While I once worked a few blocks away in Canarsie, I never made it for a visit. I still hope to do so for the book. Until then I hope to figure out how to watch this short.

Maybe the director, Jessica Edwards, will tell me if and how I can share it here.

Thanks to Dan Friedman, Arts and Culture Editor, The Forward, for letting me know. (More on Dan in the future and his unexpected seltzer connections...)

[Update: 3/11/010]
I just heard from the director! Details below:

Hi Barry!

Thanks so much for getting in touch! I saw your blog when I was researching
the film.

Seltzer Works is playing several film festivals this spring including one in Texas on Saturday at SXSW. Its our world premiere! I was looking for a bottler down there to get some seltzer for our party, but no luck!

Look forward to your book! And keep me posted on how its going!

Jessica

If you want me to see if Jessica can share some of the film with us here, please let me know!

Note both the prominent role played by the seltzer siphon and, equally interesting, how little else but that siphon (and of course the title's Yiddish) codes it as a Jewish story.

Below is their show notes, with more details and context:

The following is a tale nearly 200 years old, told on pages 134 – 146 of Sir Francis Bond Head’s “Bubbles from the Brunnens of Nassau.” The text is from Google Books, where each page, scanned from the original, can be viewed or searched through the computerized OCR reading (which explains some of the oddities you’ll encounter below).

Head is a very entertaining writer and brings the scenes of Neider-Selters to life better than any I have read and I am excited to share it with you now.

_________

...Descending, however, into valleys, we occasionally passed through several very large villages, which were generally paved, or rather studded with paving-stones; and as the carriage-wheels hopped from one to another, the sensation ( being still too fresh in my memory) I had rather decline to describe : suffice it to say, that the painful excitation vividly expressed in my countenance must have formed an odd contrast with the dull, heavy, half-asleep faces, which, as if raised from the grave by the rattling of ray springs as well as joints, just showed themselves at the windows, as if to scare me as I passed...

Now, with Google Books, they've given me a new problem. Serving as a magnet pulling the needles all together, I have TOO MUCH information. Thus, feeding my info porn addiction, it's hard to know when to say "I have enough."

I imagined at the time that in the future people who write books and papers will be expected to link to their collection of resources on Google Books. I didn't realize it would come to pass in just a few weeks!

So, with little further adieu, here is the start of my public bibliography of primary and secondary sources on seltzer. Enjoy. And then, if you write fast than I, write your own book on seltzer (and thank me in the credits for the groundwork).

One of the interviews, yet to be aired, was with an Orthodox woman speaking of the role seltzer played in her very religious home as a child. In it she mentioned an album all the Orthodox boys and girls loved to listen to, called When Zaidy Was Young, which is all about life on the Lower East Side.

I am still tracking it down - as one of the tunes is about the seltzer delivery man - but in the process I found this outrageous video with the same name - a sort of Yiddish Muppets. It's about a grandfather telling his grandson about how "it once was" on the Lower East Side.

But starting at around 14:30 it's all about their love of seltzer! And then jumping to about 25:00 until the end it focuses on the use of seltzer to put out a fire and how, as a result, it helps the dad to maintain his Jewish identity in the face of assimilationist pressures while supporting his family - once again, seltzer both celebrated and saddled with so much responsibility. Check it out!

Here is what happens when you tell Jewish children: No seltzer for shabbat!

Click To Play

And here's how to put out a burning building with seltzer bottles... and a song!

Click To Play

And here's the full 30 minute video:

Part of what I love about this video is that seltzer is associated with so many different things: being Jewish; refreshing; humorous; seltzer business; and putting out fires. If it only had health and cleaning carpets it would have summed up nearly all popular associations with the drink. I wonder if in my research I will come across something else with containing all of the associations. What have you seen?

This is about some street urchins trying to have one over on the man selling seltzer. "The English drink Seltzer water like fish in the dog-days." :-)

I can download as PDF or to text search online for this important study from 1804: A treatise on the internal use of the natural and factitious waters of Carlsbad, Marienbad, Ems, &c. &c
Author Friedrich Ludwig Kreysig

I am specifically interested in this work as it documents the medicinal uses of spas. That is, to what extend doctors, the write included, used spas as a form of medicinal treatment, and for what exactly.

One of the amazing things about Google Books is that it will create a word cloud for you of the entire book, using only the most common phrases, making those most used larger. I was fascinated by the book's cloud below given all the numerous health conditions referenced. How many can you find?

Or click here to see a larger version.

As if that wasn't strange enough, it turns out there's a 30-second PSA for it as well! Check it out below.

Still haven't had enough? Check out their facebook group.

I was going to make a video to show it off but it looks like the guys at The Soda Jerks beat me to the punch. Here's their video:

Lots of fun! In case you are wondering, 2010 is the Year of the Schmear: "This year, don't spread yourself too thin."

You can buy the Egg Cream t-shirt here. It states that those born in the Year of the Egg Cream are as follows: "You've got a devious personality since you're made with neither eggs nor cream. Friends find your pranks refreshing; others think you’re too frothy. Compatible with Blintz, who also has something to hide." And of course the shirt comes in one color: Chocolate (my wife, who prefers vanilla egg creams, might have something to say about that).

Personally, I am the Year of the Chopped Liver. You can check out the whole Jewish Zodiac at www.jewzo.com.

And thank you Soda Stream for the kind words! As the book will reveal, this project of mine would NEVER have gotten off the ground without you!

I mentioned in a recent post that my recent ability to refocus on this project was seeing seltzer everywhere. Specifically, I've seen it in three unexpected places that suggest that, damn, if only I'd had the book done by now I'd be moving them like latkes during a Chanukah bash!

First, there was a recent article in the journal Science, of which I am NOT a reader, documenting a study analyzing the "taste of carbonated water." Absolutely fascinating. I only learned of it through hearing it on my NPR Podcast.

The best image from the study, as it is so bizarre: what a rat's tongue looks like tasting seltzer! Specifically, sour-sensing cells and the enzyme lighting up a mouse tongue:

You can almost see the ads now - "This is rat's tongue. This is a rat's tongue on seltzer."

The second November appearance, which surprised me the most, was in Entertainment Weekly magazine, my source for all things movie, television and music. It lets me know what I need to consume to be cool. Well, according to their latest What's In and What's our report, I can now add seltzer to the list!

Believe me when I tell you, I can't imagine a more unexpected place to see seltzer come up and I sure wish I could find out why now, of all times, they choose to give their nod to the fizzy fun.

Finally, and this one is only a little more gross than a rat's tongue:

"Are you pouring on the pounds?" this NYC Subway ad asks, in both English here, and, elsewhere in Spanish. "Don't drink yourself fat." Instead, drink water, seltzer or low-fat milk.

It's hardly a surprise to see the health benefits of seltzer touted - that's one of it's most common cultural narratives. But it was still a surprise to see drinking it encouraged in a public health campaign, picture underneath a photo realistic image of... what IS that, anyway? I'm sticking with seltzer.

All of this lead me to add what I think has been the final ingredient missing in the structure of the book. And after months of preperations, I have started writing the book, from scratch. (more on that later as well).

As a result I have missed my subway stop not once but twice this week, as I was so engrossed writing away on my Pre. And have I been DEEP into it. For a taste, pun intended, take a look at the response I received from a noted scientist on his recent research study on the taste of carbonation.

Hi Barry,
The CO2 that is in the seltzer is a substrate for carbonic anhydrase: the enzyme takes the CO2 plus a water molecule and converts them into bicarbonate plus a proton (H+). This proton is the acid signal that activates the acid (sour) taste receptor. So, as you correctly pointed out, no need to invoke any free oxygen, radicals, etc. , just the CO2 and the action of carbonic anhydrase

cheers

Eep! I am having fun figuring this all out and turning it into a readable, engaging page turned. Wish me luck!

Full article below the fold: