#and my city is like. the perfect intersection of chicago and the rest of the state

[queerb]

Now is one of those times where I really wish I'd dedicated myself to streaming part-time.

[canaryatlaw]

alright, so today’s been a bit of a whirlwind. sadly my laziness (or chronic exhaustion, if you prefer that label) got the best of me and I slept through the middle church service and ubered to the last one since I was signed up for the nursery. this is why it’s better when I’m signed up for the middle service so I’m not tempted to skip out. but I made it there with a bit left in the service and got to watch it for a bit so that was nice. it was centered around joy, and the part at the end I got to witness involved a dancing christmas tree, menorah, and dinosaur onstage while they handed out krispy kreme donuts, because how else would you define joy??? (for context, they had their annual Christmas store event yesterday where they have low income families from the communities our church support come in and be able to buy presents for their children and families at very reduced prices, with all the proceeds going to charity, and while the adults are doing this they also do entertainment for the kids, so the costumes were leftover from that and I suppose they decided to put them to work. I heard that the little kids were very much NOT a fan of the dinosaur 😂) service ended and we had our volunteer huddle before heading over to the room where I helped with the pick up of kids from the last service and drop off for our service. I think we ended up with 4 helpers so that’s a decent number, and I think we had like 8 or so babies so that’s a pretty good ratio. things were fairly calm for the most part, a few of them were crying on and off but were ultimately consolable, didn’t have to call any parents so that’s always a win, especially when we found out at the end that one of the little girls we had had been having issues the last few weeks that resulted in calls to parents, and this was the first time that didn’t happen, so that’s encouraging. At the end of the service we cleaned up and I waited for the last parents to show up (always the ones that are volunteering in some capacity themselves so they tend to be the last to pick up) then headed out. The plan was to go to the place to get brunch for the date after church. I’m gonna try to explain the route of the blue line and the bus route the best I can because my navigation in this got a bit complicated. I can take the bus right from my corner to basically a straight line down. my church is right off the blue line, which intersects the bus twice, as the blue line makes a V in and out of downtown, traveling southeast until it hits downtown, then traveling southwest out of it, with church being on the southwest prong. I generally take the bus to the first intersection and take the V down to the church because it tends to be faster. the second intersection is only one station west of my church, but for some reason the bus service is really spotty from that station so I tend to avoid it. but this brunch place was right off the bus route, and it was before the first (northern) intersection of the blue line, so it made sense for me to take it one stop west on the southwest prong and take the bus from there, so that’s what I did, except the bus service was spotty and I ended up taking an uber from the train station to the place so I didn’t end up being late. Met up with the guy, there was a bit of a wait so we walked over to a coffee shop nearby and hung out for a bit until we got called. this place was entirely Ron Swanson themed (from Parks and Rec) which was really just so flipping fantastic, and the food was very good. He was a self-confessed nerd, so we talked a lot about comics and superheroes and all that good stuff, and at some point the conversation migrated to the various systemic problems in child welfare and criminal justice (probably because he was saying he tends to lean libertarian on some issues but still supported social services and such) which is always interesting. overall it was nice, I’m not sure if I’m feeling any romantic attraction but I guess we’ll see where it goes from here. Once we finished I got on the bus with the intent to take it the rest of the way home (and here’s where things get really complicated) until I got a phone call from who turned out to be the guy who had done the custom fitting for the suits the law firm I was working for was paying for us to get, and he had the suit and was passing through Chicago tonight and said if we could meet up I could try it on and get it. There was a tense moment when I was like “you know I’m not with the firm anymore, right?” and he said he did but the suit was still made and paid for so it’s mine. he was heading west into the city and was hoping we could meet before he hit downtown where he was meeting with the other women from the firm who I definitely did not want to see, and I knew there was a starbucks a few blocks from my church that would be in his direct path, and at this point the bus was just coming to the northern intersection of the blue line, so I hopped off the bus and got back on the train and took it down to where my church was (I told you this was complicated). So I bought a snack and sat down to wait, he showed up a few minutes later and gave me the suit to try on, so I went to the bathroom and like. guys. it’s so perfect. I love it so much. like I can’t even tell you. I like actually had been really sad about it because I thought I wasn’t going to get it anymore since I don’t work there but it’s made and it’s mine and I love it so much lol it’s great. the only thing I was kinda meh on was the button, but that’s super easy to get replaced so I’m not concerned about that. and like, it’s a fucking super nice suit, custom made, like that shit retails for like $1,000 so this was QUITE the bonus from a company I no longer work for 😂😂😂 so this was pretty awesome. I took an uber pool home because I didn’t want to deal with having it on public transit. when I got home I chilled for a bit and got ready for the first night of the crossover, which I was going to be livetweeting from the Batwoman Podcast account for the first time. Overall I thought the episode was pretty solid, I have to fangirl about what was by far the best part for me, which was of course the inclusion of Clark and Lois which they filmed on the Kent farm from Smallville, and when they transferred to that scene they played the iconic Smallville theme song that’s all like SOMEBODY SAAAAAAAAAAAVE MEEEEEEEEEE and y’all, I actually died. my soul left my body. I was legit screaming, like I CANNOT believe they actually did that. if we get more Smallville references in this crossover as its been hinted we might in the preview clip I will actually die and probably remain so. So I was completely overwhelmed by that lol. But I did of course watch the scene with the introduction of Lois to the universe and man, I love her so much already. Between schooling Clark on some sexism to being ready to fight off Oliver and Barry with a hammer to saying “go get him Barry!” because Oliver’s “kind of a joke” I just totally fell in love with her. she’s perfect. Of course then I absolutely died again when she called Clark “Smallville” in the same exact way that Erica Durance as Lois Lane did on Smallville which is a thing that was completely unique to Smallville, I screamed again and it was just so damn good. so that was obviously the highlight of it for me. the Barry and Oliver training stuff was interesting, I’m not sure how I feel about the whole “Barry has to draw on darkness to use Oliver’s skills” thing which just seems a bit unnecessary, but maybe they’ll pull it through. I thought the beginning was pretty funny with Oliver waking up to Iris and them all being so thoroughly confused about everything. Then there was the fight scene at the end which was pretty good all around, very inventive with the number of heroes participating in the fight and how their various power sets were used. Of course it peaked my interest that this was “Ivo” labs and the robot was named “AMAZO” which is intriguing because it’s a very different interpretation than Arrow took on the subject, yet it’s much closer to the overall DC universe lore about the character and his creations. I found it particularly interesting though that they were linking the mirakuru to the robot, which was of course something that came directly from Arrow’s plot regarding Ivo and the Amazo (ship) so I’m curious as to where they’re going from there on that subject (if it’s not just a throwaway line, anyway). The ending where they decided to go to Gotham and the shot of Batwoman on the roof was really fucking epic, and definitely a great place to end the episode. So yeah, excited for tomorrow’s installment and of course the Legends episode airing right after it that is sure to be fucking hilarious. Once that was over I watched this past week’s episodes of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend and Blindspot before watching the last episode of the newest season of Great British Baking Show and I just want to say I’m very proud of Rahul and I hope he truly knows how talented he is and goes far in life. and yeah, shortly after finishing that I started getting ready for bed (and definitely wasted time in there somewhere) and now I’m here and it’s almost 2 am because I’m bad about this stuff, so I should really be getting to bed now. Goodnight my dearies. Hope your Monday doesn’t suck. 

[cyclicallife]

The Day

As part of my psychotherapy I was asked to write about the initial seizure, and subsequent diagnosis, from the 3rd person perspective. I have buried a lot; I haven’t wanted to return to that particular day, but I know it is present. It is there, in my mind, lurking. It appears in dreams; when I let my guard down, it presents itself. The presentation in this moments, in my unconscious states, is sometimes cloaked in metaphors and surreal imagery, but I wake knowing where it is tethered. This is human nature, this is our survival mode kicking in.

Jeremiah did not feel well upon waking. Perhaps it was stress or another late night of working on his thesis… he could not tell.

After a shower he felt slightly better, but there was a tiredness that he could not shake and a queasy feeling in his gut.

He exited his basement apartment and stood on the stoop. The dappled sunlight flooded over him. The air was still cool, as it was barely April, but the sun was growing strong. He closed his eyes and stood still, ‘yes,’ he thought, ‘sunlight will nourish me.’

Stepping down he dodged the multitude of uniformed children making their way to an elementary school just west of his apartment. He noticed, on almost a daily basis, that their uniforms had a military look to them. Neatly pressed shirts and pants, leather shoes, etc. They didn’t look anything like the catholic school uniforms that he had worn in his youth.

Jeremiah arrived to the corner of Broadway and Thorndale. It was a busy morning and, like the school children rushing to make their classes, the cars that whizzed past had an urgency to them. Jeremiah didn’t have such an urgency. He stood on the corner and let the unhindered sun fall over him. The traffic and pedestrians danced around him. He seemed to be at a standstill, he was in fact, and this made him seem out of place within the whirlwind of the morning commotion.

He had no real urgency, he had none in fact. That morning his only plan was to go to the park and meet Eda. They had arranged to soak in the sun in Millennium Park. It was, he noted again, a perfect day for such an occasion. Also, he wanted to see more of Eda, she was attractive, intelligent and a good conversationalist. They were still in the early stages of getting to know one another. He liked this time, the explorative time, the exciting time of a potential relationship.

Part of Jeremiah’s attention was preoccupied with the lingering feeling he had had since he awoke. It wasn’t nausea per se, and he knew the sensation of stress, thus he could rule that out as well. The other part simply wanted to enjoy the sun. He remained in a sort of neutral zone, letting neither sensation or desire pull the entirety of his attention.

Jeremiah had waited through two rounds of red lights & two rounds of green crosswalk signals beckoning him to join the others in their haste. He decided it was time to make his way across Broadway to the Thorndale Red Line Station and join in the morning rush. He disliked these morning commutes, but loathed the afternoon and evening ones. The north bound trains leaving downtown anytime between 4 and 8pm, depending on the day, were like cattle cars. The morning commute was less crowded, Thorndale was only a few stops before the end of the red line, a perk of living so far out of the city.

The school children ran past him as he stepped out to cross the four lanes that made up the intersection of Broadway and Thorndale. Broadway was one of those streets that ran a great distance, miles and miles of ever-changing facades; CVS pharmacies, mattress stores, seedy restaurants, the flip-side being trendy coffee shops, hipster bars, whole foods, etc. Jeremiah was used to New England streets, even the city streets like those in Boston, that curved around this way and that, intersections that confused tourists and locals alike, one-way streets that began randomly. The city had no real planning and just grew with the expansion of the population, which grew due to the industrial revolution and the massive changes it brought with it. It was as if the city reached out in all directions, sending runners here and there that shaped the city with some sort of chaotic beauty. Chicago, on the other hand, was systematic; streets would run for miles and miles, the flatness of the midwest let them stretch to no end.

The sound of the school children became slightly muffled, it was as if there was some sort of ringing in his ears or that they had water in them. Sunlight bounced off of a storefront window and blinded him. It was a flash, like an explosion, a bolt of lightening. The school children ran about, laughing gleefully. Looking down Jeremiah saw the shadows of everyone going to and fro, it was an insane dance upon the sidewalk; bodies blending and merging, figures morphing into multi-limbed creatures that split apart, multiplying and dividing. Again, an explosion as the sunlight bounced off another storefront window. He had kept his gaze down, mesmerized by the multi-limbed shadows. As the blast of light occurred the shadows dispersed as if running from it, as if scared. Then, when the lightening flash passed in the blink of eye, the shadows returned and again resumed their odd dance.

Overhead the northbound Red Line slowed at the station. The thunderous wheels rolled to a stop then began again generating this metallic cacophony that quickened until it was swallowed up by the southbound train. The two sounds were dissonant, jarring. The northbound train was picking up speed as the southbound train began to slow. The sounds pulled at one another, tearing a sort of ugly hole in the once peaceful morning.

Clack clack claclaclaclaclaclclcl the northbound train ran away.

A hiss of sorts sounded out, there, above him on the trestle that stretched over Thorndale, was the southbound train. It stretched many cars in length and seemed to loom almost imposingly above him. The doors opened and then closed and it, like its northbound counterpart, moved south as if tugged by some unknown force. The sunlight broke through the train cars; at first it was slow, shadow-light-shadow-light. Then, as the train increased in speed, the timing generated a hypnotic sensation even behind closed eyes, shadow-light-shadow-li-sha—l-sh-l-s.

Jeremiah’s stomach turned, the queasiness rose up inside him and there was almost this desire to wretch. He was unsure at that moment if he was standing still. Was he moving? Others around him took no notice, they flowed about him like a river moves around a large rock. Unlike the rock holding its own in the torrents of raging water, he began to give way, to slip. A sneaking sensation of paranoia crept up within him. It crawled up his spine and filled his mind with questions: Are you ok? Are these people aware of you? Are you having a panic attack? His awareness of self made his eyes move about trying to pinpoint someone or something that might act as an anchor upon which he could hold. There was no one. There was nothing.

The feeling of queasiness moved from his gut to his head and there became a sort of pressure. As it ventured from his gut  to his head it curled its fingers about his throat, then wrenched his jaw open with such a force. It felt dislocated, it was swinging there, disjointed resting upon on it’s hinges. Then the fingers crawled into his brain. His eyes fluttered. They fluttered again. The two trains arrived simultaneously; both the northbound and southbound directly across from one another on the narrow, wooden platform that separated the two trains. The doors opened at the same time, both departed at the same time. The metallic clanging was almost symphonic and then again became dissonant as the two ran off in separate directions, each one moving at different speeds.

His unhinged jaw swung open then locked in that position, ajar and painful. His stomach burned, his legs unsteady. Jeremiah’s right hand began curling inward; fingers to palm. He had no control of this movement, none whatsoever. The south bound train arrived, the shadows flicker until they slowed to a stop. His eyes fluttered in a syncopated rhythm; eye open, shadow, eye closed, light, and so on.

His ears filled with every sound, every car, every child running off to school, every footstep, every flash of light… Then, there was not a single sound at all. Like the shadows upon the ground that moments before had transfixed his attention, so too did the motion of everything and everyone; just a blur of beings and objects in various colors and shapes, coming in and out of lights and shadows. Then there was stillness and just a whooshing sound in his ears.

His curling hand turned further inward and was drawn upward towards his open jaw then further still to his head. He cupped it as best he could with his rigid hand. It wasn’t pain that he felt, he didn’t know the words. There was simply a lack of control. He had no ability to say no, to stop this, to return his hand to his side and close his jaw. The whooshing sound disappeared, the world still remained motionless. A sound came from him, from within him. It wasn’t a word or a plea for help. It was a word to him yet outside his vocabulary. It was a moan, a moan that escape him as a sigh might, as a yawn might. A long, extended moan. Then his body fell, his legs gave way and his being slipped downward into some hole, into some sort of abyss that opened underneath him, a trapdoor in the earth.

Where was he. Who was he. Just blackness that engulfed him; rich, thick darkness in which no light was present, no words were uttered, nothing. His sigh had left, the commotion of the morning had gone, the trains no longer sounded out. Nothing. No one.

[1310miles]

Thirty One

Just days before the Baltimore Marathon, I was considering not doing it. We had such a busy fall season. I was exhausted from my volunteer work, previous marathon in Wyoming, and all the activities my family was part of. My head hurt thinking about coordinating and preparing my parents to take over for me and manage the lives of my over-scheduled kids while Brett and I traveled to Maryland.

On the other hand, taking a little vacation with Brett seemed like a good break and I had paid for everything already. Plus, I would be visiting my cousin and her family, and my aunt and uncle, so that was important.

Whereas most marathons are on Sundays, Baltimore’s race was scheduled for Saturday. Brett and I arrived on Friday and did the typically quick and uninspired expo visit to get my materials and then we relaxed in our hotel for the rest of the day.

Leading up to the race I had been so busy that I hadn’t put a lot of thought into my strategy or plan for the run. The hill profile was daunting: a long ascent over the first five miles, then back down for five, flat for eight, and then another gradual ascent for six. It’s very hard to anticipate how bad I will feel after a five mile hill, and equally difficult to know the toll a five mile descent will take. Also, a major long hill after mile 18 is very dubious. I could either feel great and storm up it or it could be so bad that it kills me.

In the morning I got up and put on my gear. I also drew the hill profile on my arm like I did in Seattle. Brett and I worked out his plan for spectating, and although it would be easy because he would be solo, we didn’t have a rental car, so transportation could be a challenge. He briefly woke up to tell me good luck, and in the dark hours of the morning I headed to the race. I had been warned that although it was only a mile to the starting line, Baltimore isn’t very safe, so I took a taxi. The poor driver had no idea that there was a marathon that day, so I felt bad telling him how messed up traffic was going to be for the next eight hours.

The starting line was outside of Camden Yards. I wanted the driver to get me as close as possible, but I was getting nervous seeing lots of runners going the opposite direction from where I thought we were supposed to go. I finally told him just to pull over, and I got out and asked where a group of people were headed. They looked at me like an idiot and said “the starting line of course.” I was very confused and concerned, but then a nice person said, “They are going to the 5k. You might be looking for the marathon start, which is around the corner by Camden Yards.” Thank you!

I was there pretty early, and not a lot of runners had gathered yet. The ballpark was open in one area for the use of the bathrooms, which was a welcome change from portapotties. Interesting to see inside the famous stadium too. The sun started to come up and after the announcements and anthem, we lined up and the race began.

To get out of the downtown area, we encountered our first hill. Then we headed straight for a long stretch up to the furthest west point of the course. Along this road I saw the neighborhoods that The Wire was based on. They must have filmed them on location because it looked just as it had on tv.

At mile three we turned into the zoo. The path got more narrow and went downhill a bit. This area was very scary for the wheelchair athletes who were trying to wind their way among the runners. Without space and with too much momentum, they were dangerously close of crashing. It was very unfortunate that many runners were wearing headphones and couldn’t hear the LOUD shouting of all the rest of us telling them to get over or to make room. It was very frustrating and could have been a terrible accident many times over.

Down in the zoo, we had a great group of spectators. A few zookeepers had escorted animals onto the course for us to see. Two penguins stood watching us, as well as a bunny, badger and kookaburra. It was so cute, but all I kept thinking was that those animals must think humans are crazy.

Out of the zoo and we begin the downhill segment of the race. It was a steep downhill, steep enough for me to really gain some speed. I had also run the first five miles fast, keeping a pace around 8:30 minute miles, so with the downhills I really started making my time look amazing. I was feeling great, and was starting to think this would be my day to possibly get a personal record. The weather was perfect- mild temperatures and the sun behind clouds. I had to keep in mind however, that the end was going to have a long hill and I would need to save some energy for that.

Again I had broken the race mentally into three segments of 8 miles. Around the end of the first segment, I saw Brett for the first time. Then we ran a little south of the city, around the harbor, and doubled back. As my loyal readers know, I like doubling back so I can watch the other runners. I was still feeling great and was pretty far ahead of the 3:45 pace group, which had me on pace to get my Boston marathon qualifying time. I came around back toward our hotel and saw Brett again at mile 13. At this point I told him that I was running too fast and would be slowing down soon. Also, I told him to have a shirt and hat ready for my change at the next spot I would be seeing him at mile 18.

I did start to slow down, both intentionally and because the end segment of the hills was upon me. They were really brutal, mostly because of the trauma of already running 16 miles and from the up and down hills in the beginning. Weeks before while I was volunteering at the Chicago marathon, I saw a few runners with cramps in their legs that prevented them from finishing the race, and I know some runners that this has happened to as well. I’ve always thought “no way that would happen to me, I would be able to finish any race.” But this time I was starting to worry. My hamstrings did start cramping and I had a moment of doubt. At that point I slowed my speed and I started accepting Gatorade at every aid station in hopes of replenishing whatever I could.

Mile 18 came and went and no Brett. I wasn’t completely heartbroken, as I would have been in other races when the kids were with him. And I wasn’t worried about him because I could tell that this race had traffic in Baltimore completely destroyed. There were back ups at every intersection I passed, and I saw a line of cars that went about two miles along one of the major streets. Also, one driver was laying on his horn for so long that I didn’t hear him stop, I only ran far enough away that I couldn’t hear the horn anymore.

The only issue with not seeing Brett was that I couldn’t change my shirt and hat. I will say the temperature had started to rise and the sun had come out. I wasn’t miserable but I would have benefited from the fresh outfit.

Around mile 20 we got to the northeast point of the course and we ran around a small lake. This was a good moment for me because I could see where I was starting and where I would be finishing for this mile. I realize now that at the end of the marathon, one of the biggest challenges is just not being able to conceptualize the distance. You lose perspective because six miles doesn’t seem like much compared to how much you’ve already run, but it is a lot. You expect the miles to go along faster, but they don’t. They are the same length as any other mile. By actually seeing the entire mile laid out in front of me, it made it much easier to get through.

But as soon as that was over, we were hit with another steep hill. This time I just had to walk it. I was exhausted and having a hard time making progress on the flat parts of the course. These end hills were just insulting.

By mile 23 and 24 excitement was building on the course. There was a lot of spectator support throughout the whole race, but these last few miles were very enthusiastically attended. The neighborhoods were really nice and it made the time go faster. I really get a lot of inspiration during the end of the race when people tell me I can do it or that they are impressed. I know they are strangers and they say it to everyone, but when you make eye contact with a spectator and they tell you something encouraging, it really can improve your outlook.

Running along at this point I also had a moment when I realized I was going to be done with 31 marathons! It really hit me that it’s such a huge accomplishment and that I’m getting so close to my goal.

Brett did find me again on the course, just when I thought I probably wouldn’t see him until the end. Turns out that he did have traffic problems with his cab and he literally missed me by one minute at the last stop. At this point, I didn’t see the benefit of changing clothes. I was trying like heck to get to the finish line by 4:00 and I didn’t want to waste any time.

Again, those last two miles are not easy. You think you can just gut it out but time stands still. I wanted to get in at four hours, and it hurt, but I did speed up as best as I could. A nice downhill into the city was also very helpful. I crossed the finish line and was so very pleased to be done, regardless of my time. In the end, my time was excellent as well, so that made for an amazing race day. I was so very happy that I decided to do the race and of course that I also got to see my Maryland family.

[analeoftwocities]

Book Read: Severance by Ling Ma 

Beer Paired: Barrier Brewing and Finback Brewery Legal Tender 

What We Love About the Book 

Severance by Ling Ma is a fascinating read. We are so used to apocalypse stories, especially zombie/virus ones. They are everywhere. Harrowing tales of people trying to survive a world where disease has run rampant. A violent, action packed future where survivors are forced to recall long lost skills of survival in a primal, threatening world. And yet, severance is not that. In a shocking twist of satire and horror, Ma paints a time, post zombie apocalypse, where the banality of life became a disease that wiped out the population, and survival is bears an uncomfortable resemblance to corporate office work but with more cult like practices. Although not earth shattering, this dry, unforgiving look at millennialism, capitalism, consumerism, and even the immigrant experience is unique and captivating.

Severance follows Candace Chen, a young woman living in New York City, working as in for a corporate giant in Bible production. Although she has aspirations to be a photographer, her lack of drive and ambivalence towards everything places her in corporate America.   The novel switches back and forth from Candace remembering her life and work in New York, through the onset of “Shen Fever,” and her journey with a group of survivors headed to Chicago in search of the “facility.” The most memorizing part of this book is how Ma turns the banality and cruelty of routine into not only the virus that kills, but also the life that continues post apocalypse.

The apocalyptic virus starts in China, and soon encompasses the world. This fever “of repetition and routine,” creates zombie-like victims that continue going through the motions of their day-to-day lives, without meaning, until they starve or rot from the inside out. In her review of Severance for Vox, Constance Grady, explains, “that the Shen Fever originates in China feels grimly ironic: It’s one last ‘made in China’ for the end of the world.” In the novel, you see a mother set and reset a table for her family dinner over and over again, until she dies of starvation and rot. However with the intersecting chapters, this apocalypse is not so different from Candace’s office-drone life before. Although she recognized the inhumanity and injustice in the Chinese factories where her Bibles were made, Candace continues to do the work all the same, compartmentalizing the bad, and making her work a meaningless routine.

Although this is Ling Ma’s first novel, she is an experience writer and her talent show. She uses a viral apocalypse as a mirror to satirize and judge capitalism and our society, and what we are left with is a chilling version of the world we live in. However, this is not without humor. (I mean the group of survivors she creates are not lead by a charismatic survivalist, instead they are lead by Bob, a once IT guy with a pension for mansplaining. *insert eye roll*) Candace is unflinchingly disconnected and periodically vulnerable, culminating in a darkly funny, painfully self-aware protagonist that, with the reader, is able to see the connections between the pre and post apocalyptic society. Severance is brilliantly smart, without being hard to comprehend, and vapidly understated with out being complacent. All in all it is a fascinating read. I don’t usually love post apocalypse stories, but this was so powerful, diagnostic, and interesting, I would highly recommend it.

What We Love About the Beer 

Because Severance deals so much with capitalism in corporate American and the rest of the world (particularly China), we thought that the Barrier Brewing and Finback Brewery collaboration Legal Tender was a perfect match. Severance deals with capitalism and the impact that it has. There is a whole passage of the book where Candace, the protagonist, is forced to deal with a client who wants “gem Bibles,” for a certain price and won’t accept them for any more, no matter how many times Candace explains that their production (and the dust created by cutting the gems) is killing the Chinese factory workers. In this novel, author Ling Ma explains that in our capitalist system, money is a driving force, and oftentimes humanity is beside the point. Thus, pairing Severance with a beer called Legal Tender seemed quite fitting.

Legal Tender itself is a dry, hoppy, slightly fruity India Pale Ale, which I would consider great for its style. It is a collaboration between two awesome local breweries: Finback in Middle Village, Queens, and Barrier Brewing in Oceanside, New York. Legal Tender gives off a strong fruit smell but the flavor comes through as more dank and hoppy rather than juicy. It has a bit of a bitter aftertaste, and is a little more carbonated than other IPA’s, but in my opinion that is a good thing. I also found there to be an earthy, herb taste throughout this beer, which also felt atmospheric to the novel and the camping that the survivors do.

All in all, I thought that Legal Tender was a very good, very interesting beer. Beyond that, it made an excellent pairing for Severance, an equally interesting novel. Both are complex masteries of their respective forms, and Alexandra and I couldn’t recommend them more. Although different, they are refreshing deviations from the norm, offering us a taste of what can come of pioneers in both the literary and beer worlds. So, get your hands on Legal Tender and Severance and prepare for an impactful experience.

HELLO, ADVENTURERS! WE HOPE YOUR MONDAY IS GOING WELL! HANG IN THERE, THE WEEK AHEAD IS ANOTHER CHANCE TO BE YOU, WORK HARD, READ SOMETHING GOOD, AND HAVE A GOOD BEER AT THE END OF EACH DAY! HOPE YOU LIKED THIS REVIEW, WE ARE SO HAPPY YOU STOPPED BY TO READ IT.  HAVE YOU READ ANYTHING GOOD LATELY?  HAD ANY GOOD BEERS?  WE’D LOVE TO HEAR FROM YOU! REMEMBER TO FOLLOW US ON OUR WEBSITE, INSTAGRAM, FACEBOOK, AND TWITTER! HAPPY ADVENTURING!

CHEERS, ALEXANDRA & CHRIS

[thiswillbereportedtomanagement]

GQ's Best New Restaurants in America, 2018Every January, just after new year's, I set out across America in search of what we at GQ call the Perfect Night Out. What does that mean? Well, that's a good question. The easy part of the answer is that I'm looking for superlative restaurants that have opened in the past 12 to 18 months, the places we deem the best newcomers in the land. What makes them “perfect” is more complicated, and figuring that out for myself anew is, in some ways, precisely the purpose of each year's travel. I could give you a list of traits that the new restaurants I love nearly always display: ambition, artistry, heart, style, humor, familiarity, surprise, comfort, conscientiousness, craft—in addition to the more traditional restaurant qualities through which those are filtered, like deliciousness, hospitality, value, service, design, and so on. But the exact way in which any number of those will come together in a particular space, on a particular night, in a way that makes you say, “This. This is the only place in the world I want to be eating right now”—that remains something of a wonderful mystery.Which is what gave me hope in a year that provided abundant reasons to be depressed about dining out, even to wonder whether restaurants should still exist at all. There have been times when it's seemed that behind every inviting dining room lies, as Boston Globe critic Devra First memorably put it, “a Hieronymus Bosch tableau of struggling operators, lascivious chefs, and broke staffers.” To those who believe the only answer is to burn it all down, the 13 new restaurants in which I enjoyed this year's Perfect Nights Out—not to mention dozens of others that offered wonderful moments and meals—are, to my mind, the best argument for why restaurant culture is worth fighting to change, so that restaurants may live on. Futures of dining are like small plates: Everybody's got 'em. The other purpose of my annual journey—this year, nearly 75 restaurants across 18 cities—is to try to tease out a picture of the dining moment, some overarching theme or through line that sums up what it means to eat out in America today. This year, I threw up my hands. On an eight-degree January day in Chicago, in search of where things might be headed, I stopped into a new branch of a fast-casual dumpling chain billed as the city's first totally automated dining experience. It was fun ordering on a touch screen and then watching a bank of high-tech Automat windows for my name to appear alongside little dancing cartoon dumplings. Then the one visible employee, tasked with helping customers order while the rest presumably toiled backstage, leaned in over my shoulder and whispered: “It's the future, bro.” My first reaction was feeling like that eight-degree wind had just blown through my body. My second was to think, Get in line, bro. Futures of dining are like small plates: Everybody's got 'em. We've got more futures than we know what to do with—big, small, formal, casual, avant-garde, nostalgic, all of it up for grabs. (You get a taste of the schizophrenia in the taxonomic mania that has overtaken menus: HOT SMALL PLATES, SMALL COLD PLATES, SNACKS, BITES; FROM THE LAND; FROM THE SEA; FROM THE FIRE. Or perhaps monsieur would just like something from BOWLS?) With a few gloriously messy exceptions, the restaurants I love are ones that approach the question with some kind of clarity, a purposeful path through the clutter. The other great part of my job, of course, is that no two of those paths ever seem to be quite the same.This was the year I saw perhaps the last thing I expected to see in any restaurant, anywhere: a comment card in a David Chang restaurant. This one came with the check at Majordōmo in Los Angeles, where Chang has been spending more and more of his time. “How did we do?” it asked cheerily, followed by a range of smiley faces like those on the International Pain Scale. None of them showed a face contorted in the kind of anguish I imagined a younger Chang might have felt had he been able to look ahead to this moment. Chang, to quickly refresh, began his career as the very embodiment of client- directed hostility. Momofuku was the Kingdom of No: to substitutions, to seat backs, to dessert, to photos. Had it not been for the inconvenience of his being in the food-selling business, you got the feeling he might have done away with customers altogether.You're greeted at Majord-omo, which sits all but alone in an industrial neighborhood on the northern edge of Chinatown, by a brigade of hosts as plentiful and polite as von Trapp children. Looking up at the bay of mullioned windows, you might think the space was used to overhaul engines by day, but below there are comfy sling-back chairs, large, soothing paintings by James Jean, a soundtrack of Steely Dan. You could argue that, for all his kitchen innovation, Chang's primary vocation has been as a restless explorer of American restaurant forms—from fast food to fine dining. This confident, comfortable place is his utopian Cheesecake Factory, an impression aided by the kitchen's use of a loudspeaker ordering system that mimics the call of “Party of two” across a mall's tiled byways.What I'm trying to say is that Majordōmo is really, really, disconcertingly, nice. On the wet and chilly night I was there, Chang was in the kitchen sending out complimentary bowls of hot soup to those huddling outside on the patio. (It was a broth of miso, peas, and Benton's ham, the kind of sort-of southern, sort-of Asian, sort-of farmers'-market-driven creation on which Chang has made his bones for well over a decade now.) Even the name Majordōmo starts things off with a punny kiss of gratitude (domo is the casual Japanese term for “thanks”). It must be maddening to other restaurateurs that Chang, in addition to all his other talents, seems to have a bag of perfect restaurant names lying around. This one manages to also evoke Chang's ongoing fascination with the intersections of Italian and Asian cuisines, a theme he attacked in a more awkward manner at his last major New York opening, Nishi. You see it play out in tapioca lo mein, a purse-shaped spiral of spaghetti-sized noodles slicked with pork fat and twirled with rapini and an underlying bass line of preserved krill. Or in the waves of fermented-fish funk coming off the “bagna càuda” bathing a wedge of braised cabbage. Majordōmo riffs on the craze for Middle Eastern dining, serving steaming bing bread alongside spicy lamb and a hummus-like dip made with a fermented-chickpea substance that Momofuku has trademarked as Hozon. I can't think of a single dish that spans more cultures than what is simply billed as California Rock Crab; from left to right you get simply steamed claws served with a Meyer-lemon mayo, a shell filled with crab-fat rice, and a faithfully spicy version of the Korean marinated raw crab called ganjang gejang. I'm not sure they really make sense on the same plate, but in that, the blend of dissonances and connections, it screams nothing more clearly than Los Angeles.And, of course, all of the components are delicious, which is Chang's gift, even if he has sometimes seemed to think of it as a curse. Majordōmo may be his most unconflictedly delicious restaurant, and his most fun. Chang has said that his generation of chefs were like child actors, unprepared for the outsize cultural role they happened to fall into and struggling to figure out adulthood while in the public eye. Some, the implication goes, are Jodie Fosters; others are named Corey. Majordōmo proves he's in the former camp.If I have any objection to Majordōmo, it's that it was part of a disturbing trend of Big Important Restaurants taking up my usually more freewheeling meals in Los Angeles—my favorite dining city of the year. It was no small consolation that one of those was David Beran's Dialogue, which has 18 seats and is located in what appears to be a repurposed storage closet on the second floor of a Santa Monica food court. Beran is an alumnus of Grant Achatz's kitchens in Chicago, most recently as executive chef at Next, the restaurant that during his tenure changed its entire menu and concept every four months. Quite reasonably, he took some time off after moving to L.A., during which he engaged in such ordinary-person vacation projects as charring, pressing, and barrel-aging hundreds of pounds of onions to create gallons of burnt-onion syrup. If anybody tried to imitate it, he said gleefully, while I sat in front of his station at Dialogue's chef's counter, they were already a full year behind.The onion syrup shows up as a deep smoky note in a dish of maitake mushrooms and smoked-date puree, but not before you've had to find your way into Dialogue's windowless hidey-hole. To get there, you follow a series of e-mailed instructions that involve a dark alley and an unmarked steel door. It's kind of thrilling, but also kind of a cheat, given that you could have just taken the escalator up past the ice cream shop and grab-and-go grain bowls.The menu is built around seasons. Beran plans to change it entirely every three to four months. Mine, perversely, began with tastes of summer, though outside it was full January. You could almost detect the joy of a recent émigré from Chicago discovering L.A.'s season-less farmers' markets in the opening act: a geodesic dome of strawberry bubbles over pork belly and caviar. We proceeded through summer—a green leaf of choy sum, stuffed with strawberry nam prik, standing like a lonely tree atop cashew puree and a dusting of freeze-dried strawberries; a finger of lobster in béarnaise sauce, tucked under a blanket of nasturtium leaves, fennel pollen, and fermented-tomato powder; chamomile shortbread with olive-oil custard and whipped honey. And with that semi-dessert, we looped back and began autumn. Too often in this kind of cooking what you miss is…cooking: the smells and sounds of heat applied to ingredients. Early on in this meal, Beran began pan-searing what I thought of as Chekhov's Duck: Appearing in the first act, I thought, it damn well better pay off in the third. This one did, in the form of crisp-skinned breast, a dish of unctuous rillettes, and a sauce made from the carcass in an old-fashioned French duck press.Despite the restaurant's name—which strikes me as being awfully close to that of a fragrance you see ads for around Christmas, probably starring Johnny Depp—I found that my dinner was strikingly quiet, without a lot of the over-explaining that often accompanies such meals. Consequently, you might miss Easter eggs along the way, like the fact that each dish contains at least one element of the one that came before, or that the sound system plays only entire albums straight through, a conscious echo of how Beran wants you to view the meal as a coherent work. No matter: The sensual pleasures here are equal to the intellectual ones; the food speaks for itself. It was my favorite new restaurant of the year.Everything you need to know about the growing meaninglessness of traditional dining categories is that $220-per-diner Dialogue is described on Google Maps as a “New American Bistro.” If that descriptor applies anywhere, it's Julia Sullivan's Henrietta Red, in Nashville, where simple dishes are made dazzling by tiny details: littleneck clams dabbed with a bright escabeche of Calabrian chile and pineapple vinegar and roofed with a single nasturtium leaf; salty cured egg yolk in a beef tartare; the touch of smoked olive in a nourishing lamb sausage with lentils or the bite of whole-grain-mustard emulsion on a simple but shining fillet of wild striped bass.Is it strange that some of the best seafood I ate all year was in notably landlocked Tennessee? Hardly. Two of the best gumbos I've eaten in years were served to me in Seattle and North Carolina—which to many old-line New Orleanians might as well be Seattle for all the kinship it has with the Big Easy. The North Carolina version was at Hello, Sailor, a fantastical midcentury-modern surf shack located on the shore of Lake Norman, in the town of Cornelius, a half hour north of Charlotte. In the summer, I gather, the area is a bustling vacation spot; boaters can approach from the lake and tie up beneath the restaurant's patio. In the middle of winter, it appeared at the end of a pitch-dark road like a hallucination—all buttery wood ceilings, candy-colored fireplaces, and sexy curves. The food riffs on the kind of dishes you might have gotten at the building's previous incarnation as a dockside joint called the Rusty Rudder: crab dip spiked with pimiento cheese and crusted with brown-butter bread crumbs and benne seeds; fried bologna on a roll topped by a near solid caul of poppy seeds; soft serve for dessert. If the haute college-food-hall presentations sometimes veer toward too cute—ribs and shrimp calabash arrive on a tiny cafeteria tray—tastes like that of the gumbo make you forgive a lot: shrimpy, slippery, deep and inky as the water of the quiet lake outside the wide picture windows.The other gumbo was equally dark and contained shrimp, fried in a batter crispy enough to hold its crunch within the murk, and with a housemade Louisiana-style hot link. This was at JuneBaby, chef Edouardo Jordan's astonishing restaurant in Seattle's Ravenna neighborhood. If the idea of a great southern restaurant in the Northwest makes you skeptical, consider the benefits. Freed from any particular region of southern cooking, Jordan can roam: from the gumbo-lands of Louisiana up to Georgia and the Carolinas, where he picks up supple strips of fried pigs' ears, drizzled in spicy honey, down to Florida, where the “rice of the day” might be an almost pudding-like confection with coconut and conch.Jordan, who is himself from the Sunshine State, also dodges the dread bullet of “elevation”—a term of defensive insecurity that still gets thrown around when people feel the need to justify restaurant treatment of supposedly low-lying southern cuisine. His food may draw on high-kitchen technique, but it feels no need to apologize or protest on the plate. There's no better example than an appetizer of chitlins, or pig intestines, here served over rice in a rich pork stock. Like the French sausage andouillette, another example of Deep Offal, chitlins provoke a fleeting crisis between brain and stomach, a moment when the mind teeters on the edge, deciding whether to react to the incoming data with revulsion or desire. Then you—or at least I—find yourself downing the entire bowl in ravenous, breathless gulps. On the other end of the spectrum, but no less boldly straightforward, is peach brown Betty, done as it should be: piping hot and barely a knuckle deep, so that each bite is chewy, buttery, and crusty at once.The chitlins, too, are representative of a restaurant that is explicitly about the story of southern food as African-American food—from a hot toddy with rum, the spirit most closely entwined with slavery, to the creamer peas, a legacy of West Africa served here alongside a thick and gravy-covered chicken-fried steak. This is a meal that is narrative without being pedantic. It could only be improved by taking reservations and avoiding the stress of a waiting-list system that keeps tables empty while crowds push up against diners in the bar. More than enough people want to taste Jordan's food; making it more difficult than it needs to be is downright inhospitable, regardless of the latitude.It was, of course, the year of Fire and Fury. Or at least, in restaurants, fire: Across the land, flames continue to blaze in every open kitchen. I guess it's only a matter of time before a restaurant actually places tables inside the fire. Until that day, there's Maydān, hidden down an alley in the U Street neighborhood of Washington, D.C., with an open-fire kitchen located smack in the center of the dining room. Trussed lamb shoulders hang above, turning amber in the smoke, which exits through a soaring copper chimney. A team of chefs led by Gerald Addison and Chris Morgan labor at primitive stations, losing eyebrows and knuckle hair as they tend whole chickens, marinated in coriander, garlic, and turmeric, and lamb kebabs spiked with pistachio. With the baffling exception of bland pita bread that is by turns undercooked and cracker-like, everything is delicious, but the fire's most salubrious effect may be on those gathered around it: Conversations break out among neighboring tables at a rate that one feels wouldn't happen if the fire wasn't activating some caveman instinct for banding together to beat back the beasts and the darkness. (Outside, don't forget, is Washington, D.C., with no shortage of either.)It's no secret that the once sacrosanct categories of High and Low were long ago cast to the wind, leaving rarefied experiential dining on the top end, super-casual eating on the low, and a great, often muddled middle. It sometimes feels as though the real restaurant divide is between Big and Small. If I may vent for a moment about a great American food city that I find myself liking less and less to eat in, what is the matter with Chicago? How can a city known for amazing architecture and amazing neighborhoods center so much of its dining energy in the West Loop, where every “concept” in every oversize industrial space looks like a multi-million-dollar version of Top Chef's Restaurant Wars—cavernous, soulless, hastily assembled, and destined to be gone by next season.What a relief, then, to land at 24-seat Kitsune, far from the Loop, in North Center. This is the idiosyncratic restaurant of chef Iliana Regan, who became a champion of midwestern foraging and terroir at her first restaurant, Elizabeth. Here she applies those principles to Japanese cooking: delicate, wobbly chawanmushi swimming with bits of clam, marinated roe, and bacon; or ramen noodles made with ramps. This isn't gimmicky, or even particularly visible, “fusion,” but quiet, careful, nourishing invention.It's the kind of small, personal, focused place that stood out in this year of chaos, and it was not alone. There are few things I take as a better omen for a meal to come than spotting a baked tarte Tatin sitting near the kitchen pass, waiting to be sliced for dessert. It was one of the first things I saw at Chez Ma Tante, in Brooklyn's Greenpoint neighborhood, and I was not disappointed. The restaurant's name may come from a famous Montreal hot-dog stand, and one of its chefs, Aidan O'Neal, may have cut his teeth at Au Pied de Cochon, the High Temple of Quebecois offal-heads, but I'd say its most Montreal-like quality is a homey sense of great care and little fuss. There are soft slices of pig's-head terrine; grilled skate on the bone with classic sauce ravigote; a pork-shoulder steak, marinated in a mixture of chile, mustard, and maple syrup that imparts just the right level of heat, like an idle bug zapper. The unlikely star is kedgeree—a British colonial mash-up of curried rice and fish, here as fluffy as pilaf and studded with lightly cured cod. New York is filled with alleged “neighborhood restaurants” that are too cool, too experimental, too self-conscious to be the place you return to over and over again, say on a Tuesday night, when it's too late to cook or you want to celebrate a minor victory. If I lived near Chez Ma Tante, it would be my spot for just those days.So would Lady of the House, especially on cold Detroit nights when there's fog on the windows, Curtis Mayfield on the stereo, and a full complement of diners crowded elbow to elbow at the bar. Kate Williams's Corktown tavern feels like a midwestern twin of Chez Ma Tante, down to their coolly modern dark-wood interiors. One of my favorite single dishes of the entire year was Lady of the House's “Parisian Ham”—a simple plate of slow-poached French-style ham, shaved thin but in slices that still offer a pleasantly spongy bite. It is served on a plate accompanied by a small dish of butter whipped with Dijon mustard and fermented honey, and it takes you a moment to realize what's missing: There is no bread. You look from the ham to the butter, from the butter to the ham. You glance around: Is this some kind of test? Is there a two-way mirror somewhere? Am I supposed to just…butter the ham?So is rich, oily “shrimp butter,” served in a sardine tin in an allusion to Spanish conservas. After a few glasses of Slovenian wine, my companion, a local, began declaiming that it shouldn't be called butter at all, since the texture of the intensely orange paste is closer to that of uni; I got the feeling this was not a new monologue, but also that Lady of the House is that kind of place: where everybody knows your name and your personal pedantic demons. (Mine would be that the “Corn Dog Rillette” is really a rillette corn dog, but never mind.) There are fat slabs of pink prime rib coming out of the kitchen, but also dishes that treat plants as equal objects of lust, like cauliflower glazed with a fennel-olive marmalade and served with Parmesan sauce. On the way to the bathroom, you pass a wall covered with the staff's childhood photos. They seem to sum up everything about this happy, occasionally awkward, deeply personal restaurant.It is, of course, a blessing of our era that personal and neighborhoody hardly has to mean unambitious. That was reconfirmed for me when I sat at one of the counter seats at Houston's Theodore Rex. This is Justin Yu's re-invention of his much loved tasting-menu restaurant, Oxheart, and it reflects the easy, happy feel of a chef released from the obligation of making all his customers' decisions for them. Leon Bridges and Sam Cooke croon from the speakers; the napkins resemble terry-cloth dish towels. The food, meanwhile, is as careful and precise as the surroundings are casual: Pristine Gulf citrus is the ostensible star of a grapefruit salad, but I found myself fixated instead on the warm thin-sliced snap peas scattered across the ruby segments, an inspiration Yu says he got from an old Alain Passard pairing; tasted alone, they were sweet as sugar but, somehow, bites with grapefruit brought out a totally different set of peppery, almost horseradish notes, the way orange juice changes utterly if you've just brushed your teeth. A simple bowl of Carolina Gold rice and butter beans revealed itself as not so simple, its flavors shifting as lemon zest gave way to pepper on the way to the bottom. Steamed snapper in a smoked fumet broth thickened with spinach pistou and filled with rustically cut mirepoix managed to evoke China, France, and Texas simultaneously. I would have been happy to let Yu design my dinner; perhaps I wouldn't have ended up with three dishes that had soupy bases. But until he returns to tasting menus, I'll focus instead on his simple Paris-Brest: two rings of pâte à choux sandwiching a pillow of barnyardy Swiss-cheese pastry cream and burnt honey. I crave it more than any other dessert I ate this year.The Charter Oak, St. Helena, CA: High and low, casual and fancy: All mix delightfully by the light of a blazing hearth in the heart of the Napa Valley.Chez Ma Tante, Brooklyn: A little bit Montreal, a little bit France, this Greenpoint corner outpost is at its core all Brooklyn.Cote, New York City: The happy collision of American and Korean steak-house traditions makes for a raucous and delicious night in N.Y.C.Dialogue, Santa Monica: This tiny tasting-menu joint, tucked into a food court, is a revelation about the possibilities of dinner as storytelling.Hello, Sailor, Cornelius, NC: This midcentury-modern haven features expert cocktails and fine-tuned southern classics.Henrietta Red, Nashville: Pristine oysters and deftly cooked seafood are the anchor of Julia Sullivan's cool and comfortable joint.JuneBaby, Seattle: Southern food has rarely tasted as vital as it does under Edouardo Jordan's hand—way, way above the Mason-Dixon Line.Kitsune, Chicago: “Fusion” isn't a dirty word when it's as delicate as this mash-up of Japanese cooking and midwestern bounty.Lady of the House, Detroit: From the comfy bar to the buttered Parisian ham, Kate Williams has created a neighborhood restaurant to dream of.Majordōmo, Los Angeles: Chang's first West Coast outpost is everything you love about Momofuku, plus everything he loves about L.A.Maydān, Washington, D.C.: Gather around the blazing indoor fire for meats, meze, and other Middle Eastern eats at this literal D.C. hot spot.Theodore Rex, Houston: Justin Yu's latest—delayed by Hurricane Harvey—is an ambitious and welcome successor to his beloved Oxheart.Xochi, Houston: The breadth and depth of Oaxacan cooking is on magnificent display at this slick H-Town jewel from Hugo Ortega.Mind you, big, slick, and ripe for replication can have its charms, too. The concept at New York's Cote is the marriage of American steak with Korean barbecue—the natural and brilliant extension of how accustomed we've become to good beef and how deeply Korean flavors have become entrenched in the American palate. On the relatively modestly priced “Butcher's Feast,” you get pieces of hanger steak, 45-day-aged rib eye, and intensely marbled Wagyu flatiron before ending with slices of more traditionally marinated short rib, or kalbi, scored so that they curl and char on the grill like hen-of-the-woods mushrooms. That grill is located in the center of the table, equipped with a venting system that sucks fumes away through subterranean ducts. In the era of the all-powerful big-name chef, every member of the front of house does the cooking here—fairly leaping over one another to tend to the beef as it curls and spits on the grill before you.The table technology plays an important role, eliminating the need for venting hoods over each table and thus leaving space for such dinner niceties as eye contact and toasting. So does the fact that you end up eating a satisfying but relatively small amount of beef compared with an American steak house, while the acid of the accompanying *banchan—*kimchi, bright green scallions dressed in gochujang vinaigrette, the fermented-bean-paste condiment called ssamjang—further diffuses the impact of the beef's richness. If all this results in a room that gets a little giddy and deafening, it's also incentive to order another bottle of soju and, rather than seek a solution, become part of the problem.Likewise, the highest levels of cooking can thrive in the most sterile nooks. Xochi, Hugo Ortega's Oaxacan restaurant, tucked into a glass-sheathed corner of a soaring Marriott Marquis in downtown Houston, has all the appearances of a safe, unchallenging haven for corporate retreaters and badge-wearing convention-goers. Then you get a taste of its mole. Moles, actually—there are at least eight of them on any given night, a range as wide and varied as a rainbow. Fifteen dollars gets you a sample of four, accompanied by fresh corn tortillas, but there's nothing to say you can't double up and get the whole spectrum, spread out before you like a vibraphone: Here are the bright, clear notes of the amarillo; you'll taste it again later, ringing clearly alongside the brininess of wood-roasted oysters; next, the dusky middle tones of red coloradito and murky chicatana, which is made with ants; finally the deep, burnt bass notes of chilhuacle and chinchillo. That last one, too, will make an appearance later, on beef decorating the wide, flat, and crackling street tortillas, called tlayudas, that are served at lunch. Ortega, whose 16-year-old restaurant, Hugo's, helped revolutionize Houston's Mexican dining scene, introduces a whole world of Oaxacan tastes here. The sopa de piedra, a fish-and-shrimp stew served bubbling furiously from the last-second addition of blisteringly hot river stones, is a deep, orange blast of seafood flavor. A pool of blue-corn cream brings soft, earthy notes to a dessert of corn ice cream sculpted into tiny cobs. But it's those multidimensional moles I keep returning to. “All those famous French sauces?” my enthusiastic companion raved. “These kick all of their asses.” It was hard for me to disagree.And sometimes you just want to embrace the chaos. Witness The Charter Oak, in St. Helena, California, in the middle of the Napa Valley. This is theoretically the casual counterpart to Christopher Kostow and Nathaniel Dorn's three-Michelin-star Restaurant at Meadowood, just up the road. In fact, it's a riot of conflicting signs: The hosts wear blazers; the servers, butcher's aprons; and, for no discernible reason, the chefs, Secret Service earpieces. Cocktails come in pre-batched flasks and punch bowls for the table; water, in curvy pewter-and-glass jugs appropriate for bathing Muses on Greek urns; dessert on a modern butcher-block dessert cart.Does any of it matter? Not in the least. There are some restaurants where you get the feeling that everybody is at least momentarily aware of how lucky they are to be there, and this is one. When you enter the bank-like dining room, you're faced with a massive hearth—a place my server pronounced so that it rhymed with “earth.” Off the flames come thick pieces of sourdough, made with a 25-year-old starter, kissed with smoke and delicious with slices of homemade mortadella. “Tostones” are smashed potatoes, deep-fried and tossed with honey, vinegar, sea salt, and seaweed brown butter. These are potato skins, to be clear, and utterly impossible to stop eating. A luscious beef rib is smoked over the wood from Cabernet barrels and comes alongside blistered beets dressed in rendered aged-beef fat. The dessert cart came by, and the chef pushing it cracked a dome of meringue for a Pavlova with a sharp thwack of her spoon. We perused the whiskey menu, deciding to pass on a $240 shot of Orphan Barrel bourbon.None of it made any sense, but at that moment it was also hard to imagine having more fun. In 2018, would it surprise anyone to learn that the great American style might just be incoherence?Brett Martin is a GQ correspondent.This story originally appeared in the May 2018 issue with the title "The Perfect Night Out: GQ's Best New Restaurants 2018"

https://www.gq.com/story/best-new-restaurants-2018

[yollocalli]

By Gerardo Salgado Flores

“Nothing compares to the simple pleasure of a Bike Ride” – John F. Kennedy

Andrew Bermudez collects bicycles throughout the Chicagoland area, sorting damaged and undamaged bikes as a volunteer coordinator at Working Bikes. Along with Bermudez, volunteers Nick Kapaun and Christopher Miller follow the Working Bikes mission of bringing back to life bicycles that are abandoned or no longer being used.

Working Bikes also hosts volunteer sessions and teaches people how to repair and work on bicycles, so they can be donated to different charities, shelters, and programs for ex-offender reentry, refugee resettlement and youth empowerment.

I talked with Bermudez, Kapaun and Miller about bicycling in Chicago, issues cyclists face everyday and what could better the lives of Chicago cyclists. I asked about whether all neighborhoods have equal access to biking, whether there needs to be more awareness of biking and if Divvy Bikes — the city bike rental and bike-share program — gives Working Bikes some competition.

I was curious to know their thoughts on Divvy Bikes: Are they good for Chicago? Are they accessible to everyone? And how do they compare to Working Bikes?

“Anyone can apply to receive a bike, lock and helmet from Working Bikes,” Bermudez said. “It is just required to bring a letter of recommendation from an employer, social worker, or case manager, also a $20 co-pay if possible.”

“Working Bikes provides affordable and healthy transportation to members of the surrounding communities and throughout Chicago,” he continued. “Divvy Bikes does not give competition to Working Bikes, we are actually friends with them as we receive saddles, wires and pedals [from Divvy]. Divvy Bikes is great for Chicago, it’s cool to see that Chicago has a bike-sharing program. It is good that Working Bikes and Divvy exist.”

Some Chicagoans wonder how Divvy decided to choose where to locate its stations. Does Divvy serve all neighborhoods equally?

According to Divvy’s website: “Many factors are taken into consideration when deciding where to place Divvy stations…ranging from population density and business permits to solar power access consideration and other stations in the surrounding network.”

Seventy-five percent of Divvy riders use this public bike-sharing program to get to or from public transportation. In early 2013, Divvy started creating a core of stations from downtown Chicago out to its surrounding neighborhoods. Then, once the initial network was built, they decided where to place stations based on demand. That means some low-income neighborhoods haven’t been tackled due to lack of awareness about cycling as a transportation alternative, or lack of information on available bike trails and bike paths.

Many people from low-income neighborhoods may have access to a Divvy Bike station, but at a cost of distance. “Low-income neighborhoods should be the priority,” said Bermudez. “It is so expensive to buy a car, but a bike is a more accessible form of transportation.”

People can request a Divvy station in their neighborhood by going to the Divvy website.

Then, there’s also the question of whether neighborhoods have adequate bike lanes

“I would like to see roads and bike lanes as a resource not distributed based on property taxes or wealth of the neighborhood,” Miller said.

Adopt and Adapt New Paths

Bike access isn’t the only factor that people should be aware of. Potential bikers need to know about bike maintenance, investments in equipment, infrastructure, rules of the road and bicycling activities around Chicago.

Many bicyclists face issues while commuting to work, school, or when exercising, but it all depends on what part of the city you decide to bike in.

Certain neighborhoods may have adapted to high bicycling activity. Most drivers, pedestrians and other cyclists are well aware of their surroundings in those neighborhoods. When neighborhood residents are not aware of biking, that can create dangerous situations. Miller recalls experiencing anger from motorists and potentially being cut-off by drivers. Kapaun has been doored or nearly doored frequently while commuting to work in Lincoln Square.

Kapaun also often encounters issues biking from the Northwest Side of Chicago to the suburbs.

“There are not many bike lanes and drivers pass by faster because of the more open and wider streets,” he said. “And they tend to have more near misses. It makes it almost impossible to get out of the city.”

At the end of the conversation, we discussed improvements that could aid Chicagoans who use a bicycle to commute or for recreation, and make a better future for the bicycling community.

Bermudez would like to see more protected bike lanes, as lack of them is the most common reason why a Chicagoan might not use a bicycle.

Meanwhile, Miller would like to see trails and bike paths on repurposed train tracks like the elevated 606 walking and biking trail in Logan Square, but more like a highway and exclusively for cyclists to get around Chicago.

He also would like to see Chicagoans adopt the “Dutch Reach,” a well-known, ingenious technique in the Netherlands where drivers reach and open their door with their right hand rather than with their left. This method makes it easy for drivers to look behind for oncoming traffic, potentially avoiding an accident with a cyclist.

It would be great to have this habit catch on in Chicago, possibly preventing many cyclists from being doored.

Chicago could also learn about bike trails from Amsterdam. When Kapaun traveled there, he noticed while cycling in three major metropolitan areas for a total of 30 miles that he did not have to leave a single bike lane or trail. He did not have to worry about traffic while cycling 50 feet next to a highway.

Cyclists v. the Road

There are various non-profits around Chicago that try to help support a more economic and eco-friendly way to commute for working class people. For example, the Active Transportation Alliance has been helping the fight for better bicycling in Chicago.

Active Transportation Alliance (ATA) started the campaign “Bikeways for All” to propose 180 miles of new low-stress biking routes that prioritize three categories: Protected Bike Lanes, Neighborhood Greenways and Urban Trails.

I sat down with Advocacy Director Jim Merrell to talk about ATA’s work.

“Bikeways for All is a campaign that Active Transportation launched in the Fall of 2015 and the goal is really to talk about our vision for the future of biking in the city of Chicago with the real focus on bike infrastructure and bike routes,” he said. “Active Transportation Alliance works so everybody in the city no matter where they live can safely use a bicycle to get to any destination, and that means providing focus with the best and highest quality bike routes possible.”

The different types of low-stress routes that ATA proposes — protected lanes, neighborhood greenways and urban trails — all have a different purpose and work in different parts of the city. Protected lanes are on main commercial streets, neighborhood greenways are in residential areas and urban trails are like highways for cyclists.

“What Bikeways for All is attempting to do is to put forward a vision for how ATA can create a connected network of these high quality lanes that serve all ages and every community equally,” Merrell said.

A Matter of Safety

South Side cyclist Monica Pizano used to be an avid bike commuter, but now she commutes to work by car since a bike accident in the fall of 2016. Her parents fear that her next accident could be her last bike ride.

Pizano started cycling at the age of 7, initially as an outlet for her adrenaline. It was also a smart economic and logistical choice.

“I started venturing on a bike due to financial status,” she said. “Although I had a U-Pass [for public transit], I was also on a time budget, and a bike was the perfect way for transportation.”

Pizano attended Columbia College downtown, where parking is difficult and expensive. “So it was all a matter of efficiency and economic status,” she said.

Pizano’s accident happened on 47th and Halsted streets, at around 3 a.m. She had taken the L train halfway home from downtown, to the 47th Street red line stop. Rather than taking a bus, she would typically bike the rest of the way.

But that night, cycling west on 47th, at the intersection with Halsted while her light turned green and the opposite turned red, a guy tried to beat the red light. He picked up velocity and hit Pizano in the middle of the intersection.

“There were no witnesses, no cameras, so it was a hit-and-run,” Pizano said. She does not remember what happened right after the accident. Later, regaining consciousness at the hospital, the policemen told her that she was sitting on the curb, and she found blood on her pants.

Pizano was riding a road bike. All she can remember about the vehicle was it was a small sports car.

“I went to retrieve my bike from the police station and this is when I realized that ‘Damn, this could have been bad,” said Pizano.

After the accident, she tried to salvage what was left of her bike, but only retrieved her handlebar and her chain. Her physical injuries were only a broken nose and a missing tooth. Pizano was lucky to survive without more serious injuries, but accidents like this may still occur until more bike lanes that offer better protection are installed.

“There is a bike lane on Halsted going north to south, but there isn’t a bike lane on 47th,” noted Pizano. “There’s actually not a lot of bike lanes on the South Side of Chicago going east-west. From Back of the Yards to McKinley Park, there is no median way to pass by. You either have to go on Western or Ashland which are messed up streets for bicycling.”

A Question of Equity

Little Village resident Isidro de la Paz is also a cyclist.

He is retired and he loves cycling, using his bike three times a week for 30 minutes at least. He rides his bicycle to exercise and to stay active, but he says it is risky to ride in his neighborhood.

“It is very dangerous to ride a bicycle when there are no bike lanes, especially in horrible weather conditions,” he said.

De la Paz used to ride on the sidewalk to be farther from cars, but now officers can give tickets to people 12 and older cycling on sidewalks. De la Paz has been stopped by police for riding on the sidewalk during harsh weather.

De la Paz complains about the lack of bike infrastructure in his neighborhood, and says it is unfair that cyclists do not get the same treatment as motorists and drivers.

“It is in unfair that cyclists have to ride on streets where they are risking their life, as well as being stopped by police, if cyclists have no other way than to take a sidewalk for their own safety,” De la Paz said.

Many cyclists believe that the South Side is being discriminated against as they have little to no bike infrastructure compared to North Side residents.

Pizano also speaks about bike equity and how Chicago has a lot of industrial areas which cut off many bike lanes in working class neighborhoods like Little Village and Back of the Yards.

According to the Active Transportation Alliance’s campaign Bikeways for All, 29 percent of South Side Chicagoans have access to a bikeway between a half mile and a mile away. West Side Chicagoans have a 26 percent chance of this, while Northsiders have a low 18 percent. This might make it sound like South and West Side residents have more bike lane access.

But the data is deceptive, because of low population densities and land use patterns including heavy industry on the South and West Sides

There might be a bike lane through an industrial area on the South Side, but because of the industry there might be no direct route to the bike lanes from nearby residences. Bike lanes in industrial areas aren’t safe if the road is traversed by heavy trucks, while some of the fastest routes have too much car traffic for bikes to use. And bike lanes through industrial areas likely don’t lead toward downtown or other places locals are headed.

“There are a lot of sections [on the South and West Side] that are chopped off and inaccessible for traffic, and while bicycling it is more noticeable because you have to find alternatives, and a lot of times end up biking next to a semi,” said Pizano.

Back on the Pedal

While biking infrastructure still needs a lot of improvement, Chicagoans are working on raising awareness about bicycling, educating people and fighting for better conditions. In addition to Active Transportation Alliance’s work, Walk Bike Co. is a non-profit planning group that manages a city-funded education and encouragement program, the City of Chicago’s Bicycling and Safe route ambassadors. These ambassadors work with school children, motorists and bicyclists, promoting safe use of active modes of transportation and potentially reducing and eliminating traffic fatalities and serious injuries.

Teams of ambassadors do demonstrations and have conversations in public areas like community events, schools and summer camps. And this summer, they have planned to target Little Village residents and other South Side neighborhoods!

Since the year 2000, rates of biking have tripled in Chicago, according to the ATA. A few years ago the ATA produced a report showing an average of 125 bike trips every day, taking into consideration that the numbers are a little higher during the summer months versus the winter when only about 40 percent of summer cyclists are still riding. Furthermore, the ATA has definitely noticed that the people of Chicago are more likely to use bike lanes when a Low-Stress bike lane is installed.

Ultimately, Merrell and Pizano concur that if all Chicagoans feel safe while traveling on their bikes, have the proper information about their rights and responsibilities as a cyclist and trust the roads and bike lanes, then they will most likely use a bicycle as a mode of transportation.

And I personally think that: Cycling should be a synonym for freedom, but there is no freedom when you are risking your life.

[jewishphilosophyplace]

Ashkenazi Jew Off-White Christian Gentile

Speaking personally, as a performative speech act, I will never self-identify in public “as a white Jew.” While I am white, or some kind of white, and while I certainly enjoy white privilege, I do not identify myself as such. The term “white Jew” eludes so many scales of historical and social-cultural difference and creates so many disassociations for it to do anything but jar. First, it is not an indigenous Jewish category. Second, it flies against the principle of self-determination. Ashkenazi Jews become white people in America, but are Jews, even Ashkenazi Jews, white “like” non-Jews? Do they carry the same easy privilege as “other” white people? Or are they defined by a set historical circumstances and social constellations that are unique to their own situation and that have gone undertheorized of late?

Ashkenazi Jews are not POC, about that one can clearly agree. But are Jews white? I cannot speak “as a Mizrachi Jew,” and Jews of Color will dissent that, no, not all Jews are white. But can we at least say that Ashkenazi Jews and Ashkenazi Judaism are white? Is European Jewish memory white? Or, in America, are Ashkenazi Jews but a special shade of white, perhaps off-white, and always differentiated as such. Neither POC nor exactly white, Ashkenazi Jews are Jews, and off-white as such. As such, the whiteness of Ashkenazi Jews is a negative identity, ascribed to Jews by others, by POC. Ashkenazi Jews are not POC, and with that comes definite privilege and opportunity based primarily on skin color. That Ashkenazi and perhaps most Mizrachi Jews do not suffer with what POC have to suffer is an ongoing and systematic difference. Skin deep, however, this goes only so far as to explain the question of Jewish difference in a white racist society. Ashkenazi (and Mizrachi) Jews can be as racist as the next white person in America. About that the evidence is overwhelming. But is whiteness the sum of whiteness in America? Are there no other intersectional factors left to complicate whiteness as a distinct social category, factors that real and imagined Jewish difference might actually serve to highlight? In short, whiteness is itself an intersection, major parts of which exclude Jews and even Ashkenazi Jews.

To begin with, whiteness is a majority status, a “comfort” or fit into the general order of things as norm. Alongside places and things like mainline churches, fin de siècle Boston Brahmin culture, golf pants and penny loafers, martinis, the country club and restricted residential covenants, other emblems of white Americanness are the overstuffed lounge chair, the gas guzzling SUV, all you can eat buffets in Las Vegas, super-sized drinks. Comfort is a psycho-physical, political disposition. You count among the majority. There is no larger and more powerful thing out there to perturb one’s sense of self or place in the world. Whiteness in America entails that one moves safely and unrestricted about in a large world that extends beyond one’s immediate circle. Perfectly free and genuinely loose, without an iota of surface anxiety, one does what one wants, confident that everything reflects one’s image –clear skin, straight hair, clean hands, and strong legs. Are “American Jews” white like that? Do they stand out like that? Does that picture of white comfort comport with the standard experience or picture of American Jewishness? In America, this may in fact be so for the last sixty years or so, largely on the coasts and in other big cities like Chicago, mostly in those regions, neighborhoods, institutions, and industries that Jews tend to populate in disproportionate numbers. I am not so sure about the fit of Jews and Judaism into the rest of the country.

Next: unnamed in discussions today in leftist intellectual and activist circles are two essential categories that complicate stabilized questions about Ashkenazi Jews and race. Those are Christian-ness (not Christian belief per se) and gentile-ness. Amongst themselves, Jews of my parents’ generation were still quite fluent about the real and imagined kinds of difference represented by “goyim.” The children of immigrants, they would not have considered themselves to be white precisely because they perceived themselves in relation to gentiles. Specialists in American Jewish folklore can correct me, but it’s my understanding that by “goy” was generally meant white people, most typically the sub-set of WASPS. Were African Americans ever goyim? The s-word, a derogatory term derived from Yiddish was the special term used for them. Happily, there is a lot of discomfort today with both types of Jewish racism among liberal and more-assimilated Jews. But omitting the category of “gentile” from the discussion of Jews and whiteness obscures the fact that, at the intersection of whiteness, Christian-ness and gentile-ness are the two other dominant hegemonic social structures in this country. On one hand, this is complicated by the fact that the vast majority African Americans are either Christian or post-Chrisitian. Conversely, and it is an odd thing to have to say, if all Ashkenazi Jews were Christian, then they would not, for the most part, be Jewish; almost but not certainly, they would then be “perfectly white.”

It is commonplace to note that for most white people there is no need to name whiteness, to name themselves as white. Whites don’t identify as white except for the extreme racists, whereas garden variety racism simply presumes dominant, majority status. That Jews have to self-identify, to assert their difference by way of  naming it makes them more like POC than your standard white people. While this may or may not remain true for Irish, Italian, or Scandinavian Americans, the question of identity is especially fraught for American Jews as a community that is part of a people with a historically pronounced minoritarian experience and self-awareness.

The complementary fact that Jews are named as such by others, even gratuitously called out alike by white racists and by POC, usually at the activist fringe, makes the same point about the non-standard character of Ashkenazi Jewish whiteness. While Jews and even Judaism fit here and there more or less comfortably into specific sections of white America, one still wants to ask if that fit can ever be perfect in a gentile culture dominated by Christians, Christianity, and post-Christian gentile culture. The genuine “comfort” that is the sense that one take for granted the order of things that Ashkenazi Jews can and do enjoy as white people in America is subject to all kinds of disruptive shocks, when all of a sudden Jews get singled out on either the fascist alt-right or on the anti-Zionist left in social justice movements.

Despite everything that we know about real and imagined Ashkenazi Jewish privilege, what all Jews, regardless of color or personal life history, will always lack is the comfort of numbers. Jewish identity of whatever racial stripe is a small social formation. It is small vis-à-vis the big white world, and also small in relation to large so-called minority communities in this country (African Americans, Latino American, or Asian Americans) who together, very soon, will constitute a majority in the United States, communities whose members number in the many millions. With constitutional protections and promise of equal citizenship, America is a unique phenomenon in the history of the Jews. As a small social formation, Jews have historically been reliant on the larger configuration of a hegemonic “host,” whether or not they contribute to that social body, participate in that social body, and identify with that social body, enjoying or not enjoying privileges conferred by that participation. This participation is punctured by multiple points of disconnect between Jewish and gentile society (itself white, black, and brown). The Jewish community is too small to be white. There are simply not enough Ashkenazi Jews in this country to be able to count in complete comfort as anything but off-white, always at least a little different and sometimes very different than the gentile majority, depending always on social milieu. Sooner or later if not now and forever, there will always be something that calls a Jew out, undercutting the gentile comfort that lies as an essential mark at the intersection of whiteness.

http://ift.tt/2uYuINx

[eitherandor-blog]

White Flag

It’s been a month.  

A full month and a day.  If we only go at this for four years, that means we have only (roughly) 47 months remaining.  React accordingly.

In that time, we have said goodbye to one president, and hello to another.  Although to be fair, I don’t think Adele is singing to this man..

We will get to Trump momentarily but in the interim, take a minute to reflect on where we have been:

In 2008, we elected Barack Hussein Obama the 44th President of the United States.  I remember where I was, early in my Sophomore year of undergrad.  With ample uncertainty- and my house divided- I cried- happily, to be clear- after listening to the acceptance speech from Obama.  I watched and listened as he was met with applause amid a dark November night, near my hometown in Chicago.  Shortly after, I rushed to central campus (colloquially referred to as “The Diag”) to celebrate.  I was met with a mix of students, pouring out of dorms- I mean, residence halls.  Music was played as we frolicked across campus, filling streets, singing and chanting.  It was one of a few moments in my life where I was filled with a tangible synergy, some shared sense of unity between myself and others, some students who I knew, some strangers, to commemorate this occasion.  

Barack Obama was not perfect.  He deported more people in his tenure than any president (..before him), and had a different but related immigration ban to some countries ‘of concern.’  Obama did not enter office supporting Gay Marriage or [initially] recognize the multiple identities part of the LGBTQ+ communities.  He was instrumental in the creation of the Affordable Care Act (mostly a positive) but left it suspect to critique and possible erasure by his successor.  Though war and conflict were not prominent to his presidency, they were present.  Our systems of prejudice were sadly not undone.

Some thought he did not live up to the hype, did not change enough; others feel like his 8 years in office were THE WORST.  There were those that thought the president spent too much time talking about issues of race and equity, while other people *hoped* he could undue the historical, cyclical American pattern of subjugation so core to our country.  He also- fairly or not- will be connected and blamed by some for an inability to unite the Democratic Party and pass the torch to a subsequent Democratic President rather than our current status.

Not perfect nor exempt of fault.  No politician, president, or person, is perfect.  Nor am I, as is reiterated in one of my favorite films, “Now I ain’t saying I’m perfect cause I’m not.”  That is not an excuse, merely a fact to consider as we evaluate his time in office.  

Like him or not, he was our President.  He was definitely my first President: the first I really, truly remember; the first I voted for; the first I followed.  As a young person- and maybe as someone liberal though I would argue it exceeded ideology- President Obama made me care about politics.  I feel like I learned a lot and took an interest in our political system in a new and vital way.

Some of this was that he coincided with my own maturation.  This may have been relevant for many young adults before me and their corresponding president.  Some will say he was one of the greatest, while many others may say he was chronologically speaking, just the 44th.  He was mine, and one for so many.  I know his goodbye as President was something I focused on, I critiqued, I felt, and will remember.  And, as someone now living in Chicago, I welcome his arrival and return to the city where he got his start.  You never forget your first.

...

Okay, enough nostalgia, back to the current reality.  We got this new guy in the White House (and how fitting that THAT’S the name of the building.  Remember that portion of FLOTUS’ speech?  The 360 from then to now is eery).

The day after getting elected, people showed up, the world over, to “acknowledge” this election.  Women’s marches spawned around the world as millions of people stood, rallied, and protested the Trump election.  Several marches had to be redirected or even canceled due to the expansive turnout.  Though these were dubbed as marches for women’s rights, it seemed like the whole world participated..but they didn’t.  People in part avoided the march due to messaging that it was exclusive or narrow-minded, and other people ended up surprised as they were welcomed into the fold of activism and action of Women’s Marches.

I know for me, I was always going to be marching.  Although I identify as a man, I know there were too many people, too many reasons to march.  For me, this felt like something much bigger than me, than gender, than a binary.  I know not everyone agrees, and it’s why we have to work to keep being inclusive, making space and seeing the full scope of identities, experiences, and issues that affect more than the most privileged among us.  

Now I want to take a minute and talk about the intersection of privilege and activism.  Anyone can participate, right?  Well, kinda-sorta.  In my humble opinion, everyone should always be included, engaged, and wrapped up in the work as it’s our struggles are all interconnected.  However, we also know that there are gatherings that media, politicians and police may describe as “peaceful protests” and others “riots,” often based on who was in attendance rather than any action/inaction that transpired.  

The costs are also higher for those with more at risk.  For me, to show up, to march to be civilly disobedient, I’m pretty much guaranteed safe passage from home to event and then back home.  This is in part due to my whiteness, my cisgender, ability status, being a US citizen, among others.  For other folks, even the mere possibility of speaking up or out can be met with law and order, or worse.

What we also need consider is not to step on one another (the lesser, weaker, quiet or oppressed) in our efforts.  Many may have grown familiar with the ‘Hope’ Obama signs during the campaign trail many moons ago (refresher here).  Well, the artist returned to demonstrate nationalism across the broad American landscape.  Unfortunately, this was done without fully considering impact or the folks offended- specifically the woman wearing an hijab of an American flag (here).  If your action, your activism and your protest denigrate another, what have you done but further your own at the expense of another.

...

Still, he’s president.

There have been subsequent marches, protests, rallies and- dare I say it?- riots, too.  I hope if you showed up for the first, you have continued to support the others that have followed, however you can.

While the marches may get the most publicity, there are innumerable other forms of activism, now and forever.  Letter-writing campaigns may be a thing of the past (though please, go ahead and send that email!).  However, there’s no shortage of online petitions or politicians to call.  Can we find a way to text Paul Ryan?  Or better yet, if Barack wants my number, I’m cool with him getting in touch..

Other than texting with former presidents, you can do so much more.  I know, some folks are not super comfortable cold-calling a political figure and complaining/advocating on a topic (Me too!  Here’s a road map to get started.).  We have to keep doing, because we have so much more to do.  Others have contemplated next steps to take. 

So to prepare, first educate yourself!  There are a bounty of resources out there to learn more about politics and lauding (fingers-crossed) the system of checks and balances in play.  You can learn more about how we have gotten to this point in our history, even hidden aspects that uphold our hierarchy and systems.  You can also arm yourself with words and reading from this list of defiance.

The concrete moments that have followed are hard to track.  As one who follows the sports world (maybe too much sometimes), I have appreciated witnessing the political climate evident among athletes and the sports world at large.  It’s on the lips of the outspoken and the more soft-spoken, even brought up by nasty coaches; politics of the SuperBowl halftime show as well as some victors’ plans to celebrate (or not) at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.  

This is not without cost- for athletes and the rest.  That does not mean to speak; instead, it requires speaking louder.  It requires listening, making room for other voices beyond one’s periphery.   

Now there are a plethora of opportunities to savor the artistic licenses employed in response to the latest president.  Sure, there are the memorable memes and SNL performances- eager to see where these go next.  A few European countries are taking part in the fun, responding to the notion that America need be 1st, exclaimed by the new President.  

And while that humor is important, it is rooted in truth.  Truth of a new president, a fragmented nation with many echoing his actions and provocations, and a country with a history to support it.

Recognize too the power of the people.  I am a bit embarrassed to say that I am just learning this truth now.  There are so many others, leaders and true activists, who have been knee-deep in the filth for quite some time.  When I look across my world of people, I am reminded of the chorus to the blog title, White Flag:

I could surrender but I'd Just be pretending, no I'd Rather be dead than live a lie Burn the white flag Burn the white flag

I do not often know what is the right action or next move to make.  I know that I am weary from the world but that I am also safer than others.  It is on me, on us, to respond, to hold our government accountable, to work toward a more perfect union.  Nevertheless, she persisted.  She was not alone.  We too must remember: we are not alone.  We are not obligated to endure.  We are obligated to object, to mobilize, to act.  No time for a white flag.  Not now, not ever.

(This blog is named after a song written by Joseph, not to be confused with the Dido hit.  As I would guess most are not yet familiar, Joseph is a trio of sisters, singing and harmonizing on a mix of topics.  This song seemed appropriate, one of many I listen to to stay motivated.  The full album is one of my recent faves; check it out and get a little introduction via White Flag.)

[canaryatlaw]

alright well, today was WILD. mostly in a good way, lol. I originally had my alarm set for 9:30 am with the intention of meeting Jess for brunch at 10. She was taking the day off from work because tickets for the KPop band’s she’s like the most into (aka Monsta X (MX) they’ll be talked about a lot today) concert was going on sale today and given our past experience trying to buy tickets for similar concerts (read: bad) we knew we were gonna have to try really hard for these, so we had a whole plan laid out. But when my alarm went off I had a message from Jess saying she got a note to be waiting for a package till like 10:30, so I went back to sleep until like 10 at which point I got up and got dressed to head out. We were gonna go to the vegetarian place but when I walked out to the street the intersection going to main street was like, completely blocked off, sidewalks and all, so I’d have to have gone one block west and then south and the east to actually get to main street, and instead of doing that we said fuck it we’d just go to the usual place that was like two blocks west of the intersection, so we met there instead and had brunch. Once we finished we returned to my apartment, the two goals for the day were to get caught up on tv shows we were behind on (Supergirl and Arrow in this case) and get tickets. So we started with Supergirl and watched the last 4 episodes of that, I’d seen the last two but not the two before that and Jess hadn’t seen any of them so we just watched them all through. We started getting geared up for the ticket purchasing, I think I explained this before but I don’t expect everyone to read every post so I’ll explain it again, basically ten minutes before the tickets are set to go on sale you can join a “pre-queue” and when it turns to the time everyone in the pre-queue is randomly placed in line, with anybody joining the queue after that goes to the end. The default position tends to be “2,000+ in front of you” which can differ widely because the venues for the smaller bands are like 3,000 seats whereas the big groups like BTS were playing in the fucking football stadium with like 50,000 seats, so 2,000 in front has a very different context depending on the size of the place. But you get advanced in line wherever you were placed it’ll start moving up and eventually get you to under 2,000 and then let you in, at which point you have to pick your tickets and pay for them, but there are a bunch of other people in there at the same time trying to pick tickets, so it can be kinda difficult to find ones that someone else didn’t just grab. so to give ourselves the best chances of getting this we had created multiple accounts so we could have the queue up in multiple windows in hope that it would give us a better chance of getting one placed further up in the queue. The tickets went on sale at 4 pm local time of the concert, and we were gonna try for New York tickets at 3 pm our time (because my parents live there and it’s always an easy excuse for a trip) with potentially looking at Atlanta at the same time, and then when it hit 4 for us we’d try for Chicago. So this whole time Jess is a giant ball of nerves and just generally freaking out, because yes she wants tickets, but she really wants the VIP tickets that let you actually meet the band and you can do this thing called “hi-touch” which is basically high fiving them from what I understand, but of course there are very few of those tickets and it was all up to the randomized queue. so I’m sitting there with my two laptops open and two windows open on each where Jess has ones on her laptop and her phone. It turns 3 pm and all of the windows refresh.....all of them are 2,000+. damn. the New York theatre has a capacity of 5,600 (I just looked that up, but that’s about what I thought at the time) so it’s no football stadium but the Chicago venue was only like 4,400 (again, just looked that up) so we potentially had a better shot in NY but there would probably also be more people trying for tickets. So we’re sitting there hoping for our things to advance, and one of my windows, the one attached to my main account starts moving forward slowly but surely (or quicker than any of the others at least) and around 3:20 we get inside, at which point we were able to grab like second tier tickets, which were good, but of course didn’t include the hi-touch Jess really wanted so we’d grab the tickets for now (we could always resell them later, they’re going for a ton on stubhub right now) and see what happens in Chicago. The one browser we had up for Atlanta had just been a total bust so we ignored that one. so the hour advances and it gets closer to 4 and everyone is so anxious!!! but we got this, I know we do, and when it hits 4, to our amazement, my main account (again!) instead of showing up with 2,000+ showed “1″ for a second before immediately letting us into the tickets!! I was in beast mode at this point and just let my super fast reflexes do all the work and click in the right places as fast as I could and a few seconds later we had confirmed tickets that were- get this- not only ultimate VIP with the hi-touch and a bunch of other shit, but were actually IN THE FIRST FUCKING ROW, AND THEY WERE LITERALLY SEATS 1 AND 2. WE GOT THE FIRST TICKETS IN THE ENTIRE DAMN PLACE. And like we looked at the map of the venue and the front row has like two or three off to each side and then like 8 or so right in the center right in front of the stage and since we were 1 and 2 at first we thought we had one of the side ones....but nope, we were in that middle section (I’ll post the screenshot Jess took of them after this to give you a better idea if you’re having trouble picturing this). But yeah, basically we got the best damn tickets in the entire fucking theatre, and we were both pretty much just having meltdowns at this point (I mean, mostly Jess, but I was kinda freaking out too because this was nuts). And I was just like man, I knew we could do this, we put up with some much bullshit and failure with the other concerts that was so frustrating, but when it really counted with the favorite band in our city, we get the best seats IN THE FUCKING HOUSE. Because that’s how I roll, when I set my mind to something I get shit done, I don’t always know how but somehow it always gets done, and I knew we could do this and we did. So needless to say it was a very exciting afternoon, lol. We had been playing like episodes 3 and 4 of The Umbrella Academy during this mostly just as background noise because Jess hadn’t seen all of that yet but we weren’t paying much attention given everything that had just happened. So yeah, we freaked out for a bit, and then cemented our plans for the rest of the night (because if Chicago was a total failure we were gonna wait 2 hours and try for the LA show) and I then baked the angel food cake I wanted to make for my birthday because I always have angel food cake with whipped cream and strawberries for my birthday (given that I’ve rarely actually celebrated with my family on my actual birthday it’s usually not on the actual date, but as long as it happens) because it’s my favorite and what we always had when I was little and reminds me of my grandma and grandpa and just happy memories that weren’t corrupted by other bullshit. So I baked the cake and when it was done I figured out how to stick it upside down on a bottle (you have to cool it like that or it won’t come out of the pan, they’re complicated like that) we headed out for dinner, we were originally probably gonna order in but given all that had happened we wanted to celebrate a bit and we knew there was a Korean place a few blocks down that we hadn’t tried yet so we figured now would be the perfect time. So we get there and we’re trying to decipher the menu to the best of our ability lol but ended up asking our waiter for his thoughts with our given dietary restrictions and he was great and very helpful, everything was super delicious and very much enjoyed, and he was just really cool and awesome so I tipped him extra (and by that I mean like 30% because 25% is my default, so, we know how I feel about tipping waiters). so it was a very enjoyable meal, I took some home with me because I didn’t want to stuff myself too much and not be able to eat cake later, we’ll have to see if I end up eating my leftovers though because my acid reflux has been kinda bad tonight so I’m not sure if that’d be a good idea (it’s strange though because none of it was a typical trigger for me). We watched the second to last episode of Arrow and then I checked to see if the cake was fully cooled, then set it up with the whipped cream and strawberries and we ate cake (I made Jess eat a little but she doesn’t really like cake so I just let her eat the strawberries). so that was highly enjoyable as it always is for me. We then watched the most recent episode of Arrow, I had the benefit this time around of having listened to the “Quiver: The Green Arrow Podcast” review of the episode since I watched it the first time so I understood things a little better, they’re not always great at actually explaining concepts and fleshing them out in a way that makes a little comic book knowledge go very far in understanding where the show writers actually want to take you (and they just aren’t). For example, in the comics, the Ninth Circle (aka “the bad guys”) is actually like a supervillain bank that funds such evil operations, and that makes a hella lot more sense than the non-descriptions we’ve had of it up to this point. But anyway. Once we finished that it was like 9 pm so Jess headed home and I watched tonight’s episode of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend that I had forgotten about lol then just watched the news into Jimmy Kimmel  (it was an old episode though) before showering and starting to get ready for bed and now I am here. so yeah, big day to say the least. pretty wild I’d say, and I’m gonna be so thrown that today was only Friday and not Saturday lol and that we have Saturday as a whole other day tomorrow. The plan is to go up north to the Cheesecake Factory, we decided against seeing a movie because there really wasn’t anything we wanted to see (I’d have been fine seeing Captain Marvel again but Jess has already seen it twice and doesn’t really want to do it again which is valid). So we’ll just do Cheesecake Factory and shop, should be fun. It is 1 am now though and I should probably be getting to sleep if I want to get up and do things tomorrow (which I do) so I will call it a night here. Goodnight friends. Happy weekend.