Great Meat: Slowly Smoked -- Slowly Served

Most Friday nights a group of us who all went to high school together in Lansing get together for dinner. Each couple picks a restaurant for the group for the week. Tonight it was Mary’s and my turn to pick. Our daughter and a few others had recommended Meat at 1224 Turner Street in what is now called Old Town in North Lansing. To all of us it is still Northtown where the venerable Freddie’s Doughnuts once purveyed their most delicious pastries. With a name like Freddie’s, how could it have been bad? So, back to Meat. The name says it all. Meat is what they do and, boy, can they do meat. We have done BBQ in a number of Lansing eateries. Among them have been Smoky Bones, Hall of Fame, Famous Dave’s, and Finley’s. Ratings of each place varies quite a bit among our troupe. The strongest consensus has been that Finley’s has the best ribs among the aforementioned places. So, I was surprised and happy to hear a mostly unanimous great rating for Meat’s meat. The ambience has a definite Lansing vibe. Down home, unpretentious, friendly and not too concerned with details. The dining room is very small and dark. Even more noteworthy is that it is very cacophonous. There was no music playing, but the small crowd (and it was full) was very noisy. The acoustics are either meant to be loud or they haven’t considered that people like to converse over great food. The most disappointing part of our visit was the speed of service. It took us an hour to receive our food. This did not bother me, much, since I was there to fellowship with my friends. I had a couple of Summer Blond Beers on tap and relaxed. Not everyone in our group was quite as laid back about the glacial pace of food delivery. This slow pace may explain the large numbers of people who came for carry-out orders. There is an outside area for eating, but my wife is, along with a few others of the group, averse to the alfresco thing, even though the weather was as nearly perfect as a perfect Michigan summer evening could be. We had a group, so we chose a long picnic table indoors which barely accommodated our membership. It was 1 of those tables which needs people on both sides to prevent the teeter-totter thing from dumping people on the floor. The selection of this table by the owners was definitely meant to create the feeling of a country kind of place short on fancy furniture and long on good food. They succeeded. On top of the table was the obligatory roll of paper towels and a collection of plastic squirt bottles of sauce. The sauce was delicious, the bottles were unmarked, again displaying the low concern for detail. The 1 fork provided was wrapped in a paper towel with the tines not wrapped. This seemed to defeat the purpose of the wrap: just saying. 3 of us had brisket, 3 of us had ribs and 1 had a burger. I, personally, had burnt ends with brisket. I have not had better. The meat was far better than any brisket I have ever had, in the north, south east or west. My wife had ribs which I volunteered to sample. They were perfectly done. Wonderfully smoked and seasoned, extremely tender, just like the brisket. Meat offers a relatively small number of sides. They apparently do not have a fryer which is ok with me. This means no French fries, deep fried pickles or any of the other customary sides served in most rib joints. Again, this is ok and provides incentive to be creative with other things. They are making progress on this, but may be able to kick it up a notch. They have Macaroni and Cheese as an entrée or a side. I did not sample this dish, but it was reported as being a little dry but well-flavored. None of us had macaroni and cheese as an entrée. The entrée is a build it to order with lots of things to add like mushrooms, onions, bacon and other good stuff. The side is served straight up. The Cole slaw is very unimpressive – not bad, just unimpressive. They serve a bleu cheese dressed potato salad which is a credible attempt. The flavors are very good, I would personally prefer a little more dressing, but this is not a criticism. I did enjoy it. Each entrée comes with a modest sized piece of corn bread. It is a sweet style cornbread and has no added items such as jalapenos or sweet corn as is the tradition in some southern places where I have dined. It is in the middle of the pack in my view of cornbread which I have eaten. It is certainly, to my taste, far better than Smokey Bones offering, but not as good as Famous Dave’s. I have a friend from West Virginia who makes her own in an iron skillet with a little bacon grease which is to die for. Hers is not sweet. I prefer the less sweet variety. Speaking of sweet, Meat does not offer dessert. I don’t consider this a negative. They are obviously concentrating their efforts on the meat. They have this down. They cannot make it better. Clearly making good BBQ is their passion. The rest is what they have to do to get people to savor their smoked perfections. Go there for the meat and beer. Have a couple sides to round out the meal. Plan to have a long meal time and enjoy your company. I would rate it overall a very respectable doughnut short of a dozen. The meat gets my highest and rarely given baker’s dozen (13 out of 12).

Hints And Comments For A Blind Person On Trimming A Christmas Tree

It may be a little odd to some people, but some blind people have never decorated a Christmas tree. There was a recent request on a list-serve that I follow from a blind couple for directions on how to independently trim a tree. I have done this many times as a totally blind person, since losing my eyesight. It is not a science but there are some general principles which I follow.

We have been married for 34 years and have lots of ornaments collected over the years. Our first tree was just 2 feet tall, sat on a table had maybe a dozen ornaments and 1 string of lights. I bought it for $1 very near Christmas and all the needles fell off within a couple hours of bringing it into the house. We loved the tree, just the same.

Some people have theme trees and some people have all the same colored lights and ornaments. We are very eclectic. We have ornaments that remind us of people and events in our lives and they range from computers to pets, sports, food, reindeer to abstract curiosities. I like eclectic, myself.

Mary and I have a stylized star for the top of ours. It is pretty old and too heavy for some trees. I sometimes have to trim the point down to get a stem strong enough to hold it up. But, that is tradition for you.
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Re: angel hair, I do not think we have any of those ornaments, though I do like them. The fiber glass is a little irritating to the skin if it is handled much.

We now have an artificial tree. I basically object to this, but I am too lazy to fight about it, since I will have to go out in the weather and cold and wet, bring the tree home, let it dry out, mount it in a stand and have it tip over a couple times before I get it right, then clean up all the needles after we take it down. I love the smell of a real tree. I like the ecological reasons for having a real tree. Real trees create more jobs than artificial and the disposal is more ecologically friendly than a plastic, glass and metal tree. So, convenience and laziness, in me, is turning me into an environmental hypocrite. Just like a liberal like me, huh? (smile)


I prefer starting at the bottom with the lights. The lights go on first. Then garland if you use it, then ornaments then tinsel if you use it instead of garland. Garland and tinsel are optional. Most people don't use both, though there are no rules. We started using garland because cats are vulnerable to choking on tinsel. A more earth friendly alternative is to string popcorn with or without cranberries and use it instead of garland. This takes a lot of patience and that is why I don't do it.

One of the most annoying parts of lighting a tree is knowing if the string actually lights. Our color identifier has a light probe on it, so we can use it, now, to know if a bulb is lit. You can also plug them in and feel if they get warm. Most tree lights are wired in parallel and so if 1 goes out, they all go out. I find this to be the most annoying part of decorating. So, plug in the lights before you string them on the tree to make bulb replacement easier.

Unless there is a window behind the tree, I do not totally encircle the tree. I start nearest the electrical outlet then go straight across proceeding around toward the opposite side near the wall opposite from where you start, then go up six inches to a foot, depending on how many lights you have and then come back across, keeping the second string as near parallel to the first as possible. Keep repeating until you reach the top It is sometimes necessary to adjust if you come up with too few to reach the top, or have too many left when you reach the top, though this is not as much a problem since you can simply reverse and go back down. You may end up with more lights at the top if you do this, which really isn't a big problem, depending on how fussy you want to be. If possible, imagine where most people will view the tree from and consider that most of the decorations should be visible from that point of view and look relatively evenly distributed. My only rule is "do my best have fun and don't worry."

With the ornaments, I start with the larger ones and try to distribute them evenly from left to right and top to bottom. I then fill in the blank areas with smaller ones.

Hope this is useful.

Justice

Lots of thoughts going on. I'm not sure what kind of fundamental principles universally apply in life, if any. My personal values and ethics are informed by my Christianity. To me, the Bible, especially Matthew in the New Testament, is meaningful, true and works no matter one's particular religious beliefs. The idea that, as clearly stated in the Lord's Prayer, God is in Heaven, he wants the Heavenly system to be present on earth for all of us to benefit from.

Mike and I were talking about justice this morning. The son of a mutual acquaintance killed a woman while driving drunk. It was his second accident while driving drunk. Clearly, society has a responsibility to protect itself from such behavior. Deterrence is a viable means of protection. In this case, the driver is facing a potential 25 year prison sentence. From the societal perspective, this accomplishes 2 things. It provides a deterrent to others who may become aware of the consequences of such behavior. It also, and directly addresses this person's behavior, gets him off the streets and isolates him so he will not, for 25 years, be able to repeat his offense.

So far, so good. Now, my question about justice. Is there justice? How is justice, repentance, love and material utility served by such a sentence? For 25 years, taxpayers will need to pay for this person's support. Society will not benefit from any potential contribution he may make to GNP or other similar measures. Presumably, he will not be able to have a family and thus there will be no gain from potential progeny of this person.

What about prison, itself. What does the institution do to a person? Is there any measurable benefit to any, let alone an otherwise decent citizen, from spending 25 years in there? Is there potential to make this person an even worse citizen when they ultimately get out? Is the mass incarceration of people with little regard to the type of offense committed a sensible approach.

If one takes the approach that prison's primary mission is to isolate people who commit anti-social acts like drunk driving the same as those who premeditate crimes like murder, robbery and similar crimes then the sentence and the mixing of behavioral criminals is consistent. If one believes in redemption and the possibility of repentance, then maybe we could design a better prison. How much are we willing to invest in this humanitarian endeavor, given that we are unwilling to invest in education for non criminal children?

Killing someone due to willful disregard for the safety or welfare of others is a selfish act which is not to be taken lightly. I wonder if locking someone up for 25 years in a dependent unproductive role is the best society can do to ameliorate and rectify the offense. Our laws are in flux on this topic, with the trend moving toward more severe consequences. The emotional reaction is perfectly understandable. He killed a 25 year old woman who was a missionary and a servant to society. It was avoidable and senseless. Maybe locking him up for 25 years is the best we can do.

God seems like the ultimate libertarian. We have free will. He teaches us about consequences, but does not intervene to control our decisions, daily. If I take the Bible in its whole, there are all kinds of teachings in there that could involve almost any kind of punishment or correction imaginable. God is expecting more from us than a prescriptive relationship. We are called upon to do justice and love God. These are deeply held values of mine. I am certain that the law is not the best we can do, I am not sure what will be better. It will, as inefficient as it is, just have to do until our thinkers can come up with something better. The answer is most certainly outside the prison system and probably outside the justice system. With our lawmakers being controlled more by special interests than voters, I wonder where the consensus will come from.

Science Camp Day 2

I am writing in the morning of the second day of Science Camp at Camp Tuhsmeheta. Yesterday, the campers arrived in the afternoon. We made introductions and talked about science concepts and our attitudes towards science. We are doing a camp around ecology. Most of the campers want to start fires and want to know more about fire. This is really funny to me.

A goal of this camp is to bring together adults from the regular and special education communities to reduce barriers to the participation in science classes for blind students. So far this is going splendidly. Cranbrook Institute will be here this morning to make a presentation to the campers about water. Mick Isaacson from Independence Science LLc (www.independencescience.com) is developing accessible software for the Labquest test equipment used in many college and high school classrooms. It is amazing to be able to record, chart and ultimately manipulate data on accessible equipment. The software is in alpha test mode at this point, so wefeel priviledged to have input into groundbreaking technology.

We have a veteran science teacher who is leading the campers and who has, along with a former student of hers, has designed the curriculum for the week. They have done a marvelous job. We will study lake, stream and wetland and forest environments. We will take measurements, record the measurements and compile data. We are attempting to, give the campers an overview of how science is done. We have discussed the ideas of competing viewpoints and that some scientists propose ideas and others challlenge those ideas. We haved discussed how politics and culture effect these debates.

This science camp is a collaboration between the National Federation of the Blind of Michigan (nfbmi.org nfb.org)and Opportunities Unlimited for the Blind, Inc (oub.org). NFBMI is paying OUB to host the camp. NFBMI's role is content development. OUB has done a splendid job with facilities and staffing. More later.

Here it is June 1. Coming up on the summer solstice, my brother's birthday and the halfway point on our calendar for this year. I have that cliché kind of thought about how I could actually stop time when I was around 5 or 6 years old. Then, I wanted time to keep moving, except sometimes when I stopped it for a minute or 2. I wish I could remember how I did that.

 

Of course the Gulf oil spill is mightily on my mind, along with Mary and a lot of my friends. I am sure that BP wishes it could stop time for a while. I vacillate between anger about how they could let such a thing happen and some empathy for having responsibility to accomplish a task for which they haven't any experience to fix. We live in this fantasy world that thinks there are instant fixes for things. Ask anyone who watches a loved one die of cancer or some bacterial infection. Sometimes there are no instant fixes.

 

I am, in no way, reducing BP's responsibility. They have made billions of dollars selling us oil. They needed to have done a better job protecting us from this accident. They didn't. Now, it must be stopped. All the hand wringing, haranguing, fretting and accusations will not stop the leak. I sure wish I knew how.

 

There are 2 apparently contrary lessons here. First, we are alone. Ultimately, we must be self-reliant and must be prepared to manage our lives and our affairs. Second, we are all in this together. We must learn to gather around one another in our hour of need and help. Hating, accusing and the like will not plug the hole, in fact, fighting will probably slow progress.

 

My best answer is prayer. From here in Michigan, all I can meaningfully contribute is my spiritual support. Another cliché comes to mind. "love the sinner: hate the sin."

I've been experimenting and learning about blogging with MS Word. Yesterday's blog has some spelling errors. I am a little ashamed of them. I am not a careless person, for the most part. I just was so excited about the ease of publishing the blog with Word that I do not have the heart to change it now and it was so cool, yesterday when it worked so effortlessly, that I forgot to spell check.

 

As you will observe, if you take the time to review the posts herein, I have been a spotty blogger to say the least. I have promised, before, to do better, so I won't do that, again.

 

I am at a point where I need to make some choices. I need to decide how to handle Twitter. It takes too much of my time and it is interfering with some other important activities. I need to decide how to blog and what I want to, ultimately, do with this resource. It is a cool thing, but not real useful, at the moment. I have a garden and home chores to attend to. I have a book to work on. I have been sick, recently, so I have my health to attend to. These need to be managed better.

 

I am still withdrawing from my former job, 3 years later, make that 4 years, come June. Likewise for the NFBMI presidency. I have reduced my work for NFB considerably, but am still very emotionally and spiritually involved.

 

Speaking of spiritual matters, I still feel inadequate with my church contributions. I am still not sure exactly how to carve out a niche that will be good for the God, church and me.

 

Memorial Day has caused me to think about these things. Some people die very young. I have been given this time. What is my best way to respond to this gift? Difficult to set priorities. I will keep trying.

I've been experimenting and learning about blogging with MS Word. Yesterday's blog has some spelling errors. I am a little ashamed of them. I am not a careless person, for the most part. I just was so excited about the ease of publishing the blog with Word that I do not have the heart to change it now and it was so cool, yesterday when it worked so effortly, that I forgot to spell check.

 

As you will observe, if you take the time to review the posts herein, I have been a spotty blogger to say the least. I have promised, before, to do better, so I won't do that, again.

 

I am at a point where I need to make some choices. I need to decide how to handle Twitter. It takes too much of my time and it is interfereing with some other important activities. I need to decide how to blog and what I want to, ultimately, do with this resource. It is a cool thing, but not real useful, at the moment. I have a garden and home chores to attend to. I have a book to work on. I have been sick, recently, so I have my health to attend to. These need to be managed better.

 

I am still withdrawing from my former job, 3 years later, make that 4 years, come June. Likewise for the NFBMI presidency. I have reduced my work for NFB considerably, but am still very emotionally and spiritually involved.

 

Speaking of spiritual matters, I still feel inadequate with my church contributions. I am still not sure exactly how to carve out a niche that will be good for the God, church and me.

 

Memorial Day has caused me to think about these things. Some people die very young. I have been given this time. What is my best way to respond to this gift? Difficult to set priorities. I will keep trying.

Memorial Day 2010

Memorial Day 2010

 

I can remember many years grilling outside with my family with the radio tuned to the Indianapolis 500. My father was a race fan and we both read mechanix illustrated and Motor trend Magazines each month. We loved the suspense of the long races and enjoyed rooting for our favorite racers.

 

Grilling in my family, was my mother's area of expertise. Today, either Marc, my son, or I do the grilling and Mary does not. Indoor cooking is appropriated according to who is the most motivated (hungry) to get things going.

 

My father hated camping. He served in WWII and said he had all the camping in Europe that he could stand. He hated tents and sleeping bags. He told many stories of the horrible conditions while his unit fought its way across Europe. He received a medal for inventing a kind of stove that could operate on gasoline without exploding and burning everything and everyone up. He came from a farm and was a very good innovator. His invention made a lot of people, even if modestly, more comfortable.

 

I am so proud of my father's contributions to defeating Hitler. Hitler was a horrible evil person who needed stopping.my father also received a Purple Heart when he was wounded during an artiliary attack. His good friend was killed by the same explosion. He always said that his friend saved him by shielding him. The strange idea of pure randomness was a lesion that I learned from this story. A random artiliary shell launched from many miles away explodes. 2 people a few feet apart are victims of the explosion. 1 is killed the other wounded. Who can possibly explain any meaning from that, except to be grateful for every day.

 

My father died when I was 16. I wish he had lived longer. He may not have lived that long if the wind had blown the shell a little off course, or the other soldier had been a foot one way or the other. We can only be grateful to God for every opportunity we get.

 

I sometimes oppose wars. I sometimes oppose political decisions. I even sometimes oppose Pentagon decisions on tactics or strategies. I never oppose our soldiers who go to fight on my behalf. Many times I feel politicians are far too cavalier with this precious resource. I am lividly angry at the lack of support that has been shown recently to the Veterans Administration to take care of Vets. Most homeless people in Lansing are Vets. Why can't the VA have a home for every homeless vet? These are special people who deserve our love.