Kenny Smith | A remarkable thing happens …

food / music / Re-Listening / tabs / Tuesday / video — Comments Off
07
Feb 23

Seriously, I want this bread, very much

I walked into the studio this evening for the news recordings and watched two young women deliver the news. A young man did a weather forecast, which he we wrote and produced over in the atmospheric sciences. Another person delivered a tightly written around-the-world segment. They have two co-directors of news, and they each pitched to pre-recorded packages to stories they’ve recently produced. It’s all quite impressive.

The impressive part, to me, though, was one of the young women sitting at the news desk. One has been there a few times and she does a nice job with it. The other, this was her first time anchoring. After, I told her, a not insubstantial part of what we do at the desk is about delivering with confidence and poise, control and power. Her face fell a little bit right then. But, I said, a very interesting thing happened as you went through that show just now, your poise and confidence grew with each story you read through.

She was pleased. Everyone was.

Please enjoy the weekly effort at reducing the number of files I have open in my browser. It seemed a good week to have a theme, so let’s have a theme! The theme is food. Bookmark these links for yourself, but, whatever you don’t, don’t just leave these open in your browser.

This one is a recent discovery. Please don’t share this one with anyone I know, lest they make it and I have to eat it and learn it is, in fact, amazing.

Chocolate peanut butter skillet brownie.

INGREDIENTS

1 cup unsalted butter
1 cup sugar
1 cup dark brown sugar
3 large eggs, lightly beaten
1 tablespoons vanilla extract
1 cup all-purpose flour
¾ cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1 tablespoon instant espresso powder

1 teaspoon salt
1 cup chocolate chips, plus more for topping
¾ cup creamy peanut butter
vanilla ice cream, for serving

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

Heat a 10 to 11-inch oven-safe deep saute pan/skillet over medium heat. Add the butter. Once melted, turn off the heat and whisk in the sugars until dissolved. Whisk in the eggs, making sure to quickly combine them so they don’t cook. Whisk in the vanilla extract.

In a bowl, stir together the flour, cocoa, espresso powder and salt. Add it to the skillet and stir until combined and on lumps remain. Stir in the chocolate chips. Dollop the peanut butter all over the batter then swirl it in with a knife.

Bake the brownie skillet for 25 to 30 minutes, or until it is just barely set. You don’t want to overcook it! When it comes out of the oven, you can sprinkle with chocolate chips if you wish.
Let cool slightly then serve topped with vanilla ice cream.

Feel free to copy it from here, saving yourself the postmodern angst of having to scroll through 500 words and a ton of photos to get to the good stuff. Ironic, I know, and you’re welcome.

If you want something more healthy, 10 fruits you should eat every week, according to a dietitian:

Did you know research published in 2018 in the American Society for Microbiology’s journal mSystems shows that eating up to 30 different kinds of plants in a week can positively benefit your gut microbiome? Having a healthy gut can improve heart health, boost immunity and even benefit mental health. Eating more fruit is an easy way to increase the number of plants you’re eating in a week to keep your gut bacteria happy—and these 10 fruits pack in a plethora of health benefits with every bite.

From increasing your fiber count to boosting your body with crucial vitamins and antioxidants, here are the fruits recommended to consume every week, backed by experts and research.

Now if I can get two or three more refrigerators I can keep all of these fruits close at hand.

When we went to Washington in June of 2021 — our first non-family anything since Covid began — we discovered the Cottage Bakery in Long Beach. At that time I wrote:

I discovered the joy of a locally made bread I’ll never be able to try again, one so full of flavor and appeal that I described it as a sommelier does a wine (with a lot of complimentary adjectives). They describe it as “A multigrain bread we developed for that special beach flavor! Sweetened with honey and molasses and full of whole grain taste.”

They’re underselling the bread.

It is called Willapa harvest bread. Sadly, they don’t ship across the country. But this bread, y’all. So I started looking for the recipe. A recipe. Any recipe. I think this might be close to what I’m after. Now I just need to try it. Honey molasses whole-wheat bread:

Tested size: 12 servings; makes one 9-inch loaf

INGREDIENTS
2 cups whole-wheat flour
1/2 cup bread flour (may substitute all-purpose flour)
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup sunflower oil
1/4 cup honey
1/4 cup molasses
1 1/2 cups buttermilk (regular or low-fat)
DIRECTIONS
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Use cooking oil spray to grease the inside of a 9-by-5-inch loaf pan, then line the bottom with parchment paper.

Combine the whole-wheat and bread flours, the baking powder, baking soda, salt, oil, honey, molasses and buttermilk in mixing bowl. Stir for 75 strokes, so all the dry ingredients are moistened, then pour into your loaf pan, spreading the batter evenly.

Bake (middle rack) for 40 to 50 minutes, or until the top is evenly browned and a tester inserted into the center comes out clean, or with a moist crumb or two.

Remove from the pan and place on a wire rack to cool for at least 10 minutes before serving.

If you want to sweet talk the nice people at the Cottage Bakery in Washington state and see if they’ll share a few tips with someone a.) not in the bakery business and b.) well removed from their customer base …

Closing those three, I now have 40 tabs open on my phone browser. I seem to be stuck on that number.

It is time for another visit to the Re-Listening project. This is a stroll down memory lane, all of my CDs, in order, in the car. Today we’re somewhere in early 1997. Live’s fourth album came out that February. I liked the third one, everyone did, so I got the fourth one. The first single came out in January and it was immediately a big draw for an early 20-something.

The memory I have with that song is an open road and an odometer needle that points just a hair over toward the right. I don’t know if I’ve ever noticed the string section at the end. It stuck out to me on this listen. It’s a dissonance that doesn’t really work, at least from here.

But back then, that song went to 35 on the US Radio Songs chart, topped the Alternative Airplay chart and made it to number two on the Mainstream Rock chart. This was the most successful single on the record, and that makes sense. When you listen to the whole thing, by the time you get to the 10th track, or May, when this was released, you couldn’t be faulted for thinking this entire record was produced on a dare.

Try as I might, and this is of course a silly thing, I can’t think of a memory of listening in this in the daytime. I did used to make most of my long trips in the darkness, but that’s a weird lack of recollection on my part.

Of the whole record, this is the second, and other, lasting song on the album that captures my attention. It’s a stripped down and live performance of Live, from November, 1997. Or maybe it was April. Some international dating conventions are tricky.

“Secret Samadhi” topped the weekly charts, and the album finished at 42 on the year-end chart. It was certified double platinum in Australia, Canada and the US, but the misses outweigh the hits for me.

These days, after allllll of their internal drama, Live, with nine records in the catalog, is still touring, though the only original member is lead singer Ed Kowalczyk. When is an old band a new band? How long can a band swap out players and use the same name? This is, admittedly, a lame Theseus’ paradox, but it is hard to imagine Live without Kowalczyk.

In our next visit to the Re-Listening project we’ll check out a breakthrough smash from a little band from Gainesville, Florida.

But, for now, I have to go ~~rock out~~ iron a dress shirt for tomorrow.

cycling / errands / Monday / photo / video — Comments Off
06
Feb 23

Is that a uranium isotope in your pocket?

I cleaned out the garage Friday morning. But let me back up to September.

In September, the gas guy visited the house. He was there to replace the meter. Only there were flowers in the way, so he left us a nice note, asking us to remove the flowers, so they don’t get damaged in his work. This was about 45 minutes before The Yankee’s crash, so I got around to doing the flower removal — they were all weeds, anyway — in November. But I’d misplaced the note with the phone number in the interim.

Last week that door hanger floated to the top of a pile of papers, so I made the call, and we scheduled the guy to come back out. They were perfectly pleasant. No beef was offered for the delay. And the guy would be out Friday.

Are there pets? Is anyone sick? Will someone be home to provide the technician access to kill, and later, restart the pilot light?

So he was scheduled to come Friday. He needed access to the pilot light. All of that stuff sits in a custom corner of the garage. The only problem is that the space around it is perfectly suited to be a place to store extra things. So Friday morning I moved out the cars and slide a cabinet, a shelf and various other small things out of the way.

Friday evening, since I had all of that stuff out of the way, I did the annual air filter replacement, a procedure that is some months overdue.

There are 21 steps to removing the old air filter and putting in a new one. I know this because that is the number of instructions there are on the air filter box.

I felt a bit like these guys.

With that job done — there’s a light with a pleasing blue glow on the front of the air filter system that tells me I’ve been successful — I could put all of the things back into their proper place in the garage. In doing so, we decided five old paint cans could be recycled.

So on Saturday I took them to the waste disposal facility, where I met a man most pleased to do his job, as bubbly as a government employee working on a Saturday shift could be. He happily accepted two of my paint cans, chummily explaining that they had an ingredient deemed hazardous. He could not take the now ancient house paint. Not hazardous, he said. Well, he could take them, but he’d have to charge me $5 a can. Now if I’d brought any of my leftover uranium, he said, he could take that straightaway.

Wouldn’t you know, I left that in the backyard.

But the garage is now cleaner, five paint cans and a handful of junk cleaner, anyway. That’s good progress.

But enough about my Herculean attempts at decluttering. Let’s get right into the most popular weekly feature on the site, the check-in with the kitties. They’re doing great!

Phoebe has developed a real affinity for this blanket, and only this blanket. If someone is using this blanket and she is offered another blanket, she will not be pleased. Phoebe is a blanket snob.

The cat tunnel is usually more of her brother’s territory, but this weekend Phoebe got interested in it. And then she realized her blanket was up on the sofa.

Recently, we told Poseidon a good joke. How many cats does it take to change a light bulb?

He took it literally.

And if he had thumbs, the answer would be one. He’s very observant. He watches enough to understand that door knobs are important, but can’t figure out how to manipulate them. So, I figure, he can’t be too far off on the concept of light bulbs, either.

Electricity is beyond him, you might think, but he’s helped with plenty of plumbing fixture projects. The other stuff that magically comes out of the wall can’t be too much harder for a smart cat.

I think I’ve only had one wiring project with him in the house. He slept through that, so he’s not yet an apprentice in the electrical arts.

Between Saturday, Sunday and today I got in five Zwift rides. I managed to record five Strava PRs on four of those rides. Three of them were on climbs. Two of those were the same climb. I am not a climber. The other two were on sprints. I am also not a sprinter.

Here’s a bit of video from one of the weekend’s rides. Please note how my Zwift avatar always remembers to hydrate.

Apparently this is the island where aliens first visited. You eventually ride through the front wheel of the lead alien bicycle rider.

I thought, Wouldn’t it be great if the road bent back around and you rode through the back wheel of the second alien bicycle rider? And just a moment later, the road bent that way.

After close encounters like that, you sneak away as fast as you can.

So after tonight’s ride, a few days off, because of work schedules and such. But!

The 2023 Zwift route tracker: 60 routes down, 60 to go.

adventures / Friday / music / Re-Listening / video — Comments Off
03
Feb 23

Who has purple eyes anyway?

And what are your weekend plans? Did you ease into them? Rush into them? Have them foiled by bad news at 3 p.m.?

The risk adverse should stop taking meetings at about noon on Friday, for that very reason. But that’s not a problem here. The sun is out, warming nothing, but the sun is out. I kid, of course. It got up to 55 degrees today, another effort at that first gut-wrenching stage of winter tricks. “Look, it’s almost over!”

I know better. More winter, as they say, is coming. I don’t know when, or why, but it will.

I’m equally prepared for the second stage of winter tricks, too. The first signs of the tulips will be upon us in a week or two. The unsuspecting will herald this as a sign of spring. We know better, by now.

Turning back to the Re-Listening project, and back to late 1996 or very early 1997, the car was today and yesterday filled with the sounds of two guys from Texas. Jack O’Neill and Cary Pierce met in college, where they were theater students at SMU. They made themselves as a duo, building an incredibly loyal audience in the folk and alternative rock scene. If you liked tight harmonies, 12-string guitars and hyperactive live shows, this was a good band for you.

I caught up to them just under a decade into their career. I played their cover of “Please Come to Boston” and their original “Three of Us in a Boat” on the air whenever I could manage. And then, in some way that I’ve forgotten now, their record “Finest Hour” came to me. This is the first track on that record, and the first time, I think, that I heard them with a rhythm section.

There is a slice of their audience that regarded this as their most anticipated, and most disappointing record. A full band took something away, they argued. And the dynamic of O’Neill and Pierce was hitting a rough spot. Few seemed all that happy at the time, as I recall. But, still, this is a catchy little pop tune. It’ll come back up again.

Classic formula here, you have to bring things down a notch on the third track. They hit three continents, nine countries and 45 states, before going their separate ways for five years. Then they got back together. Older, wiser, less youthful exuberance, same quality performances, from what I’ve seen online of late.

One of the best songs on the record. And we’re going off the strength of the theme, the peppy chorus, the creative use of mahogany hair, juxtaposed against a lyrical great force that takes the narrator to a … ferry. Aside from that, though, great song, and “Vineyard” is one of their signature tunes.

They started doing what they called “Destination Shows,” which, if anything else, caters to a maturing audience with purchasing power and no sense of rock ‘n’ roll whatsoever.

These shows are a whole new fan experience where people can enjoy gorgeous scenery, share delicious food & wine and have “campfire”- type access to their favorite band. It’s a vacation and concert in one. Each Destination Show provides a unique experience dedicated to the local culture: Napa/Sonoma vineyards at sunset, a ranch in Austin Hill Country, high society in Dallas, a two-mile-high a private club in Aspen, amazing history at the Biltmore in NC, a 14,000 square foot hacienda in San Miguel de Allende, MX – and the list goes on.

“We have been doing destination events for 10 years now and they have been a huge hit with our fans and have allowed us to make so many great new ones along the way,” said Cary Pierce. “I think these events continue to grow and sell out because people want more than “just a show” – they want an experience. They want to create lasting memories, explore a new place or visit an old favorite. In some cases, we’re offering them a trip of a lifetime. We’re finding there a lot of people that really value these experiences.”

That actually sounds like good fun … oh no … I’m an aging audience member!

Anyway, this one is a bit of a departure, and it works because of that.

Remember, a few embeds ago, I said we’d hear more about “Trials.” Here’s the hidden track remix.

The other half of the album, to me, all sounds like this one. Not my favorite, but there’s a half dozen tracks I still enjoy, more than a quarter-century later, on a record that was something of a wash, and that’s pretty great.

Happily, Jackopierce is still working. They released a new song last month. They’ll be in Tennessee, Georgia and North Carolina on the first weekend of March.

I took a bike ride last night. I had intended to use Thursday as a rest day, but The Yankee invited me for a quick workout. A good rule of thumb about bike rides is to never turn down an invitation. So I did a quick hour, got 17 miles through Zwift’s Makuri Islands. I found one more Strava PR, on a sprint that doesn’t matter. Also, I was treated to this neat scene as I rode through one of the virtual villages. It was a good place to use the many different camera angles.

So what have we learned? Rest days are important — they would be if I was doing high volume, I’m doing average volume — but accept the invitation.

The 2023 Zwift route tracker: 55 routes down, 65 to go.

To the weekend! To the miles ahead!

Auburn / Glomerata / history / journalism / links / Thursday / video — Comments Off
02
Feb 23

Just 83 years ago …

I have next to nothing today, but there’s always the weather! Before I woke up, some rodent had doomed us to more winter. The high here today was 39 degrees. The low was 19. It was sunny.

Why is it that some creature elsewhere determines my weather? Don’t I have any agency here? Of course, I don’t. The weather is a part of a global meteorological system barely within our understanding, and certainly beyond my control. But, really, the lack of agency is galling. Not me, but some critter that’d just as soon stay in his hole, honestly.

I know how he feels. As soon as I read about the shadow, I wanted to climb into a hole, or at least back into the blankets.

Groundhogs. What a silly, successful bit of marketing. We persist in this because it is fun, right?

And also tourism.

We haven’t looked back at the old college paper in a month. When last we had a look, we poked around in 1929. We’re jumping forward a bit today, to 1940. On this day, 82 years ago, there was a new committee that was formed to think about cheating. I wonder what they thought.

Oddly enough, this guy was on the same front page. R. Temple Greystoke was a man named Ray Price.

He started in the magic business in 1921, and can’t you imagine that was a challenging lifestyle. It begain with kids shows, a dog act and he eventually developed what is called a Spook Show, and became a famous and popular act through the 1930s. Soon after he played at Auburn he returned to a more conventional stage show. He moved home to Alabama when his health began to fail him in 1955. He passed away in 1973.

Dawson Mullen here, he was a BMOC. He was an electrical engineering manager, honor society member, he was on the mysterious leadership council of his time, president of something called the engineer’s council, colonel in the ROTC, captain of the rifle team. And, in this same issue, we learned he was on that cheating committee.

I’ll have to look ahead and see what, if anything, that august panel resolved. Anyway, Mullen, I believe, found his way to Georgia. If I have the right one, he died in 2001. There’s not a lot on him, however.

This bit of copy is a hoot.

The building being referenced here is, I assume, the Auburn Sports Arena. We called it The Barn. It housed basketball starting in 1946. Likely a project put on hold during the war?) The basketball team moved one block over in 1968. The Barn was right across the street from the football stadium. It housed the gymnastics team, it was old and scheduled for demolition. And then it burned to the ground during the LSU football game in 1996. (A different, better, story.) There’s a parking deck in that spot now.

We like to think of the 1940s as being a fully modern time and, in many respects, it was. They were still trying to get driveways paved and sidewalks pour on campus. The depression, in-state politics, and subsequent decades of inattention were just starting to be remedied.

Scandal! Bottom of page one! Oh … never mind.

Grady Young graduated from Georgia and then studied to be a vet, like his father before him. He had three kids and seven grandchildren, and he ran Young’s Veterinary Clinic in Georgia for 42 years before his retirement. He died in 2021, at 82.

Here’s a man that made an impression, and you get the feeling the multi-sport coach (they all coached more than one thing back then) was well liked and would be missed.

Dell Morgan died in a car accident, in Texas, in 1962. He’d spent the day watching his Rice players practice, and was headed out to go fishing with a buddy when another car crossed the center line. Four people were killed.

(I wonder if that tweed jacket ever turned up. That’s one of those mysteries that will stick with you the rest of the week.)

I love the old phone numbers. Dial 611 for flowers. Cracks me up. I don’t know anything about the florist. This isn’t the sort of history anyone on the Plains is good at making readily available, and contemporary florists using SEO has basically ruined any searches of this sort. H. L. Welsted, based on the ads, was around for at least four years, but, again, he falls in the analog canyon, but he is interred in Virgina. He passed away in 1961. The Welsteds had two children, Harry Lee, junior, and Mittie, who had just graduated from AU the year before. Harry the younger became a chemical engineer, and worked in New York and Charlotte. He passed away in 2010. Mittie studied dietetics, got married and died in 2002.

Here are the Welsted kids, from the 1939 Glom. They had long, and hopefully, full and complete lives.

Their parents ran a boarding house. Moved to Auburn and set that up, specifically, so the kids could get an education. That’s what Harry Lee Welsted’s obituary said. And while I learned one or two more things about the Welsteds, but not many, it is important that we don’t stray too far afield. Because that image above is really about the Grille.

I remember the Grille. Dined in it, frequently. One night a week they did a spaghetti plate dinner. If you finished it, they’d give you a second plate free. You could get in there, stuff yourself with two plates of spaghetti, a soft drink and a brownie for about five bucks, and that was one of the better, cheap meals in town. The walls were covered in local lore and history. And in that one particular booth is where the legendary football coach sat.

And then the rent got too high, and the Grille closed in the late 1990s and it still feels like one of the saddest things that could possibly happen in a place like that. We kicked ourselves that we didn’t eat there more — maybe we could have helped save it — but we are all starving and broke college kids and downtown was changing. Downtown was always changing, every so often.

My time was more than a half-century latter, of course, but I don’t have any knowledge of these places, either. Ball’s Bakery was in the neighboring town, but clearly everyone knew of it.

They stayed in business through the mid-1950s. Reed’s? Absolutely no idea. But with a “stay out of the cold” you have to think they had their moments. Winter moments.

The Martin Theatre was still relatively new. It opened in Opelika in 1938, with 1,600 seats, and lasted until 1970 or so. Martin replaced it with one in the strip mall. That joint was the barely-hanging-on dollar theater a quarter century later. I remember watching a few movies there.

The movie they were showing? Wonderful pre-war propaganda. The film highlights the real (and dramatized) exploits of a New York unit during World War 1. Also, the picture was just released the week before. In a time when movies weren’t in theaters everywhere simultaneously, it is amazing that this was on a screen in little Opelika, Alabama, six days later.

The Martin must have truly been the place to go.

Olin Hill? The man with the tape? He’s buried in nearby Notasulga. The headline in the (Mobile) Press-Register obituary was “Auburn clothier Hill dies.” Imagine all the things he saw from 1907 until 2003.

IU / music / photo / Re-Listening / video / Wednesday — Comments Off
01
Feb 23

If this feels thin, blame Wednesday, or the first of the month

We are showing documentaries all this month — and much of next month. In my role as vice deputy to the assistant auxiliary button pusher, I get to put the discs in the player. (“Soon I’ll be on fries! Then the grill … ” ) Some of these are going to be really, really good.

This one is up tomorrow.

In the office until late in the evening, because we were in the studio tonight. Looking out the window, someone got pulled over on Indiana Ave.

I guess you just park in the two lane road when the lights go on behind you. Having a car on campus is a perpetual exercise in defensive driving anyway, today’s morning commute involved five lane changes in just three blocks, and then you get things like that.

We go back to the car, back to the CDs and return to the Re-Listening project once more. This is an August 1992 record, but it’s 1997 or so when I finally picked this up. A friend gave this to me, or perhaps we traded for it. Either way, it was a solid deal for me.

Six of the 12 tracks on the Gin Blossoms’ sophomore album were released as singles, but I bet you didn’t know that. (I didn’t know, until just now, that “Lost Horizons” was the first single. What a choice that was.) It took more than a year for this record to gain any traction, even within its own record label — what can we say, the music industry is weird — and so you’d be forgiven for not knowing any song here until 1993 or 1994. But about that time, it became hard to escape Robin Wilson and the rest of the guys. This thing ended 1994, it’s second full year in the wild, at 54 on the US Billboard 200, and went platinum four times.

Only their hits fill the emo category. The deep cuts offer a lot of other emotional styles. Here’s the accordion-tinged “Cajun Song.”

Maybe that’s my favorite song on the record.

Here is their September 1994 Farm Aid version of “29.” Robin Wilson is 29, singing about being 29. They all look like kids.

Or maybe this deep cut is my favorite song on the record.

There’s some simple poetry in there that’s appealing.

Then, of course, there’s the last track, which is my other, other, favorite song. Jesse Valenzuela sings the proto-country pop tune, “Cheatin.” This is from a 1993 live show.

If you see the Arizona boys play these days — and we saw them twice last year — they of course play all the hits. Wilson is still Wilson. Valenzuela is still the key to the whole thing. It’s a good quality nostalgia show. Their last new record was 2018’s “Mixed Reality” which will show up in the Re-Listening project much, much later.

Up next in the Re-Listening project, we’ll move to the east, to hear from a Texas-based band occupying the seemingly odd intersection of late-stage folk rock and alternative rock.

Hey, it was the nineties.