culture – Page 4 – Life In A Word

Highest Chair

When we babysit our granddaughters here at the house, we tap into several items to make the job easier. A big basket of toys and stuffed animals sits in the corner of our living room. A dozen children’s books line the lowest shelf just waiting to tell their stories. Sesame Street is easily streamed on the nearby television. And at dinner time we roll out the high chair so everyone’s on the same level. So who would’ve thought a high chair would be my blog topic for today? Maybe you, if you know anything about cathedrals.

We’re almost there, loyal readers. I will lay the corner-block of my LEGO model of Notre-Dame de Paris next week. Why not this week, you ask? Because before we crack the seal on the giant box of pieces, we need to pay a little respect to the real Cathedral. I want you to know a few things about the stone and glass Notre-Dame before you witness the rising of the plastic one.

It’s a cathedral in the middle of Paris, Dave… what more do I need to know? Uh, a LOT more. To begin with, do you even know what a cathedral is? I didn’t (and I have a background in architecture, for gosh sake). It’s a big, giant church with stained glass and chapels and a raised altar, you say. Well yes, you’re right, but what makes a church a cathedral? Interestingly, it has nothing to do with the building itself. Instead, a cathedral is the seat of a bishop (the ordained clergy-person who presides over the surrounding parishes). For lack of a church this person could just as easily be in a small house and it would still be considered a cathedral.

Cathedrals really do have “high chairs” on their altars for the bishops (cathedra in Latin means “seat”) but Notre-Dame de Paris is much more than a place for furniture. First and foremost, it took a hundred years to construct (1163-1260). In that era the building evolved from the common Romanesque style of the period to the more elegant French Gothic. Notre-Dame feels unusually vertical and airy for a structure of its time and there’s a novel reason for this: flying buttresses.

Imagine Notre-Dame’s architect – Eugène Viollet-le-Duc – talking to the Paris city council in the twelfth century and saying, “Look guys, let’s think outside the box here… literally. The structural support for this church ought to be outside of the building instead of inside”. Why would the architect want this? Because the flying buttresses assume the structural load that was previously handled by short, thick interior walls. The result is taller, more dramatic spaces, filled with the light of high-up stained glass windows. In other words, flying buttresses allow Notre-Dame to “reach for the heavens” much better than its Romanesque predecessors.

There’s also more to this French “grande dame” than structure, of course. Notre-Dame has twenty-nine chapels surrounding the main sanctuary (that’s gonna take a lot of LEGO). It features three spectacular stained glass “rose” windows that would not be as large or as high were it not for those flying buttresses. Notre-Dame’s twin towers host ten massive bronze bells and they each have first names. “Emmanuel” (listen to his sound bite below) and “Marie” are so big they take up the entire south tower, while their eight ringing siblings all fit into the north tower.

Notre-Dame also has a central flèche, a spire not unlike the ones you see on more modest churches. This spire, however, is topped by a bronze rooster, which is not only the symbol of the French state but also a container for (supposedly) a small piece of the Crown of Thorns, worn by Jesus leading up to his crucifixion.

As you would expect, Notre-Dame de Paris hosts countless works of art, whether paintings or sculptures. Many of the sculptures are biblical scenes intended to educate the illiterate parishioners of the twelfth century. But my favorite sculptures may be those of the twelve apostles, way up high surrounding the base of the flèche and looking outwards towards Paris… all except one. St. Thomas – patron saint of architects – faces Notre-Dame itself, and was given the facial features of Viollet-le-Duc.

Okay, so now you know more about Notre-Dame de Paris than just the LEGO model. Considering there are over 500 Gothic cathedrals in Europe, it’s impressive to see Notre-Dame at the very top of at least one “Top Ten Cathedrals” list. We’ll visit some of those other “high chairs” in future posts, to add even more life to my pile of plastic pieces. In the meantime, my LEGO “church service” begins promptly at 10am next Thursday.

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

You Can Say That Again

When I was a kid, I remember (or was told) I used creative pronunciations for common words. Instead of cinnamon I’d say cimm-anin. Instead of spaghetti it was bis-ketti. The library was the lie-berry. Maybe back then my excuse was in just learning to talk but I can’t play that card as an adult. So when someone says Feb-YOU-air-ee instead of Feb-ROO-air-ee, or Shur-BERT instead of Shur-BET, I tend to wince.

We’ve made it to the time of year where we reflect on the previous one, and we do so in year-in-review lists. “Most Influential People of 2024”. “Best Television Shows of 2024”. “Significant World Events of 2024”. And how about this one? Most Mispronounced Words of 2024. Thanks to Babbel, maker of language-learning platforms, the hard audio evidence doesn’t lie. Babbel came up with ten words people mispronounced over and over last year.

I could print Babbel’s list here, but it’d be a waste of your time so I’ll just hyperlink it instead. Eight of the words I never ever used in 2024 (and never will), and the only reason I spoke the other two was because they’re the last names of politicians featured in 2024 headlines. To be honest, the list made me question Babbel’s approach to learning languages. Are these the words promoting a budding English speaker’s proficiency?

Babbel also listed mispronounced words from other languages, including one of my favorites: espresso. Not sure how we Americans get that one wrong time after time, but we do. Maybe the myriad “ex-” words in the English language have us saying EX-presso but the concentrated coffee drink sounds exactly as it reads: ES-presso. Keep that in mind and your next Italian barista will be happy to serve you.

As long as we’re speaking Italiano let’s get another one right – al dente. When you want your pasta cooked just right; “not too soft but firm to the bite”, you describe it as ALL den-tay, not ALLA dawn-tay. I only know this because I learned Italian when I was in college. If I didn’t know better myself I’d probably go with AL dent.

As long as we’re talking foreign language mispronunciation, let’s correct another one. Notre-Dame de Paris, the medieval Catholic cathedral in the middle of Paris (and the middle of the River Seine), can be mispronounced so many ways it’s almost as devastating as the fire from which it was resurrected. On the surface it sounds something like NOH-tur daym day PEAR-iss, which is “English-French” at its absolute worst. In actual French it sounds like this: NOH-tr dam due PAH-ree, where the two “r”s almost sound like “l”s.

You never saw it coming but today’s language lesson is a segue to the topic I’ll be covering for the next several weeks and months. Notre-Dame de Paris is a magnificent structure and a renowned work of architecture. It’s also a new model created by the good people at LEGO. And speaking of good people (great, actually), my wife put that LEGO model under the Christmas tree for me this year.

For those who enjoyed the long journey of my building the LEGO Grand Piano (which I chronicled in Let’s Make Music!), and the shorter journey of the LEGO Fallingwater House (Perfect Harmony), I’ll be at it again as I attempt to rise Notre-Dame de Paris from the “ashes” of 4,383 plastic pieces. Won’t you join me on this foray into all things FRON-says? (That’s “French” for those of you who mispronounce it.) You’ll learn about the world’s cathedrals along the way, many of which took hundreds of years to construct. Let’s hope my own build of Notre-Dame de Paris is a whole lot shorter than that.

Some content sourced from the CNN World article, “These are the most mispronounced words of 2024”, and Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

Choc’ Full and Wheat Thin

Chocolate aficionado that I am, the recent headline of the possible buyout of The Hershey Company instantly grabbed my attention. Hershey has been around for well over a hundred years; the American brand most associated with chocolate (no matter what you think of their products). But one detail caught my attention even more than the chocolate. Mondelez, the purported buyer of Hershey, also makes Wheat Thins snack crackers. Suddenly this announcement is downright riveting.

If you don’t have a box of them in your pantry right now, you’re at least familiar with Wheat Thins. The flat, square, unashamedly crunchy crackers have been around forever (that is, if 1947 is the same as forever). Wheat Thins are packaged in the bright yellow box with the distinctive red Nabisco logo in the upper corner. The box top encourages you to “Open for 100% Awesome” and boy do I ever. I sometimes wonder whether Nabisco has baked more Wheat Thins or Oreos over the course of their respective existences. As a kid I would’ve hoped that winner would be Oreos. These days I nosh more like an adult and prefer the ultimate snack cracker.

Here’s where you come at me with your own “ultimates”. Maybe your pantry is stocked with Cheez-it crackers instead of Wheat Thins. Maybe “everything sits on a Ritz” in your house. Or you like Premium saltines because they’re, well, saltier. Are you’re one of those inexplicables who actually prefer table water crackers? You must’ve really liked communion wafers as a kid. Nothing says “Styrofoam” like the taste of a table water cracker.

Wheat Thins was (were?) introduced to my palate at a very young age. My dad was obsessed with them. I can’t think of a time I entered our pantry where the big yellow box wasn’t present. My dad would eat them right out of the box instead of bothering to pair with cheese or dip. My dad was never one to talk with food in his mouth, but I swear I can still hear him holding conversations with my mother while simultaneously crunching a mouthful of Wheat Thins. Apparently obsessions are hereditary.

Wheat Thins are described as “100% Whole Grain”, which is a sly way to throw you off the canola oil, sugar, cornstarch, and other garbage you’ll find on the ingredients list. Admittedly there were several years where I strayed from Wheat Thins. At the time our pantry morphed into a collection of decidedly more healthy options, and many, many boxes of Wheat Thins gathered dust on grocery store shelves. We indulged in almond, baked, and organic wheat crackers instead, as if any of them held a candle to Wheat Thins.

I can’t say exactly when they made their comeback, but suddenly Wheat Thins is a pantry staple again. Probably because I missed their “indescribably delicious taste”; a spot-on advertisement because I can’t describe what makes a Wheat Thin so delicious. Whatever the attraction, the recommended serving size of “16 pieces” is laughable. Heck, I grab that many in one handful. On that note, I’m eternally grateful to Nabisco for creating a “Party Size” box of Wheat Thins (and I’m perfectly content to be the only one at the party).

To be clear, we’re only talking about the “original” here. I was horrified to learn there are over twenty spins on the taste of Wheat Thins, including “lime”, “chipotle”, and (gag) “dill pickle”. Then Nabisco went completely off the rails and created sweet versions of Wheat Thins, including “honey” and “lightly cinnamon”. Those last two have been discontinued because, c’mon, did they really think the king of sweet crackers – the graham – could be dethroned?

Like a lot of food products I was raised with, Wheat Thins are not as “original” as they claim to be today. They just aren’t. I can’t say how many of them I’ve eaten in my life but let’s go with a billion, shall we? That makes me an unquestionable Wheat Thins expert. And I’m here to tell you the taste may be the same but the consistency is suspect. Wheat Thins are a little crunchier these days than they used to be. If they’d just let me into their factories I bet I could figure out exactly which ingredient they swapped out (in the interest of profit margin, of course).

If I were you (wait… reverse that; if you were me), keep an eye on Mondelez. You know them by their former name: Kraft Foods. Mondelez is quietly consuming the entire snack aisle. Chips Ahoy, Triscuit, Sour Patch, Toblerone, Dentyne, even Tate’s Bake Shop (another “thin” delight) all belong to this foody conglomerate. Hershey Kisses (and Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups!) may soon join the list. But if someday we all wake up and finally realize these products are terrible for us, I hope the one cracker Mondelez is still making on the day it closes its doors is Wheat Thins. I’m not sure I can live without them.

Some content sourced from the CNN Business article, “Hershey’s stock explodes higher on report Mondelez offered to buy it”, and Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

Recycled Airbags

As I build the beginnings of this week’s blog post (three “b”s already for those keeping count) my screen distracts me with alerts for Cyber Monday deals. Laptops at 30% off retail. E-readers at 25% off. DNA tests at 70% off (which begs the question: do we really care about our ancestry anymore?) Cyber Monday is a sort of second chance for those who shunned the big box stores the Friday after Thanksgiving (good decision). But here’s what I wonder today. Why endure Black Friday or get distracted by Cyber Monday when you can shop through lost luggage any day of the year instead?

I’ve finally found a reason to visit Alabama. A six-hour drive due west of my keyboard puts me in the little town of Scottsboro, of which an entire block is consumed by a business known as Unclaimed Baggage. UB is exactly what you think it is: deep-discounted personal belongings made available to you by the traveling misfortunes of others. Think of UB as one person’s trash becoming another person’s treasure only, of course, the original owner had no intention of throwing it away.

Unclaimed Baggage is the kind of entrepreneurial enterprise I wish I’d thought up myself. Consider the end-to-end process. You and your luggage start at Point A, but sadly one of you doesn’t make it to Point B. The airline (or the bus or the train) spends several months trying to reunite the two of you. Failing that, they compensate for the loss (sometimes). But what of your bag if it turns up later? Dump it into a “Dead Luggage” office? Actually, yes, and then Unclaimed Baggage comes a-calling.

Here’s an encouraging stat: 99.5% of lost luggage is reunited with its owner. You wouldn’t think Unclaimed Baggage could make a business of the leftovers. But those leftover are, on average, 7,000 items every day. No wonder Unclaimed Baggage needs a city block to house all that it sells. And the best part of the business? UB never knows what it’s going to get because the airlines don’t (or aren’t allowed to) open the bags. It reminds me of the show where bidders vie for contents of storage lockers without being able to raise the roll-up doors beforehand.

The most expensive item UB ever sold was a Rolex watch for $32,000 (50% of retail). Visit the store today and you can purchase a diamond ring for $20,000 that surely appraises for more. Some items are so strange they’re relegated to an area known as the “Museum Gallery”. Wigs. Shark teeth. A funeral casket key (?) Items considered “unsaleable”, and items where you have to wonder why they were on an airplane in the first place.

When I first learned about Unclaimed Baggage I thought, they have something of mine and I want it back! No, I’ve never lost luggage. Rather, I’m the passenger who keeps forgetting the little things in the seat back pocket right in front of him. Reading glasses. E-readers. A rather expensive pair of noise-cancelling headphones. Somehow my stuff gets left behind despite the pointed announcement from the flight attendant: “Please check in and around your seat for personal belongings, as you will not be allowed back on the aircraft after you deplane.” Sigh…

Unclaimed Baggage has at least one example of an item unintentionally returned to its original owner. At UB’s annual ski sale (which earned an LOL from me; I mean, just how many skis are left at baggage claim?), a shopper purchased ski boots for his girlfriend. When he brought them home, she discovered initials on the inside of the boots – hers. The airline had already compensated her for the lost boots so effectively, she re-owns her boots at a deep discount.

As you might expect, a good percentage of shoppers at Unclaimed Baggage are the same ones who troll garage sales and eBay for items they have no intention of owning. They simply relist their wares online for purchase (and profit) from others. It’s another enterprising way to make a buck but it’s not my cup of tea. I’m the shopper who shows up at sales well after the best items have been picked over.

Unclaimed Baggage has cornered a lucrative market. I don’t think they have any competition for the business of repurposing lost luggage. I will say this: I’m less likely to leave my stuff on airplanes now that I know about UB. I mean, do I really want some stranger buying my stuff for way less than I paid for it myself?

Final thought for the day. Why don’t they call it Unclaimed Luggage? Baggage? Luggage? Bag? Lug? Who the heck added two words into the English language when we only needed one? The Oxford English Dictionary estimates we use 170,000 words these days. I’m here to say that’s one too many.

Some content sourced from the CNN Travel article, “US travelers lose millions of suitcases every year…”, and Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

Minuscule Marvels

For Christmas this year I’m putting a small ornament into my wife’s stocking. It’s a miniature of… well… let’s just leave it at “a miniature” in case she reads this post. But I know she’ll love this ornament and promptly hang it on our tree for the remainder of the season. Why will she love it? Because it’ll spark fond, romantic memories. But she’ll also love this ornament because she can’t help loving something that’s a little, well, little.

One of my bucket list items – still to be fulfilled – is a trip to the south of France for a taste of those wonderful wines created from Burgundy or Bordeaux grapes. Maybe you hope to make the same trip some day so I’ll let you in on a little secret. If your trip only allows a visit to Paris, you can still visit a vineyard… right in the middle of the city. Most people visit the neighborhood of Montmartre to see the Sacre Coeur cathedral but most don’t know about the tiny vineyard just steps away. Clos Montmarte produces wine on a single acre, from 2,000 vines forging a connection to the long-ago rural times of the region. Compare an acre to the wineries in Bordeaux, with vines covering an average of fifty times that much property.

Harvesting the grapes at little Clos Montmartre

Clos Montmarte wines probably aren’t award-winning. Who knows if I’d even care for the taste of their reds or rosés. But does it really matter? I love the thought of a teeny-tiny field of grapes right in the middle of Paris. I love how the grapes are harvested by locals and transported to the cellars of the nearby Town Hall to be pressed and turned into wine. The whole operation is appealing to me because it’s quaint and because it’s small.

This affection for itty-bitty things must hearken back to our childhoods. Who among us didn’t spend countless hours of playtime with (take your pick) little dolls, little cars, little houses, or scaled-down trains? When we played at the beach we built little castles. When we played in creeks we made little boats out of sticks or leaves and watched them flow with the water. Tea parties meant tiny cups and plates on tiny tables.

In today’s world the toys might be different but the attraction to small things remains. It fascinates me to watch my (little) granddaughter choose her favorite toy from among dozens: a set of ten two-inch high Sesame Street characters. She stands them up all over the house. She hides them and then finds them. She always seems to have one or two in her hands. Even though my granddaughter doesn’t speak in complete sentences yet, she probably has complete thoughts as she considers tiny Big Bird. You are a lot smaller than me and that’s why I like you so much.

If you include Japanese toymaker MegaHouse in this year’s Christmas purchases, maybe you’ll go for their world’s smallest operational Rubik’s cube. You can’t get one until next April, but picture this: the minuscule marvel is one 1,000th of the size of the original. Pull out your metric measure to confirm it; a single face of the wee cube measures only 5mm from side to side. Best throw a pair of tweezers into the Christmas stocking along with the cube. There’s no way you’ll be able to rotate the Rubik’s colors with fingers alone.

Would I want the world’s smallest operational Rubik’s cube, you ask? Heck yeah! Consider, the faces of a traditional Rubik’s cube contain a 9×9 grid. Then someone went and created a miniature Rubik’s cube with 2×2 grids. I thought, how very cute. I just had to have one so my original would have a little buddy. My cubes are hanging out together on my home office shelf as we speak. And they’re asking for an even littler buddy for Christmas.

So let’s summarize the pint-sized products we’ve covered today. I already have the ornament for my wife in-hand (soon to be in-stocking). I won’t put a bow on a bottle of Montmartre wine this year because I want the chance to see the tiny Paris winery for myself first. And you probably thought I sprung for one of MegaHouse’s pee-wee Rubik’s cubes (and a pair of tweezers). Sadly, no. I don’t have the $5,300 it costs to buy one (minuscule marvels aren’t cheap!) Thankfully, my wife will be happy with an adorable little ornament for $15 instead.

Some content sourced from the CNN Travel article, “The secret vineyard in the middle of Paris…”, and the CNN Style article, “This is the world’s smallest Rubik’s cube…”

Let Freedom Ring

In an Election Week – especially one as consequential as this year’s – it’s only fitting I can’t seem to focus on blogging. After all, my country and its prospective leaders demand (and deserve) my undivided attention. Any topic I choose to write about here pales in comparison.

So I urge you to do the same. Set aside the blogs you read or write, if only for a little while. Watch tonight’s tallies, accept tomorrow’s outcomes, and pray for peace and continued prosperity. As the patriotic “My Country, ‘Tis of Thee” reminds us, we live in a sweet land of liberty.

Let freedom ring.

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

Flop O’ the Mornin’

Parked prominently within my wife’s impressive collection of teas are colorful boxes of English Breakfast and Irish Breakfast. The first is described as “expertly blended… a smooth classic” (strength: 4 tea leaves) while the second is “brilliantly blended… bold & robust” (3 tea leaves). Maybe those descriptions are right on the money but I’m a coffee drinker so what do I know? What do I know? I know I’d never let English breakfast or Irish breakfast anywhere near my dining table.

Sorry to disappoint but we’re not talking about tea at all today. Instead, we’re talking about the food that goes with the tea. Or rather, the food that should go with the tea. In my world, the sanctity of breakfast is second only to the cornucopia of the Thanksgiving meal. There’s a certain well-defined menu of dishes that screams BREAKFAST!!! and nobody in the Western Hemisphere (or at least, in the New World) would disagree. Even so, I must acknowledge the “illegal aliens”; the dishes that try to crash the morning party when they really belong on the lunch or dinner table. Or in the trash. Or at least on the other side of the Atlantic.

In its various forms, the full English breakfast starts out promising. You’ll find eggs, bacon, and sausage almost without fail; even hash browns on occasion. But the plate shatters after that. You have a tomato, cut in half, fried, and doused with salt and pepper. You have baked beans in tomato sauce (which aren’t even sweet the way Americans think of VanCamp’s or Bush’s). Finally, you have the horror known as black pudding, which can only be described through the hyperlink above instead of the words of this post, for fear I’ll lose my lunch – er, breakfast.

Unlike the teas, the full Irish breakfast is virtually identical to the full English, with the singular exception of white sausage instead of black. Again, the definition will remain behind hyperlinked for the sake of a clean keyboard. I was in Dublin on business years ago and took the “try anything once” approach with white pudding. Bad, bad, very bad decision.

White pudding (not for the faint of stomach)

If I were born in England or Ireland I probably wouldn’t rain on the breakfast parade on the other side of the pond. But here’s the thing: even if you like a savory tomato or “pudding” for breakfast, the entire plate is greasier than the wheel bearings in your car. There’s not even anything to mop up said grease (like the slices of dry toast we Americans prefer). I can’t imagine having much pep in my step after a weighty meal like this.

Denny’s is very helpful to reestablish breakfast order. If you walk into one of their restaurants and order the “Build Your Own Grand Slam”, you can construct your plate from four of the following: Eggs (7 different ways), pancakes (9 different), bacon (2), sausage, potatoes (3), toast (countless), muffin, biscuit, ham slice, or seasonal fruit. With all those combos you could eat breakfast at Denny’s every day of the year and no version would be the same as another. But more to the point, Denny’s offers breakfast items decidedly “All American”. Add in waffles, hot/cold cereal, baked goods, and hash browns, and you’re looking at everything deserving of the list.

American breakfast menus do include a few trendy alternatives these days (even at Denny’s). You can keep it simple with a fruit smoothie, breakfast sandwich, or avocado toast. These all-in-ones strike me more like convenience foods than full breakfasts. Yes, you paint yourself a little healthier just for ordering them. But let’s hang in there a few generations and see if they still show up on breakfast menus. More likely they’ll just be memories the way porridge or salted meats have become breakfast history.

For the record, my wife’s English and Irish tea boxes sit largely untouched, except for the few bags she’s brewed. They’re untouched for good reason. Just the words on the box have me thinking of tomatoes, baked beans, and pudding. Someone bring me a blueberry waffle stat.

Some content sourced from the CNN Travel article, “The Full English: How a greasy feast came to define and divide a nation”, and Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

Apple Pie meets Maple Syrup

On a visit to Detroit with my brothers last weekend, I was surprised to discover just how close the city streets are to the edge of the United States. Walk out of Detroit’s downtown Renaissance Center through the south doors (yes, I did just say “south”), cross Atwater Street, and you’ll find yourself standing on the edge of the Detroit River staring at Canada on the other shore. Almost has you thinking in metric, “eh?”

Here’s something I probably learned in middle school and promptly forgot: the border between Canada and the U.S. runs right through the middle of Lake Erie (and the Detroit River). It’s as if Americans and Canucks had a long drawn-out discussion about who deserved the lake more, and then clinked glasses of Budweiser and Molson with, “Okay, you get half and we get half”. The same thing happened with three of the other four Great Lakes (America somehow got all of Lake Michigan) and that’s why – at least in Detroit – Canada lies to the south.

Not that you’d know it’s Canada, mind you. Aside from the giant red and white flag billowing on the far shore, the streets, buildings, cars; everything looks exactly the same as America. You might as well be looking at Saint Paul from Minneapolis. And Windsor (the Canadian town you see) is so close you might as well swim for it. The Detroit River is only a mile wide at this juncture. I kind of wondered what would happen if I did swim for it. Would a flurry of border patrol boats appear out of nowhere to haul me in?

Instead, my brothers and I kept it legal and drove across the Ambassador Bridge (there’s the Detroit-Windsor tunnel if you prefer). It felt a little strange to hand over passports just to go to dinner. And once we sat down at our Windsor table we were greeted with a hearty “Happy Thanksgiving!” Thanksgiving? Had we gone through some sort of time warp? Oh, right – Canada celebrates Thanksgiving in October.

Naturally we asked our server how Canadians celebrate Thanksgiving. She thought about it for a moment and said, in her wonderful Inland North accent, “Oh, y’know, we gather with our families and have the meal.” That’s it? Not even an embarrassingly-large, dozens-of-dishes, eat-’til-you-burst meal? Just food with family? But in fact, Canadian Thanksgiving is pretty much the same as “down south”. Explorers crossed the ocean, landed safely in the New World, established a settlement, held a feast of thanks, blah-blah-blah.

Pumpkins make sense for Canadian Thanksgiving

Despite our server’s succinct description, the Canadian Thanksgiving meal includes most of the dishes we enjoy on this side of the Detroit River (including turkey). Canucks also celebrate with parades, Oktoberfests, and other festivals. There’s even a “Thanksgiving Classic” courtesy of the Canadian Football League. Makes me wonder if the Detroit Lions somehow found a way to play that football game along with every (U.S.) Thanksgiving Day game since 1934.

As we crossed back over the bridge after dinner, two thoughts entered my mind. One, the waterfront houses on the Canadian side of the Detroit River have a view of the United States all day long instead of seeing their own country. That seems a little odd. And two, I wondered whether goods and services in Windsor (or beyond) would be worth leaving the U.S. for, instead of just purchasing the same in Detroit. You’d have to pay the bridge/tunnel toll both ways for a little Canadian Bacon (or backbacon), which might compromise the benefit. You’d most certainly run out of pages for the stamps on your passport.

Earlier I said something about “almost” thinking in metric. No, you really do have to think in metric in Canada. As soon as we crossed over the Detroit River, our car’s GPS changed directions into kilometers (clicks) and meters. Suddenly the next turn was “100 meters” away instead of “300 feet”. Believe me, it’s a little disorienting watching the meters count down (slower) than the feet you expect. After several bottles of wine at dinner (liters?), at least we could still navigate back to the bridge. Otherwise this post might be coming to you from “up north”.

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

Tricks of the Trader

Our town, like so many others, offers the choice of grocery shopping at a national-brand market or at one with a more local vibe. We spend our dollars at Publix (1,300 stores across eight Southeastern states) but also splurge at The Fresh Market (161 stores) when we’re after something a little more unique. Having said that, our town lacks another popular market and it begs the question: What is the appeal of Trader Joe’s?

This post was originally headed in a different direction. Trader Joe’s made the headlines because of its popular cloth “mini-tote” bags; so popular they were reselling on eBay for $500. That led me to think, America has an obsession with miniatures and let’s make that today’s topic. But no, I can’t get Trader Joe’s itself out of my mind, so let’s walk through their aisles for a few minutes.

The cloth bags are a great place to start. Did you know Trader Joe’s was the first grocer to offer reusable shopping bags, beginning in 1977? The trend didn’t catch on with other stores for another fifteen years. Even better, “TJ’s” encourages use by refunding you $0.05 per bag or entry into a weekly raffle for a $25 gift card.

The above paragraph was brought to you by the food-and-drink enthusiast website Tasting Table. Their 25 Facts About Trader Joe’s… is a convincing sell, maybe getting you to dash over to your nearest TJ’s for a look inside. But a company’s commitment to sustainability isn’t enough to draw me in over and over. There must be something else at play.

Maybe it’s more about TJ’s “revolving door of new products”. They frequently discontinue one product in favor of another, so what you find on the shelves is constantly changing. They limit certain items to seasons (right now you’ll find pumpkin-spice everything). And their product line is impressively diverse for a medium-sized grocery store, which probably attracts more than your run-of-the-mill shopper.

I suppose you could make the same argument for a restaurant. Shaking up the menu is a good idea every now and then (hence “specials”). Leave the core set of entrees alone but occasionally introduce new ones to see if they’ll take. Yet it’s not a perfect analogy for Trader Joe’s. My impression is, nothing on TJ’s shelves is safe for the long haul because all products are under constant scrutiny.

How about “affordable prices”? Here’s where I take my hat off to TJ’s. The advertised price of a given product at Trader Joe’s is the one-and-only price. No discounts, coupons, gift card offers, special promotions, or even online ordering to cloud the cost to the consumer. And since 80% of what TJ’s sells can only be purchased at their stores, price-shopping the competition is a waste of time.

TJ’s probably draws in young families because the shopping experience is fun. The nautical theme is apparent in its decor, as well as on its “crew member” uniforms. A stuffed animal hides somewhere in the store – find it and win a prize. And a bell rings (again, the nautical thing) to alert employees to open new check-out lines or answer customer questions. I like that approach a whole lot more than simply announcing the need over a loudspeaker.

You can try a lot of things at Trader Joe’s (Costco on steroids?), you can call the store ahead of time to reserve popular items, and you can usually get a refund on anything you regret buying (regardless of reason, proof of purchase, or the amount of the product you’ve consumed). What I highlight in italics here is impressive for a grocery store yes, but it still doesn’t make me a return customer.

At the end of the day (or a list of “25 Facts…”) I go to a grocery store because it carries the items I need. To put it another way, I am brand-loyal and fairly routine in what I buy. Perhaps that is the genius of Trader Joe’s. It draws people in again and again because, well, they want to be more creative in the kitchen. Try out new things. Emerge from the doldrums of the same thing on their plates every other week. And who can argue with variety as the spice of life?

Maybe, collectively, 25 facts explain Trader Joe’s success. Or maybe someone from out West will chime in and solve the mystery. After all, California was the birthplace of Trader Joe’s (Pasadena), and the number of stores in the state has ballooned to over 200. There should be plenty of TJ’s experts out there to explain what the fuss – er, repeat business is all about. Then, just then, I might get into my car to drive the hour and change it’ll take me to get to my nearest location.

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

Hack Attack

Imagine a plain brown box showing up at your front door with no indication of who or where it came from. The box is topped by a small white envelope with a card inside. In elegant script the card reads: Scan the QR code to see who sent you this gift! So you scan it. Congratulations – you’ve just given scammers access to everything on your smartphone.

I wish this story was a work of fiction but some day soon it could be coming to a doorstep near you. The gift box scam worked on my son’s friend and frankly I can’t say that it wouldn’t have worked on me. If someone sent you a gift and they wanted it to be a surprise, would the situation look much different than what I just described? Would you scan the QR code?

I can’t explain how the simple scan of a QR code translates to the hack of a smartphone, but technology far outpaces my understanding of its capabilities these days. My first reaction to this story was to check my phone apps to make sure any “data-sensitive” ones were password-protected. My next reaction was to wonder if I could ever trust a QR code again.

Here’s a second bit on hacking, also passed along by my son. He said scammers now prey on public parking lots. Many of these lots use pay-by-app technology and the app can be downloaded onsite by scanning a QR code. Scammers simply place their own sticker over the one you’re supposed to scan and presto! – you’ve unknowingly given some level of data access to thieves. It reminds me of gas station scams where the pump credit card reader is retrofitted with a device capable of collecting your card’s data.

By comparison email and text scams now seem pedestrian, but boy-howdy they keep trying don’t they? I got one just last week claiming I have a “USPS parcel being cleared, but the parcel is temporarily detained due to an invalid zip code”… and I’m supposed to click on a link so I can correct the zip code. These phishing messages are so common they’ve become easy to spot, whether from the broken English or from the bizarre originating email address. Phishing reminds me of those long-ago Nigerian princes who sought our help in exchange for “large sums of money”.

At least I’m not a head-over-heels fan of Brad Pitt. Last month two women were scammed out of hundreds of thousands of dollars by five people in Spain, posing collectively as the actor in an online conversation. The fraudsters were arrested, but you have to wonder about the naivety of people these days. Do you really believe Brad Pitt would contact you to invest in one or two of his projects? More importantly, would you invest this kind of money with anyone without meeting them in person first?

All of this hack-yacking brings to mind the 1970s counterculture bestseller Steal This Book. From the title you’d expect to read about tricks of the hacking trade but it was a different topic entirely. Steal This Book gave step-by-step instructions on how the average American could get free services and products courtesy of the federal government’s welfare programs. The book was intended as a sort of protest against the powers-that-be, written by a well-known activist of the time.

[Side note: Steal This Book also explained how to create (underground) radio broadcasting and printing presses, start (non-violent) demonstrations, and make bombs with household materials. You can still buy the book but I’m guessing the section on bombs has been removed. And don’t ask me how many copies of the book were actually stolen.]

The FBI’s website lists eighteen categories of common frauds and scams. The examples I shared above fall under just one of these categories: “skimming”. Some of the other categories are even more disheartening, like “holiday”, “elder”, or “romance”. Collectively it’s a sad statement about the world we have to deal with. So be skeptical, I tell you. That unexpected gift at your front door is probably not a gift at all. That QR code may create a connection you don’t want. And “Brad Pitt”? He has no interest in doing business with you. He only wants your money.

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