Willow Smith, daughter of Jada and Will, becomes third author in her family

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Willow Camille Reign Smith came home on Friday.

Technically, perhaps, the 23-year-old was born in California, where she lives today. But the writer, singer and activist is the youngest child of Baltimore’s favorite daughter, Jada Pinkett Smith, and she comes from a long line of strong, confident, proud Black Baltimore women including her grandmother, Adrienne Banfield-Norris.

In Smalltimore, that’s enough reason to embrace Willow Smith as family.

And more than 300 Baltimore-area women turned out Friday night at the Enoch Pratt Free Library to support Smith, who is on a book tour for her first novel, “Black Shield Maiden,” published Tuesday by Random House.

“I love being Black,” Smith told her interviewer, Glory Edim, founder of the Well-Read Black Girl website and podcast.

“I want to inspire people who felt like they didn’t have a voice to just sing and know that deep in your heart your voice is valuable.”

Smith is the third member of her family to put pen to paper. Her father Will Smith’s autobiography “Will” written with the help of Mark Manson, was published in 2021. Last fall, her mother’s memoir, “Worthy,” made waves with its candid examination of Pinkett Smith’s relationship with her husband.

But instead of probing her own psyche, Willow Smith created a work of historical fiction to explore the possibility that Viking warriors, who ventured as far south as Morocco, might have encountered African people and their culture. While studying the legend of Erik the Red, Smith stumbled on Thorhall the Hunter, a fictional character who some historians have hypothesized was based on a real-life Black man. If Thorhall had a daughter, Smith wondered, what would she be like?

Her speculations resulted in the fictional character of the warrior maiden Yafeu, the protagonist of a book that Smith spent six years writing with her friend, Jess Hendel.

That intellectual rigor impressed Shawn Lee, 45, of Baltimore, who attended the discussion with her daughter. Lee said she first became familiar with Willow Smith from the “Red Table Talk” show that ran from 2018 to 2023 and was co-hosted by Pinkett Smith, Banfield-Norris and Willow Smith.

“I admired the way she handled all those grownup conversations,” Lee said. “She’s a very intelligent young lady.”

Though the crowd at the Pratt was almost exclusively female, participants ranged from senior citizens to preschoolers. If older audience members became acquainted with Willow Smith primarily through her movie-star parents, the opposite is true for members of Generation Z.

Willow Smith, a singer, songwriter, and activist, discusses her new book, Black Shield Maiden, at the Enoch Pratt Central Library on Friday. (Kim Hairston/Staff)

Willow Smith, a singer, songwriter, and activist, discusses her new book, Black Shield Maiden, at the Enoch Pratt Central Library on Friday. (Kim Hairston/Staff)

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They became fans of Willow Smith in 2010, when she was 9 years old and her debut single, “Whip My Hair,” peaked at number 11 on Billboard’s Hot 100. They have followed her career as a singer-songwriter with viral hits like “Meet Me at Our Spot” and a new album, “Empathogen,” released on May 3. They admire the fashionista with her father’s height and her mother’s delicate features who turned heads earlier this week at the Met Gala.

“My children have grown up being fans of Willow,” said LaShelle Bynum, 64, of Baltimore. “I came to this talk tonight because I wanted to learn about her for myself.”

Here is some of what Bynum discovered:

Though Willow Smith can rock a gold chain dress over a black bikini, she thinks of herself as a bookworm and nerd.

“I was a really voracious reader when I was growing up,” she told Edim. “I was always asking my dad to take me to the bookstore.”

She is a big fan of historical fiction series, and cited Jean M. Auel’s “Earth’s Children” and Marion Zimmer Bradley’s “The Mists of Avalon” as favorites.

“What I love about historical fiction,” she said, “is that there is an interesting mix between going back in time and using that period to comment on current situations.”

The intersection of real life and make-believe can be a perilous place for an author; when Smith’s publisher released two early excerpts of “Black Shield Maiden” in May 2022, it inspired a backlash of criticism from the Arab world, which characterized those passages as anti-Muslim.

“The Imazighen are not mythological tribes,” wrote Rania Kettani in “The Gazelle,” a student -run publication that operates out of New York University. “We are well and alive.”

Kettani wrote that she objects to “half of my genealogy” being depicted as “barbarous and dangerous religious zealots.”

Smith wasn’t asked about the controversy during her talk at the Pratt, and it couldn’t immediately be determined whether the disputed passages had been rewritten prior to publication.

But in a post on social media that has since been deleted, Smith’s co-author, Hendel, wrote that the pair had conducted considerable research on Islamic societies and added that the novel “tackles directly prejudices about the Amazigh and other Islamic peoples.”

Smith said Friday at the Pratt she is planning at least two more sequels to “Black Shield Maiden.”

Column: Kids like to swear. Do I blame Olivia Rodrigo? Or do I blame myself?

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I turned to the parent next to me and asked what she was going to do about all the, you know … I didn’t want to say it. The what, the parent asked. All of the swearing, the F-bombs and such, I said. This was several weeks ago, at the United Center, where Olivia Rodrigo was playing the second of two shows. Soon, if her new album, “Guts,” was any indication, she would be singing F-words and S-words and lots of other B(ad)-words, loudly and prolifically, and to judge by the lines to get in, she would be singing them to many, many children, middle school-aged and younger.

Which meant, of course, thousands of young children shouting back naughty, naughty words. I wasn’t clutching my pearls in horror. But I was wondering:

Have we all decided — you, me, Olivia, Beyoncé, Taylor Swift — that young children can swear now?

Kim Vanhyning, the parent beside me, from the village of Channahon near Joliet, was attending with her two children, ages 9 and 12, and their grandmother Dorothy, who whispered: The kids recently lost their 7-year-old brother to cancer; they had shirts made that read “(Expletive) Cancer.” They knew swear words more intimately than they liked. And yet, Kim said, for tonight, “the rule is: Sing the swear words, but only tonight.”

At their age, I would have felt weird swearing in front of my mom.

Kim Vanhyning nodded: “I know! I wouldn’t have dreamed of cursing in front of my parents.”

“Yup,” her mother said, confirming it.

But these days — screw it, I guess.

I asked many more parents of young children at the United Center how they planned to deal with inevitable hailstorm of bad words, and the responses were so full of nuance — so lacking in generational clutching of their own pearls — that I wondered if attitudes on when and how children swear had shifted. Sure, parents at an Olivia Rodrigo show are likely more indulgent than most. But even within this sample, there’s subtlety. Mary Davis, from the Chicago suburbs, told me her kids “can’t swear tonight or at home, but they know all the swears and are great at finding words to substitute.” Jenny Grippo of McHenry said, “I’m a bad person to ask. I swear a lot. My daughter” — Avery, 10 years old — “she’s used to it, so I’ll let her enjoy the moment and sing whatever she likes, but she can not say swears at home and she can not swear in front of me.”

“I wish,” Avery deadpanned.

Cry about the decline of morality and coarsening of culture, but I would like to thank Olivia, and Taylor, and Beyoncé, and Nicki Minaj and other contemporary Top 40 singers for their contributions to the mainstreaming of swearing. I really like swear words. Though we don’t have mountains of rigorous university-backed studies on the impact of swearing — and even fewer on its effect on children — we do know from what exists that cursing can help manage emotions, and that people who swear extravagantly tend to be among society’s truth tellers. (Lacking filters, they are regarded as warmer people, more trustworthy.) When Taylor Swift released her first album at age 16, the only use of profanity was one utterance of “damn.” Now 34, her latest album, “The Tortured Poets Department,” has seven songs marked as explicit, and according to online linguistic breakdowns on its lyrics, the F-bomb has become her fourth most frequently used word.

Because, well, (expletive) — just living out in the world erodes our filters.

Before you say Olivia Newton-John never relied on cursing, or that the Beatles became superstars without dropping F-bombs, know there were practical reasons they couldn’t. Partly, federal regulations against profanity on radio stations, which drove record sales. Spotify, YouTube, TikTok, the places people hear music today carry no such regulations.

“I understand why it would be disconcerting for those of us over 40 to be standing in an arena of 8-year-old girls collectively screaming the F-word, but it’s a pretty natural part of the evolution of music and technology,” said NPR music critic Ann Powers. “If your parents were raised on hip hop, metal and punk, they are probably not shocked.”

And yet, the morning after “Tortured Poets Department” was released, during the drive to school, my daughter, age 7, already memorized the chorus of a song that goes “(Expletive) it if I can’t have him,” and was singing loudly, no worries. I was startled, then winced, without being shocked. Olivia R. sings about driving past “the places we used to go ‘cause I still (expletive) love you, babe.” Beyoncé sings, “Don’t be a (expletive), come take it to the floor.” And I could blame them.

But no, it’s me, hi, I’m the problem, it’s me.

“The stories we tell about the way we use language is the real story of how language is changing,” Jason Riggle, a linguist at the University of Chicago, told me. Our anecdotal truths get closer to the emotional truth of how we feel about cursing than clinical studies. When he said that, I thought of my favorite online video ever: A very young British child stands at the window of a suburban living room and tells her mother, “There’s a (expletive) goat outside.” The mother, sensibly, replies, “It’s just a goat.” But the girl, now frowning and serious, corrects: “No, it’s a (expletive) goat.” And indeed, when the camera pans over, there is a goat in their yard.

My daughter asks to watch this video the way she asks to watch Disney+. It’s my fault for (accidentally) showing it to her in the first place, but her love for it doesn’t worry me: It teaches, in its way, that with naughty language, context always matters. It shows the power of the right emphasis. And that well-timed language can generate a visceral thrill.

When I was a kid in the ‘70s and ‘80s, a bad word on the radio could be a shock. Charlie Daniels singing “son of a bitch” in “The Devil Went Down to Georgia,”  should you catch the unbleeped version, landed like a slap. I will never forget the Sunday afternoon I was in the car with my Italian grandmother and we were listening to the Pretenders’ “Precious” on the radio and somehow the DJ’s bleeping finger was slow and Chrissie Hynde sang, very clearly: “But not me baby, I’m too precious — (expletive) off!”

“Mio Dio!,” Grandma said.

Swearing is among the great joys of adulthood. I swear a lot. Why wouldn’t my daughter want to? It serves as anger, punctuation, a laugh, a threat, shorthand. Emma Byrne, a scientist who studies artificial intelligence and wrote a book on swearing (“Swearing is Good For You”), described an experiment in which subjects plunged their hands into ice water; those told to swear as they did this reported feeling less pain. If you ever sat in a car with the windows rolled up and cursed at the top of your lungs, you can attest to the therapeutic benefits of shouting bad words.

Not that everyone is as comfortable with swearing as I am.

Even Olivia Rodrigo has said her producers asked if all this swearing is a bit much. My daughter swears mainly to press my buttons, then reassures me that she would never do it at school, or at someone else’s home, or in Target or anything. I choose to believe her.

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Parents do bring up childhood swearing as a concern, said Emily Perepa, a clinical social worker with the Family Institute at Northwestern University, but it’s usually not the reason a child goes into therapy. “Music may help a child express emotions, even if they are not using those words themselves out in the world. But are they quoting a lyric? I am less concerned than if it’s impacting them at home or school. Do they swear without processing the emotions behind a lyric? Are they unconcerned when it’s disrespectful to other people?” Marianne Breneman, a life coach for children from Farmington Hills, Michigan, spends a lot of time listening to swearing in middle schools and is mostly concerned with the kids “who can’t form a complete sentence without swearing. My fear isn’t a limited vocabulary but limited emotional regulation.” She tells parents that middle school is where kids swear as a way to try on personalities. Yet, she added, most parents are “not as concerned with swearing as parents were when you and I grew up.”

Take Laurie Viets of Irving Park, 52. She has 12-year-old twins and a 15-year-old. “We are a swearing family,” she told me. “We have always been. When we first had kids, we asked: ‘Do we stop swearing?’ Well, no, we can’t. Not realistically. I’m not going to be a hypocrite. I just tell (the kids) to swear appropriately. Don’t call each other swear words. And no slurs, of course. And also, don’t make me look bad in front of the other parents.

“Context matters so much with swearing. I was a DJ in Minnesota, which means we also don’t listen to clean versions of songs. Oh, no. We get annoyed when Alexa tries to play the clean versions. It’s like, ‘Alexa, darling, do you not know this family by now?’”

Powers, who wrote a 2017 history, “Good Booty: Love and Sex, Black & White, Body and Soul in American Music,” pointed out that when recorded music began more than a century ago, overt sexual metaphor and innuendo, often sung by female blues singers, was among the most popular music: “Like precode Hollywood, before the FCC stepped in, language in popular music was once freer.” She says the switch began with sometimes raunchy 12-inch versions of popular songs made only for discos. Then came punk, hip hop. Still, music itself is a language, and all languages have profanity. As novelist Rumaan Alam wrote in a New Yorker essay about his kids swearing during pandemic quarantine: “Not swearing is just about decorum, and that’s a kind of facade.”

Profanity is a construct we tentatively agree on.

Fundamentally, it’s letters. Famed linguist Geoff Nunberg likens curse words to “magic spells” entirely dependent on social circumstances. I have been substituting “(expletive)” in this story out of respect to readers who might be offended but chances are I’m not fooling anyone about the identity of the actual words. That’s why I almost never play safe versions of songs for my daughter (although my wife, more skittish, usually does). The American Academy of Pediatrics has argued that exposure to profane language could lead to aggressive, numbing behaviors in children. But other studies conducted on swearing and children found mild behavioral changes at most when kids are exposed to offensive language — assuming the language is not derogatory or abusive.

Timothy Jay, a professor emeritus at the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts, who has been studying the effects of swear words for 50 years, has heard it all. “What I tell parents is it is inevitable,” he told me. “Your children will swear. It’s part of how we evolve.” In fact, his studies have busted myths about swearing. His 2015 paper for the journal Language Sciences, for instance, shredded the folk wisdom that people who swear frequently have limited vocabularies. His findings found no less English fluency between swearers and non-swearers. (Any difference, he said, had more to do with class and income.) He’s not been surprised by the prolific F-bombs in contemporary pop. It’s a merging of trends: Children swear more than they did a generation ago, but also: since more women entered the workforce, more women swear in public.

Consider it a byproduct of gender equity.

Shocking words, of course — homophobic, racist, sexist — still exist. That’s why, in 2022, both Beyoncé and Lizzo backpedaled from the use of “spaz” in their lyrics; the word is ableist. But context is king. My daughter has told me several times, as if it were a recess legend, about a teacher in Michigan who she heard once said a swear word … in school!

Innocence exists in the world.

Though the fact that “The Tortured Poets Department” has 57 profane words means that “language like this is just mainstream enough now for Taylor Swift to use it without fear of alienating fans,” said Riggle. “It means whatever change in society we maybe feared has already happened.” It could also be, he said — having found in studies that those who initiate swearing in a relationship tend to carry more power — a show of female singers displaying strength.

Certainly, if you’re a parent, as Amy Johnson, executive director of Chicago’s Neighborhood Parents Network, said, it’s hard to punish for swearing now “when there are bigger concerns in the world.” Worrying about naughty words can feel like a luxury.

Still, some parents fight the good fight.

Outside the United Center, Cynthia Escalona of Chicago told me her 12-year-old daughter never swears and is not allowed to swear anywhere. “When she’s singing, she just skips over bad words.” She was not allowed to swear along with Olivia Rodrigo.

And yet, her daughter pointed out, “I will be swearing in my head.”

cborrelli@chicagotribune.com

Olivia Rodrigo performs her song “Bad Idea, Right?” at the United Center in Chicago on March 19, 2024. (Trent Sprague/for the Chicago Tribune)

Biden team’s tightrope: Reining in rogue Obamacare agents without slowing enrollment

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Julie Appleby | (TNS) KFF Health News

President Joe Biden counts among his accomplishments the record-high number of people, more than 21 million, who enrolled in Obamacare plans this year. Behind the scenes, however, federal regulators are contending with a problem that affects people’s coverage: rogue brokers who have signed people up for Affordable Care Act plans, or switched them into new ones, without their permission.

Fighting the problem presents tension for the administration: how to thwart the bad actors without affecting ACA sign-ups.

Complaints about these unauthorized changes — which can cause affected policyholders to lose access to medical care, pay higher deductibles, or even incur surprise tax bills — rose sharply in recent months, according to brokers who contacted KFF Health News and federal workers who asked not to be identified.

Ronnell Nolan, president and CEO of the trade association Health Agents for America, said her group has suggested to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services that it add two-factor authentication to healthcare.gov or send text alerts to consumers if an agent tries to access their accounts. But the agency told her it doesn’t always have up-to-date contact information.

“We’ve given them a whole host of ideas,” she said. “They say, ‘Be careful what you wish for.’ But we don’t mind going an extra step if you can stop this fraud and abuse, because clients are being hurt.”

Some consumers are pursued when they respond to misleading social media marketing ads promising government subsidies, but most have no idea how they fell victim to plan-switching. Problems seem concentrated in the 32 states using the federal exchange.

Federal regulators have declined to say how many complaints about unauthorized sign-ups or plan switches they’ve received, or how many insurance agents they’ve sanctioned as a result. But the problem is big enough that CMS says it’s working on technological and regulatory solutions. Affected consumers and agents have filed a civil lawsuit in federal district court in Florida against private-sector firms allegedly involved in unauthorized switching schemes.

Biden has pushed hard to make permanent the enhanced subsidies first put in place during the COVID pandemic that, along with other steps including increased federal funding for outreach, helped fuel the strong enrollment growth. Biden contrasts his support for the ACA with the stance of former President Donald Trump, who supported attempts to repeal most of the law and presided over funding cuts and declining enrollment.

Most proposed solutions to the rogue-agent problem involve making it more difficult for agents to access policyholder information or requiring wider use of identity questions tied to enrollees’ credit history. The latter could be stumbling blocks for low-income people or those with limited financial records, said Sabrina Corlette, co-director of the Center on Health Insurance Reforms at Georgetown University.

“That is the knife edge the administration has to walk,” said Corlette, “protecting consumers from fraudulent behavior while at the same time making sure there aren’t too many barriers.”

Jeff Wu, acting director of the Center for Consumer Information & Insurance Oversight, said in a statement that the agency is evaluating options on such factors as how effective they would be, their impact on consumers’ ability to enroll, and how fast they could be implemented.

The agency is also working closely, he wrote, with insurance companies, state insurance departments, and law enforcement “so that agents violating CMS rules or committing fraud face consequences.” And it is reaching out to states that run their own ACA markets for ideas.

That’s because Washington, D.C., and the 18 states that run their own ACA marketplaces have reported far fewer complaints about unauthorized enrollment and plan-switching. Most include layers of security in addition to those the federal marketplace has in place — some use two-factor authentication — before agents can access policyholder information.

California, for example, allows consumers to designate an agent and to “log in and add or remove an agent at will,” said Robert Kingston, interim director of outreach and sales for Covered California, the state’s ACA marketplace. The state can also send consumers a one-time passcode to share with an agent of their choice. Consumers in Colorado and Pennsylvania can similarly designate specific agents to access their accounts.

By contrast, agents can more easily access policyholder information when using private-sector websites that link them to the federal ACA market — all they need is a person’s name, date of birth, and state of residence — to enroll them or switch their coverage.

CMS has approved dozens of such “enhanced direct enrollment” websites run by private companies, which are designed to make it easier and faster for agents certified to offer insurance through healthcare.gov.

Rules went into effect last June requiring agents to get written or recorded consent from clients before enrolling them or changing their coverage, but brokers say they’re rarely asked to produce the documentation. If CMS makes changes to healthcare.gov — such as adding passcodes, as California has — it would need to require all alternative-enrollment partners to do the same.

The largest is San Francisco-based HealthSherpa, which assisted 52% of active enrollments nationally for this year, said CEO George Kalogeropoulos.

The company has a 10-person fraud investigation team, he said, which has seen “a significant spike in concerns about unauthorized switching.” They report problems to state insurance departments, insurance carriers, and federal regulators “and refer consumers to advocates on our team to make sure their plans are corrected.”

Solutions must be “targeted,” he said. “The issue with some of the solutions proposed is it negatively impacts the ability of all consumers to get enrolled.”

Most people who sign up for ACA plans are aided by agents or platforms like HealthSherpa, rather than doing it themselves or seeking help from nonprofit organizations. Brokers don’t charge consumers; instead, they receive commissions from insurers participating in state and federal marketplaces for each person they enroll in a plan.

While California officials say their additional layers of authentication have not noticeably affected enrollment numbers, the state’s recent enrollment growth has been slower than in states served by healthcare.gov.

Still, Covered California’s Kingston pointed to a decreased number of uninsured people in the state. In 2014, when much of the ACA was implemented, 12.5% of Californians were uninsured, falling to 6.5% in 2022, according to data compiled by KFF. That year, the share of people uninsured nationwide was 8%.

Corlette said insurers have a role to play, as do states and CMS.

“Are there algorithms that can say, ‘This is a broker with outlier behavior’?” Insurance companies could then withhold commissions “until they can figure it out,” she said.

Kelley Schultz, vice president of commercial policy at AHIP, the trade association for large insurance companies, said sharing more information from the government marketplace about which policies are being switched could help insurers spot patterns.

CMS could also set limits on plan switches, as there is generally no legitimate need for multiple changes in a given month, Schultz said.

___

(KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs of KFF — the independent source for health policy research, polling and journalism.)

©2024 Kaiser Health News. Visit khn.org. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

You may not be able to escape cicadas — but you can eat them

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In early April, the No. 1 show on Netflix was “3 Body Problem,” about an alien invasion. The final image in the series is of swarming cicadas, and we can expect to see similar scenes all over Chicagoland in the coming months.

In 2007, we witnessed a sizable invasion of cicadas in Brood XIII. This spring, Brood XIII is coming back and will be joined by Brood XIX, a reunion that last ensued over two centuries ago. Illinois could host upward of a trillion cicadas. You cannot escape cicadas, but if it’s any consolation (and I understand if it isn’t), you can eat them.

Grossed out by the thought of eating bugs? Well, consider this: you’ve probably eaten pounds of them … in the past year!

“Insects or insect parts are found in most of the foods that we eat. The FDA has a Defect Levels Handbook that lists the allowable limits on ‘natural and unavoidable defects’ in commercial foods,” said Gina Hunter of Illinois State University and author of “Edible Insects: A Global History.” “For instance, peanut butter is limited to 30 insect fragments for 100 grams. Thus, it’s not surprising that the average American consumes an estimated 2 pounds of insects per year, as reported by the Centers for Invasive Species Research.”

So, it turns out, we’re all entomophages (bug eaters).

During the last infestation, I’d go cicada-hunting in the cool of the morning, when young cicadas (known as nymphs) emerge from their yearslong slumber with one thing in mind: mating. The cicada’s life is played out in three movements: emergence, mating and death. I prefer to snare them just as they’re emerging from the ground. Then they’re cleaned and cooked in boiling water before being stored in the refrigerator.

My wife and I whipped up tempura cicada nori rolls, which were rather pleasant. We dipped the boiled bugs in batter, fried them and lined them up lengthwise in a seaweed-rice roll with green onion, wasabi, lightly steamed carrot and soy sauce. To pair, our recommendation is a cup of sake.

There are many sustainable ecological advantages to eating insects instead of poultry, pork or beef: insects need much less space and water than chickens, pigs or cows, and they produce much less greenhouse gas.

“Many people have suggested that insects are a sustainable protein alternative to conventional meat sources (and) many food companies are investing in insect production,” Hunter said. “It’s mostly for animal feed right now; the market for insects in human food is very small. I do think we will see more insect-based foods in the future, most likely as an ingredient in processed foods.”

Andrew Moore, of Warrenville, tastes battered and fried cicadas that his dad, Kirk, on May 25, 2007. (Antonio Perez/Chicago Tribune)

Though she has found that insects have been a historically important foodstuff in China, Thailand and Australia, Hunter said that in the Western hemisphere, Mexico is undoubtedly the epicenter of insect cuisine. You’ll find bags of spicy Mexican grasshoppers in some Hispanic grocery stores.

I’ve had tacos filled with chapulines (little grasshoppers) in Oaxaca, Mexico, and at some local Mexican restaurants, such as Uptown’s Kie-Gol-Lanee, you can order fried chapulines as a starter. Frying makes many insects crunchy, which is nice, but I must admit it’s difficult to discern flavor in unadorned bugs. In Oaxaca, chapulines are seasoned with spices such as chili, garlic and lime. Spiced up, they’re tasty, but that taste seems to come mostly from what’s added to the grasshoppers.

Cicadas harvested in their teneral stage are pan-fried on June 4, 2021, in Hyattsville, Maryland. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty)

Are any bugs delicious without tasty condiments? “Yes,” Hunter said. “Insects get a lot of flavor from pheromones, which are on the outside of the body. Traditionally people might have eaten insects just straight up.”

Indeed, in the Australian outback, Aboriginal people and others eat witchetty grubs (moth larvae) right off the tree, no cooking, no condiments. We’ve heard they taste like scrambled eggs.

Do some insects taste better than others? “Yes!” Hunter said with enthusiasm. “Some ants have this bright, citrusy flavor that’s delicious.”

Kirk Moore, of Warrenville, prepares cicadas on May 25, 2007. (Antonio Perez/Chicago Tribune)

Insect cuisine is something “we should encourage,” said Maureen Turcatel, collection manager of insects at Chicago’s Field Museum of Natural History. Eating insects, she tells us, is “a very easy way to get a good source of protein” that doesn’t require a lot of resources.

If you’d like to enjoy exotic insects in the comfort of your home, Amazon offers a vast array of insect-based snacks such as salted black ants, dehydrated zebra tarantulas and bags of “mixed bugs” including mole crickets and silkworms. Or you can go into the Midwestern wilds to fetch bags full of cicadas. Turcatel explains that “when the soil gets warm, that’s a good indication that cicadas will emerge.” With the exceptionally mild winter and spring we’ve had, cicadas may emerge sooner than usual.

Caution: Cicadas are arthropods and belong to the same phylum as shrimp, lobsters and crabs. If you have a crustacean allergy, you might have an allergic reaction to eating cicadas. Also, it’s best to harvest cicadas in wooded areas, such as a forest preserve, rather than on local lawns, which may have been sprayed with insecticides and fertilizers.

Before the day comes when you can order a bug burger at a fast-casual restaurant, consider sampling what could be the hyper-local food of the future, soon to be crawling up a tree near you.

A Brood XIII cicada waits for its wings and new exoskeleton to dry and harden after climbing and molting on a tree in a front yard in Homewood on May 22, 2007. (E. Jason Wambsgans/Chicago Tribune)

How to tempura fry cicadas

In a plastic bag, collect 1 cup (or more) of cicada nymphs as they emerge from the ground
Drop cicadas in boiling water and boil for a minute or so
Remove cicadas and place on paper towels to dry
Blend ½ cup cornstarch, 2 tablespoons flour, ¼ teaspoon baking powder. Stir in one beaten egg and 2 tablespoons water; mix thoroughly
Dip each cicada in batter
Drop a handful of cicadas into 1 or 2 cups of hot vegetable oil and fry for about 30 seconds; repeat with other cicadas
Drain cicadas, then sprinkle with salt and pepper (or hot sauce!). Enjoy!

David Hammond is a freelance writer.

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