Irritating Gatekeeping Mention — Due to the number of “marketers” liking posts (thereby connecting and leaving their site address), I’ve turned off post “likes.” Comments are still open.
The leaves begin to tumble, the moon rises in the very early evening, and a chill wind blows past creaking wooden shutters and underneath ill-fitting doors.
It’s time to put up the herbs.
Nothing terribly surprising — just basil, thyme, oregano, and sage — but I have a nifty way of saving fresh herbs for the entire year. (At least I think I do. For all I know, everyone else is doing exactly the same thing.)
Sage & Basil ready for their bath
O
I set the herbs in piles and pick through everything. (I have indeed taken caterpillars out.) I drop the stems and rejects in a pile on the counter, and I drop the good stuff into a colander in the sink.
After everything is rinsed, it’s food processor time — the basil, thyme, and oregano are wozzed up together nice and small as an herbs de Provence mix.
I tuck the washed-chopped herbs into ice cube trays, cover with water, and freeze. After they’re frozen, I plop ’em in a labeled Ziploc bag and I have ready-to-go chopped fresh herbs all year long — just drop an herb cube into whatever I’m cooking. =)
The scraps and stems can be put into a bottle with warmed olive oil and placed in the sun. Strain the herbs out after a week or two, and you’ll have herb-infused olive oil.
The sage is frozen separately (not chopped) in Ziploc bags by the bunch — filled with water and frozen to wait for Thanksgiving.
I tend to argue both sides of a problem. I’m interested in the “why.” I’ve no argument to win. On that, I humbly step aside. So, we’ll call this series “The Devil’s Abnegate.” I argue, but I concede.
Posit: Customer service sucks.
O
Let’s first look at the “back in my day” element.
Society has changed, the way we interact has changed, the way people treat strangers has changed. We’ve turned inward (and to our screens) to a large degree. We mind ourselves more, and everybody else less.
Was customer service really that much better thirty or forty years ago? Was walking up to the counter of a McDonald’s, Publix, Walden Books or Chess King in 1982 really that much more pleasant than the 2023 experience?
O
Don’t be ridiculous. Of course it was. (And the uniforms were more fun too.) We can argue about why the customer experience has slipped, but there is no doubt. It has slipped. Because of us. (And khakis with polo shirts.)
“Well, no wonder! People no longer even know their next-door neighbors!” That’s what I hear, and it’s probably true. Yardless apartments, condos, and “maintenance free” townhouses are being built at a dizzying rate and are more popular than ever — many less places to congregate outside, and those damn kids won’t look away from their screens anyway. Or so I hear.
I’m usually guilty when it comes to grumpy social stuff, but not in this case. We live on a short, friendly street with only eight houses. I know six of the eight families plus people around the corners, and most of us at least say hello or have a short conversation each day.
There are no houses across the street. It’s a park and the Community Farm. All of us know the people that volunteer there as well. We are indeed lucky … It’s very Sesame Street come to life. Days that I don’t see and talk to a at least a few neighbors are very rare. Unless it’s raining.
O
With next-day delivery, on-demand services, and platforms on which we can make ourselves known to potentially whole world, our desire for attention and immediacy has surpassed our desire to simply act in a civilized manner. We’ve become performative — seeking attention, adulation, monetary tips, and wealth through simply being noticed.
“Look at me! Awesome! Let’s gooooo! GOAT! That is so meta. YouTube is literally amazing! Squad goals, ultimate. You should automatic debit me ten bucks a month.”
With this, standards and expectations of quality, artistry, study, and expertise have fallen as well.
Shops no longer carry what we need or want, especially if those items involve higher quality and cost. Shops don’t employ people with specific knowledge or expertise because it is more expensive to do so. So, we stop shopping there. The shop loses money, and then carries even less (and lower quality) merchandise, and employs even fewer people (never-mind knowledgeable people).
We end up with a store that we view as an exercise in frustration and potential unpleasantness. So, we order online, taking business away from the store, which makes it even more difficult to keep happy employees and stock quality things that people like and would repeatedly return for.
O
In the present day and the longer-term, we now have not-even-twenty-year-old half-empty strip malls and shopping centers (which they bulldozed trees and wetlands to build) that are barely rented to stores that have a just a few surly employees at two of the ten registers and no one on the floor.
Well, now we’re grumpy. Of course we are. We complain.
The “I’d like to speak to a manager” people make me giggle. I want to be clear though. I don’t think “I’d like to speak to the manager” is ridiculous because of a personality thing — Everyone is permitted to be Angry Queen Bee once in a while. I think it’s ridiculous because it’s absolutely futile and not even close to worth the energy expended. I once heard an employee in a mall store reply, “I am the manager. And I’m also the only employee in the building.” Not worth the breath it would take to bother.
But then, I’m not somebody who optimistically buys a purple size small to see if I like it and then tries to return it without the tag or receipt after I wore it to dinner and Sheila said it looked “comfortable.”
O
The other day, I couldn’t buy a fountain pen in a large arts & crafts store. A few months ago, I’d stopped in the same store to buy some 100% wool yarn. I didn’t have to have fancy alpaca. I’d even take sheep. Nope. All acrylic. In the case of the fountain pen, I asked a clerk. She didn’t understand what I meant by “fountain pen,” and sent me to the things you dip strawberries in at a wedding.
One department in this store has continued to expand into the spaces stolen from useful, quality merchandise — Photos and Framing. With items advertised as “great for selfies.”
Needless to say, I don’t even bother anymore. I just order online and it arrives at my house the next day without the frustration.
O
If they still carried what I wanted or needed (or even understood what I was talking about) just once in a while, I’d perhaps feel differently.
But at some point, one must decide in favor of one’s own blood pressure.
I have a thing about underground buildings and rooms.
Our (very) small backyard is on a hill, sloping down 30′ to the house. Something occurred to me today when I saw the below photo.
“Well, that looks like it could be in our backyard. It sure would be easy to pay someone to dig out the space. Then, I’d be very comfortable laying the masonry myself.”
O
(Yes, this is exactly the type of thing I get myself into.)
These underground root cellars (and garages) built into hills are ubiquitous here in the Hudson Valley. No worries, though. I have forsworn longterm unnecessary house projects.
It seems like the sort of thing that could be done in less than a week, but we know how I am … it would take two years to decide, a year to plan, another year to actually start, and six months to finish.
I don’t need to pass into my retirement-age years with a half finished root cellar.
Every so often during this (very slow) kitchen renovation, I run across something that (to me) seems very common; then I realize upon then trying to purchase it, it’s not.
Evidently these iron-and-slats kitchen drying racks on pulleys are one of those things. They’re easily bought in Great Britain, but not so much here. I guess we prefer the standing XWing kind.
Ninety bucks. Forty of that was shipping from the UK and having to import the wooden rails as well because the standard sizes of lumber are not the same in both countries.
Ah, well. I’m happy I found one.
(not my photo)
O
All this aside, I don’t feel quite well today, and it’s a bit chilly. It’s not even cold yet, and the notification emails I receive alerting me to homes for sale in Saint Augustine are already tempting — even if the house is really not that great, needs some work, and is way too small.
Is that a good name for a lunar colony? Or, “The Second Generation Lunar Cooperative Introvert Society and Conservatory Band.” I’d like to live there. I’ll be the resident piano person and orchestra maestro. Are we able to synthesize water? That’ll be important.
Forty years ago, they said that removing salt from seawater for public consumption was too expensive and not sustainable; but now coastal cities are doing just that through reverse osmosis.
It seems like we should be able to just “make” water. I’d imagine the process being something like blowing micro-misted hydrogen at oxygen gas at a particular temperature in a pressurized vacuum. (That’s a total guess — I’ll look it up at the end of the post. If I got it right, I’ll throw a water synthesis party in Watertown at a water park.)
A reverse-osmosis plant.
O
This is the sort of thing that I would’ve done as a science fair project in middle school and gotten in way over my head.
I wonder if a small, completely closed economy made up of vetted moon residents could be sustainable. Two-thousand seems like a good number — 1200 working-age adults, 500 children, 300 seniors. Just enough people that you’d know everyone without having to know everyone. Certainly, people would need things to do; and there are things that would need done. So that takes care of jobs.
An artists’ rendering from ICON Technologies -New York Times
O
I suppose what I’m talking about is essentially a lunar self-sufficient combination of a Home Owners Association and a grocery Co-Op. hardware and home items can be ordered. I imagine a currency-less society.
Every time a version of this has been attempted in the past, money and ego has brought it down. So, let’s go money-less. We should still have stores and things like that, because that’s good socially; but you wouldn’t pay for anything. Just do your job and take what you need. Abuses can be addressed by the community. I’d imagine that a weekly meeting in which grievances can be discussed would be a component.
This is all in the works, in fact. NASA plans to have habitable human space on the Moon by 2040. This is not a flying-cars-by-the-year-2000 thing — it’s very real. Three moon landing missions are planned for this decade, and NASA has partnered with a construction technology companies (to the tune of $60 million).
There was a terrific article last weekend in the New York Times about NASA’s plans. Alas, I’ll be turning eighty in the 2040s — probably not a good time for a major relocation.
After looking it up — I was right! But you don’t need the pressurized vacuum. Yes, believe it or not, it really is that easy to synthesize water. However, there’s heat and an explosion involved. That’s kind of a problem. The Hindenburg is an example of what happens when a large amounts of hydrogen and oxygen tango together.
Sit Still Phill 