Anti Fracking Rally Albany NY August 27 2012

Dateline, Albany, New York  August 27, 2012

Its a warm, perfectly lovely day for a protest, low 80's, light breeze, and an intermittent cloud cover.  A great day for a make up of the May 15th "call to action" which was threatening and overcast with a light sporadic rain, just enough to discourage the fair weather patriots among us.  Oh, the action was held, 150 strong, braving the groping hands and eyes of the NYS state police as they suffered the indignity of a security check so they could enter the capitol bldg and hold their protest inside.  Pathetic.  `

But today the weather was on "our" side and a respectable crowd of around 500+ turned out to implore our sovereign and entitled gov Cuomo to stand up against the energy related corporate interests who he is counting on supporting his eventual presidential run.  Good luck!!!

This seems to be emblematic of an unhealthy trend starting to appear in American politics.  The evolving political dynasties in which the sons of former politicos with ample name recognition, personal wealth and/or financial backing, and a healthy sense of entitlement avenge the perceived indignities inflicted on their fathers.  George W, Mitttttt, sooner or later Andrew, and don't count out Jebbbbb.  What an interesting playing out of a Geek Myth, Jebbbbb v Andrew for prez, and in this splendid democratic system, we the humble and disenfranchised voters get to democratically empower the next entitled pretender to the throne, who couldn't give a shit about us.

But I digress, as always.  Today was make up day for the call to action and hopefully, the resurrection of the Occupy movement now that they have found an organizing principal around which to wrap their increasingly fragmented and disinterested base.  I could see the signs at their last demonstration in November, 2011...

    

The Occupy movement still front and center, but hydrofracking as a potent force, lurking in the background, and just as well.  An organizing principle...Can't say it enough.

Well, a picture is worth a lot of words, so here is the anti-fracking rally, at least when they got to the capitol.  Missed the march, but I just got back from the midwest and had no idea it was going on till it was almost too late.  So here is what I saw...

Well, the signs are all there, and there will be another month of summer, and a long autumn, so it will be interesting to see how this evolves.  Didn't see many of the Occupy organizers in the forefront here.  It is a good place for them to pick up the ball, as they say.

                                                                   Pablo

Fargo and my Sammy's Pizza experience...

It's 10:14 in the morning on Tuesday, August 14 and it seems that I've woken up in Fargo North Dakota and I have no idea how I got there.  In fact the only thing I knew about Fargo was what I saw in the movie of the same name, which I now realize has no correspondence to reality.  I've taken this kind of cheesy postcardlike photo down by the railroad station, which I'm sure has been taken by just about everyone who has visited here, but you do need a marker to remember where you were.

Headed down to 8th Street, which you can see in the background after 7th street, because I needed a cup of coffee and something to eat to get me going.  I liked 8th Street, in fact, I liked Fargo in general.  It is still a railroad town and there's nothing I like better with my coffee than sitting and watching a few long monotonous coal trains.

This is positively 8th Street, and no, I did not take any pictures of the coal trains.  There are plenty of them on earlier postings, if you care to dig.

Some buildings that run along the Northern Pacific Avenue on the north side of the tracks...

Broadway, which is the main drag in Fargo, and for an old midwest town that didn't exactly dodge the urban renewal bullet, Broadway remains nicely intact.  Even the infill buildings, like the one between the signs, blend in well.  More or less across the street from White Banner Uniforms, at 301 Broadway, is Sammy's Pizza.

It looked old, dim inside, and unpretentious the way a good pizza place should look, so I ventured in to nose around and liked what I saw.  This is Bryce slicing a fresh one right from the oven in the checkerboard way they like to do it...

I sat down at one of the well worn 1940's or 50's vintage booths and ordered a plain pizza...

The crust was thin and crisp, the sauce was flavorful and well seasoned, the proportion of cheese to crust was perfect, so there was no gloppyness.  It was well cooked and crispy, and since the place is small it was served to us hot enough to burn the roof of your mouth.  Perfection in the most unlikely of circumstances once again.  Good work Bryce.  Loved Fargo and would come back for the pizza if I was in the area, which I may be if I have the craving.  

                                                             Pablo 

Bleak House Coffee, Toledo Ohio,

Since I'm on a roll with food reviews, Toledo, Ohio comes to mind as a place where we were pleasantly surprised by a gastronomic anomaly of circumstance, Bleak House Coffee.  So, in spite of not being chronological,  it is more than worth mentioning here.  I'm not quite sure why the above photo seemed emblematic of my impressions of the city, but it was, or at least it was until my Bleak House experience.   Parenthetically, a totally arcane and irrelevant fact to anyone other than my some day future hypothetical biographers;  I once applied to and entertained thoughts of, attending the University of Toledo, back in a prehistoric era of life, for no particular reason other than the fact that they would have been accepting of the mediocre student that I was back then.  Surprising in view of the fact that I had once been heard to say...

                                                   Sometimes I stop,
                                                   and give thanks that
                                                   I was not born in Ohio...

Toledo was once called the Glass City because of the large number of glass manufacturers that had resided here, but today, the glass (taken on a sidewalk on Madison Street, walking to the glass museum, believe it or not)  is mostly shattered in this ghost city of vacant lots, vacant buildings, vacant dreams, and vast empty parking lots covering entire downtown city blocks that appear unneeded, since there seems to be little reason to be down there other than to see a Mud Hens game (I took a lot more like this, but you get the idea) ...

Where once stood buildings, commerce, and a bee hive of productivity, now there is only the dim memory of what once was, and a gaping sense of emptiness and despair in the inhabitants sleeping at bus stops slumped over at street corners, asking for quarters, going nowhere, doing nothing bereft of hope;  I could feel myself being drawn into this morass, at least I was, until I found myself at Bleak House Coffee, and all of a sudden, I felt at home in Toledo, the storm clouds parted, I felt I was somewhere, that there was hope, a reason to live.  Ironically, Bleak House (named for the novel of the same name) was in the Spitzer Building, which may mean nothing to most people, but to a New Yorker, it was the name of our disgraced former NY Governor, hoisted on his own petard.  It is an architectural treasure/office building that somehow,  fortunately missed the wrecking ball and houses a small indoor mall in the lobby area of which Bleak House is a part.  Located at the corner of Madison and Huron, this couple of blocks seem to be the most intact part of town.

This is the corner of Madison and Huron, looking down Madison.  The building to the right is the one you see through the window of Bleak House, the picture below is the perfectly minimalist interior accented by the totally cute co-owner/barista Stephanie who hand brews each cup of really good coffee right in front of you, if you are even watching .  In addition to Stephanie there is a quirky and interesting cast of characters who appear to inhabit the place in shifts and seem glad to be there, and for at least a little while, probably fantasizing that they are somewhere, or maybe someone else.  You would too.

In the end, my only real disappointment, was being there on a week when the Mud Hens were on a road trip.  Jackie and I spoke about hoping that "next time" we were in Toledo, we would make sure we  were there to catch a Mud Hens game.  What are the odds there will be a next time???  Maybe good.

                             

                                                                   Pablo's feet

Back in Lincoln (Nebraska) and headed to Yia Yia

May 29, 2012

We're back in Lincoln, NE.  Last time we were in Lincoln, about a year ago, the big news was the killing of Osama Bin Laden.  See blog posting (Ding dong the witch is dead, 7/12/11)....

 Back in Lincoln, and over the last year, other than the ongoing mis-adventures we continue to be getting ourselves into in the Middle East in the ongoing self immolating activities  of a nation flailing blindly in the dark, vainly trying to avenge the 9/11 wrongs inflicted on us, nothing much is new, news wise, if you don't count all of those thoroughly American mass murders that seem to be all the rage these days.  So common, in fact, that if you don't kill enough people in a novel and newsworthy enough manner, you won't even make the first page, so indeed, psycho-killers have been working overtime to come up with a new twist on an old story, like killing and wounding a massive number of people in a movie theater watching a batman movie, or peaceful worshipers at a Sikh temple, to get the attention of the media.   Rant...rant...rant...

So anyway, the big news this time around was the coming of a Whole Foods supermarket to Lincoln,

which, next to acquiring an NBA team or having a newsworthy catastrophe of your own, is the next best thing to acknowledging that you are a town worthy of note.  It was some good news, for a change, and  a good segue into  the point of this posting, a short food review about some good eatin' in Lincoln.

I'm talking about Yia Yia pizza on O Street, next door to the Bourbon Theater, which makes O Street a very good place to be.  Coming from New York,  I'm pretty particular about my pizza, and I am very easily disappointed.  Even in NYC, it is getting harder and harder to find a good slice, with fewer and fewer pizza places being owned by people ethnically or temperamentally qualified to make real Italian food at the street level.  Imagine my surprise to find one of the world's perfect slices in Lincoln, of all places.  They prepare the uncooked, thin, crust dough in advance, slice it into 8 wedges, and when you arrive and place your order, your slice is custom designed and prepared according to your specifications regarding sauce, cheese type, and toppings, and is then baked from scratch as you like it and served hot and fresh.  As you can tell, these things are quite important to me and something I take very seriously.

 Oh, there are other great places to eat in Lincoln, Billy's on H street, where we had that interesting meal with Willa Cather's great nephew, George;  Lazlo's down by the train station, with their great burgers and very memorable onion rings that I thought about for months after our last visit, and a few other places, but that isn't the point here.  It was the anomaly of finding such pizza perfection in such an unlikely place.  OK, maybe I'm a bit of an east coast snob, but if great pizza is important to you, if you should find yourself in Lincoln, catch the music and scene at the Bourbon, and go to Yia Yia.

Was down by the railroad station and got talking to some rail workers there about something, I think it had to do with my being from New York.

Mentioned I has headed to Yia for lunch, and they said they didn't care that much for it, the crust was too thin!!!   Didn't want me to take their picture.  Said I should take a picture of the trains instead, so I did.  Then headed to Yia for a slice with artichokes and anchovies.  Thought I would stick with toppings beginning with A.  It was great, as always.

                                                                   Pablo

Dorothy Lynch Salad Dressing...

We were having dinner at our cousin Stacey's house in Auburn, NE, where we were introduced to Dorothy Lynch salad dressing and the particular attachment many Nebraskans seem to have for this product which appears to be totally their own.  Stacy was telling us stories about Cornhuskers who have found themselves washed up on the shores of cities far from home and were shocked to find there was no Dorothy Lynch on the shelves of their local supermarket and had to have an emergency shipment sent from home.  Having nothing better to do while traveling the broad expanse of grassland between Auburn and Valentine, NE, and having just eaten at a nice restaurant whose owner confided to us that one of the "secret ingredients" in a certain recipe was Dorothy Lynch, we came up with the following ad copy.

                                             

People often ask me: “What does Nebraska taste like?”

“Why it tastes just like Dorothy Lynch salad dressing,” I tell them,

“Sweet, honest, and unpretentious.”

Made and sold only in Nebraska - Didn’t see it anywhere else, not even in Kansas or Iowa.

  

We’ve been told that many Nebraskans don’t leave the state without it.

Pablo likes his on the rocks with a twist of lemon.  Most other Cornhuskers like theirs on a bed of iceberg lettuce with some cucumbers and onions.

          Use your imagination and ENJOY!!! 
                                                   

                                   Pablo&Jackie

And the award for artistic excellence in public art in Nebraska goes to......

 Grant County for having the most wonderfully uncommercially, totally American work of art announcing their existence in all of Nebraska that we have seen so far, which is quite a lot...I'm sure, or I like to believe, that 50 or 60 years ago, the landscape was dotted with this sort of thing created by people who were proud of who they were and what they did, wanted the world to know, and took it upon themselves to say it.  No need for some glossy commercial sign company to tell their story ...

and to Benda Land and Cattle, about 10 miles south of Alliance, Nebraska, for their ranch sign, a true work of art that didn't need to be so great, but it is...Seen a lot of ranch and farm signs, functional, fanciful, ideocryncratic in their way, lots of well executed wrought iron work, but none that made me want to jam on the breaks and take a picture.  Some were good, but did not stand out, and were not art...So says me, anyway...

This is a picture of the "sandbox"...

In a state which announces its presence with all of the tedium of a lecture on composting or oral hygiene, and has nothing more to say about itself than that it is the home of Arbor Day and the good life, there is a failure of imagination somewhere along the way in terms of advertising the mystery, grandeur, and transcendental quality of this magical place, and letting people know how fortunate they are to be part of it, for however long they are there, so it was more than nice

 to see that there are people with the imagination and an appreciation for the handcrafted sign that was once a hallmark of the American landscape.  A runner up award has to go to Wauneta, Nebraska not so much for the sign itself, but for the sentiment, which must qualify it for the Miss Congeniality award of signs...

The graphics are neither here nor there, but the sentiment, "Half way between here and there" says nothing and says it all in 6 words.  Brilliant!!  Who ever came up with that encapsulation of Nebraska in a nutshell deserves the Willa Cather award for what ever literary category it is that they might fall into, maybe advertising double talk.

I have often said that it takes someone from the loud, claustrophobic, piss stained streets of the endless neon night time frenzy that is New York City to appreciate western Nebraska, or all of Nebraska for that matter for what it is.  Quiet, serene, and otherworldly, with uncommonly friendly people who wave at you, and mean it.

Exhibit A:  You don't want to live there, believe me...It is quite amazing how a New Yorker can tell you to "Have a nice day" with affect that ranges from disinterest to distain to out right hostility...and they mean it too.  After a few days of this you will agree with Dorothy's sentiments that "There's no place like home".  Which segues nicely into a great sign I saw in Kansas heading north into Nebraska in a town named Home

Which brings me to one of many pet peeves about the decline of the America that once had an identity and knew who it was.  So many of the signs welcoming us here and there have changed.  They are, across the board glossy, bland, commercial, and outsourced to some professional graphic design firm who applies some standardized metric to their work, thereby creating a homogeneity  which deprives us of something intrinsic, saying nothing about ourselves, but apparently saying it well in the eyes of the bureaucrats in some cubicles in Lincoln or Albany, or where ever, who contract for and approve such things.  This process is symptomatic of a failure of imagination that is endemic in the US and is at the core of our decline.   Woe is us, an extension of what I've been saying in my posting on the US post Office (See posting of 7/25/11 on US Post Office).

                                                                       Pablo  

Highway 136 west from Red Cloud to Invale to Riverton, Nebraska

Left Red Cloud mid day traveling west on the 136, quite overcast but warm, and not a promising day for pictures, but there were some occasional short breaks in the clouds, so patience was rewarded.  Still using the 136 photo from last years trip because it was perfect, and I wasn't going to do better this time around, or maybe ever for that matter.  Only in retrospect do you realize how fortunate you were.  I keep telling myself this.  Anyway, about 10 miles west of Red Cloud is a town called Invale.  I remembered passing it last year traveling east to get to Red Cloud before sundown, and I remembered seeing a partially broken down building that had clearly been the post office as was clearly marked on the front wall.  Didn't get the chance to get back, but did make a mental note for next year, which is now.

What a difference a year makes.  As this photo shows, something terrible happened here, and there have been many irreversible changes since we were last there and sadly, none of them good.  This is all that's left of the main street, north side...

Burnt, broken, and generally decimated...a testament to the obvious fact that nobody seems to care, or there is nobody left to care...

This is the imploded shell of the post office building which did not fare well over the intervening winter, and exists now only in my memory...

The only intact building east of Maine Street, abandoned, but intact...for now...there are so many hundreds and hundreds of these kinds of building throughout the Sandhills...so what to do with them.  After all, Invale just seems like a town you would drive by at 50 mph and not even see, so why bother...

Well, they still have Jesus, and a population of about 95 clinging to some hope that the second coming will improve their lot.

This is the side of town west of Maine Street...Intact, but not too inviting...Of the many abandoned houses available for immediate occupancy, this was one of the more appealing ones...

Onward on the 136 to Riverton, about 29 miles down the road.  The picture there wasn't much more encouraging...

They have a post office, which has chosen to remain anonimous...

A florist...

And a bar next to another apparently abandoned building with plants growing inside, which kind of covers the north side of the main street and for the most part, Riverton...Didn't see the church, but the clouds were closing in at a rapid rate and we were not in the mood for exploring.  Sorry the 136 report thus far was not all that encouraging, but the bigger question is,  how to restore a sense of relevance to the irrelevant??? By recognizing that all of these once vibrant farming communities are not at all irrelevant, but a link to the past that is worth preserving for its own sake, even if there are not enough antique shoppes, art galleries, or Dollar Generals to fill them and pay the rent...do something Nebraska!!!!!!  Please.  Maybe only someone from New York really gets it, or thinks he does!#@%%^

Prove me wrong....

                                                                   Pablo