Author: Dave

Five hundred posts would suggest I have something to say… This blog was born from a desire to elevate the English language, highlighting eloquent words from days gone by. The stories I share are snippets of life itself, and each comes with a bonus: a dusted-off word I hope you’ll go on to use more often. Read “Deutschland-ish Improvements” to learn about my backyard European wish list. Try “Slush Fun” for the throwback years of the 7-Eleven convenience store. Or drink in "Iced Coffee" to discover the plight of the rural French cafe. On the lighter side, read "Late Night Racquet Sports" for my adventures with our latest moth invasion. As Walt Whitman said, “That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.” Here then, my verse. Welcome to Life In A Word.

Creatures of Habit

WHAT IF Starbucks decided to close its stores for a whole day? Imagine, you’re driving to work with early-morning brain fog, you pass by the most convenient Starbucks, and from the street you see a big “CLOSED” sign behind the glass. Not to be denied, you head for the drive-thru, but your access is blocked by green cones (everything matches at Starbucks). You’re still in denial, so you pull into a parking space, get out of the car, and peer through the darkened windows. Horrors. Your 7×24 caffeine-addiction fixer-upper (well, almost 7×24, but who craves coffee at 3am?) has taken the day off. Are you getting a case of the jitters just reading this paragraph? Is this a Catch-22, because you can’t think up another coffee option until you’ve actually had your morning coffee?

We had a little “sip” of this scenario earlier this week, didn’t we? For reasons that were relevant-today gone-tomorrow (maybe), Starbucks took the high road and delivered several hours of anti-bias training to its employees, closing 8,000 locations in the process. For one interminably-long afternoon and evening on Tuesday, you had to search a lot harder to find your grande no-whip Caramel Macchiato. When Starbucks’ announcement lit up the front-page headlines last week, my first thought wasn’t, “the lines are about to get longer at the bathrooms” (though admittedly, it’s a legitimate concern since I’m a man of frequent visits), nor was my first thought, “we’re about to see a lot of, uh, interesting people at Starbucks now” (because we already do, don’t we?) Rather, my thought was, “how the heck are we gonna cope with several hours of no-Starbucks, when 100 million patrons – you read that right – frequent their stores every week?”

In a related headline, an economist claimed this one-time Starbucks shutdown would cost the company $12 million and be a boon for “coffee competitors” like McDonald’s and Dunkin’ Donuts. Laughable. I know those restaurants have their fair share of coffee allegiance these days – if you consider “fair share” less than 1%. No, the world didn’t rotate off its axis on Tuesday, but I also won’t promise patrons didn’t line up at the Starbucks drive-thru hours before the open on Wednesday morning. Our Starbucks habit was ingrained at an early age, well before the competition stepped up. Howard Schultz is a genius.

More likely, the impact of Tuesday’s shutdown is what I refer to as the “Chick-fil-A effect”. If you’re a fan of CFA, you’ve known from the get-go their stores close on Sundays. It’s a simple building block of the founder’s philosophy: CFA employees should spend their Sundays resting and at worship, with family and friends. Now, you might pass Chick-fil-A on a Sunday and think, “Closed. What a nice gesture – more companies should do that.” But I’m pretty sure you’re actually thinking, “Damn – I was really craving a #1 meal, hold the pickle, w/ lemonade”. And that thought will stay with you until Monday. And Tuesday, And Wednesday, or whatever day you next pass by Chick-fil-A. Maybe their alt-slogan should be, “Closure Makes the Heart Grow Fonder” or something like that. It’s as much a business strategy as a thoughtful benefit for CFA employees. On that note – trust me – Starbucks will make up Tuesday’s lost business by the time I hit the “publish” button on this post.

Nothing Bundt Cakes (“Home of the Most Delicious Bundt Cakes Ever!”) is kinda sorta the same animal as Chick-fil-A. For reasons suspiciously vague, NBC allows its franchisees the option to close on Sundays. Google your NBC’s hours before you head over for a white chocolate raspberry bundt or a lemon bundtlet. The next time you find their doors unexpectedly locked, I predict your dreams will be relentlessly invaded by dozens of little flying bundtinis – at least until you satisfy your craving with a purchase. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Here’s the irony about today’s musing: I’m typing my post from a Starbucks. I’m sitting quietly at a table, enjoying a grande cold brew with a touch of cream. The baristas are unusually perky (surely a side effect of their recent training). The restaurant feels quiet and “inclusive”. In other words, I didn’t cry over spilt coffee on Tuesday. Instead, I just proved my theory. a) Tuesday afternoon I couldn’t go to Starbucks. b) I wasn’t even planning to go. c) The store closures were in the headlines, which inserted “caffeine denial” into my brain. d) Here I am, just two days later, getting my Starbucks on again.

Touché, Mr. Schultz.

Tryst With a Twist

I’m leaving my wife for another woman. There, I said it.

I never thought it would come to this; I really didn’t. My wife and I have been together for thirty-one bliss-filled years – as smooth and as satisfying a marriage as one could hope for. And yet, tomorrow afternoon, I’ll catch a ride to the airport, kiss my beloved goodbye, and board a one-way flight to Las Vegas. All my worldly possessions stay behind, save for the overnight bag in my hand and the wad of cash in my pocket. When I get there, I’ll dress up, head over to one of the finer restaurants on the Strip and reunite with a woman over thirty years my junior. We’ll smile at each other and raise our glasses in anticipation. A new adventure will commence.

Now then, let’s shed a little more light on my tryst, shall we? Yes, I’m leaving my wife (but only for a day and half). Yes, I’m going to Sin City on a one-way ticket (but then I’ll turn around and drive back home the next day). And yes, I’m meeting up with a woman thirty years my junior. She also just happens to be my daughter.

Here’s the detail. After a year of living and working in Los Angeles, our youngest has decided to return to Colorado to give Denver a try (the “new adventure” I refer to above). The drive between those cities – if you’ve ever done it – is Las Vegas and a whole lot of nothing else. Imagine a twenty-hour jaunt in a lunar rover on the moon, only somewhere along the way you get thirty minutes in Disneyland. That’s LA to Denver: no people (at least, no sane ones) and a whole lot of cactus, dotted with a single oasis of slot machines and casino-hotels. Come to think of it, I’d wager big money the moon is more interesting than LA-Denver, especially the never-ending portion of the drive known as southern Utah.

Anyhoo, (to use a word from my daughter’s unique vocabulary), I’m sharing the Vegas-to-Denver drive with her – responsible father that I am – fully fourteen of the twenty hours it takes from Los Angeles. Somehow the idea of my daughter and her cat all alone in the desert doesn’t sit well with me.

The more I ponder this little adventure, the more I wonder if I shouldn’t be worried more about my time in Vegas. Think about it. I’ll show up at the hotel, and the front desk will undoubtedly eye my much-younger companion from head-to-toe. “Oh!”, I’ll say with a sheepish grin, “she’s my daughter.” Yeah, right pal, your ‘daughter’. When I arrive at the restaurant for dinner, the maitre d’ will say, “Sir, if you and your – uh – ‘niece’ will follow me, I’ll show you to your table.” Or let’s say I get my daughter to blow on the crap table dice for luck. Stink eyes all the way around. Hey big spender; who’s your prom date?

This is a no-win situation. Short of a blood test and a doctor’s proclamation, “Holy cow, they’re actually related!”, I’m destined to a jackpot’s worth of dirty-old-man looks in the next few days. At least I won’t be mistaken for a gigolo.

What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas. Sorry, I beg to differ. I’ll be pleased as punch to share the intimate details of my time with my “other woman” in Sin City. Heck, maybe I’ll even make it my next blog post. We checked into the hotel. We went to dinner. Dropped a few quarters into the slots. Went to bed early so we’d be rested up for the long drive head. Riveting reading, huh?

Rumble in the Jungle

Last Friday, a Miami prep school put on a senior prom. The party included the usual accoutrements: decorated tables surrounding a darkened dance floor, strobe lights sweeping in rhythm to the blaring music, and the students themselves, dressed in never-be-seen-in-again styles and colors. The theme (there’s always a theme at prom) was “Welcome to the Jungle”, played out through the room’s exotic backdrops and fabricated trees. Somewhere during the festivities, a pair of fire-eaters put on a show. And eying everything that moved, from a cage at the edge of the dance floor? One extremely agitated, very-much-alive, time-for-dinner, full-grown Bengal tiger.

I had to watch the video (here) to believe the headline, but yes, snopes.com – true story. A tiger went to prom. Judging from the size of the cage and the attitude of the animal, it’s no wonder the authorities were all over this one, from the Florida Fish & Wildlife Commission to PETA. The students – er, administrators – will “have some ‘splainin’ to do, Lucy”. For starters, where the heck did Principal Pugh find a Bengal tiger for rent? And then, did Pugh and his staff really think students would want to see said tiger up close and personal? My date wouldn’t have been impressed as I peed in my tuxedo pants.

Prom wasn’t always this way. Once upon a time it was entertainment enough to simply go to a high school gathering off high school grounds. Prom was more about the one time you got to borrow Dad’s fancy car; the one time you could be at one of your town’s finer hotels as a minor; the one time you could stay out past curfew (oops; discovered that last one wasn’t actually true after the fact). Prom was simply dinner and a dance; 95% perspiration and 100% awkward moments.

I can’t remember how I asked my date to prom. These days, the asking is an event all of its own. “Promposals” – as the ladies now expect – are supposed to be “creative, elaborate, and over-the-top” invites. A Breaking Bad fan convinced Bryan Cranston to film a promposal for his date. Another guy changed his name and photo in his date’s cell phone, so when he called her, the promposal popped up on the screen. Yet another had a pizza delivered to his date’s house, with “PROM?” spelled out in pepperoni. A phone call just isn’t enough to get a “yes” anymore.

Proms go back a long way; well over a hundred years. Proms were originally deemed “times of firsts”, as in first “adult” social event for a teenager, first time taking the car out after dark, first real dress-up affair, first ride in a limo, first formal photo with a date, and so on. Today, firsts happen a lot sooner, don’t they? Maybe that’s why we add tigers and fire-eaters to quicken the pulse. Or hold our prom in the East Room of the White House, as Susan Ford (daughter of the late President) did alongside her Holton-Arms classmates in 1975.

Photo courtesy of Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library

Here’s a bit of prom trivia: the word is short for promenade. Promenade means “a stroll or a walk, especially in a public place, as for pleasure or display”. Makes sense, doesn’t it? Further, promenade comes from the Latin word prominare, which means “to drive (animals) onward, with shouts”. With a nod to Miami – makes sense, doesn’t it?

(Note: PROM also stands for “programmable read-only memory”; a form of computing memory where the setting of each bit is locked. Makes me think of teenage hormones, especially at prom. Locked/loaded – nothing you can do to change any of the settings.)

Not to rain on this parade – er, promenade – but every time I think of prom I can’t help but think of the movie “Carrie” – the original version of course, with Sissy Spacek. Still terrifying after all these years (and I can still hear her mother’s haunting scream, “They’re all gonna laugh at you!!!”). At least now I’ll just have nightmares about hungry tigers.

The Life of Spice

“Mikey’s Late Night Slice” in Columbus, Ohio, offers a pizza called “Fiery Death with Hate Sausage”, topped with three of the world’s hottest peppers: Carolina Reapers, Trinidad Moruga Scorpions, and Bhut Jolokias. You must sign a waiver before Mikey’s serves you a slice of Death, acknowledging, “you’re an idiot”, and absolving the restaurant of any responsibility for the unpredictable aftereffects. According to one taster, “It was pretty miserable. My eyes welled up, my nose ran, and no drink could wash away the pain.” Sounds like my kind of heat.

It all started with the tabletop pepper shaker. Salt’s brother-of-another-color stood quietly to the side in my childhood, hoping for the same constant attention given to his savory companion. If pepper was used at all in my day, it was nothing more than an obligatory shake; a decoration of the food versus a yearning of the taste buds.

Forty-odd years later, the pepper mill has become the king of the spice rack – my go-to final flourish before deeming a meal ready-to-eat. My pepper mill is always cranked to the furthest setting to the left, so the dozens of corns fall out of the bottom virtually intact. When I refill my pepper mill and spill a few of the little guys onto the counter, I scoop them up and pop ’em into my mouth like candy. My family has learned to pass the pepper before I even ask for it.

I blame my parents, of course (something I seem to do with increasing frequency these days). My dad peppered everything on his plate – still does – and kept shaking away until his food literally disappeared under a blanket of black. My dad was the guy at restaurants who mercilessly trapped the poor fellow who politely asked, “would anyone like ground pepper”? My dad would always add, “you can be generous…”, and several minutes of grinding ensued. My dad also had violent (but apparently enjoyable) fits of sneezing, sometimes seven or eight in a row. I never made the association with pepper, but now I wonder. I can still hear him concluding a sneezing session with the word “marvelous“.

My mom, who graduated from the Emily Post School of Etiquette with honors, commanded a family dining table to rival the tightest ships. Every placemat, utensil, plate and bowl were in perfect symmetry. The meal began with a table grace, and concluded with “please may I be excused?” In her world, “please pass the salt” meant passing the salt along with the pepper shaker, and with two hands instead of one so you couldn’t eat at the same time. Thus, the pepper arrived at my plate whether I wanted it to or not.

Sometimes I think my hankering for pepper is borderline-addictive. Eventually the “shaker” no longer sufficed, as the pepper only came out in little bits. Once I discovered the “mill”, there was no going back. A handful of turns became ten, then fifteen; my food turning as dark as my father’s. As it turns out, pepper was my gateway spice. In the last several years I’ve discovered “red pepper flakes”; a significant leap in heat from peppercorns. I used to shy away from those little plastic vials they include with pizzas. Now I ask for two or three more.

Lucky for me, pepper (and all things spicy) appears to be a healthy habit. According to an article by Dr. Joseph Mercola – an osteopath and proponent of alternative medicine – a full ounce of pepper provides most of the manganese, Vitamin K, and potassium we need in a given day, and even a good dose of iron or fiber. Mercola then missteps when he acknowledges “…it’s true one would not have that much pepper in a day…” Apparently, he hasn’t met me.

Pepper is described as a “stealth antioxidant”, discourages intestinal gas from forming (no wonder my wife peppers my food), and somehow aids in the breakdown of fat cells. Finally, black pepper has much in common with cannabis, with aroma molecules functioning as “cannabinoids”. To be clear, we’re talking about the therapeutic benefits of cannabinoids here. Pepper isn’t playing with my brain cells (I don’t think), but it does help to reduce inflammation.

My children are destined to a life of pepper – I’m sure of it – and not because I turn my food black like my father or pass the shakers as a pair like my mother. In high school, my daughter prepped for her team’s volleyball matches by “peppering” with another player (hitting the ball back and forth to warm the hands). Now, she carries pepper spray in her purse. One of my sons went to college in Waco, TX, where Dr. Pepper was invented in 1885 and vended on campus without a Coke or Pepsi in sight. More recently, I’ve seen my children reach for the hot sauce (instead of the mild) at Mexican restaurants. You see, it creeps up on you quietly. Next thing you know they’ll be asking me to take them to Mikey’s Late Night Slice.

Fit for a Queen

Two weeks this Saturday, the United Kingdom’s Prince Harry and America’s Meghan Markle will be married at England’s Windsor Castle; an event garnering lots of attention on both sides of the pond. In the line of succession to the British throne (still occupied by Queen Elizabeth II after a record sixty-five years), Harry is now sixth, behind his father Charles, his older brother William, and William’s three children: George, Charlotte, and ten-day-old Louis. Of all these royals, I’d love to see William’s daughter ascend to the throne someday. “Queen Charlotte” just sounds so regal, doesn’t it?

Princess Charlotte is now three years old and already working on her Royal Highness wave (see above). I thought she was named after Princess Charlotte Mecklenburg-Strelitz, the German-born wife of King George III from three centuries ago, but apparently that’s a-little-too ancient history. Charlotte’s name is instead a nod to the feminine form of “Charles”, her grandfather. Add in her middle names Elizabeth (her great-grandmother the Queen) and Diana (her grandmother), and Charlotte’s full name is quite a mouthful. Perhaps you prefer the more formal “Her Royal Highness Princess Charlotte of Cambridge”?

I’m enamored with Charlotte because you just don’t see her given name in print very often. Mecklenburg-Strelitz is one of just three Charlotte’s in the entire British monarchy. Mecklenburg-Strelitz was Queen – by marriage – of Great Britain and Ireland for forty years in the late 1700’s, before those countries became a part of the United Kingdom. Lest you think she was a power Queen, Charlotte was chosen by her husband King George III for just the opposite reason – her lack of interest in politics. Charlotte bore George fifteen children (including future king George IV, who himself had a daughter Charlotte), so it’s fair to say she fulfilled her real obligation to the monarchy.

Princess Charlotte by Johann Georg Ziesenis, c. 1761

There’s America’s city of Charlotte, North Carolina, of course. Charlotte really is named for Charlotte Mecklenburg-Strelitz, as she was the reigning “consort” (monarch’s spouse) at the time of the city’s incorporation in 1768. America was still a grouping of British colonies back then, so the city’s naming makes more sense with that context. Charlotte is aptly named the “Queen City” and is central to the county of Mecklenburg. It’s as if we Americans are of British and German descent.

The only other reference to Charlotte I could find (in case someone up there is reading) is the town of Charlotte, Vermont. “This” Charlotte was incorporated six years before North Carolina’s, no doubt also named for the eighteenth-century queen. No surprise – Charlotte, VT is in America’s geographical region of New England.

On a personal note, my father’s older sister was named Charlotte. She died not ten years old (of scarlet fever), so it’s a shame I never had the chance to know her. I would’ve enjoyed calling her my Aunt Charlotte.

That’s the extent of my tour of Charlotte’s. With any luck (and longevity), I’ll be witness to Queen Charlotte in my own lifetime. Throne or not, the young princess’s estimated worth to the British economy is $4 billion over the course of her life. Big number there. Then again, I just contributed $7.95 of the total. My wife and I renewed our Netflix subscription last night so we could watch “The Crown”.

Some content sourced from Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

Good Times and Laughter Too

My wife and I will attend two weddings this summer; one for friends and one for family. This week I noticed one of the brides-to-be on Facebook, requesting “songs you want to hear/dance-to at the reception”. Clever girl, making sure her guests have a say in the music. My guess is – whether requested or not – the deejay will find room for Kool & The Gang’s enduring party anthem, “Celebration”. It’s as timeless now as it was when we first heard it in 1980. And ce–lah–brate-ing good times is as timeless at weddings as it is for the passing of a loved one.

Plucked from another section of the significant-life-events portfolio, my wife and I attended a Celebration of Life this past weekend, for my uncle (my dad’s twin brother). I label two aspects of my uncle’s passing as “merciful”: 1) He was weakened by a heart condition over the last three years of his life; and 2) One or two of his family members were not available for an immediate memorial. Because of the first aspect, the extended family had plenty of time to make peace with my uncle’s eventual passing. Because of the second aspect, what may have been a funeral became a celebration of life instead.

No need to vote on this topic. Whenever circumstances permit, choose Celebration of Life over Funeral. Funerals lean to the shock and mourning of a life lost – somber affairs are they. Celebrations of Life revel in the happy memories of one life, and the joy brought to countless others. Such was the case with my uncle. His celebration included a church service, hymns, and a homily (given by the “celebrant”, of course), but what moved me to my core – and what I couldn’t get enough of – were the stories shared by my cousins (my uncle’s children) and my father (his brother). Those memories included things I never knew about my uncle, such as his talent as a cartoonist and his childlike demeanor with his grandchildren. I’m even more inspired by the man than I already was.

My uncle’s celebration moved on from the church to a beautiful setting by the San Francisco Bay, where drinks, lunch, photos and memories were shared for several hours. It was as much a family reunion as a celebration, and my uncle wouldn’t have had it any other way. Before he passed, he let it be known we should make merry instead of mourn. And so, …There was a party goin’ on right there; a celebration to last throughout the years.

Whether we celebrate births or birthdays, weddings or wedding anniversaries, Sunday Mass or Christ-mas, we get a healthy dose of festive occasions in our lifetimes. Perhaps that’s why we’ve come up with so many words to describe them. Merriam-Webster published one such list here, including Bash (America’s melding of “bang” and “smash”, somehow maturing into “party”); Blast (surely inspired by loud musical instruments and champagne bottles); Rave (actually inspired by a Middle-Ages term for “acts of madness”); Blowout (once defined as a “one-off indulgence”; somehow morphed into “major festive occasion”), and finally my favorite – Wingding (once “feigned seizures”, now “wild partying”).

But enough digression. Well, almost enough. My nod to all things “celebration” wouldn’t be complete without a mention of the town in Florida by the same name. Developed by Disney as a utopian master-planned unincorporated community “created from scratch”, and “a town worthy of its brand and legacy”, Celebration was/is Disney’s nod to New Urbanism: development based on the small towns of early America, with compact downtowns, “walkable” streets, diverse housing stock, and plentiful public spaces. Celebration doesn’t even consider itself a town, preferring instead the label of community, as in “strong spirit, and desire for friendship with neighbors”. Sounds like a festive gathering to me!

There will be many more celebrations of life before the one that has my own name on it. I’m okay with that. Celebrations of life are a unique blend of revel and revere, partying and paying respects – the dual reasons we raise our glasses to someone’s name. Just be sure it’s a party. As Kool & The Gang puts it: We’re gonna have a good time tonight… Let’s celebrate… It’s all right.

Dream Puffs

Last year, Starbucks surpassed Subway as America’s #2 restaurant, measured by gross sales (McDonald’s is still top dog). I don’t consider Starbucks a place to “dine”, so second-place is impressive. Then again, Starbucks’ bakery case has matured since its initial offerings. There are temptations-a-plenty now, en route to the barista. The traditional breakfast items share space with yogurt parfaits, fruit-and-cheese boxes, “fold-over” sandwiches, and entree-size salads. But it’s the smaller offerings I want to talk about today. Look closely through the glass – you’ll see sous vide egg bites and Bantam’s bite-sized bagels. Those little guys could be the future of fast food.

I haven’t tried the mini bagels, but Starbucks wins me over with its egg bites. The first time I gave them a whirl, my wife and I were in the middle of Lent, trying to find alternatives to the foods we gave up. Egg bites to the rescue. The sous vide prep means cooked in water, with nothing but a bit of spinach, red pepper, and cheese mixed in for flavor. Simply elegant (elegantly simple?), and the light, fluffy texture makes them as delicious as they are convenient.

Now let’s talk about real breakfast foods. Last weekend, my wife and I went to a nearby restaurant called Three Little Griddles. Much to my delight, Griddles had Æbleskiver on the menu. If you’re Danish, you already know what I’m talking about. Æbleskiver is heaven-sent breakfast: puffy little balls of pancake with a sweet surprise in the middle, finished off with a delicate dusting of powdered sugar and a side of raspberry jam. Æbleskiver is Danish for “apple slices”, but you’re more likely to bite into a strawberry or a fruit-compote filling instead. Three Little Griddles also offers Æbleskiver with an egg/bacon filling, coated with a maple-syrup glaze and powdered sugar. A complete breakfast!

If you haven’t heard of Æbleskiver and the first thing you thought of was “doughnut hole”, shame on you. Doughnut holes don’t even qualify as poor man’s Æbleskiver. Doughnut holes are a clever product designed to get you to buy more when it appears you’re buying less (think “fun-size” candy bars). I have two issues with doughnut holes. One, they’re not actually the “hole” of a solid doughnut, but prepared and baked separately instead. Two, they’re not shaped like a doughnut hole should be (picture it – something more like the hub of a wheel). They should be called doughnut balls. But enough of this talk; I’m wasting words. Let’s keep the focus on Æbleskiver.

My first taste of Æbleskiver came when I was little, in the Central California village of Solvang. Solvang is like, well, a kid’s “Little Denmark” – a town small enough to walk around, with an overabundance of shops selling toys, candy, and ice cream. Several windmills spin slowly above Solvang’s high-pitched shingle rooftops. A church sits prominently on the edge of town. A small park serves as the town square, complete with a bandstand-sized gazebo. All that’s missing is some water-filled canals and cobble-stoned streets. But meanwhile, there’s plenty of Æbleskiver. Some restaurants even bake them out on the sidewalk, rotating those little dream puffs to perfection in their unique iron skillets.

If you credit the Danes with the invention of ball-shaped food, the rest of the world takes a distant second with its imitations. China makes a spherical egg-based fruit-filled waffle called Gai Daan Jai. Japan makes a variety of savory ball-sized snacks called Takoyaki. (Savory? Yuck.) And America makes doughnut holes called Munchkins.

As if Æbleskiver isn’t cool enough as a food, it’s also a cool word with a unique spelling (note the “letter” Æ). Perhaps Starbucks will start carrying it, along with the egg bites. I’d buy both and a coffee for a complete breakfast.

Finally, if Æbleskiver has you wondering what other delights Denmark has to offer, consider Æblekage. Æblekage is “apple charlotte” – stewed sweetened apples layered with butter-roasted bread crumbs and crushed makroner (an almond-flavored meringue), topped with whipped cream and red currant jelly. Oh my; sounds like dream stuff.

Some content sourced from Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

Venus and Her Deadly Sisters

Let’s begin with a quiz. Name a movie you’ve seen – any movie – where long after the fact you wished you’d never watched it. Not because it was a bad movie or a boring movie; rather because it left you with brain-burned images you’ll carry to the grave. I’ll give you a “pause” so you can come up with a movie.

[pause]

My own regret-I-saw-them movies are the following three: Fiend Without a Face (from the wonderful television series “Creature Features”, when I was a young and impressionable teenager), Deliverance, and Saving Private Ryan. If you haven’t seen those films, read the web synopses to understand where I’m coming from. Trust me; it’s safer than watching.

Recently, I’ve decided to add a fourth movie to my list: 2005’s War of the Worlds. Why recently? Because my wife decided to go all green-thumb on me in the last couple of weeks. She went to Home Depot and Lowe’s and purchased several plants for our recently remodeled home. She even ordered a few growee’s on-line (didn’t know you could do that). We have quite the conservatory now, from potted palms to fruit-bearing minis to fresh herbs. But the real reason for my fourth movie sits quietly on the kitchen window sill: three Venus Flytraps.

Venus Flytraps fall into the category of “carnivorous plants”; which, from an insect’s perspective, is entirely accurate. The organic mechanism of the Venus – called a “snap trap”, is frighteningly sophisticated. Pairs of hinged leaves lay open at the ends of delicate stalks, secreting a sweet smell to attract the bug. Once said bug steps on said leaves, hair-triggers activate a rapid closure, forming a capsule. The more the bug moves, the more the capsule hermetically seals, forming a “stomach” to allow digestion over the next one to two weeks. The capture itself takes less than a second. I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it with our own Flytraps. Venus #1 is still digesting the bug I placed on her leaves a week ago.

Besides the “snap”, carnivorous plants include four other delightful trapping mechanisms. “Pitfall” traps, as in pitcher plants, collect prey in a rolled-leaf container complete with a deep pool of digestive enzymes. “Flypaper” traps, as in sundews, utilize a glue-like substance all over their leaves to trap and starve their victims before digesting them. “Bladder” traps, as in bladderworts, create a vacuum inside a cavity sealed by a hinged door (I did say sophisticated, didn’t I?) Bladderwort victims trigger a surface hair and are literally sucked into the bladder, to be quickly digested. Finally, “Lobster-pot” traps, as in corkscrew plants, remind me of the Eagles’ Hotel California: thanks to their inward-pointing bristles, “you can check out anytime you want, but you can never leave”.

Like my regret-I-saw-them movies, research on carnivorous plants should’ve stopped with the trapping mechanisms. Unfortunately, I kept reading and there’s more. Creature Features take note – these little guys are evolving. Pitcher plants used to get flooded by rain (compromising the digestion process), so they developed a flared leaflet to cover the opening. Sundews developed tentacles, which along with the flypaper help to trap their victims. Even more disturbing, larger sundews developed a symbiosis with a species of assassin bug. The bug eats the trapped insects while the sundew subsists off the insect feces (team effort!) Finally, some versions of monkey cups (which contain pitfall traps) consume small mammals and reptiles. Would you like another pause to consider that last bit of carnivorous plant trivia?

Carnivores are defined by just two characteristics. They must exhibit an ability to attract, capture, and digest their prey; and, they must be able to absorb nutrients from the dead prey and gain a fitness advantage from those nutrients. Hello, War of the Worlds human-harvesting Tripods. Hello, exotic-but-pernicious Flytraps. Maybe I should consider moving to Antarctica? It’s the only continent on the planet where carnivorous plants cannot sustain themselves.

I know what you’ve been thinking since the very first paragraph. “Dave, the perfect regret-I-saw-it movie for you is Little Shop of Horrors.” No thank you, good reader. I’m familiar with the Shop plot, and Audrey the Venus Flytrap sounds like a full-sized combo-nightmare of everything I’ve described above. On that note, uh, hang on. I should check my kitchen window Flytraps. I swear they look a little bigger than the last time I checked.

Some content sourced from Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

Mechanical Wonders

A Wall Street Journal headline stopped me in my tracks today. In Guangzhou, China, you can now buy a car from a vending machine. Starting with a smartphone app, you book a test drive before you arrive. Once at the “dealership”, facial recognition software kicks the machine into gear, delivering your car-of-choice from an eight-story automated garage. If you’re happy with the test drive, you negotiate the purchase through the app – no haggling salesperson to be seen – and off you drive with a new car. I’d fly to China and take a test drive just to see the automated garage vend a car. That’s some cool technology.

Vending is more sophisticated these days than the plain-Jane cigarette and candy machines of old, of course. Airports dispense cell phones and other pricey electronics to travelers from vending machines. Food-truck-like boxes dispense made-to-order pizzas. A mall in Beverly Hills vends Beluga caviar from self-serve refrigerators ($500 a pop). Las Vegas’s “The Lobster Zone” is like one of those machines where you joystick the claw to your toy of choice, only here you’re plucking live lobsters from a tank. Finally, the cupcake company Sprinkles makes serious bank with its street-side “cupcake ATM’s”.

Speaking of bank, I used to collect mechanical banks when I was a kid. That sounds like a strange (nerdy?) admission – collecting toy banks – but that’s what kids did in the 1970’s. They collected things. Mechanical banks wouldn’t appeal to today’s youth for a couple of reasons. One, they’re battery-operated or “wind-up”, so you can’t control them with a phone or an app. Two, they work on the assumption you’re saving up nickels, dimes, and quarters for future purchases. Today’s kids seem less likely to save that way (if at all), and their purchases are with bills or electronic cash. Mechanical banks prefer coins.

My collection of banks – which disappeared years ago – is a good example of the limitations of what and how a kid could purchase back then. Almost all my banks came from the Johnson Smith Company, a manufacturer out of Chicago (“Since 1914!”) Johnson Smith sold endless novelty and gag gift items: x-ray goggles, whoopee cushions, joy buzzers, and those really annoying “chattering teeth”. They also sold mechanical banks; not the beautiful collector’s editions of old, but plastic, battery-operated cheapies, probably manufactured in China. Johnson Smith was the closest thing a kid in my day had to Amazon.

Because I lived in Los Angeles and Johnson Smith sold their mechanical banks in Chicago, the U.S. Postal Service was a lifeline; the critical link between my quiet suburban neighborhood and the Midwest’s biggest city. When I saved enough money, I’d stuff my bills and coins into an envelope, hand-address it, add several postage stamps (Mom helped with the calculation), and walk it out to the mailbox at the end of our driveway. Four to six weeks later, a small brown box would arrive from Chicago, addressed to me and containing my latest mechanical wonder.

Think about that for a second. Not only was I putting cash into a flimsy white envelope to be processed through the endless shipping and handling of USPS, but I was also leaving my hard-earned money out by the street, alerting the world to its presence with the little red mailbox flag. That same transaction today – with “1-click ordering” – takes a single keystroke or voice command and shows up on my doorstep in two days or less.

The irony of collecting mechanical banks is that you’re spending your hard-earned pennies on the very thing designed to keep you from spending them. Truth be told, my banks weren’t about saving money at all. Instead, they were entertainment in the form of plastic-and-battery-operated mechanics, watching coins go here-and-there before finally disappearing from sight.

I never lost my fascination for mechanics. I remember grade-school field trips to commercial bakeries, going behind-the-scenes to see how big vats of dough methodically evolved into sliced, packaged loaves of bread. My kids and I used to watch the Food Network’s “Unwrapped”, a half-hour tour through the sophisticated mechanics behind a product’s evolution, from individual ingredients, through various stages of assembly (and several conveyor belts), finally to the finish line: a brightly-wrapped ready-to-eat consumable.

Mechanical banks may be long gone, but even in today’s age of electronics I say we’re still fascinated by mechanics itself. It’s the reason we buy cars from vending machines or cupcakes from ATM’s. And it’s the reason I still haul my pocket change down to the bank, just to see the teller dump the lot into the coin-counting machine; the noisy, mechanical wonder that sorts, counts, and spits out a receipt just before gobbling up every last penny.

Personal Space

We’re in the midst of Holy Week (for us Christians), which for some means spending more than the usual amount of time in church. Starting with this past Sunday, most Christian denominations conduct a total of five church services unique to this week: Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and Easter Sunday. Our Methodist church here in Colorado devotes an hour to each of these services (short by Catholic standards); some during the day, others at night. No matter how you slice it, Holy Week means a lot of time in the sanctuary.

The church sanctuary wasn’t always a welcoming place. Growing up in Los Angeles, my family and I belonged to a formal Methodist church, with a sanctuary I can only describe as intimidating (at least from a kid’s point of view). You entered the building from the back, where the doorway greeters beckoned you to a narrow narthex. So far, so good. But the imposing sanctuary lay just beyond, through a wall of soundproof windows and closed doors, with stern-faced ushers protecting its every entrance. The pews were hardwood and upright with thin cushions, thirty deep on either side of the main aisle, marching in perfect unison towards the steps of an even-more-intimidating white marble altar. The booming organ drowned out any conversation (which was always at a whisper anyway), and the soaring structure of the ceiling made a kid wonder when it would all come a tumblin’ down like Jericho’s walls.

The congregation of worshipers was a lot of “old folks”; the kind of people who thought kids belonged in “Sunday School” instead of the sanctuary (that is, neither seen nor heard). Hence as teenagers, my friends and I sat up in the balcony (at the back of the space, kind of like the last seat on the bus). You couldn’t always hear the pastor, but at least we didn’t feel the eyes of the disapproving adults down below watching our every move. From our vantage point they were just a bunch of suits and dresses, topped by a whole lot of gray hair.

“Sanctuary” took on new meanings as I grew older. The San Diego Wild Animal Park (now the “Safari Park”) opened its gates in the 1970’s and put a completely new spin on the concept of a zoo. Animals lived in wide open spaces instead of enclosures; broad, beautiful environments designed to mimic their natural habitats. Instead of pressing noses against cages or glass, visitors saw the animals from a distance, confined to the seats of a quiet tram circling the park. If I ever come back as a member of an endangered species (like the northern white rhino I mentioned last week), put me in the San Diego Safari Park. That’s what I call an animal sanctuary.

Also in the ’70’s, Hollywood produced “Logan’s Run”. The movie depicted a utopian society of the future, offering a wealth of pleasures and resources and good living… at least until you turn thirty. At thirty you reported to the “Carousel”, where you were assured a place in “Sanctuary” – the supposedly better hereafter. Logan and his friends decide to find Sanctuary before they turn thirty, and that’s where the curtain of the ugly truth is drawn back. I can still hear Logan fighting the controlling supercomputer as he moans “THERE IS NO SANCTUARY!” Logan’s world was seductive for sure, but it was the mystery of sanctuary that had me watching to the end.

Recently, sanctuary has taken on more puzzling associations. In the 1980’s, American thrash metal produced the band Sanctuary (but nothing in my research explains the name). Sanctuary Clothing is a line described as “…capturing the Los Angeles lifestyle… vintage styling with a handcrafted focus on detail…” Again, nothing about the name. The SyFy Channel’s Sanctuary ran for four seasons and explored gene therapy and cloning, and the “strange and sometimes terrifying beings” that emerged within the human population. Finally, today’s sanctuary cities appear to be anything but, as the political feud between the Fed and the state overshadows any sense of actual security.

My definition of sanctuary will always be that primary space for worship in a church; or to put it in broader terms, “a place of refuge or safety”. Whether that’s somewhere inside, worshiping in the pews as I’ll do tonight; or somewhere outside; say, walking on a quiet path in the forest, it’s more about a feeling than a location. Sanctuary is all about personal space.