culture – Page 17 – Life In A Word

R.I.P. Restaurants

The next time you dine out, take a good look at the menu options. You may find a few favorites missing thanks to COVID-19. Whether gaps in the supply chain or trims in the workforce, the virus-born experiment of modified operations has restaurants scrutinizing menus for what makes (fiscal) sense and what does not.

Examples: McDonald’s “all-day breakfast” – implemented in 2015 and an immediate success – retreated to morning hours shortly after the virus exploded. Drive-thru wait times promptly decreased – by an average of 25 seconds – so the change may be permanent. Outback Steakhouse axed its wedge salad and French onion soup, favoring fewer appetizers with faster production. Before you know it Outback may offer steaks, potatoes, and nothing else.

Subtle menu changes like these got me thinking about restaurants closing their doors for good. At some point all of them go to their graves. Maybe this is the beginning of the end for McDonald’s and Outback. Maybe ten years from now we’ll look back and wonder what brought on their respective demises. I know I would, which brings me to the real topic of this post: what happened to the eateries of my youth and why are most of them now defunct? Here then, a eulogy of my more memorable ones:

The All-American Burger – We had one of these red-white-and-blues in my hometown just a few blocks south of the church where I went to Sunday night youth group. Mom supplied the cash while All-American supplied the fast-food dinner on those Sundays. Not sure why AAB closed but they did have their fifteen minutes of fame in the 1982 classic, Fast Times at Ridgemont High.
Chi-Chi’s – A super-size Mexican restaurant and one of the first dates for my wife and me in college. Great food, but Chi-Chi’s U.S. downfall was a grand-scale outbreak of hepatitis-A in one of its Pennsylvania restaurants, in 2003. You can still find them in Europe and the Middle East.
Farrell’s – An ice cream parlor and a great place for parties, since the birthday kid got a free sundae. Farrell’s had an early-1900’s theme: straw-hatted waitstaff, player-pianos, and menus printed on newspaper. My favorite Farrell’s memory: “The Zoo” – a giant bowl of ice cream intended for ten or more topped with a menagerie of colored plastic animals.
Hamburger Hamlet – “The Hamlet” also had a location in my hometown, and for a burger joint the menu and decor were decidedly upscale. It was known as a Hollywood celeb hangout. Curiously, I associate Hamburger Hamlet with O.J. Simpson more than other celebrities. Simpson’s wife Nicole and friend Ronald Goldman were murdered at the Simpson house, in the residential neighborhood nearby our Hamlet. Nicole Simpson had just been dining at Mezzaluna (the restaurant where Goldman worked), also just a couple of blocks up from The Hamlet.
Lyon’s – The quintessential 1980’s smoke-filled greasy-spoon diner. There was nothing memorable about Lyon’s (nor healthy on the menu) except the rip-the-boss conversations my coworkers and I had over lunch. Lyon’s filed for bankruptcy in 1998 and never recovered. No surprise; none at all.
Naugles – My go-to choice in college, Naugles never skimped on their portions of Mexican food (so who cared about the taste?) Whether it was the massive “Macho Burrito”, the messy “Naugleburger”, or the trash-can sized sodas, Naugles was my all-nighter study buddy. Del Taco took over most of the chain in the 1990’s.
Pup ‘N’ Taco – Hot dogs, Mexican food, and – pastrami sandwiches? I remember Pup ‘N’ Taco more for the buildings than the food; obnoxious red, white, and yellow structures with steep-sloped roofs, similar to the look of the Der Wienerschnitzels of the time. Taco Bell bought out Pup ‘N’ Taco in 1984, more for the locations than for the menu. Obviously.
Sambo’s – I can’t tell you why I remember Sambo’s; I just know my family and I had several meals here. At its peak Sambo’s had over 1,000 locations in 47 states. Fittingly the only remaining location changed its name this year, to disassociate with the children’s story The Little Black Sambo. George Floyd and all, you know.
Victoria Station – Chain together several boxcars and a caboose, add kitchen, tables, and steak-and-shrimp menu, and you have a heckuva unique restaurant. Victoria Station ballooned to almost a hundred locations at its peak. The railcar restaurant concept evolved from a joint graduate project at Cornell University’s School of Hotel Administration. Victoria’s seemed like an upscale meal but maybe it was just the train car dining that made me feel upscale.

Someday soon (soon) we’ll be able to say we’re “post-pandemic” but by then it’s predicted thirty percent of our restaurants will have closed. I’ll pray for those restaurants to R.I.P. as well, but not without another deserving eulogy.

Some content sourced from the 6/27/20 Wall Street Journal article, “Why the American Consumer Has Fewer Choices – Maybe for Good”, and Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

In Defense of Breakfast

I wish I could remember the first time I watched “The Wizard of Oz”. I was probably six or seven, and so many scenes in the movie would’ve been magical at that age. Black-and-white turning to brilliant color as Dorothy opens the door post-tornado. Glinda the Good Witch descending in a giant soap bubble. The Emerald City gleaming green beyond endless poppies. But one scene disappoints at any age: when (The Great and Powerful) Oz is exposed as a mere mortal (“Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!”) It’s the same disappointment I have with Mehmet Oz right now.

If you know Oprah Winfrey you probably know Dr. Oz. A cardiothoracic surgeon and Columbia University professor, Oz added “television personality” to his resume when he appeared on Oprah’s show more than sixty times. Later he launched the daily “Dr. Oz Show”, addressing medical issues and personal health in front of a studio audience. He also authored the best-selling YOU: On A Diet series of books.

I’ve listened to Dr. Oz a handful of times and his medicine seems credible enough, especially with his attention to homeopathy and alternatives. But earlier this year he made a statement I simply couldn’t digest. Oz said (and I quote): “Breakfast should be banned”. WOOF. To me and a whole lot of other aficionados, that’s a truly harsh statement.

I’ve written about breakfast before, and my unabashed affection for its foods (ex. see Dream Puffs and The Meal of Champions). For me, “it’s the most important meal of the day”. However, those in the know – Dr. Oz included – say I’m victim to a powerful long-ago marketing campaign. In the 1940’s General Foods decreed breakfast as “most important” based on the claims of anonymous nutritionists, when in fact GF simply wanted to sell more of its breakfast cereal. Seventy years later many of us still buy into the idea of most important. We just don’t have the data to back it up.

Now, let’s clarify a couple of points here, especially for those of you who are take-it-or-leave-it about the morning meal. First, breakfast on my table is usually healthy and/or whole-food. I like steel-cut oats with fruit, soft-boiled eggs with pepper, and yogurt with granola. I adore traditional unhealthy breakfast champs like pancakes and waffles, omelets with the works, and bacon/ham/sausage, but those are for occasional Sundays after church or special occasions with family. My weekday breakfasts are simple and small, designed as much to fuel as to fill.

Second, I have to cut Dr. Oz a little slack with his breakfast ban. To add context, Oz goes on to say, “instead of eating breakfast first thing every morning, eat your first meal of the day when you are really hungry”. In other words, Oz isn’t attacking breakfast so much as the timing of breakfast. Have breakfast for lunch, for all he cares. In fact Oz says, “Have brunch every day of the week!”

Intermittent fasting (IF) is a popular approach to diet these days, where meals are timed to create periods of fasting and non-fasting. If you subscribe to IF it’s difficult to have an early-morning breakfast, else you’ll have dinner for lunch and nothing for the remainder of the day. I like the concept of IF; I just don’t have the discipline (nor the inclination). Morning breakfast works best for me – every day at the same time. I look forward to the foods and I like the fact I’m fueling my mind and body before putting either through its paces. But you may be different. You may wake up and not be hungry. You may venture several hours into the day before even thinking about food. Your travel mug of coffee may be “breakfast” all by itself. Different strokes for different folks.

Even if the entire camp isn’t eating breakfast first thing in the morning (or at all), I must stand fast on this: Breakfast is a morning meal. 4am, 7am, 11am – I don’t care, as long as it’s before noon. None of this “breakfast for dinner” nonsense. Wait, let me grant one exception: Sunday brunch (where I never partake of the “lunch” items). Otherwise, I think even Dr. Oz would agree with the old adage, “Breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, dinner like a pauper”. If we could all learn to eat like that, we’d be “great and powerful” every waking hour of the day.

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

No News is Good News

As a kid, my parents would sometimes take my brothers and me to a restaurant called Sir George’s Smorgasbord. Sir George’s was one of those all-you-can-eat places, and in the 1960’s it cost you a mere $1.69 a plate! I don’t remember the “royal buffet” being so kid-friendly (except for the fried dough balls for dessert) but that didn’t matter so much. The idea you could assemble your own dinner from dozens of selections was a dream compared to some of mom’s mandated meals.

Sir George’s closed its doors in the late 1970’s, but I thought about the place the other night. For years my wife and I used to watch a half-hour of local news on television – our before-bed catch-up on the happenings of the day. I was always impressed with how many stories the newscasters crammed into thirty minutes; an almost breathless smorgasbord of headlines and reports. Alas, the real-time information of mobile devices removed much of the appeal of the late-night news (except the weather – always an important topic here in Colorado). But maybe the loss of appeal should be blamed on something else. Something more troubling.

With the pandemic and protests of late, my wife and I tune into the news again. We seek an encouraging stat or bit of research we’ve missed, or we yearn for a better angle on the justification of our country’s continuing unrest. Whatever the reason, we find we’re tuning out the news almost as fast. What used to be a buffet of international, national, and local news has changed into something else entirely: essentially a waste of our time.

I’m guessing news broadcasts look about the same in every American locale right now. The lead story is an incident-based piece on racial injustice (i.e. Seattle’s CHOP), followed by something similar at the local level (i.e. a peaceful protest). These stories are followed by a statistical update on COVID-19 (global, national, local), which leads to the latest state/city mandates and recommendations.

Click the stopwatch. Fifteen minutes have already been consumed by protests and pandemic, leaving the other fifteen minutes for weather, sports, and everything else a viewer “needs to know”. Actually, make that ten minutes. Our news takes a break halfway through for commercials, then again just before wrapping things up. Weather is only newsworthy if you live in a place where it changes daily. Sports isn’t newsworthy at all, at least not right now.

You see where I’m going with this. The late-night news is simply not “news” anymore. Without taking anything away from the seriousness of the pandemic and the issues behind the myriad protests, neither topic is end-of-day compelling when you’ve already consumed a healthy dose of both from your phone and newsfeed. You seek something else entirely late at night, at least to avoid EGO (eyes glazing over). You seek something newsworthy.

The news lineup won’t change, of course. Networks broadcast what they think you want to see and hear. Or more accurately, they broadcast what they want you to see and hear. Daily pandemic coverage is designed to elevate fear and maybe drive safer practices. Daily protest coverage is designed to elevate the significance of the issues and maybe drive actual change. But sorry; these topics are not the most newsworthy day-in and day-out. They’re not “breaking news”. Here’s breaking news: the other day we had a large brush fire just to the north of us, threatening our very homes and lives. By my stopwatch, the news got to that story seventeen minutes after the hour. Should’ve been the lead.

If the networks retitle these broadcasts something like “Pandemic and Protests Daily” at least I know what to expect. I could set my DVR to record the show once a week and that’d be all the tuning-in I’d need. Kind of like daytime soaps, where you can skip a whole week and then watch the next Monday’s episode to get caught up on all you missed.

Mark my words, the nightly news will soon lumber off like the dinosaurs, never to be seen again. You might ask yourself: will its demise be attributed to the real-time pings of your mobile phone, or because the networks didn’t choose to acknowledge the vast buffet of topics right in front of them?

I say bring back Sir George’s.

True Colors

In the kitchen cabinet convenient to our countertop coffeemaker (I’m on a roll with the letter C today), we keep a couple of large mugs; souvenirs from the San Diego Zoo. Identical in size and shape, both mugs have images of animals on them. More importantly, one mug is light blue while the other is bright red. For this reason and no other, I place the blue mug at the front of the cabinet and the red mug further back. My preference is the blue one.

If these same mugs were in your kitchen cabinet, which would you choose? What if I added a green mug and a purple mug – would your choice be just as clear? It should be, since we all have favorite colors. Unless we’re colorblind we concur when something is blue, or something is red. We even agree when something blue is “pretty” (say, the summer sky) or something red is not (say, the heart of a forest fire). But that’s just preference by association. Favorite colors are part of our DNA.

As far back as I can remember my favorite color is green. I also like blue and purple, but if I only get a single Skittles make it green. With board games, I choose the green pieces. With my wardrobe, I own several green shirts (but no red ones). My wife and I once owned – one after the other – a green van, followed by a green sedan, followed by a green mini-van; even though the more popular vehicle colors are white, silver, black, and dark grey. It may be no coincidence the colors of my alma mater are blue, gold… and green.

Don’t let the numbers influence your choice but 35% of Americans prefer blue while 16% prefer green, 10% purple, and 9% red. Orange, yellow, and brown sit together at the back of the bus. Also, gentlemen may prefer blondes, but gentlemen definitely prefer blondes in red. To heterosexual men at least, women in red draw more romantic attention than any other color.

Infants show a preference for color as early as twelve weeks old. That’s hardly an age where you associate colors with material things. Toddlers show a preference for pink and blue regardless of sex (and cool colors over warm), but choose yellow over both of them – perhaps owing to association with the sun, flowers, and other “happy” things.

Here’s where favorite colors get interesting. At five years of age you begin to associate colors with more than just “things”. You associate with feelings and states of mind as well. Consider the table above. My preference for green suggests a good/bad combination of traits. Immodestly I like to think I have good taste. Unquestionably I put a premium on my health. Envy? Sure, every now and then. Eco-friendly? Nope, not really.

Red and blue make for better arguments. The “lust”, “power”, and “speed” associated with red explain why it’s the color of choice for sports cars, and why red uniforms statistically improve performance in certain sports (think Tiger Woods). All five blue traits explain why the color is so prevalent in the American workplace (and primary in the logos of standard brands like Ford, Facebook, and IBM). Even the traits of violet/purple make sense: the color most associated with royalty.

Our desire to interpret the meaning of favorite colors has been around a long time. The Rose of Temperaments is a wheel-like image from the late eighteenth century, matching colors to character traits and occupations. See what your color says about you. If green goes to my very soul, the rose is strikingly accurate. I can make a case for every trait in the list of phlegmatic. My tendencies are also more introverted than extroverted. The rose gives me reasons for envying red, yellow, or blue (and reasons for not), but I can’t deny it: I am literally defined by my favorite color.

Speaking of the basic colors, we also favor color names. Mother Nature’s rainbow just doesn’t do it anymore. In a recent remodel project my wife and I chose the paint color “Cocoa Whip” over “Havana Coffee” and “Wild Truffle”; when in fact we were simply choosing a shade of brown. In product tests, participants shown swatches of the same color consistently preferred the one with the most elegant name.

Closing comment on my favorite color green. You do know what they say about green M&M’s, don’t you? The aphrodisiacal effects (urban legend) are explained by the color’s association with fertility. However, the better story comes from 1976, when the FDA banned the chemical “red dye #2” and red M&M’s temporarily departed the production line. Rumor had it the reds were the real aphrodisiacs, employees were pocketing them straight from the line, and the whole red dye #2 story was a cover-up. Red, green, whatever the color; they all taste good to me. Even the brown ones, which testers swear taste more like chocolate than any other color.

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

Whistle Work

Last weekend my wife and I drove north a couple hours to visit our granddaughters. The last time we saw them was in the pre-pandemic days of yesteryear. We spent most of Saturday afternoon in the backyard playing little-kid games in the makeshift pool and breaking out a plastic Tee-Ball set. Later on after a barbeque, it was time to clean up the toys. My son and his wife promptly requested the “The Clean Up Song” from Alexa, and my granddaughter hopped to it. Watching her I caught myself thinking, can’t I help with the clean up too?

Google The Clean Up Song and you’ll find several dozen versions to choose from. Cleaning-to-music for kids has been around a little while now. I wish we’d used this approach more often when our own children were little. It’s a song! It’s a game! It’s almost whistling while you work.

For me, household chores morphed to something more therapeutic as the kids grew up and out of the house. Taking out the trash became extra steps towards my ten thousand (we have a long driveway). Washing dishes became a mini-spa of warm water and soap bubbles. Making the bed and arranging its pillows channeled my inner Marie Kondo. Folding clothes was how to avoid lazing on the couch while watching TV. (On that note, an ironing board should be called a “clothes-folding board”, if you go by my folding minutes (100%) vs. ironing minutes (0%).

Lest you think me compulsive, a recent Wall Street Journal study comes to my rescue. During these stay-at-home times – locked-down residents find similar stress relief in housework. Washing windows allows the slow, deliberate wax-on-wax-off zen of “The Karate Kid”. Cleaning countertops tempts flowing dance, like Julia Stiles in the diner in “The Prince and Me”. Ironing doubles as light weightlifting. And vacuuming? Nah, I got nothing there. Vacuuming’s still just a chore.

The lovely Ms. Stiles and her diner dance

Headspace, a software company focused on meditation and better sleep, includes housecleaning exercises on its app. They recommend “quiet housework in dim lighting” just before bed (but then how do you see what you’re cleaning?) They want you to sweep the floor and wipe the counter in smooth, restorative motions. Laugh all you want but the use of their “cleaning-related content” is up 20% since mid-March.

Household products are trending the same way. Swiffer wants you to mop with “a clean home and a clear mind” and suggests a facial treatment while you’re at it. They switch “clean the counter” to “give your surfaces a little TLC” (as if your surfaces are close friends). Proctor & Gamble fortifies its “Gain” laundry detergent with essential oils like lavender and eucalyptus, touted for their calming effects. “Clear Your Mind with a Cooling Clean! A Soothing Scent with a Mindful Twist!”

Call me one-in-five (not compulsive) because P&G research claims 20% of us clean to relax or reduce stress. Sure, but we also clean to clean.

I never thought about laundry this way but the Journal article likens clothes-cleaning to problem-solving (which we guys are all about). Sort the clothes, dose the detergent/softener, fold according to best-fit in drawers, and then put everything away. It’s a process, and it’s a new puzzle every time.

To take it one step more spiritual, household chores are considered seva – a form of selfless-service. Says one yogi about dirty dishes, “You’re reminding yourself you’re washing for the divine grace that flows through your husband, your wife, your children, or your parents.” Whoa now. Me, I’m just washing dishes.

I’ve neglected to mention another household chore: cleaning bathrooms. It can be “healing” sponging the porcelain to a sparkling-white shine, conducting the bowl brush in large, lazy circles, or returning to nature in the gentle flow of the sink (waterfall) or toilet (whirlpool). No, no, NO. I don’t do bathrooms. Not even if you ask Alexa to play “The Clean Up Song”.

Some content sourced from the 5/27/2020 Wall Street Journal article, “Sick of Cleaning? Turn It Into Meditation”.

Not-So-Fast Food

If you’re like me, you’re prepping meals at home more often than you used to. Your grocery lists are electronic or paper instead of in your head. You may even be meal-planning and on your way to becoming America’s next gourmet chef. But no matter the approach eventually you succumb to food out instead of food in. “Taking away” meals these days means navigating an app, a website, a drive-thru, a phone call, or for the really daring, an unscheduled appearance at the front doors. You never know which approach works until you try a couple. Sometimes you simply give up.

Case in point. Last Friday we took my wife’s truck for a service – scheduled just after sun-up. Leaving the house so early meant breakfast would be out instead of in. My first thought? McDonald’s. An Egg McMuffin is still a pretty good on-the-go breakfast, and navigating McDonald’s hasn’t changed (drive thru, pay at the window, drive away, enjoy). I also admit to a soft spot for the Golden Arches because I worked there in high school.

My wife had other ideas. Since a breakfast sandwich was the order of the day she wanted Einstein Brothers Bagels, and with good reason. Einstein’s offers a choice of five “classic” breakfast sandwiches and another seven “signature” specials: twelve different spins on bagels and eggs. While Egg McMuffins are assembled from just four mass-produced ingredients, Einstein’s creations are made-to-order adventures with options like chorizo, avocado, spinach, and mushrooms. If the choice is Einstein’s or McDonald’s it’s a no-brainer. Except now.

Not knowing Einstein’s take-away approach during COVID, I parked in front of the restaurant while my wife went inside to place the order. Nope. Einstein’s allows two options: DoorDash or order from the app. Well blast my bagels – DoorDash doesn’t even deliver to our neighborhood so it was either the app or go hungry. Fine. A quick download and I went in search of the “Order” button. Nope. Einstein’s wants an account first – phone number, email, birthday, credit card, and so on. Fine. At last we assembled our on-line order and I went in search of the “Pay” button. Nope. Einstein’s makes you bank a minimum balance first (and welcome to “Shmear Society Rewards”). Really? A cash reserve for a breakfast sandwich? Once and for all, nope. I X’d out of the app, deleted it from my phone, and left a skid mark or two as I accelerated away.

McDonald’s was also on the way home, a couple miles up the road. We didn’t have their app either but so what? Order at the drive-thru, pay at the window, drive away with an Egg McMuffin, enjoy. We even splurged on hash browns (and an order of breakfast sausage for the dog). A McDonald’s breakfast for two people and a pet costs far less than a similar order at Einstein’s. Was my Egg McMuffin forgettable? Yes. Did I consume my sandwich within minutes of leaving the restaurant? Yes (today’s Egg McMuffin is smaller than your palm). Did I wish I’d had a custom-made Einstein’s instead? Of course. But not if I must jump through a bunch of electronic hoops to get one.

I want to support restaurants through the COVID pandemic; I really do. Our favorite Mexican place has nothing electronic, so you just place a phone order and take-away fifteen minutes later. Our favorite coffeehouse is a converted bank, so it’s drive-thru, pay, and go, lickety-split. That’s all I’m asking for: simple process, no hoops.

Einstein’s theory of relativity assumes accelerated motion (say, a car pulling away from a restaurant with an order of food). Einstein’s Bagels requires decelerated motion (say, the unanticipated time to download, setup, and bank-load their app). Take your pick: Einstein’s approach or Einstein Brothers’ approach? For me, it’s Albert’s way every time.

(Not) Paying the Piper

Our church is weighing creative approaches to conducting in-person services next month. Pastor Bob sent out a survey recently asking we-the-congregation to consider options like outdoor church, weekday church, and evening church – all in the name of social distancing. We’ll also be shaking up the service “touchpoints”, like sharing the peace, passing the (offering) plate, and partaking in communion. The Big Guy doesn’t care about the where’s, when’s, and how’s, of course – just that we have church. On the other hand, He (She?) might have something to say about the music. After all, how does a church organ sound after a three-month absence from tuning?

It’s bad enough our congregation is gloriously inharmonious when we bellow out the hymns (no choir of angels are we), but add in a fully discordant church organ and you have a complete mess. Organs need tuning like the human back needs a chiropractor: maintenance is key. When dust accumulates and seasons change, organ pipes sound noticeably different than they’re supposed to (hence the term “off-key”). Imagine the pitch-perfect tones of a bass saxophone, but instead you get more of a sour wail. That’s an organ pipe sans “tune-up”.

Tuning organ pipes is serious business and can run thousands of dollars per visit. Consider, the biggest organs have as many as 25,000 pipes. The booming bass pipes can be thirty feet long and two feet in diameter, while the little pixie sopranos look more like metal soda straws. Each pipe must be individually tested and tuned no matter how big or small. Tuner A presses a key on the (up to four) keyboards down below, while Tuner B adjusts the pitch of the pipe up above (sometimes on a ladder, sometimes on a suspended platform). It’s hours and hours of monotonous – and in the case of cathedrals, death-defying work, one demanding pipe at a time. Better love what you do.

Here’s another reason organ tuners deserve hazard pay. Imagine you’re suspended hundreds of feet above the sanctuary floor on a swaying rope-suspended platform (I’m already saying “no”), virtually floating like the angels, and as you reach over to adjust the pitch of a mid-sized pipe, bats fly out. Yep, that’s the kind of critters tuners encounter when an organ wants for too long (or a single pipe sounds suspiciously out-of-tune). Squirrels even make their homes in the pipes – though don’t ask me how they don’t go plummeting to their death the moment a note is blasted from the keyboard. Maybe they’re flying squirrels?

In the land of COVID-19 there are no organ tuners (or very few). Those Peter Pipers are being denied access to their church-bound “patients” because a) COVID may reside on a surface like, say, a keyboard, and b) no congregation means no offering plate means precious few payments to the Piper. So what do stay-at-home tuners do instead? Why, they tune their pianos of course! Then they play those pianos hours on end. We may come out of COVID with a whole new genre of classical music called “tuner tunes”.

Talk about a sprint from feast to famine. An organ tuner’s busiest weeks are those leading up to Easter, often requiring extra staff and longer hours. COVID downpoured on that parade. Demand for pre-Easter tuning disappeared faster than Mr. Bunny himself. In the case of one tuner – profiled in the Wall Street Journal – 100 contracts withered to less than a dozen inside of two weeks. He furloughed his entire workforce, worried instead over simply paying the rent on his shop.

One day soon, we faithful will walk away from our laptops and wander back into church sanctuaries instead. We’ll spread out over more services. We’ll wave hands instead of shake hands. We’ll drop the offering into the plate from a “safe height”. We’ll bypass communion servers and help ourselves to the bread and wine instead. The organist will play and the congregation will sing; both noticeably off-key. And when that happens give a nod to the organ tuners, who will someday get the pipes pitch-perfect again.

Just hope they don’t need an exterminator as well.

Some content sourced from the 3/25/2020 Wall Street Journal article, “As Coronavirus Shutters Churches, an Organ Whisperer Changes Key”, and Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

Merry-Go-Round Mayhem

In the midway of the wonderful San Diego Zoo Safari Park in California, you’ll find a colorful attraction called the “Conservation Carousel”. Unlike traditional carousels teaming with horses, the Safari Park merry-go-round boasts giraffes, rhinos, zebras, cheetahs, and other “rare and endangered creatures”, just waiting to be taken for a spin. It’s a full-on circle of animals. It’s like riding a zodiac.

Speaking of the zodiac, what’s your sign? I’m an Aquarius (born in late January), which makes me water-bearer to the gods. As much as I don’t subscribe to horoscopic astrology – a visual representation of the heavens to interpret the inherent meaning of life – I can’t deny water’s played a significant role in my world. I spent childhood summers in the Pacific Ocean and the backyard pool. I lazed away hours in Northern California’s Lake Tahoe, swimming and water-skiing. I enjoy a lively display of water, whether Niagara’s Horseshoe Falls or the fountains of Vegas’s Bellagio Hotel. A gentle rain is nature’s therapy.

But then there’s the hell-or-high-water side of things. Literally since our wedding night (when my bride and I awoke to dripping from the bed-and-breakfast room above us), the two of us have endured all manner of water problems. A fully flooded basement. A backed-up septic system. Drinking water with a PH so out-of-whack we had to install a conditioner and a neutralizer. Our well water quit pumping one time – for days – when a squirrel chewed through the electrical connection. It’s like those gods have nothing better to do up there than play games with their little water-bearer down here on Earth. If it were up to me I’d spin the zodiac wheel and land on another space instead.

Turns out my wish may have already been granted. According to the Wall Street Journal, the earth maintains a wobble in its orbit around the sun, caused by gravitational pull on its not-so-perfectly-round midsection. That wobble (called “precession”) – projected over the last several thousand years – shifted the alignment of the Earth with the zodiac constellations as the Sun passes through them. Long story short, everything astrological advances one month on the calendar. In other words, you rams out there (Aries) are actually fishes (Pisces). You maidens (Virgo) are now lions (Leo). And us water-bearers (Aquarius) – mercifully – are now mountain goats (Capricorn).

With more passing of time, the earth’s Weeble-wobble will redefine basic astronomy as we know it today. Take Polaris, the “North Star” at the end of the Little Dipper, and the starting point to locate the more distant constellations. A few thousand years from now, Polaris will give up its position to Vega, another bright star. All because our planet is a little fat in the middle.

With talk of a “changed world” after a curbed pandemic, I think it’s high time for me and you to adopt our newfound zodiac signs. Goodbye Aquarius. Hello Capricorn. To preview my new persona, I looked at today’s horoscope in the local paper: A conversation with a female acquaintance will be important to you today. This is a good time to share your hopes and dreams for the future with someone to get his or her feedback. Bless my lucky stars – I’m to check with my wife before moving one position on the astrological merry-go-round. Seriously? What does she know, holding court from under the sign of Cancer? Whoops – make that under the sign of Gemini instead. Either way, she can finally refer to me as, “you old goat, you”.

Some content sourced from the 2/21/20 Wall Street Journal article, “You’re a Scorpio? Why the Earth’s Wobble Means Your Zodiac Sign Isn’t What You Think”, and Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

Iced Coffee

In the airy but over-aired romantic comedy Me Before You (2016), the dashing but damaged Will Traynor (Sam Claflin) laments bygone times when he refers to, “Paris. Place Dauphine, right by the Pont Neuf. Sitting outside the cafe with a strong coffee, a warm croissant with unsalted butter and strawberry jam.” Place Dauphine is not just a scene in Me Before You; it’s a real square in the heart of Paris. And it probably has Will’s cafe, thanks to the nearby river and central views of the city. Yet French cafes are growing scarcer every year. In fact, these quaint little gathering places are disappearing in droves.

If someone asked me to paint a scene from a French country village, I’d surely highlight a charming cafe on a cobbled central space, bursting with patrons. In the cafe, the proprietor would serve incomparable pastries alongside fine, pressed coffee. The room would swell with music and chatter; the locals swapping their work-day adventures before heading home to supper. The evening stopover in the cafe seems to me a staple of French culture.

So it pains me to read about closed doors on France’s rural cafes, according to a recent report of the Wall Street Journal. Sixty years ago, you would find over 200,000 of them liberally dotting the country. Today, there are less than 40,000. “Progress” – in its various forms – has forced the rural worker out of traditional French industries and into the big cities. Time once spent in the cafe is now given over to the workday commute. Adds a village mayor, “Without a cafe, a village is pretty much dead”.

Even though I’ve been to Paris, I can’t claim to have spent time in any of its cafes, not even the famed Les Deux Magots, where writers like Hemingway and Joyce were said to have gathered. And yet, I’ve still experienced authentic “cafe culture” (and I don’t mean Starbucks). On a trip to Ireland several years ago, my wife and I concluded our first day of sightseeing by ducking into what we thought was a small pub in downtown Dublin. Turns out the place was more “French cafe”, complete with black-and-white prints on the walls, candle-lights on the tables, and coffee, tea, and pastries to beat the band. We were so taken by the place we stopped in every afternoon for the better part of a week. Perhaps the most showstopping memory of all: we never saw a phone, tablet, or laptop. Patrons were there to gather and chat, or at least – in the case of a few loners – to lose themselves in a good book.

The French cafe is made all the more romantic thanks to the artist Vincent van Gogh. In 1888 in the southern town of Arles, van Gogh observed the play of a cafe’s lights against the nighttime sky, which inspired his painting Cafe Terrace at Night, the precursor to his unequaled The Starry Night.

Perhaps you recall France’s “yellow vest movement” a year or so ago, when protestors took to the streets to battle aggressive economic policies. Turns out the French cafes played a part in the melee. The government sought to impose an increased fuel tax to reduce the number of cars on the road. The protesters interpreted the tax as an impolite shove, to get more people to move to the big cities. In other words, less people in French country villages. And no people in French country cafes. Remarkably, one of the government’s concessions following the yellow-vest protests was subsidies towards small businesses. Perhaps the French country cafe is not dead after all.

Had I written this post two weeks ago, I wouldn’t have come up with much positive spin on this topic. But let’s face it, those of us “sheltered in place” right now yearn for social interaction (not social distancing). We want face-to-face again, not Facetime. We want the congregation, not just the church service. So perhaps there’s a silver lining to the current pandemic after all. When we return to “new normal”, my hope is we’ll have a newfound appreciation for gathering, instead of hiding behind our electronic devices. As well, my hope is my next visit to France will find the doors of French country cafes wide open again, just beckoning me inside for “strong coffee and warm croissant”.

Not So Fast, Mr. March!

In 2010, New York City premiered a wee little romantic comedy called Leap Year. The movie starred Amy Adams and Matthew Goode, and spun a creative love story around a Leap Day tradition of marriage proposals. In Ireland (and Britain), the tradition held if a woman proposed to a man on February 29th, the man must accept her offer or face significant penalty. Leap Year begins in Boston with the intent of ending in a Dublin marriage proposal, but the coastal Irish town of Dingle (and Matthew Goode) gets in the way. That’s where the real story begins.

If you haven’t seen Leap Year, you’ll have to search elsewhere for the complete plot summary. Just avoid the movie reviews. Leap Year earned a not-even-modest 23% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and a not-even-one-third 33 out of 100 on Metacritic. My favorite assessment comes from reviewer Nathan Rabin, who concluded, “The film functions as the cinematic equivalent of a (McDonald’s) Shamrock Shake: sickeningly, artificially sweet, formulaic, and about as authentically Gaelic as an Irish Spring commercial”.

Yeah, I get it. Mr. Rabin refers to the several “overly-Irish” details in Leap Year, which seek to pay homage to the country’s culture but instead come off as cliched (with a capital C). But do viewers really care? Leap Year‘s underlying story is fun, and even if rom-com isn’t your bowl of Irish Stew, at least you have Amy Adams and Matthew Goode. I repeat, Amy Adams and Matthew Goode, two of the most appealing actors in the movie industry today.

I’ve been hooked on the lovely Ms. Adams ever since she took her Oscar-nominated spin as Giselle in Enchanted (2007). It doesn’t hurt she grew up just a few minutes north of where I live here in Colorado. My wife’s been hooked on Matthew Goode ever since he stole scenes from Mandy Moore in Chasing Liberty (2004). It doesn’t hurt he added a passable Irish accent in Leap Year. Both actors have been nominated for awards in far better films, but put them on the big screen together and a little chemistry goes a long way.

Speaking of leap year, my preference for order and logic takes a serious hit whenever the short month of February rolls around. A month of twenty-eight days when the other eleven have thirty or thirty-one? Why not just reduce two or three other months from thirty-one to thirty days and make February “full”? The only credible historical explanation I can find is this: Caesar Augustus stole a few days from February to make his month (August) as long as Caesar Julius’ (July). We future generations are left to deal with the anomaly. Gee, thanks Gus.

In a rather odd example of redemption, February gets extra attention by boasting an extra day every four years. We need the quadrennial Leap Day to put the calendar, the seasons, and the universe back into sync. Not so fast, Mr. March. And yet, pity the poor souls born on Leap Day. Must’ve been pretty traumatic as a kid, trying to understand why your special day doesn’t show up on the calendar like the other kids. Or consider a “leaper’s” 21st year (or whatever year one earns drinking privileges). How do you convince the barkeep you’ve reached your drinking birthday in a year without a February 29th?

Perhaps you’ll “celebrate” Leap Year 2020 by seeing the movie of the same name. We’ll watch Leap Year for the zillionth time. My wife will remind me Matthew Goode’s character and her own Irish Draught horse share the same name (Declan). I’ll remind her several Leap Year scenes take place in Connemara and County Wicklow, two of our favorite places in Ireland.

Matthew Goode recently admitted, “I just know there are a lot of people who say (Leap Year) was the worst film of 2020″. But Goode also admitted to signing on so he could work closer to home and to see his girlfriend and newborn daughter more often. Doesn’t that make the (English)man even more likable? Maybe. At least Amy’s doing a sequel to Enchanted.

(Author’s Note: Just noticed this is my 229th post on Life In A Word. 229 as in 2-29 as in February 29th as in Leap Day. WHOA.)

Some content sourced from Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”, and the 2/28/2020 Wall Street Journal article, “Leap-Year Babies Fight a Lonely, Quadrennial Fight for Recognition”.