Fried fishiness

Relativity? Absolutely!    

Here?... in Bellingham, WA? McSeriously?

As the saying goes, "No matter where you go, there you are." So then what is here? What is far? What is near? What's over thar? And who begs these questions? Sporadigram says McDonald's does. The billboard down the street from my office was recently wrapped anew to herald the arrival of Fish McBites: "the catch that's caught here" Whoa! Really? Have the golden arches adjusted their span to sync up with the "eat local" movement? And what would I be bitin' if I were Mc-Bitin' here? Salmon? Trout? Herring? Fathead Sculpins? Well no, fool. Fish McBites are Alaska Pollock. And those deep-sea morsels are swimmin' 'round here, off the shores of B'ham, right? Well, no. 

From space: McEarth

The first clue is the name of the fish -- the Alaska part of the name. But it's even farther away than that. Alaska Pollock is almost exclusively caught in the Bering Sea, about 2,370 miles from my neighborhood McDonalds. Not that that makes McBites less McTasty but is that's pretty far from McHere.

According to my independent geographic analysis (see McGoogle Earth screen shot at left), a delectable Lake Michigan musky would also be "caught here." In fact, McDonald's "caught here" geography is fully compliant with the Caught Here provisions in section 438.b of the North American Free Trade Agreement.

Oh well, Mickey D's. A loose interpretation of "here" is probably great news for Filet-O-Fish fans in Elko, Nevada. And, if you really want to embrace the eat local movement here in Washington State, you'd best start putting pot brownies in the happy meals (along with the salmon McNuggets).

Speaking of pot brownies

The Girl Scouts are out peddling their biscuits again. But isn't it always the Brownies who get stuck doing all the work? Seems that way to me. Anyway the G-Scouts haven't yet to my knowledge applied for a Washington State license to sell Mary Jane Tagalongs™ next year. But when they do, Sporadigram will be prepared. I won't be out-scooped on this one. Not like last week when the post-November-elections story the media had been waiting for finally happened: Newly married lesbian couple seeks pot license in Washington. An accident of joint probability? I doubt it. And if you laughed at that, you're obviously high.

It will be fun to see how merchandising works in the upcoming, legal pot market. It's safe to say there won't be any advertising. But will there be brand names? Creative packaging? In anticipation of a fairly mundane yet oddly mesmerizing series of upcoming events, Sporadigram is getting ahead of the swerve by appointing itself a giver of unsolicited accolades in the field of merchandising, product placement, and stuff like that. So, without further ado, please tolerate...

The first, sporadic Sporadigram merchandising awards

Bellingham Goodwill's TV department is low def genius.

Goodwill: Who says old, castoff TVs don't deserve prime-time shelf placement? Not Goodwill. While looking for an almost-mint condition George Forman Grill recently, I stumbled upon the great wall of Elmo. These old TVs were as proud and mainstreamed as any acre of super HD plasma at Best Buy. I was also interested in Elmo's date -- another red-furred muppet (strangely with blond hair). I really need to stop over-thinking muppets.

Like nuggets in a pan, it so happens.

Ship Happens in Sumas, WA, with their snarkily allusive name, moved into the old Miner's Outpost (or some such place). They found out the hard way (or maybe they had no idea) that when you gotta go hang your shingle on the existing infrastructure, you gotta go... But, adding injury to insult, Ship Happens gets extra chutzpa points for searching the internet pipes and somehow finding comfort with the the URL, MyShipHappens.com. Plain old "shiphappens.com was taken? So there's more than one Ship Happens?! From that observation we can now generalize that Ship Happens happens. Wow. I better hustle over to GoDaddy and put $9 down on YourShipHappens.com. But I'd let you have it for $20 (it so happens).

Oh, hey, how ya doin'? I saw you in aisle eight the other day. Yeah, um,
see ya 'round.

Our neighborhood Haggen supermarket went through a remodel last year and that lead to a months-long shuffling of the merchandise. The resulting need to frequently reinvent the store's product taxonomy -- you know, the category signs that hang over each aisle -- provided rare insight into the philosophical struggles confronted by the modern market manager.
Product categories are usually based on the substance of the things like produce, meat, dairy, baked and prepared foods, salty snacks, and tampons. But other products, like adult diapers, force the modern market manager to skip convention and name a category based on the need that's being met. Thus, big diapers become incontinence. If this approach were loosely applied to the rest of the store, aisles would simply be marked, "Hunger," "Getting drunk," "Sneakers for grandmas," and "Spills and other accidents." Could ice cream be both a substance and a distinct need? Is there a philosopher in the house?

When you feel the urge to steal, remember,
you can buy a cream for that.

At the Food Country USA in Glade Spring, VA I stumbled upon a great merchandising trick: Identify certain products as popular among thieves -- you know, extra desirable like jewelry and sudafed. It's the same stunt as putting an armed guard outside a diamond store or hiding those speakers that play the demon voices next to the cheese at Trader Joe's. But while it may be true that our Food Country is dealing with rashes of crime here and there, I've gotta feel sorry for the itchy 'lifter (who as it turns out is a lot like the lonesome loser). We've all gone to great lengths to reach a hard-to-scratch itch. And if money is the obstacle, maybe that's not so different than having a wide back or really short arms. And who can know the severity of another's itch? Maybe the shelf sign should read, "Itchy but broke? Food Country clerks are always happy to scratch ya." And if that doesn't stop the burning, I don't know what will salve us.

Is this a wardrobe moofunction? Looks kinda teetery.
What would Temple Grandin do?

Back up in Sumas (where you have to try harder) the Super Duper Foodstore gas station & minimart has "raised the chain" in Washington's competition among north-state retailers to see who can sell the most milk to Canadian lactophiles escaping that country's diary supply management policies. Their strategy? Inflate a 35 foot (10.67 metre) plastic cow (we'll assume it's not bull). As you can see (at right), the tactic takes an immediate turn for the strange. I mean, if you're bankin' on a two and a half story bovine balloon with human hands, sun glasses, a Holstein-print t-shirt, and bowling shoes, why confuse things further by tethering guy-wires to the poor "cow-woman's" nipple rings?  It's a lot to pasteurize.

Until next time, remember, Sporadigram cares.

Screen time

Sharing is a symptom of scarcity (or just lameness)

100 percent screening of airline
passengers

In the land where individualism trumps the group, it seems we keep finding ways to avoid shared experiences. Sure, we share experiences after we've had them -- on Facebook. But why should we waste time experiencing music or film or other mass media with other people when there's even a small chance our tastes may differ? That's what headphones and iPads are for. This trend (if that's what it is) was in my face on a flight earlier this year. One seat, one video screen. It's assumed now that only people flying on food stamps need to be offered headphones. Having been on just a few planes with this one-face-one-screen accommodation, it would already feel dreadfully pathetic to confront the long standard choice: watch the movie or don't. But the old standard would also fly in the face (pun intended) of this trend (if that's what it is) because watching a movie in an airplane, on a shared monitor, with a bunch of strangers, would now seem less like an in-flight premium than like being stuck at a bad summer camp. So toddlers take note. Your parents' repetitious insistance that you share and take turns is oblivious to the trend (if that's what it is).

Maybe I'm wrong

iPad can be wePad but it's myPad
and it's gone.

For Fathers' Day this year, I got an iPad. Apparently, I'm supposed to share. While I wasn't sure at first what the void was between my smartphone and my laptop, apparently the distance from ears to lap  represents a huge market for apps that could change my life... if I'd only let them. But it's been difficult to explore these new frontiers because first, I have to track down the 'pad. I started hiding it and taking it to work with me. The compulsive sharers have found the hiding places. I tried to see how I'd use it at a meeting. Flipping open the "smart cover" at a conference table in Vancouver last week, I had to make the snap judgement that it would be worse to attempt an explanation of the wonderfully high resolution page of pink bikini bathing suits (those things are expensive btw). And see? If we all had our own iPad instead of my new wePad, I would know less about all the game apps that are now loaded on to it, less about all the cool stuff we may or may not be buying, and my colleagues would be less inclined to wonder about my fetishes.

It gets worse

Survey says... what the f*** is that guy doing fishing for
for file folders in a coat-and-tie-dress?

The banality of PowerPoint is a tired cliche, it's true. But it's still happening. With a generation of rising Teletubbies taking over soon, we can't seriously expect this trend (if that's what it is) to reverse. See the screen. Be the screen. Giggle and coo. Among the most unfortunate spinoffs of this mediocre medium is clipart. Where other art has the potential to imagine life's complexities, clipart's agenda is bluntly opposite: obfuscatory reduction. And so I posit that clipart is not cute. (Though, by using the word "posit" I may be giving off the vibe that nothing in this world is cute.) Coupled with the deference to the screen that we're taught in self-referential duplicate by Tinky-Winky, Dipsy, La La, and Po, clipart is management consulting's weapon of choice against scrutiny. Analysis, if it is actually performed, can be synthesized into bulleted truisms and paired with clipart to cement the abstraction. And so, maybe because we just want the meeting to end, we're unwilling to argue with the insight of hard working experts that organizations dedicated to success should not wade into water, fully clothed in dysfunctional garb, to pull up oversized file folders with a fishing pole?

We are what we clip (?)

I am car driving man. I have three skirt-wearing people, a dog, and two cats.

A lot of people are now embracing clipart as a way to affirm their domestic arrangement -- at least to those who may be tailgating them. You've seen this -- those white vinyl line-art decals used to represent the people and creatures affiliated with the household car (sometimes depicted with their favorite toys. A quick Google search (of family stickers) tells me that if I only want to mock this trend (if that's what it is) I'm really late to the party. But nonetheless, it seems sad. What compels this stickering? I can't think they're stuck up in hopes of starting conversations at stoplights (Hey there. Two cats, eh? Wow, you're a lot fatter than your window sticker).  So, sticking with the clipart analogy I'm going to, you guessed it, posit that these mountings are driven by a need to reduce domestic relationships to a simple, stable, and most importantly projectable form (that can survive the stresses of a drive-thru carwash). Maybe I'm wrong so to end I'll say, thanks for reading this far -- my love for you is like window glue.

My body for science

My invitation... to science.

Oil & D
After 45 years of waiting, it's happened. I've been drafted by science to be a subject in a long term health study. If my completed questionnaire doesn't eliminate me, I have agreed to eat large amounts of both vitamin D and fish oil (or one or two placebos) for five years. The hypothesis given by the investigating institutions (Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women's Hospital) is that these supplements might prevent heart disease, stroke, and cancer. So here's the ethical question. What's stopping me from getting my package of pills analyzed to see if I've been put in the placebo group? I mean, it wouldn't necessarily mess up the research to, upon finding my pills are placebos, toss them in the trash and say I ate them. And wouldn't you have to make a fish-oil placebo smell and taste like fish? What could be ethical about that? They could at least use gummy-fish for the placebo group. I guess I could be undermining the possible finding that all it really takes to prevent disease is a good, daily whiff of fish smell.

Backyard archeology

Unearthed: the portrait of Garage Baby. 

The time has come to replace our 1930's era garage building. Built atop of a schmear of cement rather than any kind of real foundation and constructed from things like scabbed-together door jambs, there's not a lot to save. But we will be saving the "Garage Baby." Sometime around 2004/5, I noticed a painter's canvas nailed backwards onto the exposed studs between some larger pieces of plywood shearing. I pulled the nails, flipped the canvas, and voila! It was nothing to cart off to the Antiques Roadshow but the mid twentieth century studio portrait of fourish year-old boy  was definitely a mystery to be investigated--or at least invented. Would some neighbors recognize him as the teenager who broke all those windows in 1949? There had to be a reason his image was nailed backward onto the cobwebs and soot. And despite decades facing darkness, countless cycles of freezing and thawing, and the monotonous silence occasionally broken by the creak and whistle of icy winds, Garage Baby is an eerily compelling presence. Ella, Ivy, and Jack were about 8, 8, and 5 when we made the discovery. With my help, we decided that GB had probably disappeared when he was very young. Because his parents couldn't be reminded of their grief, they had to hide his image in what was now our garage. Certainly, GB's unknown tragic experience lived on as his ghost in and around the garage. In fact, I'm pretty sure I once heard someone howl, "noooooooo" as I started to re-mount the crank on by bike backwards. And there have been pranks. Somebody recently pulled the plug to the garage refrigerator.

Alas, the ghost stories we've enjoyed over the years are false. Thanks to a new feature on Google's image search, I was able to upload the original image of Garage Baby (above), find visually similar images from the entire World Wide Web, and in no time at all, construct a timeline of Garage Baby's  life.

Garage Baby: A visual chronology of a life well lived.

Despite the revelations via Google, our garage will forever be a more spirited place because of GB.

My upcoming children's books
Due to my obvious knack for turning mundanities into stories that prevent young people from thinking clearly, I've decided to write a children's book -- maybe two.

I stumbled across the first plot about eight years ago during a conversation with friends about what  should determine when a girl can pierce her ears. Thus, The Piercing Elf is a modern fairy/faerie/small-weird-person tale about a girl (or boy) who's too young, in her/his parent's (s')/guardian's opinion, to have her/his ear(s) pierced (or otherwise mutilated). Rather than deny their daughter (or son) directly they/he/she say(s) tries to frighten their child out of the idea by announcing that  they/he/she will have to summon the Piercing Elf, the tiny bearded man/woman with one long sharp tooth who visits children while they sleep and bites a small hole into their precious little lobe(s). Alas, the smart child's questions force the parent(s) deeper into a string lies until the end of the story turns a tad disturbing.

Following on the heels of The Piercing Elf will be another story of modern parental struggle. Daddy Wears Sweatpants Now is a middle aged man's commentary on other middle aged men's struggle with economic downturn as told from the fabricated perspective of a bemused seven year old. While the first pages can be a bit wrenching, Daddy's eventual switch to yoga-pants proves catalytic for a complete, albeit ironic, reinvention. (hard cover only, sorry)

Pre-orders accepted (it might be a while)

Teach lactose tolerance

Think globally, eat tinily

A little cheese goes a short way in the locavore world

Since last August or so, our house has been buying some food through a new community-supported agriculture (CSA)... thing (I don't think they'd want to be referred to as a business). Rather than support agriculture in the typical ways, with money or a shovel, a CSA simply requires more money. Product for product the various price premiums reflect the fact that the berries, carrots, chard, kale, more chard, and more kale are from just down the road or over the hill. We can now claim that we are locavores (not to be confused with locovores -- those people will eat anything). You might think that cutting out transportation costs, distribution costs, and big-government chard taxes would lead to lower prices. But, locavoracity is complicated. It turns out that the people growing and picking these berries live in the same real estate market and have grad school loans. But sometimes the nuances of "sustainable" foodie-culture are too funny to avoid the attention of Sporadigram and so I ramble about it here. The first shock came when our weekly CSA e-mail encouraged us not to miss their debut of chicken -- a whole bird for $26. Last week a wedge of cheese in our box weighed less than the plastic pouch it rode in... in. It was almost cute-a-vore.

Big milk -- too big to pail

Got milk? 

Up here on the border, a strong Canadian Dollar, Canadian price supports for dairy products, and a lot of migration from India to British Columbia over the last thirty years have resulted in an impossible-to-ignore spike in cross-border milk buying by Indo Canadians. This has led to easily overheard speculation by non-Indo Bellinghamsters about what anyone could do with so much milk. Urban legend (if you can call Bellingham urban) already has it that many Indians use the milk for baths. I've also heard conjecture about milk-buying clubs, re-sale in Indian-owned convenience stores, and, less-sensational-thus-less-satisfying explanations involving heavy use of milk in traditional Indian cuisine. After exhaustive research by Sporadigram's investigative arm, there is no evidence that milk baths (not an unheard of though excessive attempt at skin care) have any special place in Indian culture. And how could anyone really get away with repackaging and selling milk in a convenience store? Haven't you heard of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police Special Dairy Crime Tactical Unit?

Paneer: when milk looses its whey.

So, literally, the milky [high]way running from Whatcom County, WA to Surrey, BC boils down to Indian cooking -- specifically ghee, a clarified butter that's made through a process that begins by boiling large amounts of cow's milk; and paneer, a fresh cheese generally made by heating a lot of milk and curdling it with lemon juice (or other food acids). The bottom line: you need more than a gallon of milk to make two servings of paneer.



Thank you. That's really weird.

If you were tiny, you'd be home by now.

Staying with South Asian tangents, last summer I was asked to meet with a delegation of of Pakistani border enforcement agency managers to discuss, well... work stuff (regional cross-border coordination and investment strategies). While I did not have a chance to ask them what they knew about Indian milk consumption, I scored a cool thank-you gift (I think). The presentation of my gift was great. Abdul Rehman Rind (the deputy collector of customs in Islamabad) stood up and announced that the group wanted to leave me with something from Pakistan. He then made some short remarks to the effect that, since I was a planner (sure, that will work I guess) they wanted to give me something that embodied the results of good planning. This turned out to be a miniature wood, string, and bead bed assembled inside an old Johnny Walker Red bottle. (Looks like an optimistic view of the future to me.) It seemed obvious that this was the same gift they had ready for each person they were meeting with over their three-day tour, so I had to wonder how the bed-in-a-scotch-bottle was spun as a metaphor for others' jobs. "...and since you're a border inspector, you know you never know what's inside unless you look..." "...and as mayor of a border city, you know how important it is to provide a bed for people who crawl inside a bottle..." "...since you write a blog, you know that nothing is ever too stupid to present to others in hopes they'll be as amused as you."

Pre Year Memo

Search engine tuneup
While Sporadigram hasn't been the most productive blog on the block, there are signs that it's coming into itself. Just a couple of weeks ago, if you googled "Sporadigram," you would get the clarifying google-question, "Did you mean: spore diagram?" But today, "Sporadigram" is apparently high enough in the hit-charts to preempt any doubts Google's computers may form about your intentions. But just to be safe, in an effort to spare newer readers this kind of virtually awkward moment (and to save those who really want a spore diagram the effort of retyping), here is a spore diagram.

Spore diagram

Finally, some good economic news

Word up.

Sometimes when we least expect it, a fundamental shift occurs that has real consequences for all the coming days. Such a shift may have happened two weeks ago. A double-sided, photocopied, hand-scrawled letter was slipped under the front door of my office (our front door opens to the street -- as in, "to the people.") The letter was from one Ralph Sal Biscaglia. Ralph has a plan (among some other things) for increasing revenue and sanity at the same time. The craziest thing (well, that's an exaggeration) is that he's giving away these strategies and encouraging recipients of his letter to, and I quote, "Make as many copies as you want." So, in support of Ralph's quest for a Nobel Prize and in hopes of increases in your sales and sanity for the New Year, I post his letter here: Suqqess Letter (Yes, the strategy has a lot to do with changing all Cs to Qs.) The best of luqk to you!

The mystery bird

The first bird -- where I "live."

Mr. Biscaglia's letter is not the first time my office has been "leafletted" with curious material. A couple of years ago (I thought it is was more recently but pulling up the pictures corrects my wishful sense of time) I noticed an orange piece of paper stuck to my window (again, on the the ground floor). I walked outside to check it out and it was this goofy drawing of a bird with four-fingered wings -- goofy enough to leave there.

Second bird -- where I shop.

About two weeks later, at Trader Joe's, while reaching for some marinara sauce, something caught my eye that freaked me out -- a miniature version of my bird friend inserted into the price-tag slot on the grocery shelf right beneath the sauce I was reaching for. I spun around to see who was watching me. My routine movements about town were obviously being tracked and marked by a stalker with goofy bird papers.

And if this isn't weird enough, there was a third bird. Walking back to my office from a lunch meeting not two weeks after bird-two, the person I was walking with was compelled to pause at the $1 basket in front of a pet store (fair to say that such opportunity wouldn't typically cause pause). So, casually flipping through the pile of I-can't-remember-what, I see a folded piece of paper in the mix and pull it out. Bird three. This one, the last one I ever found, I still have in a drawer at home. If you have any idea where these birds came from, by all means, let me know.

Cargo pants: pouches of forgotten intentions
Like a lot of middle-aged people, I've caved to certain practicalities like buying pants at Costco. This usually brings to mind "relaxed-fit" sizes and "comfort" waist bands but I'm talking about real utility. Modern "man" has numerous essential devices and cargo pants answer the call. The phone, the camera, tissues for young children (and sad movies), a journal-writing pen, the shopping list, a bottle of hand sanitizer, nose-hair trimmer, pepper spray, and the things that've always been there (wallet, keys, and 67 cents). In France, guys wear a man-bag. In North America we wear it on our thighs -- under a discrete, double pleated velcro flap.

If you have more than one pair of cargo pants, and are given to any kind of forgetfulness, they will start to serve as a running time capsule of what you were in the middle of last time you wore them. Why is there a screw driver in here? Receipts for the cleaning supplies you didn't actually use. Notes-to-self about blog ideas or financial epiphanies involving switqhing letters around.

To break out of the Costco chic, I recently picked up (late adopter that I am) a pair of Carhartt pants. In addition to having a great phone pocket (my favorite), they also have a hammer loop. There's got to be a practical alternative use for the loop. For me, I guess that might be a dish towel. Other ideas?

Happy New Year!!

Thanks given

Buy well
Now that we've all given thanks (yes this is a delayed post-Thanksgiving post) for the nice people in our lives and the option of overeating, we can get down to the business of buying stuff. Let the restoration of consumer confidence begin with you. You must need something or at least have an undeniable want. How is the economy to grow unless everyone finds a need for more stuff than they needed last year? Come on people. My mutual funds are lagging. Get with the program. If you're out of ideas, just send me some money (I have a PayPal account) and I'll go buy some socks or gum or something. Let's get the frenzy back.

I left my [shopping] cart in San Francisco

A right wing view of downtown SF

To give thanks this year we flew Allegiant Airlines direct from Bellingham to Oakland for Thanksgiving in San Francisco. Yes, Allegiant -- the bargain airline that serves little Bellingham because it's an easy way to get at the many more Canadians that live near here (in Canada) than Bellinghamsters. And because Canadians have Thanksgiving in October (before Halloween -- it's crazy), it was fairly easy to get seats.

Good burritos at Chino's

First order of business in SF: reunite with a good SF burrito (where taquerias melt the cheese in the tortilla-steamer). With that business settled (at Chino's on Balboa) we jumped into three and half days of visiting, eating (some more), walking up and down hills, and playing some Scrabble. We also had some odd jobs to take care of such as foraging for lost tennis balls at JP Murphy playground (to take home for our dog) and venturing downtown for a taste of black-Friday madness (our children made us do it).

Ella, Kristin, & Ivy try on pants
at Nike Town, SF.

Kristin and I did manage to sneak in a date -- a morning coffee at a newish Jewish cafe near Jeanne's house (where we were staying) in the Inner Sunset District. At the Old Jerusalem Cafe we joined one other customer (an aspiring author/compulsive notebook scribbler) and an eager barrista. Eager barrista insisted we order his specialty -- an americano with some steamed milk. Maybe it was because he'd never seen us before that he explained the potential of this beverage to please as if he himself had invented heated liquid.

Candles a bit droopy at the Old
Jerusalem Cafe (which has new
hours, by the way).

But it was no time to deny anyone their pride. It was still Thanksgiving weekend. But, the coffee was only okay. My nugget of wisdom for the barrista: Just because you have a big mug doesn't mean you should fill it. I've always tended towards smaller cup sizes myself.

Thanks taking
The return to Bellingham started off smoothly enough. An easy drive across the Bay Bridge, light bags filled with little more than three pairs of underwear and a bunch of weather-worn tennis balls. When we got to the Allegiant Airlines counter we were met by the baggage nazi -- sizing frame in one hand, roll of hot pink approval-tape in the other. No fitty, no tapey, you checky, you pay. Ella, Ivy, and Jack's bags all just made it. Kristin and I, who have the same exact bag, were one inch too tall. We'd been caught in Allegiant's post-thanksgiving extra revenue net -- with many other dumbfounded and now-bitter passengers. There's more to this story but, if you want the more complete rant you can read a google-docs copy of my letter to Allegiant. But, for this blog, I'll let this lesson live on as...

Travel tip No. 2

Sorry... too big. $35
(times two) on the
credit card. Next.

To continue with Sporadigram's Travel Tip series, today's tip is simply that  while Allegiant Airlines seems to be a perfectly functional and potentially cheap way to get to and leave from Bellingham, you need to know and accept ahead of time that it's a total game. And with all games, you win some and you loose some. If you're expecting traditional customer service, you're just gonna get hurt.

And, as an update, I did get an immediate reply (by e-mail) to the letter I mailed to tell me that my letter had been received and that it would be answered within 60 days.  Will I get my money back? Will sanity be restored to an industry that's lost its way? Will I feel whole again? Stay tuned.



The new "-genic"

         Is that a play button or am I about to get my teeth
         cleaned?

So maybe it's not enough to write a letter. Maybe what it takes these days is a video. The contemporary visual signal of having something to say is the video freeze-frame with the play-button arrow superimposed on the soon-to-be-talking head. And, setting up that image probably requires some attention to detail to make it "videogenic" -- at least a little more attention than was paid to a recent link that Senator Patty Murray's office e-mailed recently. The play-button looks more like a form of censorship or a hastily added beak.  Oh well. Just another real issue for our legislators to worry about and need money to perfect.


'tis the season

With December now underway we found ourselves this week at the Port of Bellingam Holiday Festival.  Ella, Ivy, and the rest of the Whatcom Middle School 8th Grade Orchestra performed a festive Friday lunch-time concert for parents and many others who, for the most part, arrived in 20-passenger vans from assorted group-living facilities.

The Port's annual holiday festival is also host to a large gingerbread house contest. Ella, Ivy, and Talia entered and won the 4th-8th grade category (showing no mercy towards their 4th-7th grade peers) with the culmination of their effort, "Gnome Home." The victory was even more impressive because the competition included not one but two gingerbread yurts (because, after all, what's a mushroom house but a naturally occurring yurt for tiny gnomes?).

Gnome Home.

 The Shire: Why Hobbits never leave home.

In addition to  judged categories, the gingerbread house contest includes a People's Choice Award given at the end of the festival. While my one allotted vote went to Gnome Home, I was strangely drawn to another entry: The Shire. It just felt like home somehow and I was compelled to give it support.

Sporadigram censored!
It's true. I forgot to mention this last time. While I was attempting to write a little blog, hooked up to free wi-fi in the lobby of the Niagara Marriott, I was informed that my attempt to access Sporadigram had been "successfully" blocked by the services of Puresight.com because of inappropriate material. I have tried (inconclusively) to figure out what I've typed or pictured that the purifying filters of Puresight have caught and rejected but, in some way, it's kind of fun to think that someone (or at least some piece of software) classifies me as a danger to society.

Squash Jaws

Niagara Fall

Artist's statement: ...and the person
is supposed to be swimming.

As you know, I missed Halloween. No, I didn't forget about it--hardly. But instead of enjoying the parade of festivities at home, I arrived just before nightfall in the strange land of Niagara, Ontario, Can-a-da. But, before leaving Bellingham, I did manage to carve up a pumpkin, stick a candle in it, and leave it behind with explicit instructions. This year's theme turned out to be shark (in case that's not clear).

I'd been to Niagara a couple of times and had a vague recollection of what I was headed for: casinos, a strip of hotels serving casinos, and, the falls -- trying hard to appear wonderful and majestic across from the high-rise row of low-brow glitz. And then around the corner from the hotel were three blocks of haunted houses, wax museums, shooting galleries, and fast food places--some haunted as well.

What would Frankenstein do? Hold the pickle?

On Halloween, I'd arrived in Canada's 365-days-a-year spooky-ville which, because it was Halloween, was a ghost town. And it might have seemed emptier except every other hyperbolic storefront also had a blaring sound track of shrieky scary music or sensational deep voice narration promising deeply troubling experiences in exchange for your hard-earned Loonies. But despite it all, my meeting mates and I managed to find some good Italian food. (Indeed if you ever find yourself in Niagara, eat at Antica's. You won't be disappointed.)

Travel tip No. 1
I suppose, on the heels of "eat at Antica's," this could be travel tip number two. But as the first in a possible series of discoveries on the fly, I'll continue.

So, I'm packing my toiletry bag the night before the flight and realize that I don't have any of those under-6 oz. containers of either toothpaste or shaving cream. I did have an empty pill bottle and so I squeezed out a three-day supply of toothpaste into that. For shaving cream, (only had one pill bottle) I instead squirted my supply into a zip-lock sandwich bag (the size Homeland Security considers to be smaller than a bomb). Well, pulling these non-labeled portions out for the required unpacking of liquids and gels at airport security was evidently unsettling for the inspectors. And it's unsettling for me to realize that these folks are so easily assured by printed containers. But I digress. Toothpaste in a pill bottle got a brow-furrow and a moment of silence. Maybe it was rash cream? Shaving cream in a sandwich bag started a conversation. Since it was not much, I was allowed to keep both but I was informed that they really should be in labeled containers. So, always travel with a Sharpie so that you can scrawl "rash cream" on otherwise ambiguous containers. You're golden! And you're welcome.

PowerPoint vs. smartphone
So why buy a share in a tank of jet fuel to get to a meeting, you may ask. And at times during the "working group" I was attending, I wondered this, too. Like a lot of people, I don't like PowerPoint which, in its lowest and sadly frequent form results in a "presenter" redundantly reading what simultaneously appears on a screen that you can read yourself. And, on the audience side of the equation, you now have fifty people who, knowing they can google it later if it ever starts to sound interesting, have moved on to fingering their smartphones. Looking around the room it became clear at times that the modern meeting is an event where people go to "read slides" to people who are "reading phones." In between there are muffins and afterwards wine.

Hospitality vs. the world
We all know that we live in a time of austerity and increasing ecologic fragility (or at least 99 percent are feeling some of that). But, with much of the last decade's perspective based on an opulent imperative, it can be difficult, especially for over-invested institutions, to adjust coherently to the virtues of eating no more than you can grow. This literally hit me in the face in my hotel shower.

How dirty do they think I am?

It turns out two [shower] heads are better than one -- and even trade marked under the name Heavenly Shower. But is it too much? Apparently this has been a subject of debate up at corporate. So, with the posting of a laminated sign in the hotel shower, guests are essentially told, "We've given you the tools to ruin the world if that's what you require for comfort." I didn't ask for this -- this dilemma -- reach for Heaven, ruin earth. That's not hospitable -- to taunt me with passive agressive nonsense before I've even had a chance to brew my in-room fair-trade coffee into a post-consumer cup printed with soy ink. And why weren't there two drains? That's so like Heaven to deny Hell a second thought. But really, I'm confronting this guilt trip 300 yards from Niagara Falls -- a non-stop shower running at 64,000 cubic feet of water a second. Damn straight I went to Heaven. I've never been more thoroughly cleansed.

Castles smaller but grass greener on this side of Atlantic

Left - Soccer in Angers with the SCA club. Right - Soccer in Bellingham with the Whatcom Middle School team.

Soccer update: This fall, Jack played on both his middle school team and county league team. For the latter team, I earned an instant promotion to head coach only a few days after sending an affirming e-mail reply to my predecessor's request for assistant coaches. I'd figured I'd gotten out of the head-coaching business at the perfect time back when Jack was nine and he and his teammates were just beginning to surpass me in knowledge of and passion for the game. Well, I got through our eight week season. I'm proud of my record--I only missed one game. And if there's any pressure to coach again, my answer will be, "Look, I'd love to, but I've got a blog to write. You know how deadlines are."

Gymnastics update: No pictures until the first meets in January. The training season for level six has been rough and peppered with various fatigue injuries of ankles (Ivy) and toes (Ella). But all seem to be on the mend. Did you know you can buy leotards on eBay? I didn't either -- until I got e-mail today about some new financial obligations.

Face hair update

Wooly Willy in the house
(clown nose not optional
for some reason).

Last week, Kristin mentioned that I should grow a goatee. Hmmm. Nothin' like a random comment about grooming to get the insecurities flowing. Has this been a deficit all these years? Have the ravages of time rendered me in need of a new look? Such perspectives have been heartily refuted. It seems it was just a casual thought related to the fact that since there are whiskers, growing them out would seem fun. So, since I can, and also to cover my bases in case there's more to it, I'm almost a week into my new hair patch. I didn't go forward willy-nilly however. To get a better sense of my options and outcomes I downloaded a Wooly Willy app for my smartphone (If I'd only had this to work with with during the presentation on global freight logistics chain security!) The danger here is that I just don't have a solid bed of follicles in my "mustache zone." So, I'm really counting on my chin to come through with some oomph. But, if Wooly Willy can do it, I have faith that I can, too. And if I don't like it, I'll just stand up and let it all fall to the floor.

"Thanks for begging."
This has now happened to me three times in the last six weeks so it must be time to either stop being surprised or include it in a blog post. This is how it goes. I dutifully take my reusable bags to the grocery store and, at checkout, will usually just start putting stuff in as it comes off the scanner. As with previous occurrences, yesterday at Trader Joe's the checker says, "Thanks for begging" -- which I hear as I've written it here and so quickly try to remember things I've just said that could have been misinterpreted as a plea for free food or an inappropriate amount of help out to my vehicle. But then I remember that this is Washington State and many born-and-bred locals say "beg" for "bag." But being a California fugitive, I guess I should say I hear "beg" when people say "bag." Well, at least I don't need a beg for my melk.