HUCKLEBERRY HAPPINESS - Releasing June 24th

                              by Judy Ann Davis
My latest novella, Huckleberry Happiness, is being released today. It’s the historical story of a young woman, Emelia Stone, who runs a bakery and her best friend from childhood, Joe Sawicki, who owns an ice company with his brother. Amelia bakes pies from native Pennsylvania huckleberries and buys ice from Sawicki Ice Company. She wants to make a special huckleberry ice cream to enter in the Pennsylvania Railroad’s dessert contest.

Huckleberries are edible, small, round berries resembling blueberries. In fact, in some parts of the United States, huckleberries might be called blueberries and blueberries might be called huckleberries, although they’re not the same fruit.

The various species of huckleberries range in color from bright red to dark purple to blue. The purple and blue huckleberries taste sweeter. In addition to humans, many animals enjoy huckleberries, including bears, red foxes, opossum, skunks, squirrels, chipmunks and white-footed mice.

Huckleberry bushes are native to Pennsylvania and stay green all year. A patch, discovered near Losh Run, north of Harrisburg, has two plants that botanists determine are 13,000 years old, older than the Sequoia trees of the West. The gigantic patch sprang from the same plant thousands of years ago as the ice cover was melting. 

Huckleberries also grow wild in many different parts of the U.S. Perhaps this is why the huckleberry inspired many different phrases dating back to the 1800s.

Because huckleberries are small, the word “huckleberry" was often used as a nickname for something small, unimportant, or insignificant. Scholars believe this was the meaning Mark Twain had in mind when he named his Huckleberry Finn character. People at that time would have understood that “Huck" Finn's name was a clue that he was a small boy who was of a lower class than his companion, Tom Sawyer.

       MY FAVORITE PASSAGE:

Emelia jabbed furiously at the mixture inside the bowl with her pastry cutter. How could her very own sister abandon her without an ounce of misgiving? Couldn’t she have waited until the end of the month and, at the very least, earned her pay before leaving the bakery?

Joe watched her work, his hands shoved in his pockets. “Are you trying to kill the lard…or is it the flour that has you so riled?” He peered over the rim of the bowl.

“Be careful,” she shot back and gave him a lethal glare that would stop a rattlesnake from making a fuss. “This place is armed with sharp knives.”

AMAZON LINK

 

Happy Pi Day by Bea Tifton

      

Oh, Lordy. We’ve made it. Do you know what day it is? Do you? Do you?  Durned if it isn’t an international holiday that I can fully support, despite my inherent distrust of anything math related. It's Pi Day, founded in 1988 by a physicist named Larry Shaw.

 

Yes, it’s that wonderful day when the date spells out, 3.14, March 14. And 3.14 is the numerical term for pi. What is pi, my little English major friends? “Pi (often represented by the lower-case Greek letter π), one of the most well-known mathematical constants, is the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter.  For any circle, the distance around the edge is a little more than three times the distance across.” https://www.piday.org/learn-about-pi/

 

Now, if you’re like me all you heard when you read that was the static of an old fashioned TV set between channels. Don’t worry, my friends. There will be no math involved today. Because Pi Day has cleverly morphed into Pie Day, and I can get right behind that.  

Ahhhh, pie. I love pie. And, as a patriotic human, of course I’m going to give this day my all. Pizza pie for lunch, dessert pie to top it off. And all over the country, places who serve one or the other will have sales and specials. 

There are so many ways to celebrate.  

       1.  Eat as much pie as possible.

       2. Have pie for dessert.  

       3. Have pie with friends. (Warning, this may involve having to share the pie.) 

      Or, if you’re on some obscure pie free diet (shudder), why not sing about pie? Here is just a sampling of some great pie song. 

       1. American Pie sung by Don McClean

       2. Sweet Potato Pie sung by James Taylor 

       3. Where’s My Apple Pie? sung by Joan Baez.  

     

       Or, since we are readers and writers, you can simply wax poetic about pie. Here are some friendly pie quotes to memorize and amaze your friends.

  1. “Cut my pie into four pieces. I don’t think I could eat eight.” Yogi Berra

  2. “We must have a pie. Stress cannot exist in the presence of pie.” David Mamet

  3. “The future… seems to me no unified dream but a mince pie, long in the baking, never                quite done.” Edward Young

 Whatever you choose to do, have a wonderful Pi Day. What’s your favorite type of pie?