Sodcutter

Ballard's Gourmet Ghetto

2010-10-28T13:43:00.000-07:00

The North Shattuck Association in Berkeley, California, is an affiliation of businesses in an area known as the “Gourmet Ghetto” to locals. The area is full of restaurants, coffeehouses, bakeries and florists – all the things one needs to live the California dream. The most famous of all is Alice Walters’s legendary restaurant Chez Panisse, where one might spend $50 on lunch and spend the rest of the day marveling only at the food.

And for those whom the good life eludes in spite of all this, there are two dozen therapists in the neighborhood too.

Seattle’s Ballard neighborhood has its own burgeoning gourmet ghetto, located on NW 70th Street a block or so east of 15th Avenue NW (15th is Ballard’s main north-south artery; for Seattleites who don’t venture north of the ship canal, it’s where you end up if you cross the Ballard Bridge heading north.)

Old Town Ballard, shaped by building booms at the turn of the both the 20th and 21st centuries, is Ballard’s designated cool zone; NW 70th Street is decidedly un-cool – just a narrow street without interesting architecture or expensive homes.

An enthusiastic referral to the Honore Artisan Bakery led to the discovery of this easily overlooked half-block slice of heaven. Across from Honore sits A Caprice Kitchen, a small restaurant transformed by owner Anne Catherine Kruger from a greasy breakfast and lunch place into a neighborhood bistro serving dinner and weekend brunch. The third notable eatery is Delancey, which specializes in pizza from a wood-fired oven.

First things first: don’t bother trying to visit any of these three places on Monday or Tuesday – they’re all closed. It’s clear from both reviews and conversations with locals that there is plenty of business to support a full seven days of business, but the owner of each of these establishments has his or her hands in every croissant, every salad, and every pizza their customers eat.

Honore’s owner, Franz Gilbertson, does not make bread, so if you’re one of those Francophiles who believes a baguette just like they make in France is the ultimate baked good, don’t bother. If, on the other hand, you’re not afraid of a little butter, this place is for you. The croissants are flaky and never doughy. If pan au chocolat is your favorite, be warned: Gilbertson’s are great, but contain only a modest amount of chocolate – but it is intensely flavorful and very dark.

Two items keep people coming back to Honore. The first is the kouign (pronounced queen amman,) a crunchy, rich, buttery cake whose top is caramelized and salted. The kouign amman originates in Brittany, which accounts for the odd-looking name, which is Breton (the traditional language of Brittany,) not French. I imagine its creation, in 1865, sprang from the minds of people who found the shape, flavor and pleasure of the croissant to be insufficiently beguiling.

The adage that people buy with their eyes finds credence in Honore’s other signature item, the macaron. To the untrained eye, they look like pastel-colored sandwich cookies. About the circumference of an Oreo, but with a gently rounded top, the “cookie” part of these two-bite gems is actually a mix of egg whites, ground almonds and sugar. Their meringue-like texture is fragile, and combined with its ganache filling, they’re not easy to eat. Thankfully, the fun and pleasure involved in taking a bite and hurriedly passing what’s left to a companion quickly melts any anxiety that a bit of messiness may have aroused.

The beauty of the macaron – both from an eating and a marketing perspective – is that it’s hard to buy just one. Honore usually has ten or so flavors, each with a distinct color and flavor, and each with a complementary (or sometimes matching) filling inside. Pistachio, coconut, passion fruit, lavender, lemon,,,eventually you’ll want to try them all.
Also available at Honore: cheerful service, coffee made with care, and a list of special order desserts.

A Caprice Kitchen and Delancey have little in common. One, Delancey, opened in late 2009 after months of anticipation, thanks to co-owner Molly Wizenberg, author of A Homemade Life: Stories and Recipes from My Kitchen Table as well as the blog Orangette. Wizenberg’s husband, Brandon Petit, is the pizza man in the family. The sometimes harrowing process of opening a restaurant was well-chronicled in Wizenberg’s widely-read blog, creating a built-in customer base, which has rewarded the couple with long lines every night. The reviews have been excellent, and Petit seems to have found the perfect intersection of New York style pizza and the modern, local cuisine favored in Seattle. (And Wizenberg’s legendary chocolate chip cookies are a huge hit as well.)

And then there is A Caprice Kitchen. Chef-owner Anne Catherine Kruger (her initials are the same as her bistro’s) took a rather unconventional path to open her restaurant. After studying Physics at the University of North Carolina, Kruger decided that a life in the lab was not for her. So she set out to sea, cooking on large sailing ships and eco-tour boats, with time out to attend cooking school at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris. “I needed an anchor,” she said on a sunny afternoon at the tiny restaurant’s five-seat bar, “so I came back from Alaska and figured I should either get married or buy a house.” Her realtor knew the owner of the restaurant that would become Kruger’s, and suggested she might consider buying a business instead of a home.

The existing business, with the decidedly old-Ballard name “The Neighborhood Café,” served a small but loyal clientele breakfast and lunch basics seven days a week. Kruger’s vision was very much in the spirit of the French bistro. “I wanted to cook good food for people in a comfortable setting, like they were coming to my house,” she said. She gradually flipped the schedule on its head, so that today the restaurant is open for dinner Wednesday through Sunday as well as weekend brunch. (Kruger took over in October of 2008; she cooked every meal for the first year, but has recently turned the brunch service over to a pair of skilled and trusted cooks. She still runs the kitchen solo at each dinner service.)

When asked about the timing of her opening – days before the economic crisis of 2008 came into full bloom– Kruger is sanguine. “I knew what I wanted to do, and sure, it was discouraging to do only six dinners some nights…but the brunch business was steady and I knew I could make it.” Her patience paid off – word of mouth has been kind to her, even if reviews have been a bit mixed.

Kruger has developed a friendly relationship with Delancey’s Brandon Petit – the two often visit after dinner service, sharing food and a beer or glass of wine and talking over the evening’s events. “He came over about a week before they opened and said ‘You better order extra food this week – we’re going to be busy and so will you.’” Petit was right; the months of anticipation fueled by Orangette had local foodies buzzing. A Caprice Kitchen benefited from the overflow, as not everyone in Seattle is apparently keen on waiting two hours for a seat in a pizza joint.

The food at A Caprice Kitchen is both simple and sophisticated. The simplicity arises from thoughtful preparation and an almost militant disregard for trendiness. The sophistication is largely a byproduct of Kruger’s belief in using local ingredients from local purveyors (a list of which is on each table.) This means frequent adjustments to the menu (and using no lemons!) And Kruger is willing to do without staples like tomatoes and onions if they’re not available locally.

All the talk of local ingredients prompted a question about Alice Waters, who has probably had more influence on how Americans eat than any other chef in the last half-century. “Oh, yes, a customer mentioned her when I first opened,” Kruger said. Joining her mailing list is recommended – though she doesn’t send menu updates every week, the restaurant hosts occasional beer- or wine-paring dinners. Having attended one of each, I recommend them highly. They are educational, convivial and delicious.

A short post in honor of opening day

2010-04-05T15:47:00.000-07:00

Below is a short writing assigment from class. The idea: choose a subject about which I have some unique knowledge or perspective. Then, write what "everyone" knows about that subject followed by what I know. I chose baseball.

What everyone knows about baseball is that it’s impossibly dull and that each game lasts at least an hour longer than they’d like it to. The players are paid way too much, especially compared with teachers and firemen. Baseball fans and broadcasters obsess on numbers – obscure statistics with strange initials like RBI and ERA. The players aren’t very athletic, really; many are obviously overweight and are winded after running the 180 feet from home plate to second base. Ballplayers spit a lot and consume a bizarre amount of sunflower seeds and chewing gum. Some old-timers still chew and spit tobacco. Everyone knows about the World Series, which is played in late October, often in weather only a hockey player could love. Many of the greatest, most popular players have used performance-enhancing drugs; most lie about it, diminishing their greatness and popularity. Baseball is America’s Pastime.

What I know about baseball is that it is a game for patient people. It is a game best enjoyed during the summer, when the days or long and warm, the fans unhurried. The players’ skills, though not strictly speaking “athletic,” are remarkable and rare. The game requires freaky-good hand-eye coordination, great concentration and a degree of fearlessness. (It’s hard to hit a golf ball, but your opponent never hurls or hits the ball at you.) It is helpful to be fast and strong – but in many cases, one or the other will do.

The game’s most fundamental event – the pitch – is the reason for its apparently slow pace. The physical act of throwing a pitch is in itself a challenge; the process of deciding what sort of pitch to throw is a mental exercise, a guessing game. Throwing the decided upon pitch at the desired speed, with the desired movement, and having it arrive sixty and half feet away in the desired location is something only the best of the best can do consistently. What I know is that what many people consider the “action” – a ball in play – is not a discrete event, but the culmination of a series of events which can be viewed broadly (in relation to what happened earlier in the game or season) or narrowly (how the batter responded to the last curveball the pitcher threw.)

The word “statistics” is no longer adequate to describe what serious fans can know about the game. Today we are dealing with information about what happens on the field, not just a data set easily reproduced in a newspaper. Video cameras and a host of other equipment installed in each Major League ballpark record the velocity and movement (lateral and horizontal) of each pitch. All games are videotaped from many angles. The speed, trajectory and destination of each batted ball are logged. What I know is that understanding the game is a pastime unto itself and because of the good, funny, interesting writing of many fans, learning about the game has become almost more fun than actually watching it.

Armageddon Dreamin'

2010-03-08T14:44:00.000-08:00

This is the full article; skip to "That Old Time Religion: Not So Old After All" heading if you've been reading bit by bit.

ARMAGEDDON DREAMIN’

AN UNEXPECTED DEVELOPMENT AT BIBLE STUDY

Each Wednesday at the small Presbyterian Church we attend, we gather for dinner. . Our pastor is a skillful cook, and aside from his fondness for split pea soup, has excellent taste as well. .

After dinner, the kids gather for youth group while the pastor leads the adults in Bible study. He handles Scripture as well as he handles a knife – and with no doctrinal analogs to that awful soup.

It’s the Full Monty of Bible studies: Genesis through Revelation, all sixty-six books of the Bible. Working through the Bible at this pace is a seven- to ten-year undertaking. Given the age of our members, several will likely have the pleasure of hearing at least some of the material from an even more authoritative source than our pastor, who holds a PhD from the University of Notre Dame. .

We’ve reached the book of Numbers, the fourth book of the Old Testament, part of what is known as the Torah, or Pentateuch. These first five books contain the creation story, Israel’s early history and Old Testament law. Plus plagues, violence and the source material for some Big Moments with Charlton Heston.

Just before our pastor read the beginning of Numbers 19, he warned us that he had an interesting aside related to this passage. Anticipation built as he read:

This ¹ The LORD said to Moses and Aaron: ² "This is a requirement of the law that the LORD has commanded: Tell the Israelites to bring you a red heifer without defect or blemish and that has never been under a yoke. ³ Give it to Eleazar the priest; it is to be taken outside the camp and slaughtered in his presence. ⁴ Then Eleazar the priest is to take some of its blood on his finger and sprinkle it seven times toward the front of the Tent of Meeting. ⁵ While he watches, the heifer is to be burned—its hide, flesh, blood and offal. ⁶ The priest is to take some cedar wood, hyssop and scarlet wool and throw them onto the burning heifer. ⁷ After that, the priest must wash his clothes and bathe himself with water. He may then come into the camp, but he will be ceremonially unclean till evening. ⁸ The man who burns it must also wash his clothes and bathe with water, and he too will be unclean till evening.

⁹ "A man who is clean shall gather up the ashes of the heifer and put them in a ceremonially clean place outside the camp. They shall be kept by the Israelite community for use in the water of cleansing; it is for purification from sin. ¹⁰ The man who gathers up the ashes of the heifer must also wash his clothes, and he too will be unclean till evening. This will be a lasting ordinance both for the Israelites and for the aliens living among them.

This passage is typical of much of the Old Testament: highly detailed and somewhat difficult for our modern minds. (Three chapters later, we encounter a talking donkey, which renders this passage rather dull.) To put it simply, Numbers 19 describes a purification ritual. The aside the pastor alluded to got my attention. “There are Fundamentalist Christians in Texas,” he said, “trying to breed red heifers in order to help bring about the Apocalypse.”

Not surprisingly, this little aside prompted a discussion about the nature of Fundamentalism. By the time I had completed the ten minute walk home, I decided I needed to learn more about the red heifer. .

I WAS RIGHT ABOUT THIS BEING DISTURBING

I turned to the Internet to find out more.

First, just to be clear, we’re not talking fire engine- or Clifford the Big Red Dog-red – just a solid-colored but infrequently occurring cow-red.

I learned of a heifer named Melody, who caused a stir in the mid-90s, until she turned out to be less than fully red. And a gentleman named Clyde Lott has been working for years to breed red heifers. We’ll learn more about both of these later, but for now, just know that candidate cows undergo detailed inspection and news of the results travels quickly.

I also discovered that the red heifer appears in only this passage. But this single mention has captivated the attention of some Christians because one interpretation links it directly to the timing of the Apocalypse. Under this interpretation, Armageddon will not occur until the Jews rebuild the temple in Jerusalem. But they cannot rebuild without a purification ritual. And there can be no ritual without a red heifer.

So some of the world’s Christians, having finished all the other work Jesus had in mind for them, have embarked on a truly global mission: helping God end the world.

WHAT IS FUNDAMENTALISM, AND WHAT WAS I THINKING?

The Fundamentalist Christian worldview holds that God’s work consists of both broad strokes (The Universe!) and amazing feats of precision (eight-hundred thousand words of scripture, each one literally true.)

Between 1897 and 1919, conservative American Christians debated and eventually agreed on the five key theological concepts that remain the basis of Fundamentalism. (They are: the verbal inerrancy of scripture, the divinity of Jesus, the virgin birth, the substitutionary theory of atonement and the physical return of Jesus.) With such a rigid starting point, there is little room for things like contemplation or finding common ground. A highly restrictive belief system, Fundamentalism is the spiritual equivalent of painting by the numbers, if the only numbers were one and two, and the only colors were black and white.

Fundamentalist scholars – many of them gifted teachers or brilliant linguists – are resolute in their search for definitive answers to every question. It can be argued that this is a religion not of faith, but of certainty –which may beg the question whether calling it a religion is appropriate.

(It is strikingly different from the Jewish Rabbinical tradition, in which the Rabbi’s role is interpreting the Jewish scriptures, not on telling the congregation precisely what the text means. Uncertainty, doubt and even arguing with God are built in.)

I dabbled in a gentle version of Fundamentalism as a teenager and young adult. While many of my friends now claim we were in it only for the girls, there was more to it than that. What we learned about friendship and character and commitment made us better people. And when “The Bible” pops up as a category on Jeopardy, look out.

Even at my most devout, I could not help but believe that our Big Brains must play a role in faith. What ultimately separated me from Fundamentalism had nothing to do with the truth of the five fundamentals. No, it was that this faith, supposedly the answer for all of humanity, made no allowance for the humanness of those it purported to save. With our innate desire to question, wonder, and discover now unneeded, the Leap of Faith was replaced by the Baby Step of Being Totally Sure. .

THAT OLD TIME RELIGION: NOT SO OLD AFTER ALL

Though the five fundamentals themselves were not new doctrines, the movement that galvanized around them amounted to a new and uniquely American version of Christianity. This bit of knowledge took me by surprise.

Largely because of its name, I assumed that Fundamentalism was the original version of Christianity, (It doesn’t get much more fundamental than the idea that understanding the Bible does not require interpretation -- but simply the ability to read and the willingness to treat each word as literal truth.) This was of course a profoundly ignorant on my part, since printed Bibles and people who could read have only been widely present for about a quarter of the time Christianity has existed. .

To illustrate the crux of the Fundamentalist approach, let’s revisit the Pentateuch. These first five books of the Old Testament are the foundation of the three great Abrahamic faiths – Judaism, Islam and Christianity.

As long ago as the early 16^th century, when printed Bibles were still quite rare, scholars began to question the notion that the Pentateuch was written by Moses himself. Up to that point, it was widely believed that Moses had written the five books and that further, the original author of each book of the Bible was inspired directly by God and was in essence taking dictation.

Well, in 1520 a German scholar named Carlstadt noticed that the passage dealing with the death of Moses, in the book of Deuteronomy, was from a literary perspective consistent with the rest of Deuteronomy. Compared to parting the Red Sea, writing of one’s own death may not seem like much, but Carlstadt’s argument that Moses was not the sole author of the Pentateuch prevailed.

And so it went for the next few centuries as Bible scholars applied the techniques of literary and textual criticism to the Bible. The approach became known as “Modernism,” which sounds to me like a much more recent development than “Fundamentalism.”

Modernism was an affront to conservative American theologians. They rejected its assertion that the Bible was more a collection of works than a coherent, unified document. Culturally, this rejection’s net effect was to unify Fundamentalists around three key ideas: exclusivity, separation and hostility towards science in general and Darwinism in particular.

Those three concepts remain central to the way today’s Fundamentalists relate to the world, and the way the world relates to them. Pat Robertson responds to the Haiti earthquake with talk of a “pact with the devil.” Jon Stewart responds to Robertson with mockery and scorn. (Moderate Christians are just embarrassed.) So there is a huge divide not just between Fundamentalists and our secular culture, but between Fundamentalists and other Christians.

(We are almost ready to revisit the red heifer.)

Even the earliest Christians believed that Jesus’ return was imminent, as do today’s Fundamentalists. This has spawned both intensive study of the relevant Bible passages and a multi-million dollar market for Apocalyptically themed books, movies and seminars. Such products fuel increases in both Anxiety and Donations.

That Jesus has not yet returned drives those awaiting she Second Coming deeper and deeper into the study of Bible prophecies, creating a frenzied increase in the amount of material available. Hal Lindsey, who wrote the end times bestseller The Late Great Planet Earth in 1970, has spent the subsequent forty years studying and teaching about Bible prophecy. As I write this, I am listening to “The Hal Lindsey Report” via streaming video from his Web site. Today’s theme: how modern communication is evidence that the end is near. Talk about a self-fulfilling prophesy.

The red heifer fits neatly into this pattern of escalation: Since now innocuous developments (like bar codes and the European Union) were not, in fact, omens of Armageddon, deeper study is required. And that’s where the red heifer comes in.

HEIFER ENCOUNTER I: MELODY…CLOSE BUT NO APOCALYPSE

Melody the heifer was born in 1996 in Israel and there was much rejoicing. It was believed for a time that she might be the perfect red heifer many had been awaiting. And by “people,” I mean a peculiar alliance of a small number of American Fundamentalist Christians and an equally small number of conservative Israeli Jews.

According to the Web site of the Calvary Chapel of Truckee, California, it was determined upon closer inspection that Melody had black eyelashes. This made her a better-looking cow overall, but unsuitable for use in the ritual.

But even here there is controversy: in an article in JWeekly.com, on online Jewish news source serving the San Francisco area, Melody’s flaw was not black eyelashes, but a white tail. So apparently whatever common interest Jews and Christians have in an actual red heifer materializing, they are at literal opposite ends of the spectrum when it comes to livestock assessment. Apparently we can’t all just get along.

HEIFER ENCOUNTER II: MR. LOTT GOES TO JERUSALEM

In 1989, according to the Los Angeles Times, Clyde Lott – a rare breed himself, being both a rancher and a preacher – “”heard from a preacher that the apocalypse might be approaching.” For whatever reason, this did not inspire Lott to get his house in order, but to export red heifers to Israel.

"A seed was planted in me, and once there, that seed didn't leave me alone," Lott told the Times, whose next move was to take a trip to Jackson, Mississippi, the state capital. There he chatted with the state’s top agricultural officer, who connected Lott with a United States trade envoy in Greece, who eventually helped Lott reach a nonprofit group in Israel, called the Temple Institute, whose purpose is to rebuild the temple.

Meetings were held, plans were hatched, but efforts to export and then breed lots and lots of Lott’s red heifers have thus far proved futile. Flying a planeload of cattle from the United States to Israel is fraught with bureaucratic headaches. But Lott’s quest continues; he’s certain the red heifer will appear, and he’d like it to be one of his.

NOW, THE SCARY PART, AND SOME HOPE

Some of the eight hundred thousand words in the Bible are fairly clear (thou shalt not kill, love thy neighbor, etc.) But we struggle mightily with the Simple and Clear, so much so that we often choose to skip it, focusing instead on the Obscure and Divisive. Frustrated with the challenge of adding two and two, we’ve moved on to quadratic equations.

Attraction to the obscure is understandable. Such things add a touch of mystery to life and provide a not insignificant number of jobs. Being free of open sores and human death, the red heifer passage leaves room to ponder the Apocalypse without confronting the human suffering that accompanies it.

To most of us, Clyde Lott’s efforts to produce a perfect red heifer look like a big waste of time. Even if Clyde’s dream comes true, it’s a huge leap to get from “there is a red heifer” to “Clyde’s cow is now in Israel.”

But perhaps we should think a bit more about such ventures. .

You might say that Temple Mount, the real estate on which the Temple is to be rebuilt, is on a very desirable corner, one currently controlled by the competition. The oldest known Muslim building, the Dome of the Rock is located there today. So the Temple can only be rebuilt if this holy Muslim site is destroyed. No matter what you believe about the end times, this would be a Step Backward for human relations.

And the red heifer, unfortunately, is not the only way Fundamentalist Christians are attempting to hasten Armageddon. They are also sending money to Zionist groups in Israel, for the express purpose of building new settlements, because fulfilling all the Biblical prophecies can only happen if Israel is home exclusively to Jews.

Waiting is a recurring theme for many practicing Christians (and has a place in other religions as well.) The eagerness with which we await Christmas is not just about unwrapping gifts; it has a spiritual dimension as well. And Lent, with its emphasis on fasting and personal sacrifice is rich in contemplative anticipation. If this Apocalyptic Eagerness was only about waiting, there would be much less to say about it.

But the literalist view of the end times includes death for what in today’s world is billions of unbelievers. Of course it is possible that the world will end this way; in fact, it could happen before my next birthday. But wishing for it and believing we ought to facilitate it is a long way from hoping for a new bike or giving up chocolate for Lent. It’s nothing short of cruel.

A more hopeful approach is found in the words of W. Eugene March, Professor of Old Testament at Louisville Presbyterian Seminary, who writes, “My experience leads me to the conviction that the practice of love, not the defense of doctrine, is the primary challenge for Christians (and the adherents of other religious traditions as well) in the world today.”

This approach, very unlikely to lead to war, provides a simple roadmap for people of faith to do Good, keep Busy and be Happy. No matter how much time we have left.

ANYONE KNOW WHERE I CAN GET A GOOD STEAK AROUND HERE?

One last thing: if you ever find yourself walking along King George Street in Jerusalem, be sure to make time for a meal at the Red Heifer Steakhouse. The beef is Kosher, house-aged and presumably from Ordinary-Looking Cows.

People You Should Know About: George Saunders

2010-02-01T22:14:00.000-08:00

George Saunders / American / 1958-

I am taking a nonfiction writing class at the University of Washington; it started in early January and goes through June. It's been great so far -- good teachers, interesting classmates and lots of stimulation.

Last week we were assigned two essays by George Saunders. I had heard of him vaguely as he is an occasional contributor to The New Yorker (most often in "Shouts and Murmurs," the short humor piece in most issues.)

Eventually we will write our own story based on one of the two extended essays we read, which I expect to be quite challenging. For now, here is the short piece I wrote about Saunders's work, which I thought was great and worth anyone's time.

Though very different in style, the two George Saunders essays “The Braindead Megaphone” and “Buddha Boy” both reveal a writer with an eye for detail, a hunger for truth and a rich inner life.

Written in the aftermath of the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, “The Braindead Megaphone” is a logical, hilarious and terrifying indictment of public debate, especially that part of it manifested in the media. One notable and brief paragraph reveals what is at stake: “A culture’s ability to understand the world and itself is critical to its survival. But today we are led into the arena of public debate by seers whose main gift is their ability to compel people to continue to watch them.”

Whether one favors O’Reilly or Olbermann, it’s hard to deny one of the central assertions of Saunders’s essay, which is that much of what passes for discourse in just commerce. And the result in not pretty or helpful.

Saunders uses a mixture of logic and humor, along with an almost sneaky building-block approach. The essay opens with a brief meditation about “a guy standing in a field in the year 1200.” At first we think this may be nothing more than a humorous piece about our crazy-making high-tech lifestyle. Then, by the end of the second numbered section, some of us are thinking about George W. Bush. By the end of the third section, it’s a full-on “holy crap” moment: we’ve been sucked in.

“Buddha Boy” is twice as long as “Megaphone” and rather than tackling an issue, is an almost entirely chronological narrative of a reporting trip Saunders took to Nepal to see a boy sitting still and meditating, which he had apparently been doing for seven months. As in “Megaphone,” Saunders lulls the reader into thinking the piece is about something less significant than it turns out to be. The first several pages chronicle Saunders’s decision to accept the assignment and the trip to Nepal. Complaints about air travel and the inconveniences of visiting the developing world are not new, but Saunders uses humor, details and creative imagery (“…a button on the overhead console marked Minty Water.”)

As the journey to see Buddha Boy unfolds, Saunders treats us to great descriptions of the sights and sounds (along with the wonder and squalor) of Nepal. Along the way, we get several looks at Saunders’s inner life, and we learn that he’s significantly more open-minded and curious – even eager to believe -- than we expected.

Among the more interesting things about this essay is the juxtaposition of a deep and mysterious subject with the very linear narrative the author uses. Profoundly effective, this approach allows the reader to relax and easily follow the time-arc of the story, leaving the mind and heart open to the fun surprises tucked neatly into the meaning-arc.

73 days...really?

2009-12-30T10:24:00.000-08:00

I'm no stranger to profound, extended periods characterized by low productivity. Long gaps between blog posts are somewhat reflective of my overall productivity, but in this case, seventy- three days of blog silence (or 'postilence' as I like to call it) isn't all bad.

For starters, I have begun some posts that have potential to be interesting, but they each require additional research and time, and it's been a buy time, making that process challenging to complete. Posts in this category include:

a writeup of Ballard's "Gourmet Ghetto," located on NW 70th Street just east of 15th Avenue NW. Packed into one little block are the Honore Artisan Bakery (fabulous, charming French baker) Delancey (cool new pizza place) and A Caprice Kitchen (great, interesting website.) And there's an umbrella store, of all things, where you can buy umbrellas, rent umbrellas and buy a couple of patented umbrella innovations directly from the inventor!
observations from a wine tasting trip to Walla Walla, which we took in October to celebrate our 25th Wedding Anniversary. It was a great trip...we learned a lot about wine, met some winemakers, bought lots of wine and had some great food. Really fun.
Starbucks Via update...I finally got my first shipment of Via in early December. Some of it became a Christmas gift, but I still have enough packets left to do a modest craft project...any suggestions?

In addition, I've picked up some interesting coffee-related work at Sodcutter Communications, which has been very interesting and just time consuming enough to make finding writing time a bit more difficult.

There are also many issues of the New Yorker to catch up on, and I had a great time reading Carl Hiaasen's "Skinny Dip" and have several books I'm working through now -- Matt Miller's Dead Ideas book I mentioned in a previous post, "Manhood for Amateurs" by Michael Chabon and a very interesting biography of Alice Waters of Chez Panisse fame.

Beginning in early January, I'll be a student in a nonfiction writing certificate program offered by the UW Extension program. So I'll have to write, and I'm optimistic that I will be able to "repurpose" work between the blog and class.

Happy New Year!

Sodcutter's influence grows: Steven Colbert weighs in on Mayo v. Miracle Whip

2009-10-19T13:41:00.001-07:00

Last week on the Colbert Report, Steven, having no doubt read my post on Miracle Whip, defended Mayo's honor with so many puns it made my head spin. See it here.

People You Should Know About: Matt Miller

2009-10-12T17:16:00.000-07:00

Matt Miller / American / 1961-

For several months now, I’ve been part of a group of former Starbucks employees who gather weekly for coffee, conversation and encouragement. I’m happy to report that the group has begun to shrink, as several have now found jobs. A couple weeks ago, it was just Kristin Anderson and I. We met at Herkimer Coffee up on Phinney Ridge – a local coffeehouse I’ve been enjoying fairly regularly recently. Good coffee, nice people, and a fun little roasting operation right in the cafe.

When we were finished with coffee, Kristin, who lives in the neighborhood, suggested we visit the local bookseller, Santoro’s Books . I’m a sucker for bookstores, and I do my best to buy local whenever possible, even if it costs a bit more. (And many local bookstores, Santoro’s included, have discount programs that reward you after a certain number of purchases – the discounts aren’t as deep as Amazon or Barnes and Noble, but you essentially get the eleventh book free once you’ve purchased ten.)

When I visit a bookstore for the first time, I like to focus on the feature tables and newer releases, which gives me a sense of how the bookseller perceives their clientele and what books they deem worthy of their customers’ attention. (If I see too many Glenn Beck “books,” for example, I’ve learned that it’s best to slowly head for the door, keeping my eye on the help and my fellow shoppers.) I’m happy to report that Santoro’s has a great selection, with lots of local interest titles, as well as a helpful, knowledgeable staff.

One of the titles that caught my eye was Matt Miller’s “The Tyranny of Dead Ideas: Letting Go of the Old Ways of Thinking to Unleash a New Prosperity.” The title sounded a little cutesy, especially the whole “unleash a new prosperity” bit – it seemed like it might be another happy talk business book. Then I glanced at the dead ideas Miller chose to write about, and the book suddenly had my attention. The dead ideas are:

The Kids Will Earn More Than We Do
Free Trade Is "Good" (No Matter How Many People Get Hurt)
Your Company Should Take Care of You
Taxes Hurt the Economy (and They're Always Too High)
Schools Are a Local Matter
Money Follows Merit

If it were up to me, “Journey was a great band” would also get a chapter, but I think that might distract and offend a few readers. I’m only about sixty pages into the book, but have found it riveting and occasionally alarming. My concern about the future -- given the state of the global economy, the seeming impossibility of our leaders to act, and the odd insistence on the part of so many that “American dominance” is a viable starting point from which to engage the world – is growing weekly. The structure of the book, which lays out the problems associated with all six dead ideas before the whole unleashing of prosperity thing happens will no doubt heighten my anxiety in the weeks ahead. (I’ve thought about skipping ahead after each chapter, but I’ve pretty much decided to trust that Miller wrote it this way for a reason.)

In the introduction to the book, which you can read in its entirety here, Miller lays out three steps for “breaking free of dead ideas,” which we would all do well to apply in many areas of our lives. They are:

Identify the dead ideas that matter. We all believe some pretty wacky things; some of them just help us get through the day, while others probably retard progress, making us less effective. We need some disciplined thought and a little courage to identify the dead ideas that impede progress.
Understand each dead idea’s “story.” It is useful to understand why we believe certain things, where the idea came from, what has changed since the idea was broadly adopted? And whose interest does the dead idea serve?
Reach for new (and paradoxical) ways of thinking. This often involves asking questions people don’t want to answer and proposing solutions (higher taxes!!) people don’t want to consider. But it’s often the only way to fight through a dead idea and make changes.

I’ll devote a few brief posts in the weeks ahead to some of the ideas in the book. Please leave a comment or email me if any of the six dead ideas are of particular interest.

Matt Miller is a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress (one of those lefty outfits) and the host of “Left, Right and Center” on NPR. He worked as an aide in the Clinton White House.

To shill, or not to shill

2009-10-03T12:43:00.000-07:00

I was surprised nine days ago to see an email in my inbox from someone called “Starbucks VIA Moderator.” I knew that the big national launch of Starbucks’s instant coffee product, called VIA, was imminent. I also recalled that I had written a little review of the product in my blog back in February. And I recalled that what I had written was pretty reasonable – my honest opinion, with little editorializing and only few snide asides.

The subject line on the email read “Love that blog!” so I was confident that Starbucks VIA Moderator was not someone in the legal department. Starbucks has a bunch of lawyers, and while I always enjoyed working with them, there is little chance that an email from them concerning something I had written about Starbucks would contain good news. It turns out that they were looking for “user-generated content” about VIA to use on the VIA website. Well, all right, I thought, this could be my big break. The world is full of people whose blogs or tweets or videos are discovered and “go viral,” and the result is often a sort of modern variation on fame and fortune. (For the lucky, this amounts to a brief period of relatively painless notoriety and excruciatingly small additions to bank accounts. The unlucky somehow end up embarrassed and broke, but with at least two lawyers on retainer – one criminal and one to negotiate the book deal, or more likely, a reality show. It’s sort of a choice between “what might have been” and “if I’d known then what I know now.”)

The email promised that my material would be used in such a way that visitors to the Starbucks VIA site who chose to read it would see what I wrote and actually see it on the Sodcutter blog. I thought this seemed pretty cool – the last thing I wanted was for someone to cherry-pick the very best things I said about VIA. So I was leaning towards saying yes.

But wait! There’s more! In addition to the potential for tens of new visitors to my blog, the email also promised me a three-month “subscription” to VIA from the Starbucks Store.com. The definition of a three month supply seemed shockingly generous: three twelve packs per month beginning “by the first of November.” This struck me as lavish, because even acquaintances who’ve said positive things about VIA to me nearly always qualify their praise with comments like “it’s great for backpacking” or “it sure beats bad hotel coffee.” And the truth is, I have not purchased or consumed a single serving of VIA since I had written about the samples I received in February. And not only am I not a backpacker, one of the great joys of our annual family camping trip is hauling out the old Melitta cones and one-cup coffee filters and making coffee each morning.

So after re-reading my original comments about VIA and getting some input from a few friends and having my ex-lawyer wife (she’s an ex-lawyer, not an ex-wife) read the two-page legal document that allows Starbucks to use the material anywhere in the universe and in any media already or yet to be invented (really, that’s in the document), I decided to give the go-ahead.

And oh! What a whirlwind it has been! For about two hours on “launch day,” the first few lines of my article and a link to my blog, though not front and center, were somewhat easy to find. Now, after four days and thousands and thousands of people tasting VIA and “generating content”, my moment has passed, my content buried behind page upon page of headlines like these:

“Livin la VIA loca”

“Via – pretty good”

“SUPRISINGLY WAY BETTER THAN PIKE PLACE.” (not good news for last year’s big breakthrough product!)

“Versatile Means More Options” (also under consideration for inclusion at dictionary.com)

“Haven’t tried it, but I love it.” (what is this, foxnews.com?)

Would I do it all again? Sure I would. Any regrets? None.

But now I either need to take up backpacking, spend some nights in lousy hotels, or figure out what to do with all the VIA coming my way, because I still prefer fresh-brewed coffee. And unlike many of my fellow content generators, I can taste the difference, just as much now as I could in February.

Project Cluck / Part II: Chicken School

2009-09-09T17:05:00.001-07:00

The Hamburg: a fine looking bird

A few weeks ago we headed to the city of Seatac to go to chicken school. Seatac is the “city” that is home to our major airport. I say “city” not to be snide – it’s just that Seatac has only been a city for a dozen or so years and it just seems kind of funny to me. The class was held at City Hall. In the city council chamber. Which is funny in itself, because it’s not like Seatac is a rural community – it’s mostly runways, hotels, parking lots and fast food places. To end all the Seatac talk in this opening paragraph, here’s all you need to know: We spent a night in one of the motels near the airport a couple years ago when we had an early flight the next morning – parking and airport transfers included. In the elevator is a sign. It says “No refunds 10 minutes after check-in.” Peculiar wording aside, two things immediately became clear: 1) the room’s not gonna be very nice and 2) best not to think about this too much.

The class was offered by King County Extension, essentially an outreach by our state’s land grant school, Washington State University. Here is some information about what land grant schools are – it’s pretty cool – basically a law signed by President Lincoln made it possible for the Federal government to grant land to the states; said land was to be used by the states to teach people how to do really useful things, like growing crops and making stuff. Not a bad idea.

I knew I was going to have a good evening after I texted our 14-year old daughter to let her know where would be, when we’d be home (like she cares!) and all that. I told her we were headed to a chicken seminar near the airport. Her response:

You guys are so awesome. CHICKEN SEMINAR.

How could I not be enthused after a response like that?

The Leghorn: a classic chicken

About sixty other people showed up, and it was pretty informative. We’d learned quite a bit on our chicken coop tour and not to boast, but we have become pretty poultry-savvy in a relatively short period of time. One thing about chickens though: there’s nothing really very intrinsically attractive or interesting about them. If you’re not into them, this whole thing doesn't make a lot of sense. So I’ll dispense with lots of chicken facts and just throw out a few highlights from the class, all of which stuck with me because of their strangely euphemistic quality:

There are lots of resources out there, my favorite one being Backyard Chickens.com. (Before you look, guess how they represent the “o” in “com” on their home page!!) From the website comes a chart with over 40 varieties of chickens. Information is provided about their size (two only, standard and bantam); egg size, type and color; comb type (mostly pea or V-shaped, but also single, walnut and buttercup – you’re on your own here); climate hardiness (hot, cold, all); broodiness (frequent, average, seldom –this has to do with the breed’s tendency to sit on the egg and hope it hatches vs. its desire to give it up so you can go inside and make an omelet); and temperament (one to avoid may be the Buckeye – her temperament is described like this: aggressive, friendly, wild, restless. noisy.) Please email me if you’d like to make a smart remark about that descriptor. Anonymity is guaranteed.

The euphemistic high point of the chart, however, comes under the heading labeled “Purpose.” There are three possibilities: egg layer, ornamental and dual purpose. It turns out that “dual purpose” doesn’t mean ornamental / egg layer; it actually means egg layer / meat.

The program included a lot of good information, much of it focused on getting us to really think about the nature of the commitment involved in owning backyard chickens. One slide dealt with the issue of “The geriatric chicken.” As hens age, they lay fewer eggs – though one woman in the crowd who, based on her experience must have thought this was an upper division class, proudly shared that she has a 12-year old hen that laid 80 eggs last year -- still over one per week but nowhere near the 4-5 eggs younger hens produce each week. The bullet point that dealt with this issue, in its entirety:

o Keep for life-span or ?

Here’s a slightly creepy bit of wisdom someone shared: Craig’s List is a good way to find someone willing to pick up your no longer productive hen. I would suggest having them drop by the house while the kids are at school, however.

Finally, this little item on another page of the presentation dealing with day-to-day care and chores, tucked neatly between “Food and water” and “Play time”:

o Cleaning the Vent

Perhaps the capitalized V should have been a tipoff…but this has nothing to do with airflow in and around your coop. It involves a Q-Tip, warm water, and one end of the chicken: the end opposite the one the food goes in. Kids thus far have shown heavy interest in certain aspects of this project, but the Cleaning of the Vent, not so much .

Following the class, we did make on significant decision: where to put the coop. Due to a strange building that was on our patio when we moved in, and I suspect something unpleasant having to do with drainage, there is a nice sized patch of dirt (where we’ve grown some great tomatoes this summer) surrounded by concrete on the patio, in view of the living room. We’re going to put the coop on the concrete, with the dirt area making up the “run” where the hens can spend some outside time. (They’ll also get time in the yard when they can be supervised.) Added bonus: the coop will be just a few feet from the Weber – not that we’re planning to eat the hens, but its ominous black lid and occasional smoke emanating from it may help the training process move along a bit faster.

The Plymouth: A classic dual purpose bird

People You Should Know About: Piet Hein

2009-08-24T17:18:00.000-07:00

Volume II: Piet Hein / Danish / 1905-1996

Discerning the difference between a simple but valuable nugget of wisdom and a horribly tired cliché can be tricky. The context and the medium can sometimes be good clues. Business meetings are of course an opportunity to practice wariness – you never know when you might be handed a “Reach for the Stars Positive Pal Starfish,” offered by the good people at Successories.com, with this explanation:

Let these Positive Pals plush toys work for you - no training necessary! Gifts, incentives, giveaways…these are just a few ideas for using our affordable Positive Pals stuffed animals. Use Positive Pals plush toys wherever a smile is needed!

And affordable they are – just $4.99 in quantities of 250 and up. It’s pretty tempting, really: I believe the “no training necessary” promise, and it’d be nice to forego smiles for a while and just chuck plush at all the overachievers I meet.

I’m happy to report that Piet Hein has nothing to do with Positive Pals. But I did become aware of him in a context that had potential to devolve into cheesy motivational tools. Several years ago, I did some coffee presentations and participated in workshops in Palm Springs as part of Starbucks’s launch of new training programs. The meetings were held at a very cool and authentic mid-century resort; its best days were long in the past, but it was nearly empty and I’m sure the price was right.

At the opening of one of the workshops each participant was given a small, rectangular card, perforated so it could be opened like a greeting card. Breaking the seal revealed a pithy saying; once we read them we were directed to discuss them with our tablemates. Here’s what I saw when I opened mine:

Problems worthy of attack

prove their worth

by hitting back

--Piet Hein

Now this wasn’t life-changing, but in a world where “There’s no ‘I’ in team” passes for wisdom, my little card struck me as pretty meaningful. This was probably in the mid- to late-nineties, which was, as was pretty much always the case, a period of rapid growth and change at Starbucks. I suppose what I like about this little verse (I would soon learn that they were called “Grooks” and that there are hundreds of them.) was that it brought another dimension to the old idea that “if was easy anyone could do it.” For me, it helped crystallize the notion that change, newness, risk – all the things we say are necessary for success – are hard in part because there is always something – a person, an idea, a structure –that would rather see things stay the same. And they hit back. If the problem isn’t big or serious enough to do so, it may not be a problem worthy of our efforts.

So it stayed with me. I kept that little card on my desk for years. And when I got back to the office, I did a little research on Piet Hein – the name seemed a little unusual, so I was pretty sure he wasn’t a motivational speaker from Newport Beach. Turns out he was Danish, and he invented a shape, was a designer, writer, philosopher and more. And internationally, he is considered the third best known Dane of the 20^th century. Can you name either of the other two? (Answers are at the end of this post.)

He invented a shape. That alone seems pretty cool to me. Here’s the story, straight from www.piethein.com :

Harmonic forming in mathematics: The superellipse
Parallel to his poetic work, Piet Hein decided to find an absolutely harmonic physical design. With mathematical intuition he first found the form and then explained it afterwards. His superellipse was to solve the double contrast between the circle and the square and that of the ellipse and the rectangle. By means of mathematics he found a harmonic geometrical figure which was first used on a large scale in connection with the solution to a town planning problem in Stockholm. In a rectangular square, 200 metres long, in Stockholm's centre two motorways were to meet in a gigantic roundabout. The solution was the application of the superellipse to both square and roundabout at the new Sergels Torg. Later on the superellipse has been used in Canada, France, Japan, the US and Mexico in connection with the solution of as different constructions as residential areas and sports centres for example the Olympic Stadium in Mexico City:

Within furniture design the superellipse also became the solution to various problems -especially in relation to Piet Hein's design of tabletops the superellipse became popular. In a three-dimensional version the superellipse became the superegg which has been used for metal versions of various board games, superegg drink coolers and the anti-stress ball. Especially the latter reached an enormous distribution in the 1970s. In addition to his work with the development of the superellipse Piet Hein has executed a great many other design commissions, from board games in wood to the elegant Sinus lamp

If you spend just a few minutes on the website, you’ll likely find something familiar – a design sensibility you may have taken for granted, or even a toy from childhood. Give it a look.

Because I am much more verbal than spatial, it’s the little bits of verse that I find most intriguing about Hein. In 1940, the Danish newspaper Polotiken began publishing Hein’s little poems, which were known as “Gruks” – “Grooks” in English. It’s not clear where the name came from – apparently Hein said it “just came to him.” Others believe it is combination of the Danish words “grin” and “suk” (laugh and sigh). I’d like to think that this is the origin, because so many of them prompt in me those two reactions. So I’m just going to end this with a few of my favorites.

Here’s one about patience:

T. T. T.

Put up in a place

where it's easy to see

the cryptic admonishment

T. T. T.

When you feel how depressingly

slowly you climb,

it's well to remember that

Things Take Time

This one’s just fun:

SOCIAL MECHANISM

When people always

try to take

the very smallest

piece of cake

how can it also

always be

that that's the one

that's left for me?

On being one’s own worst enemy:

ON PROBLEMS

Our choicest plans

have fallen through,

our airiest castles

tumbled over,

because of lines

we neatly drew

and later neatly

stumbled over

And finally, something familiar:

A MAXIM FOR VIKINGS

Here is a fact

   that should help you fight

      a bit longer:

Things that don't actually

      kill you outright

      make you stronger.

To read a whole lot more of these, visit http://tiny.cc/ULoGp

Oh yes: the two 20^th century Danes with more international fame than Piet Hein: physicist Neils Bohr and author Karen Blixen

Miracle Whip Is the New Black!

2009-08-10T15:29:00.000-07:00

“We are Miracle Whip. And we will not tone it down” is the defiant tagline for a new ad campaign for Miracle Whip, which was once known as simply “the Kraft bread spread.” The new Gen-Y focused TV ad first caught my eye a couple weeks ago. While I haven’t rushed out and bought a jar (or a one-gallon vat, which is apparently one of the options), if my Gen-Y daughters request it, we may give it a try.

I found the really cool ad, which you can see here (http://tiny.cc/sAC1w) quite remarkable. For one, it took me back to childhood: ours was a mayonnaise family, and one of my best friends lived in a Miracle Whip household. I should mention that I was somewhat more aware of this kind of stuff than most kids, because my dad worked for General Mills. Though “Big G,” as we called it, was not in the sandwich spread business, (Kraft makes Miracle Whip and appears to be the leader in mayo) I was probably more aware of food and foodlike substances than most kids my age, because where there were choices, we were pretty much limited to General Mills products. Because breakfast cereals were hugely important to Big G and a significant part of my diet, I was keenly aware of foods I ate at friends’ houses that were unavailable at home. So for some reason, the allure of Miracle Whip, which I only experienced elsewhere, was conflated with the frankly superior hedonics of cereals like Cap’n Crunch and Super Sugar Crisp. So all of that is to say that I’ve always been aware that Miracle Whip and mayonnaise are two different things.

The other reason I found the ad remarkable can be summed up with the word “Huh?” I suppose it’s possible that the flavor of Miracle Whip – with is “zing” (more on that word later) and sort of assertive, weird sweet-but-tangy quality – could appeal to the Gen-Y taste buds, which are known to favor extreme (XTreme) flavors. I’ve long suspected that Miracle Whip was invented when someone at Kraft was testing the shelf life of mayonnaise and discovered that just before it’s foul enough to actually sicken someone, mayo takes on a pleasing-to-some tanginess. The food scientist involved no doubt reported this to the product management and marketing people, who rather than thinking of the words “food safety” thought of the words “line extension” or “new product opportunity.”

“It’s a Miracle,” said the product manager.

“I’ll Whip up a deck,” responded the marketer, “and start socializing it with leadership.” And a product was born.

Given the resources that Kraft has, why wouldn’t they just develop a new condiment? In a world where “Baconnaise” becomes news, wouldn’t it make more sense to get something new out there, to try to really create some buzz? I’m sure Kraft looked into this, and perhaps concluded that they were better off spending their money on marketing. And really, given all that’s going on “in the social networking space,” why not skip the headache of product development and just change the way they talk about the product? So in addition to the hip TV ads, they’ve also developed “Zingr.” (Apparently Gen-Y consumers don’t like spelling the whole word if they can avoid it. LOL.) Zingr is “the newest way to add your own flavor to the web. Zing anything you deem worthy of your wit.” You can download Zingr and use it on Facebook to “zing” your friends by adding your own witty remarks, validated by Miracle Whip’s ever-so-right now graphic motif. So we must conclude that Kraft’s research showed that Gen-Y consumers are most interested in products that somehow create synergy between social networking and sandwiches. I can only imagine the marketers at Heinz and French’s scrambling to counteract Zingr: “I know, how about ‘Splat?’” It’d be awesome to splat someone when they write on your wall…we could totally make it look like yellow graffiti…”

In an interview with Media Post, a Kraft spokesperson said, “Many people enjoyed Miracle Whip in the past, but with so many flavor options today, many of them -- especially younger consumers -- have lost sight of this tangy original dressing.” So they’ve ended up in Shredded Wheat territory, which has a campaign going now that boldly states “Progress is overrated” and “We put the no in innovation.” (The Shredded Wheat campaign has a fun series of episodic ads available for viewing at http://thepalaceoflight.com/.) Fair enough – a TV ad that looks like MTV combined with a social networking add-on might do the trick.

But the Kraft spokesperson goes on to say, “We have reinvented Miracle Whip, and we want to bring its one-of-a-kind flavor back in front of younger consumers who might not be thinking about it." Hmmm. Two things:

You are wrong on the first point. You have not reinvented it. The whole point is that you haven’t changed it. (“And we will not tone it down.”)
You are correct on the second point. Younger consumers are not thinking about Miracle Whip

Zing!

Disclaimers and clarifications:

Some of you have noticed that I recently became a fan of Miracle Whip. This is Facebook fandom ONLY, and is for research purposes only. I am a mayo man, though for sandwich-based applications, especially if roast beef is involved, I’ll go with mayo on one slice and horseradish on the other. That’s some real zing.
For the record, mayonnaise predates Miracle Whip by about 180 years. Mayo was invented in France in 1756, but didn’t debut in the US till 1905. Miracle Whip came along in 1933.
Miracle Whip tastes the way it does because it has a whole lot of sugars in it as well as what I’m sure is a secret blend of spices.

People You Should Know About: An Occasional Series

2009-08-03T11:28:00.000-07:00

Volume I: Introductory Remarks

When I was in about third grade my parents gave me a book called “The Golden Book of Quotations.” I still have that book, and still remember a lot of the quotations in it. One of them, attributed to Alexander Dumas, I have found both funny and true since the first time I read it. (“All generalizations are dangerous, even this one.”) I have always enjoyed having little aphorisms like this at my disposal, so I look for them, and I usually remember who said it and where I read it. So I guess I’ve always been curious not just about information, but its source as well. I cannot imagine, for example, loving a book, telling someone about it, and then not knowing the author’s name. In fact, I’m more likely to correctly remember an author’s name than a book’s title.

Now, as a curious adult who has both the time to be curious and easy internet access, I am able to dig a bit deeper when I read a pithy statement or hear an interesting idea, and often I’ll try to learn something about the sources of things I find intriguing. I don’t dig as often as I should, arrogantly assuming that my not having heard of someone is a reflection of their lack of fame or their unwillingness to retain a proper PR firm. Other times, my curiosity gets the best of me and I dig; what I find out is always rewarding.

So that brings me to People You Should Know About (PYSKA). In the coming weeks, prepare to meet some interesting people here at Sodcutter. The folks I plan to write about came to my attention in a variety of ways – including what appeared to be junk mail in one case. I make no claim to have discovered these people, and they have no need of the meager “publicity” an appearance in this blog will provide. So this is really about appreciating the special, unique intelligence that is all around us. I learned about these folks only because I took the time to respond to one tiny jolt of curiosity, and then found that my appreciation of their work grew as a result of knowing a bit more about them. I think the same will be true for you, and I hope over time you’ll share some of you discoveries with me.

2009-07-27T10:20:00.000-07:00

Project Cluck / Part One: Commitment

“I’ve already decided, but it takes Tim a little longer to get committed,” I heard my wife say on the phone to a friend this morning. Whether the central assertion of her statement is true or not is a question for the ages; my immediate need was to figure out exactly what I would eventually be committing to. “The coop tour was great,” she said next, “it was so fun seeing all the different kinds of chickens. It’s going to be really hard to decide which kind to get.” So I guess we’re getting some chickens.

A couple of Saturdays ago we spent about half a day visiting chicken coops, as part of a tour sponsored by Seattle Tilth (www.seattletilth.org). It actually was terrific fun, meeting proud chicken owners and seeing their gardens, coops and chickens…and dogs, cats, goats, etc. The appeal of the whole thing is undeniable. There’s something transfixing about watching hens scuttle about the yard, making funny little sounds; they appear quite self-actualized, especially when, based on how tiny their heads are, it’s not likely there’s a lot going on inside them.

In Seattle, you can have up to three hens (no roosters), plus one additional hen per thousand square feet of land. Because lots of people ask, yes, hens will lay eggs even if there is no rooster about, but said eggs contain no chicks. And –OK, this is odd – you can tell what color eggs a hen will lay based on the color of the feathers on their earlobes. There are a lot of things about the anatomy of the hen I’d rather not know, but it honestly never occurred to me that they have earlobes, let alone that the feathers on them mean anything. Also, other than color, there is no difference between eggs of different shades.

Chickens in America lay about 75 billion eggs a year, about ten per cent of the global total, and we consume over 99% of them here in the US. So each year, American hens (that is, hens living in America) produce roughly 250 eggs per person. Yikes. About sixty per cent of these eggs are used by consumers; the rest are used in processed foods (~30%) and the foodservice industry (~10%). Chinese chickens lay 390 billion eggs a year – about 293 per person. (I’ve heard but have not verified that General Tso’s chicken in particular lays very tasty eggs.) China’s chickens lead the world; I’m not sure if that’s on a per-hen basis or if they just have more chickens. My guess: American hens are the best educated, most productive ones on the planet.

(Click on this link to learn more about chickens and eggs: http://tiny.cc/iShDA. Two caveats: First, the videos are a bit disturbing – not in a PETA sort of way, so no worries there. There’s just something alarmingly earnest (Midwestern?) about the two laptop-toting “students” who guide us through Egg Facts 101, but the Introduction is a “must see.” Second, the American Egg Board, to whose site this link takes you, is not so concerned with the whole “which came first?” part of the conversation, so don’t go looking for that level of discourse on their site. The AEB are the people who bring you the “incredible edible egg” campaign. And we won’t be joining, unless we start buying up the whole neighborhood and tearing down houses – you need 75,000 layers to join. (Our little rambler sits on a 5,980 square foot lot; if we can only have one extra hen per 1,000 feet, we’d need another 15,000 lots at 5,000 square feet each – about 1,722 acres.)

But here’s the thing: based on what I’ve learned thus far about how many eggs a hen can lay in a year, there’s pretty much one hen out there for each of us. And so if there’s a chicken out there laying eggs for me, why shouldn’t it live in my backyard? Perhaps this is part of the appeal of the whole thing – talking to chicken owners; you get an overwhelming sense that having hens is just really satisfying. I wonder if it’s not partly because there’s this happy symbiosis between households and hens? It’s pretty cool, really. And that’s before you start thinking about the living conditions many hens endure, carbon footprint, and all the other stuff we’ve become conditioned to consider as consumers.

I’ll keep you posted on our progress.

The Espresso Dilemma (Solved!!)

2009-07-21T13:59:00.000-07:00

It’s now been five months since my unplanned departure from Starbucks. Of the many adjustments I’ve had to make, several concern coffee acquisition and consumption. Specifically, what products are out there that I’ll like, and how much should I expect to pay for them?

I really like coffee, and I have a bit of a caffeine dependency. I’m not one of those people who drink coffee all day long. I drink more coffee than the average person, but no more than the average coffee drinker. Chances are, if you drink coffee, you drink about 3 cups a day. There is obviously a sense in which caffeine is addictive, but unless you consider crankiness antisocial behavior or believe people resort to crime to feed their habit, it’s hard to make the case that caffeine is addictive in the same way other drugs are. Of course people in the coffee business discuss this whole topic only reluctantly and always euphemistically. “Habituating mood-enhancer,” a phrase I heard from someone at one of Starbucks’s many ad agencies over the years, is perhaps my favorite way to express our reliance on coffee. (Rule of thumb: if you work for Starbucks, you never use an apostrophe with Starbucks, in any situation, for any reason; once you’ve left, you’re on your own to run with this as far as your apostrophal comfort will take you.)

But aside from dependency, for which a wicked, debilitating headache is pretty much the worst-case outcome, the whole matter of paying for coffee is something I’ve had to confront. As a Starbucks employee, one of my benefits was a free pound of coffee every week. In addition to that, I was entitled to a 30% discount in Starbucks stores and could drink all the coffee I wanted at the office, including espresso beverages.

This brings up the whole question of value, which is one of the big business challenges facing Starbucks right now. When coffee is free or deeply discounted, it’s easy to forget what customers pay for it. Over the years, as Starbucks added dozens and dozens of flavors, new drink “platforms” and expanded nationally, it was really easy to have essentially no idea what customers were paying. Prices differed from market to market, but not always in ways you might assume – an area where costs might be higher may also have more competition, which would put downward pressure on prices. Areas with little competition created different issues: in some respects, Starbucks was basically able to establish the value of specialty coffee products in such markets. This opened the door to less sophisticated startups, who could simply match Starbucks pricing, getting premiums they had not earned, and to others who saw the opportunity to undercut the out-of-towners.

One of the first times I really had to think about this question of value was in my early years at Starbucks, when Howard Behar, one of the legendary leaders of the company, wanted to change one feature of the discount policy. In those days, employees were entitled to free beverages, anytime, in any store, whether you were working or not. Howard felt it was important, for a variety of reasons, that we pay at least a discounted price for drinks when we weren’t working. It was pretty controversial – by definition, it seemed to be a “takeaway” – always unpopular. I recall debating this with a colleague who worked in restaurant sales, which meant he spent a lot of time on the road and that he would potentially be affected more than most people. In the end, his admission that it would no longer be worthwhile for him to pull off the freeway for a cup of coffee if it cost him a dollar pretty much proved Howard’s point to me.

So while I always appreciated the value and quality of Starbucks coffee, over the course of almost 22 years, I got used to paying $X for coffee. So now it’s difficult for me to see anything but those discounted prices as the appropriate cost of the product. And the overwhelming majority of the coffee I drank – all that I drank at the office and what I made at home with my free pound – were essentially free. And as the years went by, like a lot of Starbucks customers, I pretty much quit making coffee at home except for on weekends.

My new lifestyle calls for coffee just about every morning at home. I generally make caffe lattes – one with two shots of espresso for my wife and a second for myself, with four shots. (Rule of Thumb: A single shot of espresso has about 75 milligrams of caffeine, about double the amount in a can of Cola. Most things I’ve read suggest limiting daily caffeine intake to 600 milligrams. Check out http://tiny.cc/19gqL to learn more, including how many Kit Kat bars or cans of Red Bull it’d take to kill you.)

My weekly demand for coffee at home is about 294 grams (6 shots x 7 grams x 7 days.) At $10 a pound, (at the low end of regular pricing for good coffee,) that’s about $6.50 a week for coffee beans, and coincidentally about what it would cost for the drinks each day at Starbucks and its competitors. Which reminds me of the first moment during my time at Starbucks when I could see that the business was changing before our eyes. I was managing the store at University Village in Seattle, which was then (and remains) one of the highest volume stores in the portfolio. It was around 1989 or 90, during a time when we sold 1,000-1,400 pounds of coffee by the pound each week. On a Saturday morning, one of the busiest times of the week, a couple came in and ordered a half-pound of Espresso Roast, ground for their home espresso machine, and two double-tall lattes to drink while they shopped at the nearby grocery store. Their purchase totaled $8.20 -- $4.10 for the two drinks and $4.10 for the half pound of coffee. It struck me at that moment that people were happy to spend as much for something that would be gone before they got home as they were for something that would likely be fueling a week’s worth of early mornings. Today’s Starbucks store at University Village is about four times the size it was when I managed it, does probably three times the business, but sells a fraction as much coffee by the pound.

Coffee was only a small part of my life when I joined Starbucks. My wife and I moved to Seattle in 1985. Coffee was already a bigger deal in Seattle than it had been in Phoenix, but nothing like it would eventually become. We had acquired a small espresso machine for home use and frequented the espresso cart at Nordstrom. Up to the time I joined Starbucks, I probably would not have self-identified as a coffee drinker. I liked it alright, but even then I could tell a lot of it wasn’t any good. When I joined Starbucks and began learning about coffee, the taste and style of Starbucks became the lens through which I saw all coffee. That I had the opportunity over the years to really get to know coffee and learn about from the inside, from industry pioneers and in a really fun environment meant only solidified the notion that Starbucks = Coffee. Of course I knew there were other good coffees out there – few at first, then arguably fewer – but now, it seems safe to say there is more good coffee available in the US than any time in the last quarter century, if not longer.

Which brings me to the Espresso Dilemma. Starbucks Espresso Roast is a really terrific blend of coffee, and its taste is so imprinted in my brain and on my tongue that it’s hard to embrace much else. But I have to pay for it now – I bought a pound yesterday, for $10.45. That’s about 97 cents a day for our lattes at home, which is hard not to see as a bargain. Yet – when you’re used to free and you’re unemployed, $10.45 seems like a lot. And frankly, there is part of me that would like to see less of my money go to Starbucks right now. I loved my time there; it was terrific fun most of the time, and Starbucks gave me a chance to see huge chunks of the world and meet famous people. Even so, it’s fun to explore other coffees, and given all that has changed at Starbucks and the rest of the coffee world, saying Starbucks = Coffee no longer works for me.

And so I’ve been trying different coffees at home to make our daily lattes. I’ve acquired coffee in a number of different ways, and for lack of a better way to summarize my findings; I’ll group them by method of acquisition, which essentially revolves around price.

Free. When it comes to free, economists and marketers agree: price matters, and free is a price most people can live with. I count myself among those happy with free. So on a couple of occasions when former Starbucks colleagues have offered me a pound of coffee, I’ve chosen Espresso Roast and found myself in possession of one of my favorite things at one of my favorite prices.

One rainy spring morning, a friend and I headed out on a little tour of Seattle coffeehouses. We visited Café Vita on Capitol Hill here in Seattle and had a lovely time. One of the employees noticed us looking carefully at things, including bags of coffee stored in the retail area and he offered us a tour of the roastery and warehouse, both of which are located behind the café. It was terrific fun and he gave us each a bag of a new blend they’d just come out with, a sort of joint venture they have going with Theo Chocolates. It was a nice gesture and the blend worked nicely for my lattes at home. Theo is an interesting Seattle company, and their partnership with Café Vita is a perfect fit. You can read a bit more at http://tiny.cc/f0xDt.

Shortly after the coffeehouse tour, I was having coffee with another former colleague, Joe Fugere, owner of Tutta Bella Pizza in Seattle (and now Issaquah.) (www.tuttabella.com) Like both Joe and everything on the menu, the coffee at Tutta Bella is authentically Italian. (Joe is actually not Italian, but he is very authentic; based on the respect he enjoys from the Italian barista in the Columbia City restaurant and the surprising number of Italians coming in for coffee, he might as well be.) Joe uses Attibassi Espresso from Italy, which he and his team selected after trying just about every coffee around. Read a bit about the coffee here: http://tiny.cc/g8IiT. For a person of my background, using this coffee at home was nothing short of scandalous. Like most Italian espresso blends, this coffee includes some robusta beans. (Rule of Thumb: Over 70% of the coffee in the world is arabica, the generally-regarded-as-superior of the two commercially important species of coffee. But there’s plenty of bad arabica out there, and most lousy coffee in the US is lousy not because of robusta, but because of stale, cheap, crappy versions of the good stuff.)

I had a cappuccino at Tutta Bella, and it was carefully prepared, beautiful to look at, and very tasty. It was easy to tell that there was some robusta in the blend, but the claim that these beans add body and aid the formation of a lovely crema on top of the espresso clearly seems to be true. Both these things, along with Joe’s graciousness and the barista’s skill, made it easy to say yes when Joe offered me a bag of the coffee to use at home.

To be frank, I struggled with the coffee when I used it at home. The home machine I have, like all home machines, is no match for a great commercial unit like they have at Tutta Bella. (My home model is a fairly new machine Starbucks sold, the name of which I can’t even begin to conjure up…I do remember there was a big marketing push behind it and that some of the design work was apparently done by BMW.) It’s a decent and reliable machine, and the espresso shots made from the Attibassi beans looked beautiful. The taste, however, was a bit disconcerting to me. The flavor of the robusta beans is just plain foreign to me and I couldn’t get past it. My wife had no trouble with it, I should say, and that means quite a lot in that she takes her latte at more “normal” strength and is a pretty observant drinker. (In fact, her strongest negative reaction to date has been the morning I opened a fresh bag of Starbucks – she found it harsh compared to whatever we’d drunk the prior day.)

To this point, the answer to the price/value question is a resounding “Duh”: Free coffee is good, at least when you know the people I do. There are no doubt gifts of coffee out there so heinous that I would not drink them; however, I believe that receiving a gift graciously is a mark of maturity, as is knowing what to do with gifts others may make better use of.

Not free. After carefully researching the matter, I’ve come to the conclusion that all coffee is either free or it’s not free. The price of free coffee seems to be fixed at $0.00. (I wonder if we need the government to investigate this. Collusion?) There is WAY more price variability in coffee that is not free, largely due to the ongoing practice of price discounting in grocery stores.

I’m fond of grocery shopping, all things considered. I rarely go more than a few days without at least a quick trip to the store—I prefer to buy produce no more than a day or two before its intended use, and when I’m cooking dinner, I don’t generally plan the meal several days in advance. (You never know what you’re going to be in the mood for, and when you have the luxury of time, it makes sense to use it.) So now that I have to buy most of my coffee, I’ve gotten in the habit of checking coffee prices regularly.

There is pretty much always something on sale, either in the bulk bins or within the packaged coffee selections. I’ve come to the conclusion that there’s just too much risk involved in buying coffee from the bins in grocery stores – the risk of stale coffee just seems too great. Not only is it impossible to know how long the coffee has been in the bins, it’s unclear to me how fresh the coffee they use to refill the bins really is. And even good coffee tastes lousy when it’s stale.

Most of the pre-packaged coffee in grocery stores is sold in 12-ounce bags. I know that a one pound bag (16 ounces / 454 grams) of Starbucks Espresso Roast costs $10.45 at a Starbucks store. That’s just sixty-five cents an ounce, so unless I am getting something really good or paying a very low price, the one-pounder at Starbucks is my default. The coffees I like – such as Peet’s, (Major Dickason’s Blend, sold for $13.95/lb at Peet’s stores; www.peets.com) some of Café Vita’s blends (especially Café Luna, sold for $13.50/lb in their café; www.cafevita.com) and a few others, are usually $9.99-11.99 for the 12-ounce bag. This translates to $13.32 to $15.98 per pound. So basically, the threat of a crushing caffeine withdrawal-induced headache is the only rational reason for me to pay for coffee if it’s not “on deal,” as they say in the grocery trade.

If I can buy coffee I know I like for sixty-five cents an ounce, I shouldn’t pay more than $7.80 for a 12-ounce bag. Given how grocers price things, $7.99 is the price I’m usually looking for. So any price that is >0 and <$8.00 will usually entice me to buy multiple units of a coffee I know I like. It’s obviously possible to spend much more or much less on coffee than sixty-five cents an ounce. Do either at your own peril, however.

Finally, having worked through this exercise, I realize that I know longer have a dilemma. I know what I like, how much I need, and what I’m comfortable paying for it. I shall now apply these same principles to our health care dilemma. Don’t hold your breath.

Instant Coffee, Starbucks Style

2009-02-26T16:45:00.001-08:00

I was surprised and delighted to receive a 2-pack of Starbucks VIA Ready Brew in the mail yesterday. I've been eager to try it, as I've heard from friends and former co-workers that it's quite good.

Instant coffee has never been anything like a regular part of my personal beverage portfolio. I can remember my dad making really instant coffee--his preferred method was to dissolve the powder in tap water then heat the mixture in the microwave oven, presumably to a ready-to-drink temperature, not wanting to be bothered to actually heat the water. Adults do strange things.

A trip to India to visit tea gardens provided another instant memory, as well as providing insight into the mind of the coffee drinker. Our guide for part of the trip, a very charming veteran of the tea business, was a coffee drinker. So even when we were staying in the house at the tea garden itself, where the fragrance of freshly fermented and delicious tea hung in the air, he demanded coffee each morning. It was clear from where the jar of crystals was kept, how long it took the host to find it and the condition of the jar that he was the only coffee drinker around, and that he had likely been served from that same jar for several years. We asked him how he could pass up such delicious tea in favor of clearly lousy coffee, he said simply, "I am a coffee drinker."

So instant coffee isn't something I've ever drunk --I've tasted it over the years, mostly in the context of work. I was not much of a coffee drinker before discovering specialty coffee in the mid-80s, shortly before I began working for Starbucks. So to me, the typical instant coffee simply isn't coffee. It may be warm, brown and occasionally drinkable, but it fundamentally doesn't taste like coffee. Its aroma is more like sweet cooked grain of some sort than it is like coffee. The flavor is vaguely sweet and toasty, but not what I think of as coffee.

The idea of a truly good-tasting instant coffee is certainly intriguing, and I never had any philosophical opposition to it. I was aware of and vaguely on the periphery of some of the early work done on instant coffee at Starbucks. The full flavor and high quality of every coffee in the Starbucks lineup created an enormous challenge, especially if matching the taste of fresh-brewed was the goal.

I'm not privy to what I would call the "sausage-making" aspect of the birth of VIA, and could not write about it if I was. So my reactions to what I received in the mail yesterday simply reflect my views as a guy who loves coffee and is more educated about coffee than the average consumer. (I honestly don't now how soluble coffee is made well enough to describe the process in a way that would be illuminating.)

OK, to start with, I was struck by the fact that the most eye-grabbing element on the mailer is the word INSTANT--all caps, bigger font than anything else. There is also a small Starbucks logo and a slightly larger "Starbucks VIA Ready Brew" identifier--since it's just plain text, I won't use the word "logo." The ingredients of the product are soluble coffee and microground coffee.

So...how did it taste? The packet contained one "stick" each of Italian Roast and Colombia. I tried the Italian Roast first because everyone I've spoken to both inside and outside Starbucks told me this was the better of the two offerings.

The first thing I noticed was the aroma, which was very pleasant, thanks to the presence of the microground coffee, an addition to the product that no doubt adds cost but makes it look and smell more like coffee. That great aroma disappeared pretty much immediately when I added the hot water; it was replaced with the smell that to me is instantly recognizable as soluble coffee. It was augmented by the smell of the microground coffee mixed with the hot water...which is NOT the same smell as the in-the-cup smell of freshly brewed coffee. Flavor-wise, I was surprised by the sharp/bitter taste of the coffee, and as it cooled, by the presence of some acidity in the cup. Both of these may sound bad, but they are very unusual in an instant coffee product. The bottom line for me: way above average for instant coffee, but not a match or substitute for fresh-brewed.

The Colombia smelled worse but in some ways tasted better. It was not the Starbucks Colombia I have known over the years, by any stretch. But because it's not a dark roast like the Italian (at least I assume that's what accounts for the difference), there is in some ways a fuller range of coffee flavor in the Colombia. It's clearly more lively and acidic than the Italian, so in that sense it's a more "complete" cup. However...it's not the cup for me. As impressive as it is to have this much coffee flavor in a soluble product, it doesn't hit the mark for me as a) fresh-brewed or b) the taste of Starbucks I know and love.

Even so, these are the best-tasting instant coffees I've ever had.

This post is already close to the length at which an apology is normally made. So I'll save thoughts on when I might use VIA, the value proposition and other observations for another time.

The Big Five-0

2009-02-24T10:12:00.000-08:00

Today is my 50th birthday. It's kind of shocking, really. I remember when I was maybe ten or twelve years old chatting with friends about the year 2000. We all reasonably assumed we'd be alive to see it, but that we'd be quite aged--most of us turned 41 that year. Fifty was simply beyond our comprehension.

I tend to compare myself each year with how I remember my parents at the same age. One thing that makes that difficult is that my folks, like many in their generation, had kids earlier than we did. So when my day was 50, I was 25. My girls are 15 and 14--growing up for sure, but still kids in most ways. This is one reason being 50 feels really different than I thought it would.

So having kids who are still kids keeps me feeling young, and having worked around so many people younger than I am does too. So there is not a lot of anxiety about being 50. And one great thing about "middle age" is that I can legitimately claim to have learned some things about life AND I'm still young enough to make changes and act on the things I've learned. That's a real blessing.

Nothing Stays the Same

2009-02-23T12:38:00.000-08:00

A harrowing experience with a rented power tool inspired me to start a blog. Being laid off 12 days ago revived my interest in blogging and also freed up quite a few hours in my day. So I'm going to attempt to chronicle the job hunt process here, as well as pass on other bits of information and insight that interest me.

Here's my starting point: Anyone out there have any pointers for me? Or any jobs?

Concrete Plans

2008-09-20T10:07:00.000-07:00

We've found someone to build the concrete steps in the front yard. This is a real sign of progress, as it will help give some shape and substance to what we're doing. We also have someone doing a bit of design work for us, so things are really moving.

The concrete work was supposed to start this past Wednesday, but Stacy got a call from the guy on Sunday. He was out elk hunting and was not planning to be back working if he didn't have an elk. The season ends tomorrow, so he'll be back in town and will hopefully start on Monday. Stacy was gracious about it, going so far as to say that while she normally comes down squarely on the side of the animals in the whole hunting equation, she would be rooting for him.

In the meantime, we've once again used a gasoline-powered tool in the yard. I'm happy to report that the roto-tiller is far superior machine to the sod cutter.

Several Things

2008-09-10T20:31:00.000-07:00

I am surprised by how long it's been since my last post. We've been pretty busy, what with the Olympics, political conventions, school starting and of course, yard work. So in no particular order, here are a few comments on recent goings-on:

If the milkman is here, it must be Wednesday. I've always been pretty time-and-date conscious; I think I started wearing a watch in about second grade. (Today I have no idea where my watch is.) The work week has certain patterns and markers such that I pretty much always know what day it is. But a couple weeks ago, I spent a good five minutes sitting in the living room trying to figure out what day it was. I'm sure it was during the Olympics, when it was never quite clear what day it was--between China being 15 hours ahead of us and watching events live on Canadian TV and then seeing them rehashed and repeated seemingly a couple days later on NBC -- it got confusing at times. But once I realized the milkman had come that day, I finally knew for certain it was Wednesday.
Appliance Day. We took the plunge and bought some new appliances from my favorite purveyor, Albert Lee Appliance here in Seattle. We've replaced our fridge and washer/dryer, all of which are 10-14 years old. We got one of those cool front-loading, money-saving washers and a much better dryer than we had before. We bought a dishwasher too, but need to have some plumbing done before it can be installed. And we had to get an electrician out to change the outlet from a range outlet to a dryer outlet. We weren't aware of this condition and don't know what its implications are in terms of drying speed, but a load of clothes that formerly took over 2 hours to dry now dries in 34 minutes. (It is also the case that the new high efficiency washers like the one we bought remove more water during the spin cycle, so they go into the dryer considerably less wet than with the old technology.)
Retro-appliance acquisition. Stacy's sister visited from Arizona, and delivered a juicer that Stacy's mom is no longer using. It's an Acme (really!) Juicerator 5001. Not sure how old the actual machine is, but the manual that came with it has a 1962 copyright date. The manual is hilarious and worthy of a whole separate post at some point. Anyway, aside from some frequent problems with extreme vibration, I'm really enjoying making carrot-apple juice blends.
Food find. We went to Home Depot today (the one on Aurora around 120th Street in the north part of Seattle.) Bought some plants and a rake, and as we were leaving we noticed a "taco trailer" and decided to try it. It's nestled in among some nice old trees in the north end of the parking lot, and has a nice little seating area and great music. The food is prepared inside a rather slick looking black trailer. It's called "El Camion" ("the truck") and the food was very tasty. I had a pork tamale, which featured a very smooth, silky layer of masa surrounding a spicy pork mixture. Also a small soft taco with carne asada. We also tried a quesadilla. All were excellent, and it appears to be very popular with many of the Hispanic workers in the area--always a good sign.
Sarah Palin. I have to say something, or a few somethings. First: how do you run against a skit? McCain and Palin appear to be basing their wacky act on Dana Carvey's grumpy old man and Church Lady skits from Saturday Night Live. Second: nobody knew for sure when McCain selected her whether she was qualified. To me, the very nature of the campaign proves that she is not--she is simply playing a character, based partly on her own "story" but mostly created by the McCain campaign. It's simply not real, and her script is made up almost entirely of lies and insults. The McCain-Palin ticket should not be taken seriously. Third: I don't think Barack Obama is perfect, but for the Republicans to seriously question his experience and qualifications relative to Palin's is absurd. He has endured 19 months of intense scrutiny and won a gruelling battle to secure the nomination. She was the impulsive choice of one desperate man.

Today's Lessons From the Garden

2008-08-21T18:15:00.000-07:00

"Garden" sounds better than "yard."
When you decide to move a plant, it's a plant. When you actually move it, it's a tree.
I now believe there is a strong correlation between how long it takes to dig out a plant and how difficult it will be to move it, as well as to the size of the hole required for successfully re-planting it.
I will no longer assume that living things roughly twice my height are easy to move.
There are a lot of metaphors in the garden. I believe they are a type of fern.

What Not Working Feels Like

2008-08-19T21:52:00.000-07:00

As mentioned earlier, I am taking six months off work. After 21 years of employment at a well-known coffee company, I’m taking advantage of a benefit offered by the company. In short, I’m taking six months off work without pay and returning to essentially the same job I have now.
As it turns out, the company I work for is going through some difficult times; many people I have known for years have lost their jobs in the last few months. So there is a lot of uncertainty and anxiety about the future, which makes this an interesting time not to be there. On the one hand, I’m happy to be out of what had become a very challenging environment in which to work happily. But…not being there to support others and try to contribute is difficult – not to mention that because of the situation the company is in, it’s not at all clear what might be going on when I return.

Overall, though, this is a great time to be away; I was ready for a break and there are few better places to spend a summer than Seattle. Because this is an opportunity many never get, people are curious about it. Lots of people ask me what I’m ‘doing,’ as if keeping busy is either a) important or b) difficult. The quickest good answer I have is that I have quickly become really involved in my life, and it is really fun.

I’m not a workaholic; my habit is to arrive at the office just before 8:00 and leave just after 5:00. But…when one works at the same place for 21 years, especially a place where high emotional involvement with co-workers and the company, work can easily become something close to all-consuming. When you’re not at work, you think about work; the more you care, the more you think about it…and when things aren’t going particularly well, it’s a recipe for lots of angst. So while living that way doesn’t sound like much fun and is a bit self-indulgent, it’s a way of life that’s terribly easy to get used to.

Thankfully, it was easier than I thought it would be to leave the angst behind. One reason for this is that I actually am really busy—but it’s not the kind of busyness that comes from over-scheduling or even trying to keep busy. I consciously prepared for the time off work, and decided (with the help of a Life Coach!) to focus the summer on just enjoying the family and establishing some new habits and patterns—routine stuff like exercise, cooking, reading, grocery shopping and consciously doing nothing at times. These routines use up quite a bit of time, and I've found that approaching them intentionally (seeing them as opportunities to learn or have fun rather than as a nuisance) adds texture and meaning to each day. Taking more time to cook a simple meal, for example, is a very pure form of fun for me, and it increases the enjoyment of the food. Working in the yard is great exercise and has already affected the way I think about and value different types of work.

Learning to value these things as part of life rather than necessities that exist on the periphery (or as someone else’s responsibility) is a great lesson. And it’s a lesson that will inform the second part of my time away, which is more about the future, beginning when the kids go back to school in a couple of weeks. (Though it is apparent that the yard work will continue well into 2009.)

Vrtually Wordless Yard Update

2008-08-19T17:39:00.000-07:00

Rather than a long description of what's been going on, I thought I'd just use one simple PowerPoint slide to provide an update. It's a bit smaller than I thought it would be; the top bar represents how much we have bitten off, and the bottom bar how much we can chew. The four items on the left are Sod Removal, Shopping, Design Work and Physical Labor.

Sod Update and A Couple Other Things

2008-08-11T22:17:00.000-07:00

Yard Update
First things first: Hertz decided not to charge us for the damage to the Ryan. Apparently what we did was mild compared to the frustration-fueled harm done by the average renter.

Last Thursday the remainder of our grass was removed and our big tree had some work done. There's a lot less tree now but it looks good and has created a lot more light in the front yard and in the kitchen.

We were strangely relieved that it took three people most of a day to complete the work that Stacy and I started. They had the same model Ryan Sodcutter we used, and they struggled with it almost as much as we did. It took two of them to maneuver the thing, using essentially the same method Stacy and I employed.

Since then we've bought and planted a few things, lest our neighbors worry or the dirt somehow asserts its own will. We have a general idea what we want to do, but we'll consult with a friend who is a landscape designer next week too, just to be sure we're not making any huge mistakes. The weather was great today and it was fun to get out there and get dirty, sweat a little and make some progress. Still plenty of digging to do.

I also had a chance to visit a great nursery, Swanson's, (http://www.swansonsnursury.com/) located in the north part of Ballard. They've been in business since 1924 and are obviously a local institution. Tons of cool plants and I discovered that there is LOTS of great gardening gear -- great looking tools that appear to be very well-designed and represent a huge upgrade over our old and rusty implements. Check out this great-looking cultivator (a hand tool that apparently helps one cultivate) made by Radius:

Beets
We joined a Community Supported Agriculture farm this summer. In the early going it was tough to eat all the leafy greens that made up pretty much the whole delivery. In recent weeks we've started getting some real vegetables including green beans, squash and onions. And beets. Red beets two weeks ago, then golden beets this past week. I would not characterize myself as a beet lover. Until a couple of years ago, my experience of beets was pretty much limited to the pickled beets that were always the black sheep of the hamburger garnish family. (I also know this: Jordan High School in Sandy, Utah uses "Beetdiggers" as the nickname for its sports teams; apparently a lot of beets are grown in Utah.)

Anyway, I found a recipe for sea bass with beet sauce and beet greens and made it last Friday (substituting fresh ling cod for the $26/lb previously frozen sea bass they had at the store.) It turned out quite good and was easy. I roasted and then pureed the beets, adding balsamic vinegar, soy sauce and some sauteed garlic. The greens were sauteed in butter and some fresh ginger root and were great. There are tons of beet recipes on epicurious.com, so give them a try. Don't forget the greens--they're really good.

Working Hard AND Hardly Working

2008-08-05T18:32:00.000-07:00

So...I'm not working these days, or I should say I'm not at work. I'm one month into a six-month sabbatical from my job. I have been employed for 21 years by a well-known roaster and retailer of coffee. This blog may ocasionally mention coffee...but it's not about coffee or my job. It's about what I'm doing while I'm not working.

I hadn't planned on doing a blog, but today I decided that I would, because of the Ryan Sod Cutter we rented. We actually rented two, because the one we started with was damaged in a freak sod-cutting accident.

Today was the day we decided to kick off an ambitous project in our yard. Bascially our plan is to remove all the grass and replace it with cool plants, groundcover and a new pathway to the door. As the day went on, it became clear that had a passerby asked Stacy and I if we were 'working hard or hardly working,' the only honest answer would have been 'both,' hence the title of my first entry. I'm pretty sure today's effort, on a blistering hot 87 degree day here in Seattle, yielded the most modest results possible relative to the effort expended. So modest, in fact that I now have an excellent argument for skipping the whole 'trying' thing should it arise in the future. I suspect the Professional Landscaper who's coming out tomorrow to give us an estimate on finishing the job will agree.

So, what is a Ryan Sod Cutter?

Let's be clear: Ryan is the First Name is Turf Renovation. (The second name will probably be Rainbow of Magnolia Landscaping and Design.) A sod cutter is essentially an immovable object powered by a gasoline engine. It appears to be mounted on two 'wheels' but the benefits traditionally associated with wheels were not evident. Here are some of its features, along with some comments based on our experience today:

Good Balance, Easy Handling - Maximum traction and self-propelled action - 95% of the machine’s weight is on the knob tread drive wheels. I don't suppose they'd sell many of these is they were truthful here, since not many people would choose a machine that is 'prone to tipping and difficult to move.'

Power for the Long Haul - Available with a 5.5-hp Honda® or a 6-hp Briggs & Stratton®; Built to last cast-iron gear case. We had the Honda. It did seem to have adequate power, but not all components are designed to withstand impact wtih our nieghbor's rockery. Also, for the record, I am more of a Briggs & Stratton man.

Easy Depth and Blade Angle Adjustment for Varying Soil Conditions - Optional trenching and mole blade attachments. Whatever.

Optional Tote Trailer for On-Road Trailer Use - Transports Jr. Sod Cutter, Lawnaire® IV and V Plus aerators. I don't think the trailer would have been much help, unless it came with a skilled Sod Cutting Professional.

Choice of Sod Widths - Available in either 12” or 18” cutting widths. We went with the 12 inch. I think the larger model would have been a real mistake.

Why cut sod, and why now?

We chose sod cutting becuase it is purported to be an easier and quicker method for removing grass than using forks and spoons.

To answer the question with a tad less bitterness, removing the grass is something Stacy has wanted to do for quite a long time. I've generally thought it was a nice idea, because Stacy has done excellent landscaping in the parts of the yard she has devoted attention to. But it seemed like it would require either a lot of work or a lot of money. (Or, in the case of our approach, both.)

Stacy has worked a lot on the yard over the years, but the portion that is still grass, which I supose is technically my responsibility, isn't real exciting. It features quite a lot of moss and dandelions, both of which predate our moving in fifteen years ago, though they are thriving now to a degree greater than what our neighbors would prefer. The plan is to preserve the yard as a habitat for birds and squirrels, grow a few herbs and a bit of food, and generally replace the grass with mostly native plants. We also plan to have a proper walkway (likely an offset series of concrete steps) put in from the street to the front door, along with some lighting. This will make life better for pizza deliverymen, so it's all worthwhile.

What next?

There are still a few details to wrap up, such as the final bill from the Hertz Equipment Center in Ballard. The mechanic will be in tomorrow to assess the damage to the first unit we rented. It basically tipped over on some rocks. It may or may not have fallen a foot or so. I know I jumped down into neighbor's yard to avoid injury. It may or may not have fallen down there too. It seemed like it did, but Stacy disagrees and we're both pretty sure we wouldn't have been able to lift the thing if it had. Apparently there are plastic parts inside the sturdy metal cover that protects that rope you pull to start it. There were no injuries.

The Professionals will be here tomorrow to finish the job, and also to do some work on the big tree in the front yard, which is thankfully healthy but in need of some help.

We won't begin planting for a while, as we have to work on the soil a bit. We aren't planning on renting a tiller.