Europe's scorching hot summer is showing no signs of cooling down, with Italy facing its warmest weekend of the year so far and heatwave warnings issued in southern France.
05.08.2024 - 21:26 / lonelyplanet.com
Aug 5, 2024 • 7 min read
I remember my amazement when I first learned that the famous song “Kumbaya” – a spiritual known by every kid who’s ever gone to summer camp – is in fact a Gullah Geechee tune. What the layperson hears as three soothing syllables in fact means “come by here” to the Gullah Geechee community.
This is how Gullah culture has operated for hundreds of years in the USA. Its influence on Southern and greater American culture has always been there, even if its roots haven’t been fully known or acknowledged. Order a heaping plate of shrimp and grits or a hoppin’ John for a taste of Gullah culinary ways. Watch high school and college groups perform step routines, and you’ll see similarities to hamboning, a traditional Gullah rhythm-and-movement technique.
So just who are the Gullah Geechee people? Like many, they are African Americans descended from people enslaved in the US. What distinguishes them is where their ancestors were enslaved: on and near the barrier islands that stretch from Wilmington, North Carolina down the coastline to Jacksonville, Florida. These communities were more isolated than those of Black Americans elsewhere in the country, which allowed the Gullah Geechee to preserve more of their African heritage. Their creole language, called Gullah (or sometimes Geechee, a Gullah dialect), uses a mix of words from English and several African languages. As we see with “Kumbaya,” most Americans know at least one or two Gullah words.
Today, most Gullah and Geechee folks (the latter usually refers to communities closer to the Ogeechee River near Savannah) live in communities that hug the coasts of South Carolina and Georgia, although their descendants can be found across the country. Following the string of barrier islands along the seaboard will bring the Gullah Geechee front and center.
From north to south, here are some of the best places to go to get immersed in their culture.
Reaves Chapel AME Church is one of the oldest structures built for African Americans in North Carolina. Efforts are underway to help preserve the building, and make it a stop on a more in-depth Gullah Geechee tour of coastal North Carolina. Visitors can’t go inside, but can visit the community of Reaves, historically a Gullah Geechee one.
This former sweet potato–and–peanut plantation is now listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and is a stop on the National Park Service’s Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor. Exhibits on the property bring to life experiences of Black Americans from the Civil War through the Civil Rights movement, as well as the cultural significance of the peanut crop to Gullah culture.
Founded by members of the Gullah community, this engaging one-room museum tells a full
Europe's scorching hot summer is showing no signs of cooling down, with Italy facing its warmest weekend of the year so far and heatwave warnings issued in southern France.
There's a good chance your credit card has some valuable benefits you might not know about. Most cards come with additional features like extended warranties, zero liability and identity theft protections, free credit monitoring and even roadside assistance.
Aug 12, 2024 • 7 min read
The tonka bean, a wizened-looking South American seed, is beloved for its complex almond-vanilla scent, often appearing as an ingredient in perfumes. Outside the United States, it has also long been utilized by chefs, but studies have indicated that coumarin, a chemical compound in the plant, can cause liver damage in animals, and the Food and Drug Administration banned the bean in commercial foods in 1954. Now, with reports that the minuscule amounts used to impart big flavor are harmless (and the F.D.A. seemingly not particularly interested in enforcing the ban in recent years), tonka is showing up on dessert menus here. Thea Gould, 30, the pastry chef at the daytime luncheonette La Cantine and evening wine bar Sunsets in Bushwick, Brooklyn, was introduced to tonka after the restaurant’s owner received a jar from France, where it’s a widely used ingredient. Gould says the bean is an ideal stand-in for nuts — a common allergen — and infuses it into panna cotta, whipped cream and Pavlova. Ana Castro, 35, the chef and owner of the New Orleans seafood restaurant Acamaya, discovered tonka as a young line cook at Betony, the now-closed Midtown Manhattan restaurant. Entranced by the ingredient’s grassy, stone fruit-like notes, she’s used it to flavor a custardy corn nicuatole, steeped it into roasted candy squash purée and grated it fresh over a lush tres leches cake. And at the Musket Room in New York’s NoLIta, the pastry chef Camari Mick, 30, balances tonka’s richness with acidic citrus like satsuma and bergamot. Over the past year, she’s incorporated it into a silky lemon bavarois and a candy cap mushroom pot de crème and whipped it into ganache for a poached pear belle Hélène. “Some people ask our staff, ‘Isn’t tonka illegal?’” she says. Their answer: Our pastry chef’s got a guy. —
Amid Greece’s peak travel season, raging wildfires near Athens are putting tour operators on high alert.
Dangerous wildfires near Athens, Greece forced hundreds to evacuate the suburbs north of the country's capital on Monday, August 12, reported to be the worst fire the Mediterranean country has seen so far this year.
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