Coffee Muses

Food is a microcosm of the macrocosm. Eating the right food is part of the solution to the problems of climate change and global hunger.(1)

Resurgence Magazine is focusing on Food this month.

I often find myself drawn to the subject of food…Not necessarily for reasons that would appear obvious. As a teenager I cut my proverbial eyeteeth on Rodale’s monthly magazines when they were still somewhat controversial. My grandfather had an early subscription to Organic Farming & Gardening and I would devour them on my visits to their house. He raised a large organic garden each year and had a small nursery where he specialized in oaks. Grandpa always mixed his potting soil by hand. He liked  a mixture of half river bottom topsoil and half well-rotted manure. It was this hand-mixed soil that he attributed the rapid growth of his seedlings to.

Food in the World

Access to food should be a fundamental human right: food is Nature’s gift to all. Feeding people and all living creatures is intrinsic to life, to existence, but sadly food has become a commercial commodity and no longer available to everyone equally. The primary objective of those who deal in the business of food is to make money, and feeding people has become secondary. No wonder we face multiple crises such as the rising cost of food, and an obesity epidemic alongside malnutrition and world hunger.(1)

Much has been written of late about the perils of the industrialization of our food supply. I personally lay a large amount of the epidemic of obesity at the foot of industrial agriculture and the commercialization of the food preparation. We all go through life under the assumption our food supply is safe and we are protected by Government inspections…until we are disabused of these assumptions by the breakdown of the system. I also question the safety of the additives that have made their way into our food supply without regard for the ultimate safety of long term human consumption. Then I worry about what the combination with other additives might portend for our health. Can anyone explain how eating meat fed with growth hormones for years and years cannot effect our own growth?

Food is a microcosm of the macrocosm. When we focus on the food economy we immediately pay attention to the multinational corporations who turn food into a commodity; to genetic engineering of seeds where crop control and agricultural decisions pass from peasants and farmers to managers and engineers. If we are concerned about industrial farming, agri-business, food miles, soil erosion, cruelty to animals, fast foods, fatty foods and non-foods then we have to look at our plate and what is on it. The food in our pantry and in our kitchen is ultimately connected to climate change and global poverty, as well as to our health.(1)

For a generation of Americans, I have a feeling, we are already too late to turn back the clock. But we must insist that the safety of our food is of paramount concern. A concern that must be protected by the Government Agencies that were set up for those purposes.

Soulfulness of Food

Perhaps the greatest challenge in this time of rapid technological advance and the shrinking of the globe is to create a world community. But that important task can’t be done in the abstract. Food can play a role. Food as community, not as a commodity. Whatever power allows lunch to foster friendship, wedding cake a marriage, and bread and wine a religion could make a community of the world’s population. But we need first to restore soul to food.

Ways to re-animate food, like food itself, are quite simple. We could grow food in a humane setting: a garden or a real farm. We could learn to prepare it, each of us, with care and pleasure. And we could return to dining: eating with manners and style with the family, friends and community. There is always a place for a quick meal, but everyone also needs communion, the intimate experience of conviviality that only food can provide.(2)

One of the greatest failures in my own personal life would have to be the way our family treats meals. Even when a full meal has been prepared, we tend to graze at will rather than sit down and share the meal. I grew up in a fast food nation. As a teenager and young adult, I ate most of my meals alone. A full, sit down meal was something we only had at holidays…Kind of strange how food as feast was associated with holy days.

Pleasure is natural to food and should always be present. Marsilio Ficino, the Renaissance magus who wrote about soul and food and friendship, was a moderate Epicurean. He understood well that deep and solid pleasures are a sign of soul. What he said about thinking could apply to food: “Thinking should always walk with pleasure, and maybe a little behind.” Give up the pleasures of food, and you stand a chance of losing its soul.

There is an old saying, “A person is what they eat.” I would say, “How a person eats reveals who he or she is.” Food can acquire soul through manners, style and ritual. It’s the difference between surviving and living, eating and dining, getting the essentials and living in a world of beauty and society.(2)

I always find Thomas Moore thought provoking. Whenever I feel the need to renew my soul, I am as apt to pick up one of his books as I am to walk out into the world of nature outside my door. As a matter of record, Thomas Moore’s books tend to reside in my bedroom bookcase far more than any other author…

Although the commodification of food is a global problem, its solution is local and personal. We can eat thoughtfully and moderately, with occasional and appropriate fasting and feasting. We can select our food to be consonant with our values, prepare it ourselves with pleasure and attention, and present it with an eye to beauty, natural religion and sensual delight. Then we might know the power of food to magically create intimacy, conviviality and community.(2)

And so go my musings on a mid-week morning…Started and fed by an email…

(1) Resurgence • Satish Kumar - Focus on Food.

(2) Resurgence • Thomas Moore - Food for the Soul.

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At about 4pm on Monday afternoon this was what the Weather Underground had to say about the conditions here…

Current Conditions

Alvin, Texas (PWS) 68.9 °F / 20.5 °C Clear Humidity: 17% Dew Point: 22 °F / -5 °C Wind: 0.0 mph / 0 km/h Wind Gust: 0.0 mph / 0 km/h Pressure: 30.47 in / 1031.7 hPa (Steady) Visibility: 10.0 miles / 16.1 kilometers UV: 1 out of 16 Clouds: Clear - (Above Ground Level)

Needless to say, it was great to be outdoors today and not locked up in a windowless office…Perfect blue skies, sunshine and cool temperatures (at least by SE Texas standards).

Tomorrow promises more of the same.

I can hardly wait…

Verlyn Klinkenborg has something to say about what’s happened to our view of the stars at night…He starts out this way…

If humans were truly at home under the light of the moon and stars, we would go in darkness happily, the midnight world as visible to us as it is to the vast number of nocturnal species on this planet. Instead, we are diurnal creatures, with eyes adapted to living in the sun’s light. This is a basic evolutionary fact, even though most of us don’t think of ourselves as diurnal beings any more than we think of ourselves as primates or mammals or Earthlings. Yet it’s the only way to explain what we’ve done to the night: We’ve engineered it to receive us by filling it with light.

My wife and I are always fighting over the amount of light we have spilling through our house and yard at night. Sherry can’t see in the dark and I have cat’s eyes, so the light she leaves on in the hall drives me to distraction all night long…Verlyn ends his essay with these words…

Living in a glare of our own making, we have cut ourselves off from our evolutionary and cultural patrimony—the light of the stars and the rhythms of day and night. In a very real sense, light pollution causes us to lose sight of our true place in the universe, to forget the scale of our being, which is best measured against the dimensions of a deep night with the Milky Way—the edge of our galaxy—arching overhead.

Light Pollution — National Geographic Magazine.

Last week when we were in Fredericksburg at Deer Ridge, the nighttime sky field was towards the north. Having spent over half of my life to the south of Houston with a nighttime sky obliterated to the north by the city glow of Houston, I was confused by the constellations I was seeing from the front porch as we sat enjoying the view.

On the nights I spend out in my backyard looking at the stars, I am looking south out over the Gulf of Mexico. So the stars and the constellations in the southern sky are familiar. But when standing in front of that porch trying to place some of the stars and especially the constellations I found myself disturbed in a way I haven’t been in a very long time.

The Seven Sisters

Even the the Pleiades, the Seven Sisters I love so well in the winter sky were playing games with me. As they rose in the east just about sundown each night they would be to dim to make out when we looked at them directly, only when we looked away would they swim eerily into view. Try as I would I could not quite identify the Sisters as the same stars I would visit with on cold winter nights in my own backyard. It was only when I pulled up a star chart on the computer that I was able to name the girls that were my companion on all of those other winter nights…

As for the Milky Way, the last time I recall seeing that splash of stardust stretching across the sky was back in the mid 90’s on a camping trip to Lake Whitney State Park. Sherry and I left the kids at the campsite playing cards and wandered down to the shore of the lake on a moonless night when the starlight was bright enough to guide our way. The park was deserted, our family was the only campers there in the middle of the week. We lay out on a cement picnic table enjoying the heat at our backs from the days sun while we were awed by the view above our heads. It felt like we were floating through space with nothing between us and the stars…The glow of the Milky Way burned across the sky.

The Milky Way Over Death Valley

As a child, my grandparents lived west of Houston about 40 or so miles. In those days those miles were mostly occupied by small farms and ranches. At most, the houses in those days may have had a single outdoor lightbulb mounted to light a portion of the yard. Most of the time though they were dark. After supper each night we would all pull out the lawn chairs from the back porch and find a clear spot to sit and watch the stars come out. Grandpa would tell his tales and Grandma would set the record straight and we would lay there and ooh and ahh the shooting stars or chase fireflies to put in jars by the bed. Those are some of my fondest memories of growing up…

* Photos above from Wikipedia.

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HOME Currently (on Sun 5:53AM CST from Pearland Regional Airport) Clear Temp: 36° Dewpoint: 34° Wind: Calm MPH

After a gorgeous day yesterday, the sun is rising over the start of what looks to be another…Just cooler. This day looks and feels a lot like Saturday morning last week in Fredericksburg. Cool, dry, and not a cloud in the sky. Blue skies like this only happen at this time of year…

Image via Wikipedia

Walking around this place the past couple of days I’ve noticed that almost all of the pecan trees growing in the area have started new leaves since Ike blew through. It really looks a little strange to see all of these trees with some season ending tattered leaves and a bunch of pale spring green new leaves. I guess it’s better than all of my oaks, they just look naked. Stripped of most of their leaves by the 100+ mile per hour winds at the peak of the storm this area has looked like a cross between fall and winter without the the small pleasure of our muted color change season.

From the morning forecast I can see that we are matching the temperatures of the Blue Ridge Mountains of NW North Carolina and SW Virginia right now. The difference between our forecasts is we will almost reach 60 today while Boone and Floyd will be luky to reach 40.

On a couple of mornings this past week I have had a Red Shouldered Hawk sitting in the oak tree outside my window. The limb it prefers is just far enough away that the 200mm lens just doesn’t pull it in at a size that makes the image postable…But I enjoy the visits.

Driving toward Kerrville along the Guadalupe River somewhere west of Hunt…

HDR image processed with Phtomatix Pro

From Coffee Muses

I have been out of the Photo Friday habit lately…It’s time to jump back in…

HDR image processed with Phtomatix Pro

From Coffee Muses

From the past weekend. On Saturday we drove south out of Fredericksburg along Highway 16. This has always been one of my favorite drives in Texas. Along the way we stopped at a number of places and snapped some shots…

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After years of having a daily routine, finding myself lacking one is more than a little uncomfortable.  Getting up and having breakfast without that normal get out the door deadline has left me disoriented to say the least. Add to this the weather since we returned home from our trip, dreary and overcast, wet and humid, and you have a not so auspicious beginning to this next chapter in my life.

It looks like the first priority I have is to establish a new daily routine and i am not quite sure where I want to start. The one thing I don’t plan to do is jump out and look for another job in the same industry I was in. After three and a half decades of playing and working in the convention and tradeshow niche I am ready for something else. Something creative, something more spiritual, something incorporating my love of photography.

One thing I will have to watch is the siren call of the internet. Information, magazines, news, movies, television, blogs…it’s all online now, calling for a little bit of your attention. When you look up it has been an hour, look up again and half a day has gone.

One of the primary things I must use this opportunity for is to get up from behind the computer more than I was able when I was being paid to be at the computer all day long. That desk job was not good for my health…I must work more work into my daily routine.

I know this blog has taken a turn from what I was posting in the past…Bear with me while I work my way through this…I’ll come out the other side once more, better for the trip…

And just ’cause I can…Here is another shot from the weekend…

HDR image processed with Phtomatix Pro

From Coffee Muses

Turning The Page

Sherry and I had scheduled this past weekend as a four day celebration a long time ago. Making sure we both had arrangements to take Friday and Monday off appproved and on the calendars at work. Gifts were bought, resrvations were made, plans were set…we were celebrating our 30th wedding anniversary on Sunday.

I had finally found a nice guest house outside of Fredericksburg, TX in the Hill Country. Deer Ridge Cottage is aptly named and we spent a great deal of time on the front porch in the rockers watching the deer down the hill. A beautiful cottage in a beautiful Texas Hill Country setting.

Sherry and I most of our time discussing the future and not reminiscing about our 3o+ years together. The future loomed large this weekend because Freeman, my employer of 35 years, decided on the Thursday before our trip “that due to the economic conditions, belt tightening was in order”. I was the belt…So after receiving and award the week before for my loyal service I was handed a stack of papers explaining my severance and given a short time to pack up and leave. My position was being eliminated and my services were no longer needed…So began our celebratory weekend.

The Next Page

So here I sit with a lot of vague plans…plans that I thought I had a couple of more years to flesh out and begin to put into effect. Sherry and I spent the weekend deciding that for now I will work at seeing where these vague, semi-formed, dream-like plans may take me. I am already beginning to feel more blessed than cursed by this change…but only time will tell where the next stop on this journey I call my life will take me.

So, if I turn more introspective over the next little bit on these pages, be fore-warned. I have been cast upon these troubled economic waters and only God knows where I’ll end up.

Now, for a commercial break…Here is a photo I took this weekend west of Hunt, TX on the Guadalupe River…

HDR image processed with Photomatix Pro

From Coffee Muses

Zell Miller was right sort of - Paul Krugman - Op-Ed Columnist - New York Times Blog.

The Guardian has this to say about yesterday…

They did it. They really did it. So often crudely caricatured by others, the American people yesterday stood in the eye of history and made an emphatic choice for change for themselves and the world. Though bombarded by a blizzard of last-minute negative advertising that should shame the Republican party, American voters held their nerve and elected Barack Obama as their new president to succeed George Bush. Elected him, what is more, by a clearer majority than one of those bitter narrow margins that marked the last two elections.

Having snatched defeat from the jaws of victory in 2000 and 2004 it felt at times fated that the Democrats would somehow complete a hat-trick of failures on election day 2008. Instead, fuelled by unprecedented financial support, the key things went right for them yesterday, from the moment just after midnight when Dixville Notch voted 15 to six for Mr Obama (the first time the early-voting New Hampshire hamlet had gone for a Democrat in 40 years), through to the early Obama success last night in the prized swing state of Pennsylvania and on into the battleground areas of middle America.

They ended it it with this…

Mr Obama will take office in January amid massive unrealisable expectations and facing a daunting list of problems - the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the broken healthcare system, the spiralling federal budget and America’s profligate energy regime all prominent among them. Eclipsing them all, as Mr Obama has made clear in recent days, is the challenge of rebuilding the economy and the banking system. These, though, are issues for another day. Today is for celebration, for happiness and for reflected human glory. Savour those words: President Barack Obama, America’s hope and, in no small way, ours too.

President Obama: Editorial - The Guardian

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As I sit discussing the outcome of yesterday’s election with my coworkers the one thing that comes through most is the sense of joy. This in the a red state, home of the Democratic President who gave up the south to the Republicans to do the right thing that ended up bringing us to this point. LBJ may not have always been right, but if this one thing is all he was remembered for, it would be a good thing.

As I type these words I am listening to a clip of the speech from last night on the Post Politics Podcast. The words are still ringing, they still have the power…”Yes we can”…We did…Now we will.

“What’s Next”

Pre-Election Day Twenty O’Eight

While everyone else is focusing on the election tomorrow, Bush and Company are getting a lot of the agenda they tried to pass and failed to do done anyway. The power of the executive office being used better to overthrow the will of the people. They learned well from their predecessor. When Bill Clinton was leaving office he waited till after the election to sign off on a lot of policy that his administration figured they could leave to Al Gore. In doing so they allowed most of those policies to be overturned with the stroke of a pen when George Bush took office. Bush has no reason to show such restraint, which pretty much tells you what he thinks is going to happen tomorrow.

Did we really expect President Bush and Vice President Cheney to go quietly?

R. Jeffrey Smith writes: “The White House is working to enact a wide array of federal regulations, many of which would weaken government rules aimed at protecting consumers and the environment, before President Bush leaves office in January.

“The new rules would be among the most controversial deregulatory steps of the Bush era and could be difficult for his successor to undo. Some would ease or lift constraints on private industry, including power plants, mines and farms.

“Those and other regulations would help clear obstacles to some commercial ocean-fishing activities, ease controls on emissions of pollutants that contribute to global warming, relax drinking-water standards and lift a key restriction on mountaintop coal mining.

Dan Froomkin - Bush and Cheney’s Last Shot - washingtonpost.com.

I guess we really need to hope Obama and Company do find a way to get to 60 tomorrow. They will need it to overturn the final days of a losing administration and it’s misinterpretation of the American will…

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This first workday of the return of Standard Time has me looking out the window in confusion. Sunrise having come and gone as I was working my way through my morning routine. It looks like it’ll be another month before I’ll be leaving the house with sunrise again. No more scenes like this one greeting me as I walk out my door….

This says it better than I could…

First, we need a president who can speak English and deconstruct and navigate complex issues so Americans can make informed choices.

Second, we need a president who can energize, inspire and hold the country together during what will be a very stressful recovery.

Third, we need a president who can rally the world to our side.

So, bottom line: Please do not vote for the candidate you most want to have a beer with (unless it’s to get stone cold drunk so you don’t have to think about this mess we’re in). Vote for the person you’d most like at your side when you ask your bank manager for an extension on your mortgage.

Op-Ed Columnist - Vote for ( ) - NYTimes.com.

Leon Hale’s weekly column this morning reached back to before my birth…But, he touched a chord even so. The final lines though really rang true…

I guess what got me going on television is that just lately we installed a new set in the old country house at Winedale. One of those flat-screen jobs that everybody but the Hale family has had for years.

And I did have my doubts. Up there in the woods, far from any cable outfit? I figured the picture wouldn’t be much better than the image of that rolling snow storm I saw in ‘49, there on Shepherd Drive.

But a man came and bolted a big metal dish up on the roof and tuned it to a satellite and gave us a TV picture far better than anything we ever had inside the Loop at home.

I was amazed.

I’ve even gone back to watching football. And thrilling documentaries showing antelopes getting grabbed by crocodiles in Africa. And movies? Movies are brought to us in slick little packages by the rural carrier and left in the mail box up by the front gate.

This is progress, folks, against the days when we sat and watched the Channel 2 test pattern and delivered wisdoms like, “One of these days, they’ll have all this stuff in color.”

Leon Hale: TV has come a long way since the test-pattern days.

Go read the column if you would like to hear about television coming to Houston…

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A while back I linked to Michale Pollan’s letter to the “Next Farmer-In-Chief”, here is a response from a farmer…Andy Griffin grows vegetables organically in the Bay Area of California. He has a CSA, a newsletter, and I’ve been reading and linking to his writing ever since I stumbled across him during the spinach crisis a few years back.

Don’t get me wrong; I’m not dissing you. But…

Ok. If I ever have the fortune to meet you again, I’ll buy you a drink, or maybe even a whole meal. I owe you. Nobody else, besides Alice Waters, has done so much to promote the sort of small-scale, sustainable farms that people like me are trying to create. Take our CSA program, for instance. CSA stands for community supported agriculture. The basic idea is that a community of people who want local farms to survive put their money where their mouths are and support those local farms by underwriting their production costs. In return for their faith and investment, the farmer pays them back with weekly “share boxes” of the harvest. The consumers get food they can trust and they get to know that they’re doing their part to preserve the vitality of their own local foodshed. And the farmer? Well. Besides having committed customers to count on, CSA means that we can do an end run around the banks, and these days, when a gun in hand isn’t even enough to get a loan from a bank, that is some powerful ju-ju. But, Michael, you know all that.

Daisy Chains and Milkmaids; An Open Letter to Michael Pollan at The Ladybug Letter.

The whole point of Andy’s muse though is in all of our talks about how our food ecology needs to change, we overlook the farm workers…

You write, “Post-oil agriculture will need a lot more people engaged in food production– as farmers and probably also as gardeners.” You say this will create “tens of millions of new green jobs.”

I read that, and paused. So I read your essay again. You never mention farm workers.

It’s different to be a farm worker than a farmer or a “green worker.” I know. I was a farm worker for years before I ever became a farmer. I understand “green worker” to be someone employed in the emerging green technologies and practices. To me, “green” sounds “whiter,” than farm labor, almost “white collar.” But even if everyone with a yard ripped it out and put in a garden it would still take millions of farm workers to keep our agriculture going, and right now an overwhelming number of them are from Latin America, and most of those are undocumented. These “aliens” have no legal right to work to feed us, and yet we count on them every day. Farm workers are seemingly invisible, even apparently to you, and whatever exposure they do get is usually when they’re invoked as scapegoats by right-wing talk radio hosts who should know better than to spew invective with their mouths full.

Andy makes a hell of a point, one that gets lost every time politicians start talking about imagration.

Take the time to go read both these guy’s writings…

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Here is another shot from Friday’s sunrise…

The Center for Responsive Politics calculates that, by Election Day, $2.4 billion will have been spent on presidential campaigns in the two-year election cycle that began in January 2007, and an additional $2.9 billion will have been spent on 435 House and 35 Senate contests. This $5.3 billion is a billion less than Americans will spend this year on potato chips.

georgewill@washpost.com

George F. Will - Call Him John the Careless - washingtonpost.com.

A snack food election…What does it say about America?

Currently (on Tue 5:53AM CDT from Pearland Regional Airport)

Clear Temp: 41° Dewpoint: 34° Wind: Calm MPH

I woke up this morning at about 3:45 smelling something burning. Sherry sat up at about the same time and said something. We both jumped out of bed before I realized it was the heater kicking in for the first time this fall and what we were smelling was the dust burning off the elements. We didn’t even make it to the bedroom door. We fell back into bed me for an hour or so, Sherry for another 15 minutes.

I had just the night before reset the thermostat in anticipation of low 40’s this morning…

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Looks like what we would consider winter has settled into the Blue Ridge Mountains. The gorcast for Valle Crucis doesn’t call for it to get out of the 30’s today and Marie was talking about the possibility of some flurries last night. It looks like Fred will be throwing another log in the stove this morning too. Floyd should be just making it into the 40’s…

Take a minute to wander over to Fragments From Floyd this morning and follow the link to the petition to try and stop the Bush Administration from pushing through another handout to big coal…It’s all about rule changes in the stream setback buffer…Go on over and follow the links

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I made my way to the Library yesterday and fulfilled my civic duty. Cast my early vote for Obama. Now it’s just the wait of a week and a day to find out who gets the privilege of trying to lead this country out of the mess we’ve gotten ourselves into.

I am lucky I guess, I arrived at the Library at 4:30…Walked right up to the first poll worker who input my registration number and we were off to the races…Down the line with each worker inputing the number off of the piece of paper received from the one to their right until I was handed my input numbers for the machines. I grabbed the first open machine and ran through my selections. Double checked everything before I prees the “Cast Ballot” button and walked out. All told it took about 5 minutes.

Not like what will be happening in some polling places next week…

Suppose in your neighborhood there are 600 registered voters per machine, while across town there are only 120 per machine. (That’s a 5 to 1 disparity, which is what exists in some places in Virginia today.) On Election Day, your line wraps around the block and looks to be a four-hour wait, while in other areas lines are nonexistent.

Christopher Edley Jr. - A Voting Rights Disaster? - washingtonpost.com.

Go Vote, early if possible…

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Gotta run..Have a great day…

Just call me Paul the Professor

Colbert, via Crooks and Liars:

I for one appreciate the McCain campaign treating us like children. McCain will bring us back to a simpler time. A time when you could identify your neighbors’ jobs by the hats they wore. Like Sam the Fireman, Bill the Cowboy and Jose the stereotype. These are the people in your neighborhood. The people that you meet when you’re walking down the street. They’re the people that you meet each day. And what the people in your neighborhood, the Joe the Plumber, the Wendy the Waitress need are tax cuts for the wealthy and off shore drilling. They don’t need universal health care or last names.

Just call me Paul the Professor - Paul Krugman - Op-Ed Columnist - New York Times Blog.

This seems to be the Republican meme. “Just let the “decider” make the all the tough decisions”. All of us self-thinking geeks who place too much credence in intelligence and education, be it formal or the school of hard knocks, aren’t “real Americans”. In the last couple of weeks we are being called “un-American”, Socialist, even Communists by the Republican Party…Way to go folks.

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While my friends on the Blue Ridge are climbing out of bed this morning and firing up their stoves to beat back the cold we finaly greeted some nice fall weather. The temperature this morning as I sit and write this is 46°. The sky is clear and we should see a pleasant mid 70’s by mid-afternoon. It looks as if we will have our first autumn weekend.

This is the first we have seen of 40° weather since last winter…I see from the weather email that Floyd and Boone will both stay in the 40’s all day…Keep a log on the fire guys, you’ll need it.

Breakfast this morning is a splurge to celebrate the weather…Rosemary potato bread toast (big, thick, sliced just before it went into the toaster slices) with butter and St. Dalfour Wild Blueberry 100% fruit spread…What a way to start a cool morning. Now I will admit there is no fire and in reality the kitchen door is open a crack to let some of that cool fall air in to make appreciate the long sleeve henley I am wearing to work today.

Email calls…I’ll check back later…