[image description: A faded art nouveau poster with difficult-to-read type showing the portrait of a mustachioed man with a very full beard made of pickles. His eyebrows and hair are green, and he wears a little small top hat with a pickle on (for?) its band. Text reads “GÜNTHER GHERKIN small god of Pickles 237”]
• • • • •
He’s not a joke god.
People sometimes assume he must be a joke, because they think pickles are funny, and don’t understand the complex history of food preservation and keeping people alive through the long winters; they don’t see how essential pickles and pickling were to proper nutrition, to babies seeing the spring still hale and hearty, to mothers who lived. They don’t know.
He knows. That’s enough.
His faithful also know. They may not have been there when the brine was bottled, when the rules were written, but they’ve read the holy scriptures, the cookbooks and instruction manuals, and they understand what he is to them, and what they are to him. They keep his practices. They remember his traditions. And they pickle, and they pickle, and endure.
Always, they endure.
Lee Moyer 
Hi, Lee!
This one took me back to the Fillmore and Winterland posters back in the late ‘60s! The style brings up all the sensory memories … pot smoke, great bands, and lots of patchouli. 🤣
Thanks for a trip! XO —Lainie
Aw, Lainie! HIgh praise indeed!
You twigged to my ambition here in an instant (though only out of admiration for the those amazing psychedelic scavengers who created those posters, combining the classic with the acid fantastic).
In any case, I’m delighted that it worked for you. Thank you for the kind words!