Five days ago, my friend K. and I made three Ethiopian dishes. We used these recipes, roughly: (1) http://allrecipes.com/recipe/ethiopian-cabbage-dish/; (2) http://www.ethiopianrestaurant.com/recipes.html; (3) http://recipes.sparkpeople.com/recipe-detail.asp?recipe=1364702. I also made banana bread using this recipe, subbing spelt flour and cornmeal for the the all-purpose flour, and coconut oil and sunflower seed oil for canola (way better!): http://dairyfreecooking.about.com/od/breadsbakery/r/vegan_banana_bread_recipe.htm.
April 14 is also the day the first commercial motion picture house opened (1894, NYC). It sported ten Kinetoscopes, which were cabinets with a window for viewing films that were played by a strip of perforated film passing over a lamp with a high-speed shutter. Must have been a small theater! I wonder if there was popcorn for sale. I wonder if people hung out and talked about the films. I wonder how long the longest film they showed was. The shortest, too. I wonder how expensive each film was, and if they were priced differently depending on anticipated demand. I wonder how many workers the theater employed. I wonder who owned the theater. I wonder how long it was in business. I wonder how many children went to the theater. I wonder when the last person with a memory of the theater died.
