Lean Regime

We would all have been living long since in communal Utopia, I am convinced, were it possible to share a kitchen without friction. As things stand, Middle East peace seems to be a less ambitious goal than kitchen comity. I have been through many schemes in a long career of communal home and work kitchens, each fine in theory, each, uhh--suboptimal in execution. There was the short-lived Procrustean democracy of seventies socialist living: from each, regardless of talent; to each, because it’s Thursday. Fasting also came into vogue about then, as I recall.

Work kitchens seem to cycle though a number of states, from Spartan disuse to competitive group force-feeding. But in all these states, domestic tranquility founders on the rock of cleaning up. It is a law of nature that at least one user will scatter food litter with the casual aplomb of a giraffe browsing the treetops, and another will always be just about to wash the dishes he/she left to soak in the sink. There will always be ancient mystery food in the fridge, waiting for someone to have the courage to pop the lid before the gases of decomposition do the job for him. These issues have once again led to an ardent round of station email, and to yet another ingenious peace plan--anything dirty will be disappeared. The Junta Plan, I call it. The kitchen, now containing many fewer items, does indeed look cleaner. But the day is not far off, I fear, when I will be stirring sugar into a mayonnaise jar full of coffee with a plastic fork.

Executive sweet

On Monday, my new desk arrived. Since 2001 I had been working at a cramped student desk I bought off my nephew, and it was getting hard to locate the mouse underneath the drifts of disks, peripheral electronics, scribbled notes and unfiled paper. I try not to sweat the small stuff, a category under which I tend to include all logical forms of organization. But my new desk should solve all that. It is a multi-level dog-legged monstrosity of steel and tempered glass. In order to accommodate its executive dimensions, everything else had to be shoved off into the corners of the office. Things are no better organized, but they are much farther away. I can now contemplate them with lordly dispassion across the shining plain of my spotless work surface.

Having a formal dinner engagement, I also wore a suit on Monday, something I do so infrequently I have to Google “Four-in-Hand” for a pictograph in order to successfully tie my own necktie. My 1976 leather-elbowed tweed jacket has graduated from out-of-style to vintage fashion. It looked sweet behind the desk. But Monday gives way to Tuesday, and now to Thursday. Stuff—and things—are starting to creep onto the outer edges of the desk. I see a coffee ring. It matches the stain on my blue jeans and untucked shirttail. And shaving appears to be among the other things on my to-do list that have just slipped by me. Maybe a bigger office would do the trick--and a wardrobe assistant.

Modest fare

It may just be my nicotine-withdrawal munchies, but the topic of food seems to be everywhere lately: Hidden Kitchens specials, the steady stream of food book stories and recipes, the Very Special Places series that has highlighted traditional diners, ice cream and hot dog stands. Also, my lunch hour is approaching soon, but not soon enough.

One lack I have noticed in the food discussion so far has been tavern fare. Time was when beer was considered an essential part of a balanced lunch. In Potsdam, in the '60s and early '70s, the best place for the balancing act was Blanche's, a modest green brick establishment tucked between the Roxy Theater and the Arlington Hotel. Blanche and her brother Harold ran the show, dispensing draft and bottled beer along with the core elements of tavern lunch--burgers, dogs, chips, pickled eggs (AKA "boneless chicken dinner"), and French fries topped with a mysterious fluid made from "brown gravy base." I've never been sure what kind of creature a brown is, but this concoction constituted half of many 50-cent lunches during my lean college years.

The other half consisted of a "frosty," which was one pound of draft beer tapped off into two pounds of glass mug that had been chilled to near absolute zero in the freezer behind the bar. Oh yeah. One day my friend Paul walked up to the bar and asked Harold for one. He drew the brew and said, "That'll be 25 cents." The guy standing behind Paul asked for the same. Harold said, "That'll be 30 cents." "Wait a minute--you charged him a quarter!" he protested. Harold gave the bar a thoughtful wipe and told him "Price had to go up sometime."

Slack time

I seem to have been avoiding vacations lately, taking less time each year, dragging a laptop and cell phone everywhere, just in case. But I broke down and took a few days off in Maine this week, leaving the portable electronics at home. And the world seems to have kept up its regular rotation, even without me working the crank. I don't know why this should come as a surprise to me, considering that I fully expect the tide to rise and fall on schedule off Wells Beach whether I am there to watch it or not.

But we give so much to our jobs, if they engage us--all that time and sweat, all the plotting and the brainstorms. It should, by rights, all go to the devil as soon as we hit the outskirts of town. And the many places that try to do public radio without me--VPR, NHPR, WBUR, Maine Public Broadcasting, WAMU--they all (from my highway listening) seem to muddle through somehow. I can't explain it; I'll just have to rest up a little and give the matter some thought.