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.

JAMES SPRAGENS ANNOUNCES HIS ENDORSEMENT BEFORE A SALIVATING MEDIA CRUSH

It is under not a little duress that I announce my endorsement in the 2008 US presidential election.  I was assured by Gen. Powell that he would await my pick before making up his mind, but he has rashly decided to appear on Meet the Press tomorrow to make his choice known. 

Poor form aside, I want Colin to know that I still hold him in high regard and will let bygones be bygones.  This will come as no surprise to him as he has remarked in in front of witnesses who came and told me many times that I am nothing if not magnanimous. 

Colin, if you’re reading this– and I know you will because your Blackberry goes crazy every time I post– don’t worry.  I’ll get over this slight.  You’ll get yours… on the links, you son of a bitch!

OK, here goes.  No more suspense.  In the 2008 election to determine who shall govern these United States… drumroll please… I am casting my lot… still with the drumroll please… with the young man from Illinois, Senator Barack Omama!  Yay!  Fanfare!  Fanfare!  Fanfare!

Let the pundits argue over the incalculable effect this will have on the election.  But, permit me if you will, to offer this:  don’t be surprised if the double-digit polling advantage doesn’t hold for Sen. Obama instead of dissipate because Americans are really afraid of black people.  When hands might have… oops!… slipped over to the right in the voting booths by accident, maybe now that one of this nation’s eminence gris has spoken, a steadiness will set in and fear will be allayed.

Of course, this loyal citizen would never consider parlaying this political favor into some peachy post in the Obama administration.  However, far be it from me to refuse my Commander in Chief should he come a’knockin’.  I’ll just say this:

Well, we’ve had our moment.  The eyes of the political world were on us for an entire news cycle.  The hyper-scrutiny of the 24-hour news age we’re in put us in the limelight like we enjoy only on the first Saturday in May.  More so, really.  Most people– even here– don’t know or care about horse racing beyond the parties with their b-list celebrities. 

This time, we were Iowa.  We were New Hampshire.  We were Florida during the recount.  We mattered, even though the elephant in the room– Hillary’s doom– was successfully pushed aside by her storyline that it’s actually the popular vote that makes her still relevant.  Chris Matthews actually took on a reverent quietude as he awaited our decision.

So, how did we do, Kentucky?  Well, we went big for Hillary Clinton.  That’s ok, I guess.  As with the Civil War, when we waited out almost the duration of the war before siding with the secessionists, we seem to prefer the lost cause.  There’s something romantic about that that I can appreciate.  I’m a little bit the same way.

But, yesterday?  Yesterday, we didn’t look Julep-sipping-magnolia-sniffing-romantic.  We looked completely backward.  The salient fact of the event– the one most often puzzled over by a rightfully bewildered punditry– was the brazenly racist motive behind much of Hillary’s support.  Barack Obama gave the state short shrift, and that may have been a mistake that he will even admit this morning.  It’s easy to forgive the calculation that he shouldn’t waste so much time and treasure for a state that isn’t very likely to see things his way.  It might have been right to ignore this state and put himself in a more agreeable crowd for the post-primary speechifying. 

Kentuckians, by a strong minority, came right out and told pollsters that they weren’t going to vote for Barack Obama because he is black.  No blinking or shrinking.  I guess maybe there’s something to admire about that kind of brutal honesty.  But, south of the Mason Dixon line, we condemn yankees for that kind of blunt crassness.  I guess we don’t mind it in ourselves if it’s for a good cause.

The newspeople didn’t miss this, either.  I watched MSNBC’s coverage some of the night and Chris Matthews seemed genuinely stunned.  He asked every guest and co-host on the show about what it means that so many people will not even try to hide their racism and that they have somehow found common cause with Hillary Clinton who wouldn’t seem to be the choice for the benighted, even if her late-campaign rhetoric has gotten even more desperate and brain-dead as her campaign’s days dwindle down to a precious few. 

I am more interested in what it means for Kentucky.  Maybe we were better off out of the spotlight before the brutal facts of our sad demographics were made known to the world:   second highest poverty rate in the country; mostly white; few citizens with a college education (especially compared to our dance partner for the night, Oregon).  We haven’t gotten this kind of attention since the Kennedys came through to see what poverty and ignorance look like for themselves, like going to the zoo to see animals from another continent.

Puts a different spin on Unbridled Spitit, don’t it?

Mine was the lead letter to the editor in Sunday’s Lexington (Kentucky) Herald- Leader.  The issue is the possible razing of the Main-Upper-Vine-Limestone block, which has become a wonderful collection of small, local, independent entertainment venues such as The Dame (music club), Mia’s Restaurant & Bar, and Buster’s Bar, to make way for a 40-storey hotel complex which will also require displacing the farmers market and pilfering space from a well-used and loved park across the street for a garage. 

One thing I forgot to mention (deride) in the letter is the name that the developers have proposed for this structure:  CentrePointe.  Isn’t that a perfectly typical example of developers’ nomenclature? 

Here’s my letter (headline theirs):

SHAMEFUL DEVELOPMENT CAN BE STOPPED

The impressive edifice unveiled in in the March 5 Herald-Leader does little to answer a basic question: Why is Lexington messing with a good thing?

The block where CentrePointe would be placed already works as an original and local conglomeration of small businesses. Chambers of commerce rack their brains to create such a district of unique dining and entertainment venues within a historic context and usually fail where this one succeeds brilliantly.

Lexington’s past vertical ambitions destroyed the street life of whole sections of downtown and made for sketchy places to walk at night.

It remains uncertain what imperative is served by this dream. The 2010 Alltech FEI World Equestrian Games will come and go in a blink. What long-term need does a 40-story hotel complex satisfy?

Do not doubt that this will largely be funded by tax abatements that generations of schoolchildren will pay for.

Local leaders have expressed an eagerness to find alternate locations for the displaced businesses. That they think these small concerns can be uprooted and replanted and still thrive shows a profound lack of appreciation for the power of neighborhoods, context and smallness.

Here’s hoping the Courthouse Area Design Review Board hears from many Lexingtonians who are tired of trading small and unique for big and predictable. May the board feel empowered by the citizens it serves to halt this looming shame.

James Spragens
Lebanon

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.     

I have just finished William Maxwell’s probably forgotten So Long, See You Tomorrow.  It is one of those novels which leave you feeling forlorn, bereft, forsaken when you get to the end.  These are bits of the human experience beautifully dealt with by this author who lost his own mother when a child. 

In fact, this terrain is so familiar to him that he can even convincingly limn the emotions of an abused farm dog tied to a rope by his indifferent departing master to await the new tenant who expects the dog as just another fixture.  She eventually runs off to town and manages to find her old master.  For this she is beaten and returned.  When she turns back up, she is put down. 

The humans don’t fare much better in this tale of boyhoods left exposed, as I suppose all are, to the whims, passions, and mistakes of their adult caretakers.  Sometimes it is only the occasional small kindness that saves a life from total wreck. It is from reading this kind of tender prose that you realize how tenuously we are tethered to lives of happiness.  It’s a wonder many of us have them. 

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?

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. 

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. 

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.