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My best story so far, in my own opinion, was picked up by Twin Cities Daily Planet:
The Seward Café, which turns 40 years old some time this year, is a study in contradictions. Although it’s known for its longevity, laying claim to being both the oldest collectively-managed business in the Twin Cities and the oldest collectively-managed restaurant/-café in the U.S., its actual collectives seem to turn over completely about every seven years. Although the café has never been totally vegetarian (the principle is even enshrined in its charter), it has always remained a favorite among vegans and vegetarians. This is probably due to its great range of vegan baked goods and its adherence to an ethos of care with its veg customers by assuring careful separation in the kitchen and full disclosure of ingredients. And further, although it looks small and scruffy and like anything but a gourmet haven, some of its food items are nearly legendary in their greatness. And its amazing survival attests to its success with the public.
The current collective has an average age somewhere in the mid to late 20s, and an average time as collective member of just a few years. Benjamin Acaso, 32, who joined the collective in 2008, is one of the senior members. The hiring process is still the same as it’s been since the early 1980s: A prospective member is hired under what is called “intake,” and after a probationary period, they may choose to join the collective and become an owner-manager. Some choose to remain on as shift-workers, but most choose the path of workplace democracy. Benjamin admits it’s not easy going to long, frequent collective meetings and making decisions by consensus, but he and the other members believe strongly that they make better decisions because of it. “And I don’t ever want to have a boss,” he says.
The decisions are working, so he must be right. One decision that was struggled over for a long time was whether or not to accept credit cards. The anti-corporate, slightly Luddite gene is very dominant in the counterculture even now in the iPod generation. But in 2012, they finally decided to do it, and this was a transformative decision that immediately increased business and allowed new directions to open up. Some of these new directions were actually a return to the roots. In March 2013, the Café switched from closing at 3 p.m. to closing at 11 p.m., also adding (back) beer and wine sales and live music. The collective expected to lose money at first when they switched hours and added new, unfamiliar dinner items. But to their delight, they actually increased profits almost immediately. With no cover charge, musicians are paid 15% of bar sales plus tips, drink tickets and meals if they’re touring.
There are a lot of parallels between Benjamin’s take on the Seward Café and that of Barbara Jensen (or Barb as she was known at the time) one of the founding collective members. Barb said not all of the founders and early collective members were counter-culture, “some were musicians,” for instance. And Benjamin, in talking about the current collective’s desire to bring back live music, mentioned that many of the collective are also in bands of their own.
In 1974, Barb Jensen was one of four full-time employees at the Seward Co-op, then located where Welna II hardware store is now. The space where the café now sits was a 3-2 bar called the Fireside Inn which had recently closed. A group comprising Barb and two other co-op employees, Mike Bird and Lori Zuidema, and Howard Hickman, who was a co-op volunteer, schemed to buy the Fireside Inn and found the Seward Café, a worker-owned and run café that would continue to serve the neighborhood, but serve it better. They each contributed what money they could for the purchase, and in the first years, worked essentially as volunteers. Barb remembers those early collective meetings starting out with the question, OK, who needs what? Who needs rent, who’s having their electricity shut off, whose car just died? Like that. It was pure primitive communism, but the spirit was utopian anarchism.
And then, barely a year after the café opened, the Twin Cities was embroiled in the Co-op Wars. Along with the Seward Co-op across the street, the café in the years 1975 and 1976 was a haven for the resistance against the Co-operative Organization, or CO, which was seeking to “take over” co-ops across the Twin Cities, often violently. But ironically, and here those contradictions are again, even though the Seward Café was stalwartly anti-CO, they had already institutionalized some of the better ideas the CO was trying to push onto all co-ops dogmatically—they were open late, they kept prices low, they served hamburgers and Pabst Blue Ribbon.
One thing Barb says that came out of the Co-op Wars was an increasing “legalization” of the co-ops, both worker-owned and the new model for food co-ops, consumer-owned. This was a good thing in the end, and the legal, in-the-system framework—putting the land in a trust, having a charter and rules to govern the collective, using proper accounting procedures—all manage to contain the anarchist heart of the Seward Café and enable it to live on through all the changes, whether economic or ideological. Barb went on to help found DANCE Warehouse, to be a major participant in the All Co-ops Assembly (ACA—which no longer exists) and the Peoples Center on the West Bank (which still does.) She went back to school, got a masters degree, taught at Metro State, and is now a community and counseling psychologist. A working-class girl who became radicalized in her late teens, she is also the author of a book, “Reading Classes: On Culture and Classism in America” (Cornell Press, 2012).
Benjamin believes the Seward Café will survive at least another 40 years. So many people love the righteous pancakes, the CP Iced Coffee, the vegan cookies and muffins, the Earth Breakfast. And now they are coming in for local food like Tempeh Tantrum, LaPerla tortillas and craft beers. The Seward Café is successful enough to be a help to other collective businesses, such as Hard Times Café. And ultimately, as Benjamin says, “the community won’t let us die.” A 40th anniversary celebration is being planned for some time in the late fall.
© 2014 Southside Pride
I got a tweet for my story in Southside Pride, which was then picked up in Twin Cities Daily Planet:
I arrived back in the UK on the 6th of September, very jet-lagged, and then promptly fell ill. Apologies for the big delay in updating my blog, but then most of my activity, as I have mentioned before, is documented on Facebook. But the archive-index is a lot better here.
I was not successful in finding a job in the Twin Cities, but then that would have been almost miraculous, so I wasn't really expecting to. I was not as successful as I would have liked in laying the groundwork for finding a job, which was disappointing, but largely due to two facts - 1) I did open a credit union account and (I think) buy a condo, but it took a lot more time and energy than I was expecting, and 2) the social scene also took up more time than I was planning for. One of the big surprises of the trip was that my old comrades in the DSA and some new friends who have joined while I was away were so incredibly welcoming and positive about my imminent return to their company. KB, now holding my old post of "only permanent female member" became an instant friend and we discovered loads of common interests, and the old stalwarts really touched me with their insistence that they had missed me terribly and were thrilled to have me back. Other social events included meeting up with old friends Janet and her daughter Michael, and seeing Michael's three children who I had known only as online photos, seeing Krista and Ben's "new" baby Oskar, along with of course Krista and Ben, and coffee with Loren, with catching up and a little discussion about my possible career choices. I found to my sorrow and distress that Marie, whom I love very much, is suffering a very severe form of cancer, and was able to spend a few hours with her, and also with her son Doug, an ex-bf now married with adult son. My dear friend Lou, whose world is a chaotic whirl completely outwith her control, nevertheless ferried me around, introduced me to Savers, accompanied Dianne and me on a few condo visits and lent me a smartphone for the duration, all of which made my trip a lot easier. I visited Walker Church and caught up with friends too numerous to mention. And finally I must give thanks and more thanks to both Steve S. and KC B., who picked me up and dropped me off respectively at the airport and housed me in their homes for eight and seven days respectively.
I'm in Minneapolis, takin' care of some business. I was going to post a blog from Keflavik airport on my way here, but their darned wifi was not connected to the internet for some reason. That was my first public wifi blog some years ago and I thought it would be cool to do a repeat.
Well, I am on Google+, have been there a while. Definitely still on Facebook, where truthfully most of my online "activity" occurs. My problem with social media vs. old-fashioned blogging (funny that something becomes really old-fashioned in about 7 years) is one I have not heard expressed a lot. I really took to blogging, because it's sort of like being a self-published author and sort of like being an amateur journalist and sort of like keeping a diary. Social media, even if you post frequently and participate enthusiastically, is nothing like that. Here's the thing. I just last week submitted my (£900!) application for naturalization as a British citizen. I had to recreate my travel journal for the last 5 years for the proof of residency section. Now obviously the passport is the first place to check. But as an American, I didn't always get a stamp on entering the US, and amongst my UK stamps and one Spain stamp and two Ireland stamps, they are not all that legible. So back when I was posting regularly here, I had a record of my travels, all nicely dated and indexed. But as I lazily moved over to Facebook, well it might be there somewhere, but it's almost impossible to look up and the only way to access it is to page backward literally forever (or however long FB keeps them, and frankly, my paging finger got tired.) Here's another little gripe that may be almost unique to me: I am on this app for sharing blogs on FB, so this post will go there automatically (I think; of course, FB does keep changing stuff.) But to cross-post to Google+ is a major hassle, and you do wonder if it's worth it. Blogger and mainly this blog is now an aide memoire for me, and also a memory lane trip, having recorded a lot of major events in my life, like Thanksgivings spent with family, death of most of our pets, birthdays I got to celebrate with Savannah, especially nice meals I cooked or books I read. But from about 2007 onwards, I just haven't been posting enough, and there are gaps in the record. Of course, it's a cop-out for me to blame FB, let alone Google. I just need to proper-blog more.
This is definitely the longest I have gone without blogging. Also the longest I have gone without a holiday. The last time I was abroad was Thanksgiving 2007. The only trip I took in all of 2008 was a one-day trip to Portmeiron, not even staying overnight. I am determined not to let 2009 go by the same way. I just got back Friday evening from a six-day trip to "the North" (where we do what we want!) I have reviewed and journalled the trip in more detail at Deborama's Kitchen, so check it out there.
Part of the reason I didn't travel is that last year everyone in my far-flung family was in a state of flux. My older younger sister and her husband, one at a time, have temporarily abandoned the family homestead in Gulfport and set up house in Kansas. This has left my aged Ps behind in a little duplex bungalow they built mainly for them. So now my younger younger sister, an academic in Hattiesburg and her husband, a realtor, are buying a second home in Hattiesburg and moving the aged Ps there. My daughter has split with her ex-partner, father of grand-daughter Savannah. My son is still with his partner, who graduated last year from her PG Architecture course and got a job in her field - just as the property market crashed. My son's company was sold and he was offered a less attractive job than he had, but of course he's going to take it for the stability. But no benefits, no holiday, and the stability is not real stability, as nothing is these days. Both my kids have two extra sidelines for income: Aimee is a web designer for her main job, and also teaches web design and is a photographer. Carey works for an online game company, and does painting and web design free-lancing. I am so proud that I raised two smart, hard-working, creative and above all resilient kids. And like all parents and grand-parents, I pray things don't get too much worse before they get better.
I have been meaning to do a blog on here called "The Fifteen Year Depression of 2008 - 2023." I would say keep an eye out for it, but it may not happen. (The blog that is; I am pretty sure about the depression.)
 ComputerWorld had a very thought-provoking article a couple of weeks ago: "Why women quit technology careers". Or, if they don't quit, why they find themselves 55 years old, nurse-maiding their own bosses who are 15 years younger, half as intelligent and male, and feel only vaguely discontented about it. Not that I'm at all bitter.
I have started my diet, health and fitness sporadic journal over on Deborama's Kitchen with a post about my workout and my music. More on that later . . .
I mentioned "my" bird, the cockatiel Percy, who was named as a boy but turned out to be a girl. She just died last night, in the night. Only a week ago she was fit and well, and even flying around the house when out of her cage, and she had stopped laying eggs, which was a good sign. But DH noticed a couple of days ago that she had suddenly got painfully thin. We got her some worm medicine and drop-fed her some sugar water and put a heat lamp on the cage, but we were too late and by this morning she was gone. I am really down about it. She was such a sweet little thing. Sadly, the only picture I have of her is as a baby, where she is cuddling up with a clutch of baby Hahn's Macaws.
Last year I was there and posted about it, but this year I missed it. May Day in Minneapolis is always on the first Sunday in May. It starts in January, with workshops at the Heart of the Beast puppet theatre, and it reaches a climax as the bands, the bicycles, the mothers and toddlers and fathers and teenagers, the giant puppets and heartfelt messages of peace, wind their way through the Phillips and Powderhorn neighbourhoods, and it culminates with a powerful, tribal ceremony of calling the sun back from the clutches of winter, enacted in canoes on Powderhorn Lake. I found a great photo set of 2008 pics by RJ Toad on flickr.
I haven't posted for a while here. Some personal changes are happening in the Deborama household. DH and I just got back from Manchester yesterday where DH had a gastric band operation. This was the first time he had ever had surgery of any kind, so it was rather fraught for me leading up to it (and probably for him too, but since he's British, there is no way to tell.) But he came through it just fine. He was a little grey in the face for the first hour I saw him, as he was waking up fully. (This was a good two or three hours after his operation, but they kept him in recovery and then put him into an ICU due to his sleep apnoea. I arrived at the hospital as he was just waking up, but they stuck me in a private room saying they would wait and give him a chance to "settle" before I could see him. The same nurse said this to me, along with "just 10 more minutes" about four times, and I was just about to explode with a very American "Settle, schmettle!" before she finally sensed my mounting anxiety and escorted me to his bedside.)
DH spent the night in the ICU (although he was very well, and hardly merited the extra care, but it was apparently hospital policy) and I spent the night in a Travelodge near Manchester airport. But now we're home. DH had lost an amazing five stones (70 pounds) in the six months preceding his operation. He is now expecting to lose perhaps another 100 pounds or so with the help of the gastric band.
Meanwhile, Deborama has been attending clandestine (it's a long story) Slimming World meetings and I have lost a stone since joining, having lost about 10 pounds before, for a total of about 25 pounds since I was at my heaviest. I joined a small local gym last May and I have been attending quite faithfully, an average of three or more days per week. I was very frustrated to not lose any weight in the first five months of this regimen, as I was not really regulating my diet at all, but hoping that building some muscle would cause metabolic changes that would "kick-start" a weight loss and give me some incentive to give up my beloved breakfast of an unsweetened latte and a croissant, my frequent cereal bar snacks and my occasional (but probably more frequent than I cared to admit) late night scoop of ice cream. I think it was around November of last year that I all but gave up the croissants and very slowly and painfully lost the 10 pounds, and when the Slimming World invitation came in January I decided I must bite the bullet and face the fact that at my age I need to do both diet-control and regular exercise; the days of "effortless" weight-loss are now well and truly past.
Now this is the last personal or diet-related post you will see in the main Deborama blog. I am doing a mini-relaunch, and I am going to confine the Deborama posts to serious news, comments on the world at large, religion, philosophy and ethics, sexual politics, the environment, humour and culture. The one exception will be photos and news of our birds. I will post these on Facebook or Flickr, with a link from here.
Simultaneously, I am going to relaunch my other two Deborama sub-logs. Deborama's Kitchen will become my new Diet Blog (keeping the name, though) and any personal journalling will be there, along with its usual fare (although it has been nothing at all for a year or more) of recipes, food politics and food-related news.
Deborama's Books is going to get the third relaunch/make-over. I plan for it to be more joined up with another of my recently neglected passions, Bookcrossing. I am hoping to get back into attending the Bookcrossing meetups, and now that I have a study (I was using the dining room table, in an open plan room with lounge with its almost always-on telly, another excuse or reason for the lack of blogging going on) I have huge backlog of books to register on Bookcrossing. Also, I have been planning to add some movie and television reviews to the books blog, as well as reviewing the books I have read but failed to mention over the past three years.
I know myself, so I don't expect this will happen overnight, or even all that quickly. If I achieve the three goals set out above within six weeks I will be satisfied (and if I fail to do it in that time, chances are it won't happen, so I had better get cracking.)
I haven't been keeping you updated on the birds in our lives. We acquired another Hahn's Macaw, after LouLou, after keeping the big Blue and Golds and after giving them back when their mummy got back from the holiday in the States that ended up being unexpectedly extended. (I did tell you about LouLou, didn't I? She's a Goffin Cockatoo, full of attitude, tends to bite women and snuggle sluttishly against men. She is seriously bonded to DH, who spoils her rotten.) Anyway, the "new" little green guy is with us now; he has had two previous homes plus our friend, the rescue centre keeper, and she gave him to us. He was called Mango, but we call him Vernon. He was missing all his feathers except his head and tail and then he pulled out his tail. Han, whose feathers had all grown back, started plucking himself too, but he only got as far as the grey fluff on his chest and then thankfully stopped.
Meanwhile "my" cockatiel, Percy, turned out to be a girl and keeps laying little clutches of eggs and sitting on them. They are probably not fertilised, but we have to let her sit on them for a while or she would just keep laying until she got calcium-deprived, which can lead to a sometimes fatal condition called "egg-bound". (I won't go into detail if you don't mind.) And another budgie passed away, probably of "old age". He was Huey, the last of our original four pet shop budgies. So we currently have budgies: Holly, Muffin, Nelson, Bob and Margaret; cockatiels: Winnie, Daisy and Percy; Hahn's Macaws: Han and Vernon and a cockatoo: LouLou. DH keeps saying he is going to take pictures of them all, but he has a lot going on just now. More on that later maybe.
A friend of mine from Minneapolis, Dolores, is coming over here to visit next week. She and her friend are mostly staying in the south, but they are finishing off their trip with a quick tour of Oxford and Blenheim Palace, followed by a Shakespeare play at the RSC in Stratford. So I am going to meet up with them in Oxford and do Oxford and Blenheim Palace. I am really looking forward to it.
This is my first blog of 2008 and it's already the 8th. Not so good, I know. Blogs do wither and die, and even though this one has had its ups and downs, and is definitely in a slow period now, I don't want to let it die. It's not because I'm tired of it, or don't know what to say; it's purely a matter of lack of time, being tired in the evening, having other things that I don't want to do but have to do. But enough whining. Let me tell you all what I have been up to.
For one thing, I am all absorbed in and excited about the 2008 presidential election. Oh, yeah, not very original. So is half the planet. The BBC, honest to God, it's almost all they talk about. The Guardian is in hog-heaven.
Although I am supporting Obama, I am almost as happy about Edwards. I would not mind it he won the presidency at all, especially given that Obama is very young and could run and win again. And I am not thrilled that Clinton is having such a rough time. Sure, I would like the US to have a woman leader. But - well, there are so many "but"s with Mrs. Clinton. I wish she would bow out and just start grooming Chelsea for 2016.
I have been following the events in Pakistan. And those in Kenya.
I have just started a boot camp exercise class on Sundays. More on that later.
I was very happy to see the Richey guy finally get out of prison today.
I still have tons of pictures from my November holiday to put online somewhere.
I have been hanging out at Facebook, exploring ScotsCafe and Sagazone, and I went to one "new" meetup - of American ex-pats in Nottingham (maybe more on that later too).
After having had to listen to my pro-kudzu rant (I am the eternal champion of despised vegetables and animals) my son simply put this link in a comment to my only blog from Atlanta.
But I am sure there is a dramatic difference in the appearance from the air of Atlanta, and not an improvement, which perhaps only accidentally coincides with the kudzu-abatement programme. And yes, I do miss the kudzu.
I am in Atlanta for the start of my fortnight-with-the-family. I have just met Carey's girlfriend Ashley. She is amazingly cute, smart and a great match for him in the personality arena, or so it seems to me. They hug all the time and semi-fondly bicker like an old married couple. She drives a Toyota Camry with a stick shift and she drives like my old high-school buddy and partner-in-anti-social-behaviour Margaret (or Maggie, as I began calling her, and I think it stuck.) I describe the driving style as "like a maniac with a guardian angel", that is, fast, confident and leaves the passengers more breathless and speechless than shaking and scared, as less protected maniacs do. It was actually kind of exciting.
I saw their loft apartment at the Mattress Factory. Nice.
We ate at R. Thomas, which I just cannot recommend enough.
I am now blogging from the Atlanta Public Library, which I also recommend; they're such nice people in Atlanta. I had sort of forgotten over the years.
I just discovered I can't capture a picture to illustrate this post. Oh, well, sorry. You'll have to find your own pictures.
I have been in a fog. Too many things competing for my attention. Almost every day at work, except the days when I have been really busy, I see a few things I ought to, want to, blog about and I email myself a link (or two or ten) and then I don't do any blogging in the evening. To be fair, my computer keeps turning itself off. There have been some family issues, and I have been fighting off a cold, probably due to stress caused by all of the above. But still . . . I'll start with the silly, move through the serious, and hopefully something sublime will turn up.
Received in an email (I'm sure it's on the web somewhere): The entire city council of Ashland, Ore., has decided to enter relationship
counseling. The catalyst was Councilman David Chapman's telling Councilman
Eric Navickas to "shut your f...ing mouth" during last week's meeting,
though Navickas had previously called the city's mayor "a Nazi," and
tensions have generally been running high. Taxpayers will pay $37,000 for
the council's five months of therapy, which "may seem like a lot of money,"
said City Administrator Martha Bennett, "But if the council doesn't function, the city doesn't function."
I was thrilled to bits that Doris Lessing won the Nobel Prize for Literature, even though, yes, it was a bit overdue. The Guardian Society section today profiled Edgar Cahn, the founder of "time banking", a sophisticated form of bartering and valuing social contributions as much as commercial ones. And finally, how about that England rugby team, eh? Watched all the games so far except the first one (I was out). (I guess this is going to be the sublime bit.) In related news, facebook has a new Jonny Wilkinson Appreciation Society site.
Yes, yes, I missed Wednesday again. Now for the excuses. First, my life was disrupted a bit, but in a good way, by the visit last week of my sister, her husband and her son. It's a complicated tale so I won't go all into it, but I took some time off work, I wore myself to a frazzle and I had a good time. It is quite painful to me being thousands of miles from my family, so these brief visits are far more idealized and - well - enjoyable than family visits are to normal people who at least live on the same continent as the rest of their kin. Or so I believe, based on my memories of when I was a normal person. But my sister is partly responsible for excuse number two as well. I took her to my new gym, where I have been struggling to attain a goal of three times a week. She suggested that I would probably not see much fitness change unless I went for five times a week, which makes a bit of sense to me, so I now am on a resolution to strive for that. My job keeps me away from home about 11 hours a day, and then there is still all the little tasks involved in keeping me, the husband and the house up and running - hygiene, laundry, shopping, filling and emptying the dishwasher, doing at least a minimal share of the cooking. There are newspapers and blogs to read, parrots to talk to. Basically what I am saying is that I am running out of time in the day. Anyway, on to excuse number three. Which has two parts. Part 3A - my sister and I were talking about memories and stories, and how she is trying to get our parents to write down some as keepsakes for the future, for our kids. And we had this brilliant idea to set up a website for the family and post short articles of our various memories and stories. A meetup group I am involved with (another big time sucker, if you let it be, as I just spent four hours last night going to a meetup and had to ditch the gym!) has recently moved from our paid sponsor site to a free site called me.com. Now this website is not perfect; its interfaces and applications are chaotic and sometimes unpredictable, and I think it has ideas above its station, if you know what I mean. But it's free, and I mostly find these things are what you choose to make them (and are capable of making them.) So I am spending a bit of my precious "free" time administering this site. Excuse 3B is Facebook. I never planned to get addicted to it, but it is very seductive. Anyway, I am doing something else as the WWW, just after this (although you will see it before this, due to the magic of blogging.) Amongst the many worthy things I meant to blog, and didn't and quite possibly won't, are-
- the bridge collapse in my hometown of Minneapolis, which I have been following obsessively
- the foot and mouth outbreak, and especially a very affecting and poignant piece from a PTSD suffering slaughterman, which I now cannot find a link for
- the latest developments in my chosen focus areas of world news and politics: Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantanamo, Nicaragua and the US presidential race
- the trapped coal miners in America
- the monsoon floods in South Asia
I have not blogged much because, even though I am at home. I have been on holiday since Thursday. I am going back tomorrow. DH and I have been hosting the visit of my middle sister, Cindy, her husband Shephard and their son, Tyler. We went to London yesterday on the coach for a whirlwind tour. While they were here, Cindy and I had this brilliant idea to set up a family website (participatory, not just a showcase) which I then did, using a free software called me.com. I am pretty tired now, but it's been fun.
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