Hi!

Tomorrow is Juneteenth, which became an official American federal holiday in 2021. I’m taking it off, so this week’s week in review is hitting your inbox a day early.

Two years ago on Juneteenth, I shared a brief rundown of why I never wrote about the Tulsa Race Massacre in these pages — the short version is, I couldn’t do it justice. But I think there’s more to it than that. By design, the stories I share here are meant to a break from the not-always-good parts of life and a place for stories that are for everyone. I actively avoid talking about politics and religion and the other topics that tend to get people’s blood boiling. I’ve made exceptions over the years, of course, and as a practicing Jew, will often point out the oddities of my own religion (like I did in April on what I called “matzah ball soup day”). But the general point holds.

History, for all its warts, is not politics, though. Calling events like the Tulsa Race Massacre “politics” would be a cop-out — if a similar event happened in Ancient Greece or the like, I certainly wouldn’t shy away from it. An event a century ago in the United States shouldn’t be any different. And yet, it’s not the only such topic I’ve avoided. And the more I think about it, my blanket “no politics” rule isn’t the reason why — it’s because I don’t think I can write about it with the requisite amount of empathy for those impacted.

The other topic that comes to mind is the history of the Oklahoma panhandle. Part of me swears I’ve written about it, and maybe I have and forgotten. But I think I have — and then never shared it because I couldn’t get the story to come out right. In any event, gist of that story is that this little sliver of Oklahoma exists as part of Oklahoma because of slavery. Here’s a relevant quote from Wikipedia:

When Texas sought to enter the Union in 1845 as a slave state, federal law in the United States, based on the Missouri Compromise, prohibited slavery north of 36°30′ north latitude. Under the Compromise of 1850, Texas surrendered its lands north of 36°30′, rather than have a portion of the state as “free” territory. The 170-mile strip of land, a “neutral strip”, was left with no state or territorial ownership from 1850 until 1890. It was officially called the “Public Land Strip” and was commonly referred to as “No Man’s Land.

That fact is really the whole story — hardly enough for a full Now I Know. Adding to it requires a telling of the land battles in the territory pre-statehood, which are very interesting, but rob the reader of the core point of the panhandle: the further the practice of slavery. Every time I wrote this story up, it kept landing the same way — I felt like I was minimizing slavery for the sake of completeness. It felt very unemphatic. The matzah ball soup day story, on the other hand, I felt very comfortable writing — as a practicing Jew, writing about my own customs and traditions (even if I don’t follow the gebrokts one myself) is natural to me.

As both the Tulsa Race Massacre and the Oklahoma Panhandle stories are about racism and civil rights (and, coincidentally, Oklahoma), I felt Juneteenth was a good opportunity to share these thoughts. Juneteenth probably should have been a federal holiday a century ago, and I think our collective fear about talking about slavery and similar issues prevented that from happening. Being honest with those fears, I think, is a way to have those conversations — much like I’m trying to do today.

The Now I Know Week In Review

Monday: The Vegetable That Used to Cost More Than Caviar: Celery was once pretty expensive. I don’t know why, because it’s only really good in soup.

Tuesday: The Island the U.S. and Canada Both Want: Since writing this, I’ve spoken to a half-dozen people who live in Maine, and none of them knew about this island or the dispute.

Wednesday: Why the Ace of Spades is So Darn Big: Taxes!

Long Reads and Other Things

Here are a few things you may want to check out over the weekend:

1) “What is Juneteenth?” (PBS, 6 minutes, undated). A primer by Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

2) “Why a Retired Texas Shrimper Crossed the World to Confront Asia’s Biggest Petrochemical Company” (The Xylom, 16 minutes, June 2026). Regular people doing things like this always gets my attention.

3) “Why Is Everyone Waiting Hours for Frozen Yogurt? Why Am I?” (New York Times/gift link, 6 minutes, June 2026). I’m not one to stand in a long line for frozen yogurt, but I still enjoyed this little essay.

Have a great weekend!

Dan