Laudator Temporis Acti

Hugh Kenner, The Pound Era (1971; rpt. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974), p. 540:

A ham came from Harry Meacham in Richmond ("THAT HAM is kulchur, THAT ham is civilization," he had written of a previous Virginia offering).

Jane Grigson, Charcuterie and French Pork Cookery (1967; rpt. London: Grub Street, 2001), p. 7:

It could be said that European civilization — and Chinese civilization too — has been founded on the pig. Easily domesticated, omnivorous household and village scavenger, clearer of scrub and undergrowth, devourer of forest acorns, yet content with a sty — and delightful when cooked or cured, from his snout to his tail. There has been prejudice against him, but those peoples — certainly not including the French — who have disliked the pig and insist that he is unclean eating, are rationalizing their own descent and past history: they were once nomads, and the one thing you can't do with a pig is to drive him in herds over vast distances.

An interest in pigs runs in my family. Here is a news item about my great-grandfather, from the Kansas City Times (Friday, October 14, 1892), p. 5:

E.B. Gilleland of Gunn City., Mo., sold a nice lot of hogs yesterday.

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From a friend:

As chance would have it I cooked "cinta ibérica" this afternoon....Nothing to it: olive oil, garlic and rosemary.

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