Maria Y. Orosa & the Food of the Philippines

University of Washington in Seattle. Then she took that knowledge back to the Philippines and spent the rest of her life working to eliminate food insecurity. So she was trying to reduce the philippines reliance on imported foods, trying to revive the use of locally available ingredients, and writing recipes for dishes that continue to be a big part of

Filipino cuisine today. Maria Arosa was killed during the Battle of Manila in World War Two, and while we will be touching on some of the atrocities that took place in the Philippines during the war, that is really not the primary focus of the episode. So if you listen and you think wonder why we did not mention any particular thing, it's because our focus is really on her

in her life. Maria Aroso was born on November twenty eighth, eighteen ninety three, and to All Philippines to all is on the coast, very roughly one hundred kilometers or sixty miles south of Manila. Her parents were Simplicio Arosa e Agoncio, who was captain of a steamship, and her mother was Juliana Ilagen. Maria was the fourth of their eight children.

The Philippines was under Spanish colonial control when Maria was born, and the Spanish had established a free public education system there about thirty years before her birth through a royal decree by Queen Isabella the Second. There had been schools before that point, primarily run by Catholic religious orders, but this decree mandated the building of schools for boys and for girls in all towns that had more than five

thousand residents. Education was also made compulsory between the ages of six and twelve, so by the time Maria was born, most children in the Philippines had access to education, at least through primary school. It was not as common for people to go on to college, but Maria and all seven of her siblings did, four of them going to college in the Philippines and three in the United States.

She and all of her siblings were seen as respectable and accomplished, and later on, in nineteen forty eight, their mother was voted Mother of the Year by the National Federation of Women's Clubs of the Philippines for having raised all of those kids.

an estimated one hundred thousand members. Katipunin had been founded as a secret organization, and when the Spanish authorities discovered its existence, its founder, Andreas Bonifacio, called for an armed uprising that's generally marked as the start of the Philippine Revolution. This happened just a few months before Maria turned three.

Fighting in the Philippine Revolution continued until December of eighteen ninety seven, when the Pact of Biacnabato established a provisional truce with revolutionary leaders exiled to Hong Kong and Spain promising to make a number of reforms. Neither side really followed through on the intent of this pack, though, with revolutionary leaders re arming themselves in Hong Kong and Spain not actually carrying out those reforms within a few months.

Spain also had some other things to worry about. The United States had backed Cuba's fight to become independent from Spain, and tensions between Spain and the United States escalated after the USS Maine exploded in Havana Harbor on February fifteenth, eighteen ninety eight. By April of that year, the two were at war. In May of eighteen ninety eight, the United States defeated the Spanish fleet that was anchored in Manila Bay, and when American forces arrived for a ground

invasion of Manila, Filipino revolutionary forces joined them. Revolutionaries considered this as fighting with the United States against a common enemy to free the Philippines from Spanish colonial control, and on June twelfth of eighteen ninety eight, the Revolutionary Government

of the Philippines proclaimed its independence. Neither the United States nor Spain recognized this independence, though, and the Treaty of Paris, signed on December tenth, eighteen ninety eight, gave the United States the right to purchase the Philippines from Spain, which it did for twenty million dollars. The US Senate ratified the treaty on February fourth, eighteen ninety nine, by which point American troops had already started fighting against revolutionaries in

the Philippines who continued to fight for their independence. At this point, Maria was only five, and her father was using his steamship to transport Filipino troops and supplies to support the fight for independence. That was something he had been doing during the Spanish American War and the earlier revolutionary uprising. Her father was one of the people as well who lobbied for the United States to recognize the Philippines as independent.

but not citizens. That's something that we talked more about in our episode on the Insular Cases in August of twenty twenty three. Eventually, the Arosa family moved from Taal to Bawan, which is roughly twenty kilometers farther south and also on the coast. The details are vague here, but most sources about Maria Arosa's life say the family was trying to get away from the violence and brutality of

American soldiers who were stationed in Taal. Apparently, American authorities found their departure suspicious, and her father was arrested and detained. There are also some sources that say their move was in the aftermath of an eruption of the Taal volcano. That eruption seems to have happened later either way. In Bawan, Juliana and Simplicio ran a general store. Simplicio died in nineteen ten at the age of just forty five. Maria was sixteen at that point, and she started helping her

mother to run the store. In nineteen fifteen. At the age of twenty one, Maria enrolled at the University of the Philippines to study pharmaceutical chemistry. A year later, she traveled to the United States to continue her college education at the University of Seattle.

United States. This act was ostensibly part of an American plan to quote modernize the Philippines and prepare it for self government, although it was definitely also an attempt to promote goodwill and cut down on the likelihood of another revolutionary uprising. In the program's first year, only men and boys received scholarships, but that changed in the second year. It's possible that Maria was the recipient of one of

these scholarships. Two of her brothers definitely were, including her brother Jose, who came to Seattle while Maria was still a student there. I did not find her name on any of the specific documents that had lists of students

on them. A lot of accounts of Maria's life say that she traveled to Seattle as a stowaway, including some accounts written by family members, but her name is on a passenger manifest from a Japanese ship that arrived in Washington in August of nineteen sixteen, along with the name of a friend that she was known to be traveling with. Once arrived, she lived at the YMCA for a while

before eventually finding other housing. Some of Rosa's letters home from her college years have survived and been translated into English and posted online by family members. These letters make it sound like her time in college was difficult but worth it. Most of these letters describe her as safe and well through the mercy of God, and she also credits God's help in keeping her well and helping her

with her studies. She clearly worried about her family, especially after hearing about an outbreak of cholera in the Philippines. At various points after getting this news, Maria urged her mother to eat nutritious food, get plenty of sleep, and wash her hands, and to cook or boil anything she ate or drank, and to throw away any food that flies or mosquitoes had landed on. And these worries continued

with the start of the nineteen eighteen flu pandemic. Maria herself contracted the pandemic flu in nineteen nineteen, but she recovered. Maria was also worried about her brothers and nephews. World War One had already started when she left for the United States. The Philippine Assembly established the Philippine National Guard in nineteen seventeen, and the National Guard recruited between fifteen thousand and twenty five thousand Filipino soldiers to support the

American war effort. Maria didn't give a reason why in her letters. I can imagine a number of different possible reasons, but she was strongly against the idea of the young men and her family joining. Although being so far away from her family during wartime and a pandemic must have been stressful, the war also led to an opportunity. While a Roso was in college, one of the people who was working in the university's food lab left for military service,

and Aroso was hired to take his place. In a letter to her mother, she described this as an honor because this was a type of job that was always offered to white people first before Filipino, Chinese, or Japanese applicants. It was also a job that she described as a great responsibility and a great help to her studies as she tested foods for purity and adulteration, and she made sure they met quality standards and actually contained what was

on their labeling. We'll talk about her life after college after a sponsor break. Maria Aurosa earned a bachelor's degree in pharmaceutical chemistry in nineteen seventeen, followed by a bachelor's in food chemistry in nineteen eighteen, and then won in

pharmacy in nineteen twenty. That sounds like plenty, and she thought about returning home at that point, but she stayed for one more year to earn a master's in pharmaceutical chemistry because she hoped having that masters would help her get a higher rate of pay after she returned home. While at the University of Washiington's, she was inducted into Sigma sized Scientific Research Honor Society and Iota Sigma Pi

Honor Society for women in chemistry. While in the United States, in addition to just an enormous amount of schoolwork, she also helped her mother run an export business with Juliana, ordering goods like baby bibs, embroideries, and bags in the Philippines and shipping them to the United States, where Maria arranged for their sale, offered some guidance on what was selling and what was not, and sent the proceeds back home.

Some of the jobs Maria did to support herself while she was in college would also go on to influence her work when she got back to the Philippines, including working at a fish cannery in Alaska and picking fruit on a farm during the summers. After earning her master's degree, Erosha turned down a job offer to be an assistant chemist for the state of Washington. She arrived back in

the Philippines in nineteen twenty two. A year she taught home economics at Centro Escolar University, and then she went to work as a chemist at the Bureau of Science for the rest of her career. A huge part of Erosa's work was focused on reducing food insecurity and malnutrition,

and on food autonomy for the Philippines. The term food sovereignty would not be coined for decades, but there was a lot of overlap with what she was doing trying to give local people rather than governments and corporations, control over their own food systems. To be very clear, the Philippines is home to a huge diversity of different ethnic groups. This archipelago has had connections to other nations, both nearby and across oceans for centuries, so Filipino cuisine has a

lot of different influences. I cannot stress this enough. I am not criticizing any cuisines that arose from this process or any foods that people like to eat. The reliance on American foods after the Philippines became a US territory, though, that was an intentional part of American control over the islands. After the United States annexed the Philippines following the Spanish American War, the US thought the Philippines was not capable

of governing itself. President William McKinley had instructed commissioners to americanize and civilize the archipelago. Obviously, this was not just about food, but food was a part of it. Authorities from the United States saw Filipino foods as unhealthy and poor quality, and encouraged people to eat processed imports instead. As the United States eventually started looking at a plan for the Philippines to become independents, adoption of American foods

was also seen as a sign of progress. If American officials dined at the home of a Filipino official, eating any Filipino dishes that were served was considered to be a gesture of goodwill, Like it was a it was polite to accept and appreciate this food. But if this Filipino host instead served American dishes, that was seen as a sign that the hosts, and by extension, the community that they were part of, were moving toward being capable

of governing themselves. This even included a preference for canned imported fruit over fruits that were locally grown, because local fruit was believed to be a potential vector for cholera. To be clear, cholera is spread through contaminated food and water, but it's caused by bacteria, not the fruit itself, and canned foods had their own problems in the early twentieth century, including bachulism outbreaks, which were an ongoing problem in American

canned goods. Yeah, so we're not going to get into the weeds about the idea of healthy or unhealthy, because food is more complicated than that. But this meant that over time, the Philippines was increasingly and really artificially dependent on imports of processed and preserved foods, primarily shipped from

the United States, Australia, and Japan. This was generally a lot more expensive than food produced locally would have been, and this focus on imported food also meant that people had progressively less and less familiarity with how to prepare and eat the foods that were abundant there in the Philippines.

So Erosa focused on figuring out the nutrient content and uses for foods that were locally available, sometimes reviving older traditions and sometimes finding new uses for things that were typically seen as a byproduct or waste or suited only for animal feed. Many of these were also foods that had potential as export crops. For example, Maria Arosa is the first person known to have canned and frozen mangoes

in the Philippines. Mangoes aren't native to the Philippines, but they were introduced sometime after the fifteenth century, and they grew and grow abundantly there. Arosa also established rural improvement clubs basically four H clubs, patterned after the four H clubs she'd encountered while studying in the United States. These provided information and instruction on how to grow, prepare, make,

and preserve things at home. By nineteen twenty four, these clubs had about twenty two thousand members around the Philippines. She also worked with the Extension Service to provide families with information on gardening, raising poultry, and making things that could be sold. The whole idea was for families to be more self sufficient and to find new sources of income and to progressively reduce their reliance on American goods.

While she was relying on education that she had attained in the United States, Arosa was focused on what people in the Philippines actually needed and how people were living day to day, like a lot of people didn't have electricity in their homes, especially outside of cities. She modified an existing type of earthenware container called a pallioc, adding a piece of sheet metal to the bottom and aluminum foil under the lid, and that turned it into a small oven that could be used over a fire or

a wood burning stove. As we said earlier, commercially canned foods had become a big part of the food supply in the Philippines, but at the same time, they were expensive and they were out of a lot of people's reach financially. But home canning was not widely practiced at all. When Orosa started doing this work. She developed canning methods for a wide range of locally available foods, including whole mangos, and she created educational materials to teach people how to

do this themselves. In nineteen twenty five, the annual Manila Carnival included a display of home canned goods, which was many people's first exposure to the idea. Interest in canning at home really increased after this point. In nineteen twenty seven, Aroso was promoted to lead the Division of Food Preservation at the Bureau of Science in Manila. A year later, as part of her work, she embarked on a year long global tour to study food preservation techniques and home

demonstration methods. The people traveling with her included Isabel de Santos, owner of DeSanto's Fruit Products Company, which had been established two years before and incorporated under the name ismar taken from the names Isabel and Maria. Maria wasn't directly involved in the creation of this company, but she had been the one who had taught Isabel how to preserve fruit.

This company preserved foods for export, especially mangoes and guava, according to a nineteen twenty nine description of their visit to Hawaii on this tour. By that point, Arosa had sixteen women working for her as demonstrators, traveling all around the Philippines to teach people how to can their own food and to develop new methods in the food lab. Arosa was promoted to lead the Philippines' Home Economics Division

after she returned from this tour. She applied what she had learned during this year of research to finding or reviving nutrient dense foods in the Philippines. This included making flour from coconuts, green bananas, cassava, and rice rather than using imported wheat flour. She also developed culinary uses for coconut oil, which was mainly being used for things like

floor polish. In nineteen thirty two, she published a booklet of recipes using roselle, which is a type of hibiscus that had been introduced to the Philippines from India and Malaysia. Its fruit has a similar flavor to cranberries, which were another expensive import from the United States. So she saw the roselle as a potential source of both food and income, and the booklet out lined recipes for a range of foods made from it, including jellies, butters, marmalades, chutneys, juice, wine,

and vinegar. She also developed a number of recipes using soybeans, including a soybean based powdered protein drink called soilac. Here also is a recipe that she wrote for soy milk, which was published in a USDA bulletin in nineteen thirty six. That bulletin also included two different recipes for making powdered soybean milk that she wrote. Quote, Wash the beans thoroughly, soak them in plenty of water for twelve hours, changing the water frequently. Grind the soaked beans, and a stone mill,

adding small amounts of water while grinding. The total amount of water subsequently added as from three to five times that of the beans. The thin paste like fluid is boiled half hour and then strained through a cheesecloth. A small amount of vanilla extract or other flavoring maybe added in order to mask the characteristic odor and flavor of the milk. Rice was and is a staple food in the Philippines, but rice brand or derrek, was considered to

be a waste product of the refining process. Arosa found that rice brand was very high in B vitamins as well as vitamins A, D, and E, and she created a recipe for Derek cookies that were high enough in B vitamins that they could be used to treat and prevent the vitamin B one deficiency known as Barry berry. Her most famous culinary development was banana ketchup, and we will talk about that after a sponsor break. The culinary invention that Maria Rosa is most famous for is banana ketchup.

So let's back up for a second and talk about ketchup. If your background is like Holly's and mine, ketchup is probably so synonymous with tomato that you don't even need to say the tomato part. But ketchup has roots in Asian cuisines, and its early precursors did not have tomatoes in them at all. These were fermented fish or soybean pastes that were meant to have a very long shelf life. The exact origins of the word ketchup are not totally clear.

It first appeared in English in the seventeenth century as a word for sauces that British merchants and colonists were bringing back to Europe from Asia. Some articles on ketchup history cite a specific word as its origin, but there are really a number of similar words from East, South and Southeast Asian languages that all describe various brines and salti or savory sauces. Regardless, early references to ketchup and English make it clear that it really didn't resemble the

tomato ketchup of today. Like one recipe from sixteen eighty three calls for ketchup and if you don't have any ketchup, you can substitute an anchovy, So obviously not the same thing. Yeah, anchovy would not be a good substitute for the red tomato ketchup that comes out of a bottle.

Exact recipes for making this non tomato ketchup could really vary, but for the most part they involved simmering the ingredients down until they had thickened, or adding lots of salt to a paste, or some combination of both of those things.

James MEAs is usually credited with introducing the first tomato ketchup in eighteen twelve, although his this version tended to spoil fairly quickly and it was really more like tomato sauce in consistency, but people seemed to like it, and in the decades that followed, more and more ketchup recipes included tomato or just had tomato as their primary ingredient. Then, in eighteen seventy six, Hines introduced a bottled tomato ketchup that also contained vinegar and sugar that gave it a

longer shelf life. It was thicker and sweeter than Misa's version, and it was made without the preservatives that had become controversial in the late nineteenth century. By the early nineteen hundreds, Hine was selling five million bottles of tomato ketchup a year. The tomato part is there on the label. Like we said earlier, For a lot of Americans, that tomato part

goes without saying. Tomatoes had been introduced to the Philippines from South America, most likely by Spain during the Manila galleyan trade that ran from Manila to Acapulco from the sixteenth through the nineteenth centuries. Eventually, a localized tomato variety developed, known as the native tomato or the Cammatis tagalog, which

usually has a lighter red or sometimes greenish skin. This variety of tomato is more resistant to the climate of the Philippines, and it's a key component in a number of Filipino dishes, but it's usually more sour and acidic than what would be used to make today's tomato ketchup. Aside from that, the runaway success of Hinz tomato ketchup meant that by the early twentieth century, people were not typically making their own ketchup at home. Anymore, they were

buying it in glass bottles. Circling back around to what we discussed earlier about American food imports into the Philippines and the early twentieth century, imported bottled ketchup was really expensive, but it was also in really hide demand, both because of the presence of Americans living in the Philippines and this influence of Americans and American policy on Filipino cuisine. Maria Arosa looked for an alternative, making ketchups from a

lot of different fruits, including guava and papaya. That Roselle cookbook we mentioned earlier included Brozelle ketchup, but banana ketchup was the most successful of all her ketchup recipes, made from saba bananas, brown sugar, spices, and vinegar. Saba bananas are stockier and have a richer flavor than the cavendish bananas that are the usual standard in most American grocery stores.

About a decade after Arosa developed her banana ketchup, Magdolo viv and Francisco Senior started the first mass production of commercially bottled banana ketchup under the brand named Mafron. Today, some commercially bottled banana ketchups are colored red, but others aren't and retain the color of the banana and the

spices instead. Banana ketchup continues to be popular both in the Philippines and in the Filipino diaspora, both as a condiment and as an ingredient in other foods, including Filipino spaghetti, which includes banana ketchup and cut up hot dogs in the sauce. I would absolutely eat this, but I have not.

war disrupted that ten year plan. After rising tensions that had gone on for years, Japan invaded China in nineteen thirty seven and Germany invaded Poland in nineteen thirty nine. On December eighth, nineteen forty one, just hours after attacking

Pearl Heart, Hawaii, Japan invaded the Philippines. The departure of the United States military from the Philippines is really its own involved story, but by May of nineteen forty two, General Douglas MacArthur had withdrawn to Australia, vowing to return, and about one hundred thousand Allied troops had been captured,

with another about fifty thousand killed or wounded. The aftermath of this withdrawal included a series of atrocities, including the Bataan Death March, which was a forced march of about twelve thousand American and sixty six thousand Filipino prisoners of war, during which thousands of them died. Arosa became part of the Filipino resistance against the Japanese, becoming a captain in

Marking's Gorillas. This gorilla unit also has its own history, but Erosa's focus was once again on food finding and distributing, including paying for it with her own money and working with volunteers to prepare it. Many of these volunteers were students who were stranded in Manila because of the war. During the Japanese occupation of the Philippines, she also worked to smuggle food to prisoners of war and into Santa Toomas internment camp, where thousands of civilians were being held.

She reportedly filled hollow bamboo with things like her soilac powder, which was nicknamed magic food, and got it into the camps with the help of resistance fighters who were disguised as carpenters. It is likely that she saved thousands of people from dying of starvation doing this work over the course of the war. In nineteen forty three, Japan declared the Philippines to be independent, with the hope of securing the loyalty of the archipelago and putting a stop to

the ongoing resistance fighting. But Filipinos continued their fight, including alongside American forces when they arrived at Laity in October of nineteen forty four. American efforts to liberate the Philippines ultimately led to the Battle of Manila, which started on February third, nineteen forty five, and lasted for a month. By that point, Allied forces had taken the surrounding countryside,

but Japanese infantry remained inside the city. The Battle of Manila was truly horrific, with roughly one hundred thousand civilians being killed, many of them massacred indiscriminately by Japanese troops, but some were killed by American artillery, and one of those was Maria Arosa. Her family had tried to get her to leave Manila and come back to Bowan, where she might be safer, but she had insisted that she could not abandon her work or the women that she

was working with. Those women had been nicknamed the Arosa Girls.

and taken to Remidio's Hospital in a push cart. This hospital had been established by the Philippine Red Cross at Malate Catholic School, but at this point the Red Cross's funding had run out and the hospital was being staffed entirely by volunteers. A Red Cross sign had been painted on the roof to try to make it clear that this was a hospital, but this was hit by American

shelling during a three day bombardment of the area. According to survivors, there had not been a large Japanese presence in the area when this bombardment happened, and one account compared it to using a pile driver on an ant hill. That same day, while at the hospital for treatment of the injury to her foot, Maria Ilagan Arosa was again struck by shrapnel, this time in the heart. She was killed at the age of fifty one, and she was one of about four hundred people who died in Manila

that day. The dead could not be buried immediately because the few Japanese soldiers who were in the area were shooting at people in the streets. It's believed that she was eventually buried in a mass grave on the grounds of Blante Catholic School, although the exact location is not currently known. The Battle of Manila went on for more than two weeks after Arosa's death, ending on March third,

nineteen forty five. It is regarded as the worst urban battle fought in the Pacific theater during World War II. Roughly ten percent of the population in Manila was killed and much of the city was reduced to rubble, including nearly the entire business district. In terms of capital cities, the destruction in Manila was comparable to that of Berlin and Warsaw, but it's far less well known today outside of the Pacific. Direction of Manila was a massive loss

of cultural and architectural heritage for the Philippines. This diverse and cosmopolitan city had been nicknamed the Pearl of the Orient as far back as the seventeen fifties. On a more practical level, this destruction included many government buildings, including buildings where Maria Arosa had worked. Most of her research, teaching tools and materials that she had created for the

Philippines Extension Service were destroyed. More than a million people were killed in the Philippines during World War II, out of a population of about eighteen million. General Tomoyuki Yamashida, who had been in command of the Japanese forces defending the Philippines toward the end of the war, was later hanged for war crimes. The massive destruction and disruption contributed to rampant inflation and shortages of food and other resources

after the war ended. There were also differences of opinion within the Philippines and in the United States about how to handle Filipinos who had collaborated with the Japanese. When World War two ended, the ten year timeline for independence for the Philippines had passed, and President Harry S. Truman issued Proclamation twenty six ninety five on July fourth, nineteen forty six, recognizing the Philippines as a separate and self

governing nation. Because of the war, this independence was recognized in a very different context from what had been imagined in nineteen thirty four, and the nation's transition from a colony first of Spain and then of the United States to an independent nation is really its own separate story.

There were definitely struggles related to the food supply of the Philippines in the wake of World War II and the shift in its trading relationship from the United States that came from it's no longer being a territory, but Maria A Rosa's two decades of work on food and security are recognized as having helped with this transition. It would have been even more difficult without everything she had done to promote locally available food sources and methods for

preparing and preserving them. A street in Manila was named after Maria Arosa in nineteen sixty four. On November twenty ninth, nineteen eighty three, the National Historical Institute placed a marker memorializing her at the Bureau of Plant Industry. There's also a Mario y Arosa Memorial Hall at the Bureau of Agricultural Extension building in dillman Queson City, which is part

of the Manila Metro Area. A plaque there reads quote dedicated to the memory of Maria Ilagan Erosa, pharmaceutical chemist, home economist, humanitarian, guerrilla worker and organizer of home extension in government, died in the line of duty thirteen February nineteen forty five. In twenty twenty, a marker commemorating Maria Arosa was found during a search for a mass grave believed to be the one on the grounds of the

Malate Catholic School. This is believed to have been a memorial stone rather than a marker of her burial site. In twenty seventeen, a Ketchup Museum opened at the Neutra Asia Kabwyo plant in the Light Industry Science Park in Kawaya, Laguna. This closed during the early part of the COVID nineteen pandemic and reopened in December of twenty twenty three. It features exhibits on bananas, the commercial production of banana ketchup, and in Maria Arosa Hall, the Life and work of

Maria Arosa. A Google doodle of her also came out in twenty nineteen in commemoration of her one hundred and twenty sixth birthday, and a bust of her was unveiled in her home province of Batangas on her birthday that same year. Over the course of her career, Maria Erosa developed more than seven hundred recipes, many of them still

considered to be staples of Filipino cuisine. Her niece, Helen Arosa del Rosario, collected these recipes along with essays about her aunt, who she knew as Tia Maria, and these were published as a book in nineteen seventy. This was reprinted in nineteen ninety eight as part of the celebration

of the centennial of Philippine Independence. That centennial, of course, being of eighteen ninety eight when the Philippines declared itself independent, not nineteen forty six, when the United States recognized it. A fiftieth anniversary edition of this book was published as Appetite for Freedom, The Recipes of Maria y Arosa. There's also a picture book about her that came out in twenty twenty three that is called Maria Arosa, Freedom Fighter,

Scientist and Inventor from the Philippines. We'll talk a little bit about a little story involving that fiftieth anniversary edition on Friday, and we'll also talk about banana ketchup on Friday.

I just saw the word Grand Rapids in an article and my brain auto completed the rest incorrectly, So apologies for that. Judy Garland was from Minnesota, not from Michigan. A couple different emails we're going to read quickly about these reeby slippers because the emails they sort of dovetail. The first one is from Holly, not the Holly. I've been talking to you for the last forty minutes, as far as you know, different Holly, Holly, Hi, Holly, and Tracy.

I've enjoyed listening to your podcast for many years now, having been introduced to it by my sister, a true history major. I've been meaning to write to you so many times about things that I hear that I can relate to, but was finally prompted to do so today after hearing you talk about the ruby slippers. I live in Minnesota and remembered hearing stories on the local news about the ruby slippers being returned and about the man

who had stolen them. Apparently he Terry, had lived a life of crime and was told by one of his mobster friends that the rubies must be real, which justified their one million dollar insured value. So Terry went to go steal them as one last score, thinking he could take the rubies off the shoes and sell them. When he took them in to sell, the person he was dealing with told him they were glass and not real rubies. It still sounds fishy to me that he believed the

rubies were real. However, he had never seen the movie and did not know about their cultural significance, so maybe he did not know what he was dealing with. Terry got rid of the slippers two days later, and the FBI eventually found the shoes in Minneapolis during a sting operation. The FBI still hasn't disclosed exactly how they were able to track the slippers down. I'm attatching the original news story I saw, so you can read about it and see what you think. So the next bit of.

your podcast, and thank you for your diligence. And bring you to light so many stories and cultural sensitivities that can get lost over time, including a pet tax of our Persian rag doll cat Smokey and our terry poodle mixed Betty. Yes, our cat is bigger than our dog, but they get along well and love playing with each other. Thank you for all you do, Holly from Minnesota. Incredibly cute cat, incredibly cute puppy dog. Listen, very excited to

get this email. I've had poodle fever lately, so that was like too much for my heart.

mystery for you both. While the ruby slippers are covered in sequins, the bows on the front of the shoes are decorated with red crystals and glass gems, which might look like ruby's to someone who had heard about the value of the shoes without knowing their history. The defendant also claims to have never seen The Wizard of Oz, which seems unbelievable. Although the viewing habits of low level Midwestern gangsters probably doesn't trend toward Hollywood musicals of the

nineteen thirties. The red crystals actually played an important role in authenticating the shoes after they had been recovered by the FBI. During the Smithsonian's restoration of their pair of ruby slippers, it was discovered that some of the red crystals were replaced by clear ones painted red in what was probably an on set repair during filming, a fact not known to the public previously and therefore not something

a forger would have been able to duplicate. Of course, there are lots of unanswered questions in this particular mystery, But as someone who has been paying close attention to the things we do know, I thought i'd passed along something of what I'd learned to save your sleep. As for pet tax, I'm including a picture of my little guy Toddy, who acts as something of a lowing a low level gangster in my house, shaking down his poor brother and sister for any cat treats they may have missed.

Cheers Alan, opening the picture of Toddy. Oh my goodness, Totty looks like the expression on this cat's face looks Toddy is planning something. That's what I will say. So thank you so much. Toddy is planning a heist for sure. Thank you so much, Alan and Holly, both of you for this. I think I can believe someone never having

seen the Wizard of Oz le iiil. What I can't, though, quite wrap my head around, is the idea that a person who has lived for seventy some years in the United States would be unaware of their cultural significance because there are just so many references to the Wizard of Oz and to the Ruby Slippers and so many other things.

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