Best Espresso on Two Continents

This is not an advertisement. It is a testimonial. Among the wonderful things about the Netherlands is its coffee. Particularly in restaurants, the coffee actually has flavor. Sorry, Americans, but most of you wouldn’t know a decent cup of coffee if it slid down your throat. Yes, that’s harsh, but very, very true. Coffee in most American restaurants is brown water weaker than herbal tea. If I want a good cup of coffee here, I have to brew it myself or go to a Greek or Turkish restaurant. Even espresso, which is the strong coffee drinker’s best bet, is almost always lacking, and not just in Montana. The nice thing about Dutch coffee in restaurants or even in bars is that it comes to you strong, and is accompanied by some sort of cookie or biscuit or chocolate. You have to pay for a refill, but mostly you drink your single cup and move on to the next place expecting a similar experience. When they serve espresso they accompany the cup with a short glass of water to serve as a chaser in case you are overwhelmed by the strength. And yet – the espresso I had in Amsterdam, in den Haag, in Arnhem, and in Ootmarsum did not warrant the polite chaser. In fact, the standard by which I now judge espresso was set for me right here in Lakeside. Like I said, this is not an ad. Over the past few months we have gotten to know and come to really like a young couple trying to make a go of a small coffee shop slash café right here, called cleverly Glacier Perks. The relationship is growing, and we really hope they can stumble through the winter. They should – they make wonderful baked goods and incredible sandwiches, and, literally now, the best espresso on two continents. Both Ashley and Miah are marvels with the espresso machine, bringing out consistently rich, strong and flavorful double shots daily. Nothing I tasted in Holland came close. Last year, an Italian visiting the area was so excited to find “a real cup of coffee” in America that he tweeted the information gleefully, for all to see. I consider this to be an issue of international importance. Man does not live by coffee alone, but no man or woman should have to live with weak and tasteless brown fluid in a cup. I don’t care where you are. But if you’re here, come on down. And if you are our guests – the door is always open – we’ll even treat!

Flying

For any of you who have ever flown anywhere on a commercial airplane, as well as any of you who have not, the experience of flying a long distance can be grueling, especially in coach class. The seats were always a bit tight but it seems like they were more so this time around, particularly on the longer jaunts to and from Schiphol. It seemed Delta squeezed more seats into the fuselage than the last time we flew. Mind you, we have been spoiled by the very first flight Diane and I took way back in 2001 when, after 9-1-1, the airline upgraded us to business class for free the very first flight. Most of you know the story. Suffice it to say that our good friend Candida advised us never to turn right on an airplane, and she was so correct. Trouble is, we can’t afford Business Class; we can barely afford coach (this time the tickets were a gift, at that), and we learned the difference right away on the return flight from that first trip. Ten hours doesn’t seem like all that long a time, a full shift with overtime, until you are seated in close quarters with the person in front of you reclining and the television remote in your hand only working in one direction, left. I think the remote wanted to be in Business Class itself. The flight from Glacier International Airport to Minneapolis-Saint Paul took just over two hours. It was moderately uncomfortable, but anyone can do two hours. The flight from the Twin Cities to Amsterdam was just under eight and crammed with sleepy passengers. It turned out to be not horrible. Everyone was very nice on Delta and the food served was palatable if not particularly diet friendly. I had trouble with the remote, as I mentioned, but I had my Sudoku and my Kindle and I even managed to get a power nap or two while stuck smack in the middle of the plane. The return trip, also on Delta, in partnership with KLM, went to Seattle. We had better seats but felt even more cramped. Neither my nor Diane’s remotes worked properly on that flight, and the food, again, was tasty but heavy on the carbs. Seattle is an interesting airport. We managed to wade through passport control and customs and another security check, grateful that our plane landed fifteen minutes early. Navigating the airport was more challenging: a tram system linked the terminals once you figured out where you were supposed to be. At first it was scary and uncertain for people on a time squeeze, but once through it we realized how quick and efficient the system actually was. I was most intrigued by the fact that these trams ran under the airport AFTER you passed through security, which meant that they had to be totally contained within the secure areas of the place. Pretty amazing. Then we boarded the plane for our last jaunt. It seemed counter-intuitive to fly to Seattle just to head back east to Kalispell, but in terms of time spent traveling it turned out to be the fastest and most direct route home. The plane was a twin prop that could seat 80. It turned out to be the roomiest of the planes we were on, with plenty of leg room and overhead space for our carry-ons and coats. The plane also cruised along a bit more slowly, offering us wonderful vistas of Mount Rainier, the Cascades, and the Rockies. It was the most comfortable and enjoyable leg of the to and fro. But the best part of the flying was a constant in every plane: in 2009, the last time we flew, Diane and I were so heavy and so big that even the seats were uncomfortable. Not this time. Diane proudly (and with good reason) proclaimed: “And I don’t need a seatbelt extension!” Of course, she still looked dangerous even by half.

Back in the Saddle

Trying to Get Back in the Saddle Well, we are back home after a wonderful three weeks in my homeland, the Netherlands, where it seems much has changed since we were there last, four years ago. Mostly, the urban areas seem all the more urban, with new and ugly high rise buildings going up, yet the city centers and the rural areas are as charming and beautiful as ever. Like most places where people get in the way with all those “people needs,” Holland has to accommodate what is the most densely populated country in the world, as measured by people per square mile. And yet, the amazing thing is that there is still so much land upon which human beings have not built high rises or anything else. In fact, when you travel through Holland you get a feeling that this place is so well planned out that the only thing that will wreck permanent green belts is global warming – excuse me, climate change – and the ensuing rise of ocean levels. More on our trip in upcoming blogs. Here I promise to try to be much more dedicated to daily blogging. I have had several readers tell me to get back in the saddle, so to speak, and I find myself compelled to make the time. Thank you all for your support and interest. I also will try to be cheerful and talk about the joys of my life, of which there are almost too many to count. I know politics will creep into them once in a while, but what can I say about Washington not getting things done that others cannot say more ably? I will say this: while we were away the government shut down. It re-opened the day after we returned. Obviously, America did not know what to do with itself while we were gone! One last note for this entry: Diane rode a bicycle in Holland, the first time she had attempted anything besides a stationary exercise bike since she was seventeen, and she didn’t kill herself! It was a momentous occasion, one which she repeated in the woods and on the trails of east Holland. She and Annemieke even crossed the border into Germany. neither lady had her papers, but no one noticed, and they slipped back into Netherlands territory without international incident. There must have been some advanced word about the transgression, though, because when we left Holland through Schiphol, Security searched her a bit more thoroughly than we would have expected. She looks like such a terrorist! They also searched her luggage – twice leaving that delightful printout that says: For your protection, we searched your stuff and neglected to put it back as carefully as you originally packed it; thank you and have a nice day. Indeed, we did.

George M. Withee

The earth is a little less bright this week. A great and gracious man, who treasured his privacy almost as much as anything else in his life, has been lost to us. George McClellan Withee passed away at the age of 91, peacefully in his sleep. He and his wife Esther were a second set of parents to my wife and her four siblings growing up in Pacific Grove, California. I only met them after Diane and I became involved but quickly became enamored of them both. To say that George valued his privacy above almost everything else is not to forget that his greatest treasure always was his wife, and his family. In writing my blogs I always sent a copy to George and he always sent me back a response, often a cartoon or a smile or a picture or a thought relating to a specific line in the text of what I wrote. It was always positive and encouraging. When Di had her car accident last December and I went through a period of anxiety that I could have lost her, George was always there for me, reminding me of the treasure I have in my wife. He lost Esther several years ago. In one note I said how grateful I was that I could tell my bride how much I love her; George quietly responded, he wished he could, every day. George was a member of the Greatest Generation, the men and women who endured the terrible war that still defines the humanity as a being, and from which, despite all their sacrifice, we still have not evolved. He was pilot of a bomber in the Pacific. His crew’s motto was, “Ragged but Right.” Like most of his fellows, he never talked about it. Yet he did write about it, at least once, in one of several selections collected for an anthology called “In Their Own Words.” I invite you to go to the web page, http://www.315bw.org/anthologies.html, and find his contribution, a poem called “The Ghost of Five Nine-Three. No wonder I liked him so much. And thank, you, George, for everything.

Confession: I am a Poet

I've been thinking. I know that is a dangerous thing to do, but I can't seem to stop myself. The brain just kinda goes that way. I have never been busier than now, since I retired from my day job and moved to Montana to be closer to our grandson. And yet, poetry flows from me like never before. I have been thinking a great deal about this passion within me, and wrote the following lines of prose. I am a poet. I have chosen a means of expression that makes no money and has few admirers yet many, many contributors. Thousands write; hundreds read. It may be the closest a writer can come to painting: each sketch, each oil, each verse is a private showing. A book takes forever to write. I know: I have two published, many others collecting dust waiting for me to get back to them. A poem is more like a snapshot, quickly taken, then selected and edited and offered. More precisely, poems are journal entries written both for ourselves and for sharing – our experiences, our observations, our thoughts, our feelings – our souls laid bare for the love of words. Why do we do it? We are curators who hang words on gallery walls in limpid museums in our minds, doors open to invite anyone inside who happens to be passing by, but no advertising budget to let them know we are here. At least we are not closed Mondays.

Special Day, Wildfires and Travel Plans

Today is special. Each day is special, of course, without saying so. But today is August 22, and for the fifth time this year Helium has put one of my poems on the front page of their website. This one is a Tanka – a Japanese structure something like an extended haiku with a rhythm scheme of 5/7/5/7/7 beats. This one is on coffee. Please go to helium, Where Knowledge Rules, and flip through the featured articles and you will find me. Today is also a day of relief: in a season of forest fires one broke out about two miles away from our home in a not-so-remote spot even closer to our friends and out-laws. That fire was met quickly with an aerial assault combined with careful ground efforts, and has been contained at a relatively small 105 acres and no structures damaged. My heart goes out to anyone on the fire line, and for the National Forest Service scrambling to find enough money to finance all their efforts. The fires so far have cost nearly one billion dollars to fight. In relative terms, that’s about a week in Iraq or Afghanistan. It is also a day for planning. Our nephew Erik had open heart surgery last month, which forced the cancellation of their vacation plans for August. So they decided that they would use that money to buy tickets for Diane and me to go to Holland to spend time with them. It was an offer we could not refuse. We are leaving in one month exactly, on September 22, and staying with them for three weeks. Much to do, much to do! So it has been a long while since I have blogged. I guess I had to have a good reason to dust off the cobwebs. Thanks for listening!

Back Blogging w/2 poems

July 11, 2013 Hello, dear friends. It has been too long since I have written to you, and I apologize. Life is good, and busy, and active. Summer in Lakeside means taking grandson Xander down to the lake as often as possible and playing in the water, while fitting writing poetry into the schedule as best I can. I have been focused on the poetry heavily of late, with a new challenge on Helium for July plus other submissions. It has been very gratifying. I seem to be building a small but very loyal following among fellow poets on the site, and one of my poems has been featured on Helium’s Featured Stories link on their front page for the fourth time in less than two months. This one is called “Sadness.” Check it out on the Helium website, www.helium.com or search Helium – where knowledge rules. It feels so good when the writing is going well, and the irony is that I don’t have enough time to write about it! I am also trying to settle in on which project I want to tackle next in the long term. There are several candidates to choose from that already are in some degree of development, but none has grabbed me by the throat and demanded “WRITE ME NOW!” That may be why the poetry has absorbed me so greatly at the moment – poems are short and do not take a great deal of time to write, although to be good at it one still must exercise all the constraint and imagination (an interesting combination – worthy of a poem) required by a longer, book-length project. It’s all good. Let me share a couple of poems today that went on the Helium Coffee House blog: //Student// /I’m still learning. /Similes and metaphors /Play inside my brain /Like matchbox men /Engaged in war games /Oblivious to time constraints /Of ignoble history, /Guns drawn on cavemen, /Knights and cowboys /Side by side, /Pterodactyls on the wing /Soaring dragons, fire ready, /Words cleft from their creator, /Student conduit busy /Regurgitating. //Tusk// /You want me just to go away, /To wander into the woods, /Curl up, wait, and die. /I did my bit, /A career as a delivery boy /Buying more than he could afford /On credit, /Mortgaged to the hilt /Before the bubble burst /And desperation served notice, /Evicting the American Dream. /I grew old /And had the nerve to escape /Your demographics, /And you’d just as soon /I took my trunks lightly packed /And wandered off /To the land of the dead, /Burial ground, /Leaving my tusks behind.