westward ho

Some friends of mine live in the Westport area of Kansas City, across the street from a marker which notes the Oregon Trail, the Santa Fe Trail, and the California Trail. For many people in North America during the 19th century, their resolve to migrate west was tested there.

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So it is for us, with two little girls ready to travel. Our oldest is eager to live in hotels again, because they promise TVs, room service, and jacuzzi pools. She was done with KC as soon as she got her fill of fresh snow. Our youngest has been missing the ocean, especially the seals. She's asked, "When do we go home?" just about ever since we arrived in KC.


A woman from Kansas a few days ago made a few rather hostile remarks about how Californians feel about seals -- right after my little girl got through declaring how much she loves seals and whales.

Unforgivably callous. Intolerably ignorant. Not entirely unexpected. In other words, par for the course. I'm sorry to have to feel that kind of resignation, but it is entirely realistic. I bit my tongue to avoid making an offhand retort about "fly over zone". After all, parts of the Midwest are highly recommended.

Two bright spots have made these past 10 months worthwhile...

One is my team in the Analytics department at Adknowledge -- a.k.a., "Team Mendota". Those people have been a joy and and honor to work among. In addition to several contributions to R, Hadoop, AWS, RightScale, and points inbetween, we've made big strides in methods for having statisticians and developers working side-by-side on "Big Data" projects -- with tangible results. Frankly, I would have left much soon (supra 3 yr old tugging daddy's heartstrings) if it had not been for how much I appreciate this team. Flo, Chris, Nathan, Chun, Bill, Shan, Vicky, Margi, David, Gaurav -- I wish you all very well. My regret is that I did not get to work with you long enough.

The other is our collective friends and families in the area, met through our kids -- mostly because of their school, Global Montessori Academy. My wife has served on the board there. The teachers and just everyone involved have been amazing. Not sure quite how that place emerged here inside of KC, and I'd be hard-pressed to believe that anything much like it exists between Chicago and Austin... but GMA and the people associated will be missed.

I found myself thinking, many many times while living here in KC, "How can I teach my daughters about the principles in which I believe, if I cannot live them here?" GMA actually does represent those principles. Highly recommended.

For everyone else, see you back on the Left Coast!

the western lands

Out on the Western Slope of Colorado, great mountains spill their bowels into a vast desert. Standing at one point along the Colorado River, one's view up the mountain is filled with snow-capped peaks, while downriver the view opens into a desert scene of mesa, scattered now with vineyards emerging out of near-Martian dust. Arriving out of France, out of Canada, out of Iowa, my people settled there. Open range cowboys. French mostly, with a wee bit o' Irish, plus a few blue-blooded Brits "gone native", along for the ride. Mountain people, ranchers, "rugged individuals".

You'll wreck in hell to leave me out. When me you fly, I am the wings.

The road to the Western Lands is by definition the most dangerous road in the world, for it is a journey beyond death, beyond the basic god-standard of fear and danger.

It is the most heavily guarded road in the world, for it gives access to the gift that supersedes all other gifts, the gift of Immortality.

Meriwether Lewis, one of our blood kin, led his expedition across the continent in a lifestyle not terribly unlike how my grandfather lived, how my uncle is said to still live, way off the grid.

Along that same blood line, my great grandmother's great uncle, Oscar Rush, chronicled the life in The Open Range, which J. Frank Dobie praised as "a sensitive range man's response to natural things". Part of the canon of Southwestern literature. Oscar was born before the start of the Civil War and lived up until the beginnings of World War II. I can only image the contrasts he experienced, but thankfully I have in my hands one of his own copies of the book as a guide.

The road to the Western Lands is devious, unpredictable. Today's easy passage may be tomorrow's deathtrap. The obvious road is almost always a fool's road. And beware the middle roads, the roads of moderation, common sense, and planning. However, there is a time for planning, moderation, and common sense.

Out in that land, my sister tends a ranch on the banks of the Colorado, not far from where our grandparents in their day raised some of the most prized Angus bulls in the West.

A mountain burns nearby, has burned for more than a century from a coal mine fire. Cul tir was the origin of our family name in Celtic, back in County Sligo and stretching further into Prehistory. Back on the green coast where Yeats learned his love of verse. Black lands, filled with coal, which burn and choke the air.

A dangerous road. Every pitfall, every error, every snare to which every man has been liable since the beginning, you are sure to meet on the road to the Western Lands.

These days the landscape is littered by the flotsam of drilling rigs and the human litter of petroleum search crews. I wonder what they'll find searching beneath our family detritus?

My other grandfather likely hid my father there, following WWII and manufactured revolution sweeping through our corner of Central Asia. Following the rise of the Soviet Union, and the incursion of the UK and US into the Middle East. Other petroleum search crews, striving beneath that other part of our family detritus. Out there on the Western Slope, it must have seemed safe, remote, unreachable by our enemies -- compared with the intrigues of Tehran or Paris or Moscow. My other grandfather was wise to imagine it, but my father was brave to embrace it.

To reach the Western Lands is to achieve freedom from fear. Can you free yourself from fear by cowering in your physical body for eternity? Your body is a boat, to lay aside when you reach the far shore. Or sell it if you can find a fool. It's full of holes. It's full of holes.

It is a black land, a land of terribly bloody history, of battles larger than could be imagined on the Eastern coast. Our family cannot hide from that dharma. Perhaps the thirsty majestic mountains themselves demand it as tribute for tolerating our mortal kind in their shadows. And so they burn.

I want to reach the Western Lands. It's right in front of you across the bubbling brook. It's a frozen sewer. It's known as the Duad, remember? All the filth and horror, fear, hate, disease, and death of human history flows between you and the Western Lands.

On the banks of the roaring Colorado river, beneath the shadow of peaks, watching a sunset over the mesas, my sister stood in white, presiding. I gathered my two young daughters close, to brace them from fear. Our family fired a twenty one gun salute -- via .44 magnum no less, as one might only expect from French cowboys gone feral in the American West. A small raft lit aflame and floated quietly downriver, our tribute to my nephew, Lennon, as his wake. "Daddy, is that for the boy who died?" my oldest daughter asked. My younger daughter gathered rocks, unflinching. Neither seemed to fear, from either weapons firing or our ritual celebrating death. As by the blood coursing downriver through their veins, would likely so.

How long does it take a man to learn that he does not, cannot want what he "wants?"

You have to be in Hell to see Heaven. Glimpses from the Land of the Dead, flashes of serene timeless joy, a Joy as old as suffering and despair.

with kudos to WSB, Material, and the neteru

attack at cia headquarters

I can neither confirm nor deny that members of our party were in any way responsible for several unfortunate events which occurred last Friday evening at the Culinary Institute of America (California Branch) in St Helena. Because I plead the Fifth, my comments may not be construed to support any of the alleged acts, including but not limited to: (a) the disappearance of a wrought-iron rooster from the wall ("Sir, we know that you have the rooster"); (b) contributing to the delinquency of a wait-server by suggesting to bribe said CIA employee in the face of mounting distress on the part of the maître de ("Only if it comes from Humbolt"); or the willful inciting of a "cougar" attack ("Gee, you smell great!") on our way out the door. I can confirm however that two of my friends, the aforementioned rooster rustlers and designated "cougar" bait - to whom we shall refer by the utterly fictitious pseudonyms "Karsten" and "Charlie" - did in fact score an autographed chef's hat for somewhat less than the winery price of a Stag's Leap 2002 Estate Grown Petite Syrah.

A member of our board has a bed and breakfast in the family, located on a beautiful stretch of Silverado just a few clicks up-valley from St Helena. They graciously hosted our firm's first "off site" week. We initiated festivities with a visit to Dean & DeLuca which involved intense negotiations en français followed by dropping a few bills (non-expensable) and holding up the checkout line for nearly an hour. Our ensuing ratatouille feast and successive raids on said family's mountain cellar provided fine food, wine, and conversations all week long, fueling some amazing sorties into the metaverse, which I hope we can begin to share with the world soon.

After months of crunch time, preparing for a wide set of technology demos, we deserved a little pampering - so we availed ourselves of the local terroir. In a private room at Tra Vigne we learned the intimate details of Pighed's recent forcible detainment by LAPD for running a red light after midnight on a girl's bike. For the up-scale down-home version of local fare, various attendees made excursions to Market throughout the week.

Lobster Roll at the latter was so amazing that Erin and I missed our flight home from Oakland. I've reviewed it for a first contribution at Lindsey Simon's new Dishola site. And as I type, our girlies are both nearly unrecognizable after munching on their chocolate duck bling-bling from Woodhouse, right near Market. Be certain to check out The Olivier next door.

Ah, Napa! Not quite as dear as my home terrior in Edna Valley, but the best thing this side of Tuscany. Moreover I can confirm that thanks to the oneological genius of Opus One, I got more smashed than I've ever been outside of Russia or Japan, and the Scallop Gnocci at CIA alone is well worth an immediate trek up to Napa.

greenling

I prefer my food slow, local, and organic.

Eating at restaurants too often - in other words, more than a few times per week - just does not feel wholesome to me. Eating fast food often at all just feels wrong.

For one thing, I cannot stand the size of portions which are typical at American restaurants. It's absurd. A friend of mine in Japan remarked that it's great when he visits because he can just order one meal and then carry home another entire meal!

The amount of fat, the horrid condition of ingredients, the excesses in packaging - all of these factors make restaurant food unlikely for me, except for really good meals, which are probably 4x food cost anyway and not what I'd care to buy other than for a special treat or a social gathering outside a home.

I prefer slow food. I love to cook at home - and spent a whole bunch on building a nice home kitchen. After those early years where I earned my keep as a cook at times, and after so many fun evenings hosting dinner parties - or "FringeWare Fridays" back when we had the bookstore in the late 1990s - a meal cooked by a stranger just doesn't necessarily sound fun.

Ah, but where do all those lovely ingredients for fine home-cooked meals come from?

There has been a notion of CSA and excellent farmers markets around Austin for a long while - quite appealing. Several years ago I met the couple who run Tecolote Farm... imagine getting a basket of fresh, locally, grown organic vegetables delivered to your doorstep weekly. Then imagine having to wait on a list for a year or two! Alternatively, the Austin Farmer's Market is a treat - I enjoy taking my daughters there on the weekend. For that matter, Austin is the headquarters for both Central Market (which I adore, admittedly corporate but supportive of locals and independents) and Whole Foods (which I detest, ultra corporate green-posers aka "Hoalf Udz"), and the area features some wonderful natural food co-ops. We even have an organic farm inside the city - Boggy Creek Farm, which has sustained since the years when Austin was the source for most fresh spinach in the region.

As a home cook, I've been a fan of growing veggies, herbs, raising chickens, etc., since I was a kid... Growing up on the Central California coast, I had not questioned the idea of "slow food"... Local seafood was abundant - each week we ate the abalone which my uncle couldn't sell from his catch. Many of the neighbors were from Portuguese families which had immigrated there, largely for the fishing - and they showed up everbody when it came to fixing seafood well! Local farms featured fresh berries, apple orchards, all kinds of vegetables - especially artichokes - and fresh dairy. We used to buy a side of beef for the freezer, selecting a steer out on the ranch... ranches tended by families who had gained the land 200 years earlier as Spanish land grants, or often some Swiss-Italian immigrants who brought Tyrolian styles. And of course, what wasn't ranch or farm was soon to become wall-to-wall vineyards, with soil and microclimates approximating a range from Burgundy to Tuscany.

Moving away from SLO, I found the rest of the US held no such values. Especially in Texas, where a "meal" seems synonymous with a drive around the block to Whataburger.

There have been exceptions. One chef transplanted from France to Austin - Jean Luc Salles - teamed up with Boggy Creek Farm to feature local, organic vegetables in season at his bistro. I was lucky enough to catch Salles and author Carol Ann Sayle from Boggy Creek give a cooking course at Central Market, and I highly recommend Sayle's cookbook Eating in Season.

Of course, all of this requires extra time and effort, and probably would seem obscure to people who don't share my values (or half-French blood?)


Which is why I've been stunned to find the wonderful value of a new service called Greenling. They take the notion of "CSA" plus home delivery and cooking foods in-season - and bundle it into a family-oriented package. Wonderful. It convinced my wife, and is convincing my neighbors - about as fast as they hear about it. Greenling delivers an ice chest of fresh vegetables, plus extras - each 1-2 weeks. For our family, we've chosen 2 week intervals at first, but we're switching soon to weekly. We get a surprise selection of in-season produce from local organic farms. We manage our delivery account on the Greenling website, and can take on extras like organic dairy, honey, etc.

We're forced now to cook at home, using whatever is seasonal and local. It's delicious. I'm actually learning to love okra again. We've reduced our trips to the grocery store (I have mixed feelings, because I love to shop at Central Market, but I appreciate burning less fuel to drive there.) We've been sharing with neighbors and friends.

The idea of a CSA is great, but the close pairing of one farm to a set of subscriber families - it comes out a bit awkward. With a service like Greenling, there can be some economy of scale, some buffering and variety, by incorporating producer/consumer relations between many farms and many residences. I could imagine this kind of service hanging around the farmers market just about when it closes - to bid on what's left over.

More importantly, one could imagine this kind of service going national. Soon.