Thanks, perfect stranger

You can find just about anything on the web by accident. Even timely succor.

Failure doesn’t stop me from blogging. In fact, I prefer the failure of a blog post to the failure of a newspaper column. Back when I was a columnist and reporter, I had to wait days to redeem myself from a crappy newspaper story, but with my blog I can atone in real time. Blogs are the most forgiving communications tools in history — they are designed to absorb defeat and encourage endless second chances.

You know, if blogs are people, then maybe those people are moms. No matter how much you screw up or make a fool of yourself, your mom, just like your blog, will always be there to make you feel better.

Okay, then. Moving on!

Local losses

Things that used to be part of Gatewayville, and apparently ain’t no more:

The St. Louis County Fair and Air Show.

The popular Labor Day weekend tradition that has drawn crowds to the Chesterfield Valley has been squeezed out by development near Spirit of St. Louis Airport, according to a source close to the nonprofit board that runs the fair and air show.

Fair organizers reached on Wednesday would not confirm that a decision had been reached, but rumors of the fair’s demise had been swirling in the last several days.

Balaban’s.

Developer Pete Rothschild lost more than a tenant when Balaban’s restaurant closed suddenly after dinner service Sunday night, possibly ending a run of more than 35 years. [...]

When Herb Balaban opened the restaurant in 1972, the Central West End’s mansions were interspersed with boarding houses, and the area had a bohemian feel. Balaban and his restaurant at 405 North Euclid Avenue served as galvanizing factors in the neighborhood’s revitalization.

I’ve been to the air show exactly once, and nicknamed it “the St. Louis County War Show,” what with all the military craft and the freakin’ loud Harrier (which was pretty cool, actually). In 2006 the event couldn’t quite break even, but it was insanely popular and certainly seemed like a family activity for the holiday. I wouldn’t want to own a house anywhere near it, but the fair’s passing still seems a shame.

I used to live above Balaban’s for a while, smack between Left Bank Books (where I worked) and Dressel’s Pub (where I drank). Balaban’s was always too expensive a place for me - dined there on four occasions, each time on someone else’s dime - but it really was an anchor for the Central West End North. Hoping that something substantial takes its place.

Filial endorsements, continued

Caroline Kennedy isn’t the only child anxious to present a father as a political model to be emulated…or as an actual candidate to be elected. At The Morning News, Ellie Kemper makes the case for her dad as president of the Hill View Neighborhood Watch.

Sometimes it takes awhile to recognize that someone has a special ability to alienate dozens of people over the course of a single dinner at Mike Duffy’s Bar And Grill in downtown Hill View. In that rare moment, when such a person comes along, someone like, oh, I don’t know, my dad, for example, we need to put aside our plans and our dignity and our better judgment and do whatever he says to do so that he doesn’t pour beer on our heads again.

We have that kind of opportunity with my dad. It isn’t that the other candidates are much, much better and handle anger entirely more effectively than my dad. But this year, we need something that won’t get my mom or me in trouble. We need a change in the leadership of this neighborhood—just as we did last year, and the year before that, and the year before that, and every year that my dad has lost the race for Neighborhood Watch president.

Brings a tear to your eye, yes?

The two Sarah Richardsons

M and I subscribe to DISH Network for our television viewing needs. As hinted at in a previous post, our subscription isn’t exactly DISH’s most fully-featured offering; indeed, it’s their bargain-basement level, something called DISH Family. In this context, “family-friendly programming” means “none of the real good stuff for you, cheapos.” Still, we’ve found entertainment here and there in the selection. The DIY network, for example. Being halfway enthusiastic householders, we like to inspire/berate ourselves by watching telegenic contractors with years of experience, unlimited tools, and a crew of helpers make home renovation look easy. Another favorite of ours is the Fine Living network. Lots of guidelines from these folks too, though these fall more generally into the “style you can’t quite afford” category. It’s good to dream, though.

Fine Living features a pair of shows with the same host, a Canadian designer named Sarah Richardson. Her shows are fascinating to me because of the very different ways in which Richardson is portrayed. On the first and somewhat older show, Room Service, Richardson is soft-spoken and gently enthusiastic as she describes design projects for the style-impaired. She’s really rather sweet; even the background music is soft and pleasant, kind of Windham Hill-ish. The second series, Design, Inc., is something else again: here, Richardson is the snarky, hard-driving leader of a team of designers putting together new looks for clients with cash to burn. It’s like the difference between a tranquil elf princess and a grand and terrible elf queen. At least, that’s the way I describe it to M, who always laughs.

Both shows, “both” hosts, very enjoyable. Though for very different reasons.

Toolin’ up in the kitchen

As I’m kind of shy and diffident when it comes to cooking - quick to remind people that I’m no creative cook, a mere babe in the woods without a clearly written recipe - it usually takes a lot of time and fretting before I can bring myself to purchase kitchen equipment. For example, I waited a long time after having ruined one cast iron skillet before finally acquiring another (that’s a story yet to be recounted here). Fortunately, my supportive wife constantly reminds me that I’m good enough, smart enough, and deserving of proper tools.

A few months back, I had made soft whimpering noises about how great it would be to have a oil atomizer, something with which I could lightly spray olive oil rather relying on my heavy hand and a tablespoon. During the holiday season, M found herself in possession of a gift card from Crate & Barrel. M loves her some Crate & Barrel, and when she announced that it was time to burn up the card, I assumed we’d be picking up some stylish knick-knack or other. But instead, and to my delight, M said something along the lines of “Let’s go get that oil sprayer thingie.”

As it turned out, we spent all of the card’s value (plus a tad more) on the sprayer and two other tools.

The oil aerosol stands tall and ready for use. As most of you already know and the rest can guess, the clear cap is attached to a tube that acts as a plunger/pressurizer. You open the sprayer, fill it with extra-virginy goodness (or any other kind of oil), close the sprayer and use the cap to build up pressure inside. Then you’re set to spray. I use it to spritz food directly and to apply a trace of oil to a pan when a light touch is desired.

The two-stage knife sharpener on the left has two crossed carbide blades to set the blade’s edge, and two ceramic rods with which to finish the edge. No, I’d never heard of “setting” or “finishing” knife edges before. There’s also a component for sharpening scissors.

The star of the show, however, is the Microplane grater/zester. Greatly have I desired one of these gizmos. Just holding it makes me feel like a real chef. Romano and parmesan cheese shavings are light and fluffy as clouds with this thing, and I can get lemon zest without grating down to the rind as I often did using a cheese grater.

Just looking at these tools makes me happy.

Penny. Wise?

This is an image from our most recent wireless bill from AT&T.

Yes, that’s right, friends: “Usage Charges,” one friggin’ cent.

So what does this usage charge refer to, specifically? I’m embarrassed to admit that in my considerable irritation over this, I forgot to read the rest of the bill. It’s not for some fraction of a calling minute or bit of data downloaded; rather, it’s likely for some cryptic charge such as you see in this example. (I like “Federal Universal Service Charge.”) But how did this charge accrue after we paid the previous bill in full? Did they just forget to mention it before?

And then, of course, there’s the big question: Why in the world would AT&T bother to waste several times the amount of the bill on postage for this?

It would be funny if it weren’t deeply weird.

Add weird: Rather than duplicating the phone company’s foolishness, we decided to pay the one cent electronically. We’re such smarties!

…except that our bank chokes on the very idea of handling a transaction that small over the web.

We wound up having to pay instead a whole dollar online. So I guess we’ll have a credit of ninety-nine cents on the next bill.

On the bright side, that should cover eight-point-two-five years’ worth of one cent usage charges.

Edwards is out

I suspected that the John Edwards campaign would not survive South Carolina, and, well, here we are.

As I said a few days ago, there is still a noble purpose awaiting him, elections notwithstanding.

Still a sad day, though.

And as long as Edwards’ name is on the ballot come Super Tuesday, he’s got my vote. Hillary, Barack - sorry.

Somewhat beyond my reach just now

Just for laughs, I did some prowling around the Dish Network site to see how much it would cost for…you know…everything that I might want in order to satisfy my television needs. HD programming. A DVR. All the channels I want (keeping in mind that in order to get them, I’d have order a lot of crap I don’t want), which include all those movie and sports packages that we don’t get now. And say I wanted it for two televisions.

Holy schmoly.

Ninety bucks a month for the “America’s Everything” programming package.

Add twenty per month for HD programming (”only $20 since it’s being added to a “top” program pack).

The HD DVRs cost so much that they don’t even list the prices on the site! At least, not where I can easily see them. What do you think, two hundred dollars, maybe three? And that would just be for the box itself; the actual DVR subscription must be extra.

Damn. I don’t have the heart to look anymore. Let’s just say an entertainment upgrade isn’t on the horizon. What the hey, there’s nothing wrong with Bio, DIY, and Discovery Times Investigation Discovery, eh?

Oy.

I hear there’s a football game this weekend

This came to me yesterday, apropos of nothing at all: The Super Bowl doesn’t exist for me this year. Even less so than usual, actually. Most years, I pass entirely on watching it, turned off not so much by the game (which is usually not nearly as exciting as the playoff struggles that lead up to it) as by the hyped national pasttime of Super Bowl commercial-watching. Ugh. And the less said about the overblown halftime festivities, the better. (Tom Petty this year? I like him and all, but seriously, I thought he died two years ago.)

I think I was one of five Americans who heard second-hand about that whole wardrobe malfunction thingie.

I dislike the Patriots, whenever I actually make time to think about the Patriots. I could be compelled to root for the Giants, if only to say “boo ya sucks” to Tiki Barber, but, well, meh.

The thing is, most of the free-floating media oxygen seems to have been absorbed by presidential politics. It’s just the NFL’s misfortune to have its “team marching toward perfection” storyline upstaged by Hillary vs. Obama and whatever’s happening on the GOP side.

Too bad. I guess.

Addendum: Forgot to mention that Will Leitch of Deadspin fame has his own problems with the SB thing.

It’s that the actual game of football, at the moment when it is supposed to be at its glorious peak, is utterly irrelevant. It is impossible to keep up the appropriate level – the expected level — of psychotic fandom when the pregame show is 10 hours long, three-quarters of the people at your party are sprinting into the room when the commercials come on and Vegas is taking bets on the duration of the inevitable Tom Petty nipple slip. When the Patriots and Giants take the field Sunday, a fan can be forgiven for thinking, for the first time, that the game itself is oddly small. This is the championship game, the event that everyone is supposedly investing all their emotional capital toward, and we can’t shake the image of Ryan Seacrest talking about Gisele while promoting the new Paula Abdul single. The Super Bowl is when a bunch of strangers come stomping through our living room, wearing muddy shoes and demanding the furniture be rearranged.

Nicely phrased. I see some Netflix action in store for me this Sunday. Er, it is Sunday we’re talking about, yes?

Kill the assumptions - and treat the patient

I’d never read a fat- or size-acceptance blog, and knew little of the Health at Every Size philosophy, before Kate Harding and Shapely Prose came into the Shakesville orbit. Since then, SP has served me as a portal to other blogs in the fatosphere. It’s also provided a needed check against the gestalt of hostility and general wrong-headedness that informs societal judgments about health and self-worth.

Because the Wurlitzer effect of that hostility is so loud and ongoing - not unlike Phil Spector’s “Wall of Sound” - correctives tend to get drowned out and lost. Good news, then, to see an article in the Washington Post that addresses a key barrier to health care: the anti-fat bias of many physicians.

Two studies in the journal Obesity Research in 2003 found that many physicians harbor negative attitudes toward fat people: A University of Pennsylvania study of 620 primary care physicians found that more than half reported viewing obese patients as “awkward,” “unattractive,” “ugly” and “noncompliant”; a Yale study reported that health professionals strongly associated being overweight with being “lazy” and “stupid.”

Such negative views, some experts charge, may be helping to drive patients away: These experts point to a 2000 study of 11,425 women, which found heavy women less likely to obtain cancer screenings such as Pap smears and mammograms even though they’re at higher risk of dying from cervical cancer and breast cancer. Newer research has produced similar findings: A 2006 study of 498 women, published in the International Journal of Obesity, found that obese women delayed cancer screenings more than other women. Negative attitudes of health-care providers and disrespectful treatment were among the reasons cited for postponing care.

Some readers will point out that even this article, specifically devoted to the effects of physician attitudes, can’t help but toss in a general reference to the “increased health risks” of being fat, as a director of research and anti-stigma initiatives put it. But she goes on to draw the harmful effects that doctors themselves may have on their patients.

Puhl said she is concerned that physician attitudes may be harming patients’ emotional well-being as well as their physical health, undermining self-esteem and possibly triggering the very destructive behaviors doctors want to discourage, such as binge eating.

The core of the article should make things clear…even for readers who aren’t fat.

“Part of the problem is that primary care physicians don’t really have a lot to offer [to obese] patients,” said Arthur Frank, medical director of George Washington University’s Weight Management Program. The standard advice to eat less and exercise more isn’t very helpful to obese individuals, some of whom are increasingly believed to suffer from a metabolic disorder rather than a failure of will, he said.

So, many physicians feel frustrated. They may make assumptions about an obese patient’s lifestyle and may, rightly or wrongly, hold the patient responsible for the weight problem, said Lorenzo Norris, a psychiatrist who is director of the Medical Wellness Program at George Washington University Hospital and screens patients for bariatric surgery. Patients, meanwhile, feel chastised, blamed and judged.

This problem begins and ends with assumptions made even before a patient walks through the door - and can be addressed by removing those blinders and actually seeing the patient.

There is a long history, predating even the horrific Tuskegee syphilis study about thirty-five years ago, of distrust in the African American community towards the health professions. Many factors play into that dynamic, but the unified effect have been as clear and cold as an actuarial table. Much work has gone into bridging the trust divide between blacks and the health industry, with admittedly much left to do. The institutional acknowledgment of the divide between fat people and the biomedical community, in comparison, is light years behind - but the kind of research described in the WaPo article, and the article itself, point the way toward a better outcome.

At the very least - how does the phrase go? More like this, please.

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