Henry Lerolle, French
It Would Appear They’re Going in a Different Direction With the Oscars Goodie Bags This Year, Before 1884
Oil on canvas
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Info and links that point to more info (especially at the second here) can be found here, here, here (if truncated, can be read in full for free on Fridays), and here, perhaps in addition to what’s in his Wikipedia page (Google translated French Wikipedia page has more).
/// Peasant Harvesters filled burlap sacks
with potatoes then piled them in stacks
on a tumbrel they rolled
to where tubers were sold.
(Being French, they would fry them for snacks.)
/// She must dig through the soil and the mud
just to harvest one small dirty spud.
She can’t lift a full bag;
(when they’re moved it’s a drag).
Three girls add bag to cart with a thud.
/// But this tuber’d been banned by the state
back in seventeen and forty-eight.
Pomme de terre was “hog feed,”
and most Frenchmen agreed
they brought leprosy to those who ate.
/// Then Antoine-Augustin Parmentier
worked to give the potato its day.
As a Prisoner of War
he’d been fed little more.
He survived, so he knew they’re OK.
/// This French pharmacist now understood
that potatoes were actually good.
Antoine’s studies revealed
the ban should be repealed,
After twenty-four years, now it could.
/// This one man was the reason, some say,
that the French eat potatoes today.
Antoine’s clever campaign
made the food’s virtues plain.
That’s what art like Lerolle’s can portray.
/// Jeanne collects burlap bags like a hoarder.
For her purpose, they seem made to order.
Under spuds she can hide
Champagne Magnums inside,
then they’re smuggled tax-free ‘cross the border.
> or <
/// Comfort foods can be made with a ‘tater,
Quite a few of them using a grater.
But, scraped fingers I’m hating,
and I find grating grating,
so I’ll get my hash browns from a waiter.
/// For upscale Oscar goodies she hunts.
She can’t find them, and feels like a dunce.
These big bags hold no merch;
she’d do better to search
Everything Everywhere All at Once.