Pomegranates

Rich fruit of the season, and other red things

Fade to fall

The tragedy of these begonias is that they will be withered and black just a few weeks hence. They have no intimation of that; no, they are blooming with glorious abandon. September is all about color, October, too. Enjoy these gifts of the season before November winds whirl them all away.

Photo © Fran Gardner

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I have a trio of phrases to explore, all starting with corn: Corn rows, corn cob, corn silk. But the subject of the first, corn rows, is really patience.

Patience

I’ve often wondered how a woman—even more, a child!—could sit still for the hours it takes to make tiny braids. Perhaps watching television helps.

I complimented a friend who works at Rose Schnitzer Manor on her corn rows. She corrected me: they’re Sisterlocks. They’re sort of crocheted, she said, formed with a special tool. You need a professional to make them. They can be touched up.

The tool used to make sSisterlocks is similar to the latch hook rug makers use. Photo © Fran Gardner

But back to patience. We’ve lost it. We are too eager to get ahead, on to the next shiny thing. We want to shed the skin of this moment before we’ve outgrown it.

Patience is important to me, because I need it so often. I wrote about it, throwing in a poem and a reference to Shakespeare, on June 24, 2023. 

I struggle daily—hourly—to be patient. Yesterday evening I made myself sit and watch a small patch of lawn rimmed by trees. A crow strutted by, and a squirrel gamboled toward a nut. The photo of the squirrel didn’t work, but I turned around and found a mirror that did.

Evening sunlight on a garage door, and a reflection. Photo © Fran Gardner

Corn cobs

I’m fascinated by the way corn kernels sit on the cob, straight rows except when they wander, larger kernels at the one end and tiny ones like baby’s teeth at the other.

Iowacorn.org notes that the number of kernels per ear can vary from 500 to about 1,200. A typical ear has about 800 kernels, according to corn experts. (Farther down, I’ll tell you how many seeds are in a pomegranate.)

I’ve written a story, “Casting Corn,” about a mystical woman who casts dried corn kernels on an ancient table carved with runes. She is a fortune-teller. You can read it on my other Substack, at fablesandlegends.substack.com, along with another corn story, “The Apple of Happiness.”

Corn silk

I love corn silk because it’s so . . . silky. It could be a doll’s hair. Epicurious.com has a method for crisping it to make a garnish. Midwest teens get their hands sticky from pollinating corn by hand, shaking the tassels over the silk to ensure plump kernels.

Cleaning the silk off corn is a test of patience. It sticks to everything. Only by slowing way, way down can you overcome. Use a nail brush to nudge the last slippery strands from the crevices.

But corn, glorious corn, is worth it. Make sure you buy organic.

Pomegranates

Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, began Friday, Sept. 15, at sundown, ushering in the year 5784. Among traditional Rosh Hashanah foods are raisin challah baked in a round; honey and apples; and pomegranates.

Pomegranates are indigenous to the Mideast, possibly originating in Iran, and have been part of Jewish culture and cuisine since Exodus.

Additionally, according to reformjudaism.org,

The pomegranate has also become a symbol of the 613 mitzvot included in the Torah thanks to the age-old theory that each fruit holds 613 seeds. Interestingly, a 2006 experiment by Columbia graduate student Alexander Haubold seemed to confirm this. Haubold gathered data by counting the seeds of 206 pomegranates sourced from around the world. The average number of seeds calculated from the sample size was exactly 613! That said, it is likely the average number of seeds has increased since then due to selective breeding aimed at maximizing the number of seeds in each fruit.

Not well know stateside

Pomegranates have always been favored in Mediterranean countries, but they were not common in the US until recently—at least not where I lived, in Minnesota or California’s Central Valley.

I was all set to write about how pomegranates were a forgotten fruit, until they weren’t. That’s when I ran into the name Lynda Resnick.

But first, about pomegranates. Used to be they were nowhere. I remember wondering what use they could be.

Photo by Marta Matyszczyk on Unsplash

The Saroyan angle

The catalyst is William Saroyan. As a teen, I was captivated by his exotic surname, which is Armenian.  I started reading with My Name is Aram (1940), stories based on his childhood in and around Fresno, Calif.

One tale was about the pomegranate trees his uncle tried to grow on some desert scrubland. Because the land was arid, the resulting fruit was dry and shriveled. Nevertheless, the uncle shipped some boxes to a broker in Chicago, who had no idea what to do with the fruit and couldn’t sell it.

No use for pomegranates

I remember wondering, in 1965, what uses there were for pomegranates. I had never seen one, much less eaten one. All I could find (this being before the almighty Internet) were references to grenadine syrup.

Grenadine may have been traditionally made with pomegranate juice, but over the years it became practice to substitute cheaper juices like black currant. Or just go with chemicals.

The label for Rose’s, a popular brand of grenadine, lists these ingredients: High fructose corn syrup, water, citric acid, sodium citrate, sodium benzoate, FD&C Red #40, natural and artificial flavors, and FD&C Blue #1. No pomegranate juice.

Change of tone

Here’s where Lynda Resnick comes in.

First, a little background: Her father, Jack H. Harris, was rich because as a filmmaker he had produced the cult masterpiece The Blob, but he never bankrolled any of her projects. So she started from virtually nothing, opening an ad agency when she was 19.

Her husband, Stewart Resnick, comes from more humble beginnings. Born in Highland Park, New Jersey, he was the son of a Yiddish-speaking Ukrainian bartender. But Stewart was already a millionaire from his building maintenance business when he needed advertising help and met Lynda. They were married in 1973.

Zip to now. Between them, Forbes reports, Lynda and Stewart Resnick are worth maybe $10.6 billion. That’s billion with a “b.” Never heard of them?

You may recognize

• The Franklin Mint

• Fiji water

• Teleflora

• Wonderful Pistachios

• Halo clementines (formerly known as Cuties)

• And—cue the pomegranates—POM Wonderful pomegranate juice.

A wonderful mind

Lynda Resnick is a marketing genius. She took a tired brand, the Franklin Mint, and steered it in new directions, including models of vintage cars and replicas of Jackie Kennedy’s fake pearl necklace. The couple later sold the company.

She rebranded pistachios, which like all nuts are nutrient-dense and full of fat, as “the skinny nut.”

I’m indebted to Mother Jones for pointing out that the Resnicks, through the Wonderful Company, are the world’s biggest producers of pistachios and almonds, and they also hold vast groves of lemons, grapefruit, and navel oranges. All told, they claim to own America’s second-largest produce company, worth perhaps $4.2 billion.

The Wonderful Company, private and family controlled, has maybe 80,000 acres of almonds and pistachios in California’s Central Valley, much of it in arid Kern County.

It takes an orchard

At one point, Lynda bought a pistachio orchard that included pomegranate bushes. Before she could rip them out, her family doctor mentioned that pomegranates were a prized folk medicine in the Mideast.

A lightbulb went off.

Lynda Resnick poured $25 million  into pomegranate research. It paid off in 2000: yes, pomegranates had more antioxidants than red wine. It was time to go to market.

Lynda was a design genius, too. She brainstormed the POM logo, with its hollow heart, and the sinuously shaped bottle.

Pom Wonderful hit the shelves in 2002. Pomegranates had arrived.

Not just juice

I don’t use pomegranate juice—too much concentrated sugar. But I love, love, love fresh pomegranates. I even put up with the monotony of freeing the jewellike arils from the surrounding pith. Er, it takes patience.

Eat them out of hand, or sprinkle on salads. Adding them to a smoothie makes the smoothie gritty, but I don’t care.

A final footnote

According to various sources, including Mother Jones, Lynda Resnick is part of another story, far removed from mineral water, clementines and flowers by mail.

Her agency had an office on Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles. In 1971, before she met Stewart, her then-boyfriend worked at the Rand Corp., along with Daniel Ellsberg.

The leaked government documents that became the Pentagon Papers were photocopied on the machine in Resnick’s office.

She was subpoenaed for the Congressional investigation into the leak, but was never charged.

Writing of red

Last week, in a list of disparate words, I mentioned redwork. I did not explain what that is.

Redwork is a particular kind of embroidery, popular in years past as a way of teaching children (okay, little girls) how to stitch and outline.

The idea of embroidering on white or ecru (unbleached) cloth with red thread became insanely popular with the development of colorfast red cotton embroider thread  in the early 20th century.

The preferred color is Turkey Red, DMC No. 498.

The appeal of redwork for an adult is that it is simple and meditative. No challenge to overcome, no need to figure anything out. All you need is square of fabric, a pattern (I traced mine in faint pencil on unbleached muslin using a portable light table), Turkey Red cotton floss, a wide-eyed needle and an embroidery hoop to keep the fabric taut. You don’t even need a thimble. I don’t usually, as they keep popping off my finger and rolling off along the floor.

I made this redwork quilt for a grandchild using a pattern created by a Portland artist that I bought in a local quilt shop. I once talked to the creator of the pattern, Kathie James, and she said she just came up with the idea. No big deal to her, but I think this pattern is special.

The name of this pattern was “Animal Activities.” I hand-quilted it.

By the book

I once bought several books with “redwork” in the title from Better World Books, my go-to source of used books on the Internet. Several good craft books came in the mail, along with a young adult novel called Redwork, by Michael Bedard.

Bedard’s a great writer, very stylish in his prose without hitting you over the head with it. But I’ve struggled to finish the book—I just went on to other things, and now I have a raft of other books ahead of it. You readers know how that is. Although it’s toward the bottom of my vast reading list, I’m looking forward to finishing it.

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She’s right about writing

I haven’t exhorted you recently to work on your writing. But we both know it’s important.

Earlier this year, I joined a Substack group (thank you for hosting, Amy Cowen!) working through Julia Cameron’s book Write for Life: Creative Tools for Every Writer (A 6-Week Artist’s Way Program).*

*Click here to start with the first of the series of postings on Write for Life at Cowen’s Illustrated Life Substack.

Yes, Cameron is capitalizing on her millions in sales since The Artist’s Way came out in 1991, but why not? She’s earned it.

She repeats, over and over, the importance of writing daily. The phrase “I put pen to paper” appears so often as to be annoying. But she is right. Daily writing in a short (three pages handwritten for her, 20 minutes keyboarded by me) but focused way, with room for intuition and an embrace of the surprising turns your mind makes when you free it up—that is magic.*

*I started writing daily exercises in 1992, a year after The Artist’s Way was published. I came across the idea in a book, Writing Fiction, by Janet Burroway that was written much earlier.

This week, I skipped the writing exercises for a few days. I din’t lose my mojo or break my rhythm, but still, a sense of loss.

On September 15, I wrote this:

Exers [my word for Morning Pages or daily exercises] are important. Vital, actually. In some mysterious way, they set the tone for the day. Without them, I am lost. I don’t feel it like that, oh, I’m lost. But I think focus suffers.

Please try it. For a week, for three days, even once. Prepare to be astounded.

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