Brautigan, Richard. Please Plant This Book. San Francisco and Santa Barbara: Printed by Graham Mackintosh, 1968. "This book is free."

Most Flavorful II

Parsley, Squash, Sweet Alyssum, and Daisies

Also part of the Tatum Collection, this "book" is a folder containing 8 seed packets for parsley, lettuce, carrots, native flowers, and other plants.

On each packet is a statement by Brautigan. We have taken one of these statements as our epigraph for this exhibit (see the "Introduction"), and offer another relevant one here:

"I thank the energy, the gods and the theater of history that brought us here to this very moment with this book in our hands, calling like the future down a green and starry hall."

K.S.

Wells, Dean Faulkner. The Great American Writer’s Cookbook. Oxford, Mississippi: Yoknapatawpha Press, 1981. 

Great American Writer’s Cookbook

A collection of personal recipes by American writers. Each recipe is complete with ingredients and comments from the individual authors. From appetizers and beverages to seafood and vegetables it’s all here.

Pappy's Hot Toddy.

Wells even includes a drink from famed uncle, William Faulkner, whose "Pappy’s Hot Toddy" appears on pages 17 and 18. Other authors include Maya Angelou, Ray Bradbury, Norman Mailer, and Tennessee Williams.

F.J.

Civil War medicine case.

After the Meal

W. H. Church, a doctor with Ambrose Burnside’s corps, carried this small chest. The medicines left to right are: calcined magnesia, a cathartic; essence of peppermint, a carminative; rhubarb and magnesia, a laxative; spirit of camphor used internally as a carminative or respiratory stimulant and externally as a local anesthetic; paregoric and camphor, used for diarrhea or as a cough medicine; and syrup ipicac, an expectorant and emetic.

A.S.