Tuesday, January 18, 2022

Southern Biscuits Forever


Today's "Where my Flickr Photos are Being Used on the Internet" is brought to you by The American Scholar's Viral Days article from June 29, 2020. They used my biscuit photo from 2010. Katherine Lucky writes:
When we place a match to a tealight, illuminating steak over tart tomatoes, soaked in the brine of green olives and vinegar, we are being indulgent: perhaps. There are too many food blogs. Instagramming my food, I know, is dumb. Dumb, and indulgent, but not quite wrong, for there’s real thankfulness here: the soft purple of ube ice cream, the crack of shortbread—colors and textures that exist in contrast to how bad everything is. Oven heat and the snap of boiling water, new discoveries in the study of quesadillas. Cooking doesn’t solve problems; it just makes us happy. Terry Eagleton calls these kinds of things culture: gifts that exist without clear utility. Summer is here! Peaches are coming. A resilient marvel, an excess.
Cooking doesn't solve problems; it just makes us happy.

I agree. In the face of all the things that are going terribly wrong in the world every day, creating and claiming a little bit of happiness also gives me a little hope.