Life is (Bitter)Sweet!

On Monday, just before heading back to Jersey City, I grabbed my big steel knife and marched off to the rhubarb patch across the road from my farmhouse. Several years ago I discovered some rogue rhubarb growing in the field, a possible remnant from the time when our farmhouse was the residence of actual farmers, not city dwellers playing as country people. Whoosh, whoosh, the large, very sharp blade cut the abundant plants. Another whack of the knife and the leaves, which Rich tells me are poisonous, fell away from the firm green and red stalks that were the object of my foray into the fields. I got just one little nick to my finger from the blade which would have done Lizzie Borden's job very nicely. It's a scary damn thing, but that knife cuts like the dickens when I sharpen it on the whetstone. Note to cooks, steel blades are much easier to sharpen at home than stainless steel knives, just don't put 'em in the dishwasher, they will rust.

My hoard of rhubarb was dumped into a bag which was then piled into the car with the rest of the crap that travels between the city and the country each weekend. (WHY is there always so much to pack each time we go back and forth between the two houses?) After a long side road detour to avoid Memorial Day traffic on the Quickway, which was not so very quick on Monday afternoon, past pretty small towns and the most amazing black, black earth planted with rows of tender young vegetables in a small, very flat patch of Orange County, we arrived home. Rich headed to town for an appointment and I headed to the kitchen with rhubarb in hand. I like to make (and eat) pies, and rhubarb is one of the easy ones to make. Cut up the rhubarb and put it in the pan lined with crust, dust with flour for thickening, put in the sugar mixed with an egg to make it custardy, sprinkle with ground nutmeg, dot with butter, put on the top crust, and stick it in the oven. Rhubarb pie practically makes itself.

That pie, a lovely fresh salad with baby greens from the garden, and a pork roast ringed with carrots and new potatoes made for a very nice topping off to a delightful weekend in the country. Sweet! Over the long weekend, the country vegetable garden was planted, a delicious lunch was had with friends at the charming Old North Branch Inn, a restored hotel in a pretty little town not far from the farm, a dinner party offered us amusing new friends and a Saturday night dance brought together the gay Sullivan County community for the first time this season. It was a perfect mix of hard work and good social time. But best of all, I was published by the New York Times this weekend. Now that was really SWEET.

Inspired by the Nutrition Facts box that appears on all food products, some design colleagues and I had a clever idea for a new kind of simple, clear credit card disclosure that should be placed on all credit card offers and statements. The Times liked it and published it as an Op-Chart in the Week in Review on Sunday, May 24, 2009. Since it appeared, I have been called brilliant, very brilliant, and really smart. What this tells me, other than the obvious about my intelligence, is that simple, strong design ideas are smart and can be effective tools to help everyday people make credit choices, buy mortgages, decide what to eat, and so on. My co-authors and I are part of a group called Design for Democracy. We are using design thinking and design ideas to improve the quality of public communications in America.

As the D for D team were making plans Tuesday to spread the word about our triumphant New York Times editorial, word arrived that the California Supreme Court had upheld the legality of Proposition 8, the ban on same sex marriages in that state. Damn, that was BITTER news. It is curious how easy it is to legalize discrimination and how hard it is to end that discrimination. My only hope is that this defeat for gay marriage will fuel the righteous anger of gays and lesbians who once again feel excluded from the mainstream with its rights and protections.

There was a demonstration yesterday evening in Sheridan Square to protest the court decision. I wanted to go, but it was cold and damp out and I was tired. Leftovers from Monday night's dinner beckoned, cold pork, fresh broccoli shoots from the city garden, more salad, and of course leftover rhubarb pie. The prospect was enough to fuel my journey back home after a long rollercoaster day at work. What greeted me as I entered my beloved Jersey City kitchen was a pile of just picked broccoli shoots and an EMPTY pie pan. Rich had loved my pie so much that he just had to eat the whole second half of the pie himself. Now that's BITTERSWEET. I gladly ate the leftover pork, the broccoli, and the fresh salad. Delicious, but I wanted a sweet. So I made some cookies...but that is another story.

Back to Basic(s)

When we are in the city, Jersey that is, I usually do our weekly shopping at the big A&P near the Holland Tunnel. I have scouted the various supermarkets in the area and this one satisfies my, as Rich would call them, "double pinkie instincts" for a quality food market where I can get a wide selection of good grub at a reasonable price in nice surroundings. I get the basics and the odd treat here and there, ice cream, some decent cheese for snacks, and so on. Frankly, the selection of cheeses at A&P could be a bit better...OK, I AM double pinkie! I am trying to lose some weight (there, I've said it) and so I resist the cookies and most sweets these days. In any case, the cookies and cakes that I bake are much better than the ones I can buy at the A&P.

Since I moved to Jersey City I have enjoyed doing a weekly shopping trip to get a house full of food. For a long time, at my old home in the West Village, I would buy food for just one day, more Euro-style I suppose, except that I did it in a supermarket, not at the high street provisioners. You could fit four or five of that West Village D'Agostino's in my Jersey City A&P, where the the quantity and variety is positively delicious. When I am at the A&P, as I head from produce to the meat section, past the bread (none of that these days!), there's an issue that weighs on my mind. It's the Chicken Question—should I buy the organic chicken, the natural chicken (whatever the hell THAT means), or, heaven forbid, the big fat Perdue Oven Stuffer Roaster? Why are are the organic chickens at A&P always so small? If I want a good-sized chicken (I got the "Make enough food for several days' leftovers" lecture this morning), the Perdue wins out. If I am feeling an impulse to eat healthy, I balance the merits of the organic and natural birds. Is it worth paying so much more for the organic bird? Sarah, one of my colleagues at work, had this advice for me: "Buy the smaller organic chicken. Eat less meat and more vegetables." My biz partner Ann is a good bargain shopper. She goes to Fairway in Brooklyn and follows the store sales to guide her weekly food choices. She says the markdowns help her decide what to buy in any given week when confronted with a giant Big Box full of food. If organic chicken is not on sale that week, her family won't eat chicken.

I was a bit overwhelmed by my first visit to the huge new Fairway in Paramus on the way back from the country last weekend. The range of produce and the scale and quality of the meat was dazzling. Lots of organics here, and cheaper, too. Until I know the lay of the land in a supermarket I am always a bit disoriented and discombobulated. It's rather like visiting a new city or country while you're trying to figure out the local conditions in the first couple of days. Wayfinding happens in countries, cities and yes, in supermarkets. Last week I got a cart full of well priced groceries at Fairway but I didn't enjoy the experience. After a few visits I'll figure out the Fairway drill and get in the groove.

The choices we make each week at the supermarket have so many implications for our health. Eating healthy is obviously important but not always so easy to figure out—think of the Chicken Question. The shopping cart is full of items and decisions to be made. It can be tough making the right healthy choices every week, balancing appetites, budgets, availability, time, and pleasure. Is there time to make a good, healthy, delicious meal each night? Will my budget allow for the organic chicken? Will I really enjoy the whole wheat pasta? These considerations can sometimes override the healthiest choices. If I shop when I am hungry, I can end up buying things I regret, things I don't need. Food activist Michael Pollan had good advice the other week on NPR: buy food that can spoil. In other words, buy fresh, unprocessed foods, not packaged ones filled with chemicals and preservatives.

On Sunday afternoon, when I go and buy the basics in Jersey City and I have some time, I stop at Basic, one of my favorite spots in my new hometown. It's a great cafe-restaurant in the lovely neighborhood near Hamilton Park. The sign in the window at Basic advertises "The Best Coffee in Jersey City." The thoroughly adorable staff serve breakfast, and throughout the day, sandwiches and wraps, salads and sweets, tea and coffee, of course, and a nice selection of gelati. My current Sunday favorite is the bul-go-gi sandwich, slices of Korean-style marinated rib eye steak with greens, basil mayonnaise on a nice focaccia roll. It makes for a very satisfying lunch. Check out Basic, and tell me what your favorites are there. I wish there was a place like Basic up the hill in my section of Jersey City. And now back to basics, I have to get myself over to the A&P. Fortunately, I have some chicken in the fridge so I don't have to make THAT decision this week.

Sign and Accept

I was shopping at my local hardware store in Jersey City last weekend and the line at the register was long. As she rang up the totals, the cashier chanted, "Sign and accept," while the customers were swiping their credit cards, signing in the little box on the card reader and pressing accept to send their signatures to the electronic file. This mantra, sign and accept, repeated over and over again, made me think of how Congress is working right now to protect the interests of ordinary credit card holders like me. Recently the House of Representatives passed a bill designed to make credit card companies act more responsibly towards their customers, regarding terms, interest rates and so on. The President weighed in during his weekly address on Saturday. He stated, "Americans know that they have a responsibility to live within their means and pay what they owe. But they also have a right to not get ripped off by the sudden rate hikes, unfair penalties, and hidden fees that have become all-too common in our credit card industry." This week the Senate is considering a similar bill.

As you know I am a graphic designer and it seems to me that there is an opportunity to make good design standards a part of this new legislation. What if the Federal Government mandated a Credit Card Facts box similar to the Nutrition Facts box that appears on most food products? This box could appear on all credit card offers and statements. Simple, clear writing and good information design could make much clearer, the tangle of rates and fees that confuses and often blind sides most consumers as they sign and accept each day with their credit cards and then look at their monthly statements with disbelief. And imagine if our national government was mandating good communications policies that really benefit all Americans. I'd sign on for that and I think many Americans would accept it too.

The PATH Not Taken

Yesterday morning I was sitting on the PATH train headed to work, scanning the arts section of The New York Times. I read with interest Nicholas Ouroussoff's report about the unveiling this weekend of a new design for Santiago Calatrava's World Trade Center site PATH and subway station. He spoke of the budget challenges to the project and the architect's attempt to maintain the integrity of his glorious design, surely one of the boldest conceptions for a transportation center in New York since Grand Central Station opened in 1913. Calatrava is a great architect and this is clearly a beautiful building, but all is not well with this new PATH station. Ouroussoff points to the secrecy of the recent design process and some of the compromises that have been struck to preserve the experience of Calatrava's soaring winged roof structure. It seems that the experience of us daily PATH riders has been neglected, ". . . in a particularly perverse decision PATH riders won’t be able to get from the train platforms directly to the street. Instead they will have to walk halfway along the hall’s upper balcony and past dozens of shops before exiting into one of the flanking towers — a suffocating experience no matter how beautiful the spaces turn out to be." In fact this grand and very expensive building has a limited function, direct links to two transit stations under the building, the World Trade Center PATH stop and the Cortlandt Street stop on the N/R subway lines, and a secondary connection to the Fulton Street subway station several blocks away. To shortchange us PATH riders seems an odd and unfortunate decision by the planners.

What struck me about the failings of the building, as Ouroussoff described them, was the unwillingness of the designer to accommodate the experience of actual people in his building. As wayfinding designers who often work on large public facilities, we have a people-focused process that we use to create signage and wayfinding systems for buildings like this. We call this process user-centered design, whereby we focus on the needs of the users of a public space, anticipating what information they require and how they will navigate a place and find the destinations and pathways they need. It seems that on this project, there was no advocate for the user guiding or challenging the architect as the building's elements were being designed and arranged. If a user focus was the goal of this public design project, the building would not have become what Ouroussoff described as,"a monument to the creative ego that celebrates Mr. Calatrava’s engineering prowess but little else."

Ouroussoff's review is surprisingly harsh. As a citizen and a PATH user, one wonders, where do we go from here? Perhaps the Port Authority has some explaining to do. Was this routing of PATH traffic designed to enhance the viability of the commercial element of the building? These days, most transportation centers are a mix of transport uses and retail, dining, and entertainment venues. Is there more we haven't seen in the way of public art, exhibits, and environmental graphics that might engage people on the circuitous journey that Ouroussoff complains about? I am an optimist, let's hope that the design evolves and the PATH experience is designed holistically and thoughtfully so us Jersey folks will celebrate our arrival each day in the Big Apple and not curse the moment we left our lovely Garden State. 

Don't Forget to Vote on May 12th

May 12th is voting day for the Jersey City municipal election. There's a big roster of candidates for mayor and city council. You have just a few more hours to do your research before you cast your vote. Polls open at 6:00 AM and close at 8:00 PM. Check out the sample ballot sent to you by the Jersey City Commissioner of Registration, it's a helpful guide to casting your vote tomorrow, describing the categories where you can vote and the choices you have in each category.

I am still new to Jersey City and I am embarrassed to confess that I didn't do enough homework to have a fully informed opinion about how to vote in this election. Check out the editorial from Saturday's Jersey Journal, our hometown newspaper which presents their endorsements for the election. I found it a useful discussion of some of the local issues. Read it and decide for yourself how you want to vote. Just make sure to vote. I'll see you at the polls.

Miami on the Hudson - Jersey City Deco

At some point in my travels through the neighborhood, I started to notice a set of small apartment buildings on the side streets off of JFK Boulevard, between Montgomery and Communipaw Avenues. I found these buildings tucked in between the houses and larger apartment blocks and they reminded me of the great Art Deco buildings in Miami Beach, minus the stucco and the bright colors. They're smallish, four or five stories, mostly light yellow brick, with stylish Deco details. This being Jersey City, they're in various states of repair, the bones are good, but the in some cases the details have been knocked about. The doorways are mostly charming, with nice brick details and some fancy ironwork. The cornices have some great details as well, terra cotta I suppose. I rode around on my bike and took these pictures - I thought you might enjoy this taste of JC Art Deco.

Where Are You on the Journey?

It is sometimes useful to describe as journeys the projects that we business people undertake together. Though it sounds kind of touchy-feely, I think this reflects the emotional process that we go through on long, hard assignments that require a lot of back and forth, give and take. A complex project can be a life event: new friends are made, fresh experiences gained, and a couple of enemies collected in the process. It sounds rather like life itself, which as we know is one very long (hopefully) journey, from innocence to deep understanding, from diapers to bikinis, and then, alas, back to diapers.

I was reminded of this idea of journeys last Saturday. Rich and I had a party, or should I say salon, at our house in Jersey City. The evening began with drinks, proceeded to dinner, and then on to performances by theater artists trying out new material. Among the first to arrive were Judi and her husband Allan, people we had met during the run up to the fall election when we hosted phone banking and debate watching parties. Allan and Judi are lively, engaging people. I don't know them well, but they seemed to have arrived at an OK place in their life's journey. Judi took us back a few years when she returned from a tour of our back yard garden and proudly announced that she had once had a Victory Garden. Was she thinking about her time in Boston and the popular PBS show created by WGBH that extols the virtues of home gardening? Or was she thinking further back to World War II when citizens were encouraged to grow food at home? Hmm, she has some gray hair and is of a certain age.

As we reminisced, I learned more about Judi and her work as a textbook designer. It turns out we have industry friends in common. While I was probing her resume and the reorganization of the book industry, Guillermo, one of the other guests, piped up and steered the questions to wardrobe. "What did you wear wear to work in the 'seventies?" he asked Judi. Of course, that's what a gay man would ask. These days Judy wears nice jeans, a sweater and comfortable shoes. Back then it was knee-high white vinyl go-go boots and mini-skirts. Hard to imagine that outfit in the staid offices of a Boston book publisher.

Guillermo probed, "what kind of stockings went with the mini-skirt - fishnets, perhaps?" Judi couldn't recall.

Emily, another guest piped in, "Pantyhose, no doubt."

Judi replied, "In those days I wore a girdle, but when the mini came along we ditched that."

Imagine putting a mini skirt over a girdle, the image is ludicrous. These discussions of girdles, mini-skirts and go-go boots triggered more memories from Judi. Apparently those days at the book designer's desk with brushes, pens, type galleys and T-squares weren't enough for our swinging Judi. Boston's Combat Zone beckoned and she set off after work one night appropriately clad in tall boots and short skirt to begin an impromptu career as a go-go dancer. In those years, the Combat Zone was appropriately named. Boston's entertainment district was a heady mix of decaying theaters, seedy bars and sex clubs. The confidence provided to Judi by a nice figure, a great pair of boots, and a flirty little mini-skirt melted at the door of the dance club, and she froze with terror. This new dance career was not to be. Oh well, back to the day job.

Speaking of which, the three performers at our Jersey City salon all have day jobs, vocal coaching, massage therapy and so on. But their real passion is creative work, in this case, both writing and performance. Our salon was a chance for them to try out some new material. James kicked off with several short pieces probing the travails of the modern gay black man, the sometimes weird and occasionally wonderful journey of a man searching for love and sex in the urban combat zone. The first piece was a touching quest for companionship "spoken" by his body parts, each looking for new friends in the old bed. His leg spoke of its desire to brush up against an unfamiliar leg, his arm wanted to caress something other than its matching limb on the other side. James worked his way around his body and spirit and the search for new companions, it was a remarkable way to give voice to a man's longing for sex and affection, quite touching and powerful. Other pieces explored actual encounters with other guys in and out of bed. I was struck by his story of Sir Laugh a Lot, the tickle master he found on the Tickle website, who led him to heights of ecstasy unimaginable to those of us who can take or lose a little tickle here or there. His pieces were raw, at times explicit. I squirmed a bit thinking of the audience. Then I remembered Judi and her own adventures in that other Combat Zone and relaxed, eagerly awaiting performer number two.

Deb is a tall stunner, with long brown tresses and the deep rich voice of a jazz singer. She gave us a painful brief moment in the life of a woman struggling to balance housework, a relationship, her day job, and the desire to bust out and become a rock singer. She captured the crackling energy of this working class woman trapped at home with a guy who didn't really care for her. Wow, I was captivated by her edgy vignette. And I loved the leggings and heels.

And then to Rich.This was a bit scary for me, I didn't really know what he was going to do and I understand that I, the man who shares his bed, his kitchen, his life, can be an easy target for his biting humor. Though this man I know and love was right there beside me at home all through late February and March, in fact I lost him - completely. He was consumed by an online competition to get a slot on a cable TV comedy show. Rich is an Internet networking demon. His skills propelled him through the competition and the process haunted me. His quest for votes became relentless and consumed every waking (and a few sleeping) moments of his life in late winter. Rich's performance last Saturday put that time in perspective for me. He brilliantly depicted the crazed performer looking for validation and support. I now understood where he went in those dark weeks of winter when I felt so cold and alone. On Saturday night I laughed and I cried as he acted out his desperate search for votes. And, thank God, there was only a passing reference to me. Sometimes I feel like Fang, comedienne Phyllis Diller's phantom husband who was the butt of so many of her jokes on TV back in the mini-skirt era.

Thus the journey ended on Saturday night. The police were never called to our quiet Jersey City street, even though the background music was sometimes very loud and the windows were wide open. I was dazzled that my honey has so much talent, that his mind and spirit had created this great new work while going about the daily routines of life. I was thrilled to bring some edgy culture to our block, to host artists sharing their work with people eager to absorb and enjoy.

Where are you on the journey? Perhaps you have something to share at our next Jersey City salon.

How Was Your Trip To Mexico?

I had dinner with Barbara the other night. It's been a while since I've seen her and we had lots to catch up on. She's a journalist and so I appreciate her take on things, she's a thoughtful observer of current events, the world at large, and even of the space that we might inhabit at any given moment. (cough) We had picked the spot, Café Loup on 13th Street in Manhattan, a reliable restaurant that neither of us had visited in a while. (cough) I had a moment of anxiety as I approached the restaurant. Where was the entrance? I was having trouble spotting the familiar awning and I had a thought that is all too common these days: is the place still open? Has it succumbed to the turbulent economy and shut down like more than a few familiar places around town? (cough) Whew, the front door beckoned and I entered the still very much alive restaurant. In fact, the place was jammed! It was busier than I had ever seen it in all the years I have been eating there.

As we settled into our seats, (cough) we both remarked on the buzz in the restaurant, wondering about the shrinking economy and the large crowd in the restaurant, which seemed out of sync. We wondered if this busy restaurant was a sign of people's search for comfort in the face of an uneasy and uncertain world. There's no place cozier than Café Loup with its old fashioned bistro decor, dark lighting, dense seating, and warm, rich, French food. (cough) She had the skirt steak with mashed potatoes and I, the duck with mango. When it comes to duck I'm old fashioned, I like that crispy skin that comes with duck a l'orange, but is often not found on elegant duck confit entrees at the best restaurants these days. The waiter assured me that it would be crispy just as I liked, and he was right.

But back to those feelings of anxiety and surprise. (cough) These days it is so hard to know how to feel about the world. Barbara and her colleagues in the news business are keeping us abreast of the latest ups (not many) and downs (lots) of the economy. The daily dose of foreclosures, layoffs, bankruptcies and business closures can be overwhelming. I have a life to live and a business to run. How do I keep the faith in the face of so much bad news. To keep a small business thriving these days requires tenacity, smarts, creativity, and a heavy dash of optimism. I have been traveling the world promoting my newly published book, and in the process have been collecting impressions, ideas, and new contacts that I hope will refresh our work in the office. That gives me hope and the courage to carry on in the face of all of the bad news out there. Perhaps it's because I am a glass half full kind of guy. (cough) There are opportunities in the midst of this global recession. Café Loup is onto something and would seem to be doing just fine. We're doing our best to keep the machine humming at my business, too. There are, however, those good days and those bad days; good days when we get a new assignment or the hint of a project opportunity out there and the market goes up, bad days when I sit with a friend over lunch and hear about layoffs and pay cuts at their office, and I look at my 401(k) statement. (cough)

And then, just when I thought I could handle this muddle of facts and feelings, along comes swine flu! (Damn it, I love pork.) What the hell am I supposed to think about it? Should I really be worried or is it just a distant problem out there somewhere that I should be aware of but not really think too much about? I find it fascinating to read the reports in my morning New York Times (the print edition, but how much longer is that going to last?) and see how the various agencies and government organizations talk about the flu. It is a bit scary when I read about alert level five and the possibility of a global flu pandemic. I am having trouble finding my half full glass right now. The best that the experts can come up with is that we should wash and cleanse our hands. And so we handed out bottles of instant waterless antimicrobial hand sanitizer at our monthly staff meeting on Friday, the $1.79 generics from Duane Reade. It is a way of taking action, warning our staff to be aware of the dangers, and to do what we can in the face of trouble out there. (cough)

Our dinner at Café Loup was a lively, satisfying meal. We mused on our respective careers: Barbara, balancing the mix of teaching and reporting, I, excited about issuing a new book and my resulting a global book tour. The one problem that nagged throughout our delightful dinner was this guy who spent the whole meal coughing heavily at his table right next to us. His date was doing a pretty good job of staying cheerful in the face of his incessant coughing. Barbara was having more trouble with it. We couldn't help ourselves. Was this guy swine flu Sam? Were we witnessing first hand the spread of swine flu in a crowded Village restaurant? Finally, we had had enough of it and beat a hasty retreat from the restaurant. On the way out, I muttered to the guy, "How was your trip to Mexico?"

We headed out into the street. We made a quick—shocking, as it turned out—stop at Jefferson Market on Sixth Avenue. My once favorite food market had been transformed into a Gristede's. Arghh, another victim of the economy and the march of big retailers across the urban landscape. I jumped on the PATH train and headed home to Jersey City for the night. You know, next time I see Barbara we're going to eat over on the west side of the Hudson. We've got some good restaurants in Jersey City that I have to tell you about soon. And, so far, we don't have any swine flu cases in Jersey City, unlike NYC which seems to be crawling with them.