what's good : winter assortment
Also, Monday is the new Sunday btw
Something about returning from a trip and trying to get back on task…I completely lost track of days once I left Ohio on Monday evening, and then I came down with a brutal cold so the rest of the week was just Days. All this to say, I think I’ll make this weekly post a Monday feature instead of Sunday from now on. Hopefully it will still be something to look forward to.
In poetry: This mood.
Winter Sun by Molly Fisk
How valuable it is in these short days,
threading through empty maple branches,
the lacy-needled sugar pines.
Its glint off sheets of ice tells the story
of Death’s brightness, her bitter cold.
We can make do with so little, just the hint
of warmth, the slanted light.
The way we stand there, soaking in it,
mittened fingers reaching.
And how carefully we gather what we can
to offer later, in darkness, one body to another.In coffee & tea & traveling: Being from the Pacific Northwest, and also old enough to have been working at a cafe in college when only people in downtown Seattle knew about Starbucks, I feel like I Know Coffee. Even though I don’t prefer it, especially in the morning because it hurts my stomach, I do enjoy a good flavorful cup now & then. (Spoiler: Starbucks is not in the Top 10 faves. Nor is the regional favorite Dutch Brothers, which hurts my Dutch girl heart but it is just not great). Locally I enjoy Stumptown’s buzzy flavor, especially their cold brew and in Tillamook yogurt - not kidding at all, a favorite part of my morning reading & writing time. And recently I had the marvelous luck of meeting & working with a woman who roasts beans fresh on order + ships from her home business across the river, High-Strung Coffee. Order now and have the best smelling mailbox in the neighborhood plus a delicious cup of coffee.
When traveling, I try to choose local places to eat/drink/shop in order to support smaller businesses and also get a better idea of what’s popular & good in the area. Last week I was in Columbus, Ohio, a place I’d never been before and found charming, despite the blank looks & grimaces I got from people when I told them beforehand where I was going. If I’m especially lucky on work trips, I have a day or two that I can spend wandering around and that happened for me this time. On my way back from seeing a fair amount of good public art and a few notable buildings [when I understood the reason from some blank looks], I stopped at Brioso Coffee. I had passed by earlier, noting the clever motto “Mean coffee, nice people,” and decided to get something warm for the last leg of my walk. I was welcomed in, found a delicious-looking cinnamon donut first thing, then ordered the special Petal to the Metal: a rose & vanilla latte. It was dreamy, its rich small batch roasted coffee taste and the floral, smooth, creamy flavors mingling with warm whole milk. I wished I’d gotten a large.
On my last day in Columbus, I went down to the German Village neighborhood and found Stauf’s next to the ponderous Book Loft, a bookstore in a presumed regular house but with dozens of improbable rooms that appear full of books as you turn each corner. I got the Ohio Thunder chai latte, an excellently mild version of the spicy tea perfectly steamed with milk. I ordered some to be delivered to my house.
In music: Last night, the husband & I did a Young People thing and went to a concert on a week night, part of the Portland alt rock station’s December to Remember series. We saw local band Les Gold [not to be confused, as I was for many minutes on Google, with the 73-year old American pawnbroker, reality TV star, author, and media personality Les Gold], which brought a fun Strokes vibe. The lead singer even reminded me from a distance - we were in the over 21, sitting-down balcony - of Julian Casablancas but in a much more kind & sincere/not philandering way; up close after the concert he looked more like a congenial cross between Luke Wilson and Steve Carell, with a hint of Sam Rockwell. All of the members could definitely be cast in the next Wes Anderson movie. Anyway, none of that matters - they were earnest and enjoyable; I can’t stop using Old Person words so you should just check them out for yourself.
The headliner was Bakar, a singer who kept coming up in my [Old Person] YouTube mixes so I finally looked to see if he was touring and serendipitously found last night’s concert. It was his first time in Portland, and he seemed excited to perform for the highly engaged crowd [of young people]. I won’t be comparing his looks from last night to any other famous people because he was backlit 99% of the time - maybe he just wanted old women in the balcony to not worry about who he looked like. Though in the video for Alive! below, he makes me think of Lil Wayne without tattoos + Leslie Odom, Jr. with long braids. Anyway. His voice is hard to describe - it’s soft around the edges a lot of the time, lilting and cracking a little; it feels like a comfortable, melodic conversation, even during the more raucous [a lot of Youths jumping on the ‘floating’ Ballroom floor] performances.
You might recognize his most popular song from the Elemental trailer. Good on Disney for propping him this way. I’m looking forward to hearing more from him as he gets more notice.
I very much dislike traveling in another country, walking by a Starbucks, and seeing that it is packed full. Local coffee shops are wonderful.