Csquared Thoughts

Christmas

Christmas blessings!

The solstice was on Monday. The light is returning!

spices

You know how much I enjoy cooking, and central to that is the liberal use of spices. I'm a big fan of Penzeys, and buy most of my spices there. When we did our kitchen remodel we made sure to include a spice rack, so we've got lots of room for our spices. But even with that there's some overflow into the overhead cabinet.

I've found, though, that for me the 80/20 rule applies to spices. I use 20% of my spices 80% of the time, and the other 80% of my spices 20% of the time. On one of the Yahoo! food groups I belong to I asked if this was the experience of others. One very firm reply was: no, absolutely not. I use all my spices regularly. I suspect, however, that she maintains a much smaller inventory of spices than I do.

Another response was that maintaining a large selection of spices encouraged experimentation with new recipes. That's my thinking, too, though I don't do that as much as I would like.

What's your experience? Does the 80/20 rule apply to spices for you?

For myself, I want to start pulling out those under-used spices more frequently.

postage

When I was a youngster, I collected stamps. It was a hobby I enjoyed for several years.

I also liked to use commemorative stamps on letters I mailed. And I still do. I avoid stamps with the flag and with patriotic themes. I prefer stamps that commemorate nature or individuals whose work I admire.

The problem is, I don't mail many letters or much of anything else anymore. Most of my bill paying is done online. Except for the occasional birthday card, I don't send mail much because I communicate by email or Facebook. (Or sometimes even by phone. Remember the phone?)

So the problem is, I get excited by the commemorative stamps I see at usps.com, and I buy too many. Then there's a rate increase that I should have known about but wasn't paying attention, and I end up having to buy a bunch of one or two-cent stamps, depending on the new rate. One year I had a whole slew of stamps, so I donated them to Good Shepherd so they'd get used before the rate increase.

I'll continue to buy commemorative stamps, but I'll have to be more conservative in my purchases and more aware of upcoming rate increases.

mugs

I really enjoy my coffee mug collection.

I've been collecting mugs for years. Over time, I have narrowed down the type of mug I will buy. The mug must convey a message of some kind or commemorate a location or business.

When I'm sitting in my loft, either working or engaged in personal pursuits (such as writing this blog), I appreciate the feel of the mug in my hand. There is a particular size mug that has far and away the best feel. It's a standard 3.75" tall and 3" diameter mug. I'll carefully check a mug to see if it fits that specification. If it does, I am likely to buy it. If it doesn't I'm likely to pass it by.

And, of course, there's not coffee in my coffee mug, but rather Irani tea.

Laredo loses its B. Dalton Bookseller

I was surprised by the national coverage of the closing of the B. Dalton book store in Laredo, TX.

More than that, it hits me in a big way personally. I opened that store in 1977.

I moved from Claremont, where I was  a Manager in Training at B. Dalton Montclair Plaza, to Laredo in June of that year. (How I became an MiT at B. Dalton is a matter for another "Olive Street Recollection" blog entry.)

When I got there, there was no store and no books - just an empty shell in the Mall del Norte. (Once books started arriving, Bantam Books had on their shipping labels "Mall del Morte," which seemed appropriate to me at the time.)

I hired the staff, we stocked the store and opened that summer. The Laredo of today is nothing like the Laredo of 1977. This was long before the NAFTA free-trade agreement, and Laredo had nowhere near its population of today's 230,000. There was an Anglo minority and an overwhelming Latino majority. Much of our business depended on the wealthy from the inerior of Mexico.

I was not happy there, despite the fact that Laredo was where I lost my....oh, never mind. Before the year was out I told my regional manager, "Get me out of Laredo. I don't care where you send me, but get me out of here."

I ended up in Oklahoma City, where I spent the next eight years.

In those days B. Dalton was part of the great Dayton-Hudson empire. Today it is part of Barnes & Noble. I understand the economics that mall bookstores no longer work, and B&N has a location, they say, for a free-standing B&N store in Laredo, but it  won't  be available for 18 months.

It's a different world, but I have to grieve a moment at Laredo's loss of the B. Dalton Bookseller that I opened more than thirty years ago.

bummer

Today was the last day at work before the Christmas shutdown. Normally we have a holiday brunch with scrambled eggs, bacon, sausage, hash browns, orange juice, and all that. It was always a nice marker of our last day before we returned to work in January.

This year, no brunch. The food service was willing but the company said no.

Bummer.

so depressing

Terry was reading something and pointed out to me that Katherine Ross of The Graduate fame is now seventy. So depressing. sigh.

The Wizard of Oz, part 2

My earlier entry on The Wizard of Oz was prompted in part by comments made by San Francisco Chronicle film critic Mick LaSalle. In his column, "Ask Mick LaSalle," he comments further on the movie in answer to a reader's question.

I saw the movie a dozen times and didn't realize it, either, but by the end of the movie, Toto is still on the chopping block. Dorothy left home to save him, and by the end, he's not saved. Miss Gulch is still alive. She still has the court paper to take Toto away, and Auntie Em and Uncle Henry are still useless. The only change is that Dorothy has resolved never again to leave home, which I'm sure Toto appreciates. Now I'm sure that the makers of "The Wizard of Oz" wanted us to leave feeling that somehow everything would work out, but they did nothing to actually assure us of that. For example, if we thought that Dorothy had become empowered by her experience in Oz, that might have helped. Instead, she seems to have mistaken Glinda's remark - about everything she needs being inside of her - to mean that everything she'll ever need is on that lousy farm. So the movie ends on the note that there's no place like home, after we've just spent 100 minutes seeing that there's really no place like Oz.

Look, the movie is a masterpiece, and I wouldn't really want to breathe on it. Yet I do wonder if it might have been better if Oz weren't a dream, that Dorothy comes home, but with some lingering suggestion that her experiences actually happened. Because if they did happen, it would mean Dorothy is a match for any witch, on either side of the rainbow.

Well, I suppose that's correct. It's hard to argue with the logic. But, gee Mick, did you really have to blast away my perception of the film like that? Sigh.

audio books

If you follow this blog you know that I get my books from physical books printed on paper, audio books on my iPod, and Kindle books. I've been considering a blog entry discussing the relative merits of each, but that isn't there yet.

For now check out this NPR piece I happened to catch: Heard Any Good Books Lately? It's a wonderful story that discusses the history of audio books, the fact that audio books are a different form from print books, and provides a couple of fascinating insider tidbits about the recording of audio books.

Be sure to actually listen to the audio. You lose much of the essence of the piece if you simply read the transcript.

Enjoy!

conversation between God and the faithful

When I was first exploring liturgical Christianity in 1996, I visited St. Bede’s Episcopal Church in Menlo Park. They had the following statement in the front of their worship folder:

We realize that navigating our forms of worship may be challenging for those unfamiliar with worship in the Episcopal Church... A suggestion which may be helpful would be to consider that you are entering into a conversation between God and the faithful which began centuries before we were here and which will continue long after we are gone. Just join in as you are — bearing with us as we are — and we will all be changed as we go!

I've always liked that as a vision for a church community. I would like to think of Good Shepherd in that way. But given the division and rancor over the budget at yesterday's annual meeting, I am troubled. And in the middle of Advent, no less. It makes me sad. Very sad.