Well, the blog hasn't burned down in the last 18 days, even though no one's been around to watch for arsonists. That's something, I suppose.
It's been busy busy busy around here. When last I wrote, I was traveling with a generation up and down the family tree to and from Memphis. Almost immediately upon return and reunion with my wife, we set off to spend a few days at renting a condo at a resort in northern Michigan (lower peninsula). We had a nice time with sunny but coolish weather and no convenient internet. Almost immediately upon returning, we had meetings at school, followed quickly by the return of my entire unit (well, mostly) for Band Camp. One time, at band camp, I was very busy.
As you can tell from the number of times I transitioned with "almost immediately," things have been busy. Things still haven't settled down, but there's never a better time than the present to get back to things we want to get back to, so here I am going through the usual apologies for flagging attention to my blog and vowing with all good intentions to do better.
In any case, I do regret the blogs unwritten. While I was in Memphis, I got word that I had won our library's adult summer reading program, though you'd hardly know it from reading my blog... which is to say that I'm way behind on writing book reviews. Some of them may never get written, given the way that the most useful bits often quickly slip from the mind's grasp and make retrospective reviewing progressively more difficult. Likewise, the ideas that the books inspired within me are mostly lost, or at least subsumed in the daily chatter, though one might hope they could rise again given the right prompting. Mostly, though, I suspect most have passed, and that's regrettable.
Saturday, August 20, 2011
Tuesday, August 2, 2011
Twos-Day Travel Update
I'm currently traveling with my mom, visiting family in Kentucky and Tennessee (with forays into Mississippi and Arkansas). Here are pairs of observations...
Two things I wish I'd brought: 1) the maple syrup I put into a smaller jar to bring along for the oatmeal that I brought for Thea and 2) --and more importantly--my pillow. It was on my list and just didn't make it.
Two things I wish I could have brought: 1) Lauren. She could even take up both spots on this list, because wow do I appreciate not being a single parent when I'm not! 2) since I've got space for it, let's say a whole fridge full of healthy food and the means to prepare it. My breakfast this morning was so far from ideal.
Two colossal blunders: 1) letting Thea have a McDonald's chocolate shake in its original container--even though I lowered the level a bit to try to prevent her from spilling it, I failed. She spilled all over herself. 2) letting Thea play with a bottle of ketchup at a restaurant--she dropped it onto the floor where it shattered and scattered glass and tomatoey goodness all over.
Two books I've been listening to: 1) Moonwalking with Einstein by Joshua Foer, 2) The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to our Brains by Nicholas Carr. They make a very good pair.
And there's the briefest snapshot of our trip.
Two things I wish I'd brought: 1) the maple syrup I put into a smaller jar to bring along for the oatmeal that I brought for Thea and 2) --and more importantly--my pillow. It was on my list and just didn't make it.
Two things I wish I could have brought: 1) Lauren. She could even take up both spots on this list, because wow do I appreciate not being a single parent when I'm not! 2) since I've got space for it, let's say a whole fridge full of healthy food and the means to prepare it. My breakfast this morning was so far from ideal.
Two colossal blunders: 1) letting Thea have a McDonald's chocolate shake in its original container--even though I lowered the level a bit to try to prevent her from spilling it, I failed. She spilled all over herself. 2) letting Thea play with a bottle of ketchup at a restaurant--she dropped it onto the floor where it shattered and scattered glass and tomatoey goodness all over.
Two books I've been listening to: 1) Moonwalking with Einstein by Joshua Foer, 2) The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to our Brains by Nicholas Carr. They make a very good pair.
And there's the briefest snapshot of our trip.
Saturday, July 23, 2011
Book Review: The City & The City
In The City & The City, China Miéville gives us a murder-mystery that gets shelved under "Fantasy" only because of its location: the twin cities of Besźel and Ul Qoma, which occupy the same space and yet exist as foreign entities to one another. Heck, maybe it's not even fantasy, per se: the mechanism of this divide is never really explained and may simply be a distinction that the citizens of each city make in their minds. In an almost Orwellian act of double-think, the citizens of each city must, from a young age, learn to ignore the other city and its citizens, to simultaneously see them (for instance, to avoid car accidents or tripping over homeless people) and un-see them. It's an interesting premise with, of course, real-world application. After all, even if the training isn't so formal, aren't we all conditioned to see certain aspects of our own world, our own culture, and of the cultures of others, and to be almost unable to see other aspects?
The action centers around Tyador Borlú, the Besźel Extreme Crime Squad detective who ends up investigating the murder of a graduate student who was apparently murdered in Ul Qoma and dumped in Besźel. Ordinarily, such a crime would fall under the purview of Breach, the name for both the laws against Besźel and Ul Qoma interacting and for the secret police who enforce those laws, but it happens that for technical reasons the crime does not, in fact, involve Breach, so Borlú finds himself working with his counterparts in Ul Qoma and on the edges of his city's laws to try to find justice for the murdered girl and to find out the truth that she died for--truths that are at the heart of the workings of Miéville's fictional world and which could threaten the status quo in a number of ways.
Overall, I found the novel to be an enjoyable read, a mystery that kept me in suspense well into the novel, in part because it's not a simple "whodunit" sort of mystery but instead involves a fairly complex skein of interests and motivations that illuminate the whole of this society. At the same time that I enjoyed the novel, I also felt like it could have gone deeper than it did, could have explored its own premise more deeply than it did. Perhaps that perception on my part is symptomatic of the fact that I listened to it as an audiobook, thus letting it pass through me more easily than it might have if it had been fully masticated and digested in dead tree format. If so, I would love to read a brilliant essay or review showing me my own shortcomings in this regard, because the novel did seem to have, philosophically speaking, more potential than payoff.
Food Friday: Kafta Casserole
In a mad rush to make just that much more space in our freezer(s) to receive a split side of beef and ten chickens, I decided that I needed to use some packs of hamburger. I've also been experimenting with the so-called "Slow Carb Diet," though I've been better at adhering to the binge day than to the other days. In brief, though, the Slow-Carb Diet would mean a daily diet made up only of meats, legumes, and vegetables. Like I said, I haven't really been adhering to it, but I've been using it as a sort of compass. That and a couple internet searches comprised the inspiration for this recipe. I would like to tinker further with some parts of this recipe, but it makes an awful lot, so I'll probably have to wait on that.
This is pretty good as is, but even better with some Tzatziki, which you should prepare in advance so the flavors have time to blend.
2 onions, chopped
2 1/2 lbs lean, grass-fed hamburger
3 cloves garlic
2 cups prepared pinto beans
10 oz frozen (or fresh) spinach
1 zucchini, chopped into smallish pieces
1 squash, chopped into smallish pieces
2 bell peppers of various colors
1/4 c fresh parsley, chopped
1/2 tsp allspice
1/2 tsp coriander
1/2 tsp paprika
1/2 tsp chili powder
salt and pepper to taste
In a large skillet, cook the onions, hamburger, and garlic, adding the last when the rest is just about finished. Add the beans and the spinach (you can add it still frozen). Add the various vegetables (fell free to add others!) and cook 5-10 minutes, until the veggies are tender. Add all seasonings, cook just a bit longer. Turn off heat and let sit for 5 minutes.
As for changes, I would add more of all the spices, maybe up the measures to 3/4 tsp each or even double them. I would go ahead and add more vegetables and more beans as well. Even as it is, you can feed a small army--presuming the army has a taste for food inspired by Middle Eastern cuisine--or have quite a few leftovers.
This is pretty good as is, but even better with some Tzatziki, which you should prepare in advance so the flavors have time to blend.
2 onions, chopped
2 1/2 lbs lean, grass-fed hamburger
3 cloves garlic
2 cups prepared pinto beans
10 oz frozen (or fresh) spinach
1 zucchini, chopped into smallish pieces
1 squash, chopped into smallish pieces
2 bell peppers of various colors
1/4 c fresh parsley, chopped
1/2 tsp allspice
1/2 tsp coriander
1/2 tsp paprika
1/2 tsp chili powder
salt and pepper to taste
In a large skillet, cook the onions, hamburger, and garlic, adding the last when the rest is just about finished. Add the beans and the spinach (you can add it still frozen). Add the various vegetables (fell free to add others!) and cook 5-10 minutes, until the veggies are tender. Add all seasonings, cook just a bit longer. Turn off heat and let sit for 5 minutes.
As for changes, I would add more of all the spices, maybe up the measures to 3/4 tsp each or even double them. I would go ahead and add more vegetables and more beans as well. Even as it is, you can feed a small army--presuming the army has a taste for food inspired by Middle Eastern cuisine--or have quite a few leftovers.
Monday, July 18, 2011
Anniversary Trip: A Comedy of Errors
In a blissful state of ignorance, I woke up Friday morning at 6 am and almost put off going to the gym because I thought I would have plenty of time as the morning went on to exercise. But I did get up, I did go exercise, and it wasn't long before I found out just how full my morning and afternoon would be.
You see, Friday afternoon Lauren and I planned to head out on our anniversary trip to Indianapolis. If twice can be considered a tradition, then our tradition is to spend our anniversary--or thereabouts--in Indianapolis. Or thereabouts. I mean, we've never gone anywhere else, so it must be our anniversary place.
Some weeks ago, Lauren went on Priceline and reserved up a hotel... except that she only booked one night and they wanted some ridiculous sum to add a second night--something like twice what the other night was costing us. So it was back to the Priceline Negotiator, which shunted us off to another hotel for our other night. One could see that as an inconvenience or an opportunity--hey! we get to see a different part of Indianapolis and gain a valuable basis for comparison as to the quality of our hotel stay. Aren't we lucky?
So, besides the packing that I had to do--and the dishes and the childcare and all that--I sat down at some point Friday morning to map out where our hotels were and how to get from one to the other. I'd planned on figuring out where other places were as well until I ran into a snag. Well, the first snag was finding both of the reservations, because they were sent to different e-mail accounts (something to do with how many offers Priceline allows). That was a minor snag. A bigger snag was the fact that we had two hotels reserved for Saturday and none for Friday.
I called Lauren, who was not at all happy with herself. But what help was there for it now? She set about finding us a place to stay some few hours hence and I went back to doing the dishes. Doing the dishes is actually a very good place to do some thinking. Your hands occupied, your mind mostly free, the repetitive motions can sometimes knock something loose in the brain that needs to be jiggled a little bit, to put two and two together in a subconscious process much like that which sometimes happen while we sleep and then wake the next morning with the answer to some ticklish problem. As the plates and silverware jangled off one another, a few things jangled together in my head: 1) I hadn't been able to find the car key when I'd looked for it this morning, nor when I'd looked last night; 2) we only have one car key now; 3) Lauren was the last person to drive the car and, presumably still had the key; 4) the lone remaining key to our car was almost certainly in South Bend, an hour away. I called Lauren, and while "shit" is not a direct answer to "Do you know where the car key is?"--well, it's direct enough.
She didn't feel like she could borrow her colleague's car to bring the key to me, even if she could leave the work she was supposed to be doing. I didn't see how I could take two hours out of my schedule and still pack everything and rendezvous in a timely fashion with my in-laws who were taking both our 2-legged and our 4-legged children off our hands for the weekend. And, of course, I didn't think I could take that time even if it was somehow possible to take Thea with me, which it wasn't, since her car seat was neatly locked in the car. We have a truck and we're constantly talking about "what a big girl" our daughter is, but she's not that big, not yet.
Lauren suggested calling our new friend Allison, one of her new colleagues in the science department. We me Allison, her husband, and their daughter earlier in the summer, taking her out to dinner once to welcome her to town and having them all over for dinner on Independence Day. Nice folks, and their daughter is just a few months older than Thea. Maybe, suggested Lauren, they could watch our girl while I made the trip up. Well, it wasn't the worst plan we had.
So Lauren gave me Allison's number and I called it. A man answer it. Her husband? Her husband... her husband... oh hell. What was his name? I am lousy with names, and his wasn't on the back of my tongue, much less the tip. "Hi." A solid opening. "This is John Sherck." In the silence that ensued, he was no doubt going through his own mental rolodex. "Lauren and I" (I offer some contextual reminder of who I am) "were wondering if you and Allison could do us a huge favor." Clever, eh? Confirm I have the right number by throwing out the name I do remember. "Okay," he says. I explain our situation and he tells me that they have nanny interviews scheduled for the whole day... but they do have an extra car seat that I could borrow to use in the truck. Great. He--Brian, Lauren later reminded me--came over and it turned out that after some small discussion they didn't think another toddler underfoot would be any great impediment to their interviews--anyway, our kids get along fabulously--so I packed her into their back seat and sent her on her way.
Which, of course, wouldn't be the last time I would abandon her that day. But anyway, I spent a little over two hours just getting the car key, then grabbed a quick bite to eat, threw random baby items into random bags, since I wasn't quite certain what Lauren had and hadn't already packed for the trip over the river and through the woods. With baby packed in her car seat and dog packed in hers--that is, sitting on my lap Britney-style--we started our two-and-a-half hour drive to meet my in-laws. Then I detoured into the South Bend / Mishawaka area to pick up our farm share vegetables before coming home, where Lauren has returned once she realized that it made absolutely no sense to wait at Notre Dame for me.
Hours driven to this point: roughly 7 1/2.
Hours left to drive that day: 2
And so anxious was Lauren to finally get underway that she wouldn't even give me time to heat up something to eat, so I had to manage this leg on a more or less empty stomach. Let me tell you: Lauren is lucky to have a husband with such a good sense of humor, otherwise we might very well have needed both of those hotels for Saturday night and yet another on Friday besides!
As it was, we had a very nice, if unnecessarily expensive, trip to Indianapolis this past weekend, and our anniversary should consider itself well and truly celebrated. We saw HP7 pt 2, visited a yurt factory and decided we could probably stand to live in a yurt for a decade or more, ate at some very good restaurants, and visited more malls in one weekend than we have in the past year. But all that is a story for another post.
You see, Friday afternoon Lauren and I planned to head out on our anniversary trip to Indianapolis. If twice can be considered a tradition, then our tradition is to spend our anniversary--or thereabouts--in Indianapolis. Or thereabouts. I mean, we've never gone anywhere else, so it must be our anniversary place.
Some weeks ago, Lauren went on Priceline and reserved up a hotel... except that she only booked one night and they wanted some ridiculous sum to add a second night--something like twice what the other night was costing us. So it was back to the Priceline Negotiator, which shunted us off to another hotel for our other night. One could see that as an inconvenience or an opportunity--hey! we get to see a different part of Indianapolis and gain a valuable basis for comparison as to the quality of our hotel stay. Aren't we lucky?
So, besides the packing that I had to do--and the dishes and the childcare and all that--I sat down at some point Friday morning to map out where our hotels were and how to get from one to the other. I'd planned on figuring out where other places were as well until I ran into a snag. Well, the first snag was finding both of the reservations, because they were sent to different e-mail accounts (something to do with how many offers Priceline allows). That was a minor snag. A bigger snag was the fact that we had two hotels reserved for Saturday and none for Friday.
I called Lauren, who was not at all happy with herself. But what help was there for it now? She set about finding us a place to stay some few hours hence and I went back to doing the dishes. Doing the dishes is actually a very good place to do some thinking. Your hands occupied, your mind mostly free, the repetitive motions can sometimes knock something loose in the brain that needs to be jiggled a little bit, to put two and two together in a subconscious process much like that which sometimes happen while we sleep and then wake the next morning with the answer to some ticklish problem. As the plates and silverware jangled off one another, a few things jangled together in my head: 1) I hadn't been able to find the car key when I'd looked for it this morning, nor when I'd looked last night; 2) we only have one car key now; 3) Lauren was the last person to drive the car and, presumably still had the key; 4) the lone remaining key to our car was almost certainly in South Bend, an hour away. I called Lauren, and while "shit" is not a direct answer to "Do you know where the car key is?"--well, it's direct enough.
She didn't feel like she could borrow her colleague's car to bring the key to me, even if she could leave the work she was supposed to be doing. I didn't see how I could take two hours out of my schedule and still pack everything and rendezvous in a timely fashion with my in-laws who were taking both our 2-legged and our 4-legged children off our hands for the weekend. And, of course, I didn't think I could take that time even if it was somehow possible to take Thea with me, which it wasn't, since her car seat was neatly locked in the car. We have a truck and we're constantly talking about "what a big girl" our daughter is, but she's not that big, not yet.
Lauren suggested calling our new friend Allison, one of her new colleagues in the science department. We me Allison, her husband, and their daughter earlier in the summer, taking her out to dinner once to welcome her to town and having them all over for dinner on Independence Day. Nice folks, and their daughter is just a few months older than Thea. Maybe, suggested Lauren, they could watch our girl while I made the trip up. Well, it wasn't the worst plan we had.
So Lauren gave me Allison's number and I called it. A man answer it. Her husband? Her husband... her husband... oh hell. What was his name? I am lousy with names, and his wasn't on the back of my tongue, much less the tip. "Hi." A solid opening. "This is John Sherck." In the silence that ensued, he was no doubt going through his own mental rolodex. "Lauren and I" (I offer some contextual reminder of who I am) "were wondering if you and Allison could do us a huge favor." Clever, eh? Confirm I have the right number by throwing out the name I do remember. "Okay," he says. I explain our situation and he tells me that they have nanny interviews scheduled for the whole day... but they do have an extra car seat that I could borrow to use in the truck. Great. He--Brian, Lauren later reminded me--came over and it turned out that after some small discussion they didn't think another toddler underfoot would be any great impediment to their interviews--anyway, our kids get along fabulously--so I packed her into their back seat and sent her on her way.
Which, of course, wouldn't be the last time I would abandon her that day. But anyway, I spent a little over two hours just getting the car key, then grabbed a quick bite to eat, threw random baby items into random bags, since I wasn't quite certain what Lauren had and hadn't already packed for the trip over the river and through the woods. With baby packed in her car seat and dog packed in hers--that is, sitting on my lap Britney-style--we started our two-and-a-half hour drive to meet my in-laws. Then I detoured into the South Bend / Mishawaka area to pick up our farm share vegetables before coming home, where Lauren has returned once she realized that it made absolutely no sense to wait at Notre Dame for me.
Hours driven to this point: roughly 7 1/2.
Hours left to drive that day: 2
And so anxious was Lauren to finally get underway that she wouldn't even give me time to heat up something to eat, so I had to manage this leg on a more or less empty stomach. Let me tell you: Lauren is lucky to have a husband with such a good sense of humor, otherwise we might very well have needed both of those hotels for Saturday night and yet another on Friday besides!
As it was, we had a very nice, if unnecessarily expensive, trip to Indianapolis this past weekend, and our anniversary should consider itself well and truly celebrated. We saw HP7 pt 2, visited a yurt factory and decided we could probably stand to live in a yurt for a decade or more, ate at some very good restaurants, and visited more malls in one weekend than we have in the past year. But all that is a story for another post.
Thursday, July 14, 2011
Thursday Think 'n' Share 3.7
As I mentioned the first time around, this is a sort of "getting to know you" game that I hope my readers will join me in playing each week. The short of it is that I pull three random question from one of various decks of The Ungame and answer them. Readers are encouraged to post their own answers either in the comment box or on their own blog (or Facebook page). If you're not doing it in the comment box, do let me know where I can find them, because I'd like to get to know my readers better at the same time they're getting to know me. You can be as serious or as silly as you feel like being on any given day for any particular question.
If you could have been someone in history, whom would you have been?
I guess the version of this question we usually get asked is about meeting someone, because that's the way my mind tends to go with this question. In fact, I'm pretty sure that a lot of the historical figures I'd like to meet I would not want to have been--they had a tendency to die young and/or live unhappy lives. I guess that should make us appreciate better the times we live in, when life expectancy and standard of living are so high, from a historical perspective. At this precise moment, with A Dance With Dragons sitting near me waiting to be cracked, I might like to be George R.R. Martin, just to know how the series will end, but I'm not sure that's a good enough reason to be somebody (but hey, he's also a pretty brilliant, successful guy too, and those aren't bad reasons, right?).
When you feel sad, what is the best thing someone can do for you?
I guess that depends on the kind of sadness it is: sometimes I would want someone to listen, sometimes I would want to be left alone, sometimes I would just want someone to be there, available, but not necessarily needing to say or do anything. Doesn't it depend on the source of the sadness, too? I guess all three of those things I listed are assuming that I've got something to be sad about, but if I'm blowing something out of proportion, say, then maybe what I need is someone to pull me up and distract me, take me out and do something to get my mind out of the rut it's gotten itself into.
If you could have a motto or saying in every home in the world, what would it be?
How about "Live and Let Live"? We could do with a little more acceptance of others, so if we're going to impose one motto on everyone, I guess that would do. "Carpe diem" is pretty good advice for everyone as well, which of course is why it's the theme of so many poems, movies, etc. Or maybe we could borrow from Thoreau and encourage everyone to "Live Deliberately." We're all human, so we all need to be reminded of the same pitfalls, no?
Well, what about you?
If you could have been someone in history, whom would you have been?
I guess the version of this question we usually get asked is about meeting someone, because that's the way my mind tends to go with this question. In fact, I'm pretty sure that a lot of the historical figures I'd like to meet I would not want to have been--they had a tendency to die young and/or live unhappy lives. I guess that should make us appreciate better the times we live in, when life expectancy and standard of living are so high, from a historical perspective. At this precise moment, with A Dance With Dragons sitting near me waiting to be cracked, I might like to be George R.R. Martin, just to know how the series will end, but I'm not sure that's a good enough reason to be somebody (but hey, he's also a pretty brilliant, successful guy too, and those aren't bad reasons, right?).
When you feel sad, what is the best thing someone can do for you?
I guess that depends on the kind of sadness it is: sometimes I would want someone to listen, sometimes I would want to be left alone, sometimes I would just want someone to be there, available, but not necessarily needing to say or do anything. Doesn't it depend on the source of the sadness, too? I guess all three of those things I listed are assuming that I've got something to be sad about, but if I'm blowing something out of proportion, say, then maybe what I need is someone to pull me up and distract me, take me out and do something to get my mind out of the rut it's gotten itself into.
If you could have a motto or saying in every home in the world, what would it be?
How about "Live and Let Live"? We could do with a little more acceptance of others, so if we're going to impose one motto on everyone, I guess that would do. "Carpe diem" is pretty good advice for everyone as well, which of course is why it's the theme of so many poems, movies, etc. Or maybe we could borrow from Thoreau and encourage everyone to "Live Deliberately." We're all human, so we all need to be reminded of the same pitfalls, no?
Well, what about you?
Wednesday, July 13, 2011
Rural Third Places
A friend of mine recently post an article on Facebook about why "third places" are particularly important in rural communities.
When I moved to middle-of-nowhere western Pennsylvania, I had friends who weren't afraid to become regulars at the local hole-in-the wall, a shabby-looking bar owned and run by an old biker and his wife. The main draws were $.70 drafts and cheap but tasty wings (only one variety, the kind with a spice rub). But it was also one of the finer third places I've known. I don't think this is true of all bars--most aren't Cheers. But this place, where the owner once plunked down a large handgun in front of me, I saw a patron in the process of being ejected fling a shot glass at the woman behind the bar, and there was a sign on the door disallowing spitting out the door, this seedy little place was well laid out to be an effective third place.
Why? The place was dominated by a U-shaped bar in the middle of the room, with just a few tables off to one side (plus a pool table and some ancient mechanical game involved metal discs that you'd slide from one end of a lane to another (think table-top shuffle board or curling). But the bar was the thing. Everyone sat around the bar, almost by necessity. So everyone was, more or less, looking at everyone else. It was easy to strike up conversations with complete strangers--and with the bartender too, as she was always in front of everyone. We more or less became regulars and we got to know a lot of the locals that we never would have gotten to know any other way. We taught at a boarding school--an institution of privilege--in a down-on-its-luck community, and that had led to a fairly sharp town-gown divide. Nonetheless, by making ourselves part of this third place, we bridged that divide in our own small way.
Where we live now, the third place that comes most easily to mind is our local coffee shop. Coffee shops seem like natural third places, because people often come to "hang out" there, but there's something about the atmosphere that also makes it easy to strike up conversations with other people there, even strangers. There are also special events there, such as musicians, which serve to draw people there.
Restaurants--and most bars that are set up like restaurants--do not function this way. In a restaurant, we tend to be more isolated. I'm at my table/booth, you're at yours, and we're unlikely to speak to one another. Even with people you know, you often won't speak to them, except maybe a quick hello as you or they leave. Perhaps it's because we go to restaurants for meals, which have a certain formality to them (as opposed to "grabbing coffee"); perhaps it's because of the set-up, with so many discrete tables and booths separated from one another. Whatever the reason, restaurants--nice as they are--tend not to make good third places. I'm sure there are exceptions, but that's how it seems to me.
What are some of your third places, and how do they work?
For those who haven’t heard of them before, third places are where people meet and socialize outside of their homes (first places) and their work (second places). Sociologist Ray Oldenburg is credited with drawing attention to third places through his influential book, The Great Good Place.These are important places both for the ways they bring people together and the way that they foster a sense of community. Third places also serve to introduce newcomers to a community. The entry linked above got me to thinking about third places in communities I've lived in.
When I moved to middle-of-nowhere western Pennsylvania, I had friends who weren't afraid to become regulars at the local hole-in-the wall, a shabby-looking bar owned and run by an old biker and his wife. The main draws were $.70 drafts and cheap but tasty wings (only one variety, the kind with a spice rub). But it was also one of the finer third places I've known. I don't think this is true of all bars--most aren't Cheers. But this place, where the owner once plunked down a large handgun in front of me, I saw a patron in the process of being ejected fling a shot glass at the woman behind the bar, and there was a sign on the door disallowing spitting out the door, this seedy little place was well laid out to be an effective third place.
Why? The place was dominated by a U-shaped bar in the middle of the room, with just a few tables off to one side (plus a pool table and some ancient mechanical game involved metal discs that you'd slide from one end of a lane to another (think table-top shuffle board or curling). But the bar was the thing. Everyone sat around the bar, almost by necessity. So everyone was, more or less, looking at everyone else. It was easy to strike up conversations with complete strangers--and with the bartender too, as she was always in front of everyone. We more or less became regulars and we got to know a lot of the locals that we never would have gotten to know any other way. We taught at a boarding school--an institution of privilege--in a down-on-its-luck community, and that had led to a fairly sharp town-gown divide. Nonetheless, by making ourselves part of this third place, we bridged that divide in our own small way.
Where we live now, the third place that comes most easily to mind is our local coffee shop. Coffee shops seem like natural third places, because people often come to "hang out" there, but there's something about the atmosphere that also makes it easy to strike up conversations with other people there, even strangers. There are also special events there, such as musicians, which serve to draw people there.
Restaurants--and most bars that are set up like restaurants--do not function this way. In a restaurant, we tend to be more isolated. I'm at my table/booth, you're at yours, and we're unlikely to speak to one another. Even with people you know, you often won't speak to them, except maybe a quick hello as you or they leave. Perhaps it's because we go to restaurants for meals, which have a certain formality to them (as opposed to "grabbing coffee"); perhaps it's because of the set-up, with so many discrete tables and booths separated from one another. Whatever the reason, restaurants--nice as they are--tend not to make good third places. I'm sure there are exceptions, but that's how it seems to me.
What are some of your third places, and how do they work?
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