Monthly Archives: August 2009

support your favorite places, $1 at a time

29 Saturday Aug 2009

Posted by in Foodies, something important, I'm sure

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I first heard about the 3/50 project from my friend Judy, who is also my source for all things topical since I don’t watch the news.  I should say, my sole televised news source is Jon Stewart, so Judy is in good company.  The 3/50 Project is a grass-roots effort to save local economies, three stores at a time.  Now Judy lives on the West Coast, where things often happen a”few” years before they meander their way to Ohio…  at least that was the case with smoothies.

But shortly after Judy’s post, I was visiting my family in Wisconsin and made my annual pilgrimage to my favorite coffee shop in WI, Mud Creek Coffee.  Mud Creek opened a couple years ago, and I was delighted but dubious that the concept could make it in a small town in today’s economy.  Every time I drive up there and Mud Creek is still open, I always stop and frankly just want to throw buckets of money through the drive-through window and say “Please make it!” because it is such a cool little coffee shop and I would be sad if it was gone.

Which is exactly the idea behind 3/50.

On this last trip, my Dear Sister and I went to Mud Creek for a relaxing afternoon break and what did I find on the counter but a flyer for the 3/50 Project.  So I figure, if the concept made it there already, it is time for my town to get on board!

So, here is the premise of the 3/50 Project:

1.  Pick three independently owned (brick and mortar) local businesses you’d miss most if they were gone.

2.  Commit to spending $50 a month at these three businesses (that’s $50 total, NOT $50 each…)

3.  Help save your town’s independent stores, one person at a time.

Now don’t get me wrong — I enjoy the immediacy and ease of on-line shopping, big box store bargain-hunting (I am a Costco addict), and all the other many chains that make shopping and eating out so convenient.  I know that at this point there is no way that the majority of my family’s expenditures can be sourced through local independent vendors.  But $50 a month of money I was going to spend somewhere else anyway?  That I can do.  It’s easy and just feels right.

So, here is my list to start on September 1st:

1.  Tazza Mia Coffee (which I do think is the freshest and best tasting coffee in town.)

2.  Troy’s Cafe (a gem of a restaurant with innovative, fun, affordable food in a relaxed atmosphere.)

3.  Ace Hardware (I know Ace is a chain, but this is the [last?] little, local hardware store around here, one with every little doohickey and thingamabob for fixing things, and a cute Grandpa-guy clerk who knows where everything is on the tightly packed shelves.)

There.  I had to try hard to keep all three choices from being food-related.

So that’s my plan.  I would love to hear what three businesses you would pick, and, dear readers, if you are willing to give it a try…

When rolling down Memory Lane, watch the nametags and Tall Corn

28 Friday Aug 2009

Posted by in seasons

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OK, so the 26th high school class reunion was a wonderful experience.  That said, driving alone into my old hometown on a beautiful (albeit hot) summer evening, the waves of memories washed over me so hard I pulled the car over to catch my breath.  It was like when you walk down a beach barefoot through the waves, and on your way back you think you are almost to your towel, but then you look up and the waves have been slowly pulling you off balance and your towel is actually 1/4 mile the other direction?  Does that happen to other people or just to me?  Anyway, it was like that.  Eventually I pulled in to the gravel parking lot, already filled with cars, parking on the approximate location of 2nd base of my old softball field.  As I recall, I was the softball player that the coach would have put in right field as the most-likely-spot-I-couldn’t goof-anything-up, but I couldn’t throw that far so I was put at 2nd base and everyone just prayed.  Once again, the memories were making me just a little lightheaded.

As I crunched across the stones toward the pavilion with the steel drum band, my eyes scanned the crowd and saw… no familiar faces.  As in, which ones are the classmates and which ones are the spouses/significant others???  Add creeping feeling of social panic to whoozy walk down Memory Lane.  But — wheww! — people were wearing nametags and I had on my bifocals, so I was set.  Just need to make eye contact, quickly scan brain for any firing synapses, then glance nonchalantly at the nametag and continue conversation.  I can do this!  What’s so scary about class reunions!  No problem!

So I chatted with the first couple folks at the door to the dinner area, somewhat bewildered that people had changed so much in the last 26 years.  They were taller or shorter than I remembered… more hair… that should have been my first clue.  Men as a rule don’t grow more hair in their forties.  But I had already spotted hash brown casserole on the buffet line so I was not thinking clearly.

Then I saw faces I would know anywhere — The Muse and The Scholar, sitting at the same table, all smiles to greet me.   The Cowboy was unfortunately MIA, otherwise it would have been the Facebook Blog Post Trifecta.  After a helping of roast pig (delicious by the way and I am still disappointed that I missed seeing the whole spannferkel-esque carcass), I felt better and started to see other faces I recognized.  I settled in to many happy chats, catching up on the years and laughing and looking at photos of kids that were impossibly grown up.

It was about an hour later when I realized that something was amiss — the lightbulb went on when I was talking to Patty, who I knew for sure, and her nametag said Ron…  Hmmm, it seems people had been trading nametags and the first several people I talked to were in fact not who I thought they were.

Uh-oh.

So if you are reading this and I said something completely nonsensical when I first walked in, please forgive me and TELL ME WHOSE IDEA IT WAS TO SWITCH NAMETAGS AND TORTURE THE OUT-OF-TOWNERS?????  Especially those with minds like a steel sieve??

But then, Patty put Ron’s nametag on me and put my nametag on someone else, so I guess I became a co-conspirator.  All in good fun.  Except that to some people I may have sounded like I just had a stroke.  But within another hour after that, nearly all the faces started to look familiar again.  I knew people.  Their faces morphed back into focus and the names came back to me.  The Memory Game, high school edition.

It was the Facebook connections that convinced me to go back, and I’m glad they did.  Rather than words on a screen, these evanescent facebook friends took their physical form again, and it was so good to talk in person.  As midnight rolled near, a group of friends came over to wish me a happy birthday.  What a great surprise!  I take up valuable brain capacity with the birth-dates of childhood friends, but I thought others were more sensible.  At any rate, that was the perfect finish to the evening and I left with a big smile on my face, looking up at the church on the hill, lit against the dark night sky.

Then I navigated the country byways to my parents’ home, you know the kind, the roads lined with Tall Corn.  Now, everyone knows the dangers of Tall Corn, which camouflages Catapulting Deer that launch onto the roadway with no warning, also activating the strong magnetic pull of The Ditch.  So I drove carefully, all those old memories now safely hidden in the darkness.

reunion

14 Friday Aug 2009

Posted by in seasons

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I’m getting ready to attend my 26th high school class reunion.  Year 25 zipped right by without a party but I am not complaining.  I do hereby decree that anyone that complains about this unconventional reunion year is automatically assigned to the 30th (or 31st) reunion committee.  I’ve never done the planning for a high school reunion (only the grade school ones, but that is another story), and I can only guess it is a fair amount of work to track down all those former students.

Note to self:  thank the committee this weekend.

A 26th reunion seems like a better idea anyway.  The 25th anniversary of anything carries a silver plated set of expectations, like the memories from the event need to be nice and shiny after it is done.  26?  It is a cottony kind of year, nothing fancy.  And indeed, this one is a outdoor picnic kind of night, which sounds just right to me.

It was the location of the reunion that sealed the deal for me to make the trip back.  That and some facebook friends.  It will be held in the little unincorporated town where I grew up (estimated population 300), not the bigger town where the high school was located (pop. 2500), or the bigger town where some large events like weddings take place (pop. 50,000).  We will be at the Marytown Athletic Field, a hub of social activity throughout my youth in the 70’s, the place where I played softball for several grade school years;  the site of the annual 4th of July Picnic and the place where I spent many shy hours wanting to be outgoing and goof around more with the other kids but instead quietly sitting and watching and waiting.  Not sure yet what I was waiting for…

I have been gone a long time.  I left home for college right after my 18th birthday and never returned for a summer.  My parents moved to a lake house a couple years later, so even the too-brief trips back to visit family did not take me back. I expect that the memories will be intense, when I drive back into town and set foot back on the dusty parking lot.  It has been rebuilt into a very nice ballfield and park, which must mean it is still a hub of community fun and activity.

So, there I will be, with the scholar and the muse, the cowboy’s weekend whereabouts still unknown.  There will surely be many other characters from my past.  I meant to dig out the old yearbooks to refresh my memory on the names and faces.  Then I reminded myself that there will not be a quiz so I don’t need to study.  Nametags will suffice.  Enough time has gone by to blur the faces from what they were, and soften any craggy memories of youthful high school angst.

(I hope!)

3…2…1 and we’re live!

03 Monday Aug 2009

Posted by in Motherhood, Writing

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So, the radio interview went well.  It was exciting and a bit nerve-wracking — especially when the very kind host called me at home right before I was leaving for the studio, to tell me that she had inadvertently left all her notes at home, and since she did not have her pre-prepared questions, did I know what I wanted to talk about?  “FOR 30 MINUTES”?

LIVE?

?????

She was so apologetic, and I could tell that she always prepared well for each interview, and she was now wondering how this one would turn out.  For some reason, this put me oddly at ease immediately.  I realized I was comfortable winging it;  it was not knowing the questions she might ask that had my stomach doing flip-flops.  And, it turns out, as she started telling me some of the questions she could recall off the top of her head,  I DID NOT HAVE ANY IDEA WHAT I WOULD HAVE SAID TO ANY OF THEM.  It would have been a disaster.  Well, as big a disaster as an interview can be if no one I know hears it.  Seriously, as far as I know, NO ONE I have ever met heard the actual broadcast.  I did mention that this interview was broadcast on a very small public radio station?  The one with the distinction of being the only official public radio station in the U.S. that broadcasts out of a retirement community?  Still, I had been nervous, even if it was possible some of the audience may have been people who could not get up to change the station.

The broadcast booth reminded me of the one on Frazier, except there was no Roz, rather a very encouraging grandmotherly woman instead.  And there was no psychiatrist.  But other than that, it was a lot like the show.  The room had a big control panel with lots of knobs and levers, and people wearing headphones talking into humongous microphones.  The Panel-Operator-Guy did count down “3…..2…..1 ” then point dramatically to us that we were live.  That was a heart-skipper.  Actually, in retrospect maybe it was more like WKRP in Cincinnati.  With no Les Nessman or Herb Tarlek.  Or Loni Anderson.  But otherwise it was a lot like that.

I received a copy of the show on CD in the mail the other day.  I don’t think I wanted to write about the experience until I heard it myself.  Of course, my voice doesn’t sound anything like it does in my head — it had a distinctly northern Wisconsiny nasal quality that is uncomfortably close to Palin-esque.  Like I could almost see Alaska from my old house.

But all in all,  it turned out to be a great experience.  I got to talk about about my funny motherhood story, and the experience of being published for the first time.  I talked about what a kick it is to be included in an anthology, and how it opens doors for interesting experiences, like being where I was that day.  The host could not have been more kind or encouraging.  She has authors lined up to interview each week through November, and has done this show for many years, so I was in good company.  In fact, the author on the second half of the hour-long program was a fascinating man who lost his sight in college when hit by a stray bullet, and the book he has written about the inspirational life he has led since then.  I listened to his interview on the drive home — it kind of put my little story about poo, lying, and chocolate cake into perspective.  The show was very professionally produced and conducted.  And it was just fun.  Before I did it, I kept thinking of it as my “first practice interview”, which makes a giant leap of faith that there will be more opportunities like this in the future.  Even if I never get the chance to do it again, the experience is something I will always remember.  I felt honored to be there.