The July 2024 Newsletter: Was that Yoko Ono?
Let others show you how to become more fully yourself...
Remember a time when it felt like someone shoved you a bit to take a step toward something?
Like the time a former real estate client said, "Linda, you're capable of so much more." Or a former fellow Realtor who said, "Linda, you don't need a coach; you should be a coach."
Others often see things in us that, in our own biases, we don’t see in ourselves.
Sometimes it's a pull instead of a push. Sometimes, the magnetic field of a single culinary event sucks you in like how a star in a binary system consumes its companion. Stellar cannibalism creating a supernova is a bit extreme, but the effects of a big pull are often dramatic.
The pull in 2011 was impulsively registering for a food blogging class. I lived and worked in Cincinnati at the time. The class was in New York City at The International Culinary Center. Every Thursday. For six weeks.
An undercover piece of travel advice. When you're making repetitive trips between cities, use the larger metropolitan area as the city of origin for booking. New York : Cincinnati vs Cincinnati : New York. It’s likely that the airlines frown on the practice, but the savings were significant.
Steven Shaw, then-Director of the ICC New Media Studies Center, instructed the class. Trained as an attorney, he was prominent in the New York food community as a reviewer and refiner of the New York City dining scene. Commonly credited as the creator of the first food blog, The Fat Guy’s Big Apple Dining Guide, the “Fat Guy” had monthly visitor numbers any writer would envy. Published in Salon, the New York Times, Elle and Saveur, Steven won a James Beard Foundation Journalism award in 2002.
Steven was very fully himself.
In 2001, Steven co-founded e-Gullet, a website considered one of the first online food communities, with 16,000 registered members and three million monthly page views. A magnetic force.
As a kid, I remember falling in love watching planes take off and land from the observation deck of the Greater Cincinnati Airport, long before it supported international flights. Who was arriving? What was their final destination? What were their lives like? There was only one, single-story terminal then, and the roof of the building was the 'deck'. I never lost that wonder and, in fact, always choose a window seat so I can see the curvature of the Earth and its topography.
Each Thursday morning for six weeks, I snagged a flight to LaGuardia and checked into a cheap (if such a thing can be said to exist in New York) Queens hotel. I used the train. I hailed cabs. I wandered the streets of Soho and Midtown, writing about community gardens and farm-to-table restaurants. I took Steven's evening class and returned to Cincinnati each Friday morning.
More travel advice. The next time you need to hail a cab on dark, rainy evening in a big city, take heart. Scoot in a side entrance of a major hotel if one is available and walk calmly, smilingly past the concierge to the doorman. Your cab will await.
Yes, yes, I was 58 and more than 30 years older than anyone else in the class. I crept quietly to the top row of stadium seating, the indoor equivalent of straightaway center field, hoping no one would notice. Then Steven spotted me and all the young faces turned around to stare.
"Ah, Cincinnati!”, Steven remarked, “home of the Roebling Suspension Bridge. The predecessor to the Brooklyn Bridge."
A man with eyes full of mischief. Always a thin veil over his quick brilliance, I would soon learn there was no limit to his cheeky humor.
The creative impulses people acted on to garden in high density New York neighborhoods were heartening. Tiny gardens on small plots vied for filtered light. Vegetable plants snaked latticed patios, rich in produce. The immense greenery of rooftop gardens swathed every available square foot.
I lunched at Five Points, Nectar and Cookshop to get a better understanding of the premise of early farm-to-table cooking. Many, sadly, didn't survive the pandemic. Sipping wine over a kale salad at Hundred Acres in Soho, I casually gawked at the sidewalk traffic just a few feet away. A quick glance to my left, and there was Yoko Ono in the summer fedora she commonly wore. She cast a demure smile and made easy eye contact.
A lifelong friend and committed Manhattanite who lived in 375 square feet gave me a better understanding of life in the City: “Linda, people don’t live in New York for what’s inside, they live in New York for what’s outside.”
Halfway through the six-week class, Steven invited me to tour his son's Upper West Side school, PS 333, the Manhattan School for Children. Parents had cobbled together $800,000 for a fully functional, completely self-contained rooftop garden.
When a friend and I arrived on the last weekend of the class season, we found Steven sitting on the floor of his little son's classroom banging wildly on a drum in a memorable exhibition of energetic, orchestrated chaos. We met Steven's wife, Ellen, and he guided us through the innerworkings of the school’s very special garden.
This trip was revelatory on so many levels. Talented people of every ethnicity, every stroke of life. People of immense creativity that was otherwise not present in my life. Other ways of living.
How many people have helped you reach more deeply inside yourself? Or, perhaps outside yourself into new ways of showing up in the world that are meaningful - to you and to others? Perhaps it’s a completely new role in your organization, a path you never considered. Or, it’s the quiet, wise counsel of a person who supported your own decision-making. Perhaps that always present, quiet voice was your guide - and you took action. A push, or a pull?
Here’s why I ask. Steven Shaw stepped outside his Juris Doctor training into a more fulfilling food-world career when his father passed away at age 58 from a heart attack. A sad irony is that Steven died in 2014 of a heart attack only three years after we met - at age 44.
Steven’s broad legacy impacted countless lives, including Anthony Bourdain; scores of restaurant chefs; the founding of food guides - and me. Alas, many others wouldn’t have the benefit of his guidance, creativity and humor. His push; his pull.
Here’s some of the best stuff I’ve seen the past month:
Links Linda Likes
Elevate your home cooking with simple tricks to improve texture, flavor and elegance in sauces and soups using - butter!
Portland's Langbaan & Chef Gregory Gourdet won separate 2024 James Beard Awards!
Centuries old bottles of fruit found at George Washington's home - preserved with care 250 years ago!
Like a quick refresher of 16 Portland Metro farmers’ markets?
Portland Art Museum: 60 modernist masterpieces Jun 8-Sep-15; Monet to Matisse
We never need an excuse to go the beach, but… The Marie Lamfrom Charitable Foundation commissioned 128 glass floats, and they’re hidden on Lincoln City beaches!
Big, big travel tip: The viewing window of a Crater Lake National Park sunset is small but the return is great. A required stop for Oregon visitors.
We’re working on pieces on legacy Oregon companies, The Columbia Bar, Lewis & Clark and summer pie! Stay tuned!
After watching The Bear, I find this immensely interesting, Linda 😄
It's interesting to hear about the impetus you have gained from other people. I haven't had that experience much in my life.