Monday, October 24, 2011

Powell Avenue Market and Deli

         Healdsburg welcomes Ann and Rob to us as they invite us into one of those charming Neighborhood Markets.  Yesterday, October 23rd, 2011, they opened up their hearts and our minds as they came out of             
hiding after  putting in some pretty fierce overtime creative action to get their local and personable Powell Avenue Market and Deli ready for their open house.   Ann dreamed one day to provide the same emotional attachment to her market, that she experienced as a kid, when she visited on occasion to pick up treats and listen to local color.
          Ann is the full time caretaker, along with a few close friends, while she provides us with local neighborhood hospitality, along with the feeling of multi-generational atmosphere and character.
                   Ann and Rob, the love of her life, hope to bring people here for diverse culinary road trips of flavor profiles of courage and down home style family cooking.  Rob, in his afternoons at the market, brings stories, embellished with his quirky personality traits.
            They were hoping to get acquainted with what they saw as their local cast of neighborhood friends, and add to an already Sonoma County tradition of small, family run Markets, displaying warmth and charm.
           The Powell Avenue Market and Deli is open Monday thru Thursday, 7:30 a.m. to 6:30 in the evening, Friday and Saturday from 9:00 a.m. to 6:30 in the evening and Sunday, 9:00 a.m. to 3:00 in the afternoon.
          The location is 555 Powell Avenue and their phone is (707) 433-2958.

















Wednesday, October 12, 2011

The Palette of Knowing Silent Laughter on Life's Canvas

        Everyday commonplace palettes of emotion elucidate across the fathoms of open horizons, catching human glares unaware and while pontificating upon itself, grasps the benign wishes as they wink and close their daily canvas of desires. Outwardly there are no signs, or warnings, but the joys of laughter often linger inwardly to pacify satisfactions from the personality emulsions blurring the lines of each day's vicarious accomplishments, and the effortless shift into unconscious childhood rhythms at the end of each day.
       Silence, in it's own right, holds dearly to presumptive attitudes, often carrying the knowing aspects that come from the freedoms of  personal choice, and the altitude of each of the individual dances thrown onto the daily canvas of life.  Waltzing thru those outcomes derived from such infinite colors on the palette of life, brings one relentless acceptance, the unconscious laughter wrapped in silence, tip-toeing over and thru those alert and deftly piquant ears.  Necessity, the mother of invention, needs no cue to gather the wisdom, then, from such folly brought into the human condition by individuals laughing in respectful and knowing silence.
        Seasoned ulterior thought patterns don't necessarily dictate those projections into reality, though outwardly the emotional colors  themselves, promulgate their origins, thus giving the rise to lazy smirks, that develop rapidly into undulating brainwaves tossed humorously, onto the subjective individual canvas.  These events are usually followed by unweighted and silently repeating rainbow remarks, congratulating the inner child for it's conceptual and unassuming palettes of dialogues strewn across life's canvas.  We all know that though the paint is easy to throw onto the canvas sometimes as an adult, imitating nature's artwork, that the innocence found in the canvas of our unfettered childhood, often takes a lifetime to bring back into focus, and only maintains it's purity, when that particular laughter from knowing, is consumed with silence.
      
      

    

Monday, October 10, 2011

Pat shares her 88th with Us


         As was planned, we all showed our faces thru the door at Charlie and Trish's house, to bring credence to our special guest, Trish's mom, Pat.  She had made it thru many histories of herself, and sometime about 9 years ago, ran smack dab head on, with my Father.  They had known each other from when they were 17, living separate lives, and were according to my Dad, reunited thru his brother Uncle Bud.
      The menagerie of guests included, Charlie and Trish's daughter Joy and her daughter,
Pat's two son's Bill and Mike, and their spouses, Dionne and
Doreen.  Again the cavalcade of culinary artwork displayed itself on the dining room table, after a rousing bit of conversational chatter, personal family catching up from Pat and my Dad's last trip to God knows where.
     We all grabbed lots of varietal  flavor profiles from the family offerings, grabbed seats, ate, and talked about the positive things, and the fulfilled dreams we all seemed to be living, and soon found ourselves toasting both Pat 
and Doreen, the two birthday girls, with champagne and two different types of Birthday Cake, provided generously by the Host and Hostess of this shindig.
    Then we all gathered round as Pat and Doreen opened their cards and gifts, and the best one we thought was the walking stick, Bill and Dionne had given to Pat,to go, for
instance, on her upcoming trip on the Christmas Markets along the Rhine.


       As Joyce and I drove home, satiated from another fabulous family gathering, we watched the sky emanating a beautiful orange and yellow sunset, as the horizon began to set itself for the
evening.  As we drew ourselves into the night sky around Petaluma, we were enjoying the clouds and the sky turning a blushing black.  The day was slowly closing it's eyes at it's climatic finish.

   Joyce and I wish everyone an open ended joyful month of October, and this is Steven, always looking forward to good times, hard work, and simple
outcomes to glorious celebrations of life, that seem to flow along the outlines of beautiful and vivacious Sonoma and Napa county Lines, Child, sincerly suggesting everyone latch onto their lives, and live out their dreams, as it seems to Joyce and I, that our friends Pat and Dan Child seem to be doing.

Saturday, October 8, 2011

Carlos and 60 smores

The Last Train to the Cain Mutiny

        Say, look behind the pedantic squalor of a pizza magnate's pleasure in elucidating his conspiracy theories of people standing around with their own free time imitating Arab Springs.  The water may not flow as easily on our hearts and minds, but there is a definite leaning toward an American Fall that rivals the same passion and discontent with the imbalance of misplaced and convoluted financial power.
        The concepts we can appreciate when Herman Cain doubts the reasons for our present inconsistency of how we view the circumstances that seem to have us mired in disbelief at what we see, even though, the bubbles have been bursting all around us for decades.  His preliminary findings conclude some mass hysteria brought on by the administration now residing in the Oval office, trying to veer us off the railroad of failed policies.  Somewhere in the back of his mind, the realization that the train never built enough steam to get the train moving in the first place, gives a clear indication of the fact that Obama has not been able to implement any policies, because he was derailed in his attempts to make them leave the station. So goes the reality check list.
         As for Cain's mutinous attitude for anyone other then himself, begs the question of his duplicity in coming to any coherent resolution to the problem.  Not everyone wants to be rich.  As for blaming banks for anything derisive to economic turbulence, and people that possess this oddity called money have anything to do with a large constituency of the population being without any means of financial support, is a prelude to a kissoff.  People didn't sell junk bonds, derivatives, bad mortgages, speculate on the stock market, or hedge their bets.  They didn't have the tools to indoctrinate those policies or protocols.
           As the American Fall continues to possess an accurate account of a large group of people living out their inability to confront the financial realities of both early childhood and senior moments, Cain invigorates the dialogue by blaming the occupying administration, and tries to claim that the alternative dialogue surrounding putting the blame on the banks for creating these furtive angry views of not being able to possess or control monetary sustenance, is ill conceived.  Further, he speculates the notion that if you don't own a piece of the rock, blame yourself.
               Why is it that anyone, especially one that is in the public eye, can find it in their parameters of thought, to ridicule anyone who differs from their concepts on life, but stand pat so easily on their own bully pulpit, mostly spending most of that time degrading others, rather than making or suggesting ways to improve the prevailing uninitiated  failed policies.
           I totally understand everyone who has been let down with Obama's leadership qualities.  So when the next election comes to fruition, take the time to remove the stain or strain on your mental capacities and remove him from office.  You gave him no support in the beginning and gave access to all the interlopers to the machine.  Now, you all have a chance, maybe not to save Obama and his forms of symbolic consciousness, but to put a cabash on the cabala of the Herman Cain Mutiny and similar characteristic representing a black hole in the human condition of this great nation we live in called the "United States of America"  Let the Eagle fly with the Dove, and if you can't be with the one you love, love the one you're with....It's Clobberrrinng Time and Help me Mister Wizard, come to mind.

Tuesday, October 4, 2011

What goes up, doesn't necessarily come Down

        As time goes on, I realize, that somewhere down the line, though people toss ideas out into the cosmos, and as Isaac Newton once, in a moment of discontented trance that they will naturally or inevitably come down and share their platitudes to the masses in an effort to show that the concept of gravity is real, that maybe, just maybe, most of them have grown wings, taken flight, and are not being recapitulated into the mainstream.
         I don't have any real gratitude for his introspective ideas, seeing as people who have in their own beliefs, indoctrinated that idea, and have compelled themselves not to take the proverbial flights of fancy. Nowhere in the histrionics of lethargy can one find solace in perfunctory concepts.  One then must take a giant step outside of one's mind, to take suggestions on how to get off the ground.
        To get some of these suggestion down on paper, I begin my Robert Frost fork in the road journey to have a where ever I go, my arrow goes moment of uncertainty.  If in any alternate thought pattern one assumes that people who are in need of welfare, in any way shape or form, enjoy the blessings of their dilemma, someone needs to correct any grammatical error in this prepubescent dilettante frame of reference.  My first idea is taking it's shape in the form of why not put those people who are out of work and receiving either welfare or unemployment stipends to work to earn their paychecks. Correct me if I'm wrong, but numerous construction workers are out of work because of what came down in 2008.  Now, we do need work on the infrastructure of our country.  Those who are either collecting these stipends still, or those who for reasons concerning their own self esteem would volunteer to help in reconstructing or rehabilitating whatever it is deemed appropriate  to maintain and improve said infrastructure, OMG, would be a first step in reclaiming our future, or as a nation of diversity and immigrant based ingenuity, bring back those ideals and ideas of being what everyone who looks at this country is or was, a United State of Mind.
               Now when one looks at whatever you view the stock market to be, it is not in anyway producing anything.  It doesn't make a product, it doesn't transport or advertise a product, and it is not producing real ideas or innovative concepts, except those that contain a value system.  Once that value system has been constructed, then to make matters worse, it speculates, and then hedges it's bets.  Money in other words, begets itself.  This defies, then maybe, Isaac's Fig Newton's premature concept of gravity.  When someone invest in something, the idea is not to make vast amounts of money, but to help further along a sound and practical idea, that helps in some way, to make life either more functional or more pleasurable to coexist with.  It is in essence, like buying a house to make into a home, not as a way to make more money, as an investment tool.  You may make improvements, remodel, or keep it maintained, but the land or the original living space, the majority of the time, does not make leaps and bounds into a higher tax bracket by itself alone. Though as it becomes a speculative tool, even if you sell it, other properties parallel it's annuitant characteristics.  This in turn does not in any way make a participant in a higher tax bracket by giving you access to breaks on a capital gains tax.
            One more arrow from the quill of ideas here, before I leap off of the page, and indulge in the familiar tasks of my day to day accomplishments.  The thoughts on the global economy are abundantly unclear as of today.  Just a few mundane observation here, whether they gather any moss, or take flight, are of no concern or consequence, because it is to the nature of the beast, and not the outcome of solidarity that I bespeak these nomenclatures.  The value of any country's coin should only withstand the value of the country's image of itself, and shouldn't be used as an image of that country by the global community, or be used as manipulative tool in order to gain some form of trade imbalance with other members of the global community.  When one uses the word community, whether it starts at the local level, and moves up the chains of command to a global essence, it is meant to stir the inner sanctum of spiritual meaning attached to that symbol of everyone lending hands to the eventual positive outcomes of any particular situation.  Each and every culture in every country in the world brings something to the table of ideas.  The best and brightest of those concepts are the ones that should be shared, and not used as wedges to gain advantages, or used to dominate the global community.  This antiquated and inane idea of putting some form of monetary value on anything, to be used as a tool to manipulate positions in the global community, always seems to fall short of it's perceived identity as sometimes a great notion.  Each cell in the human anatomy of consciousness, must be healthy in order for the whole to have it's maximum potential.  So, in symbolic terms, those countries that have, or those people who have, that are viewed as healthy images, need to help those that aren't as healthy, so as to achieve some semblance of equilibrium, starting on a personal level, and working into the global community scheme of things.  It is a natural evolution that this occurs, so somewhere along the dusty trail of human existence the strings have been cut in Nature's Way of doing things, and it should be accepted that for all the good things to exist, in a ying and yang sort of way, the diametrically opposed circumstance must also be imbibed.  This in no way should stop most of the inequality that exists, to try and evolve it's way into the acts of necessity due such proclivities.  Enough said for now, in the continuing saga of a sojourn gone sad.

Saturday, October 1, 2011

Dark Clouds and Sierra meet at Charlie's

        What we have here is Joyce and Sierra entering via the foyer, Charlie's, a really cool restaurant at the Windsor Golf Course, filled with a collection of California eclectic food items with great flavor profiles.
        Take for instance this Bleu Cheese, lemon zest,  parsley and truffle oil pile of french fries.  As we started to munch Joyce and I caught up with Sierra's agenda, and her goals, and who she gets along with.
       To add to our conversation about up coming trips and visits, we chowed down on this appetizer, a chicken quesadilla, with lime flavored guacamole, salsa fresca and a chipotle aioli.
       As the flavor profiles kept coming, and we listened to how Sierra picked out her homecoming dress and how she got a steal on the deal, we enjoyed another appetizer of calamari and dipping sauce.
       As Joyce and I enjoyed the French Onion Soup, we continued to hear about Sierra's shit list of relatives, and who she actually gets along with and how she wears the fashion faux pas she does in Pebble Beach.
       Finally, Sierra's Sicilian Pizza came, with olives, artichoke hearts, proscuitto, and mozzarella cheese, and we all took turns in downing a piece of this or two.  Later, we cruised home and got a glimpse of Sierra's new homecoming dress.  This being the end of the Charlie's Roadtrip, this is Steven, glad to have such relatives as our niece Sierra, to help me keep up on what the new generation's hopes and aspirations are, Child

Blue Octobers and Approaching Normal

       If, on a rainy day, in a Blue October, you find yourself, with your face glued to the drops of antiquity that have subdued themselves onto the glass of the window you are gazing out of, please invite yourself away from any melancholy meanderings, stop approaching normal, and fly with open arms into any concepts left of your childhood glee for such moments.
       Somewhere in your vast network of neurons the visions left there by spirit guides or your own Electric Glide in Blue orchestrations,  are melodies of infinite concerts conducted by your subconscious mind and can be used for your own fulfilling external fugue. It is with these notes that in the past, found you out playing in the mud, having a food fight with friends and family, or watching any of a dozen or so natural phenomenons take place right before your eyes.
        Those second chances of seeking out the Expressways of Your Mind, can make you consummate any or all of those mercurial stupors as a child, that put you often playing unknowingly in the peaceful sand box of your dreams.  So go and put your  symbolic galoshes on, step into the vast distances of your inner self and gleefully accept any of the donations that are blessing your ethereal and esoteric choices.
        Remember it is never too late on the occasional Blue and Rainy October day, to loosen the protocols found in primers for adult story lines late in life's prodigious rule books, and lick the newly found profiles of Banana Nut Bread Jam off of the wooden tasting spoon of a casual and sublime pagan ritual or two.