Science fiction, fantasy, mystery and what-not
It’s from a tee-shirt, but it should be a bumper sticker.
Yes, I confess: I’m a coffee snob.
I can’t abide most American mass produced ground coffee, like Folger’s, Maxwell House, and Hill Bros. Worse of the worse is Sanka instant.
No, worse of the worse could be the Folger’s Instant Coffee Crystals. Instant coffees taste off to me, as though the coffee has been recycled.
I have friends who swear by Dunkin’ Donut’s coffee. Not me. Dunkin’ Donut cofffee provides a taste that I imagine comes from a dirty tee shirt being soaked in coffee and then wrung out in a cup. Just below it are the foul offerings provided at McDonald’s, Burger King and other fast food establishments. I haven’t had coffee from any of those places in decades. Haven’t eaten at them since around 1992, when I returned to America from Germany.
I became such a snob, as with many things, when I was exposed to offerings in other places. Being stationed in Germany was the changing point for my appreciation of not just beer, but coffee, pastries, asparagus and French fries. German coffee seemed so very strong and clear that I was instantly drawn to it. I started buying different Italian coffees available in Germany, examining flavors the way others do with wines.
The same process was followed with wines, and then beers, along with cigars, ports, whiskeys, fruits, chocolate, cheese, fish, oils, vegetables and meats. I learned that an experienced palate will be drawn toward fresher, clearer flavors. Becoming more mindful among the differences in flavors, I became more mindful as I consumed food and beverages. Fresher and more refined foods offered unique flavors on my tongue.
Of course, it ruined me. Returning from Germany and settling into the Bay area, I drove by a KFC. KFC chicken! I remembered eating it as a child. A sudden nostalgic flame consumed me. I ordered a chicken dinner. The eating experience ruined my memories of KFC and made a skeptic of me about all my American favorites.
So, I’m a coffee snob, but I’m also a beer, wine, chocolate, pie, cheese, fruit, vegetable, meat and pastry snob. I’ll eat things because they’re sustenance, and it’s my nature to accept that food is fuel. But I now know that some foods don’t work nearly as well as fuel.
Something about the eating and drinking experience also affected my reading, news reporting and movie watching. Overall, I became a snob, more watchful, more critical, more mindful. Part of me often wishes that I wasn’t a snob, that I can just turn on the television and be titillated by the latest number one show like so many others, or that I don’t need to research and vet news headlines and reports for the truth and accuracy, or that I can just trot on down to a fast food place for a meal.
With that, time for breakfast, locally sourced and organic, featuring berries and fruit we picked and froze ourselves, and a cup of coffee. It’ll be Major Dickinson today, from Peet’s.
Walking around, I’ve just recognized how much my little town of Ashland, population about twenty grand, offers visitors and residents. Of course, it’s all about experiences here. On center stage is the the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and the Green Show (free) but there is also the annual Ashland International Film Festival. Southern Oregon University generate learning activities. Your reading fixes can be attended through Bloomsbury, the Book Exchange, and the Book Wagon.
Want a marijuana high or need a medical high? We have you covered. Marijuana is legal in our state, county, and town. Several dispensaries are here to guide you through your choices. You can smoke, vape or eat to fill your need, although you can’t do it out in public, as signs will remind you. Locally produced chocolates are made at Branson’s to handle that munchie or go to Market of Choice and ogle their pastries, breads, pies, cakes, cookies, scones and cheeses, or ice creams, pastries and gelato at Mix, on the plaza.
Prefer an amber or red ale, pilsner, IPA, porter, stout or lager? Local breweries, led by Caldera Brewing and Standing Stone Brewing, are doing great. Fill your growler at Gil’s or Growler Guys. Gil’s is alongside Ruby’s, where flavorful wraps and sandwiches can be ordered. Ruby’s and Gil’s share owners so you can buy at one place and consume the other. This is pretty cool; Ruby’s has patio sitting available where you can dine in sunshine. Gil’s patio is covered and has fire pits.
Growler Guys also have fire pits. Having a beer as the wind blows your face, the rain falls a few inches away, and a fire warms you as you watch people and cars pass is an an elemental experience.
If beer and grass aren’t to your taste, you can enjoy wines from multiple local vineyards, like Weisinger, literally down the street from me. Or zip across the valley to Belle Fiori. Don’t want to drink and drive? Don’t worry, you can enjoy tastings at several locations and the local wines are offered in multiple restaurants.
Yeah, like to eat? As a progressive town, vegans and vegetarians are taken care of, but places like Smithfields will satisfy carnivores. Lark’s is wonderful for more unique dining choices. Although we lack decent Mediterranean and Greek fares IMO, the downtown area and plaza can see you through yearnings for American, Sushi, Chinese, Mexican, English, French, and Italian. Martolli’s sells sensational pizzas whole and by the slice. Louie’s on the plaza is one of our favorite places to eat. Brothers, Breadboard, Morning Glory and Waffle Barn will do you for breakfast and lunch, but you can have an awesome Chicago style sandwich at Sammich. But the Ashland Food Co-op creates some of the best sandwiches and wraps, which are sold in several local stores and cafes.
Naturally, there is a farmer and grower’s market, run by the RV Growers. Fresh produce, prepared foods like pies are available at the Saturday’s Grower’s Market. The Tuesday’s Grower’s Market has a larger location, and food trucks are present to serve you as you shop. Coffee shops all over the place, less now than there were a few years ago. Noble Coffee is one of several places roasting and grinding their own coffee beans. Zoey’s handles local demands for ice cream and milkshakes. If your burden is clothing shopping, the downtown is full of new and used clothing stores and boutiques. Every Saturday during the summer and fall, the Art
Or just wander through Lithia Park by the creek, following the trails, or sitting by the ponds, watching ducks or enjoying the deer’s presence as they meander through town and the park, nibbling at plants and grasses, looking at you as you look at them.
It’s amazing. Prefer skiing, hit Mt Ashland. Want to venture further away, we’re located just off Interstate 5, seventeen miles north of the California border, less than three hundred miles from San Francisco to the south and Portland to the north, and there are many amazing places between those two.
I’d write more about it all, but I’m hungry.
Some clever folks have come out with coffee in a cone. Which, you know, immediately raises interest in, what kind of cone, and why coffee? Why not beer, or wine in a cone?
The coffee in a cone uses a waffle cone. The problem of coffee leaking through the cone quickly arose. The entrepreneur addressed the issue by adding four layers of chocolate to the cone. If you’re not a chocolate lover (I can’t believe those words can even be true), then you might think, doesn’t entice me, thanks. I don’t like chocolate. But surely other coatings can be applied to the cone. Like caramel or maple, or something. I don’t know. Don’t ask me, I just think here.
Returning to collateral ideas, I brainstormed about what kind of cone I can use to hold my beer, and what I should coat it with. Cheese?
Pardon me a moment while I address my gag reflex.
I like beer and cheese but I canna wrap my brain around drinking beer in a cheese coated cone. Hmmm, wine…maybe.
Can you imagine ordering? “Hi, I’d like a red blend wine cone.”
“Which red?”
“Three Vineyards Oregon blend.”
“What kind of cone, sir?”
“Do you have anything gluten free?”
“Yes, we have a pretty nice olive and rosemary rice cone. I have samples here. Would you like to taste it?”
“Oh, yes, thanks. Oh, that’s good. And that’s gluten free? Okay, I’ll try that.”
“Yes, sir, what size?”
“Grande.”
“And what kind of cheese would you like as your coating?”
“Hmm…I’ve having a red wine…do you have sharp cheddars?”
“Yes, we have several cheddar variations, including white. There’s the list, up here behind me.”
“Oh, sorry, I didn’t see that. Hah. If it was a snake….”
“Would you like to sample any cheese?”
“Yes, let me try that Face Rock sharp white cheddar, thanks. I always like Face Rock’s cheeses. Yes, that’s good. I’ll go with that.”
Fifteen dollars and a few minutes later, you have your grande cheese wine cone. Of course, even with the coating, the coffee dissolves its cone cup in about three minutes. I believe we’d have a about the same amount of time for the wine cheese cone. Chug, chug.
Going back to the beer cone, we can probably have an entire sandwich in a cone, you know, like turkey with Swiss cheese. Using a rye flour cone, we’ll wrap the innards with the turkey and layer it with hot melted Swiss cheese. Then we’ll deep fry that sucker, fill it with beer (“What beer do you want, sir?”) and sell it at state fairs. And then, someday in the future (which, I know, is a bit redundant, but I’m selling an idea here), we can have National Drinks in a Cone Day.
Next: Pizza in a cone. And then stir-fry in a cone, and burritos in a cone….
Isn’t progress amazing?
Time to write like crazy, at least one more time.
Never is a big word, easily used. “I’m never going to Texas,” she said. “It’s full of racists and rednecks.”
I have family in Texas. They are somewhere on the spectrum of both of those things. Reliable Republicans, they think whites are getting a raw deal and distrust the M&Ms of Mexicans and Muslims. They’ve never actually experienced deprivation, never went hungry or without a roof, but still, they hear stories.
“I’m never riding on trains. They’re so dangerous.”
This was brought on by a train wreck in Spain that killed four. Wrecks happen. They’re never riding on trains because of an accident. What does that leave? Cars, bikes and planes? Because no one has ever been killed using those. People walking are killed, as are people in bed, suffering from nature’s attacks (quakes, tornadoes, hurricanes) to human events (gas line explosion). What are you going to do, hole up so you don’t die, with a plan to live forever?
I’ve jumped on the Never train many times (oooh, like that as a title for something, “The Never Train”), irked by Microsoft, Google, Lenovo, IBM, Comcast, HP, United, Delta, AT&T, Geico, McDonalds, Hillary, Trump, Republicans, Democrats, the NFL, the Senate, the House, the SCOTUS, Obama, Bush, Cheney, Clinton, Monsanto, police shootings, mass shootings, terrorist bombs, drone attacks…. Never comes easily but it’s rarely forever.
“I’m never going to stop drinking coffee,” I say, but with the rust disease, who knows? Yesterday, I bought a quad shot mocha for over five dollars, a bottle of wine for six dollars, and a pint of beer for six dollars. The QSM was purchased on the road in another town. “Too much,” I said, with a grimace, but held back from loosing the N word. “Six dollars for a bottle of Pinot Noir?” I asked. Seems too good to be true but I refrained from saying, “You can never get a good wine for six dollars.” It was hard to not say. Six dollars for a pint of Ninkasi Sinister Black Ale? That seemed steep, too. What is my Never point, I wondered.
My wife illuminated the never point in later conversations. While the prices of coffee, wine, beer (and gas) were striking, we have money that provide us a large comfort zone. The prices are noted and shrugged off. Sure, the comfort zone experienced a little nibble on the edge, but it’s a broad space, and that makes strides of difference.
We remembered when a car repair would mean a budget analysis to see what we would do without or reduce to save enough money to fix the car. Pennies were hoarded to purchase a treat, like ice cream at DQ. We didn’t drink wine, rarely drank beer, and our coffee was bought for fifty cents a cuppa. We never thought any of that would change.
But life is full of nevers. We never imagined video games being such a massive business, with their primary demographics being adults. We never thought Ashland would have the country’s record high, 108 degrees F. We never thought we’d track and study wildfires and El Nino and La Nina, never thought we’d quit subscribing to cable television, never thought a friend would do the things she had, never thought violence would come to our neighborhood. But it all happened.
So, I think, as I write like crazy and work, saying never rarely holds. I don’t think I’ll never say never again, but I will be more mindful about it.
At least, I’ll try, because always is a lot like never.
Three degrees can be a lot, and not much. It can be a shrug or a killer, self-actualization achieved, or another day of determined trying, the perfect puffed pastry crust and advancement to the next round with a handshake from Paul, or dead last, saying good-bye.
Three degrees further north, and you’ve entered another world. That can be huge. North Korea and South Korea. Not the countries’ real names, but their nicknames. You probably recognized them. Three degrees off the tip of southern Florida, and you better be airborne, on a boat or a platform, or you’re in a watery situation.
At 42 degrees north, you can be on the California – Oregon border. Three degrees south and your taxes are much greater, along with the costs of real estate, the average income, and the likelihood that you’re a college graduate and are more liberal. At 120 west, you’re on the California – Nevada border, if you’re north of 39 degrees latitude but still south of 42 degrees, and the differences those two states embody. South of those coordinates, and you’re still in California at 120 degrees west, all the way down to Santa Barbara, where you enter the ocean.
Three degrees of effort, luck and success is sometimes the difference between being average, good, and great – between winning a gold medal and being back in the pack – or average, fair and poor. Same could be in the degree of decorating taste. One person’s stripped zebra rug and red walls is another person’s horror. It’s a matter of degrees.
Three degrees was the difference in the high between Tuesday and Wednesday at my house. Tuesday reached 96. Wednesday, cooler, at 93. What a difference it felt. 93, with a light breeze, offered comfort in the shade. 96’s shade was a brick oven’s shade. Today is forecast to mock them both, at 103 F. We’ll see if that three degrees over 100 is realized, or felt.
Three Degrees is a good but not fabulous Oregon Pinot Noir. Supposed to have won some awards but would not win them from me. Different tastes, and all that.
Three Degrees is also a Portland restaurant. They don’t explain where the three degrees come in, but they mention food, drink and people. Or is it because they’re now between six degrees of separation, right in the middle of a chain, between a friend of a friend of a friend?
Three degrees is half of the six degrees of freedom, which is about movement, and not personal freedoms. But if you think about it, we can apply the six degrees of freedom to personal and political freedoms and develop an analogy to six degrees of freedom in mechanical motion.
Or anything else. I’m writing about degrees here, and what differences they do and do not make, and how arbitrary they sometimes seem, and yet what an impact they can have. Your thoughts on it may depend upon your degree of interest.
Michael Seidel, writer 