Author: paladin1787

Scandinavian music, riding in the rain, and restaurants

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While not much has happened here recently, the same can’t be said for my non-digital life. To wit, a list.

  • Been listening to more and more tunes from northwestern Europe. Soaring digitals and orchestration coupled with a hint of nihilism? Count me in.
  • Visited a couple times at FreeGeek Chicago. Getting to know some of the regulars. Good people; good organization. Oddly, its basement headquarters, with bare bulbs and chainlink fence for “walls,” feels like home. Maybe I should have been a hacker.
  • Riding often. Always, rather. Unofficial goal: 360 days this year. Above, my pants hang dry after a wet ride last night.
  • Learning more about restaurant work every day. So far I’ve kept mum about my part-time employer, a pretty big player in the local-sustainable food scene here. I’m either gonna remain silent or introduce it with a bang. Haven’t decided which yet.
  • Following Matter Magazine, a Kickstarter-funded online place for good long-form science journalism. Or, as they like to call it, “journalism about the future.”
  • Trying to please those editors who like my deep/long work while trying not to scare away those editors who only need me to churn out short ephemera.
  • Eating some really great food. In the past few months I’ve been to Yusho, Mana Food Bar, Au Cheval, San Soo Gab San, Trencherman, Sixteen, Avec, Tavernita. And Lula Cafe, my perennial favorite, more times than I can count. There’s a reason I live down the block from them.

Two nights ago, at 56 glorious degrees fahrenheit, I explored the Loop, Grant Park, and Streeterville by bicycle between midnight and 2 a.m. My new header image shows Streeterville in all its money-soaked sparkle.

The cadillacs of bike accessories

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I’m writing this as much to record my wish list as to tell you about it.

Kickstarter helped fund two of these three outrageous-cool bike accessories. From left to right, the Blink Steady rear light; the TiGr titanium lock; the Hövding helmet-as-airbag, which, unless you’re in an accident, looks like a punk scarf.

The light’s all the rage because it eliminates human interaction with it. No more switching modes, turning on and off, or even removing it from your bike to prevent theft. If only they incorporated solar charging; maybe that’s too much to ask. With fundraising successful, the question isn’t if but when they’ll release a front light.

The titanium lock sparked a do’h moment: why hasn’t anyone thought of this before? Stronger than a U-lock and one-third the weight. Not to mention that I carry two U-locks—to protect both wheels—for the job that a single TiGr unit does. Sign me up.

While the airbag-helmet ($600) and lock ($200) are for sale now, the light will be available soon. Pre-orders cost $125.

I can’t see myself spending $600 for a slightly more pleasurable ride… but $125 to save a couple minutes every day? Sure. And $200 to shave nearly a dozen pounds? It’s so worth it.

Julia Child

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In honor of Julia Child’s 100th birthday this week, I read her 2004 New York Times obituary. From it, a lesson carried on today by a lot of good journalists and, in this field, America’s Test Kitchen:

Mrs. Child was always a star, never a spokeswoman. She prided herself on not granting endorsements because she was devoted to public television, and she was not afraid to mock corporate contributors to her advertising-free programs. She once demonstrated how to break off a part on a Cuisinart food processor to make it less cumbersome to use even as the manufacturer’s representatives sat in the audience.

Happy birthday, Ms. Child.

(Photo licensed Creative Commons and scanned by Flickr’s Krista76.)

New city, new (ad)ventures

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It’s time I move this site into line with reality. I left Ohio journalism at the end of May, after exactly a year with the Springfield News-Sun and, sporadically, the Dayton Daily News.

Since I had accepted an offer to be Springfield’s permanent city hall reporter only a month earlier, my colleagues were surprised to hear my decision. When I told them where I was going — Chicago — they all smiled. (All but those tasked with ensuring the paper’s coverage.)

It would have been an honor to cover government in a city with such an important past. But after talking to several older friends whose bylines appear in places I covet, I found I had probably taken what I needed from the Ohio position. Anything else was just gravy. I needed to cast a wider net.

It helped that my wife got a job offer in Chicago at an exclusive hotel downtown, and that I scored part-time work in a kick-ass restaurant. More on that later.

But now, as dust settles in a one-bedroom in the Logan Square neighborhood, my desk is coming into shape. My magazine subscriptions will soon roll in. And I’ll be writing about what I want to write, in the timeframes I want to write.

It was scary to leave the pension, the 401(k). But if I was gonna do what would tickle my soul, I had to.

Below is the trailer for a forthcoming documentary produced by some good blokes from nearby Wilmington, Ohio. My sentiments exactly, boys. My sentiments exactly.

Gots me an award

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People gave this to me on Sunday.

Here’s the second installment in the series for which I won. (It links to the first part there.) The topic still needs more reporting, actually…

It addressed the local effects of a nationwide phenomenon later documented best by Radley Balko. (Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3.)

Maybe next year I’ll get first place for “pink slime.”

Next year, pink slime on fewer school menus

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In this followup story to last month’s pink slime exposé (see previous post), I show it’ll be harder for schools to get their hands on products that contain “lean, finely-textured beef.” But not impossible.

If a school here doesn’t use its buying co-op to order its cafeteria meat, and it doesn’t ask the company that does its ordering (say, GFS) to avoid pink slime, they may still get it.

But good news for anti-pink slime people: if schools make sure they order with the same codes as last year, USDA will ensure those products are pink slime-free for next school year. So it’s a lot easier to avoid it.

I’m still trying to obtain a list from the Ohio Department of Education as to which districts in the state ordered pink slime beef and which didn’t. All USDA commodity orders go through ODE.

So-called “commodities” represent about 60 percent of beef schools buy — though poorer schools often hover hear 100 percent commodities, and richer schools might be assumed to avoid pink slime anyway… so the ODE’s tally should be a pretty accurate list of who buys pink slime and who doesn’t.

I’m especially proud that my description made it into the final cut of the story:

The substance has been added to most ground beef for at least a decade but has come under fire this year since a news story detailed how it’s made. The fat is melted out of fatty animal scraps, and what’s remaining, including connective tissue, is pressed together and mixed into ground beef to make it cheaper and leaner.