This article in yesterday’s Boston Globe is an interesting case study in why some restaurant locations never seem to work out. The place is about to reopen as yet another restaurant after a parade of places that came and went with so much regularity you couldn’t be sure what would be there any time you drove by. The article doesn’t seem to address what I think is the central reason nothing lasts: it’s too far removed from the rest of Davis Square’s assortment of dining choices to attract a walk-in crowd. While the spot worked out well for the bakery cafe that was there for a long time, people walking around looking for lunch or dinner aren’t too likely to wander that far away from the action in the middle of the square. Until it becomes a destination in its own right, which the new chef-owner clearly believes it will, it’s likely to stay a revolving door.
Location doesn’t explain a couple of other similar revolving-door places I can think of in Arlington. Right in the center of the town, along with a cluster of very successful places, there are a couple of spots right on Massachusetts Ave that are as regular as clockwork with the changing of the management. In one particular case, it was actually successful for a while as an Indian place called Punjab; so successful that they moved to a bigger space a couple of doors down and sent their original space back into Cursed Cafe territory. So even a doomed spot can be turned into a success if the right thing happens — in the case of Punjab, there were too many Asian restaurants and no Indians ones, plus they benefitted from the coincidence of a regular program of Bollywood movies at the theater a block away, which brought lots of Indian visitors to the district.
I also find myself wondering what sort of inertia keeps lackluster places going year after year when better ones come and go. I suppose some places develop that vibe of being an institution in their particular geography, but usually those places have SOMETHING to recommend them. In the very same locations where the revolvers I’m talking about live, there are restaurants that seem to exist in some Bizarro world where no traffic equals longevity. Funny thing, the restaurant business.
The British singer-songwriter Billy Bragg is also a political activist in the U.K., and the Manchester Guardian has this video of him recently standing on a soapbox at Speaker’s Corner in London’s Hyde Park. His speech to the assorted people gathered is about his decision to withhold paying his income taxes in protest over the British government’s mishandling of bonus money being handed out to bankers in a situation not too different from the egregious bonus scandal in this country. What I liked about his speech, though, is how well he explains the importance of taxes to society in general. Teabaggers and similar idiots in this country live in a fantasyland when it comes to taxation, and they have too many people in this country convinced that taxes are EEEEEEEVIL and that somehow everything would be perfect if nobody had to pay them. Bragg makes plain the value of the social contract not just for the general welfare of the people, but also as a political force. American government, even moreso than other democratic governments, derives all of its power from the consent of the governed, contrary to what the Supreme Court would have us think, and taxation is a direct tool of that power. Eliminating taxation deprives citizens of a necessary means of political control, which he demonstrates by refusing to pay his taxes. Granted, the efforts of an individual will never be more than symbolic, but it’s the little lesson in “Why It’s Important” that I wanted to share with you.
The Siege of Leningrad was one of the longest and costliest battles in history, lasting 872 days and resulting in 1.5 million Russian casualties and an additional 1.5 million evacuees. The failure of the Germans to take the city marked a significant turning point in the war, and to this day it remains an important part of Russian national identity. The underlying cause of most of the deaths in Leningrad was not military action but starvation, as the stalemated Germans changed tactics to simply starve out the entire population. This first-hand account talks about tens of thousands of people dying month after month from hunger and deprivation.
Though the people of Leningrad were forced to eat their pets and any other animals they could catch just to survive, this English Russia post honors the cats of Leningrad who are memorialized by statues all over the city (once again called St. Petersburg, of course). The cats who were lucky enough not to become food themselves were crucial to the city to keep the exploding rat population in check. Indeed, the post points out that 5000 cats were gathered up from all over Russia and sent to Leningrad to aid in rodent control. Sadly, it’s safe to assume that the cats also ended up aiding the starving citizens, but at least one cat outlasted the blockade and became a national hero:
Here are a couple of book reviews I encountered this week that have me itching to hit the One-Click button:
Wired’s “GeekDad” contributor Jonathan Liu looks at Hollowing Out The Middle: The Rural Brain Drain And What It Means For America. Liu, who lives in a small town in Kansas, has the advantage of first-hand observation of the phenomenon detailed in the book, namely the long-standing tradition of young people moving away from those small towns to pursue brighter futures elsewhere. The situation is neither recent nor particularly American — virtually every culture in the world has experienced this since the first cities popped up in Mesopotamia — but in a large country like the United States, the scale of the situation means the societal impact is more pronounced. The book, which focuses on one particular rural community in Iowa, takes on the elements of other significant sociological studies like the famed “Middletown”. Given the flap this week over the Daily Kos poll about Republican core values and the distorted significance of the political power of the “flyover states”, the need to staunch the “brain drain” in those places is pretty fierce.
Internet smarty-pants gadfly Morgan Meis, posting at 3Quarks Daily, shared a Bookforum.com review by writer/historian Rick Perlstein about Garry Wills’ latest book Bomb Power: The Modern Presidency And The National Security State. I tried to use the direct link to the Bookforum page, but it wants you to register first…so use the link in the 3QD post unless you’re okay with registering for Bookforum.com. But either way, do make the effort to read Perlstein’s review; other than some mild fawning over Garry Wills, the piece is the sort of review that makes you want to go right out and buy the book RIGHT NOW. Wills presents the thesis that the Presidency as it came to be after the death of FDR was completely redefined by the invention of the atomic bomb, not just in the raw significance of the power of having nukes, but in style and substance by taking on the trappings that were given to the Manhattan Project. It is this vision of the President as having a complete and all-encompassing shadow role as guardian of the nuclear option, Wills argues, that leads directly to the anti-democratic and paranoid machinations of people like Richard Nixon and Dick Cheney, and which may no longer be reversible by any President. Perlstein, by the way, if you are not familiar, is the author of the well-regarded 2008 Nixonland, so if someone with that degree of familiarity with American political history is so enthusiastic about Wills’ book, it’s probably worth the look.
Yesterday I mentioned that the maple sugar producers would be hoping that ol’ Punxsutawney Phil would not see his shadow this morning, but, as usual, he did (although, that linked NatGeo article says that Phil is only right about 40% of the time). So it might not be a great year for maple syrup.
However, the cold weather that has dipped all the way down into the southern states this winter has had a beneficial effect on the carrot crop, according to this Atlantic food blogger, who lives in Texas. Apparently colder weather results in sweeter carrots. In fact, January is National Carrot Month, and tomorrow, February 3, is National Carrot Day, so obviously the dead of winter is WabbitDuck Carrot Season!. There’s even a cute little song:
If you’ve been thinking about running in the Boston Marathon this year, you are already too late to sign up, even though the race is still almost 10 weeks away, according to this True/Slant blogger. The open slots were filled all the way back in November. It’s only the second time in the race’s history that all the available slots have been taken.
However, if you’re a fan of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s “Little House” books, there’s still plenty of time to register for LauraPalooza 2010, being held in July in Mankato, Minnesota. The final details for the conference schedule will be announced over the weekend, but you can already make your reservations for lodging at the university which is hosting the conference. You don’t have to run 26.2 miles, either…although they may be arranging for a plague of locusts, a blizzard, or some other “Little House”-style entertainment.
Check out this “Roman Army Knife” that has gone on display at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, England. It’s part of their newly-refurbished Greek & Roman antiquities gallery.
It’s not actually part of a Roman soldier’s kit; it dates back to the Third or Fourth Century, is made of silver, and was probably owned by a wealthy Roman, according to this Daily Mail article. I think it’s interesting that a fork is one of the implements, since forks were generally not used as eating implements by Europeans until the Renaissance, but maybe it wasn’t used for eating by whomever owned it. Or maybe he was just ahead of his time. The article says that folding knives were actually very common articles in the Roman Empire, usually made of bronze, since steel was difficult to produce in ancient times. In the picture above you can see that the knife blade of the tool has deteriorated to just a small rusty end.
It’s going to be a long two months waiting for the iPad to actually ship so that all the tech bloggers and their hangers-on will stop writing so much speculative bullshit about iT and turn their attention iNstead to some other thing that’s going to Change Life As We Know iT.
Since you cannot click a [...]
Please, please, PUH-LEEZE stop talking about “What do we call the last decade?” Nobody could come up with an acceptable choice ten years ago, and nobody’s going to come up with one now. “Aughties” and “Naughties” are contrived and stupid, and so is the very idea that anything wraps up all nice and [...]
This week Barack Obama committed the United States to at least two more years of war, 30,000 troops in harm’s way for no other reason than saving face, and umpteen billions of dollars wasted FOR NO GOOD REASON WHATSOEVER and we are inundated with:
Tiger Woods proving he knows how to put it in the hole
GateCrashGate
Meredith [...]
Nowhere near enough responses to fill in all the blanks on the Mad-Lib Post game, so I guess we’ll chalk it up as a loss and try it again some other time. Maybe I’ll try it on Facebook instead.
More additions to the list:
Levi Johnston
Carrie Prejean
Blue Dog Democrats
The Entire Lohan Family
The 2012 Apocalypse
The Republican “Comeback”
“ordinary heroes”
More effluvia:
Those Northwest Airlines pilots
Zombie Michael Jackson
Sexy ____________ Halloween Costumes (in fact, anything to do with adults and Halloween)
Celebrity Twitters
Balloon Boy and His Crazy Dad (thankfully, this one has already faded quite a bit)
Thanks to Shelley for alerting me that last night’s edition of the local TV newsmagzine “Chronicle” featured Harvard Humanist Chaplain Greg Epstein, whom I blogged about recently in conjunction with the various atheist billboard campaigns around the country. I was busy helping Charlotte do her homework, so I didn’t watch the show, but WCVB’s [...]
Update to yesterday’s post about boiled eggs:
The picture at the top is what I got by boiling two eggs in 180-degree-ish water for 6 minutes. Sorry for the so-so photo, I only had my cell phone handy.
The eggs were indeed nicely done. The cooked ring of egg white was consistent in its thickness [...]
Bridget’s mother called yesterday to say that she’d taken Barkley to be put down. When we saw him over Columbus Day weekend, he was noticeably thinner and having trouble breathing. It was a bit of a spot decision by my mother-in-law, but she felt the time had come. I’m glad she came [...]
It’s going to be a long two months waiting for the iPad to actually ship so that all the tech bloggers and their hangers-on will stop writing so much speculative bullshit about iT and turn their attention iNstead to some other thing that’s going to Change Life As We Know iT.
Since you cannot click a [...]
Please, please, PUH-LEEZE stop talking about “What do we call the last decade?” Nobody could come up with an acceptable choice ten years ago, and nobody’s going to come up with one now. “Aughties” and “Naughties” are contrived and stupid, and so is the very idea that anything wraps up all nice and [...]
Thanks to Shelley for alerting me that last night’s edition of the local TV newsmagzine “Chronicle” featured Harvard Humanist Chaplain Greg Epstein, whom I blogged about recently in conjunction with the various atheist billboard campaigns around the country. I was busy helping Charlotte do her homework, so I didn’t watch the show, but WCVB’s [...]
Update to yesterday’s post about boiled eggs:
The picture at the top is what I got by boiling two eggs in 180-degree-ish water for 6 minutes. Sorry for the so-so photo, I only had my cell phone handy.
The eggs were indeed nicely done. The cooked ring of egg white was consistent in its thickness [...]
