Gone Mild

The Christmas season is coming and you probably have beer lovers on your list. If you are a kind and generous soul, you would probably like to please the beer palates on your list. If you’re in the 99%, you probably want to do it without breaking the bank. You don’t want to risk it all on one beer. This post will give you 6 beers. If you buy a sixpack of each, you can shuffle them into sixpacks of variety and delight.

All these beers are available by the sixpack, and they are chosen to cross a broad spectrum of flavors. All of them are great beers; a beer snob will be impressed with your good taste, while a more novice beer drinker will be educated by the sampling. All can be bought here in Kansas City, probably at Gomer’s or Royal or Lukas. Finally, each of these beers comes in sixpacks. That ruled out many great beer in champagne style bottles or 4 packs, but my goal here is to make this easy on you.

I don’t necessarily recommend just picking out 6 beers from the “build your own 6 pack” station that you might find at some liquor stores. Too often, that is where old, out-of-date bottles go to spoil.

Oh, yeah, and they’re all imports. America makes the best beer in the world these days, but Christmas is about tradition, so the latest and greatest hop bomb from the Northwest just didn’t feel right. Dickens probably tasted each of these beers.

1. Warsteiner Lager. This is just a great example of the German pilsner style. It’s dry and crisp. It goes with all foods, and it’s one of the classic beers of Europe. Warsteiner is also popular enough in America that you won’t get stuck with a sixpack which has been rotting on a shelf for 2 or 3 years.

2. Bass Ale. I have been reading about India Pale Ale lately, and have renewed my appreciation for Bass Ale. It is a beautiful color, with a minerally dryness and a complex English yeast character. Its red triangle was England’s first trademark, and it appears in a painting by Renoir. Tasting it, you will notice a woody, herbal note to the hop flavor. Also, the hops are enhanced by the water characteristic of where it is brewed. If you have a sensitive palate, you might detect a bit of butterscotch in the flavor. You can’t get more classic than Bass ale.

3. Einbecker Ur Bock Dunkel. Smooth German malt, fills your glass with a caramelly goodness balanced with just enough German hops to prevent it from tasting like candy. There’s something rich and elemental about this beer.

4. Spaten Oktoberfest. More German malt, this time in a festival beer with a bit more hops and a bit lighter mouthfeel than the Dunkel.

5. Guinness Draft. The classic Irish beer now comes with nitrogen “widgets” in the can or bottle to give that creamy head. There are plenty of people who argue that Guinness should only be enjoyed on tap in Ireland, and I agree that is best, but it’s pretty darned good at home, too. (There are several versions of Guinness, and if you can find the Foreign Extra Stout, get that instead. It doesn’t have the nitrogen gimmick, but it is a wonderful bottle of beer.)

6. Fuller’s London Porter. Dark brown, rich, creamy and complex, don’t serve this one ice cold. Pour it at a chilly cellar temp and you’ll be rewarded with the complexity of dark fruit and molasses flavors. It’s a rich, winter beer, and you can bet that the recipient of your beer sampler six pack will be toasting you fondly when he or she drinks it.

Another Dog’s Death

For days the good old bitch had been dying, her back
pinched down to the spine and arched to ease the pain,
her kidneys dry, her muzzle white. At last
I took a shovel into the woods and dug her grave

in preparation for the certain. She came along,
which I had not expected. Still, the children gone,
such expeditions were rare, and the dog,
spayed early, knew no nonhuman word for love.

She made her stiff legs trot and let her bent tail wag.
We found a spot we liked, where the pines met the field.
The sun warmed her fur as she dozed and I dug;
I carved her a safe place while she protected me.

I measured her length with the shovel’s long handle;
she perked in amusement, and sniffed the heaped-up earth.
Back down at the house, she seemed friskier,
but gagged, eating. We called the vet a few days later.

They were old friends. She held up a paw, and he
injected a violet fluid. She swooned on the lawn;
we watched her breathing quickly slow and cease.
In a wheelbarrow up to the hole, her warm fur shone.

— By John Updike
________________________________________

First of all, just give in and enjoy the poem. It gets you, doesn’t it? The thought of an old dog and his fond master – it’s classic, and we’re all suckers for it. It’s okay, really – go ahead and enjoy it.

Now, having been human for just a moment, it’s time to be an English major and start poking around the poem to find out what’s going on in there. First off, what’s with the title? “ANOTHER Dog’s Death”? The first word we encounter robs this poor animal of individuality.

Then, boom, the “B” word in the first line. Yeah, of course it is rescued when we realize we’re discussing a female dog, but Updike knows his stuff, and he knows he’s dropping a percussive word to slap us awake.

Then he plays with us a little bit – no solid rhymes in this poem, but a nod to the thought with words pairing off like acquaintances instead of couples. Short A’s alternate with long A’s in the first stanza, then other subtle plays later on – “along” sniffs at “gone” and “wag” plays with “dug”. The final stanza uses “he” and “cease” and “lawn” and “shone” – subtler than rhymes but somehow making the lines hang together.

We never learn the animal’s name. Does that universalize the poem, or lessen the bond? And if it lessens the bond, is it because the bond didn’t fully exist, or because the author is striving for the distance to deaden the pain?

The Gospel of Barbecue

for Alvester James

Long after it was
necessary, Uncle
Vess ate the leavings
off the hog, doused
them with vinegar sauce.
He ate chewy abominations.
Then came high pressure.
Then came the little pills.
Then came the doctor
who stole Vess’s second
sight, the predication
of pig’s blood every
fourth Sunday.
Then came the stillness
of barn earth, no more
trembling at his step.
Then came the end
of the rib, but before
his eyes clouded,
Uncle Vess wrote
down the gospel
of barbecue.

Chapter one:
Somebody got to die
with something at some
time or another.

Chapter two:
Don’t ever trust
white folk to cook
your meat until
it’s done to the bone.

Chapter three:
December is the best
time for hog killing.
The meat won’t
spoil as quick.
Screams and blood
freeze over before
they hit the air.

Chapter four, Verse one:
Great Grandma Mandy
used to say food
you was whipped
for tasted the best.

Chapter four, Verse two:
Old Master knew to lock
the ham bacon chops
away quick or the slaves
would rob him blind.
He knew a padlock
to the smokehouse
was best to prevent
stealing, but even the
sorriest of slaves would
risk a beating for a full
belly. So Christmas time
he give his nasty
leftovers to the well
behaved. The head ears
snout tail fatback
chitlins feet ribs balls.
He thought gratitude
made a good seasoning.

Chapter five:
Unclean means dirty
means filthy means
underwear worn too
long in summertime heat.
Perfectly good food
can’t be no sin.
Maybe the little
bit of meat on ribs
makes for lean eating.
Maybe the pink flesh
is tasteless until you add
onions garlic black
pepper tomatoes
soured apple cider
but survival ain’t never been
no crime against nature
or Maker. See, stay alive
in the meantime, laugh
a little harder. Go on
and gnaw that bone clean.

– by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers
____________________________________

Doing a Sunday poetry post every week is a discipline that pays off big-time. A couple hours ago, I had never heard of Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, and now I’ve read parts of her blog and “liked” her Facebook page. All this Just because I felt obligated to find a new poem to present on Sunday.

As an aside, it’s kind of scary to write about living, breathing, internet-alive writers. Poets know how google works, and they sometimes come by and comment, or email me. So far, nobody has threatened a copyright lawsuit, or, much worse, brought to life my Prufrock-inspired paranoid fear:

Would it have been worth while
If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,
And turning toward the window, should say:
“That is not it at all,
That is not what I meant, at all.”

But I feel like it’s bound to happen one of these days.

This poem challenges me. I’m a middle-class, midwestern, middle-aged white guy facing a poem written by a younger black woman from the South, and the poem tosses into the mix race, slavery, whippings, second sight, chittlins, and even Carolina vinegar-based barbecue (KC style being my zone of comfort). I’m a perfect product of white privilege presuming to comment on a poem written by a woman who knows what she’s doing, and whose blog demonstrates she is most definitely alert to nuance, symbolism and politics.

But the Gospel of Barbecue provides its own advice down there at the end –

. . .See, stay alive
in the meantime, laugh
a little harder. Go on
and gnaw that bone clean.

So here are a few of the things that appeal to me out of this poem, like the abominations that Uncle Vess chewed on.

“Leavings off the hog” – there, straddling the third line and fourth lines, is a phrase I hadn’t even seen turned before, but it’s a wonderful descriptor of the bits that get left behind when someone else locks up the ham, bacon and chops. Even though the times have changed and the necessity of eating the leavings is long past, Uncle Vess chooses to enjoy them, even though they bring high blood pressure and failing health. The poet doesn’t ignore the reality of nutrition and risk to present a falsely happy picture of food traditions brought on by slavery, but she answers her own concerns with Chapter One of the Gospel – “Somebody got to die with something at some time or another.” This is not a Gospel of Eternal Life – it’s a Gospel of Barbecue.

Chapter 4 kills me. Verse one – the great grandmother speaks of whipping and how it changed the food. Verse two – Old Master expects gratitude for nasty leftovers. This isn’t some rose-tinted song-of-the-South food reviewer waxing eloquent about a great plate of barbecue – Jeffers is placing this food into a context as distasteful as history.

Chapter 5 lets us in on the secret – it’s survival. Religious tradition in parts of Africa might consider pork unclean, but this Gospel preaches that survival is not a crime against Nature or the Maker. Whatever alien gospels might proclaim, the Gospel of Barbecue has arisen to allow laughter and gnawing and staying alive.

Yesterday, I wrote about laundry. Clotheslines. I enjoyed it, and the pictures were fun, but it didn’t strike me until the evening just how mild I had become. I hope the local politicians and journalists appreciate the lack of negative attention. I worry about my friend and frequent commenter Les, though. That old man’s spleen needs venting . . .

So, on to a topic of importance and controversy – is beer best enjoyed from a bottle or an draft? This topic is soon to be of increased relevance here in Kansas City, because Bier Station is going to open in less than a month. There, people can taste beer on tap and buy bottles to go.¹ When offered your choice of drinking the same beer from a bottle² or from a tap³, which should you choose?

Most beer snobs will tell you to take order the draft. I (mildly) disagree. Most times, the difference is minor, and the nod should go to the bottle.

The reasoning in favor of draft beer is that it is often not pasteurized, and, by being transported in a steel keg, it is shielded from light, which can damage hop flavors, making them “skunky”. Also, it comes to you in a glass, which allows the aroma to come out.

More importantly, bars try to rotate their kegs pretty frequently. When you order a draft beer, you’re not likely to get something that has been sitting on a shelf for two years in a hot warehouse.

Those are good points, but I think that advances in beer knowledge and handling have reduced their importance. If you get a bottle of craft beer from a bar, the brewer has put it into a dark glass bottle, and shielded it with cardboard carriers before delivering it to a wholesaler who has been chosen for its ability to treat beer with respect. Your craft beer isn’t sitting in a 120 degree warehouse these days – it’s treated with the same respect that the kegs get.

It is also pressurized just the way the brewer likes it – not according to the dispensing system at your local watering hole. Speaking of dispensing systems – they’re not always cleaned as well as they should be. I’d rather have my beer straight from a clean bottle than pushed through grungy taps filled with mold and sediment.

As for aroma, I think the nod goes to bottles. (Of course, you’re going to insist on getting a glass with your bottle, right? You weren’t just going to swig your beer from a bottle, and miss out on seeing the color and head, and sniffing the aroma, were you?) In a bar, the person who gets to enjoy the fresh-poured aroma is the bartender. By the time the glass gets put on a tray and brought to your table, all those wonderful volatiles have disappeared. A bottle will hold those aromas in and release them when you or your waiter pour the beer at your table. (I prefer to poor my own, but I haven’t yet started slapping the hands of over-eager waitstaff.)

As for freshness, it depends. If you’re drinking something weird that has been sitting around for months, it’s probably better out of a bottle, but if it’s something weird that attracts a mob of beer nerds to plow through a keg in a day or two, then the nod might go to the keg.

8 times out of 10, though, I think you’re better off ordering a bottle beer over the same beer on tap, all other things being equal. But those other 2 times in 10 might arise when I want to have 12 or 16 ounces of a beer that only comes in champagne bottles, or I’m just in the mood to have a draft, or the drafts are coming in special glasses. There’s no hard and fast rule here – just a tendency. I’m not going to turn down a good beer whether it comes from a tap or a bottle.

¹I dropped in and visited with John Couture yesterday evening as he and David Rouyer (handyman extraordinaire, and the craftsman who created the tiny porch I mentioned yesterday) were working to prepare for opening. The space is looking great! Here’s an excellent write-up on this major addition to Kansas City’s beer culture.

²When I say “bottle”, I really mean bottle or can. Craft brew in cans is a rapidly growing segment, and it’s great news for beer lovers. Cans admit no light, so the beer doesn’t get “skunked”, and they are more ecologically sound.

³When I say “tap”, I mean only regular draft beer. If you get a chance to sample “real ale” (hand-pulled with a pump-like action from a keg), the decision is easy – those are special beers and you should give them a try.

I had pretty much forgotten the smell of freshly dried laundry unclipped from the clotheslines in my backyard. I barely remembered the brittle stiffness of a line-dried towel.

In Italy, windows everywhere were brightened by laundry drying in the sun. It was one of my favorite visual treats – bright colors against old stone.

One of the first things I did when we returned was to buy a clothesline and some clothespins from my wonderful local hardware store. I strung the line from our tiny back porch to the garage, and started saving energy and money the next time I did a load of laundry. Even in the mildly chilly weather of a Kansas City November, an afternoon on the clothesline can dry out a pair of jeans or a heavy bath towel without consuming a spark of electricity. Hanging in the breeze is also easier on clothes than being tossed about in a hot drum.

It’s a bit ironic to travel thousands of miles to recall and adopt a “trick” my mother used before the Kennedy Administration, but there it is.

The Myth of Innocence

One summer she goes into the field as usual
stopping for a bit at the pool where she often
looks at herself, to see
if she detects any changes. She sees
the same person, the horrible mantle
of daughterliness still clinging to her.

The sun seems, in the water, very close.
That’s my uncle spying again, she thinks—
everything in nature is in some way her relative.
I am never alone, she thinks,
turning the thought into a prayer.
Then death appears, like the answer to a prayer.

No one understands anymore
how beautiful he was. But Persephone remembers.
Also that he embraced her, right there,
with her uncle watching. She remembers
sunlight flashing on his bare arms.

This is the last moment she remembers clearly.
Then the dark god bore her away.

She also remembers, less clearly,
the chilling insight that from this moment
she couldn’t live without him again.

The girl who disappears from the pool
will never return. A woman will return,
looking for the girl she was.

She stands by the pool saying, from time to time,
I was abducted, but it sounds
wrong to her, nothing like what she felt.
Then she says, I was not abducted.
Then she says, I offered myself, I wanted
to escape my body. Even, sometimes,
I willed this. But ignorance

cannot will knowledge. Ignorance
wills something imagined, which it believes exists.

All the different nouns—
she says them in rotation.
Death, husband, god, stranger.
Everything sounds so simple, so conventional.
I must have been, she thinks, a simple girl.

She can’t remember herself as that person
but she keeps thinking the pool will remember
and explain to her the meaning of her prayer
so she can understand
whether it was answered or not.

by Louise Glück
_______________________________

This poem disturbs and challenges me.

This presentation of the Persephone tale is a fresh twist on a provocative old tale. Not so long ago, I saw a statue called the Rape of Persephone by Bernini, and it is a powerful work of art. Fingers sink into flesh, tears flow, and violence itself is captured in cold marble – the statue sits in the middle of a room, but its dramatic portrayal makes it seem kinetic.

Bernini’s presentation is worlds apart from Glück’s. This is not the face that Glück is describing.

Bernini depicts a rape – Glück portrays something different and far more complex. If you read about Persephone, you can see that Glück has chosen some awfully deep waters in which to swim.

Start with the title – The Myth of Innocence. Is innocence itself a myth? From the start of the poem, the subject is already beyond true innocence. She already views her daughterliness as a horrible mantle – she looks at herself hoping for change. Her individuality is already separating her from her mother – she wants maturity.

“I am never alone.” Is it a thought or a prayer? It sounds like a complaint – but she turns it from a thought into a prayer, which is then answered in the form of death. Think about that for a while – there’s a lot going on in that little stanza, and I could not begin to summarize all the thoughts it contains. Is she seeking death? Does death keep her from being alone? Is she praying for separation from her family?

This poem stretches language into broad sheets of thought. Even Persephone herself cannot choose words to describe what has happened, and the “rotation of nouns” cannot describe her abductor.

And there is this morsel –

The girl who disappears from the pool
will never return. A woman will return,
looking for the girl she was.

To me, that conveys the bittersweet feeling of reminiscence – the change wrought by time is irreversible, and she cannot even “remember herself as that person.”

I admire Glück for her amazing little poem – the myth of Persephone has, to me, always been a quaint tale told by ancient people to try to explain the changing of the seasons. Glück turns it into a kind of terrifying and awful tale trying to explain the changing of ourselves.

I’ve done two posts on this topic before (1, 2), and they get a lot of hits around this time of the year. People obviously want to bring beer to the dinner table on the most glorious feast day of America, and I’m happy to help. These are beers that shouldn’t be too hard to find in most of the country, and certainly not around Kansas City.

1) Elle’s Brown Ale, Avery Brewing. This is a rich, but not heavy, malty, but not cloying, wonderful example of American Brown Ale. It’s named for the brewery owner’s deceased chocolate lab, described as “sweet and somewhat nutty”. A good description for a dog and for this beer, too. It’s not going to blow your mind or steal the attention away from the meal – but it will satisfy everyone.

2) Boulevard Pilsner, by Boulevard Brewery. Here’s one for your uncle who doesn’t really like the fancy beers. Boulevard Pilsner is a great example of what happens when someone who really loves good beer makes a style – American lager – that insists upon subtlety and balance. It’s not very hoppy, it’s not very malty, it’s not very anything except drinkable and enjoyable. Introduce a relative to this classic American beer, and you may have just encouraged a small step toward the wonderful world of craft beer. Or not – Thanksgiving is not a day to force people to try things they won’t like.

3) Anchor Steam Beer, by Anchor Brewing. Anchor Steam was at the heart of the craft brewing revolution, when Fritz Maytag chose to renovate a crappy old brewery that was going out of business. He saved a style of beer – I would describe it as a hoppy lager brewed with slightly fruity ale yeast – and made people pay more attention to what is in their glass. This is a good, flavorful beer that will stand up to the fatty side dishes and the roasted bird.

4) Leffe Blond, by Leffe Brewery (Belgium). Pay attention, or you’ll miss the greatness of this beer. When it hits your mouth, it doesn’t raise your eyebrows – it just tastes wonderful. There’s a little bit of spiciness at the end, and a little bit of fruit in the middle, but nothing in the flavor warns you that this is 6.6% alcohol. Serve it in a chalice glass to get the most from the aroma.

5) Three Philosophers, by Brewery Ommegang. I’ve been subtle so far, but this one will clobber you. Save it for dessert, to cap off a wonderful meal and guide you toward pleasant dreams. This amazing bottle (I had it on tap in DC recently – wow!) is a blend of a quaddrupel ale made by Ommegang and a special cherry beer made by Liefman’s – a brewery in Belgium. I love this beer – as I’ve written before. There’s so much going on in the flavor – cherries, of course, but also chocolate and raisins and warming alcohol (9.8%). This is a beer to be appreciated with a loosened belt and a quiet household after the kids have gone to bed.

Enjoy – happy Thanksgiving!

I have sworn off political posts, in favor of focusing on things that make me happy. But sometimes it makes me glowingly happy to at least glance back at what I wrote back in June of 2011.

For instance:

It’s been a long time since I’ve posted, and I’ve sat out a few of the major issues that have occupied much of the local and national blogosphere. To atone for my missing out on the recent past, I’ll gaze into the crystal ball and offer up a few glimpses into the national, state and local future.

1. National: President Obama is going to be re-elected. Period.
Despite constant efforts by those who sell advertising space to convince us that there is an interesting story here, there isn’t. They are just trying to sell newspapers and fill air time between ads. If we ignore them, they will go away, but we won’t ignore them. In all seriousness, if the Republicans were smart, they would just skip the 2012 elections, and nominate one person for 2016 at their next convention, devoting two cycles worth of money and promotion toward making darned sure they win the next winnable election.

2. State: The independence of the Missouri judiciary will be ferociously attacked by high-dollar corporate interests.
At first blush, this may seem a bit obvious, along the lines of predicting that “abortion rights will be controversial” or “Peter Kinder will say something dumb”, but I think the attacks on the Missouri Plan for selection of judges are going to take a nasty turn. Recent history has seen determined efforts by wealthy corporate interests to inject more money and politics into Missouri’s judicial selection process. In a rare refutation of the Golden Rule (“He who has the gold makes the rules”), good judgment has thus far prevailed against these breathtakingly bad ideas. I’m betting that we are going to see focused attacks on good judges in the next cycle of elections, with well-funded negative campaigns aimed at judges who are unable to raise funds and fight back. Whomever Governor Nixon appoints to replace Mike Wolff will have a big target on his or her back, and will face a huge “Vote No on Judge ____” campaign. Money and its corrupting influence view our court system as a vacuum to be abhorred.

3. Local: Bishop Finn isn’t going anywhere.
I have good reason to avoid much commentary on this topic, but the Catholic Church is pretty much immune from popular opinion. It’s a little amusing to watch political reporters wrestle with competing demonstrations of support and nonsupport as if they mattered. It’s as if a sports reporter went to a Royals game and focused on the fans’ attempts to muster a successful wave. The real game doesn’t happen in the stands, and the real umpire is in Rome (or, perhaps, in heaven).

2 out of 3 topics were absolutely nailed, and the third (attack on the Missouri Plan) was correct, but the millionaires’ electoral incompetence hadn’t occurred to me. Instead of knocking off a few judges, they blew their money on a hilariously ineffective Constitutional Amendment campaign that they wound up abandoning because it was so poorly managed.

I hate to say “I told you so,” but

I love to say “I told you so.” I’ve just become way to kind and gentle to allow myself to produce posts like this.

(PS: If any multi-millionaires want to hire me to deliver results instead of skewed polls followed by “shocked” excuses, I’ll sell my soul for enough money to allow me frequent luxurious visits to Europe instead of once every 50 years. Have your people call my people.)

Our first night in Florence, we ate at a steakhouse. We called that afternoon and were lucky to secure reservations. To our amusement, the restaurant was apologetic about the fact that they would need for us to clear the table by 2 hours. We did not yet understand the leisurely pace of dining in Italy – 2 hours in Tuscany is not rushed by any means, but 3 would be more comfortable.

All of our meals were great, but Jim’s beef stew dish was explosive. Peposo is a rich tomato-beef stew studded with peppercorns that have been slowly braised to a point of crisp tenderness. I didn’t know peppercorns could be like that – tiny dots of heat punctuating a hearty, luscious stew of tender beef chunks.

I set out to recreate this stew, and I read several recipes on line that just didn’t seem quite right. The best one I found was simple to the point of not even including measures. This is Tuscan soul food we’re after here, and the recipe needs to be more about how than how much.

My version was a success, served with a simple polenta enhanced with olive oil, a few twists of the pepper grinder, and a handful of good grated parmesan.

I bought around two and a half pounds of chuck roast and cut it into chunks the size of walnuts, trimming out the large pieces of fat but not being too Puritanical. Straight into the pot – no browning, and I mixed in a box of diced Italian tomatoes – I think that unless you’ve grown your own, canned tomatoes are better than fresh ones these days. I added a half dozen whole cloves of peeled garlic and a bay leaf, and eyeballed “enough” peppercorns. I didn’t measure, but I’d guess it was a little less than a quarter cup, maybe a jigger in volume. About half a bottle of decent but inexpensive chianti wine covered it all.

I brought the mix to a boil on the stove top, but I think that might have toughened the beef slightly. Next time, I will try a more traditional braise. After the brief boil, I lowered it to a simmer with the lid ajar. After a couple hours, I smashed the garlic cloves with a fork and wooden spoon, and added a touch of salt and a few grinds of pepper. I simmered it for a total of 5 hours, until it was thick and lovely. When I served it over the polenta, the peppercorns gave me the tender but still crunchy bursts I was seeking in a warm, rich beef stew. I had learned something of value in Italy.

I’m not an anti-TV zealot.  In fact, I’ll frankly admit that I enjoy sit-coms, documentaries, movies, sporting events and dramatic series.  And I have no intention of becoming ascetic and surrendering my remote.

That said, I know I watch too much TV, and most of it is due to lazy thoughtlessness.  If there’s nothing urgent to do, the couch beckons and the remote winds up in my hand.  Time slips away, and sometime later that day or evening, I will realize I have killed time.

I’m going to print this list out and put it near my customary seat.  I know it won’t distract me from watching what I truly want to watch, but I hope it will remind me when I’m wasting time that I could be doing something better.

1.  Read a book.

2.  Read a magazine.¹

3.  Write in my journal.²

4.  Do some ironing.³

5.  Email someone I haven’t reached out to in a while.

6.  Do a blog post.

7.  Browse a cook book.

8.  Read a poem.

9.  Take a walk.

10.  Draw or paint something.

11.  Do some pushups and leg lifts.

12.  Polish shoes.³

13.  Work on the business plan.⁴

14.  Look at genealogical information.⁵

15.  Match socks.^3,6

¹We subscribe to The New Yorker and a bunch of others.  I will never catch up in my New Yorker reading. Never.

²I bought the most awesome leather journal in Florence.  Now I have to fill it with profound thoughts.

³This can be done while watching most TV, unless it’s something that demands rapt attention.

⁴Much more on this sometime later.

⁵There are an awful lot of Ryans.  Trying to figure out which ones are related to you is not easy.  I’m thinking of changing my name to something more interesting.

⁶This is made much easier since I had the genius idea of just buying white and black socks.