Friday 12 February 2016

Bowie Gets Stitches



Unbeknownst to us, Bowie gashed his lip open on something. You would think something like that would bleed heavily, but it didn't even leak. We'd know, his whole front half is pretty much white.  You'd also think he'd show signs of discomfort, but he was his usual Bowie self. It wasn't until I was giving him some rubs and hugs that I noticed his lips didn't match.

I started calling as soon as the vet's office opened. If they have call display, I'm a potential stalker. I got a 12:30 appointment. We arrived early. Bowie got weighed. He still a chunky lad. We saw the tech, we saw the vet, we were presented with a startling estimate and I signed on the dotted line.

I recommended sedating him immediately, knowing Bowie would unleash his inner bloodhound the second I left. They said they don't do that. Only when an O.R. became available would they sedate him. I admired their ethics. I also need to avoid any job that lets me dispense sedatives.

Also to never again feed the dog cookies from the jar on the counter in the exam room while waiting to see the vet. Don't do it. If your dog needs surgery, which ideally occurs on an empty stomach, you won't have to then fess up to the three cookies you swiped.

The vet tech took Bowie away and I made my way back to the reception counter to follow up. I saw the young guy whose conversation with the vet assistant I had been listening to through the other side of the exam room door. He knew very little about dogs and I didn't like the sound of what he did know, but his pup was friendly, healthy, and he cared enough to take the pup to the vet.  A man came in with an English mastiff therapy dog. It was the biggest dog I have ever seen. He was huge! The young guy asked how much the mastiff weighed. His owner said about 200 lbs. I said he looked like a really nice pony.

I watched the clock all afternoon waiting for the vet to call. When she did call late afternoon, it was blissful news all around. Bowie was repaired, his stitches would dissolve, he was a "cheap drunk" who didn't need general anesthetic (or take after his mother), and his bill was just under half of what was quoted. A choir of angels sang. Not really, but it felt that way.  The vet tech would call when he was walking and ready to come home.

My phone rang on the drive home so I continued on to the vet's office. A little brown terrier mix that looked just like Benji met me at the front door. I said to the dog, "Hey, you look just like Benji." His owner said his name was, in fact, Benji.

The tech brought me a very stoned Bowie. He gently swayed back and forth as I paid his bill and received instruction from the vet.

As high-as-a kite Major Tom and I headed for the door, a lady on the young side of senior came in carrying a white miniature poodle. "Look at his eyes!" She said of Bowie, in a heavy French accent. "He's David Bowie!"

I told her that his name was, in fact, Bowie. That we named him Bowie because of his different coloured eyes.

She laughed and gestured to her little white dog. "I have another poodle at home, a black one. Her name is Oprah."

Regardless of gender, we're calling our next dog Sport.

Sunday 7 February 2016

It's the End of the World as We Know It

Unionized newsroom staff at The Chronicle Herald has voted 98.3 per cent in favour of strike action should a collective agreement not be reached in last-ditch settlement talks scheduled for Wednesday and Thursday. (STAFF)
The Chronicle Herald

As of 12:01 a.m. last night, the Chronicle Herald editorial strike entered its third week. The print edition continues to arrive every morning in the office. I check. I look at what's above the fold on the front page and give it a heft. It's thin and light, but it was like that before the strike. It's the most contact I've had with the print edition of the Herald since a weekend at White Point last summer when it was delivered to our cabin. I spent a lazy morning on our little deck reading the news, free of the largely vacuous online commentary of Herald subscribers, and completed the crossword. It was fantastic. I was also on holiday with nowhere else to be and nothing that needed to be done. As for before that day and every day since, my media consumption is entirely online.

I haven't read a printed book in about three years. I read e-pubs on my over-sized smart phone or my less clever Kobo Mini, both of which can hold hundreds of books. The last time for print was a different weekend away at cabin when, in a moment of unplugged nostalgia, I picked up a couple trade paperbacks.  It wasn't fantastic. I had to sit next to a light source and hold the book just so in the evenings to read the text. My phone is back lit, perfect for poor light and my Kobo displays text perfectly under a glaring sun, so I load the same books on both. I couldn't select an unfamiliar word and immediately call up a dictionary definition. I couldn't flip back and forth between the current book the series and the previous ones to refresh my memory of past story lines. Compared to the convenience and functionality of my electronic devices, devices that I once upon a time said would never replace printed books, the printed books were dumb objects. The stories within didn't change, but my preference for how I consumed those stories did. It was a change that came about because something better came a long.

This observation is likely not win me any friends in the journalism community, but printed newspapers are also dumb objects. I know that sounds harsh, but it's true. By virtue of its medium, there isn't a single news story that will appear in print tomorrow that isn't yesterday's news. That isn't good enough, because something better came along. News breaks all day long on the internet.

Now I will be the first to admit I engaged in hand wringing and hyperbolic panic about the death of newspapers, especially when the Herald strike first seemed likely, but I've spent the last two weeks somewhat obsessively learning about the Herald's current financial situation and the financial situation of newspapers everywhere. The newspaper business model that has operated for the last 150 years is dead. Not dying. Dead.

In 1986, the print edition of the Herald had 138,000 daily subscribers. In 2006, it fell to 111,000 daily subscribers. In 2016, 74,000 daily subscribers. The Herald sells more digital subscriptions today, but combined subscriptions only total 94,000; and subscriptions were never a main source of revenue. Subscribers were what sold advertising and classifieds, which in turn, paid for the newsroom, which in turn gave subscribers a reason to keep subscribing.

I don't remember using the printed classifieds in the last decade. A trip through the Wayback Machine tells me that a 2006 Monday edition of the Herald had 394 listings for unfurnished apartments and 87 houses for sale. In yesterday's Saturday classifieds (the big day for classified advertising) there were 22 total rental accommodations and seven houses for sale. This isn't the strike, this is Kijiji. A 2 x 3 inch classified in the Saturday Herald is nearly $300. An advertisement with photos and as much text as you want to type is free on Kijiji every day. You can promote your ad for as little as $8.50.

According to the Chronicle Herald, "North American newspapers are estimated to have lost three-quarters of their classified ads to the likes of Kijiji and Craigslist and half their general ads to the likes of Google and Facebook, outfits that pop them up as clickbait on your device." I would hazard a guess that a significant portion of the remaining classifieds result from obituaries and legislative obligations to publish notices. As for general ad revenue, Google and Facebook offer advertisers better advertising. This is not a grand conspiracy on the part of these "outfits" to deprive journalists and printers of their daily bread, they offered customers a better product and customers took it. This is capitalism. This is why we drive cars, not horses and buggies. (It's also a little myopic to criticize those "outfits" for clickbait advertising while lamenting the inability to sell advertising space.)

Capitalism is why newspapers thrived for most of the last 150 years. Newspapers had the best product. Oh sure, I can drone on about the importance of media as a gatekeeper for government and business and to serve as a voice for the people, but the newspaper business was not birthed and sustained by philanthropic intent, it was to make money. It made a lot of money. The only modern thing about the term "media baron" is the use of the word "media", which has replaced both "newspaper" and "press" in style guides. The barons themselves have been around since newspapers started, that's how they became barons. The movie Citizen Kane, a fictionalized composite of three media barons, is 75 years old.

Since then, the barons' numbers have consolidated greatly. In Canada, a handful of people control nearly all the newspapers. It shows. In the last election, those people endorsed a Conservative government in various arrangements, including ludicrously enough, the Globe and Mail recommending a Conservative government followed by the prompt resignation of its leader (as likely as a unicorn). The actual voice of the people gave the Liberals a healthy majority. If this is gate keeping, the rest of the fence is down.

Now on that front, I know from the same Herald article that it is the largest and virtually the only independently owned English daily newspaper in Canada, but think about that. The rest are gone. Speaking of unicorns, the Herald is one of the last. To be sure, I do not want the Herald to fail, nor do I want anyone to lose their jobs. It's just unreasonable to think that appeals to brand, to history, and to consumer loyalty on either side of the strike are going to somehow offset an obsolete business model.

Journalism is not dead. In terms of informing the people, it's never been so easy to reach so many people in so little time in so many places. No one has to wait until tomorrow to find out what happened in the world today. In terms of gate keeping, the most explosive muckraking (whistle-blowing) journalism in the last decade came from a wiki site run by internet activists. The medium has changed, the filters have changed, the very foundation has changed, but the news will continue. The news organizations that adapt will continue.

It is the end of the (newspaper) world as we know it, but I feel (relatively) fine.

Saturday 6 February 2016

Everything Bread Recipe (or just plain bread)

 

Last weekend I made "everything bread", which was just white bread coated in everything bagel spice (I love that stuff). It was really good, but more importantly, it reminded me that I have a damned fine white bread recipe. It's fast (in yeast bread terms), it's delicious (verified by others), and it freezes well (only leave out what you'll eat in a couple days).

An unfortunate bit of math made me realize I've been baking bread with this recipe for 20 years. It makes four loaves, because if am going through the trouble to make one loaf, I might as well make four. To that end, anyone has an industrial Hobart mixer and a need for 30 loaves at once, I can give you that recipe, from which this one came.

Bread recipe

4 cups water (hot tub temperature)
1 1/2 tbsp salt
2 1/4 tbsp sugar
2 1/4 tbsp quick rise yeast 
1/2 cup vegetable oil
Flour (at least 10-12 cups, I've never measured it)

Everything spice

2 tbsp poppy seeds
2 tbsp sesame seeds
2 tbsp dehydrated onion
2 tbsp dehydrated garlic (if you can't find it use a tbsp granulated garlic)
1 tbsp course salt

In a very large bowl (preferably larger than this one, one day I will buy myself a proper bread bowl), add the water, salt, sugar, yeast and oil.


Then start stirring in flour by the cupful.
 

When the mixture becomes so stiff you can't stir in more flour, and your hand and arm are tired, dump it out on a well-floured counter top. If you are like my grandmother, scrape every last bit of dough and flour out of the bowl onto what's on the counter, wash and grease the bowl. If you're like me, get the worst of it out of the bowl and give the inside a good coat of flour.
 

Sprinkle flour all over the top of the shaggy mess and start kneading.  It will be really sticky to start with, so coat your hands with flour and lift the dough and sprinkle flour underneath it every few kneads until it finally absorbs enough to stop sticking to everything and you get a nice smooth ball.
 
Both hands and arms should be tired at this point (professional bread bakers have forearms to make Popeye proud). Put the dough back in the floured/greased bowl and place it in a warm spot. I have a bread proofing setting on my oven. If yours doesn't, set your oven to 100F, which is all pressing the bread proofing button does. Leave it there for about 40 minutes.

 

When you come back, the dough will be twice as big. If it isn't leave it for another 10 minutes.
 
Flour your counter and dump the dough on it.


Divide the dough into four relatively same-sized pieces and knead each one into a loaf. The dough will make satisfying squeaky noises as the large air bubbles pop. Make sure you squish them all out or your bread will have holes in it.
 
If you're going the everything spice route, pour a bunch of the mixture on a pan or plate. I used parchment paper so I could pour the leftover spice mix back in the jar. Use another piece of parchment paper to line one big baking sheet or two small ones. If you don't have parchment, grease the pan(s) with butter.
  

Wet your hands and rub them over the top of a loaf to make it sticky and roll it in the spice mix. This works a lot better in theory than in practice, but do the best you can with it. An alternative would be to use a shaker, but I don't have one. Coat the rest of the loaves, or half and half, or just one. It's your bread.

 
Put the finished loaves on the baking sheet(s) and put them in the same warm place you used the last time. Leave them for half an hour or so. 
 
The loaves double in size. If your using the oven to proof them, take them out. Turn the oven to 350F and when it comes to temperature, bake the loaves for 30-35 minutes. When done, transfer to a cooling rack.

 

Eat, share and/or freeze.