You may have noticed that a number of items on my chocolate list are out of stock. That’s because some types of confectioner’s chocolate are hard to get right now, largely because of industrial and transportation shutdowns due to Covid. The milk chocolate I like has been unavailable for over 4 months, and my stock is almost gone. I can get lower quality milk chocolate, but I don’t want it. Low quality milk chocolate doesn’t taste as good, and it often contains bad stuff: palm oil instead of cocoa butter, imitation vanilla instead of the real thing, powdered milk, and old or low quality cocoa beans. I would prefer to be out of stock rather than use bad chocolate. My chocolate has my name on it.
HOT CHOCOLATE? Restaurants are constantly coming up with novel and surprising ideas for chocolate desserts. There are now restaurants in several cities that pour melted chocolate over the hands of their customers, and then you lick the chocolate off your hands. That’s the dessert. See photo below. This does not appeal to me at all. What about you?
The Number 1 piece of advice I can give tenants who are planning to move out is GET RID OF JUNK NOW! The single most common mistake that tenants make when moving out of an apartment is waiting until the last minute to get rid of their junk. This is a big mistake! If you have more junk than will fit in your garbage can, you cannot just leave it in bags next to the garbage can. You cannot leave it anywhere on the premises for pickup later. Don’t put this off until the last minute. You will regret that. Everyone does. Please remember that I cannot issue security deposit refund checks until all your stuff has been removed from the premises, and that includes your junk. A good place to start is your kitchen. That pizza in your refrigerator that is 2 weeks old and is now hard as a rock isn’t going to become more edible with age.
There are a lot of toxic materials that used to be common in household products. I sometimes think about products that I used to buy and used in my business decades ago that are now banned – and that should have been banned a long time before that.
ARSENIC. Arsenic used to be in a long list of consumer products. Dye. Arsenic was used to make green dye. It was used extensively in paint and wallpaper. Just last month, I saw an old can of Sherwin Williams Paris Green paint. Paris Green is a pigment made from copper and arsenic. It is also known as Vienna Green and Schweinfurt Green. Arsenic was also used to dye thread and fabric. Many hand weavers died from handling arsenic green thread as the arsenic was slowly absorbed into their fingertips. Skin Cream. Arsenic was also used in skin cream and wafers, products that were sold for centuries until Teddy Roosevelt created the FDA in 1906. They quickly outlawed arsenic skin cream. By rubbing arsenic on your face; blemishes, discoloration, and age spots vanish! This product really worked! The only problem with arsenic cream is that it will kill you as the arsenic is absorbed into your face. Other. When I first became a landlord, I bought and used a number of products that contained arsenic and thought nothing of it, including snail pellets, weed killer, and green pressure treated lumber (which was known by carpenters in the 1970s as ‘green death’.) If termites tried eating it, they would immediately die. There are still products on the market with arsenic in them.
MERCURY. People have known for thousands of years that mercury is poisonous, but nevertheless, it can still be found in a number of products still on the market. Dental Fillings. ‘Silver fillings’ are made out of a mixture that includes mercury. I used to have a number of them. Switches. Old freezers, space heaters, and clothes irons used to contain mercury switches that turned the electricity on and off. Some still do. Thermostats. I used to have mercury bulb thermostats in my rental units as well as my own home, but I replaced them with electronic mercury-free thermostats. Mercury thermostats are still sold and in common use in the U.S. Thermometers. If you have an old mercury thermometer in your medicine cabinet, you should get rid of it. Don’t bring it to me for disposal! Light Bulbs. I used to have CFLs in my units but replaced them with LED bulbs. LED bulbs do not have mercury in them, but CFL bulbs do. CFLs are the light bulbs that are spirally. They are still sold in stores, but I don’t know why. Batteries. Small button or coin shaped batteries contain mercury. They are used in hearing aids, watches, calculators, and toys.
ASBESTOS.
Asbestos used to be put in a huge number of consumer products, and it was used extensively in construction. I once owned a building with ‘cottage cheese’ ceilings. That is also known as ‘popcorn ceiling’ or ‘stucco ceiling.’ It was very popular in the 1950s and 1960s. You have probably seen it. It looks like the ceiling is covered with cottage cheese. It usually contained asbestos. You can still find cottage cheese ceilings in old buildings everywhere. It is very expensive to remove safely and legally.
Products to be wary of: A long list of products used to contain asbestos. Be suspicious of anything old that produces heat or insulates against heat. Some people like the look of and collect old Art Deco toasters, coffee percolators, and clothes irons; but these products commonly have asbestos in them. Old hair dryers, kitchen stoves, clothes dryers, baby bottle warmers, slow cookers, dishwashers, automobile engines, and popcorn poppers that were made before the 1980s may also have asbestos in them. Old oil lamps often have woven asbestos wicks in them. Fake snow used for Christmas decorations used to be made from fluffy asbestos. It is impossible to make a complete list of all the consumer products that used to contain asbestos. It was in hundreds of products.Kent cigarettes. This one is my favorite. Kent cigarette commercials on television boasted that their cigarettes had ‘the exclusive Micronite filter’, which they advertised as ‘the greatest health protection’ smokers could get. The filter was made out of asbestos. Imagine – claiming that you could improve your health by smoking cigarettes if you inhale the smoke through asbestos.
URANIUM.
Uranium Glass. I can’t believe they still make uranium glass, also known as ‘vaseline glass’ because of its color. However, Vaseline doesn’t glow in the dark, unlike uranium glass which does. I know a woman who collects uranium glass. She once offered me a meal on one of her radioactive plates. I declined. Radioactive Wool and Clothing. About the same time that the government banned arsenic in thread and fabric, radioactive wool started being sold to knitters and hand weavers. I wonder which was more dangerous, arsenic thread or radioactive thread? In the 20th Century, a great many radioactive consumer products were on the market, including radioactive bath salts, toothpaste, cigarettes, chocolate, underwear, condoms, and baby pacifiers. After the bombing of Hiroshima, attitudes about radiation changed. Most radioactive products disappeared from the market by the late 1950s. However, you can still find these products in antique stores and in people’s basements.
As you may have noticed, I am interested in bizarre Danish trivia, like the Hans Island War. This story is far more bizarre. Princess Alexandra was the daughter of King Christian IX of Denmark. She married Edward, the Prince of Wales, heir to the British throne in 1863. Alexandra of Denmark quickly became the fashion icon of England. Wealthy women wore copies of her dresses. They wore chokers that looked like the ones that Alexandra wore to conceal a scar on her neck. After giving birth to her third child, Alexandra developed rheumatic fever. When she recovered, the disease left her with a noticeable limp. Shortly afterwards, a strange fashion craze swept over Britain, the Alexandra Limp. High society women in England and Scotland started limping everywhere they went, copying Alexandra’s limp. Shrewd shopkeepers quickly figured out how to make money on the Alexandra Limp. They began selling ‘limping shoes’, one shoe high, one shoe low, forcing the wearer to walk with a limp. Women also began walking with canes. Predictably, newspapers and prominent figures in England were aghast by this fashion trend, mimicking Alexandra’s very real disability. American newspapers also ridiculed the Alexandra Limp, which never caught on in the United States. The New York World published a cartoon ridiculing ‘The Limping Ladies of London.’ Although her relatives in Denmark thought Alexandra should publicly denounce the Alexandra Limp, she said nothing about it. Her limp was an embarrassment to her. Like all absurd fashion trends, the Alexandra Limp eventually faded away.
To’ak RainForest chocolate bars used to cost $250, but now they are ‘only’ $190. I am not sure why they are cheaper this year. Perhaps demand has fallen due to Covid or perhaps they had a bountiful harvest. The bars weigh 50 grams (1.75 ounces.) That comes to $1,735 a pound. The packaging is beautiful. They sell out every year. I have never bought one of these chocolate bars so I don’t know how good they are. If any of you have eaten one of these chocolate bars, let me know what you thought of it. I wonder if it tastes better than my chocolate. $190 is about what I pay for a 50 pound box of high quality confectioner’s chocolate.
1. After you have had both of your shots, take a photo of your CDC vaccination card showing that you are fully vaccinated and leave the photo on your cell phone. Also, print up a few copies of your vaccination card as well and leave one of them in your wallet. It is my guess that pretty soon, people are going to need to show proof of vaccination in order to get into certain places, places like classrooms, dorms, gyms, airports, etc. Some European governments are already considering requiring foreign visitors to show proof of vaccination before they can enter the country. Some cruise ships are running again, but they are requiring passengers to produce proof of vaccination to get on board. Just last week, New York announced they will be issuing ‘vaccination passports.’ You will need one of them to get into large venues in New York, like Madison Square Garden and convention centers. Make sure you store your original vaccination card someplace where you won’t lose it. Treat it like a critical personal document. 2. Don’t make plans for the day after you get your shots, especially the second shot. About 1% of people who get the Moderna vaccine feel sick or feverish after the first shot, and 20% feel sick after the second shot. That included me. I was sick as a dog the day after my second shot.3. Don’t stop wearing a mask. Just because you are vaccinated, that doesn’t mean that you can’t give Covid to other people. A vaccinated person can still be a carrier of the virus. Over 1,000 Americans are still dying every day of Covid (as of March 1). Keep 1 or 2 spare masks in your pocket just in case the strings break. Mine break all the time.
COVID AND RESTAURANT FOOD CONTAINERS.Because restaurants are closed for in-person dining due to Covid, the amount of food people are eating at home in to-go plastic containers has exploded. Before the epidemic, I never had hot meals delivered to my house. Now, it seems, everybody is getting them, including me. But remember, most plastic to-go food containers are not microwavable. If you get food in a plastic container, and the food needs reheating, take the food out of the container and put it on a porcelain plate or bowl first. Some plastics will melt in a microwave oven. But much worse, some plastics release toxic chemicals into your food when the plastic gets hot! Don’t trust disposable plastic containers that say ‘microwavable’ on them. That just means the container won’t melt in your microwave oven. It is not a guarantee that the container won’t leach chemicals or microplastic particles into your food. Microplastics. The average American eats about 5 grams of microplastic particles every week. That’s about the weight of a credit card. Eating food out of plastic containers and drinking beverages from plastic bottles are the major source of plastic in our diet. No one knows what the long effect is of eating all this plastic is. It is becoming increasingly difficult to find products in supermarkets that aren’t packaged in plastic. Until just a few years ago, most brands of mayonnaise, ketchup, and vegetable oil came in glass jars and bottles. Now, nearly all of them are in plastic. In 2017, global plastic production was 8 billion tons a year. By 2050, it is expected to increase to 35 billion tons, and less than 10% of all plastic is recycled.
The Volstead Act. During Prohibition, the federal government had a very tough law prohibiting the sale of alcoholic beverages. However, there were a few exceptions in this law. For one thing, the government had to allow the sale of sacramental wine to Roman Catholics and Jews. This provision didn’t affect the amount of wine purchased by Catholic churches, but sales of sacramental wine by rabbis exploded. Because of the way the Catholic church is organized, anyone can’t just say: “I am a Roman Catholic priest”; however, anyone can say: “I am a rabbi.” Unlike the Catholic church, there is no supreme authority, like the Pope, in Judaism. In addition, Catholics consume sacramental wine in churches, whereas Jews consume sacramental wine at home – unsupervised. Under the Volstead Act, Jews were entitled to buy 10 gallons of wine a year for “private religious observance.” Almost as soon as the law went into effect, huge numbers of Americans suddenly discovered that they were Jews – something that they had not known before Prohibition, and that they were pious Jews as well, and that they needed sacramental wine, a lot of sacramental wine. As soon as Prohibition ended, those same people just as suddenly discovered that they weren’t Jewish after all, and sales of kosher wine returned to their pre-Prohibition levels. In 1924, Rabbi Rudolph Coffee of Oakland’s Temple Sinai complained that the number of families in Alameda claiming to be Jewish was 50 in the 1920 U.S. Census, but in 1924, over 500 families in Alameda claimed to be Jewish. Rabbi Coffee argued that the number of Jews in Alameda could not possibly have increased by 1,000% in just 4 years.
Wine Rabbis. Anyone with a rabbinical license could issue sacramental wine permits, and getting a rabbinical license was easy. In some states, it only required that a person get 10 signatures on an application form, and those signatures could come from anyone, including the applicant’s friends and relatives. As a result, the number of licensed rabbis in the United States increased tremendously during Prohibition. Most of these “wine rabbis”, as they were known, were not Jews. Many had suspiciously unJewish sounding names including Rabbis Sean and Patrick O’Connor of Boston (brothers), Rabbi Luis Mendoza of Tucson, and Rabbi Akira Matsumoto of Los Angeles. In 1922, the Jewish World newspaper reported that a Greek junk dealer in Denver made $100,000 selling kosher wine and wine permits using his rabbinical license. That’s almost $2 million in today’s money. In addition to selling wine permits, licensed rabbis could also sell sacramental wine to people directly, and they could issue sacramental wine permits to restaurants and social clubs. Of course, they charged a fee for this service, typically $200 to $500, a lot of money in the 1920s. Because it was legal to buy sacramental wine, it was much cheaper to drink wine than hard liquor or beer during Prohibition. As a result, sales of wine skyrocketed in the United States. In 1919, the year before Prohibition went into effect, California farmers used 100,000 acres of land to grow wine grapes. By 1924, that grew to 680,000 acres.
The Pseudo Rabbi Squad. The Federal Bureau of Prohibition had a ‘Pseudo-Rabbi Squad’ which tried to put a stop to this, but whenever they put a fake rabbi out of business someplace, new ones popped up elsewhere. Jewish organizations also tried to put the pseudo-rabbis out of business, fearing that they would stir up antiSemitism, which they did. The Klux Klan was at its peak of power in the 1920s. They strongly supported Prohibition and blamed bootlegging on Jews and Roman Catholic Italian and Irish gangsters. All efforts to put the pseudo-rabbis out of business failed. There was just too much money being made selling kosher wine, plus the public did not support the law, and too many policemen and politicians were taking bribes from bootleggers. The pseudo-rabbis only went out of business when Prohibition was repealed. Below is an article from the Oakland Tribune from this period.
I had assumed that most Jews knew about the story, but I was wrong. While everybody knows about the big-shot gangsters who controlled the sale of hard liquor and beer during Prohibition, people like Al Capone, Dutch Schultz, and Lucky Luciano; almost nobody knows about the pseudo-rabbis. My father and his brother Sol sold bootleg liquor during Prohibition. Neither one of them claimed to be rabbis. Even though they were small time operators, my father made enough money selling bootleg booze to buy a ‘Model A’ Ford. He was one of the very few people in his family to own a car during the Great Depression. In 1933, Prohibition was repealed, and my father and his brother had to get real jobs, jobs that paid a lot less than what they had been making selling whiskey to their friends and neighbors. My father told me that Prohibition was the stupidest thing the United States did in his lifetime.
This is one of the strangest stories about UC Berkeley that I know of. Igor Fetch was a Labrador-Beagle-Husky mix. He was the house dog at Bowles residence hall. Igor was registered every quarter from 1972 until he graduated in 1976. On his application form, Igor’s ethnic identity was recorded as ‘K9.’ His keeper signed his name and took his tests. When Igor graduated, the dog’s sociology diploma was hung in Bowles lobby. Igor’s senior photo appeared in the school yearbook. Sadly, Igor died soon after graduation and was buried on the ground of Bowles hall. Igor is the only Bowlesman to be buried on the grounds. His granite grave marker is still there. Former UC students from the 1970s visit the grave and leave dog biscuits.
Last month I said that vanilla is the world’s second most expensive spice, just after saffron. Several people asked me why vanilla is so expensive, and since it is so expensive, how come there are so many inexpensive vanilla products, like vanilla pudding at dollar stores? First, about the price….the price of vanilla has skyrocketed in the past few years. Almost 80% of all the world’s vanilla beans come from the island of Madagascar. They have had terrible weather there for several years, causing a collapse in vanilla bean production. As a result, a kilo of vanilla beans currently sells for around $500. Just 3 years ago, the price was under $100. Second, how come there are so many cheap vanilla products? That’s because most vanilla products are made with imitation vanilla. Less than 1% of the world’s vanilla flavor comes from real vanilla beans. Last year, Americans consumed over 2 million pounds of imitation vanilla. There isn’t enough real vanilla in the world to just make just all the vanilla ice cream.
Natural Flavor. Remember, when you see the words ‘natural flavor’ on a vanilla product, that doesn’t mean that there is real vanilla in it. ‘Natural flavor’ means that the flavor was derived from an organic source, which could be any plant or animal. Most ‘natural flavor’ vanilla is made from wood tar creosote, which sounds rather unappetizing; however, some imitation vanilla is still made from castoreum, which is much less appetizing. Castoreum is an anal secretion of beavers. Beavers produce castoreum to scent-mark their territory. (This is one of those tidbits of information that makes people say: ‘I would have been happier not knowing about that.’) There is an easy way to be sure that there is no castoreum in your vanilla ice cream. Look for a kosher seal. Castoreum is not kosher. As a rabbi once told me at a kosher certifying booth at the Fancy Food Show: “You can’t make kosher food out of something that came out of a beaver’s rear end.” (Between 80% and 90% of all kosher food is purchased by non-Jews. This is why.) My advice is that when in doubt about vanilla ice cream, go with Ben & Jerry’s. Their vanilla ice cream is made with real vanilla. By the way, I use real vanilla in my chocolate.
Very few people know how we got the income tax. Nobody likes paying income tax, so who was behind the passage of the 16th Amendment? Most history teachers can’t tell you. Most CPAs can’t tell you. I’ve asked quite a few CPAs. They don’t know. Surprisingly, it was the Prohibitionists. By the late 1800s, many states had passed statewide Prohibition laws, but they were unable to get Congress to vote for a national Prohibition amendment. Even members of Congress who were committed Prohibitionists wouldn’t vote for it. The reason was that the federal government was completely dependent on liquor taxes for its financing. From the time George Washington was president until the passage of the 16th Amendment, liquor taxes were the federal government’s principal source of revenue. When I tell people just how dependent the government was on liquor taxes, they don’t believe me, so consider this quote from the IRS web site: IRS Web Site. “From 1868 until 1913, 90 percent of all (federal) revenue came from taxes on liquor, beer, wine and tobacco.”
Think of it – 90% of the federal government’s income came from taxes on alcohol and tobacco, and most of that income came from alcohol. Congress was reluctant to raise tobacco taxes too high because nearly half of all Americans still lived on farms, and it is easy to grow your own tobacco. Making liquor is much more complicated. Before Congress could vote for the Prohibition Amendment, the Prohibitionists had to find another way to finance the federal government. In 1894, the Prohibitionists got Congress to pass a federal income tax law, but in 1895 the Supreme Court ruled that a federal income tax was unconstitutional. That meant that the only way the Prohibitionists could get a federal income tax was by Constitutional amendment, and that is what they set out to do. They had allies in this. Although liberal politicians generally had little interest in Prohibition, they were very interested in doing something to reduce the tremendous wealth inequality in the U.S. at the time. This was the Gilded Age, a time when a small number of incredibly wealthy industrialists accumulated huge fortunes, men like Rockefeller, Carnegie, Morgan, Vanderbilt, etc.; while factory workers were living in poverty, and their poverty was getting worse. The gap between rich and poor in America had never been greater. These liberal groups allied themselves with the Prohibitionists to support the income tax amendment. So that’s how we got the income tax – it was the Prohibitionists!
Jack Daniel’s. Prohibition in the U.S. never completely went away. A number of states in the Midwest and the South have still not ratified the 21st Amendment, and there are dozens of dry counties in the United States, places where the sale of alcoholic beverages is prohibited. Jack Daniel’s is the #1 selling American whiskey in the world. It is made in Lynchburg, Tennessee, a fact that the company frequently mentions in its advertising. Lynchburg is in Moore County, a dry county. That means that Jack Daniel’s cannot be sold in stores or restaurants in the county where it is made, and there are no bars or liquor stores in the county. You have to leave Moore County to buy Jack Daniel’s. Many of America’s top-selling whiskeys are made in places where it is illegal to sell alcoholic beverages. Isn’t that odd?
What Is A Jack Daniels Terrier? I once got an application to rent a house from a woman who wrote on her application form that she owned a Jack Daniels terrier. I asked her: “Don’t you mean a Jack Russell terrier?” She became enraged by my question and said: “No. Why do you landlords keep asking me that question? I know what kind of dog I own!” Then she stormed out. After she left, I looked up Jack Daniels terrier on Google, just to make sure there is no such breed. Just as I suspected, there is no such thing as a Jack Daniels terrier. I wonder how many landlords before me asked this woman the same question that I did.
