BASEBALL NEEDS FIXING (NOT IN THE BLACK SOX SENSE)

How’s this for a half-baked, born-out-of-frustration solution to Major League Baseball’s revenue disparity?  The big-market players like the Yankees (Bless their hearts!) and the Red Sox don’t want any movement in the decade-old revenue sharing plan. The Sox say that it’s gone about as far as it can.
Really?
The Cincinnati Reds’ payroll in 2009 was about $75 million. The World Champion Yankees’ was $205 million. How’s that for an insuperable disparity, kids?
Do the Yankees win it all every year? No, it just seems like it. But, they’re in the picture every year because they can just write a check for a big star to plug any hole whenever they dip below .500.
My Reds have no shot. None. And, they won’t for the foreseeable future. They’re not even in the conversation of the NL Central. One Cincinnati scribe put the question to Bob Castellini, the Reds owner: why not just sell the Reds as a night out? You can’t compete. Just change your marketing strategy because no one’s buying that the Reds matter anymore. Of course, he balked. He said he wouldn’t be in the business if he didn’t think he could win big in Cincinnati. What else could he say?
Down deep, I’m sure he knows the truth, and if he’s doing his job, he’s wearing Bud Selig’s voice mail out.
Now, here comes my crazy idea (Crazy like a fox???).
What if all the small-market teams decided to twist the arms of the Yankees-Red Sox-Dodgers-Cubs Axis of Evil? OK, you big-market teams don’t want to share? Then maybe it’s not in our interest to fly to New York, Chicago, or LA to play ball with you. Maybe we’ll just forfeit all those games in your park.
Sure, we’ll still have to make payroll, but we’re losing money anyway. We’ll just save our pennies on travel. How much popcorn you gonna sell to the crowd that shows up to watch you take extended batting practice?
Get it? We don’t show up to fill your coffers! It’s just not in our interest anymore to help make you richer. The open secret is that you can’t do it without us and we’re going to use our leverage now. As George Will said, who’s going to show up to watch the Yankees scrimmage?
Maybe that will convince MLB that it is one company–one product– not an organization of winner-take-all corporations. The Yankees need all the other teams, because it’s the COMPETITION that MLB is selling.
Well, theoretically, anyway.

LOVE TO LOVE YOU, BABY

To quote the great Donna Summer, I would love to love you, Natasha.

But I just can’t. 

Natasha’s Cafe– a restaurant in downtown Lexington, Kentucky– has so many virtues that make me want to like the place.  It’s downtown, it breathed life into a quiet block, and expanded our dining possibilities in the city’s core.  It engenders a great symbiosis with my beloved Kentucky Theatre.  It’s funky.  The front, with cafe tables for al fresco dining, is as attractive as that of any other restaurant in town.  It has a neat international boutique to stroll through before the drinks come (I ill-advisedly bought a beret there once when they were at the old location on Southland Drive.  My wife wears it now.  I act like it was always hers.).    They go to great pains to augment the dining experience with inventive entertainment events. 

Overall, I sense that I should like it, because it’s good for me.  Like Joyce.

And yet… and yet.

My wife and I went there to enjoy the aforementioned symbiosis before heading across the way to a movie at the Kentucky Theatre (By the by, go see The Savages.).  Nobody loves a good symbiosis like I do (especially with remoulade). 

One thing never disappoints.  The place is beautiful.  Whoever designed the place, did a masterful job.  The lighting is just right.  The decor fits the motif (They wisely skipped the going-out-of-business auction at Long John Silver.).  The fixtures and furnishings lend an Old World aura.

The bar menu is limited but carefully selected.  I had a Polish beer– ok, two– that I’d never heard of.  The dinner menu has a nice selection of international cuisine that sets Natasha’s apart.

We didn’t have a lot of time before the movie, but we ordered two courses which came in good time and were brought to us by an attentive and experienced server.  My wife started with borscht, I a salad.  She liked her borscht, but I didn’t think it had been cooked well to extract the savory flavors I know borshct can have.  I had recently had it at a great Polish restaurant in another city and it was ten times better than Natasha’s.  I think if she had the other borscht she would go back to Natasha’s, order it again, and vomit it on the floor.  I realize this is not a totally fair test.  If she liked it, she liked it. 

My salad– a house “Greek” salad– would have been better received had it been the complimentary side to my meal.  Instead it was a $6 add-on that portended more by its price than it delivered.  For $6 I expect more than a scattering of lettuce which afforded me a scant view of the bottom of the plate, with exactly one pitted olive, some cucumber, and so little feta that I couldn’t quite remember if it had been on the plate when I finished the salad.

For our second courses, she ordered a salad and I a mushroom pot pie.  I think her salad was called a “Fru Fru Salad”.  It was also $6, as I recall.  She confessed a little trepidation when she saw my paltry salad.  She was right to be afraid.  This may be our limitation, but we had never heard of a salad with diced raw butternut squash.  We had never heard of raw butternut squash at all except as something the rabbits in our garden might consider.  We both found it unappetizing and hard to eat.  Fall and winter squashes MUST be cooked to extract flavor and to get tender enough.  Otherwise, it was a basic salad with vinaigrette.  She did not finish it and we decided to kindly inform the server for the sake of constructive feedback that they might want to reconsider the raw squash.

My pot pie:  it was the tastiest thing we had and it made me wish we hadn’t been such pigs when the nice, fresh loaf of bread came at the beginning of the meal.  You see, I’m a sopper from way back.  I offered my wife as much of it as she wanted to compensate for not really getting a dinner herself.  We both enjoyed it, but agreed that the price ($14) was also misleading.  Again, I would not complain had the price not promised more.  The size was fine, but not an ounce more than absolutely necessary.  However, for $14, I expect more than three or four new potato quarters and a half dozen plain ol’ white mushrooms, covered with a square of puff pastry which is impressive if you don’t know how easy an effect it is to pull off.  The potatoes and mushrooms were stewed in a very tasty cream sauce.  But, it contributed to our overall feeling that we were simply not getting our money’s worth.  I think if they were to reconceive the dish as a menagerie of wild and unusual mushrooms– caramelized with onion, with a bit more cheese in the sauce– it would have been a successful dish I would have made a point to return for.  Instead, it’s a stingy dish that just misses.

That’s the problem:  value.  I would not tell anyone not to go to Natasha’s.  It’s an interesting place that makes an effort to be unique and succeeds on many levels.  It’s perfect for a date when you’re too nervous to eat much, but want to impress.  We left with the same feeling that I’ve had before but never verbalized, that we could have gotten much more for our money. 

We will probably return.  It would be disingenuous of me to condemn so completely an independent restaurant which does so much right based on some imperfect experiences.  My own restaurant has committed many sins and surely been written off by some patrons.  Some things happen in a business that are beyond the control of an owner who can’t be everywhere and see everything.   And I know the unjudged sins of cliche and mediocrity are on the souls of Olive Garden, TGI Friday’s, Rafferty’s, and all the other winners of the American restaurant game.  Nobody wants more to see them put out of business by the likes of Natasha’s.

I know from experience that controlling costs is absolutely vital to making a restaurant successful, but there are little tricks you can use to give the customer the feeling that she got a little more out of the deal than she paid for.  A few surprises in my pot pie and more substantial salads would have turned our experience around.

But, here’s hoping a few changes are made to improve a restaurant that I want to see succeed and build on a longevity that has often puzzled me.     

GET WITH IT, GRINGO!

The number of La Raza Nonregistrada (Beg pardon.) in the US is, by the figures I’ve heard, somewhere between 11 and 14 million.  That is some gap, but the gap may be even wider because we simply do not have the means to measure this population.  That is a problem.  However, the problem is more one of security, not, I would argue, of economics.   It just makes sense that we need to know with some accuracy who is here and roughly what they are doing.  The other arguments for why we need to deputize every able-bodied American to drive the INS dodgers back south are off the mark.

Were we to magically purge these millions– and it would truly take a bureaucratic David Copperfield to make even a dent–  it would be a rupture to our economy more far-reaching than the attacks of 9/11 (I love making bold statements pulled from my wanton ignorance of the issues I write about.  That’s why my views go unnoticed into the ether, not onto the op-ed page of the Washington Post.).   How much of our economy is predicated on cheap manual labor?  How much would the price of grapes rise if there were no migrant workers to pick them?

In my own state of Kentucky, I can bear witness (from a safe distance, of course) to the dependence tobacco and dairy farmers have on the this reliable and effective source of help.   This has an effect on every part of the continnum, from production to processing, to distribution, to consumption. 

This is one area in which I agree with our benighted president.  And, New York governor Elliot Spitzer has joined us.  Both the President and the Empire State Governor realize that these human beings are not our enemy.  And, there is not a decent American who would not cross a war-won border to improve the lives of his or her family.  At least I’d like to think so.  If we would not tacitly welcome these folks into our economy with jobs, I assume they would not come.  If we did not need them so much, they would not risk their lives for the economic rewards we dangle. 

What Governor Spitzer has proposed, and today abandoned in the face of rabid unpopularity, was a program to license Mexican-Unamericans to drive.  The licenses would not back-door the aliens into Americanhood, but would represent a sane and practical attempt to get a handle on a nebulous situation. 

The flavor that the opposition Governor Spitzer and others of similar inclination face is bitter.  The face is ugly.  It reminds me of “Irish Need Not Apply!” signs.  I believe we should accept the situation as it is and deal with it in a real way.  We can’t find one Osama Bin Laden and we can’t find and drive out 11 to 14 million Mexicans.  We simply do not have the people or the plan to make such a thing happen. 

And, why should we?  I am not in favor of a system that may take advantage of desperate workers to drive down labor costs just so producers can put their products on Wal Mart’s shelves.  But, I do not have a taste for punishing those who have only responded to the need we have while making their own lives better.  The only thing different about today’s Mexican immigrants from the Irish immigrants fleeing the potato famine is that the Irish had no means to enter the country through the backdoor.  There was the matter of an ocean to negotiate.  However, I have no doubt that they would have done whatever was necessary to get into this country which has always sent out a clarion call to the unhappy and the unfulfilled. 

Recognition of this segment of our population and moves toward certifying it in some way, would lead to eradicating the payroll inequity which surely exists wherever an illegal job applicant has no means to fight wages which are illegal if offered to American citizens.  This would be good news for those shut out of back-breaking fruit harvesting jobs by wage bottom-feeders, wouldn’t it?  You know who you are.  You are there, right?

THE PLEASURE OF A KIND OF READING

 

My friend, Lynn (not in photo), recently gave me an old paperback called The Secular Journal of Thomas Merton.  I espied it in his house and expressed interest.  He gave it to me which means eBay betrayed no great covetousness for it.  I am thankful, nonetheless.  Like many of my favorite books, it is a great one for just picking up when I have a few minutes to kill.  The other day, I had a spare moment waiting to let in the woman who cleans the restaurant.  I keep such books in my car for those occasions. 

It occurred to me when I put it down that reading these varied essays is like reading a blog.  Then, I thought, no; reading a blog is like reading these essays.  It should properly be recognized which came first and begat the other.  There is really nothing new about blogging except the mode of transmission.  This observation is not a revelation, but I still think it is worth noting that there is a tendency with the new technology for its exponents to hail it as something new under the sun.  It isn’t, and we need to go back at least to Montaigne to properly place our gratitude.  Essay, of course, [Is any phrase more arrogant, than "of course"?] comes from the French word which means “to try” or “to attempt”.  Essays are attempts at explaining or ruminating on a subject.

I make this observation, hopefully, without making the egregiously risible connection between what you are ill-fatedly reading now and the essays of Montaigne or, more lately, Wendell Berry, Joan Didion, or Meghan Daum.  But, I think I do share with them the delight of working out something on paper in order to work it out in my head.  It seems axiomatic to me that the best way to figure out what I really think about a thing is to put out as much as I can on paper, read it, reread it, go away from it and reread it later, and then bring it to a final form.  It is delightful, but often hard.  That’s why some of my posts molder for a time in the “drafts” file of WordPress’ server. 

Too, it’s interesting to pursue this as a conversation with one or a few people you have in mind who may read your writing.  If you’re lucky enough to get feedback, the process I’ve described above is all the more enhanced by this voluntary editing of your ideas. 

RUMINATIONS ON THE VIABILITY OF SMALL BUSINESS IN SMALL AMERICA

 

As someone daily struggling to make a small business go in a less-than-humming corner of America, I often wonder about the viability of the pursuit I’ve chosen.  My restaurant is in a very small town (about 7000 people) but one which draws from a region of about 40,000 nearby Kentuckians.  There is a decent amount of tourist traffic accountable to the many bourbon distilleries, the Civil War attractions, Bardstown, the many Catholic historic sites, and a fair amount of hikers, bikers, and anglers.  We have a healthy economy with a quality of living envied by many other Kentucky towns of comparable size. 

Still, I have to wonder how far beyond the saturation point we’ve come in my particular industry.  As have other independents, I stopped serving lunch last year.  It wasn’t because we didn’t have a decent volume of business.  But, there is too much competition from fast food joints to justify all the work and expense to draw a small-ticket, teetotaling, in-a-rush lunch trade.  I need about four hours of labor for an hour to an hour and a half of business.  When the average check is about $7, including tip, it often cost me to provide this service to the town. 

Unlike at dinner, my potential customers who are in a hurry to get back to work– and actually like fast food, truth be told– will consider McDonalds or Wendys or KFC in addition to me as a lunch option.

Even shedding the lunch albatross has not made this business any easier for me.  And, every time I hear and feel the dynamiting going on as our first bypass comes nearer to reality, I have to wonder about the added competition that will come if our economic development mandarins manage to entice a decent chain-type, sit-down restaurant to the shopping center that will surround the “super” Wal Mart now under construction.  The locally owned restaurants that remain have endured the chiselling of our business by the chains that have so much more name recognition and advertising power behind them than we could possibly counter.  We’re holding on, but sometimes it seems like just that, no more. 

Should one or two of these sit-down chains– an O’Charlies or Perkins, say– decide to invest here, I truly believe it’s curtains for us.  Not that independents haven’t managed to hold their own since chains ascended over the last forty years, but I’m talking about a tiny market.  There is no college here.  No sizeable population that sees value in what we’re doing as opposed to catering to the bottom-dollar crowd.    In this small market, and in the thousands of similar markets nationwide, it will not be the independents who will survive.

This could fairly be said to be an indulgence in self-pity and defeatism.  I am, by turns, inspired and infuriated by those who say that anything can be done with enough will and smarts.  I can’t argue with this any more than they can argue decisively that the sad endings in America were self-fulfilled.  As John Tunis said, “Losing is the great American sin.”

The truth is that at some point, an independent business person has to look at the odds against him or her and decide if it is worth the risk.  And, in this reflection, one must conclude that things are just geared most conducively for national chains to dominate.  I don’t know enough about interstate commerce law to know the exact culprit, but, I believe therein may be found the foxhole where the enemy hunkers and shares a canteen with our local and state authorities who share much of the blame with their tackleboxes of  ready tax abatements and zoning law corruptions. 

THE BIG IDEA

 

Consumed with our hyper-consumerism and the havoc wrought daily on our resources in the pursuit of our sordid boon, I have often shaken my head at the pure, sinful (inasmush as I believe in sin) waste of the materials used to contain and transport our goods.  One target of my dismay is the thing most needed to make a slingshot, the lowly rubberband.  I’ve no idea what the ecological cost to make the billions of rubberbands that are surely manufactured in this country alone for all those soggy morning papers and whatnot.  However, I think it’s safe to assume we’ve just about got enough right now.  Except for whatever industrial uses for large rubber bindings, may I suggest that we place a moratorium on their production?  My apologies to those of you whose family fortunes are all bound up in the rubber trade.  The only problem each of us may have with rubberbands is that they are not always handy, but I know of no one who does not have a stash of them somewhere for all those future uses which will surely never exhaust the cache.  And, there are those whose business necessitates that they have a ready store of them. 

I have considered some repository where we might send them for redistribution.  However, that would require infrastructure and a system of transport.  HERE’S THE BIG IDEA:  WHAT IF WE GOT INTO THE HABIT OF PLACING AT LEAST ONE RUBBERBAND IN THE ENVELOPE EVERY ITEM WE PAID OUR PAPER BILL (OR ANY BILL FOR A SERVICE THAT NEEDS LOTS OF RUBBERBANDS)? 

The beauty of this is that it would add no further trouble or expense for anyone.  You could easily fit a small bundle of rubberbands into an envelope and not exceed the first class postage weight limit.  They’d just be tagging along.  Hitchhiking, if you will.

I often take our surplus clothes hangers to Terri, who hems my pants.  She’s always very grateful, and why not?  That’s an expense she can forgo. 

I haven’t really considered just who else besides my paper lady might need more rubberbands for their work.  The bank?  Maybe they’d reduce my interest rate if I brought in enough.  Hey, like the man said, a penny saved is a penny earned. 

It occurs to me now that Andy Rooney has insidiously wormed his way into my brain.  Suddenly I feel the need to go trim my eyebrows.

I ACTUALLY DO HAVE GOALS. TO PROVE IT, I’LL WRITE THEM DOWN.

I don’t picture myself as one of those “purpose-driven” souls who always have an eye on some goal.  Those of this type annoy me, probably because I feel shiftless and feckless around them.  Is it just an excuse for drift and laziness to believe that events control you, not the other way around, and that one, therefore, needn’t bother pushing against the current?  Possibly.  However, I do seem to make some progress at the end of each day by my reactions to stimuli.

This has gone a bit far afield of my intended topic– that of my goals.  I sat down and wrote a bit in my notebook yesterday about some goals I have for the restaurant.  Goal #1 is to sell the restaurant.  The reason I want to sell it is to reduce stress and get out from under my debt and risk.  That leads me to Goal #3 which I’ll get to after the perfunctory Goal #2:  Until I do sell the restaurant, I want to make it as good as it can be and manage the current transition in such a way that the business ends up in a better situation.  More on the “current transition” later.  The aforepromised Goal #3:  Should Goal #1 not pan out in a timely fashion, I would consider taking in a working and investing partner who could bring in enough capital to alleviate my debt and its attendant monthly sop as well as alleviate the pressure on my time and management responsibilities.  I don’t want to be solely responsible anymore for ironing out all the petty issues that come with managing employees of varying loyalty, professionalism, honesty, and maturity.

As for the transition we are in, that was precipitated by an incendiary situation fomenting in the kitchen of late.  The head cook of the last three years and his wife waged war against one other staff member in particular and, because there was vitriol left over, the rest of the staff in general.  Apparenly, it was assumed that I was so reliant on the cook and his shrew that I would tolerate any behavior– even fire the target of their anger.  My hand was forced and I put in writing the situation any my response and delivered this to the cook’s home.  My response was to suspend him for one week and stipulate certain rules to govern his return.  Namely, his wife doesn’t see the doorstep again or remember the restaurant’s phone number.  And, the vendetta against the other employee ends immediately.  He stopped by several times last week and always indicated that he would return when his suspension ended.  He didn’t.  For the record, I stated the day before that it was 50/50 at best whether or not he would be there.  Word on the street is that he already has a job to tide him over until a new restaurant up the block opens in a few months.

Hence, my “transition” period.  Almost as if dropped off by angels, four replacements stepped into my restaurant within days– hours in one case– of the cook’s last shift.  I’ll need more help than that to put us on a smoother course.  I’m working on that.

A KINDRED SPIRIT

 

Despite most assumptions or appearances, I tend to see the world through granola-colored glasses.  To wit, yesterday I had an actual bowl of granola for breakfast (Man!  It was good.  If you’re ever in Indiananpolis, right across from the capitol in the Simon Building is a large coffee shop called Cafe Patachou.  The coffee was better than Starbucks, which I do like, and the granola was, I believe, homemade.) 

Another to wit:  I get emails from Orion Magazine and often find something of interest, whether it’s the latest Wendell Berry epistle from the mountaintop or some other grousing about the insanity of contemporary living.  Here’s an article by Rebecca Solnit about how the demands on our time are anathema to living a full life.  I’ll pique your interest with the beginning: 

“THE FOUR HORSEMEN OF MY APOCALYPSE are called Efficiency, Convenience, Profitability, and Security, and in their names, crimes against poetry, pleasure, sociability, and the very largeness of the world are daily, hourly, constantly carried out. These marauding horsemen are deployed by technophiles, advertisers, and profiteers to assault the nameless pleasures and meanings that knit together our lives and expand our horizons. “

If that was at all interesting to you, here’s the link to the complete story (If there’s some annoying registration to look at stuff on the site, please accept my apology.):  http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/346

NOT SO DAILY

OK, I’ve forsaken DHC for a few days.  The life of a father is unaccompanied by a lot of free time.

In the time since I’ve written, I finished Garp.  I’m glad I had saved it for myself.  Irving is one of those writers who can draw the reader in on an emotional level without compromising his art.  Now reading James Salter’s “The Hunters”.  I have stated several times since I discovered JS that he is now my favorite writer.  I only wish he were more prolific.  The stories in “Last Night” have those electric moments; a single word or image employed at exactly the right moment hits you like the live end of a severed wire.  He is very careful and I am rewarded for his care.

DAILY?headcheese

Have I locked myself into a truly daily task? 

I’m trying to upload some photos from last night’s dinner at my friend Terry’s.  Won’t let me. 

Lynn, another friend, and I braved the threatening storm and walked to Terry’s– about a half mile away.  I carried a loaf of bread in my poke that I’d just baked.  

Lynn and Terry are my elders– both in their mid to late sixties.  I sort of inherited them from my father and we became boon companions in our own rights.  This is a situation I’ve never seen elsewhere– such truly good and companionable friends of such an age disparity.  I think it speaks to my life-long desire to be an adult.  Even as a small child, I was interested in what the adults were talking about. 

Every Christmas break, the three of us go on our “Book Junket” to Louisville or Lexington.  Often, we have just been given gift certificates to various bookstores and we go and make the rounds.  Of course, a meal is a feature of these trips; we are accomplished trenchermen.  (This past Christmas, we ate at a discovery of mine called Flabby’s Schnitzelberg in the old Germantown section of Louisville:  http://www.flabbys.com/fcc.htm) 

Back to dinner at Terry’s: 

MENU:  spaghetti with meat sauce, green bean casserole, sliced tomatoes, corn on the cob, iceberg salad, my bread, asparagus, and angel food cake.  Enjoyed the food and the conversation which usually consists of dredging up old stories about Lebanon characters, quick and dead.  (My wife, Wendy, calls it our game of “What was that guy’s name…?”  She can hardly abide it.  I don’t blame her.)  Most of them are unknown to me, but I have something more than a tolerance for these stories.  This makes us hard to deal with for most others.  (In fact, our Slovakian friend who works for me at Blues on Tap was a no-show.  I take a Godfather line on such slights:  Once refused, I never ask again.  Terry is more forgiving.  As Lynn and I say, “Fuck him, he’s out.”)  I like these stories, even the repeats. 

Here’s one:  A long time ago, back when the first Kroger store in town was a small storefront on Main Street, a notorious town drunk across the street watched a housewife leaving the store with her arms burdened with groceries.  He said to his companion, “Look at that!  I bet there’s not a drop to drink in the house.”

 ON GARP:  Read the chapter last night that is the beginning of Garp’s novel, the story about the young mother and the rapist.  It kept me up until almost two, but it was hard to read.  I find these subjects hard to stomach these day, especially the scene where the rapist threatens the mother by putting his knife to the toddler’s cheek and drawing blood.  Irving’s got a great style.  He can make a story move along.    I admit to a little fatigue at the onset of these chapters that are Garp’s stories– the stories within the story.  However, I am quickly drawn into them.  I recall the sidetrips that Jonathan Franzen’s novel The Corrections would take.  You quickly care about those, too, despite the wariness.