We don't really celebrate the anniversary with our fourth day open being 9/11. It always seemed crass and insensitive. We did celebrate the 7th anniversary and we will the 11th the same way- calling it "Lucky Eleven" and having drawings for tapas at the bar and free dinners. But the so called 'big anniversaries' like the fifth and tenth will be ignored. I hope the best celebration for this anniversary will be Sous chef George winning the "Farm to Chef" challenge at the Farmer's Market this weekend. I have no doubt he'll take one of the 3 top places! He's come along way in the past three years.
A few thoughts:
- The radio program in Tucson was fun! Thanks to all who got me there!
- I still haven't heard back from the Culinary Institute of America to make the necessary changes in my post about the different types of chefs. Chef's who do big bold food can be either working stiffs who just do what they do or prima donnas- if I hadn't made that clear. Burn outs and those in leaving mode rarely do so and when they do it is often to disastrous effect.
- Editing the cookbook has been slower than I want. Don't know how to change that.
- Can't decide what recipe to put up next, but I need to decide once I finish this post!
This Labor Day Weekend was just okay. Figures were up from a typical weekend but not enough to feel like a traditional/pre-lesser depression holiday weekend ($4300 this year vs $4600 last year vs $6700 in 2007- the year the "recession" officially started in November; which I called just after Thanksgiving weekend 2007) I really think this is going to be a deep depression if the government doesn't do REAL large- $1.5 trillion at least- stimulus, but articles like this make me despair. Why would anyone vote for someone that was so anti-government that they would tear it down. In a different time we would call that person an Anarchist, now we call them a Republican. I don't believe in Big government, nor Small government- I want an efficient adaptable government able to meet the times- and that changes as the needs/threats/economy/world/climate/etc. changes. Sometimes I despair that a third of the population has declared the government the "ENEMY" instead of wanting to Take Back our government to once again make it the government of, by and for the people. I blame Reagan on this one- he could have said we needed to take the government back into our control versus declaring it the problem. That has now become the belief of too many people and so government is grid-locked, the size stimulus even conservative non-Keynesian economists like Bruce Bartlett believes we need are ignored and Keynes is declared irrelevant even though Obama was too much of a wimp to ask for the level of stimulus needed. Lessons from history is declared void and 1937 and a double dip depression is upon us as we tragically do austerity and debt reduction instead of MASSIVE government spending to get us out of the job crisis and reduce the debt another day. In 1937 Roosevelt made the same mistake, the economy re-tanked and economists- to keep Americans from being terrorized by the double dip depression- added a new word to their lexicon; "Recession". We've been bullshitting ourselves and calling depressions "recessions" ever since. "Those who don't learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them" isn't just a old-fashioned saying without truth or purpose! We have little attention-span in this country and even less of a sense or knowledge of history. We make the same mistakes too often and are doomed to continue making them despite the fact that we should know better. I fear we will see a decade of little to no economic growth, few jobs created, unemployment staying high, the middle-class keep slipping, the reversal of functioning social safety nets and the rich just getting richer. We've had several revolutions in this country- though the are rarely taught and definitely not taught as revolutions; i.e.: The Whiskey Rebellion- and if things don't change "Bread & Circuses" as the Roman Emperors called it, or Bud & Circuses (beer, NASCAR, reality TV, sports) as I call it, will eventually not be enough to keep the masses placid and mollified. The Tea Party is not a rebellion, it is the corporate/media/political-insider manipulation of fear and discontent of a fast changing world. But the elderly in the Tea party don't want changes in Medicare or Social Security- "keep the government's hands off" those programs, though they are government programs. As people stay unemployed, as the programs they like disappear, as the legislators they elect give themselves more perks and fewer roads and bridges are repaired, they WILL wake up! And I wouldn't want to be part of the anti-government/pro-wealthy only crowd at that point. Mobs are ugly things, and they will probably NOT resort to changing things via one person one vote; if they still have it at that point. Democracy IS fragile and the Republicans are leading those who are appealed to first and foremost out of fear and other emotional vs rational appeals into believing in policies that are counter their own self-interests. When they wake up to how badly they've been screwed I wouldn't want to be a conservative politician.
Then again, maybe I've just become too cynical as I've fought to keep my business surviving. We'll know in a few years.
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