1.21.2023 – see taste touch smell hear

see taste touch smell hear
Saturday morning traveling
magic world wide web

I traveled to the town of Market Harborough, near Great Oxendon, this morning and fell for a place named The George.

The George bills itself as A former 16th century inn set in the beautiful surroundings of South Leicestershire.

The George features a traditional village bar and a large patio area to while away your days in the rolling Northamptonshire countryside.

It is, they say, “A place to eat, drink and sleep.“

The George offers an Auberge Supper, which I think means supper in the style of an inn or small hotel in France where three days a week, lunchtime and evening, we will surprise you with a different tempting 3 course meal. The Auberge Supper is always full of flavours and at a fantastic price.

The George offers afternoon tea where you can “Treat yourself and your friends to afternoon tea at The George. Homemade sandwiches, scones and cakes are served on the patio or in the dining room overlooking the garden. Indulge in a selection of teas or a glass of champagne.“

The bar at the George lets you, “Enjoy a handcrafted real ale or a chilled white wine in our cosy bar. An extensive drinks menu hand-picked from around the world, there is no excuse not to stop in and relax.”

The Sunday Lunch at the George is “Served midday till 3pm every Sunday, you will always find the finest Roast Sirloin of Beef.”

I clicked on an online link for the place and managed to spend a half hour on their website.

I looked at the all the pictures.

I read all the menus.

I could see it.

The photos showed a clean, well lighted place (to steal from Mr. Hemingway).

I could taste it.

Scones, cakes, a glass of champagne, finest roast sirloin of beef.

I could feel it.

I could sense the polished wood and the weight of the crockery.

I could smell it.

The smell of an old bar, of whisky’s and beers and the smell of the kitchen and again the roast meats.

I could hear it.

The clack of crockery and china. Chairs sliding on a wood floor.

It all looked so … civilized.

Far from the maddening crowd.

It is where a warm welcome will always await you.

There was a jingle when I was kid that went, “Let you fingers do the walking in the Yellow Pages.”

I let my mind do my traveling on the world wide web.

I had never heard of Market Harborough or Great Oxendon.

Not quite sure I know where they are.

I feel like I have been there, at the least to The George.

I never left my chair.

Sometimes, better than being there.

1.20.2023 – inefficiencies

inefficiencies
stress fatigue impossible
unsustainable

As you knew, today’s haiku is based on an a newspaper article about the restaurant industry.

In the guest opinion essay, “Foodie Fever Dreams Can’t Keep Restaurants Afloat” by Vivian Howard, a chef and restaurateur, is the author of two cookbooks and the host of the PBS series “A Chef’s Life” and “Somewhere South.”

Ms. Howard writes:

Even so, Chef & the Farmer closed, in large part because the inefficiencies, stress and fatigue brought by an unsustainable business model became impossible to ignore. Our industry needs to evolve or else more full-service, cuisine-driven restaurants like mine will languish their way to extinction.

About being in the restaurant business, she write: “…perhaps why you so rarely hear a parent say: “You should get into the restaurant business. It looks like a nice life.“

As Anthony Bourdain once said, “I mean, I admire anyone who wants to cook and knowingly enters the field.

It’s a hard thing.

But, you know, look before you leap.

Because I’ve seen that so many times, kids coming out of cooking school and working in my kitchens, and literally two weeks in, you see it.

You look behind the line, and you can just see the dream die.

This terrible information sinking in, like, “Oh my God, this is nothing like they told me it was going to be.”

And I am thinking of going out to dinner tonight.

At least, as of right now.

I think I need a job that pays you to be on the beach.

Maybe the one I have that lets me on the beach at lunchtime is good enough.

But consider the beach.

Twice a day the tide comes in and wipes it clean.

Completely and efficiently.

No fatugue.

No stress.

Though I am sure that if I had the job to clean sweep the beach twice a day, I would make a mess of it and I would languish on my way to extinction.

1.19.2023 – extremely online

extremely online
insulted as efficiently
as is possible

Extremely Online.

A condition where social media compels us to read thinly, strip out all context and get to the part where we can be insulted as efficiently as possible.

So writes New York Times Opinion Columnist, Tressie McMillan Cottom, an associate professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Information and Library Science, in her piece, The Enduring, Invisible Power of Blond.

The line in question reads, “I knew a lot of the anger had to do with my critics being Extremely Online, a condition where social media compels us to read thinly, strip out all context and get to the part where we can be insulted as efficiently as possible.“

The ability, no, the desire of some folks to read thinly and strip out all context and get to the part where we can be insulted as efficiently as possible.

I come back to that old saying, why going looking for trouble.

Besides, if you go looking for trouble, trouble will find you.

Which in a way I think is really funny when I try to put that into context with news and social media and trouble.

Back in the news business we had endless discussions that folks no longer had to seek out news, they did not have watch TV news, listen to radio news or buy a newspaper.

With social media, the news someone wanted to hear, the paradigm went, now found them.

News, like trouble, finds you.

And the part of the news that interest us the most is the part that we are insulted.

And being extremely online compels us to read thinly, strip out all context and get to the part where we can be insulted as efficiently as possible

OH the wonderful power of social media,

1.18.2023 – sun shone, salt glittered

sun shone salt glittered
like tinsel the wind tousled
the sea prettily

Adapted from:

Prepared for a slice of heroic adventure, they found themselves in the middle of a floating vicarage garden fete .

The sun shone.

The salt in the air glittered like tinsel In the enclosed water of the Solent, the stiffish southerly wind did no more than prettily tousle the sea.

Though I had made an important fuss of laying compass courses on the chart and calculating tidal streams, there was no navigation, since everyone could see exactly where everywhere was.

There was no solitude, either.

There was hardly any room at all in which to move.

From the book Coasting by Jonathan Raban

Jonathan Raban, the British travel writer, critic and novelist known for his candid accounts of travelling the world in books such as Passage to Juneau and Coasting, has died aged 80, his agent has confirmed.

1.17.2023 – these illusory

these illusory
and ridiculous promises
never understood

My feeling that writers who write about economics get to use the best multisyllable words was reinforced by the NY Times opinion piece, The Crypto Collapse and the End of the Magical Thinking That Infected Capitalism, by Mihir A. Desai, a professor at Harvard Business School and Harvard Law School.

Mr. Desai gets to use wonderful $5 words when he writes:

Pervasive consumer-facing technology allowed individuals to believe that the latest platform company or arrogant tech entrepreneur could change everything. Anger after the 2008 global financial crisis created a receptivity to radical economic solutions, and disappointment with traditional politics displaced social ambitions onto the world of commerce. The hothouse of Covid’s peaks turbocharged all these impulses as we sat bored in front of screens, fueled by seemingly free money.

For me, this opinion piece was summed up in two sentences.

The first, These illusory and ridiculous promises share a common anti-establishment sentiment fueled by a technology that most of us never understood. Who needs governments, banks, the traditional internet or homespun wisdom when we can operate above and beyond?

Not only does it explain, for me the bitcoin fixation but most of the aspects of the covid era.

What I found fascinating was that Mr. Desai linked two worlds together for me.

There is this group, right, that for the most part, boiled down to its essence DOES NOT TRUST GOVERNMENT.

Vaccines, elections, gun rights and border control.

This group does not trust the government and wants the government out of their lives.

Who are these people?

As Mr. Desai pointed out, they are ANTI-ESTABLISHMENT.

They are the 1960’s HIPPIES come to life as 2020’s conservatives.

And at their core, just like the hippies, they are against everything.

As Brando said when asked, “ Hey Johnny, what are you rebelling against?“, replied, “Whadda you got?“

Who needs governments, banks, the traditional internet or homespun wisdom when we can operate above and beyond?

And really what do these people want to accomplish?

Don’t ask me.

these illusory
and ridiculous promises
never understood

Not only did Mr. Desai explain identify this New Hippie Era to me, he also explained the mystery of cyber currency for me.

Mr. Desai writes, “Speculative assets without any economic function should be worth nothing.”

I feel that way and I am not a professor at Harvard Business School and Harvard Law School.

May I paraphrase and say, something without value is should be worth nothing!

BOY HOWDY!

What to do?

Of late James Garner’s tag line from that goofy old western, Support Your Local Sherriff, keeps coming to mind.

Me?

I am just passing through on my way to Australia.

these illusory
and ridiculous promises
never understood