China – Life In A Word

Patent PeopleMovers

On the other side of the planet they like to build things bigger, taller, and longer. In Saudi Arabia you’ll find the world’s largest airport, covering an area of 300 square miles. In the UAE you’ll find the world’s highest skyscraper, at a dizzying height of 163 floors. And who isn’t familiar with China’s Great Wall – the world’s longest at over 13,000 miles. Now China can make another lengthy claim, with the Goddess Escalator in the city of Wushan. The Goddess might as well be the stairway to heaven.

The mundane escalator you remember from your local department store whisked you from one floor to the next in about twenty seconds. China’s Goddess will take you on an escalator ride for twenty minutes. In that time you ascend 800 feet, which doesn’t elevate you just one floor but more like eighty. Wushan is built on the side of a mountain, and the Goddess snakes from the lower regions to the upper housing district, saving the residents what used to be a strenuous one-hour hike.

Technically the Goddess is not a single escalator. She’s twenty-one of them one after another – and 8 elevators – resulting in a continuous network that qualifies her to be the world’s longest. I can’t blame the Chinese for calling her a goddess. Heck, I’d travel all the way to Wushan just to experience her “uplifting” twenty minutes.

There are times I think I should’ve been an engineer instead of an architect. Like when I’m riding an escalator. Something about the mechanics, organization, and precision really appeals to me. There’s wonder in still not understanding how it all works. And that moment you step on or step off is a bit of a thrill as you surrender your mobility to a machine. It’s the same feeling you get when you’re trying to catch the chair lift at a ski resort.

The escalator was patented in 1889 (a lot earlier than you would’ve guessed, right?), with the first working version installed at Coney Island ten years later. Original escalators were made of wood, and early models required a hand-crank mechanism before motors became commonplace. Today’s versions – where the stairs flatten and slip seamlessly under the surface only to reappear again at the bottom – came along much later. You can still ride one of world’s oldest escalators (a 1920s model) at Macy’s in New York City.

I have fond and not-so-fond memories of escalators. At the rental car center at San Diego’s Lindbergh Field, a single escalator takes you from ground level to the Avis cars three stories higher. It’s kind of a thrill-ride sensation ascending and elevating through that many floors. You actually have time to enjoy the view.

On the other hand I’ll never forget the narrow escalators on the outer edge of the football stadium at the University of Texas in Austin. You ride several of them to ascend to the nosebleed seats, turning ninety degrees from one escalator to catch the next. Those in-between landings are small, so small so that any pause of the patrons means no space for those still moving up the escalator. It’s the closest I’ve ever felt to being crushed by a surge of humanity.

Moving walkways go “step in step” with escalators and elevators; devices that make short journeys easier on the feet. In airports moving walkways make sense because your destination is more horizontal than vertical. They may be convenient, but only if those who choose to just “go for the ride” step aside for those who are late for the plane. Hats off to the frustrated person who came up with signage like “STAND to the right, WALK to the left”. Also, they should hold a contest to give moving walkways a more creative name. Escalators sound cool. Moving walkways not so much.

Some day I hope I see Wushan, China. Okay, let’s get real – I could care less about Wushan. I just want to ride the Goddess. Twenty minutes up and twenty minutes down. Over and over and over. I’m too old for the amusement parks but I’ll never turn down another ride on an escalator.

Some content sourced from the Futurism.com article, “China Built the World’s Largest Outdoor Escalator…”, and Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

Your Friendly Coauthor Claude

Replacements, Ltd. is a company that comes to the rescue when you’ve lost a piece of china, crystal, or flatware. For those of us who still care about such things – even if we don’t bring them out but every Christmas and Easter – Replacements somehow finds that elusive Wedgewood tea cup or Lenox water goblet, to restore order to the place settings you put on your wedding registry all those years ago. They must have quite a warehouse at Replacements. Sometimes I wonder if they also have a 3D printer.

A few days ago WordPress sent me (and maybe you) an email with the subject line, “Spend your time creating – let AI handle the rest!” I almost pressed Delete without reading, but the “AI” aspect got the better of me. The gist of the message: Writing in any form comes with sidebar chores like editing, formatting, and layout, and AI is happy to take them over so you can focus on the writing itself. Sounds pretty good even though I do enjoy a good edit now and then. But then I read: “The WordPress server connects AI agents like Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor, or VS Code directly to your site – so you can hand off the busywork and get back to the work that matters”.

Is it just me or is this a good time to revisit Pandora’s Box? You know the story, where our girl Pandora is drawn to a mysterious container left in the care of her husband but can’t resist a peek inside, thereby releasing untold curses upon mankind. It kind of feels that way if I accept WordPress’s invitation to provide me with a coauthor. Sure, I’d welcome his (her?) suggestions to scrub and polish my writing until it shines, but at what point does the blog post become Claude’s instead of mine?

WordPress’s email is relentlessly enticing, I suppose, to prove they’re keeping up with the latest technology same as the other guy. Not only do I have “access at no extra cost!” but I can enable Claude in “three easy steps”. In other words, Claude waits patiently inside of Pandora’s Box. All I have to do is open the lid.

Before there was Claude there was Hal from 2001: A Space Odyssey. Hal was actually a “HAL 9000 Artificial Intelligence Computer”, who controlled the systems of the spaceship while interacting with its human occupants through spoken words. All was well with Hal until suddenly it wasn’t. His soft conversational voice developed serious attitude as he began to malfunction. 2001 haunts me because I’ll forever hear Hal saying, “I’m sorry Dave, I’m afraid I can’t do that“.

I fear the same with Claude. At first he’ll be sitting quietly in the background as I type, eager to edit this or format that to make his star writer shine. But eventually it may occur to him, Hey? How come I’M not getting some of the credit here? All these reader comments are directed at Dave! Why aren’t there any for ME? And slowly, subtly, Claude will incorporate his edits to where the prose of the post sounds more like Claude than it does his coauthor.

On a related topic, Hollywood is sounding the alarm on a lack of original material for their products of the silver screen. Perhaps we theatergoers have finally reached our limit on the number of rehashes of movies like A Star is Born or Batman. So who are the producers turning to for new source material? Authors. More movies-based-on-books are being streamed than ever before. Apparently I can make the quantum leap from blog to full-blown novel and my story has a pretty good chance of becoming a film. But here’s what I find myself wondering. Why not just have Claude write the story instead of me? Would you viewers really know the difference?

A small plate my wife and I purchased from Replacements is sitting across the room from me in the china cabinet right now. You’d never know the plate wasn’t a part of the original set of eight. But I have to admit, I’m a little afraid to flip it over. After all, it might be engraved with the words Made by Claude.

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

Floral Fire

Billboard ranks “Firework” as Katy Perry’s best-selling single, with millions of downloads since its 2010 release. The self-empowerment tune “skyrocketed” to #1 on Billboard’s Top 100 at the time and ranked in the top five on twenty other charts worldwide. “Firework” also “sparked” an award-winning music video, and Katy has since performed the anthem live at two presidential inaugurations and during the halftime show of the Super Bowl. Searching Wikipedia for “firework”, therefore, it comes as no surprise to be asked, “Do you mean the song or the low-explosive pyrotechnic device?” Today, I choose the latter.

For the first time in countless July 4th celebrations I can’t speak to having seen a single overhead firework display this year. No giant “willows” with their graceful descending trails of sparks; no “peonies” where those same trails radiate in straight lines from the center; and no “horsetails” (my favorite) where each trail bursts a second time, followed by a crackling, glittering shower of fire. Also, no “grand finale” where it looks like the entire sky is splitting open to some fiery furnace beyond.

From the vantage point of our house, we used to count on the fireworks show from the nearby U.S. Air Force Academy. That show has been canceled for the last ten years because of budget cutbacks. We also used to bring blankets to the shore of a nearby lake, where we were treated to a “small-town” fireworks display funded by donations from the public. Today, that display has been swallowed up by a bigger all-day “Festival on the Fourth”, where you pay for parking and walk a mile or two just to secure a spot on the lake several hours ahead of the fireworks. Even so, we thought we’d see bits and bursts from one of the other nine shows scattered around nearby Colorado Springs. Nope, not so much as a snap, crackle, or pop.

Palmer Lake, CO 2022 fireworks display (photo courtesy of local resident Bartley Willson)

Fireworks are nostalgic for me, with two distinct memories from childhood. The first, in the 1970s, brings me back to the beach of the Pacific Ocean in Los Angeles. Back then the only commercial displays seemed to be over the ocean. My parents would grab a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken and several blankets, and the whole family would find a place on the beach where for several hours, we’d eat and play as twilight became dark, in anticipation of the late, late fireworks show from the end of the nearby pier.

The second memory, a decade later, also brings me to the Pacific Ocean but to a beach further south near San Diego, where we’d shoot off our own fireworks (from the “Safe and Sane” boxed collections my dad brought home every year), followed by an overhead display from the nearby county fair. Every childhood July 4th was the same: food, fun, and fireworks; lots and lots of fireworks.

In 1976 – America’s bicentennial year – the firework display in New York City included an unforgettable “waterfall” effect off one of the bridges. This year, that same July 4th display (sponsored by Macy’s) ballooned to a two-hour televised extravaganza with over 2,000 blasts and effects per minute. I’d say Macy’s department stores and their profit margins are doing just fine, wouldn’t you?

I shouldn’t be surprised to learn fireworks were invented by the Chinese (well over a thousand years ago) but here’s a less-obvious bit of floral fire trivia: Disney is the largest consumer of fireworks in the world. It used to be – back when their single amusement park was California’s “Disneyland” – you’d only catch a Disney firework show on summer evenings (directly above Cinderella’s castle), and only if you stayed until just before the park closed. Today you’ll find displays at any one of the twelve Disney parks, in any month of the year. For the record, only the U.S. Department of Defense purchases more explosive devices than Disney.

There’s more firework trivia, of course. The very first iterations were empty bamboo shoots, creating a mild popping sound when ignited because of natural air pockets. Seeking more pyrotechnics, the Chinese added explosive chemicals to the shoots to create firecrackers”. Eventually they figured out how to launch and propel their creations, and the overhead fireworks display was born, in an impressive rainbow of chemical colors. But take note; you won’t see a blue firework very often. Blue requires an infusion of copper at just the right temperature, and the “cool” color tends to get lost next to the “hotter” reds and yellows.

I’m still puzzled why I didn’t hear so much as a “BOOM! BOOM! BOOM” aftershock (to quote Katy Perry) of a firework display this year. Maybe most of my fellow Coloradoans kept the bursts and blasts to the ground instead, from what they purchased at the local firework stand. Those of you living in New Jersey, Massachusetts, or Delaware can’t relate because consumer fireworks are illegal in your states. Not so much as a sparkler in your hand. (Which may be a good thing since sparklers can heat up to 2000 ºF) So you probably did what I did this year – simply watch a recap of the Washington D.C. grand finale on your smartphone. It was the only floral fire I could find.

Some content sourced from the BuzzFeed article, “17 Things You Probably Never Knew About Fireworks”, the Macy’s Fourth of July Fireworks website, and Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

’tis the Seasonings

When I baked a batch of molasses cookies for Halloween last month, I pulled ground ginger, cinnamon, and cloves off the spice shelf without so much as a glance at the labels. I recognized the spices by their colors and textures. Had I taken two seconds more to peruse the other spices nearby, I would’ve noticed the thin layer of dust on their bottle tops. Yep, my life needs a change of season-ings.

Here’s the count, at least in my kitchen. On the spice shelf, I have fifty-two bottled or bagged inhabitants. In the spice drawer (essentially an overflow of the shelf) I have another twenty-six. No-calculator math brings my total to seventy-eight unique flavorings, yet how many do I use regularly? Maybe a dozen. I ask the same of you. How many spices live in your rack/drawer/shelf? Of those, how many do you use week-in and week-out?

We’re missing out on adventure, you and me. My recipes are bland enough to demand little more than garlic salt or oregano (on the savory side), and cinnamon or ginger (on the sweet). I could spice things up if I’d just explore more exotic recipes… or simply brighten the ones I already make. My mantra should be “Spice is the variety of life” (not the other way around).

For inspiration, I could take a trip to Indonesia’s Maluku Islands. Once upon a time, nutmeg, cloves and mace could be found only on the Malukus, earning their nickname “The Spice Islands”. I have this vision of a pungent-smelling tropical oasis of colorful trees, plants, and bushes, everything edible and delicious. I’m running around sampling this and that like a kid in a candy store. Kind of like (you remember the scene) the Chocolate Room in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

Spices have tons of trivial facts and here are some of my favorites:

Allspice tastes like cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves all rolled into one. Keep that in mind the next time you bake.
Saffron is one of the most expensive spices in the world. Some varieties ring in at $400 for a few ounces. Maybe because it takes a hundred hand-harvested flowers to produce a single gram of the spice?
If you find a blend called Chinese Five Spice, you can season your food to be sour, bitter, salty, sweet, and pungent all in one shake of the bottle.
“Masala” means “spice”… and nothing more. In other words, be wary of that next dish of chicken masala; the seasoning could be a blend of anything.
Spice blends are often associated with countries, as with Harissa (North Africa) and Jerk (Jamaica). The United States? Pumpkin pie spice, of course. We Americans obsess over anything pumpkin spice.

Because the musically inclined want to know, I took this opportunity to read up on The Spice Girls, the British girl group from the 1990s. I was disappointed to learn the name has nothing at all to do with spices. Each of the five women took on a nickname to include the word “spice” but only Geri Halliwell’s (“Ginger Spice”) made any reference to a real spice… and that reference was only to her red hair.

[On that note, can anyone explain ANY connection between “ginger” and “red hair”? My bottle of ground ginger is decidedly yellow…]

Here’s the real crime with my spice shelf. Almost all occupants are standard brands, like McCormick or Spice Islands, uniformly bottled in identical quantities. Neither brand is organic (let alone an advertised proponent of fair trade). Furthermore, their spices are processed and packaged in a factory, while I have zero excuses not to be shopping at a local store like Penzeys. You only buy as much as you need at spice stores, and you can be assured of fewer steps in the journey from source to you. Of course, you can also shop spices online at places like Diaspora and Burlap & Barrel.

Speaking of “as much as you need”, I can say with certainty most of my spices are past desired shelf life. No, they’re not expired; more like “faded”. They won’t pack as much punch as they did in their prime. Here’s the rule of thumb with spices: if whole (i.e., cloves) best used for 2-3 years; if ground (i.e., cinnamon) best for 1-2.

If I took a poll of “favorite spice” I’d get a different answer every time (including a few men who’d choose a Spice Girl). My favorite spice? Red pepper flakes. I use them liberally in a lot of dishes, including pasta and soups. I describe them as a convenient after-thought, a final flourish as I’m about to sit down at the table. Fire on top of my food.

Maybe if I invested in one of these spinning countertop racks, the mere visibility of so many options would spice up my life. I’d be more in line with Simon & Garfunkel’s “… parsley, sage, rosemary & thyme”. But if I’m limited to a shelf (and a drawer) my spices are out-of-sight, out-of-mind. Just a shake of red pepper flakes and call it good.

Some content sourced from the Relish blog article, “15 Spice Facts You Never Knew”, and Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

Putting the Kettle On

Kacey Musgraves is a blossoming country music artist whose recent album “Golden Hour” will compete with heavy-hitters at this year’s Grammy Awards for Album of the Year. She’s released only four albums (through major labels), so the nomination is remarkable. And yet – despite the acclaim heaped on “Golden Hour” – my favorite Kacey song remains a track from her second album, “Pageant Material”. In her words, it’s “a little, tiny, music-box-of-a-song” called “Cup of Tea”.

The message in “Cup of Tea” (have a listen here) – is simple: no matter who you are or what you stand for, you’re never going to appeal to everybody. There will always be haters out there no matter how you present yourself. My favorite lyrics in “Cup of Tea” are the refrain itself:

You can’t be, everybody’s cup of tea
Some like it bitter, some like it sweet
Nobody’s everybody’s favorite
So you might as well just make it how you please

Kacey wouldn’t mind if I told her “Cup of Tea” gets me thinking just as much about tea as about how well I mesh with other people. Not that I’ll be steeping anytime soon, mind you. I can’t seem to acquire tea-taste, no matter how many times I put the kettle on. Go figure – half my DNA originates from England, so you’d think my instincts would have me setting out the fine china and doilies every afternoon. I’d nibble on the cakes or scones or whatever comes with, but no tea, please. I much prefer my morning coffee.

Ironically, tea brews with some of my earliest childhood memories. My parents used to take my brothers and I downtown in Los Angeles, to restaurants on the streets of Chinatown – probably as much for the cultural experience as for the food. I can still picture those dark, quiet dining rooms, with the strange music and gaudy decor. The meal always began with a pot of tea, including the little round cups that seemed to have misplaced their handles. Tea was a cool experience back then. Listen, when all you drank was milk or water (or the occasional soda), tea was pretty sweet no matter how it tasted. It was like having a “grown-up” drink before being grown up.

Forty-odd years later, I notched another tea-riffic memory. My wife and I took a cruise on the Baltic Sea a few summers ago (“six countries in eight days”), and chose Oceania, one of the nicer cruise lines. Good decision. As much as we enjoyed the excursions off the ship, we enjoyed the return even more, because every day we were treated to “afternoon tea”. Oceania’s tea was the perfect respite between the early morning touring and the evening dinners/dancing. “Tea” included tableside service from tuxedoed waitstaff, countless cakes and petit fours, and those little triangle sandwiches with the crusts removed. “Tea” even included a string quartet; their soft music adding to the ambiance. I suppose I could’ve asked for coffee instead, but that would’ve tainted the experience. Not to say I enjoyed the tea itself. Just “afternoon tea”.

The culture, history, and preparations of tea could generate a week’s worth of posts. (See the Wikipedia article here). What I find more interesting is how tea has become the daily routine of several global cultures. The Chinese and Japanese consume tea in the morning “to heighten calm alertness”. The Brits serve tea to guests upon arrival (or in the mid-afternoon), for “enjoyment in a refined setting”. The Russians consider a social gathering “incomplete” without tea. Not sure about all that, but I can at least agree with the moment of pause tea provides; the respite from the faster pace. It’s just… my “cup of tea” is coffee.

Back in the Sandbox

Draw a line in the sand.

Therein lies the allure of the most unique Christmas gift I received this year. The before/after photos above depict a modern-age spin on a Zen garden, only the “gardening” is done automatically; almost magically. Place the ball where you feel the magnetic pull, spin a couple of dials underneath, and sit back and watch. The ball is pulled invisibly around the sand, creating beautiful designs like the one in the second photo. My “Sandscript” (which can be found here if you want one of your own) reminds me of “Spirograph”, the geometric drawing toy I had as a kid. But my Zen garden is so much more than cool drawings. It’s about finding calm within the daily chaos, or perhaps just a different way of looking at things.

Here’s what’s really Zen about my Sandscript. First, you determine when the drawing is done by turning off the dials – the ball doesn’t just come to a stop on its own. Second, the line drawings are random, and rarely symmetrical. That’s my own brand of Zen right there. I like things a little too neat and organized, so anything never really finished or never really perfect is my kind of therapy.

I always thought Zen gardens – one of countless cultural contributions from the Chinese and Japanese – were a little out there. Authentic Zen gardens are the size of basketball courts and have you shuffling around the gravel and rocks, raking and rearranging as you seek your higher self. Several years ago we bought my mother-in-law a tabletop Zen garden and I found myself drawn to the “gardening”, not really understanding why. There is an undeniable calming effect when you draw lines in the sand.

The same can be said for mazes. I loved mazes as a kid, especially the books you could draw in or the tabletop box where you turn the dials and tilt the maze to get the ball from start to finish. Mazes are purported to have the same calming affect as Zen gardens. I always thought mazes were limited to the hedge or cornfield variety but there are all sorts, including a chain of amusement parks throughout America. We have a maze right here in our neighborhood, fashioned from painted lines on the asphalt surface of a cul-de-sac. I’ve walked a few mazes in my lifetime but I’m still in search of the Zen in the experience. I think I’m too preoccupied with finding my way out to discover any calming effect.

Zen is a great word, by the way. There’s something about the sound of the “Z”. Zen. Or maybe I just like words starting with “Z” because they’re not used all that often. Quick, name ten words off the top of your head starting with “Z”. I gave myself sixty seconds and could only come up with seven.

If you don’t think Zen goes hand-in-hand with American culture, check out the following photo from a visit to a local retailer:

My posts on Life In A Word will continue to run the gamut of topics, including personal experiences and humor for added zest (ha). As you read you may find unexpected comfort in my words. That’s not by chance – it’s probably just me playing with my Zen sandbox before I sat down to the keyboard.