America – Page 11 – Life In A Word

Once-A-Year Cake-and-Cheer

I caught a radio show last week where a caller mentioned her birthday fell on December 25th. She lamented how, as a kid, she received presents for Christmas and others for her birthday, not knowing which were meant for which. Without missing a beat the radio host goes, “Hey! At least you get to share your birthday with Jesus! I have to share mine with Madonna!”

I decided to play the game myself (and you can too, at the Famous Birthdays website). Type your special day into the box at the top of the screen and up pop all these, uh, interesting people you share something of a kinship with. You’ll see names, ages, and occupations under big, colorful photos. People the website deems famous. But don’t get too excited now. I had to scroll through seventeen before I recognized anyone. Maybe that’s because their occupations are Rapper, YouTube Star, and TikTok Star? For Pete’s sake, can’t they have real jobs?

Mercifully, I find “real” birthday buddies among the self-proclaimed famous. Steve Perry – lead singer for the band Journey – shares my birthday, born eleven years before I was. So does Sam Cooke, whose soulful voice captured hearts in the 1960s. But one birthday buddy stands gracefully above the rest. Diane Lane, exactly three years my younger, is one of my favorite actresses. When Diane turned 14 in 1979, she debuted as the adorable lead in the France/Italy adventure A Little Romance. I’ve been smitten ever since.

Birthdays represent a variety of celebrations as we pass through life, don’t they? As babies, our parents celebrate for us since we have no clue what the fuss is all about. As young children, the celebrations become the most colorful: parties with friends of the same age and activities from amusement parks to backyard bouncy houses. As young adults, birthdays tend to be celebrated at restaurants and bars, with plenty of alcohol flowing. In the decades following we seem to favor SURPRISE! parties.

Now, as my sixtieth birthday looms like the next interstate exit, I’m all about more subdued celebrations. A quiet dinner out with my wife. A trio of phone calls from my kids. A single piece of birthday cake instead of something big enough to hold five dozen candles. Wouldn’t want the day to pass without acknowledgment but the simpler the gesture the better.

Speaking of birthday cake, it’s perhaps the single tie that binds as we celebrate our years young and old. I picture a baby’s birthday cake as small and round, with a big #1 candle on top. Cover your kid in plastic and put the cake close enough so he or she can dig in with both hands. We have these priceless and messy pictures for each one of our kids.

Young children have the most adventurous cakes. I picture a blank rectangle just waiting to be populated with frosting, decorations, and little toys, like an artist’s canvas. Dump trucks working on a cake-top construction site. Animals living in a cake-top jungle. Ballerinas dancing across a cake-top stage. The possibilities are endless.

After childhood, cake designs evolve to the age itself. Whether big wax numbers or individual candles, the focus of the cake becomes the number. After enough of those years, we try to be more subtle (ex. spell out the age with candles) so we don’t set the house on fire. Later in life, we save the biggest celebrations (and cakes) for the round numbers because ages 80, 90, and 100 are achievements in themselves, aren’t they?

There’s evidence to suggest birthdays and cakes have been a combo as far back as ancient Roman times but for me, birthday cake is simply a nod to happy childhood memories. Birthday-cake-flavored ice cream, cookies, and even protein bars are all the rage for this reason. We just want to be kids again, breathlessly anticipating the celebration of our special day.

Some content sourced from IMDb, the Internet Movie Database, and Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

Sweet Nothing

Cleveland, Ohio sits proudly on the south shore of Lake Erie but has long been considered one of the least desirable locales in America. Shuttered steel mills, miserable weather, and a floundering economy don’t paint a pretty picture. But Cleveland does have an upside. It hosts the iconic Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Hundreds of thousands flock to its international film festival. And the Cleveland Browns – long the doormat of professional football – just completed their first winning season in over a decade. Alas, music, movies, and sports don’t erase mistakes… not when a city lays claim to a “holiday” called Sweetest Day.

Tape a big round target to my computer monitor and hand me a bazooka, because I’m about to blow the Sweetest Day bullseye into bits you’ll need a microscope to see. The redeeming qualities of this celebration amount to little more than sweet nothings. I mean, how bad is it when your holiday is not only labeled a “Hallmark”, but popular opinion says it’s the worst of that lot?

A Hallmark Holiday. By definition it’s a celebration with no more substance than a push to buy a greeting card. Boss’s Day (Oct. 16th). Administrative Professionals’ Day (April 27th). Teacher Appreciation Day (May 3rd). There’s even Clergy Appreciation Day (Oct. 10th). Sweetest Day lands at the very bottom of this feathery-light pile. Please, can we just leave it buried there?

It wasn’t always this way with Sweetest Day. Wait… YES IT WAS. Did you know we celebrated the 100th anniversary of the original Sweetest Day last Saturday? But I’m getting ahead of myself. The better question I should ask: Do you even know why we celebrate Sweetest Day?

No, I don’t celebrate Sweetest Day, but many of you in the “Great Lakes Region” do (eight midwestern U.S. states plus the Canadian province of Ontario). For the rest of us, here’s the debatably sincere back story. In 1921, twelve Cleveland candy company executives pooled their surplus product and gave away 20,000 boxes of candy “to newsboys, orphans, old folks, and the poor”, and literally manufactured a holiday in the process. In the hundred years since, Sweetest Day has morphed from free candy for strangers to “… a day to share romantic deeds or expressions and acts of charity or kindness.” With all due respect Cleveland, why do we need a “holiday” for romance or charity?

When I first learned about Sweetest Day all I could come up with was Valentine’s Day 2.0. I mean, how convenient, right? We have the big day of romance in February so why not a little one (a really little one) in October? Defenders of Sweetest Day say the two celebrations aren’t anything alike. I agree. Valentine’s Day was a Christian feast day designated over 2,500 years ago and celebrated throughout the world today. Sweetest Day was a gimmick designed to sell candy (and cards) exactly 100 years ago and celebrated throughout… the Great Lakes Region.

Several failed attempts were made over the years to solidify Sweetest Day on the October calendar. In 1922 the name was changed to “Candy Day” to see if it would generate more buzz (nope). In 1927 they tried to make it Sweetest Week (nope again). And in 1937, to make it more nationally accepted, they tried to advertise Sweetest Day on par with Mother’s, Father’s, and Valentine’s Day (this effort sponsored by, drum roll please… the National Confectioner’s Association).

None of this spinning of wheels stood in Hallmark’s way. The greeting card company produces over 150 designs for Sweetest Day. American Greetings joined the card party to make another 180. Can you blame them when so many Great Lakes Region people are willing to buy?

All of my bazooka-blasting brings me to a fitting conclusion concerning Wikipedia (where I often find reference material). Every Wikipedia article gets a rating of “quality” and another of “importance”, using a scale not so different from the one you had in grade school. Wikipedia’s article on Sweetest Day – published seventeen years ago – gets a quality rating of, uh… has not yet received, and an importance rating of, uh… has not yet received. In other words, nobody at Wikipedia cares enough to even rate the article.

Here’s an idea. How about we just delete the Wikipedia article? (as one employee proposed two years after it was published). For that matter, how about we just delete Sweetest Day? I have my bazooka at the ready.

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

Sour Grapes

I’m not a fan of French wines. Er, let me rephrase – I don’t appreciate French wines. My palate for bottles of the red and the white has traveled as far as Napa (Chardonnay and Cabernet) and California’s Central Coast (red blends) but nowhere further unless I count the occasional bottle of Chianti from a college year in Italy. I can’t even name a French wine, other than a sparkler like Dom Pérignon. But maybe it’s time for a change, my friends. I’ve taken a sudden interest in a new Viognier… you know, the wine from the vineyards of Grey Poupon?

You read that right. Grey Poupon, the maker of Dijon mustard, wants to be a maker of fine wine as well. Described as “bright hints of spice and pronounced citrus” and “floral characteristics”, a bottle of Grey Poupon white “pairs ideally with charcuterie boards and sandwiches”. Of course it does, because there’s an infusion of crushed mustard seeds in every glass.

Mustard-flavored wine. Sounds like sour grapes, doesn’t it? Mustard wine sounds as appealing as the scoop of Goat Cheese Beet Swirl ice cream I can get right up the road in Denver. And if you think the name on the Grey Poupon bottle sounds fancy – La Moutarde Vin – think again. Translation: mustard wine.

I don’t expect to stock my wine cellar with bottles of La Moutarde Vin (once I have a wine cellar, that is) but I do stock my frig with mustard. Despite endless baloney-and-mustard-on-white sandwiches in my grade school days, I bounced back as an adult and reembraced mustard. The yellowest of condiments is delicious in potato salad. It’s ideal on bratwurst or a hot dog. And mustard wins out over mayonnaise any day on a ham-and-cheese.

For all the attention ketchup gets (for some reason Batman and Robin come to mind here), mustard has been around longer and comes in more varieties. In typical fashion, Americans first flocked to its most basic version, “yellow mustard”, before maturing to the spicy brown varieties of Europe. Mustard was created in Dijon (France) in the 1800s. Anyone who knows the taste of Dijon knows it’s a wholly different animal than the yellow. Why so different? Dijon mustard is made with white wine. And there’s the role reversal in a nutshell. Now we have white wine made with Dijon mustard.

[Trivia break: A popular brand of mustard in America is French’s. Where in France did it come from? No, no, no, back up the truck. It’s just yellow mustard. It has nothing to do with France. But it has everything to do with the guy who invented it: Robert Timothy French.]

We Americans adore mustard so much we built a shrine in its honor. The National Mustard Museum in Middleton, WI proudly boasts the world’s largest collection of mustards and mustard memorabilia. I have no plans to visit, but I do wonder if they’ve added a bottle of La Moutarde Vin to their display.

As long as I’m grappling with American vs. Dijon or mild vs. spicy, let’s address another challenge with mustard. It’s a branded color, as in mustard yellow. Sure, I get it – the yellow evokes the bright blooms of mustard plants. You’ll even find mustard yellow in a box of Crayola crayons. But what if you’re a kid in France? How does a French mom explain to her kid why his mustard yellow crayon looks like bright sunshine instead of Grey Poupon?

Grey Poupon’s La Moutarde Vin is a limited-edition product, sort of a “cheers” to the wine used in the mustard. At $30 a bottle, it’s reaching the high end of what I typically spend on wine. But with every bottle you also get a free jar of Grey Poupon. Okay, so maybe I have a taste for mustard wine after all.

Some content sourced from the CNN Business article, “Grey Poupon wine now exists”, and Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

Do YOU Know the Muffin Man?

I have a hodgepodge of baked goods on the kitchen counter right now. A loaf of sourdough sliced and ready for sandwiches. Brioche buns to cradle the bratwurst I barbecued over the weekend. Angel food cake for dessert topped with berries and whipped cream. And tortillas (which, okay, are “fried goods”) by the bagful. But we’re not done here. There’s one more option, one where my starchy carb willpower goes flying out the window. English muffins.

Who among us doesn’t love a warm, toasty English muffin? The little round breakfast breads give us so many reasons to choose them. They’re delicious, whether with butter, jam, or as an ingredient in Eggs Benedict. They’re satisfyingly circular. They’re usually fork-split so they break apart easy for the toaster. You feel like you get two-for-one instead of a single piece of boring toast. And as if to boast of their popularity, McDonald’s bakes millions of them into their Egg McMuffins.

Here’s another appeal of English muffins. They have all those nooks and crannies to secure the melted butter. You’re familiar with the term “nooks and crannies” (I know you are). It’s the primary descriptor in Thomas’ English Muffins advertisements. But you probably don’t know the backstory. Thomas – as in Samuel Bath Thomas – created the “American” English muffin in 1880, after moving to the United States from England. He brought with him a griddle-baking process for the muffins, which results in the signature crunchy outside and soft inside. 140 years later, I’m hard-pressed to come up with another manufacturer of English Muffins. Okay, maybe Bays. That’s it.

Ironically, English muffins are a more popular breakfast item in North America, Australia, and New Zealand than in England. But you can’t just call them “muffins”, at least not in America. Muffins (coming from the German muffen for “little cake”) refer to blueberry or corn or some other muffin with a more specific taste than the sourdough of English. Not sure about you, but my consumption of English muffins to blueberry or corn is probably 100:1.

You think you “know the muffin man”, but I’ll bet you’re just singing the children’s song (and you’re welcome for getting it stuck in your head). There really were muffin men, you see, way back in the mid-1800’s. They’d walk the streets selling their fresh-baked muffins, ringing bells like an ice cream truck. In Britain there used to be so many muffin men ring-ring-a-ringing, Parliament passed a law to ban the bells. But people still bought their fresh-baked muffins (at least until houses started getting this new invention called a “stove”).

When Mr. Thomas first sold his muffins in America he called them toaster crumpets, described as a “more elegant alternative to toast” to appeal to finer hotels. Over time he changed the description to “English muffins” to better serve the masses. The company bearing his name has been making them ever since, and the griddle-baking approach is the secret to all those nooks and crannies.

Crumpets, aka “English muffin imposters”

While we’re on the subject, let’s settle the debate on crumpets (and scones, for that matter) vs. English muffins. Crumpets look like English muffins. They’re about the same size. But that’s where the similarities end. Crumpets are only cooked on one side. They have a milder taste. And there’s a good explanation for the popularity of English muffins over crumpets in America. Muffins go better with coffee, which Americans drink a lot more of than tea. Can’t tell you when I’ve ever seen someone having a crumpet with their coffee.

“The Muffin Man” song includes the lyric, “… who lives on Drury Lane?” Turns out, Drury Lane is a real street; a thoroughfare bordering Covent Garden in London. But I prefer to think the Muffin Man lives right here on my street. The Muffin Man is me, because not a week goes by where I don’t include the English rounds in my breakfast.

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

Five High

Last Thursday, my brothers and I took an overnight train from Northern California to Northern Oregon as part of an every-other-year reunion. The trip, which would take eleven hours if you drove from San Jose to Portland instead, took twice that long on the Amtrak Coast Starlight. But the meals come with the ride and everyone gets a bed and a hot shower, so it’s a cozy way to watch the world go by. In hindsight, for all the time sitting and staring out the window, we could’ve been stacking M&M’s. Just five of the colorful candies one atop the other would’ve landed my brothers and me in the Guinness Book of World Records.

Sounds easy, doesn’t it? Buy a bag of plain M&M’s (you’ll have zero chance with the peanut variety), count out five, and let the stacking commence. You’ll get to a tower of two quickly. You’ll get three one atop the other with time and patience. But that’s the proverbial end of the line, my friends. You won’t make it to four. If you did, you’d join the two co-holders of the former world record. Last January, Will Cutbill, a twenty-something British engineer, pushed the record to a stack of five.

The history of M&M’s suggests it’s only appropriate a Brit broke the stacking record. M&M’s were copied (and somehow uniquely patented) from British-made Smarties, the first candy where a hard-shelled coating protected the chocolate inside from melting. Here’s another interesting M&M’s factoid. The first “M” is for Forrest Mars, Sr., the founder of the Mars candy company. The second “M”? Bruce Murrie, the son of the president of Hershey’s Chocolate. No, the companies didn’t join forces to create M&M’s. During the wartime years of the 1940’s Hershey had a monopoly on rationed chocolate so Mars was forced to use them as their supplier. Today, M&M’s have evolved to a “fully Mars” product.

It’s safe to say Will Cutbill wouldn’t have broken the M&M’s stacking record without the pandemic. He was in the middle of the UK’s third lockdown earlier this year when he pondered a lifelong dream of getting into the Guinness book. He also had a bag of M&M’s in his hand at the time. Practice led to more practice, and as you’ll see in the video here, the record-breaking moment came as a happy, unexpected surprise.

Marawa Ibrahim – Most hula hoops spun simultaneously

Maybe you’re thinking what I’m thinking. Why can’t one of us become a world record holder as well? As I type, I’m munching on Triscuit wheat crackers. I just built a stack of five on my desk. What if I went to the store and bought several more boxes, then stacked all those crackers to the ceiling of my double-height living room? Wouldn’t I and my Triscuits join the Guinness book as well?

Not so fast, record-setting wannabes. As you should expect, Guinness has a tried-and-true process, not only to establish world records but to decide if they’re worth pursuing. You must submit a formal application (even if attempting to break an existing world record). Your attempt must be deemed ethical (ex. no killing of animals). Your attempt mustn’t be harmful to the participant (ex. excessive consumption of alcohol). Your record must be deemed environmentally friendly. Finally, Guinness must approve the process by which your record will be adjudicated (which in Cutbill’s case included a video instead of an in-person judge). Oh, and unless you’re willing to contribute several thousand dollars to speed things up, plan on a year or more to complete the process.

Mya-Rose Craig – Most northerly climate protest

Now you know why the Guinness book hasn’t grown to a ridiculous number of pages and entries. The content is regularly reviewed against cultural, societal, and environmental standards. Records even slightly in question are removed. For example, Guinness used to list the “largest fish on record” of a given species. Then people started overfeeding fish just to break the record. Guinness realized this kind of manipulation was not only cruel but potentially a source of litigation, so they removed the entries.

This quick dive into the pool of Guinness World Records has me thinking my brothers and I made the right choice in not challenging the M&M’s stacking record. We’d be better off drinking a Guinness than breaking one of their world records (yes, the beer and the book come from the same family). Besides, how would we stack five M&M’s on a rocking, rolling passenger train anyway? Nope, not interested in breaking world records today. But if you don’t mind, I’ll get back to stacking my Triscuits now.

Some content sourced from CNN Business video, “Good luck breaking this deceptively tough world record”, the Guinness World Records website, and Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

Shelf Life

The rural neighborhood I live in hosts a Nextdoor electronic newsletter, allowing residents to post online for all sorts of reasons. (Loose animals are a frequent topic.) Today, however, one thoughtful neighbor said to look beyond first responders and hospital staff for a moment and acknowledge other workers deserving of the spotlight: grocery store employees. Talk about people we take for granted. After all, they’re keeping an eye on 20,000 different products on the shelves of the average U.S. supermarket.

I had to double-check that number to believe what I was reading. Nielsen, the research and ratings firm not only confirmed the number but said U.S. grocery stores experienced a 4.5% decline in 2020 (so more like 18,000 products). Shouldn’t surprise us, especially with global supply chain interruptions. And it’s easy to remember the most popular products missing in action. Bath tissue, cleaning wipes, and canned soup, for example. Others however, you probably didn’t notice. Bumble Bee, the tuna maker, reduced its product count from 300 to 225. Progresso Soup (a personal favorite), dropped its canned choices from 90 to 50.

Now, guess what? Bumble Bee is not only back to its 300 products but adding new ones regularly. Progresso is back to its ninety soups and doing the same thing. So much for the “death of variety”, huh? And speaking of variety, did I say ninety soups from a single manufacturer? I’d be lucky if I could name twenty-five (“tomato”, “chicken noodle”, “clam chowder”, uh, uh…) No wonder soup gets so much real estate on supermarket shelves.

J.M. Smucker is taking a similar tack. They make a dozen varieties of peanut butter and two dozen more of jelly but last year you had to go without “Simply Jif”, “Reduced Fat”, and “Omega 3” versions of both. Today, not only are their PB&J’s back but Smucker has introduced “Jif Natural Squeeze” and a smaller snack version of their popular “Uncrustables” frozen sandwiches. It’s as if the pandemic was a small speed bump en route to ever-increasing variety.

Post Grape-Nuts cereal (which earned solo attention from me in “Ever Eat a Pine Tree?“) disappeared entirely in 2020. For a while there you couldn’t find any version of the tooth-shattering cereal on the shelves. But now the gravel is back, and Post is making a bold move to “apologize” for last year’s inconvenience. If you paid $10 or more for a box of Grape-Nuts from November 2020 to March 2021, Post will issue a partial refund for the “unreasonable” portion of the cost. You need your receipt, of course. Clever marketing there. How many people keep their grocery store receipts from six months ago?

Speaking of bold moves, here’s one I think we should sustain; a sort of pandemic silver lining. At many hotels “housekeeping” has been reduced to the time between stays instead of every day. My wife and I recently spent four nights in a Marriott hotel and at no time did housekeeping enter our room. Instead, we gathered up dirty towels and exchanged for new ones at the front desk. We emptied our own trash. We made the mini soap/shampoo/conditioner bottles last. It was hardly an inconvenience. It was also nice to know our room was undisturbed the entire time.

Similarly, dropping grocery store product totals from 20,000 to 18,000 was subtly a good thing. We were forced to simplify our pantries and go more back-to-basics. We cooked more. We ate more whole foods (instead of fast foods). Let’s hope those habits remain, even while consumer goods manufacturers crank out ever-more variety.

There’s a newish bad habit driving grocery store shelf life however; one bound to stay a while. The percentage of snack/junk foods you’ll find is higher than pre-pandemic days. Why? Because working from home drives the demand. Accordingly, you’ll find 10.9% more salty snacks on the shelves, 11.5% more energy drinks (including PepsiCo’s caffeine-laden Mountain Dew Rise), and 14.8% more pastry items. And (most disturbingly), you’ll find 79.2% more pre-mixed cocktails. Whoa now. Somebody might want to post on Nextdoor for the invention of a web-based sobriety test. They’ll make a fortune.

Some content sourced from the CNN Business article, “These foods disappeared from grocery stores last year…”, the CNN Business article, “The Grape-Nuts shortage is over…”, and Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

Picking Poison

If you have me over for dinner and ask what I’d like to drink, I’m probably going to disappoint you. My go-to “adult beverages” are wine and, well… wine. Nothing mixed. Nothing with a lot of proof on the bottle. A margarita with Mexican and a beer after a long day in the sun, but otherwise it’s pretty much a glass of Chardonnay or a full-bodied Cabernet. Not much creativity in picking my poison, it seems. Yet that’s not quite true. Out on my property I’m faced with poison just about every day, as I fight a persistent onslaught of noxious weeds.

Noxious weeds make their appearance around here every spring – without fail – just when I’m fooled into thinking this, this is the year they’ll cut me a break and infiltrate someone else’s property instead. I’ll walk out one morning and seemingly overnight the uninviteds have taken prominent positions among the prairie grass. Knapweed. Toadflax. Mullein. And the worst of this noxious bunch: thistle.

Weeds annoy most anyone, but noxious weeds deserve a place in Hollywood’s scariest horror flick. These bad boys earn descriptors like “aggressive invader”, “detrimental to native plants”, and “poisonous to livestock”. Noxious weeds fall into a family of growees known as “alien plants”, which means they don’t belong here in Colorado. Nor anywhere else on Earth if you ask me. Name one redeeming aspect of these pernicious inhabitants. I can’t, except perhaps I get a solid workout while I struggle to keep them at bay.

Operative phrase there, keep them at bay. Not kill them. Most noxious weeds establish an underground root system as strong as chain link fence. Many are impervious to the most aggressive chemical warfare. Try yanking out the whole plant and you’ll burn through a bank’s worth of sweat equity. Better to use something gas-powered instead. Or a flame thrower.

Yes, Colorado has its Rocky Mountains and seasons of snow, but most of the Centennial State is high and dry desert. We’re constantly challenged by drought, and in those conditions noxious weeds thrive. Our county even has a “Noxious Weeds Division”, of the Environmental Division of the Community Services Department. Send them an email and they’ll tell you everything you need to know about noxious weeds. Most disturbingly, how they’re here… to… stay.

Let’s get to know these persistent plants a little better:

Diffuse knapweed – Picture a tumbleweed. Large, round, and spiny. Not very nice to look at. You can knock off knapweed by severing the single taproot, but, its seeds can still develop on the cut plant. Time for a bonfire.
Dalmatian toadflax – Showy, yellow, snapdragon-like flowers. One plant can produce a half-million seeds. The best way to control this bugger is… with bugs. Can anyone spare some root-boring moths or stem-boring weevils?
Common mullein – Starts as an innocent, flat, green “rosette”, then bursts into a ramrod straight stalk, several feet tall. Mercifully, mullein has a shallow root. Meanwhile, people think you’re growing corn in your pasture.
Canada thistle – Small purple flowers bunched on tall, dark green stalks, replete with thorns and other self-defense mechanisms. Hand-pulling this freakshow of nature stimulates its growth. If you ask me, Canada thistle is better named “Satan’s Rosebush”.

How do I know the exact species of my noxious weeds? Because my county’s Noxious Weeds Division tells me… when they send letters threatening to charge for maintenance if I don’t do it myself. My advice: it’s best to obey the Noxious Weeds Division.

Now for some noxious weed trivia:

Worldwide damage caused by noxious weeds: $1.4 trillion USD.
Russian thistle lives longer than humans.
Giant hogweed (which causes a nasty, blistering skin rash) earns a spot in the Guinness Book as “world’s largest weed”. Its umbrella-like blooms can hover more than eighteen feet, on stalks three or more inches around. “Giant” indeed.
Lastly… (and my personal favorite), before the chemical embalming process, tansy ragwort was used to line coffins because of its ability to repel vermin. Hey! Another redeeming aspect of noxious weeds.

I have a fond weed memory (believe it or not). When I was a kid, I stayed at my uncle’s house for several days alongside a cousin about the same age. Somehow my uncle had us weeding his front yard (work in exchange for food?). Those straight-and-tall weeds looked like a vast army of soldiers. So that’s how my cousin and I took to the job. We split the yard down the middle, declared ourselves generals, and started taking down the soldiers one by one. When the dust cleared and the “bodies” were removed, the battlefield was admirably clean. We declared victory and went inside for a much-needed shower.

I’ve just returned from another battle with my noxious weeds. I lopped off dozens of mullein tops with my pruning shears, to shut down their seed spread. It’s exhausting work and I’m done picking poison for the day. I could use a drink. Nothing mixed, of course. A beer will do just fine.

Some content sourced from the Noxious Weeds and Control Methods guidelines document, State of Colorado, El Paso County, Community Services Department, Environmental Division.

Meet Cute

Every now and then McDonald’s gets it right. In 1973, they introduced the Quarter-Pounder because customers demanded more than a 10 oz. patty inside of a boring bun. In 1987, McDonald’s added “PlayPlace” indoor playgrounds to suburban locations: crawl tubes, slides, and ball pits contributing to countless happy childhoods. This year, the restaurant chain is stepping it up with its McCafé Bakery offerings. The Apple Fritter, Blueberry Muffin, and Cinnamon Roll will step back to give the spotlight to the newest McDonald’s kid on the block: the adorable Glazed Donut.

Seriously, just look at this little guy. Isn’t he the cutest donut you’ve ever seen? The McCafé Glazed Donut looks like a happy gathering of donut holes, all nestled up against each other for warmth and protection. The Donut is pleasingly symmetrical. Even the spelling is cute (instead of the more substantial “doughnut”). And the best part: its “donettes” pull apart the way you would a hot, flaky croissant. It’s like getting seven for the price of one. And it’s cute to boot.

I admit I didn’t wake up this morning intending to write about cute donuts. Even the headline about this doughnut’s upcoming debut didn’t really catch my eye. But then I saw the photo and I was utterly smitten. It’s the same way I felt when I first saw a package of those colorful little Plink garbage disposal cleaners. I just had to have them.

Some would describe this as a “meet cute” moment. Meet cute is the early-on scene in television or movies where two people connect for the first time and you just know they’re headed for romance. The Hallmark Channel is all about meet cute. Any scene where Hallmark movie man meets Hallmark movie woman, combined with something funny or unusual is 99% headed towards future romance. It’s like you’re ten minutes into the story and you already know how it ends.

And that’s how it’s gonna go with the McCafé Glazed Donut. We had our meet cute this morning. Now I have two weeks of anticipation and heart palpitations before I can actually buy one. But I already see it. I (almost) already taste it. And the whole pull-apart thing? Pure sex(y) appeal.

Meet cutes don’t always lead to predictable endings. After the meet, the movie leads you to believe the characters are destined for romance. But sometimes they’ll throw a curve (usually in the form of a third character) and the story goes in another direction. Could happen with the Glazed Donut too.

Let’s use supermarkets as an example. You stroll into the store, grab a basket, and think about your shopping list. But before you even reach the aisles you’re greeted with front-of-store marked-down day-old doughnuts. They’re just sitting there like little round orphans, begging you to spend another $0.69 to “adopt” one.

So you do. And you make sure the little guy’s placed in your basket as an easy find. Then you slide behind the steering wheel and polish him off before you even leave the parking lot. Tastes great, right? Maybe now. Later you’ll reflect on the slight, sickly feeling in the pit of your stomach and wonder why you caved.

That’s my thinking with the McCafé Glazed Donut. I can cruise past the Fritter, Muffin, and Cinnamon Roll without so much as a passing glance. But mark my words, next month I’ll find any excuse to be near a McDonald’s during McCafé Bakery hours. I’ll purchase the Glazed Donut and my meet cute will blossom into a full-on romance. When I consider the Protein Shake I have most mornings, I’ll feel like I’m about to cheat on my mainstay. Heck, this scandal could go viral! I see the headline now: Man Opts for Sweet & Sexy over Cold & Icy. But can you blame me? My Protein Shake really IS cold and icy, and there’s nothing satisfyingly pull-apart about it at all. Meanwhile a small, soft, almost UFO-looking donut beckons.

Forgive me, my beautiful, healthy breakfast-in-a-cup. Looks like I’m gonna stray.

Some content sourced from the CNN.com article, “McDonald’s is adding a sweet new treat for fall”, and Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

Arid (and) Extra Dry

Most of us reacted to eighteen months in the unwelcome company of COVID-19 the same. We reflected on our time with Mr. Virus and wondered, “What would we have done more of?” More get-togethers? More travel? More dinners out? Yes, yes, and yes. But instead, we hunkered down and waited for things to get better. Our routines became more… routine. Everything faded to black and white. Clocks came to a standstill. It’s the same feeling I had, coincidentally, enduring a drive from Colorado to California earlier this month.

My advice: choose “East” while you still can

Maybe you’ve made the trek: Denver to San Diego via Interstate 70 and then Interstate 15. Sounds so clean and easy, doesn’t it? Two highways. Plenty of lanes. Rocky Mountains on one end and Pacific Ocean on the other. Yeah, well, it’s all the mind-numbing in-between stuff that makes you want to burst through your sunroof and flag down a helicopter heading west. There’s a whole lot of nothing in the desert.

The problem with this drive (which was not a flight because my wife & I wanted to bring our bikes) is the beautiful part comes first. From Denver, it’s four hours of majestic snow-capped mountains, rushing rivers, red rock canyons, and breathless (literally) summits as you cruise on over to Grand Junction. There’s good reason America the Beautiful was penned in the Rockies.

But don’t get comfortable. Once you reach Grand Junction (which isn’t so grand), beauty takes a big break. Pretend you’re a marble inside a rolled-up blanket. Then someone flips that blanket out and off you go, rolling across the flattest, most desolate desert floor you’ve ever seen. The mountains reduce to buttes reduce to sand dunes reduce to nothing. The highway morphs from all sorts of curvy to ruler-straight. Your cell phone signal goes MIA. You suddenly feel parched. And you wonder, why-oh-why does the dusty sign say “Welcome to Utah” when there’s nothing welcoming about it at all?

So it goes in middle-eastern Utah. Every exit is anonymously labeled “Ranch Road” (and why would you want to exit anyway?) The highway signs counting down the mileage to Interstate 15 march endlessly. When you finally do arrive at I-15 (your single steering wheel turn the entire journey), you bring out the balloons and the confetti and do a happy dance. YOU MADE IT ACROSS THE MOON! Well, sort of. Now you’re just in central Utah.

I-15 wanders south a couple hours to St. George. It’s probably a perfectly nice place to live, but St. George reminds me of the Middle East. Squarish stucco/stone buildings, mostly white. Not many people on the streets. The temperatures quietly ascended to triple digits when you weren’t looking. You realize you’re starting to sunburn through the car windows.

But then you make it to Arizona (briefly). The landscape changes, suddenly and dramatically, as if Arizona declares, “Take that, Utah! We’re a much prettier state!” You descend through curve after highway curve of a twisting, narrow canyon, rich with layers of red rock. It’s the entrance to the promised land! Alas, Arizona then gives way to Nevada, and here my friends, are the proverbial gates of Hell. Welcome to the arid, endless, scrub-oak-laden vastness of the Mojave Desert, where everything is decidedly dead except for a brief glittery oasis known as Las Vegas. The Mojave looks like it wants to swallow you whole and spit you out (except spit requires water so you’d probably just be gone forever).

Hang on to those dashboard gauges for dear life, friends, because it’s a full four hours in the Mojave broiler before your car gasps past the “Welcome to California” sign. In those hours you’ll call your kids (one last time?), declare your final wishes, and wonder why you didn’t visit your parents more often. Anything you see in motion off the highway is probably a mirage. If you do make it to California, you’ll pull over and kiss the ~~ground~~ sand before wondering, “Hey, how come California looks exactly like Nevada? Then Google Maps smirks the bad news. You’re nowhere near the end of the Mojave Desert.

Baker. Barstow. Victorville. Hesperia. You’ll pass through each of these towns and wonder, a) Why does anybody live here? and b) Is this the land that time forgot? But finally, mercifully, you’ll descend the mighty Cajon Pass (the outside temperature descending alongside you), burst forth onto the freeway spaghetti of the LA Basin, and declare, “Los Angeles. Thank the Good Lord. I must be close now”.

Except you’re not. The Basin is dozens of cities, hundreds of miles, and millions of cars collectively called “Los Angeles”. Hunker down, good buddy. The Pacific is still hours away.

Here’s the short of it. My wife & I made it to San Diego. The car didn’t die in the middle of the Mojave. Neither did we (though I left a piece of my soul behind). We even rode the bikes a few times. But I can’t account for those nineteen hours behind the wheel. It’s like Monday morning became Tuesday night in a single blink. Just like 2019 became 2021 without much in between.

What goes down must come back up. The time has come to do the death drive in reverse. Ugh. Maybe we’ll leave the bikes in San Diego and catch a flight instead.

Covering My Tracks

A passenger train sweeps through this little vacation town every morning at a quarter past eight. The first sound you hear is an almost apologetic “ding-ding-ding” to alert cars approaching the seaside crossing. The next is the “click-clack-click-clack” as the wheels grind a percussive beat with the twin rails below. Finally, you’re consumed by the rush and roar of the train itself, barreling towards its next destination without so much as a split-second’s thought about stopping.

Dings, clicks, rushes, and roars – which typically wake me from my vacation slumber – are comforting music to my aging ears. These trains cover the same tracks they did during the innocent summer days of yesteryear. The beaches here are more crowded than they used to be. The houses make grander statements. The ocean is a few centimeters higher and the sand threatens to wash away with each passing season. But the train, which once called this town a destination (but now simply passes through), faithfully maintains its daily schedule from points north to points south and back again. Some things never change.

My family’s first summer house here – the upper floor of a duplex – was mere steps from the train tracks. In those ten-and-under years, well past dark, my pajama-clad bleary-eyed brothers and I would bolt to the front screen door in the middle of the night, drawn to the roar of an oncoming freight train. We just had to see the roving locomotive headlight flash by one more time. During the day we’d dash to the rails just before the train passed by, laying down countless pennies to be flattened. I still see them – pancaked, shiny and hot – as the giant wheels flipped the coins wildly off the rails. Sometimes we’d never find them again.

The allure of the passing train was something intangible; a magnetism I can’t find words for, even today. You had its awesome mechanical power, its symphony of distinct sounds, the romance of faraway destinations, and the untold stories of countless passengers. You had the promise there would always be another train coming down the tracks, if you were just willing to wait long enough. To a kid, the train was equal parts come hither and go away; the exciting and the scary combined into one imposing, larger-than-life spectacle.

There was a time I would’ve thought trains were meant for childhood and nothing more. But they still click-clacked through my life after that. As a teenager, I rode those same “Pacific Surfliner” coaches several times as a convenient connection between Los Angeles and San Diego. In college, a freight train rumbled across campus in the wee hours, most often witnessed as I walked back to my dorm from late-night dates. In my junior year in Rome, Italy; Eurail pass in pocket, the entire continent beckoned with its on-schedule trains and speedy routes to exotic locales.

Living in the San Francisco Bay Area begged a resident to ride trains. My first corporate commute was on a train of sorts: the Powell-Hyde cable car line from Fisherman’s Wharf to Union Square. When we moved south of the city, Caltrain became the easiest way to commute to the heart of downtown. When my job also moved to the south, Caltrain still served as the easiest option, the nearest station a twenty-minute walk from my front door.

No mention of trains – at least for me – would be complete without a nod to the Royal Candian Pacific. RCP rail tours include private rooms in restored vintage carriages, daily meal service prepared on-board, and spectacular scenery as you click-clack through the Canadian Rockies wilderness. The RCP is kind of like a…, no, it’s exactly like a five-star hotel on wheels. They even throw in tuxedoed waitstaff. Unless the Orient Express is your idea of a typical vacation there’s nothing quite as grand as the RCP.

Years ago, my wife bought me an LGB model train set. The LGB was probably the largest scale of any of the model railway sets out at the time; its cars a good foot in length and almost as high. We’d set up the tracks every December so our “Christmas train” could cruise under the boughs of the tree above. I often wonder why my wife bought me that train set. Maybe I commented enough about how much I enjoyed the rail commute to work back then. More likely, she still recognized the boy in the man, the one who would rush to the screen door in his pajamas when the locomotive went barreling past.

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