Back in the good old, bad old days of the 1960s, Britain’s very few motorways or freeways, were serviced by old-fashioned petrol stations and even more old fashioned transport café’s, known in London as “Caff’s” or more generally “Trannys”.
Haggis, Rabbie Burns and related musings
Burns was a man of the soil and a loyal and often visionary populist, disdainful of the upper and especially royalty-fawning classes which he observed caustically in many poems and prose-writings, and the church with it’s ever-shifting double standards of what was holy and what was not and came from peasant stock but was educated by his fairly benign –for the times- landowner factor who took an interest in his precocious intelligence. [Read More]
Open letter re: Mouth of the Columbia
As you are doubtless aware, there is a sufficiently clueless demographic that peruses and sends reports to the likes of Trip-Advisor and Yelp, without the situation being exacerbated by an allegedly knowledgeable locally based reporter writing from what looks like a similarly limited knowledge and experience of food.
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Open Forum on the Edge
For the rabbi’s first blog entry on the Edge, we’ll go to the daily paper in the area, and respond to the Open Forum letters to the editor section. I hope to make this a regular feature of this blog, as well as muse about myriad other things that crowd my mind and need to get out. Hope you can join me for the ride…
Hankering for Paradise: My Discovery of The Wave Crest Inn
On one of my trips from Portland to Cannon Beach I stayed at the Wave Crest Inn. I drove past it the previous time I was in town and later looked it up on the Internet. From one picture on the scant web site, I knew I wanted to see this place.
Watt’s Gospel at the Farmer’s Market
Stop and talk to Watt Childress (who founded this website) any day at Jupiter’s Books in Cannon Beach and you’ll hear the gospel of community. The good news that our community is full of talent and special people and that we have much to give each other if we would find ways to share. Upper […]
The Grocery Store Dilemma: Real Effects of Food Politics
Picture this: you’re a single mother, unemployed, and reliant on food stamps to feed your family. You walk into your local “Bargain-Mart” and the so called bargains can only be spotted on the towering pyramid display of sugar covered “Cocoa Puffs”. Next to that display, the whole grain organic “Life Fiber” brand sits dusty on the shelf.
Do our actions bear good fruit?
I know I’m not the only bloke who’s fond of the harvest season. Four years ago, writer Matt Winters penned a robust tribal toast to these “prized weeks of plenty” (“We all have dirt under our fingernails,” Daily Astorian, 9/21/07). His ode to the bond of harvest is worth rereading at this time every year.
“After painfully scraping past the starvation gap, the warm but barren months between the depletion of winter stores and arrival of a new summer’s crops, at last this was the time of frenetic gathering, of reaping whatever rewards could be had from strong-hearted prayer and soul-bending labor.”
Way back when, this season marked a time of relative abundance in which our agrarian ancestors could kick up their heels. “At our core, we all are peasants,” writes Winters, and it’s true that humanity is rooted to an earthy cycle of subsistence.