As Stephen Reverand, a vice president for development at the Discovery Channel, framed it recently, "The planet is divided into rice cultures and bread cultures, but everyone makes beer".
Indeed some scholars have pointed to a great and fundamental contrast between the civilization(s) of rice and Mediterranean bread cultures (e.g. Watsuji 1961; Hardricourt 1962; Hosoya et al. 2010).
For a company often thought to personify white-bread culture, that's a quiet triumph.
He recently was named Whole Foods' co-president, in charge of the eastern half of the U.S. Wary at first, Gallo stayed on after the sale once he realized "they weren't out to destroy the Bread &Circus culture of quality food.
Every bread-eating culture has its own variation on this celebratory theme.
Whether he intended to or not, Ray had opened fire on two very distinct cultures at one and the same time: the white-bread mass culture that was on its guard against sexuality of any kind (and especially the black kind), and the black religious community, which felt that gospel was the Lord's music, and thus should be off-limits to the wild secular shenanigans that Ray represented.
"We're not really a bread-eating culture".
"Bread is our culture," says the owner, Luigi Carrieri, of his predominantly Greek, Italian and Portuguese customers.
"The crying need of the nation is not for better morals, cheaper bread, temperance, liberty, culture, redemption of fallen sisters and erring brothers, nor the grace, love and fellowship of the Trinity, but simply for enough money".
There was a time when sports stars would just appear in TV shows or movies like Jack Dempesy in The Prizefighter and the Lady, (1933) or Joe DiMaggio in Manhattan Merry-Go-Round, (1937) but as sports transformed from pastime to a full on entertainment industry unto itself, the cameo roles were too small for this new bread of popular culture idols.
A collection of witty, insightful and offbeat essays on Southern culture, from shortening bread to Memphis Minnie.
