New Website coming soon!
June 23, 2009
March 05, 2009
Notes from A Corner
Notes From A Corner
Mike Jewell
March 3 , 2009
My tail is between my legs because once again it’s been a dog’s age since my last entry. No doubt I’m in the dog house with Austin and Laura but it matters little since I’m already hounded by guilt. I’ve been busier than a dog on a meat wagon and desperately chasing my tail while in dogged pursuit of increased consistency and, as the kind reader can imagine, I am left dog tired from the effort. But..... I remain a lucky dog for having the Frontside Grind available for my morning waking ritual. It’s a dog’s life indeed, in spite of the migrated corner chair (see below).
The biggest news in the last 3 years: The Corner is now A Corner. Someone has moved The Corner to another Corner. As the kind reader can imagine, the change has been destabilizing to everyone who walks through the door. As I often point out, there are advantages and disadvantages to everything, including advantages and disadvantages. I no longer have a perfect view of everyone’s rear-ends as they stand in line. However, I am in a better position to defend myself against an attacker.
My personal big news is that my phone’s ring tone is now a dog growling and barking. It’s the best thing that’s has ever happened in my life. I talk to the dog in the phone; “Settle down... settle down.... I’ll be there a second. Quit your barking......” Thus, I now have three pets -- two cats and a dog. The cats are confused and a bit nervous about the dog’s presence.
If the statistics that I read are correct, well over 90% of the violence in the world is committed by men, mostly between the ages of 16 and 27. When considering riots, wars, and gang-related crime, these numbers are easy to believe. There is little doubt that there is a vast difference between men and women in respect to relationship, aggression, and degrees of vulnerability,.
We in “A” Corner (we are still very wise) have been discussing these and related topics since a local politician created a firestorm by belittling the importance of a non profit organization that provides support to victims of domestic violence.
Bein’s that I’m a member of the male persuasion (and demonstrably not wise regarding cross-gender issues), I hesitate to speak for women. However, after asking many women about their place in the world, I have concluded that generally speaking, they experience themselves as being fundamentally threatened in a way that men are not.
All of the local selectmen who voted to turn down funding for this safe house for domestic victims were, well,..... men.---- which makes me think that they are not listening to women and not actively reaching across the broad inter-gender chasm -- which leads to
the larger and important subject of empathy and its limitations. (the groundswell of
complaint has forced our local political men to support the non profit organization. They may
not listen to women but they must listen to the general public.
We tend to assume that the world is (or should be) to others as it is to us. This presumption relating to being-in-the-world is called subjectivism. It is the opposite of empathy, which is an active process in which one listens carefully, and takes seriously the story of “the other”. It is also a process in which one attempts to, as much as possible, abandon one’s own primary experience in an effort to feel the world of the other.
Many women have told me (when asked), that they live a guarded existence that men are not forced to live -- that they live within a context of implied danger -- a backdrop that is persistent, not subtle, and very real.
The exact nature of empathy and its limitations are not clear. However, at the very least, we can all understand (and feel) the nature of physical threat and it seems to me that it would take little effort for our politicians to listen carefully enough to the voices of women so as to take seriously the need for avenues of escape from domestic violence.
Paul Harvey died this week. That’s the rest of the story.
February 10, 2009
February customer of the month!
Kurt Detser!
Drink: 8oz. double Americano, double Espresso lungo. Usually at the same time(animal!) or ordered twice(savage animal!).
Interests:Concrete foundations, Flying to exotic locations, then flying back!.
January 16, 2009
Notes from the corner! by Mike Jewell!
Notes From The Corner Mike Jewell January 16, 2009 Alas, 2009...... Israel’s military incursion into the Gaza Strip has, for the last two days, monopolized our conversation in The Corner. After sixty years, the Middle East continues to be an open sore of hatred,resentment, and violence that resonates in the hearts of people throughout the world -- including the hearts of our Corner denizens (who are usually very wise). For the first time, I have found myself suggesting that we do not further discuss a topic in our Corner -- because it symbolizes some of the worst events in human history, because it is mind-numbingly complex, and because the conflict is the embodiment of the most raw and fundamental tensions in the human spirit. There are times that a mutual and sincere exploration of “truth” causes more pain than it is worth. On a lighter note, I attended The Lion King. It was my first Broadway show. The music, the dancing, and the costumes were magnificent but I the plot was utterly terrible. Had the plot been merely shallow, I would not have been particularly disappointed. But the story’s triviality was layered atop two contradictory themes. We were first presented with the morally nonjudgmental “Circle-of-Life’ theme in which all Life eats and all Life is eaten. But soon we found ourselves immersed in a highly judgmental story of Good Eaters (lions) and Evil Eaters (hyenas); glorious golden lions sang in major keys while lurking gray hyenas skulked in dissonance. I was not tempted to burden my 11-year old companion with my complaint (perhaps thinking that I might later burden the kind readers of this blog). However, I am quite certain that she could have written a more nuanced and internally consistent plot in about 15 minutes. We arose this morning to a temperature of 15 degrees below zero. The air was still and therefore less painful than it might have been. We were also thus saved weather-persons’ implications that fast air is colder than still air; “Bundle up folks! The ‘wind-chill temperature’ this morning is 80 degrees below zero!!!” I stepped outside the Frontside Grind at about 6:00 am and threw water into the air. It was immediately transformed into gelatinous globules. I am reminded of my Phoenix friend who suffers when winter temperatures drop to 60 degrees above zero.
December 12, 2008
COFFEE BASED FUEL! YAY COFFEE!
Waste coffee grounds offer new source of biodiesel fuel
Researchers in Nevada are reporting that waste coffee grounds can provide a cheap, abundant, and environmentally friendly source of biodiesel fuel for powering cars and trucks. Their study has been published online in the American Chemical Society's (ACS) Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, a bi-weekly publication.
In the new study, Mano Misra, Susanta Mohapatra, and Narasimharao Kondamudi note that the major barrier to wider use of biodiesel fuel is lack of a low-cost, high quality source, or feedstock, for producing that new energy source. Spent coffee grounds contain between 11 and 20 percent oil by weight. That's about as much as traditional biodiesel feedstocks such as rapeseed, palm, and soybean oil.
Growers produce more than 16 billion pounds of coffee around the world each year. The used or "spent" grounds remaining from production of espresso, cappuccino, and plain old-fashioned cups of java, often wind up in the trash or find use as soil conditioner. The scientists estimated, however, that spent coffee grounds can potentially add 340 million gallons of biodiesel to the world's fuel supply.
To verify it, the scientists collected spent coffee grounds from a multinational coffeehouse chain and separated the oil. They then used an inexpensive process to convert 100 percent of the oil into biodiesel.
The resulting coffee-based fuel — which actually smells like java — had a major advantage in being more stable than traditional biodiesel due to coffee's high antioxidant content, the researchers say. Solids left over from the conversion can be converted to ethanol or used as compost, the report notes. The scientists estimate that the process could make a profit of more than $8 million a year in the U.S. alone. They plan to develop a small pilot plant to produce and test the experimental fuel within the next six to eight months.
Biodiesel is a growing market. Estimates suggest that annual global production of biodiesel will hit the 3 billion gallon mark by 2010. The fuel can be made from soybean oil, palm oil, peanut oil, and other vegetable oils; animal fat; and even cooking oil recycled from restaurant French fry makers. Biodiesel also can be added to regular diesel fuel. It also can be a stand-alone fuel, used by itself as an alternative fuel for diesel engines.
Hot of the press....Notes From The Corner!
Notes From The Corner
Mike Jewell
December 12, 2008
Since the presidential election, writer’s block has seized this Corner writer. As previously mentioned, I never ‘decide’ anything and thus IL merely wait to see what “comes to pass” in my behavior (I know.. this seems a bit passive). Since I’ve been pregnant with the urge to impose my views on kind readers regarding the election, and since such behavior would be inappropriate on Austin, Laura, and LIly’s web site, I’ve been stuck -- long past my due date.
This child of a literary caesarian is being typed on my new IMAC computer. Objects typically do not provoke my interest but I love this computer. It’s big. It’s blue. It’s big and blue. And fast. It’s big, blue, and fast. We (the computer and I) felt an instant connection and it is thoroughly compliant. I love my new computer. She, er..... it is big, blue, fast, and compliant. It is incomprehensible that we could ever argue or that she could ever turn her bac..... er, I mean crash.
We have new art in the coffee shop so I am surrounded by naked, cubist, women. We in The Corner (we are very wise) recently tortured the subject of art -- particularly regarding the nature of “good art”. Never mind that the subject is a bit sophomoric. We immersed ourselves nonetheless. My view: good art un-selfconsciously arises out of the essential fabric of the artist’s being and is enhanced, but not limited, by technique. Such art resonates in the hearts of most of humanity since although we are superficially different, we are all fundamentally the same.
Cubism resonated during the twentieth century since it was during that period that the dehumanization of fragmented culture and fragmented
attitude and behavior was becoming apparent. Instant communication changed all of that, reminding us that relationship/connection trumps
category in the human experience.
Picasso knew this and purposely and unabashedly capitalized on the vulnerable publics’ collective subconscience. Picasso on Picasso;
“In art the mass of people no longer seeks consolation and exaltation .......... I myself, since Cubism and before, have satisfied these masters and critics with all the changing oddities which passed through my head, and the less they understood me, the more they admired me. By amusing myself with all these games, with all these absurdities, puzzles, arabesques, I became famous and that very quickly. And fame for a painter means sales, gains, fortune, riches. And today, as you know, I am celebrated, I am rich.
But when I am alone with myself, I have not the courage to think of myself as an artist in the great and ancient sense of the term. Giotto, Titian, Rembrandt were great painters. I am only a public entertainer who has understood his times and exploited as best he could the imbecility, the vanity, the cupidity of his contemporaries. Mine is a bitter confession, more painful than it may appear, but it has the merit of being sincere.”
My claim that motivation defines the quality of an act leads to the conclusion that Picasso’s art was not “good” in the purest sense -- because his art was manipulative and conscious rather than spontaneous, selfless, and unconsciously driven. Musicians describe this as “not being honest”.
Enough.... except, mmmm...... the election of Barack Hussein Obama was a stunning victory for all of humanity. He will disappoint voters on both the political right and left but this event brings us yet one step closer to acting out the knowledge that we are all fundamentally the same. Incidentally, his first and middle names translate to mean; “Blessed, good”.
November 19, 2008
Frontside Introduces Storytime!!!
Starting December 5th, every friday at 10 am. Ann Smith will be reading stories for the kids followed by a variety of local musicians including Jonny "Ramblin' man" Denis & Steven "Coon-dog" Cooney.
November 15, 2008
Late November-December customer o' the month.....
Drink: AM, small or medium dark drip. PM, double short Mocha or Americano. Accesories: Egg & cheese bagel & HALF a chocolate donut(washboard abs) Interests: crooning, roofing, pulling jhegis Dynos on the crux pitch, brah. Little known Cooney facts: in college he had an afro & turrets. Given sugar, he will turn into a tasmanian devil. Steve "Coondog" Cooney
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November 12, 2008
Jake Brown goes down town!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrnJ3JyaekI&feature=related
Sure, we've all seen it. But Maaaan! Checkout the slow-mo at the end.
