clark later sums these up in an email: how ‘the divine power of God … is able to heal our body without drugs or medicine; supply our needs without laid-up cash for the future; protect our family without firearms or anti-theft devices; bring about justice without legal action or attorneys; and to save our soul by a believing faith that endures to the end of our life.’

“As to what may seem idiosyncratic or even absurd, such as not wearing seatbelts or correcting bad eyesight with glasses, the explanations get interesting. The problem with seatbelts, Pastor Clark says, is that ‘anyplace we are told to do something in case something happens is a breach of faith or denying of faith in God to protect you.’ This same idea of trust applies to vision. ‘If God made eyes, obviously He can heal vision problems to see normally. We don’t use mechanical devices to make it better—it’s a matter of trusting God for normal vision.'”

-Robert Huber visits members of the First Century Gospel Church, who believe in the power of prayer over medicine, to get a sense of why a couple let two of their children die of illnesses that could have been treated by doctors.

* * *

Photo: Lydur Skulason

A 1,000-Year History of Laughing Games

“Laughter games, though seemingly unconventional, are not new. The Canadian Inuit have been practicing them for thousands of years. Their version is called Iglagunerk and consists of two individuals facing each other, grasping hands, and—at an agreed upon signal—beginning to laugh. The one who laughs the hardest and longest is declared the winner. Nerenberg says this, and an observation that mixed martial arts fighters often laugh during their pre-fight stare down, formed the genesis of competitive laughter. But there’s also some science behind it.”

– At Pacific Standard, Sam Riches goes to the Canadian competitive laughing championship in Toronto, where “laughletes” compete in laughter challenges like “the Diabolical Laugh” and “the Alabama Knee-Slapper” to win a title and trophy. Read more about competitions.

***

Photo: Stewart Black