WigDawgs WigBlog

The Way She Showed Us

wigdawg — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 02:10:00 +0000

I’m not overly fond of death. But I don’t fear it either. I understand our partnership with it. I don’t see it as an enemy but an ally. As I've shared in this blog before, I believe “life is lived most fully in close proximity to death”. For me that is an eternal truth, without exception. It is a true for me today as it was when I first uttered it. Anyone who doesn’t know this hasn’t been close to death, is in denial, is too busy to notice, or simply hasn’t lived.

Of course, we've all been close to death. It is close now. We cuddle up with it everyday if we agree to slow down, be present, see and listen for it.

Spring: 

For me it has been a Spring of particular color- and introspection too.They always are I suppose but this one has stood out. Winter releases its death and life gets its vibrant rebirth. It is closeness with death we get annually. I’m back north in Sun Valley, Idaho. In California, where I just left, Spring is in full flower. Here, She is giving way glacially as sheets of deep snow painfully retreat inch by inch day by day.

A couple of days ago my brothers 13 year old golden retriever developed a vestibular infection. I didn’t know this at the time of course. She was suddenly unable to walk and looked like she was having a stroke or something. I pretty much thought she was dyeing. I’ve seen animals die. And this seem similar enough to what I've seen many time before. What amazed me was Olivia’s wagging tail. She just kept wagging that tail of hers. She wouldn’t eat and she wouldn’t drink but she would stop wagging either. She couldn’t walk but she tried and tried and looked at me hopeful and with her tail wagging happily. Olivia didn’t die. But day after day I wagged my head in disbelieve at her attitude in spite of all that was happening to her.

Five years ago today my friend and former boss, Anita Borg, passed away. I spent the day with the recovering Olivia, still tippy and still wobbly, but also still wagging and working happily. In the morning we labored up on the hard crusted snow bank out in front of the house. Olivia dug with her front paws and ate snow. I plopped down with my coffee and watched a light snow magically appear out of a nearly completely blue sky.

And I thought about my friend Anita and her courage, vision, compassion, dreams, and unwavering spirit to stand for what she knew to be right and true. Later in the morning I got a surprise call from Fran Allen who, like me on this day, was feeling “the hole in our worlds” Anita’s loss had created in our lives. Fran, like me, was feeling the proximity of death, and doing it as I've always known her to do it, without fear or regret, and living fully with courage, bravery, laughter and lightness.

Just like Anita showed us.

All good good things,
Eric

“Gringo Day”

wigdawg — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 22:24:00 +0000

Tomorrow is Gringo Day in La Manzanilla. Of course, everyday is gringo day for me. It’s difficult to escape. Sure my skin grows pinker, redder and then darker and my hair more sun torn and flaxen. But once a gringo always a...well you get it. Anyway as of tomorrow, Gringo Day, I’ve been here a week. I told someone on the beach today I arrived three or four days ago. It’s been a week. And time keeps slowing down, elongating...slipping.

They call this ‘the great sand suck”.

I’m here being gringo in La Manzanilla as the grateful guest of Gustavo “Angel” Caballero and John Fraticelli who granted me their beautiful home, Casa Piedra Del Mar, www.lamanzanillahomes.com/casa_piedra_del_mar.htm.   Casa Piedras Del Mar (Stones from the Ocean for all you gringos) sits on the hills above the southern most tip of the village of La Manzanilla. I’ve got the best sunsets in town above a crescent shaped bay of the Costa Alegre sweeping north and then nodding west into the sea. With all the grandeur and perspective I should be able to keep an eye on the sand suck vortex below but I’ve had no such luck. Its even more pervasive than sand, that gritty find every nook, cranny, and orifice on your body substance. Sand Suck is in the air, in the dusty streets, in the breeze, music, taco stands, and absolute blessed normalcy of the place. This perch hasn’t made it better, it has made it happily worse.

From everything I’ve heard from locals and expats the one and single iron-glad criteria of Gringo Day is to pay the 18 dollar U.S. cover for a small bit of food and all the beer you can drink. This appears to be the only requirement to register, as and become, a full-fledged gringo, be you canadian, german, austrian, dutch, or from the united states. You pay...you drink, you gringo. I checked my pesos earlier today to be sure I’ll have enough for cover charge.

In another hour our two I’ll slip slip off the hill to the Fiesta and parade which kicks off both Gringo Day tomorrow and fours days of the Rodeo starting the following day. From everything I’ve heard, read and seen La Manzanilla has about 1000-2000 residence. I have not met everyone but faces have already started to look oddly familiar, and mine to them as well. The fisherman at the cooperative, the old man at the base of the hill who sits outside his tiny store, morning, noon and night, and even the rusty old hang dog down the street. He barked wildly at me on day one but now ignores me motionless more like a cold blooded reptile than a canine. Sand Suck got that ol dawg long time ago.

So tonight, lots of new faces as the community congregates for music, procession and revelry.

All good things,
Wig

The Gold Mine

wigdawg — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 17:39:00 +0000

Sun Valley, Idaho was built on silver mining. Then later, in the 1930’s, 40’s and 50’s on skiing and the glitz and glamour of hollywood movie stars, writers, and the elite. This is a valley of black diamond ski runs, massive estates, boutique shopping, celebrity sightings, fine dining, golf, fly fishing, hunting, guided tours, cycling, and hiking. All of these done with the casual ease and glow that only money, lots and lots of money, can engender.

Sun Valley includes the town and resort of Sun Valley, the older town of Ketchum downstream towards Bald Mountain and south winding along the Big Wood River through the valley to the town of Hailey and Bellevue. During the last presidential election a commentator said about Idaho “It doesn’t get much redder than that”. Sun Valley, on the contrary, with its money, sophistication and isolation from the rest of the State is a vein of blue in this very red land. On September 11, 2005 the Dalai Lama visited Wood River High School in Hailey and gave a speech on understanding and friendship. That is the sort of crowd Sun Valley draws.

Just behind all that blue and alpine glow is a distinguishable group of people (most of whom are also blue in their political leanings) who run the stores, serve the food, operate the lifts, groom the trails, lead the tours, and in many cases truly access deep into the valleys and peaks of this area. They are the working-blue and they rub elbows with the tourists, the estate owners, and the trust-funders. When their more asset rich brethren evacuate their estates, vacate their condo’s or resort rooms and head back to the coasts and big cities the working-blue remain during the transition period between tourist seasons known as “slack”.

One the most unique places in the Valley is the Gold Mine. The Gold Mine isn’t swank or posh. The Gold Mine is a Thrift Store, a Salvation Army, Sun Valley style. The Gold Mine only accepts donations, no selling or consignments. All all proceeds from The Gold Mine help fund the Ketchum community library located one block away. The unique demographic and activities of the valley - from skate skiing and fly fishing to black tie events and monster estate building - means you can find almost anything at the Gold Mine. If you can’t find it at the Gold Mine you don’t need it.

I went prospecting at the Gold Mine yesterday. The front of the store is full of racks of donated designer label clothing for men, women and children. I squeezed through the cluttered front of the house to the rear where the scene is repeated but with ski clothing, helmets, shelves of boots, poles, books, tennis rackets, scattered electronic equipment, golf clubs, tapes and dvd’s. If you can’t find it at the Gold Mine you don’t need it.

In the very back of the house is tangled lawless snarl of used ski’s. Poking around this corral of possibilities I found what I was looking for. After thirty minutes I struck gold with a pair of year old 193 cm Rossignal FreeRide double X’s complete with Look bindings for 25 bucks.

During my ski shopping I was joined by, among others, two middle aged women clad in full-length fur coats. If this were any other Salvation Army style thrift store you would expect ladies in fur coats to be accompanied by the shopping cart they live out of. Not here. These women had obviously payed full price for their fashionable hides. And now they were scavenging for an old pair of skis mixing it up with me.

A Certain Uncertainty

wigdawg — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 04:16:00 +0000

I cracked the spine of my 2008 Moleskin pocket calendar for the first time this morning. We’ve all crossed over from one year to the next. The Time Square ball has dropped, the numerous countdowns of bests and worsts are recorded, the noise makers are silent and the granted revelry kisses from the stroke of midnight are memory. Welcome to day one, morning one, 2008.

My pocket day calendar will accompany me throughout the year just as my previous calendars followed me through 2007, 2006, 2005, 2004... I use my calendars to record more than just appointments. I jot down thoughts for later writing, I note new words, capture quotes or interesting conversations I happen to overhear, register my hours of sleep, exercise, due dates, books read, birthday’s and shopping lists. My pocket calendars become the annotated capsule of my year.

In years past I bought my pocket calendar a month or two before each New Year. I did the same this year. Different from previous years, however, I didn’t open my 2008 version until this morning, day one, 2008. In previous years I opened them as a bought them and diligently got all my important dates for the upcoming year marked and included. This takes time and I’ve always set aside a morning to update all the important and critical information well before the big ball dropped marking the cross over from the old year to the new.

For the last decade I’ve crossed over this annual New Year bridge with irons in the fire. I’ve often hopped this yearly fence with elaborate to-do lists, deadlines and commitments. As a result I haven’t given the actual crossing much more thought than...”lets party” or “I’m staying in tonight because I’m on deadline” as noted in my new pocket calendar. All those events and deadlines following me from one year to the next has made them mesh and fold into one another with a certain certainty.

This year, like few others in my history, is distinctly different. This year, it seems, I’m carrying less of this certainty of events, deadlines and commitments over the threshold of one year and into the next. Rent, insurance...and that’s it. This was made clear to me this morning in the basement room of my brothers home in Sun Valley, Idaho when I opened my 2007 calendar for the last time and my 2008 calendar for the first time. I transfered one or two pass-codes and viola! I was finished.

As I look out at the day, weeks, and months of the year ahead nothing is set. Nothing is set and everything is possible.

Starting my year with this certain uncertainty is a little unnerving. But that is only because it has been so long since I’ve allowed myself to live authentically in this space. As such this certain uncertainty is also overwhelmingly satisfying. I find that unlike other years I’m not bound to think or act within a constrained set of parameters. Instead of spoiling over what needs to be done and how to get most effectively from point A in 2007 to point B in 2008 my thoughts are opening to possibilities not possible within tyranny of hard schedules that bound my thinking for such a long time.

At one level I’ve carried less from one year to the next. At another I’m wheeling in much much more. I find this level of uncertainty allows me to think back and coalesce whole swaths of my life experience in very tangible ways. It is a whole life I’m taking into 2008 not simply the top ten list from 2007 or the list carry-overs from 2007 I’ve got scheduled for the months ahead.

I sat at the Ketchum Grill bar last night on New Year’s Eve with my sister-in-law, Ann. She asked me what I was looking forward to in 2008. I thought about travel, work, commitments represented as items on a spread sheet, expectations tied to a pay check or a status report, production calendars, and to-do lists. With a sort of odd surprising delight I told her, nothing. I’m not looking forward to anything in 2008. This Certain Uncertainty felt wildly liberating. I donned a festive party hat and gave a “toot” on a New Years party horn!

And why not. The certainty of a list of events pre-registered in my calendar hasn’t gotten where I want to go and hasn’t provided any of the certainty that truly enriches my life. Certainty of events hasn’t ever pointed to or defined how a year in the life of Eric Mason actually panned out. Certainty of a crowded calendar chronicled the deadlines but there was less and less life held within those accomplishment each year. Certainty never told me what my year would look like or how fruitful a year I’d have. The years stacked up. The certainty of events along with the increasingly insurmountable and complex set of to-do lists became the navigational compass, the point, the end.

This year I’m starting differently. I’m carrying nothing into 08; no appointments, no to-do lists, no spreadsheets, no job, no fear, no regrets over what wasn’t accomplished in my 2007 book. The job will come as it is intended. The appointments will come as they always do. I’m going to avoid making a to-do list as long as possible. I want to let the uncertainty of each day unfold guided not by the deadline but the thoughtful process. The rest will fall into place. Of that I am certain.

Relationship Coffee

wigdawg — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 00:09:00 +0000

4:30 am, October 23, 2007. Chattanooga, Tennessee. I can hear my sister Eileen downstairs walking on the creaking wood boards of her house. Her adolescent golden retriever Lucy is with following, paws padding, claws clicking. I arrived yesterday flying from Orlando to Atlanta. Eileen picked me up and we drove a couple of hours back to Chattanooga. She wanted to know all about Orlando.

I’ve been in Orlando for about ten days doing my part as the Communication’s Director for the Anita Borg Institute’s Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing. It is always fascinating to people (family included) the hear about my experience working almost entirely with, and for, women. There are always dumbfounded looks when I tell them entering a room 1500 women and being the only man, or one of only a few men, not striking me as odd. I remind them these are ‘technical women”, not just any old women or a gathering of a wide array of women, but technical women. They are their own, rare breed. After eight years with the Anita Borg Institute I’m generally accustomed to them. And I suppose they with me.

Working with the Anita Borg Institute is amazingly rewarding. It has also tapped me dry. I’m in that phase as I sat in the car with my sister yesterday, hollowed-out, fragile and yet amped-up and slightly manic. I am aware the high end of this spectrum will soon fade and i’ll just be left with the emptiness and the letdown that make up the the post conference blues. I’ve been here before. I’m aware of what is happening. I talk, she listens and asks insightful older sister questions. As we near Chattanooga I turn the conversation towards her life, her work, and what we have planned for the next couple of days.

Eileen and her partner at the Chattanooga Coffee Roasting Company, Ev, have just landed and new account in a Whole Foods-type market in town. Its a big deal for their young coffee company and they are very excited, and a bit overwhelmed too. With this account they are also announcing a new “Relationship Coffee”. At first when she is describing what Relationship Coffee i can’t decide if it is just another label like “green” or “fair-trade” but as I hear more I understand it an evolution from those now often overused and misunderstood terms. Eileen hands me a press release:

‘Pioneered by Sustainable Harvest Coffee Importers in the late 1990’s, Relationship Coffee is an economic and social impact-based system that depends on strong personal bonds between all entities in the product chain from source to consumer. Relationship Coffee is based on: quality control training; full transparency of all business, price, and quality information; traceability of the coffee from cooperative to cup; and pre-trade financing. It is a system where the “middleman” (the importer) provides both supplier and client with more value oriented services and products as part of the business proposition.’

It is what my friend Jesse Cool would call “Earth to the Table” or being connected to the food we eat. Of course this isn’t an issue in many parts of the world where they know the person who grows their rice, have at least an inkling if not full knowledge of where their chicken was raised and butchered, and knows someone involved with growing, drying, roasting and delivering of their coffee, tea or tobacco. I could see Anita Borg (1949-2003), who loved coffee, good food, and being connected in intimate ways to whatever she did, really liking this concept of relationship coffee. Even though she has been gone four years it is still easy for me to imagine her talking about “Relationship Technology”.

I often heard Anita making the connection between innovators and end users and the appreciation and the quality that comes when many voices are listened to, heard and understood.   Eileen tells me more about this relationship movement I miss Anita. We are a society in search of connection and interconnectedness even as we isolate ourselves with more gadgets, mores gismos, more access to information, more shapeless speech, more food that fills and expands us but doesn’t nourish nor satisfy. End of conference blues? Yes, thats all this is.

When we get home in Chattanooga I meet Lucy for the first time. I get dogs. Dogs and kids..and technical women. I wrestle Lucy to the ground and splay my body out on top of hers. I put her big dog head and snout into my hands and knead my fingers deep behind her ears and into her neck. Lucy has been raised for the first year of her life by women. I think that Eileen and Ev are little shocked by my seemingly rough treatment. “be careful with her” Eileen keeps saying. Trust me Sis, your 90 pound animal can handle it. I tell Eileen, this is relationship dog-handling.

Lucy loves it. I know she can’t tell me, but I can see it in her wagging tail. Clearly Lucy needs a man around from time to time.

Eileen sets me up in the upstairs bedroom. I toss down my bags and feel at home. This is my favorite part of her house. A converted attic with angled ceilings, accessed by a steep narrow flight of wood stairs. I can stand full upright at the center but have to croutch at the edges. At the top of the stair is a sitting and television room. Around the corner a hallway and at the far end a bedroom. I think it is the slanted ceilings that appeal to me. We had a house in Longview, Washington growing up and one of the upstairs rooms had ceilings like this. It was my oldest brother Steve’s room. Because it was his room and because he painted the white walls with splatters of black paint I loved being in that room too. It was a combination - in my little kid-brothers mind - of secret clubhouse and strangely magical place that might, just maybe, lead me to Alice’s wonderland or Lucy’s Narnia.

I get out of bed and into a pair of jeans, a t-shirt and tie-died beanie. I duck down the hallway and turn for the stairs. Lucy is waiting at the bottom. Eileen is somewhere else in the house but I can hear her talking to the dog as I descend “he’s coming down, yes, he is here and he is coming down”.

Eileen already has the coffee brewing and within minutes all three of us get into her car. 15 after that we pull into a large brick warehouse parking lot. Sheets of rain blitz sideways through shafts of light scattered throughout the lot. Eileen brings the car to stop near a wide loading dock. There is a single door next to it. I get the dog on a leash as Eileen hurries up the four or five concrete steps to the landing and under the awning escaping the rain and wind. She unlocks the door and enters. Lucy and i follow.

The industrial space is divided haphazardly into private cubicles with tall plywood and 2x4 walls. We walk down a wide awkward hallway to the Chattanooga Coffee Roasting space. A palette of 50 pound burlaps bags sits shrink wrapped and waiting outside the door. I have an immediate desire to claw the plastic from the pallet and dig my nose into the course hairy bags each holding raw coffee beans from around the world. Eileen unlocks the padlock and swings the door open.

Lucy dutifully finds her spot on a pad in an open dog crate near the door.

Centered along the far wall like an alter is Eileen’s elegant but industrial grade Spanish made Roure coffee roaster. Along the right wall smaller palettes and atop each open and unopened 50 pound bags of green coffee beens. Like a seasoned cook who knows the first thing you do when you enter a kitchen is to start water boiling, Eileen heads directly to the machine and fires it up. The sound of the gas furnace fills the room. This is the engine of her business.

I look at the heavy bags and the red and silver roaster getting to life and feel like a railroader or a welder. I’ve never been either. I’m romanticizing. Maybe I’m a cook, or a cyclist. Who knows, but I have an immediate connection to the soul of what this behemoth does. There is something macho, robust and artistic held within it. There is also something financial. The more hours a day this machine runs and roasts, the more successful Eileen and Ev will be.

Eileen has a list and we start to work through it as the machine heats up. She gives me one job and then another. I place a large five gallon plastic bucket on a scale and zero it out. She walks along the wall telling which each bean is and where they are from. She need 20 pounds of Guatemalan, 15 pounds of Columbian, 10 pounds of Brazilian which they roast for their espresso, 10 pounds of Sumatran, 20 pounds of decaf Sumatran, and 10 pounds of decaf Ethiopian Fancy.

I’m portioning coffee and examining and comparing seeds. The Guatemalan’s are smooth nearly perfect lady bug shaped verses the rugged pockmarked Sumatran. The decaf Ethiopian’s are arid rusty and imperfect verse compact intense looking Brazilians. Eileen is doing paper work and occasionally checking the roasters temperature. She checks the temperature again and then again. She confirms the beans with me verbally and then places her hand in the bucket doing a visual confirmation.

She takes the first bucket and pours it into a conical shaped funnel on the top of the roaster. She checks the temperature once again and then releases a latch as she starts a timer. The sound of 20 pounds of coffee rushing into a spinning roaster follows. I’m reminded of rain on sheet metal, coins in dryer, rocks in rock polisher, fish dangling on a fish chain, the murmur of voices in a crowded room, a heated conversation in an adjacent room...coffee roasting.

10 or 12 minutes later we hear “first crack” as the first of the roasting beans pop. Eileen makes a note in her log book. Then her twists and pulls our a small dowel with trapped beans from the drum. She examines, replaces, twists and pulls and quickly examines another sample. It is the coffee roasters equivalent of a wine thief, the long baster that wine makers use to do barrel tastings.

A few minutes later she unlatches a steel door on the front of the machine and out pours dark oily hot beans. They cascade into a hoola-hooped sized perforated stainless steel cooling bin directly below the roasting drum. Rotating from and 18 inch pole in the middle of the bin are three arms. On the ends of these rotating arms are metal shovels that push and sweep the beans around and around like mounds of snow. This is a machine that is all about movement. Movement of the beans during roasting and movement of the beans durning cooling.

The beans cool sufficiently and I begin portioning 1/2 and single pound bags for delivery to the Chattz Coffee Shop and a variety of Chattanooga restaurants, businesses and grocery stores. Eileen checks the temperature of the roaster and begins the process again. Later we are all loaded back up in the car. We make deliveries and rotate stock in grocery stores. We stop by the new Whole Foods-like store and Eileen shows me where the bins of “Relationship Coffee” will go. She tells me they have a soft opening in a week. I’m doubtful. Half the place looks nearly finished, product on shelves, aisles full off food, other areas are under full construction. Still, it looks like it is going to be a very very nice Whole Foods-like store.

We finish our deliveries and head back to Chattz, the Chattanooga Coffee Roasting company, coffee house. Ev is there. Earlier in the day she opened the shop. Business was good but now it closer to lunch and pretty quiet. That is good with me. I need a break. I need to develop a short but meaningful relationship with a strong cup of espresso. The barista quickly portions, tamps, and extracts my espresso. I take it by its tiny demitoss handle thumb and forefinger and get comfortable in a high bar chair and a one of the tall cocktail tables. Its a perfect espresso. The head of espresso golden brown and creamy and under that poignant black.

Eileen, Ev and I have lunch at a classic southern hole-in-the-wall greasy spoon. We eat our fill. Ev heads back to the store and Eileen and I take Lucy out to the Civil War Battlefields just outside of Chattanooga. It is raining but warm so we don’t care. Lucy runs through open fields and the forests. She races out from the two of us through Union and Confederate lines foraging, chasing deer, and retreating back to us for safety and encouragement. Eileen and I walk through the fields and forests and talk as we cross these ancient fronts, across lines of retreat and advance, over lands where men fell defending what they held dear, over what divided and connected them.

Rain Drops Keep Falling on My Toes

wigdawg — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 16:51:00 +0000

Its raining. It started raining last night. By this morning it was a steady sleepy rhythm on my roof top. I slumbered letting it fall. As I lie in bed I couldn’t quite remember if my shoes outside my front door were up close enough the house to be under the awning. The awning - if you can really call it that - only overhangs about 8 inches so i suspected my shoes were filling with water. Still I slept. My black dress shoes and my brown dress shoes were inside, dry in my closest.

All my other shoes were out in the rain. Besides the dress shoes I own one pair of Asics Gel Nimbus running shoes, a pair of SIDI cycling shoes, one pair of flip-flops, a pair of classic white Tiger tennis shoes and pair of Sanuk hybrid sandal shoes. I also own downhill ski boots. They live in the shed. Not including my ski boots that is seven pairs of shoes. Five of them are out in the rain.

I wake and rise, as usual, before dawn. I’m wearing a sarong and an old sweatshirt with the the sleeves cut off from the Western States 100 mile run. I make my bed in the dark. Half conscious and in half-light I shuffle to the kitchen. I fill my red kettle with water, pivot and place it on the stove. I push down and twist the burner dial. I listen to it click, click click, click and then hear it catch and billow blue and hissing to life. There is a faint smell of gas. The rain is coming down harder and harder outside.

I step over to the the door and open it. The ground is dark. My shoes are there waiting for me like wet strays. My running shoes are to the left in front of a chair where i took them off after my run yesterday. Each has an twisted inside out sock sagging lethargic over the laces and tongue. My SIDI’s and my Tigers are to the right half covered. Their toes are potentially dry but the back of the shoes are totally exposed. When i pick up the biking shoes water sloshes from toe to heel. The Tigers are drenched as well.

In Asian style I don’t wear shoes in my house so my flip-flops and my Sanuks are directly in front of the door. I use them the most for my daily running around and they are the easiest to slip into an out of. They too are soaked. I gather up all my shoes except the flip-flops and bring them inside. I place them on a towel in front to the heater.

The kettle sings, the tea steeps. I open the door and step back outside and into my waiting flip-flops. I sit down in the open doorway my bare legs stretching out beyond the end of my sarong and into the rain.

All good things.
Wig

Burnt Offerings

wigdawg — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 03:14:00 +0000

My hands grasp for my knees, my back curls and my head drops. Water moves in two directions. Thick hot salt water pulls through my scalp, clings to my forehead, seeps down to the tip of my nose and drops heavy to the frozen sparkling ground. Vapor drifts like ground fog rising in wisps from the curved earth of my smoldering back, neck and head.

Sometimes when I run I feel like I offer up my life like the burn zone I raced myself through last week on a trail run off Trail Creek Road near Sun Valley, Idaho. Sometimes I am the fire and sometimes I am the offering. Sometimes I’m just moving.

The fire came in late summer sprinting without ceremony up the side of a steep hill. On day of my run the fire is long since exhausted. It is nearly winter. The ground is black and covered with a thin sheen of frost. The trees still stand but are stripped bare. The frozen air is bitter, but fresh. Even though it is cold I can still smell hints of the fire and through my visible hot breath something metallic on my tongue.

I am struggling to run hard enough to get warm.

I pass through the burn zone. A single stride separating a stand of devastation and a stand of healthy old growth trees. I run further and feel myself finally warm up against the cold. When I turn around for home I’m finally ready to run and the cool air now plays to my advantage allowing me go faster and faster. I wisp into the burn zone and then through it like a ghost.

The next day I coerce my niece Lyndsey to come with me for a hike. I’m armed with my brothers camera. It isn’t as cold on this day but the wind is howling. I’m snapping pictures wishing it was colder and that the ground still sparkled with frost against it’s black background. Lyndsey is cursing me hood pulled over head, gazing out from the edges at the desolation. She bends down and looks closer. There in the burn zone with winter threatening she finds small green buds sprouting. Life is already returning, she says.

My hands grasp for my knees, my back curls and my head drops. Water moves in two directions. Thick hot salt water pulls through my scalp, clings to my forehead, seeps down to the tip of my nose and drops heavy to the frozen sparkling ground. Vapor drifts like ground fog rising in wisps from the curved earth of my smoldering back, neck and head.

Life is already returning.

The Solstice Tree

wigdawg — Sun, 02 Dec 2007 02:32:00 +0000

The day after I quit my job I received a letter in the mail. ‘This letter is to inform you that as of 2.1.2008 your rent will increase from $1175 per month to $1325.’ It was straight forward and to the point. I felt the universe smirk. I nodded my acknowledgement and read on. The second page of the letter gave me the option for 6 or 12 months lease saving me 25 or 35 dollars a month. Gee thanks! I turned on my computer and went to Craigslist. I checked the rents of local apartments in my neighborhood and adjacent towns. I’ll be staying where I am.

I closed my computer, took another look at the letter and decided to go get a holiday tree; A solstice tree. A Christmas tree is fundamentally a secular (if not outrightly pagan) symbol co-opted and commercialized, like so many things, by our way of life. I have not had a tree of my own for several years. I’m not sure why I have one now. My tree (just so we are clear) honors the shortest day of the year. My tree recognizes something that is true for every single person on earth who seeks order and hope in a unimaginably large and complex universe of which we inhabit the tiniest speck. After the winter solstice the days will grow slowly longer and spring will soon push back the cold. Life will renew.

Of course, in my tree it is possible to see, if you like, a series of holy Crosses. Run your hands from the bottom to the top and think of the scales of a Christian fish… if you like. I see in the angles of edges of my solstice tree the Star of David and in the upturned branches the burning arms of a Menorah or a Kinara. As I water it early each morning and again after sunset each evening the I sense the fasting, thirst, heat and perspective of Ramadan and the eventual feasting of Eid ul Fitr. My solstice tree’s aroma fills my apartment like perfectly offered prayers lifted in the smoke of temple incense and through its bows and branches I can recognize the simple peace of a Shinto shrine.

On every continent I’ve been on (including the European peninsula and the island of Australia) I’ve walked under similar trees. When I play the music loud and I’m dancing and singing I think about all the religions and beliefs past and future who are tied universally to the ebb and flow of seasons, to the cosmic workings of our planet and to what connects us beyond what divides us. I don’t see a fat man in a red suit or a baby in swaddling clothes. I don’t see a protected and fearful symbol, or a god-man, or a dogma. Instead I see a tree that smells nice, drinks allot and for today answers a question or two in my head and heart, and satisfies my need for order, focus and hope.

But this isn’t why I bought my solstice tree. I don’t really know why I got the solstice tree. I don’t have a sinister solstice agenda. Promise! When I went to get the tree right after reading about my rent increase I didn’t even have a vague idea why this was on my list of things to do. Sometimes you “just decide”. This was one of those “I just decided” moments. I suppose it could have been the Thanksgiving day hike I’d gone on a few days earlier in Sun Valley, Idaho with my brother Scott, his wife Anne and my niece Addy. On the way up the hill Scott mentioned coming into this section of wood and getting their tree this year. Later that weekend we had a discussion about gift giving, gratitude, forgiveness and family. Then I spent 12 hours in the silence of my own head driving home. Somewhere in there I think I made a tentative decision. Rental prices solidified the vague thinking and out the door I went to in search of my solstice tree. Impulsive.

A short drive and 37 bucks later I had a three foot tall fir bundled in the back seat of my car. The diameter of the trunk of my tree is approximately the size of a silver dollar. This means my tree really doesn’t need a stand so much as it needs a vase. I have a wide based glass wine decanter (Cost Plus $12.99 on sale) and with a bit of trimming of low branches and a knot or two I was able to plunge my solstice tree perfectly into place. I shook the tree once more turned it right side up and brought it inside. I found a spot for it in my living room between a hanging picture of Vietnamese fishing boats in Na Trang harbor at sunset and a dangling pair of another nieces, tattered point shoes.

Sometime over the next hour I realized why I bought the tree. Or rather, why it chose me. I decided, I “just decided” that this year I’m only putting presents under the tree for me. That’s right, only for me. It is completely and utterly selfish. But it seems right this year. What’s more…I realized the first gifts where already under the tree. The very first gift under the tree was the floor, or more correctly my $1325 a month home. It is warm, comforting, expensive and a place of sanctuary, joy, tears, meals, friends and protection. Gratitude (even at 1325 a month) showed up under my tree very unexpectedly and with it the holiday season began.

The second gift under my tree I discovered was the wine decanter acting as a tree stand. The gift, sobriety. I’m not talking necessarily about Spirits when I say sobriety. Instead this true sobriety is about the guts, fearlessness and courage to address the world with honesty and truth and then act on those convictions. That’s sobriety. En vino veritas? Perhaps. Wine certainly loosens the truth from our tongues, but true sobriety allows us to face ourselves in the morning and throughout the day and act with soul-felt conviction. True sobriety means we don’t hide from ourselves, don’t flinch at our reflection or draw back from what we know to be true.

I apologize if you expected something specially wrapped for you under my solistice tree. I know it seems selfish at this time of giving to think only about myself. But the season is just on its head this year and it calls for some out the wrapper and bows thinking. Do what I’m doing. You’ll save money. You'll realize the gifts are all around us, and you might just find it isn’t as selfish as you think.

Near Death Experiences

wigdawg — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 15:18:00 +0000

Isn’t your life suppose to flash before your eyes during near death experiences? I’ve had several near death experiences but I’ve yet to see this flash before my eyes. Perhaps I wasn’t near enough to death. But that can’t be. Granted I’ve not had an abundance of the truly, dodging a bullet, brush with death, sort of near death experiences. But even with those they’ve seemed rather trivial. They startle but they don’t frighten. And as far as I can tell we have these experiences at least three for four times a week, if not more. For example, in the last week I was nearly rear ended in my car, had a close call on my bike, jay-walked and darted in front of cars on several occasions, rode a banister down a flight of stairs, and ate at a Burger King. These are just the near death experiences I can recite at this moment. I'm sure there were others, known and unbeknownst to me. I’m comfortable with the fact that we are one step away from death at most points during our day. Yet for all these moments I've had (trivial or not) there has been no flash, no life before my eyes.

My authentic near death experiences have always been of the more slow motion type. Finding myself in life or death situation and then dealing over an extended period of time (several seconds to weeks) with how to stay alive and survive. In those instances I’m typically too busy to have my life flipping along infront of my eyes on flash cards. My thoughts are fluid and focused and in complete composure with my being. It is an amazing state of mind to be in and fortunately I am not seeing myself eating a snow cone when I was six or playing spin the bottle when I was 10 and kissing Patty Nelson. Those are all nice memories but they, and all the rest have been utterly absent during my near death experiences. In fact, they are the furthest thing from my mind.

What I have found is that a while after those really truly frightening times my life seeps out and bubbles up in greater detail and texture than before. The residue from that amazing state of mind isn’t a flash however. Instead, in the weeks and months that follow the house lights of my auditorium gradually come up and reveal in forgotten detail the events of my life, past, present and future. The curtain draws back, and back and back until finally the space is open and you stand alone, naked, surrounded by it.

This weekend in Oregon I had a new sort of near death experience. Although it has characteristics of both the brush with death sort and the really truly frightening type it was also completely new. It happened while I was sitting with my dear sweet Mother. We were having lunch in her beautiful new home. We had been talking and laughing and waving our pompoms in support of the Oregon Duck football team battling it out on TV. We had been silent for a few minutes when my Mom sat up and looked at me and said “Where did Eric go?” to which I said smiling “I’m right here Mom”. She smiled back and waved her hand and said, “Don’t play with me, you’re not Eric”. I smiled bigger and put my hand on her arm. The recognition washed brightly back into to her face. It was over and it passed in the blink of an eye. We returned to watching the game, talking about old times, her awesome kids and grand kids, and life in Eugene.

I sat watching my life flash before my eyes.

NOmaste

wigdawg — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 16:02:00 +0000

Namaste! Greetings. The God in me greets the God in you. The Spirit, the Spark, in me meets the same Spirit and Spark in you. May your paths be supple and your burdens carried with grace, strength and ease.

For years people (women) have been trying to drag me to Yoga class. I’ve always resisted saying, “No…NOmaste, por favore.” Or in other words, I’ve been a smart ass. In each case the yoga proselytizer gave me a look similar to those who have time and time again tried to coax me in to a church. Yoga has always had the scent of organized religion to me and for that reason alone I’ve resisted. Plus, I don’t speak Sanskrit, I’m not Hindu and I’m not greeting fellow yogsters on the street with Namaste.

Really! I love sushi but I don’t call salmon, sake, or yellowtail, hamachi, when I’m standing in front of the fish dude at Safeway or Whole Foods. I don’t bow, or politely nod out the few words of sushi Japanese I know. That would seem pompous, stuffy and most of all…dumb. I lived with Muslims. To this day I exchange with them a traditional greeting. I know exactly what it means, the significance and the implications. In that Namaste makes its way out into the yoga attendees world reinforces its organized religion status to me. And that’s cool but I’m just not into it. NOmaste!

I get religion and of course the “spirituality” everyone latches onto right after they apologize for not going to church more often. I also get the difference between team or group exercise and individual sports. I’ve always gravitated to the later. Yoga, is essentially stretching, strengthening, and most importantly making the connection between spirit, mind and body within a community of others. Yoga is church with perspiration. Pull out the pews and replace them with mats, add some poses (my Muslim brothers and sisters are half way there already) sprinkle in some perspiration and charge 30 bucks a class and viola, holy yoga!

I applaud this connection. It is in fact the reason I exercise. It is a connection sadly vacant and unarticulated by the behemoths tossing around weights in the weight room. If it were taught and brought front and center in aerobics or step-classes I have little doubt you would find yoga-like evangelist and zealots around too. My spiritual and athletic journey run in tandem and have always been about the journey inside and the spirituality I can find outdoors, in a book, writing…alone. Or, to be clear, in small intimate groups, two’s and three’s and four’s, of those who are my blood or who have gone through the fire with me in some way.

I’ve had times in my life where I’ve said I can see god in everything, everywhere. I haven’t really said that much recently. But I’ve heard it bunch. I’ve heard it from those inclined and not inclined to organized religion. I’ve noticed in myself and in the comments of others that right after this “god everywhere” statement typically follows a big ol “but” followed again, by a long list, or even a condemnation, of the places they don’t see or feel god. When I see this in myself it arrests me and makes me smile too. Those who adhere to organized religion like to claim authority. Those not inclined to organized religion like to claim tolerance up to but not beyond the bounds of the authority of organized religion. Are there really any differences and why do I resist yoga so much?

Yoga Firsts

So all that said, I attended my first Yoga class on Monday. I went again last night. I did something new. I did a group religious thing. I wasn’t talked into it. I went on my own accord after a long run Monday morning. I figured for an hour I could check WigDawg at the door. At the very least I’d get a decent stretch. Anyway…I loved it. It kicked my ass. It kicked the smart ass right out of me. And at the end after the entire struggle when the entire class lay quietly centering ourselves, my cheeks pulled and stretched a big smile across my serene face. It was really fun.

I struggled. In certain poses I was hopeless and in others did really well in others; for a newbie. My body was shaking seven minutes into the class and I seriously wondered how I’d make it fifty three minutes more. The tall graceful woman on the mat next to me went to failure and fell over during one of the deep knee poses. Everyone was struggling at one point or another. The yoga instructor, a firm but patient drill sergeant just kept everyone moving, one… pose, hold, and, breath…to the next. When it was over I rolled my mat, slipped on my shoes and walked out into the weight room adjacent the yoga studio. To my eyes it was bathed in a soft white light as if someone had wrapped the fluorescents in white gym towels.

I understand the spiritual nature of physical activity, of our physical beings. I experience it every time I get on a bike, hike, run, toss a Frisbee around, and do the dishes…whatever. I’m aware of my body and the mind and spirit which allow it to focus, excel, strive, dream, hurt and heal itself. Going solo, going outdoors, communing with only those dearest and closest to me is where I make the connection. It isn’t for everyone. As I sat on the mat surrounded by strangers the other morning and again last night, just as I’ve wiggled in church pews, stood in synagogues, knelt in mosques and temples and within rituals refined and brutal I re-learned that I can find that connection where I’m comfortable and, if I’m open I can find it in places where I’m instinctually uncomfortable. In doing so I learned something new, again.

The yoga studio exits into the weight room. I’m pretty sure some of the buffed dudes clumped together here and there around the machines and the free wieghts chuckled at me as I exited with thirty women. Whatever. Yoga Rocks! So put that in your downward facing dog and Namaste!

All good things,
Wig

Old Habits New

wigdawg — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 05:45:00 +0000

At least he ate sitting down. But that was because there was work to do. There wasn’t anyone across the table to talk with, no light dinner banter, no office politics or weekend plans. The work was his company. So he sat. The television flickered on his forehead, his head cast down to his meal and his work. How long would the habit of sitting down for a meal remain absent someone to talk with and once the work slowed down. How long until he was once again standing in his kitchen, cooking, eating, and cleaning at the sink, staring blindly into the television.

He finished scrubbing the last dish and began to rinse. The water began rising from the drain. With one sudsy hand he flicked on the garbage disposal. He heard switch below the sink click and then nothing. No chopping, no swirl of water and whooooosh and away. The water continued to rise. He turned off the tap and double-checked the switch making sure it was off. Then he plunged his hand in the soapy water, narrowed and shaped it like an arrowhead and pushed his fingers, hand and wrist through the narrow aorta valve of the of the drain expanding his fingers once through.

He groped around feeling for the teeth of the disposal ignoring the food and gunk from breakfast and dinner. He worked his finger around the obstacle jammed between the rivet and the metal floor of the disposal. Immovable, he yanked his hand free took a table knife from the counter and drove it into the water and into the drain. He managed his hand down alongside the knife and placed its tip at the obstruction. Small, hard and pearl shaped he educated blade to the right spot he began to twist and tork. A small muffled splash signaled success. He removed the knife, checked again to make sure the switch was off and placed his hand back into the opening.

His fingers probed gently round turning and wiggling each rotor. He thought they felt like heavy dull British pounds, a pocket full of coins in a crowded and muffled cotton pocket. Confident they were all spinning freely he then groped for the obstruction and felt the small floating bead. He got it in between his thumb and forefinger and wrested his hand from the drain and out from the brackish water. He blew the suds from his fingertip to reveal a small black olive pit.

He had been through this before. Different obstacles, different faces, meals and details but something about this felt similar, oddly recreated, familiarly new. He would have to face them all, the old ones and the new. He stood above the sink, hips resting on the tiles, holding the olive pit, dirty warm water dripping to his elbow and the television in it’s idle seizure behind him. He would re-break his new habits that had recently become old and replace them with his older habits that would now, for a time, become new again.

He placed the pit on the counter and wiped his eyes with the imprecise blunt of the back of his wet hand and wrist. He turned the water on hot, flipped the switch, and watched the sink well-up momentarily and then collapse. The sink ran clean. He began to rinse. He knew what he was doing, knew the where, knew the how, the when. The why eluded him.

Papers we carry around

wigdawg — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 15:19:00 +0000

Many years ago my friend Terri Casey sent me a photocopied copy of a chapter of a writing book. Chapter XVIII –He Whose Face Gives No Light Shall Never Become a Star – Blake. I’ve carried the folded piece of paper around for years. I don't know why I've held on to this piece of paper, but I have. I pull it from time to time and re-read it. It feels like an old friend and that is reason enough to keep it close. At the bottom of the page is a note written from Terri in green ink. It says “E- Came across this, from “If you Want to Write”, an old classic, during some end-of-the-year file purging. Thought you’d enjoy. Happy New Year – Love Terri."

The Author outlines a case for the spark within each person and her dream for a nation of writers. She lays out a list of 12 things to do if you want to write and live more fully. As an ‘old classic’ I’ve rewritten the list in a language I can understand. According to her, and through my interpretation, if you want to write:

Know you are unique, one without equal, and have something to say.
Apply ass to chair with a smile. The work is good, easy, light, fun and a privilege.
Be fearless and reckless in first drafts.
Write everything, anything, but remember “better to strangle and infant in the cradle than nurse un-acted desires” Blake.
Don’t be afraid to Suck. In fact…suck often.
Respect yourself enough not to be ashamed. Of course you make mistakes….move on!
Don’t BS. Write from your core and not your theoretical self.
Remember you are a miracle, unique, without equal (see #1) “We are to be less taught and more reminded” Samuel Johnson.
Don’t get comfortable. Write at the brink of disaster and greatness.
When you hear the voice (internal or external) say “You can’t”, DO! And silence that voice.
Don’t be afraid of your own reflection. Laugh and write through it.
Don’t compare. Just be.
(mine) Don’t walk around hungry. “We are only half ourselves and the other half is our expression” Emerson. We wouldn’t leave a dinner table half full so don’t walk around half fed, half ourselves.

All good things,
Wig

The Easy Loop

wigdawg — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 16:56:00 +0000

The Easy Loop is my little lie. Three or four mornings a week I get up, slide on a pair of running shorts, tug on a t-shirt, pull on socks, lash my running shoes to my feet and walk out the door. Most mornings I run the same loop, the Easy Loop. I’ve got increasing time constraints. I’m often on the Easy Loop before sunrise but can already feel the coming days pressures mounting. Or the unfinished business from the day before chasing me. The Easy Loop gets me out of bed when it is raining, when I’ve stayed up too late, when I’ve too much to do or just plain old don’t feel like running. The Easy Loop is my first cup of coffee. The Easy Loop is a little lie I tell myself. Not unlike those who set their clock 15 minutes fast so they can be sure to get out of the house on time. Do they not remember that they set the clock ahead? Is the Easy Loop ever easy?

We split out our minds in various story lines. We build homes with many rooms in our head and fill them full with clutter. I’ve a friend who has every upstairs clock in their home set 15 minutes fast. The downstairs clocks are set 10 minutes fast. I’ve tried to understand the logic but I can’t. Instead I call their stairway the Wormhole for its capacity to warp time and space. I never know when to arrive; upstairs time, downstairs time, or on time. But when I enter or exit their home I grab the door jams and shoot myself thorough to the other side. The entire house is a vortex, a time travel machine.

I have another friend, a wanna-be chef, who calibrates his oven down 25 degrees so it is never set too high. It is a slippery slope. I’ve cooked with him on several occasions and am never sure when he says “sauté over high heat” or “beat until firm”, exactly what he means. Which high? Which firm? I’ve told him that the whole mind game with the oven makes him slight untrustworthy in the kitchen. There is a precision in our language and our math and our sciences and our lives. Then we get involved with our personal games and our trickery. And all this would be fine so long as we kept these things to ourselves. But we don’t and we find ourselves time shifting and eating under-cooked meat. It’s a mess!

My fastest time for the Easy Loop is 17 minutes and 45 seconds. This wasn’t easy. My slowest time for the Easy Loop is 26 minutes and 53 seconds. This wasn’t easy. This is a huge range for a set run and distance. I can still run really fast and I can still also run really slow. The Easy Loop is the run I do regardless how I’m feeling, what shape I’m in, or what else is going on. Admittedly, about 25% of the time I don’t wear a watch. I’m sure I’ve never gone faster than 17:45 without a watch and I’m very sure I’ve gone slower than 26:53. Timed or not I’ve always got time for the Easy Loop, and I named it that for that specific reason. Most days I trot, shuffle or gallop around the loop in about 20-23 minutes. If I’m in that window of time, breathing moderately, and not feeling any odd aches or pains I figure I’m doing well.

The Easy Loop starts in front of my house. It heads up through the tree lined college terrace streets. I always run in the street and not on the sidewalk. At the top of college terrace it intersects with a bike path at the base of steep short hill. The bike path crosses Peter Coutts road and winds up along an elementary school. It crests another short hill and turns left along a row of Eucalyptus on one side and suburban backyards on the other. The bike path ends at a dirt path where you start a series of right turns. The path is quiet and protected by shrubs, trees and 12 foot high concrete barriers. The barriers end and to your left you can see the Stanford dish and the Santa Cruz mountains. The path turns right and right again intersecting back at the Eucalyptus trees and the bike path. From there you reverse your steps home detouring near the end to climb a shallow knoll for a views east, north and south of the bay, Mt. Hamilton, Moffet Field, San Jose, the bridges, San Francisco and the yawning pressure of the sunrise.

The Easy Loop isn’t long or demanding. But it isn’t really easy either. It is never easy. Running is hard. It is enjoyable but it is hard. I’ve been doing it my whole life, so I relax doing it. Stress fades away, my mind clears, and then sometimes I even think clearly. The big home and all its rooms and clutter clears away. The easy loop is what I do to my mind, the little lie I tell myself to get out the door.

All good things,
Wig

Pork, the other white vegetable

wigdawg — Mon, 27 Aug 2007 15:43:00 +0000

Did you ever see or hear that catchy pork commercial that went “Pork, the other white meat”. Who didn’t? Pork is the other white meat, isn’t it? That means it must have been a darn good advertising campaign. It is right up there with “hold the pickles hold the lettuce, special orders don’t upset us…” I hum the jingle every time I walk into a Burger King. But that is another story…and it’s a musical.

Back to pork.

A few years ago Jesse, Jonah and I were traipsing through an east Javanese jungle at the base of Mt. Semeru. Semeru is Holy Mountain to the local Hindu Tengger people who live on its slopes and in the highlands around it. We had been hiking for a couple of hours and as one will do out on the open trail, I asked the stupid theoretical question. I avoided the one about being on the life raft and having to choose which family member to save and the one about alien abduction. Those are good ones but I opted instead for; if you were on a dessert island what three vegetables would you choose to have? They dove into a lengthy discussion while I asked probing question about the selections, logic and recipes behind each selection. Eventually after debate and rigorous defense of veggie choices Jesse asked which three I’d take. I loudly pronounced potatoes, onions and BACON.

Bacon isn’t the other white meat, it is the other white vegetable. I adore bacon. Pigs are more vegetable than chickens could ever hope to be (not that I've ever seen a hopeful chicken). Chickens peck at the ground; pigs, onions, and potatoes live in it! Sometimes I’m embarrassed to say or admit how much I enjoy pork. Something about that claim feels slightly incriminating. Of course, that has to have something to do with Jehovah and Allah (both of them). If it wasn’t so good why make it off-limits? It’s like that apple, forbidden fruit always tastes better. Tell me I can’t have it and I know it must be good. If the twin God’s of Abraham hadn’t made bacon taste so good they wouldn’t have any problem with us grinding down a rasher now and again. But they did and so they do.

Bacon is one food you eat and don’t even consider saying that it tastes just like chicken. I know people who claim they don’t enjoy bacon. But that is like not liking salt! Still not convinced? Then take it from Quentin Tarantino via John Travolta (both of them) as Vincent Vega “Yeah but bacon tastes goooood. Pork chops taste goooood.” Well put gentleman, well put. I’m sure the big boys upstairs agree. I know I do.

In recent days I think Jesse and Jonah might be coming around to my way of thinking. Maybe they are not ready to call it a veggie but there is no doubt their love of pigs. Jesse recently wrote an article/blogpost over on Organic To Be .org, entitled My Son, The Pig Farmer (with Pork Chops and Cherry Port Sauce Recipe).

Then the other night at jZ Cool Eatery and Wine Bar, Jesse and Talia’s suggested I try the new pork dish on the menu. I bit into the slow (slow) braised Niman Ranch pork roast topped with a meltingly juicy pork belly and served on a bed of greens. The second (slow), is mine because to say “bit into” is a statement made true only by the bed of hearty summer bitter greens. The pork melts in your mouth, creamy, soft, sweet and savory. There was a time when you would only find piglet bellies in China Town…or China. But I’ve seen it on menu’s with increasing frequency. God bless those pork-loving1.2 billion! In this new dish at the jZ Cool Eatery the greens add a counterpoint in flavor and texture that makes every mouthful something to relish.

Don’t eat pork? Try sushi. The closest sushi comparison is a great cut of toro. Don’t eat sushi or pork? I recommend a Red Delicious apple.

All good things,
Eric

First Bites

wigdawg — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 05:21:00 +0000

** just published Jesse's first post over at
http://www.cooleatz.com/smallbites/ **

It’s been a while since a sallied up to this side of the bar. It is a sleepy night in downtown Menlo Park and near the end of summer. The days are growing shorter but the air remains warm and still. Autumn hasn't yet set in.

Many years ago I used to do my part for Jesse up at her flagship restaurant, Flea St. Café. This was well before she wrote her book. One day, back then, Jesse came back from a benefit with other celebrity chefs in Napa Valley. They all had authored books. Jesse, full and angst and frustration knew it was her time to do something more than the monthly columns for the San Jose Mercury and local Gourmet magazine she was writing at the time. I wholeheartedly agreed. Jesse and I ultimately cut a deal for me to run Flea St. 100% for a year.

I worked as the GM while she got that first manuscript under her belt and her first book, ‘Tomatoes’, published. It wasn’t only her first book but the first time she had ever handed over this much control of her business to grow her career in this new direction. It was brave of Jesse. And of me too.

Since then, Jesse and I have grown with typical ups and downs as friends and partners. I now run her website and help her continue to get her name out there to a wider world. I love cooking, serving people, and the theatre restaurant. Jesse has vision, guts, and commitment to build a better world. Representing her isn’t difficult. In fact, it is an honor and a delight. It also comes with the invaluable perks for my taste buds and stomach. As she stated in the acknowledgements to her most recent and 7th cookbook ‘ONE-POT COOKBOOK’, “Thanks, Eric for being my friend an sharing one-pot meals, possibly more often than any other, and always with vigor.” That’s me! I'm a vigorous eater. I love of food, farming, hard work, wine and the community that comes with it.

Jesse and her team recently asked me to step in a couple of nights a week behind the bar at the new jZ Cool Eatery and Wine Bar. Jesse and her team are getting a new restaurant off the ground and as usual I love seeing new things begin, flourish and build. Tonight is my first official night. I actually jumped in on opening night when the community poured through the wide front doors. Tonight I’ve folded napkins, polished silver, reviewed the pours by the glass, learned the computer, memorized the table numbers, reviewed the menu and as might be expected noshed on the night specials prepared for the staff by jZ Cool’s kitchen manager Talia in the back of the house. There isn’t a harder working group of people in our country than those in food service. I honor, value and embrace the work. I’m glad I’m here. Come in. Join us.

Every couple of days I’ll update this blog with the nightly specials and seasonal cooking coming out of another of Jesse’s legendary kitchens. From time to time I might also throw in an observation (or three) from that special vantage point of a bartender looking out from behind the bar.

Specials:
Grilled Watermelon with honey & chili flakes
Fresh Melon with house cured Alaska Salmon
Heirloom tomatoes with lightly charred corn and basil salsa
Linguini with scallop

Soups:
Garlic cheese with saffron rice
Minestrone with chicken

A third type of cyclist

wigdawg — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 21:34:00 +0000

“Tell me she was wearing a helmet?” I pecked in the question to the chat line and pinky-fingered, enter. I waited and navigated around my desktop on other tasks. Earlier this morning I watched a classic Tour-de-France stage and have a ride planned with Keith this afternoon. The Tour is once again mired in drug problems. We live in the twilight of idols. The drug scandals bum me out, hurt me inside. We’ve been granted a gift of riding bikes for leisure and fun and sport. They – the cheaters - were bestowed with a special gift and spoiled it. I’m excited to ride my bike this afternoon and tap into the part of cycling that isn’t polluted; what I can do and see and experience when joined to a bike.

The light in my toolbar blinks and I click it open.

“Yes she had a helmet on. I guess it did its job but the force with which she fell was too much” Unfortunately the light in my head doesn’t blink, the light doesn’t go off and I’m not listening. I jot down a response arrogantly quoting five-time tour winner Bernard Hinault. Known as the Badger, or Le Blaireau, he insisted there are two types of riders; those that have and those that will fall. We fall. Scraped, bruised and busted we get back on. I fit into the former. I hit return without thinking or rather, assuming she was okay.

I minimize the window and whirl my mouse pointer to another application, open it and work. Soon I’ll be out climbing Old La Honda with Keith and then descending confidently. A few minutes later the toolbar blinks again. I read, “She is brain-dead. Actually, they called her time of death yesterday afternoon so I guess she is technically dead. They are keeping her body alive for organ transplant. They should harvest tomorrow. The accident was on Sunday and the girls and I have been taking turns sitting with her and caring for her husband. We will continue to do so until they come and harvest her organs. It’s just so terribly sad.”

I read the comment and then keep rereading the first three words. I’m wishing I could somehow pour some inflection, emotion and empathy into the chat line in response. And remove my ignorant quote from the Badger. I can’t. I’m stunned. I’m trying to figure out what to say when another sentence blinks onto my screen. “I don’t care for Bernard Hinault’s thought, by the way. Or maybe I don’t care for the category I fall into. Not now. Not here sitting near her in the hospital room.”

You can tell a little bit about a person by how they ride a bike. I didn’t really know Deb but I often saw her out on the road, riding. She was a hard worker, serious, studious and no nonsense. She pushed big gears. Huge gears. Knee crushing gears. She pushed those same gears at the YMCA spin class where I’d seen her. She sat in front and she hammered until she was spent. It was clear she loved to ride.

We love our bikes. They love us. Wear your helmet, always. PLEASE. Riding our bikes for leisure, sport, fitness and fun is a gift. Whatever combination and at whatever level you do that, wear your helmet, don’t cheat, wear your helmet, don’t cheat, and wear your helmet.

Inventing Spin

wigdawg — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 23:16:00 +0000

6:17 am. An eternity ago I looked over my shoulder at the clock on the wall. It was 6:16 am. I should be out on the road and not in spinning in this Spin class. Based on the first painful 17 minutes of this could turn out to be the slowest hours of my life. Over in Europe the boys in the Tour de France are three or four hours into today’s stage 13 in the Pyrenees. I should be out on the road but instead I’m Spinning.

I invented Spin. Not the exercise bike but getting people together on a bunch of stationary bikes and having a workout together. I’m not running for President or saving the planet like Al Gore but I did invent something, like Al. Or, I’m just spinning this, like Al. We called it Turbo and we didn’t have music or mirrors. In place of the aerobics styled overly peppy instructor (and dj) we had something called a “coach”. This was in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s with the triathlon team I co-founded, coached and chartered, Tri-Team Peninsula. We had no idea we had invented something called Spinning, but we did. Somebody else, of course, would market it and make millions.

But we were doing spin before spin was spin. Way before it became a fitness club fad like aerobics, yoga or tae bo-pilates-kickboxing-step-abs-cardio-sculpt-blast class. Tri-Team bought 25 turbo machines and some sets of Kreitler rollers for a few of us purists. Each Wednesday night we did an hour “Spinning” and followed that up with a 3-6 mile run to simulate a triathlon transition. Instead of the weight room style fitness exercise bikes we used turbo-trainers allowing you to make your regular bike into a stationary bike by attaching the rear wheel to a flywheel and drum. You adjusted the tension or difficulty by either shifting gears or by adjusting the tension on the flywheel in back.

Rick Sutton was the Turbo coach. He often rode a turbo during the workouts but he never faced the group like Spin instructors do. He lined up with everyone else and then barked out orders like a team leader in a real peloton. Most of the time however Sergeant Rick treated turbo like a swim coach treats a swim workout. He paced the deck, yelled out splits, looked at body position, screamed encouragement to the group or called out people by name. Those workouts were never boring.

This one is. I’m in the back corner of the dimly lit, beating Equinox Spin Studio. The instructor this morning, Matt, is at the front of class facing the wearied Monday morning Spinners. There are mirrors along the front wall that we, the peloton, face. From where I sit tucked in the corner and angling my bike I’m out of range of seeing myself. But I’m in a great position to watch everyone else watch themselves chasing their imaginary nemesis. Matt doles out a continual stream of tidbits of advice urging us incrementally higher up our percentage of effort and closer and closer to the imaginary rider out on the road ahead.

Instructor Matt has a microphone on the end of a little boom anchored from his ear. His voice is slicing through the music with instruction as well as visualization queues. “We are on a long straight road. Out ahead of us is another lone rider. We are going to catch him increasing our effort each 3-5 minutes by 5%. We start controlled at 60-65% and we’ll move it up to an all-out effort.” One song is fading out and Matt works his Ipod click-wheel. A techno-fied Bee-Gee’s song pounds into the room. He says “Let’s go get that other rider”.

I’m fighting myself about whether the clock has stopped and if seconds and minutes are still ticking by. They are. Time is moving. But time is moving slowly. Of course, that isn’t true. Time is, like change, constant. It doesn’t go on break, speed up or slow down it doesn’t keep track of itself. We do that. This morning I’m fighting time, pushing time, doing anything I can to not surrender to time.

I’m having a tough time with the visualization. I decide to add in some cool wind. This helps and I put my head down and relax my arms, neck and breathing. My legs go to work. I add more mental pictures. To my left there is a lake. The road is flat but I’m passing through a plateau in the mountains. There are white caps on the lake and the wind feels like it is coming off the hills, over the water and rising from the pavement. The peaks rise around me their summits disappearing into clouds. I look over to my right and see that a 200 pound woman has pulled up alongside me. I’m not imagining this. She is compact, breathing hard and close. I settle in with her. She appears confident in her bike handling at this pace and on this flat stretch of road. She is wearing a heart monitor. It reads 160 beats a minute. I marvel at her 60-65%. I give her a nod and a smile. She heaves out a nervous half smile obviously after her own lone rider up the road.

There are many styles in Spin class. Most of the styles have little to do with biking with cadences bouncy and too high or knee-busting and too low. Nearly everyone is sitting like upright children in high chairs, handlebars draped in white cotton gym towels to collect the spills and sweat that will soon have every soaked and stained. I keep my head down and keep moving.

The imagining works and I finally claw my way up to the rider I earlier conjured. The sweat is pouring off me. The woman next at me looks at my straining face and smirks and nods again. I catch a glimpse of her heart monitor. 160 beat a minute and holding. I should be in better shape. I should be stronger. I will be stronger. The clock moves by 6:30 am and I hear the instructor say there are hills coming up. I look over at Mrs. 160 and wonder what hills she imagines ahead. I know mine will be a tornado of switchbacks and steep pitches. I sit up and grab some water and prepare to begin climbing as soon as the instructor says “go”.

Vortices

wigdawg — Sun, 22 Jul 2007 16:51:00 +0000

Last year I traveled with my brothers Steve and Scott to Viet Nam. We spent time in and around Ha Noi, out on Ha Long Bay and up in the mountain towns of Bac Ha and Sapa near the Chinese border. Short vignettes below. Also links to Scott’s radio food tips and his recent Rotary video production as well as pictures from Steve.

Scott's Radio Food Tip #1 - Sapa
Scott's Radio Food Tip #2 - Travel
Scott's Radio Food Tip #3 - Coffee
Scott's Video Production
Band of Brothers 2006
Steve's 2005 Makong Delta and HCMC Pictures

“The hypothesis of vortices is pressed with many difficulties.”

Between a split of land on the mighty Red River a village was founded. On a shred of land rising above a sliver of marshes a town grew. Skirting a knob of land among title flats, scattered streams and lakes a city occurred. From a network of foot, cow and duck paths to a loose agglomeration of towns and conjoined streets, to an immense estuary with it own ebbs and flows. Partly laid out in geometers, but mostly growing like vines, Hanoi, is the city between two rivers.

“The hypothesis of vortices is pressed with many difficulties.”

On the edge of the old quarter of Hanoi, on the banks of Hoan Kien Lake an old "Viet Man" paces reciprocating arcs. On the Red River long-stanchion blades and foot driven oars mint systems of vortices that fall aft tracing out fading and flattening conic sections flailing about one another. Throughout the city, flotillas of bikes and moped, bucket-like cyclos, carts, cafes, streets, push and bump below the rigging and spars of electrical wires and clothes lines and through alleys combining into a tangle as vast and inextricable as characters on a page must do in the eyes of an unlettered peasant…Us.

“The hypothesis of vortices is pressed with many difficulties.”

At an intersection a boy smiles. His gums support a rubble of teeth shouldering their way to pink gaps and deciduous ones flapping like brothel signs on skin hinges. Precocious sots peer quick faced as I pass basting their sentences together through white smoke of cigarettes and industry turning the sky into a blazing spark shot. Motorcycles tethered by a traffic light mingle and jostle like a nervous horses heaving at the sound of distant guns. Knees pimple through plastic ponchos draped against a constant rain. The light changes. A red flag with a single yellow star snaps straight with a pop. They’re off leeched against a sky of matted reticule of taut jute.

”The hypothesis of vortices is pressed with many difficulties.”

Like jumping fish they go about difficult tasks and matters with bloodless ease. As if they were all born knowing things that other people must observe and learn. Given enough time, enough points, one can begin to draw a mental line from the bridges spanning the river, to the wickered and walled gallows of the old quarter, to this street corner. Plotted out one begins to understand a little about what these people fear, whom they love, how they live. And though it is impossible I want to see everything, taste, smell and touch all, and alter nothing.

“The hypothesis of vortices is pressed with many difficulties.”

Ode to the Garden Hoses

wigdawg — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 15:32:00 +0000

In the words of Kermit the Frog…”it ain’t easy being green”. This is true for puppet frogs and garden hoses alike. My garden hose gets a workout this time of year, stretched pulled and yanked. All winter it sits idle, empty, and cold. Is there any more useful summer tool than the humble garden hose? Or any more fun? Drinking from garden hoses is a favorite summertime activity of mine. Of course, you are not suppose drink from garden hoses. But I do anyway. I overeat at Thanksgiving too. Garden hoses are rumored to carry toxins, lead and bacteria that can leech into the water yet I can seldom resist running the torrent from hot to cold through twisted feet of coil and getting my mouth and face blasted. This typically leads to water drooling down my neck, splattering on my flip-flopped feet, drenching my shirt. I have a bar of soap sitting near my hose for full-on showers on the really hot days or when it is too hot to sleep a quick in-the-buff cool down. If I had a river or a lake nearby I use those. But all I’ve got is a garden hose; the brass mouthed open fountain of summer.

Mine hose is a classic. A green a 25 foot, 5/8 interior diameter, ¾ inch thread coupling, brass fitted, US standard rubber garden hose. Garden hoses are made from a variety of materials of which of rubber hoses are the heaviest. I drag my hose. I muscle my hose. I tug at it and pull. Heavy rubber hose are not easy to handle. Rubber hoses are often made with tire cord fiber but they can also be made of vinyl, or a hybrid of the two. My hose is a thick ply of rubber and layers of vinyl or nylon reinforced vinyl. It resists weathering, kinks and cracks. It is heavy, unwieldy, durable and green.

I loosely wind and my garden hose after each use de-flaking it to hang on a hose saddle rack. At the spigot my hose mates to multiple die-cast manifold system allowing me to turn my one outdoor faucet into two. I can use both a once or just one at a time. All my heaving and tugging has pushed loose a washer and I’ve recently sprung a high pressure leak. Whenever I turn on the water a hissing spray jets wets my arm and wrist and forearm. I attached a hose bib when I bought the hose three years ago in anticipation of this but the water has burst through regardless.

There are a many interesting and useful couplings out there for the working-end of hose. There are pistol-grip nozzles that dispense water when the handle is pressed. They have a number of adjustable spray patterns and settings; jet, soak, shower, mist…and so on. There are long-handled wands for reaching hanging plants and other out of the way places. There are sprinklers, all sort of sprinklers - oscillating, rain bird, timed and adjustable. There are other types of hoses too. Coiled hoses are made from polyurethane and stretch when pulled and then snap back into a tight slinky-like shape when not in use. They come in different colors like, red, pink, purple, and blue. There are flat hoses, I call them firefighter hoses, made of nylon that reel-in for easy rewinding and storage. They are neat and tidy and I hear they are safe to drink from. Hoses come in many shapes and sizes with advertising like “swan soft”, “supple soaker” and ‘kink free. Martha Stewart has special double-reinforced vinyl “flexagon” that promises all of the above.

All these accessories and hoses allow you to easily control and manipulate the water in a variety of ways. I don’t own a single one. Instead I prefer to control the stop and start vinyasa of water by strangling the neck of my hose in the grip of my hand and with a steady thumb orchestrate jet, soak, shower or mist…as needed. For hard to reach places I slop and splash and improvise. I like my hose nearly untamable so I can whip-em, heave-em and tug-em.

I do have a second hose. It is a soaker hose. It isn’t anything like my garden hose, none of the flash or fun. But I’ve grown to adore is my soaker hose too. A dry soaker hose is grayish black, coarsely textured, oddly carinated beast. Thankfully I only have to handle it once or twice a year. The soaker twists and turns along the floor of my three small flower and vegetable beds. Two or three times a week at this time of year I twist the spigot to full blast and listen as water surges and swells the length of hose rushing the 50 feet past my marigolds, opal and lemon basil, rosemary, lavender, thyme, daffodils, cilantro, ground covering, and up to the stand of six tomato plants overtaking the sunniest area along the fence. Finding the far end capped and plugged the water pushes outward as the soaker grows an inky black and begins to weep and seep through tiny pores like a river over run its banks. The working-end of a soaker hose isn’t the brash fitted mouth but its entire length.

Soakers don’t have the flash of a sprinkler system or a summer rain shower but for getting a watering job done nothing is more efficient and easy. Because they apply water directly to the soil they don’t lose water to evaporation. A soaker hose can use up to 70 percent less water than a standard garden hose sprinkler delivery system. Soakers can be buried or covered with mulch so the black hose can be camouflaged too. My soaker is on its third season. During the winter I store it behind the shed but in the early spring I pull it out and after cleaning my beds, lay it down against the bare soil. Then I plant around it like a farmer on the alluvial banks of the Jordan River or Nile River Valley. As the season passes, herbs, flowers and vegetable burst from the banks of the soaker river and overwhelm my beds.

I haven’t been part of a good water fight in a couple of years but I still find great joy in a green garden hose. These typically started small, with squirt guns or a flick from someone’s fingertips and then escalated to water balloons, cups, and buckets. They always ended with someone planting by a spigot armed with the garden hose. And then chasing all comers as fast as they could, uncoiling green chain behind them like a guard dog, water spitting as far as thumb allowed.

All good things,
Wig

A Snail in The Kale

wigdawg — Tue, 03 Jul 2007 16:56:00 +0000

Palo Alto is blessed with the best weather in the Bay Area. Summer is no exception. We don’t have San Francisco’s fog nor the overheating of anyplace south of Santa Clara. Unlike the East Bay our hills are bathed with evergreens, old growth and moisture. The coastal range that climbs south from the Gate uplifts at highway 92 and runs directly to the west of Palo Alto forming a rampart that allows refreshing coast breezes most days while standing resolute again coastal fog, always.

Summer is upon us here in Palo Alto and the sun’s white hot fuse has burned and burst into the gardens, flower beds and farmers markets of my neighborhood. I’m caring for Jesse’s garden and chickens while she is away. I’ve been training her chickens. Training chickens isn’t difficult as they only have a couple of tricks in their nature. The training consists of reminding them of that nature. I’ve trained her chickens to scurry out the front door when I open their hutch in the morning. I’ve also got them trained to waddle back up the ramp and into their coop right after the sun goes down.

Jesse will train them to lay eggs in a couple of months.

Palo Alto. Shallow Alto. It is fun to squat here with the rich and the famous and the incredibly well-educated. I’d say smart, or even wise, but I don’t find any higher rate of intelligence or “smarts” here in Palo Alto than anywhere else in the world. But we are certainly well educated and rich. Or is the word I’m looking for wealthy. Either way, it is cool to live in such an interesting place and at such an interesting time.

Stanford has its firework celebration tonight, July 3rd. The well-educated often celebrate in alternative ways. After the well-trained chickens settle I’m going over, finding a spot on the grass and watching the night sky rocket to life.

All Good Things

Chinese CatFish, Terminal Birds and IPhones

wigdawg — Fri, 29 Jun 2007 23:45:00 +0000

I’m fond of islands. I like Hawaii. I’m waiting for my plane to leave and I’m clearly on island time. If you are truly on island time are flights ever truly delayed? In Indonesia they call this waiting around “Jam Karet” or rubber time. They’ve got something similar on many islands. Not on Brittan or Japan but on other islands, hot islands; Caribbean islands, Greek islands, and of course the 11,000+ islands of the Indonesian archipelago. There as here, time is stretchy, unpredictable, can scrunch and elongate. Time is fluid like waves or weather systems. Buses (or planes) arrive when they arrive and depart sometime after. Appointments happen around the time they are scheduled…or not.

Of course, rubber time has its consequences. This morning I long-board surfed on small waves. Little rollers frothed in one after another and I caught them using my last opportunity to practice tippy-toeing up and down the board. At that time in the morning the beach and break is quiet. All the good surfers are on the beach, shaka reclining and renting boards to us tourists. They are drinking coffee and nodding super cool nods like only true surfer dudes living on island time are capable of for extended periods of time. I did my best short-term “I’m a cool dude from California” and rented my board with as much nonchalance and surfer-ness as possible. Thankfully they were cool, or perhaps it was just too early, to even make me feel not cool. This was cool.

I ended my session out off “the wall” at 7:30 sharp so I could pack my bags, shower, and meet my pre-arranged taxi to get me to the airport precisely on time to make my plane home. The surf wasn’t really up yet but it was getting better and I would have loved to have stayed longer. I made my taxi but my flight is now in the liquid jaws of island time. Making this plane has changed from an event recognizable as a point on the clock to a process characterized by an as of yet undefined period of time. So I shifted my gears as tempers started getting hot around me. I’m embracing island time, rubber time and just waiting it out, grooving on the process...bra.

I’ve found myself a hunker-spot at a nearly empty gate nearby. Two huge flat-panel TV’s are ensconced on the walls and tuned to CNN. Occasional announcements echo though the bright cathedral like glass hull of the terminal. Sparrows wheel and knife through thin air-conditioned air of the terminal sky. Hawaiian music floats through the air just out of reach. It is nearly rainy season here in Hawaii and outside the air drips with heat. Sliding doors breathe open and shut as passengers inhale and exhale through them. Heading in one direction people visibly wilt, readjust their heavy carry-on's and slow as the heat covers them. Those who are inhaled jerk erect as if they’ve been resuscitated after a light afternoon nap on a couch via the touch of a cool hand.

Through the glass and frames I can see my fellow passengers at the adjacent gate impatiently settled in and shuffling. They are waiting for the departure event. Many are reading, listening to music or eating. A couple treks into the terminal area near me, drop their backpacks and spread out their fast food. Three birds land near them and begin hopping excitedly around the periphery waiting for scraps.

On the television I learn there is a problem with Chinese fish. Chinese fish? I love Chinese Fish! I ate fish everyday here in Hawaii. I feel fine. Am I? I listen more intently.

Turns out the television is doing its usual rhythmic teasing. Sound-bite mythmaking. The truth is squeezed in between the alarmist editorializing. Some Chinese farms use medication keep the fish healthy, but the FDA is concerned about “possible harmful effects” on humans after “years of consumption”. Possible effects? Years of consumption? Who eats catfish anyway!

This is a ridiculous story. It is non-news. Fast on facts slow on truth. It is why I can’t watch the news. Our country is racked by obesity, heart disease, ADHD, diabetes and a host of other dietary controllable ailments but catfish get the headlines, feed the fear, and fan the worry flame. If we swapped out potentially tainted catfish for McDonalds, hormone-laced beef, and super-sized drinks, I’d bet, after years of consumption, we would be a thinner, healthier, smarter, funnier AND even a better looking America.

The story finally ends with a tease of their next story, the IPhone. Now here is a story I can sink my teeth into and wave the red, white and blue about. The IPhone is something to celebrate. We need products and devices to drive back the tyranny and dangers lurking out there in the world. Besides I love gadgets and especially cool techie gadgets. But before I can get on to the revelry I learn during one of the commercials about a heretofore unbeknownst to me medical ailment called RLS, Restless Leg Syndrome. Hummm…I think there might be a remedy called EXERCISE that might cure that one but I’m not sure. I feel fine. Am I?

Finally the commentators are back and I learn all about the IPhone. Honestly, I’ve already heard all about it. I’ve read everything, the blogs, forums, articles, reviews, previews and advertisement…I covet this device. I want to be the first in my family to own one but I know my brother Steve and my nephew Taylor are going to beat me to it. I’ve got a sinking, hollow, jealous anxiety seeping into my island time attitude. My treo is flashing that I have a new text message. I couldn’t care less.

By tomorrow my phone will be a dinosaur, not a single person will be sick from tainted Chinese catfish, I’ll no longer be on island time and these birds will still be darting around the terminal sky.

Who’s got your back?

wigdawg — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 00:41:00 +0000

**The Anita Borg Institute sent me to Hawaii to be part of the HP diversity booth at the ASEE annual conference. Below is the feed from the ABI blog (www.anitaborg.org) published under the same title**

HP and the America Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) are once again hosting a diversity booth at the Annual ASEE conference and exposition June 24-27 at the Hawaii Convention Center. The Anita Borg Institute is pleased to be representing on the floor of the exposition hall along side leading organizations that provide programs, services, research and support for a variety of underserved communities within engineering and technology fields.

When I stand along side these sister and brother organizations I’m encouraged. Often times in a small non-profit you feel like you have to do it all. When I stand shoulder to shoulder with each an every one of these people, hear about their work, understand their depth of knowledge and convictions I know conclusively…we don’t.

The Anita Borg Institute does have some of the answers. We don’t have them all. But by coming together with supporters, constituency and other organizations like those here at ASEE we expand our expertise, reach and impact. We are called to be the best in our particular sector, maintain the integrity of our mission and excel in our programs. When we do our job well we support the entire community. Increasingly we need to understand the landscape and our friends well enough to know who, in essence, who has our back.

Effectively solving the engineering, science and technology issues of the 21st century will require a depth and breadth of participation from every population. No single organization has all the answers. No country will have the luxury to leave behind or leave unheard large swaths of its own population or to ignore its partners and competitors across national borders. Everyone here seems to agree that the Engineer of the 21st century will not look like the engineer of the 20th. The 21st century challenges are going to be great and the rewards and possibilities consummate with those challenges.

The diversity booth is one example but you see and hear it everywhere here at ASEE. The opening keynotes by Philippe Forestier, executive vice president at Dassault Systems and Leah Jamieson, dean of engineering at Purdue University & CEO and president of IEEE had at their core, though in very different ways, the new engineers, environments, perceptions and innovations of the 21st century. Forestier spoke about three-dimensional and multi-national engineering. Jamieson followed and spoke forcefully about Forestier’s points and the interplay between those things and the liberally educated, creative, artistic, technically skilled, nimble, connected, reflective, contextualized and diverse, “multi-dimensional” engineer of 2020.

From workshops and sessions to a stroll through the booth spaces on the exposition floor you see organizations addressing these issues at one level or another. Everyone appears to be grappling with at least one aspect; many (like HP and ASEE) are addressing multiple levels and bringing to the surface the conversations necessary for change.

Together we make a strong statement about the critical importance of diversity in engineering.
Together we demonstrate the importance of the work each does within a larger framework.
Together we highlight the complexity of the issues faced in changing a culture, increasing diversity and indeed, changing the world.

So, with that, here is a quick look at the other organizations who this week at ASEE “have our back”

MentorNet

Society of Women Engineers (SWE)

American Indian Science & Engineering Society (AISES)

NAE Center for the Advancement of Scholarship on Engineering Education (CASEE)

HENAAC, Promoting Careers in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math

National Association of Multicultural Engineering (NAMEPA)

National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE)

Society of Hispanic Professional Engineering (SHPE)

Society for the Advancement of Chicanos and Native Americans in Science (SACNAS)

Women in Engineering Program Advocates Network (WEPAN)

All good things,
Wig

In the event of a water landing

wigdawg — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 02:12:00 +0000

I scored and exit row and a window seat. I’m willing and able in 25a. I get myself settled and construct my tiny private space between the window, bulk head and armrest. My fellow passengers jostle and wiggle themselves into their private spaces. I twist off my shoes without untying them and tuck them under my seat. I feel the guy behind me shuffle his disapproval as this little cubby, technically, is his. It is a full flight and lines are drawn; arm rests, mini-pillows, blue-blankets, palm sized bags of peanuts. A policy of containment cold war style, person to person, seat by seat, row by row. We push private spaces, we protect ours against strangers.

The doors close and we push back from the gate. The aisle seat next to me remains empty. Sweet! I’ve scored the entire two-seat exit row. I’m willing and able in 25a and 25b! I move into the reclining aisle b-seat and spread out my reading, journals, ipod, and computer into the window a-seat next to me. The flight is nearly full but this twist of fortune makes me, for the next five hours, the king of coach.

The flight attendant comes by and asks me if I’m “willing and able” to assist with the emergency door and to help other passengers in the event of an emergency. Almost by reflex I reply that I am. He reaches across and takes out the tri-fold, laminated “For Your Safety” Boeing 767 emergency door and evacuation procedure brochure and information card. He delicately opens and displays it for me.

He gently talks me through the operation of the emergency exit door. With each piece of information he refers me to an image on the laminated brochure. I nod and smile. The door has two handles, one above and one below the little porthole window. They are marked in red. The door has no hinges. This is single-use door. It is not meant to be opened and closed. It is meant to be opened and removed. If I do have to dislocate the door he tells me to first check outside the window for fire or obstructions.

This flight is unique for a domestic American flight; it happens almost entirely over water. Of course many international flights are like this but only flights to Hawaii and Alaska have large chucks over open water. We spend the next three or four minutes talking about what to do in the event of a water landing.

“In the event of a water landing” he points to an illuminated exit sign at my feet. Matter of factly he adds “be sure to check on the water level. If it is above that exit sign you may have trouble removing the door.” He tells not to toss the door outside (I think he has just read my mind) but place the door my seat and then assist passengers onto the wing directly outside my door.

This plane has six life rafts. One of them is directly above me, the king of coach. I saw it when I was the last person on the plane and was searching the overhead compartments for a place for my bag. The life raft is big, bulky, heavy and self-inflating. The flight attendant points out a picture of the raft floating in the water. The plane is in one piece, wings, tail, engines, and fuselage. There is one person in the raft and another person at the end of the wing stepping into the raft. I can see the drawing that represents me in one of the doorways helping a woman and her child out onto the wing. A giant green arrow is super-imposed on the wing directing her to the raft.

I look at the picture.
I look at the wing.
I look at the picture.
I look at the wing.
I look at the flight attendant.
He smiles.
I smile.
“So I need to get the raft out this door too?”
He smiles and nods.

The bulkhead in front of me is carpeted with soothing Hawaiian airlines colors, blue and lavender. Directly in the middle there is a similarly colored round medallion with two footprints, and a slash crossing them. Below them is says, Mahalo! I am the king of coach but I’ve got some responsibilities too. I’ve got to look out for this door, and the passengers and the life raft. And I’ve got to keep my feet off the wall.

I’m not drawn to scale in the saftey brochure. I point this out. He continues to smile. None of us are drawn to scale. We are too big and there are far too few of us in the pictures. They are so spacious. We’ve ample personal space and apparently plenty of time. The water is calm and there is no fire or obstructions. I appear to be doing a great job helping the four people who have come through my 2 foot by 4 foot one-use door. Of course, I’m happy the raft didn’t inflate early while still in the cabin and that the nice man who helped me is now helping others out on the raft. The rendering of me in the picture has no emotions (and dark hair too) but I image I’m happy. I know I’m delighted the other 300 or so passengers have apparently evacuated out the other exits. I’m happy it is all so orderly and the plane is floating so sweetly. I wonder what sort of passed appetizers they are serving on the life rafts.

The flight attendant and I finish our conversation. Captain Scott and first officer Lee report over the intercom from the flight deck. We are first for take-off. A short taxi later and I sink deeper into my seat as the turbines jet into action below me. The nose points off the ground the plane teeters into the air and we are wheels-up headed to Hawaii. I feel the vibrations of the engine in my inner ear as San Bruno, South City, and then Pacifica appear out the window as we climb quickly out over the Pacific ocean and then level off.

I’m aware of the guy behind me, the line to the lavatory, the flight attendants clunking the drink cart from the back of the plane to the front. I look out the window to see the wing and the idling engine divide two blue worlds that meet along a hazy smudge at the horizon.

Mahalo!

Gus found peace dreaming he was dead

wigdawg — Fri, 22 Jun 2007 05:42:00 +0000

Summer solstice, 2007. As the evening came on we spoke of dreams. We ate. We sipped wine with the maker. The maker’s wife told us stories of nuns. Nuns who unknowingly ventured back and within, and though afraid, dreamed. They dreamed of a time before nuns, a time of maypole dancing, of stone monuments, of bonfires, of celestial alignments, of harvests, antlers and a shining moon burning against a setting blue sky.

All good things, Wig