Olivia Newton-John showed up for opening night of Xanadu on Broadway and joined cast members on stage for the curtain call. The musical is getting good reviews despite its much hated source movie. Roller skating is back on Broadway, this time set to the music of E.L.O.
As the emerald ash borer threatens America’s ash tree population, baseball bat makers ponder the future of their tree supply. Ash has been the dominant raw material for major league bats, though maple has risen recently as it is Barry Bonds’ favored source tree. Under the umbrella of a series of articles on climate change, the N.Y. Times raises the question of whether warmer weather will contribute to the decline of ash bats. The ash borer invasion may be aided by higher temperatures and a longer growing cycle for the tree could result in softer bats. But baseball will survive any bat material changes that may result.
Tucked a little past the middle of Mimi Sheraton’s memoir, “Eating My Words,” a short chapter tells the former N.Y. Times restaurant critic’s side of a culinary brouhaha that predates all our techie generation foodblogging, Food Network mudslinging, and celebrity chef fawning. In 1979, the New Yorker published a piece by consummate essayist John McPhee that began, in true McPhee style, by describing his fifth-best, fourth-best, third-best, best and second-best meals, which all took place under the same roof, “a sort of farmhouse inn…in the region of New York City”. He was vague about the location as the chef-owner (“Otto”) and his wife (“Anne”) had agreed to cooperate if McPhee kept the restaurant anonymous. But by praising an unknown mom & pop operation into the realm of haute cuisine and by recounting Otto’s harsh criticisms of certain New York restaurants, McPhee sparked an investigative firestorm amongst journalists who, unlike McPhee, made their living writing mainly about food. Through wits and luck, Sheraton and her accomplices discovered Otto’s true identity and published the details in the Times. She was subsequently skewered by some publications for breaking the trust McPhee had established; Time magazine printed a pun-laden article titled “Devouring a Small Country Inn.” Now years later, Sheraton finally gets her side of the tale in print. (The McPhee essay is in “Giving Good Weight
Oh Snapple, where have you gone? The glass-bottled beverage, ubiquitous in the 1990s, has been shuffled aside while brazen energy drinks and branded bottled water take the limelight. After it leapt far beyond its modest Greenwich Village beginnings, Snapple was sold in 1994 to Quaker Oats for $1.7 billion. Sales then took a nosedive and Quaker Oats unloaded it three years later for a mere $300 million (and the CEO resigned). The next owner, Triarc, turned things around and made a tidy sum in 2000, selling Snapple to Cadbury Schweppes for $1.45 billion. But sales have again fallen off. Cadbury is now planning to split itself into two businesses, and none other than giant Coca-Cola is reportedly interested in snapping up Snapple from the beverage unit. Interestingly, Nantucket Nectars, the brand I started choosing over Snapple, is now owned by Snapple (Cadbury) and if a Coca-Cola deal happens it will likely go along.
In 1986 Ron Bartl bought a 1923 Great Northern Railway caboose for $2,900 from a man who bought it from the Burlington Northern Railroad. Bartl decked it out with cable TV, heat, shower, toilet, and phone (no Internet?). Bartl thought he’d use it as guest quarters for his Bellevue, WA house, but now that he’s moving to a smaller home, he’s listed the furnished caboose for sale on CraigsList at $50,000. With plenty of train nuts in this area (and well-to-do ones at that), this caboose may not have to travel far to its next home.
As a prelude to this past Sunday’s rollout of the new 787, Boeing gathered together one each of its 7xx series aircraft and paraded them in a takeoff from Paine Field in Everett to a landing at Boeing Field in Seattle. The family reunion took place on Saturday evening with the first of the eight planes, a 707, landing at 7:07pm. (In case you didn’t notice, the 787 was rolled out on 7/8/07). The planes came from various airlines and a few other sources. The 707 is owned by a refueling company and the 727 by FedEx. The 747 is a testbed for Rolls-Royce. One of its original engines was replaced with a larger model that is being certified for use on the 787. Here’s an airliners.net shot of the line-up (you can see that huge engine on the 747).
Little did I know that one of the world’s greatest collection of violins was right here in the Seattle Eastside. Well, it used to be greater; it’s been recently edited down to fifteen “crème de la crème” violins, violas and cellos. David Fulton sold Fox Software to Microsoft in the early 1990s and the stock boom gave him the means to acquire seven instruments made by Antonio Stradivari, two by Giuseppe Guarneri del Gesù, and six others from Italian masters, plus the seven that he’s recently sold. Fulton is a violinist (his mother hoped he’d be celebrated professional) and he loans his prized instruments out to deserving musicians.
Levi Strauss had no children, but his company’s success provided his heirs with a fortune that they are funneling into a vast trove of local charitable acts. Walter Haas Sr. married the daughter of a Strauss nephew (a Stern), ran Levi Strauss & Co. for nearly 30 years, and set an example of community giving that his children have exploded into vast proportions. The five largest Haas foundations now hold well over a billion dollars in total assets. The largest, the Evelyn and Walter Haas Jr. Fund, has given away $268 million. Bay Area residents may not realize the extent of the family philanthropy that gave the city Stern Grove, turned a toxic military base into the beautiful Crissy Field waterfront, built SF’s Museum of Modern Art, kept the Athletics in Oakland, brings college opportunities to low-income students, funds gay and lesbian causes, and is about to transform the Presidio campgrounds with $15 million. Some of their larger gifts carry the Haas name, such as the significant UC Berkeley funding, but the Haas family likes their privacy. They give to progressive organizations, they give to disadvantaged children and women, they give to improve the region immediately around them.
A genetic study of cats has shown that felines were domesticated in “Fertile Crescent” of the Middle East at around the time agriculture began. They liked our rodents. We didn’t. It was a perfect match. The study comes to us from the Cat Genome Project.
Some YouTube highlights from this year’s Glastonbury Festival (“the largest greenfield music and performing arts festival in the world“): Dame Shirley Bassey wraps up her set with 10 minutes of pure diva power (and this diva is 70 years old!). Bjork and her killer all-female brass band perform Hunter. The Who, always amazing live, energize Who Are You? while sheets of rain pour down on the crowd. The oddest of the bunch, Rufus Wainwright and his band dance along to his cover of Judy Garland’s Get Happy. And if you want to see the sea of tents and mud that was Glastonbury 2007, catch a few minutes of “Getting out of Glastonbury 2007 in 5 minutes” wherein a coupla blokes video their drive out from the festival grounds.