Buying Votes for Wayside Waifs

Before the county election season starts up, with all its excitement and intrigue, Wayside Waifs offers you an opportunity to vote for your favorite pet. The leader of the contest right now features a video that I fear will be stuck in my head long after the contest is over.

Hefeweizen vs. Milk Stout

Yesterday evening, I donated two 5 gallon kegs of beer to a charity event for to support ALS (Lou Gehrig's Disease) research. The event was spectacular, and I was honored to have my beer be served at the same event that featured Christopher Elbow chocolates and spectacular food served by Chefs Jasper Mirabile, Charles d’Ablaing, Marshall Roth, Josh Eans, Todd Walleen, Jeff Troiola and Nick Jonjevic. Those are all culinary allstars - it was kind of intimidating to be on the same menu.

The event came at a good time, because I have a great supply of beer right now. Out of a selection of Schwarzbier, Dark American Lager, Milk Stout, Hefeweizen, and Robust Porter, I chose the two freshest - Milk Stout and Hefeweizen. The weather was perfect for either - cool enough to tackle a rich stout, but after a day warm enough to crave the refreshment of a Hefeweizen.

To my surprise, the Hefeweizen won the popularity contest, hands down. I had expected the richer, sweeter, chocolaty Milk Stout to draw more drinkers, especially since it was served next to a great selection of cigars provided by Fidel's. Hefeweizens are a little funky and playful, with banana esters and cloudy yeast. But, the masses spoke, and when I went to pick up the leftovers today, the Hefeweizen was all gone, while I got to bring home a gallon or so of the Milk Stout.

As a homebrewer, you don't often get the opportunity to gauge public reaction. When you serve your beer to friends, they are obligated to say nice things. When you submit your beer to contests, you get expert opinions focused on nuances that would completely elude the average person. Honest popular opinion is scarce.

The thrill of the evening, though, was walking out and seeing Chef Josh Eans, a beer expert who has put together one of Kansas City's most intelligent beer lists (.pdf), sipping a glass of my homebrewed Milk Stout with a smile on his face.

And the fact that it all supported an effort to find a cure for a horrible disease made it even better.

Great Food Tomorrow Night! And an Opportunity to Support the ALS Foundation

How does "Smoked Porter Braised Piedmontese Short Ribs,Black Truffle Grits, Tomato Jam, and Baby Arugula" sound? How about "Tomato Water Poached Halibut, Spanish Sweet Tarragon, Watermelon and Heirloom Tomatoes with Radish accents"? Does "Lemon Grass Seared Fresh Water Prawn, Corn, Green Tomato and Turnip Fricassee, Herb Pistou" sound good?

There will be some homebrew by me on the porch, too.

Better yet, the proceeds will go to support the local ALS (Lou Gehrig's Disease) Foundation.

Tickets are still available here. It's going to be a fantastic evening for a great cause.

New Orleans' Carver High & Its Field of Dreams

My daughter, having recently graduated from Tulane, is staying in New Orleans for a year with a program designed to help 9th Ward high school students become high school graduates. It's an important goal for a part of the city that "Great Work Brownie" somehow didn't reach. 4 years after Hurricane Katrina, Carver High remains shuttered, and the students attend classes in trailers.

The school used to be a football powerhouse pre-Katrina, and some ambitious people are working to restore that source of community pride.



As a parent, it's awfully exciting to see my daughter drawn to where she can do the most good, in the presence of others who have bold dreams, real initiative, and problem-solving skills.

Burning Houses, Severed Fingers, Blinded Children - Jackson County Wants More of These - Day 51 of the Jackson County Ethics Crisis

Our Jackson County legislature has legalized the sale of fireworks in Jackson County. They claim that the reason they are doing so is to help nonprofits.

No, seriously, they are claiming that.

I attend a lot of nonprofit meetings, I read a lot of nonprofit publications, and I know a lot of nonprofit executives. Never once have I heard anybody propose that fireworks sales are the solution for the funding crisis faced by nonprofits. Not once.

And, really, Mr. Rizzo and Mr. Tarwater, if you want to help nonprofits increase revenues, why choose a seasonal item that causes fires, traumatic amputations and blindness? Nonprofits have funding needs all year, not just in July. Why not let nonprofits sell drugs, or run brothels? There's a lot more money in those vices than you can get from the chump change people fork over for bottle rockets.

Perhaps I am mistaken. Perhaps Henry Rizzo and Dan Tarwater have been talking to the National Society for Blind Homeless Kids Missing Fingers.

Or, perhaps they have lined up some donations from people with ties to the wholesale fireworks industry.

It has now been 51 days since we have had a fully staffed Jackson County Ethics Commission with the power to investigate our Jackson County legislators. As long as the legislature exempts itself from local enforcement of the Jackson County Ethics Code, Jackson County voters should assume the absolute worst of legislators.

With characters like Rizzo and Tarwater helping out the fireworks industry, it's hard to believe anything but the worst.

Thanks for Coming Out

This is one of those times I don't dare mention names, because I can't list them all and I wouldn't want anyone to be overlooked, but thanks to all who came out and tasted the Triple Sugar Tripel last night. That was a heck of a party!

The beer, for those who weren't there, was a lot sweeter than I expected, but it was a warming sipping beer for the winter. When cold, it had a pretty good balance between bitter and sweet, that slipped toward the sweet side as it warmed. I'm pleased with how it came out, though my homemade version was less sweet and full-bodied - the 75th Street version is a rich sipping after-dinner beer. The beer snobs at the party seemed to enjoy it as a complex, style-stretching Belgian Tripel, and people who don't typically drink beer enjoyed a sweet drink. One of my Bud Light-favoring friends summed up her reaction as "if you closed your eyes and didn't know it was beer, you would think you were drinking wine." I think there's some truth to that statement, and it hints at the complexity of the beer.

We raised somewhere over a thousand dollars for the Central City School Fund, enough for a scholarship enabling a child to attend an excellent Catholic school in the old Northeast or the West Side. That's a tremendous accomplishment. Thank you to all who came out and enjoyed the beer, and a special thanks for those who tossed something into the pot.

Tapping the Keg!

Regular readers will recall that I won the opportunity to have a full batch of my beer brewed at 75th Street Brewery. It now appears to be ready for prime time - they'll be serving "Triple Sugar Tripel" beginning on Monday, December 29th. Yes, I'm working on putting together some kind of party for that evening, and I'll post details here when I work them out.

I haven't sampled the beer, and we made a few significant changes to my 10 gallon recipe in the process of scaling it up to 200+ gallons, so I'm relying a bit on guesswork to predict how it will taste. The last time I saw this beer it was nothing more than sweet, tea colored water being pumped from the boiling kettle through the chiller and into a fermentation vessel where it would meet up with the special Belgian yeast that does all the work.

I expect that this beer will be the color of medium-strong tea, with a subdued but long-lasting head. The aroma will probably be honey mixed with just a suggestion of hops. The flavor will be sweet, with a strong note of honey flavor, followed by all the esters thrown off by the 75th Street Brewery's Belgian strain of yeast. Those esters will add a fruity, spicy taste to the beer, which I hope will combine with the honey to create a sweet, warming beer that will stand up to rich holiday meals and accompany traditional holiday desserts. At 9% alcohol, it will be a strong sipping beer. My hope is that the sweetness will make it appealing to those who think all craft beer is dark, hoppy and bitter, while the Belgian complexity of the beer will appeal to the beer snobs. It's not really a Belgian Tripel, because those ales focus more on the yeast characteristics than on the sugar, and it's a little dark for the style. Go here for a good article on the tripel style.

In light of the monkish lineage of this beer, it seems appropriate to use the occasion of its tapping to support a good religious cause here in Kansas City. While I'm still working out exactly how it's going to work, I'll make certain that samplers of the beer will have some opportunity to voluntarily support the Central City School Fund, which helps four wonderful Catholic elementary schools in the Old Northeast and the Westside give kids a great education.

Stay posted for more info on the party and the beer.

Want to Support KCMSD Success?

You probably don't know the name Ron Martz, or understand his role in the formation of some of the Kansas City Metropolitan School District's best and brightest youths. No, he's not one of the bickering School Board members, nor one of the superintendents who have come and gone.

He's just a band teacher.

But, in his role as the band teacher at Lincoln Prep, Ron Martz has brought discipline and practice and talent to life in children who are at that crucial age when they start either abandoning dreams of greatness or fitting them into their deepest self-images. Through music, he reaches into kids' dreams and offers a score for their success. I don't know how many professional musicians he has taught (though I'm sure there have been a few), but I know for a fact that he has taught kids whose self-confidence, bolstered by their demonstrated ability to master a musical instrument, has walked with them on college campuses from Harvard to Penn Valley, and helped them achieve far more than the newspapers and civic talk would allow them to dream.

Yes, I'm a little emotional on this topic, because I've seen him take groups of kids and transform them from unruly, surly mini-gangs into polished orchestras and bands.

HELP SEND THESE KIDS TO CARNEGIE HALL!

Two years ago, two Lincoln students submitted their audition tapes to Carnegie Hall’s National Youth Wind Ensemble competition – and both were selected! The Carnegie Hall staff said they couldn’t recall a time when 2 high school students were selected from the same school in the same year. So last year, four more students submitted audition tapes (these are audio—it’s a “blind” audition) and were selected to be part of this National Youth Wind Ensemble this year. The artistic director of Carnegie Hall contacted Ron Martz, the director of Lincoln’s band program, and basically invited Martz to bring the entire Wind Ensemble to New York. High school bands and choirs from around the country travel to New York for this program each year, but they are overwhelmingly suburban schools. Most urban schools just can’t pull together the resources, even if they have the talent to be invited.

THEY NEED MONEY TO GET THERE!

The budget for the trip - bus, hotels, fees, meals, insurance, all that stuff - is about $75,000, and they already have $30,000.

Are you setting up a Holiday Party for your office? How about arranging a few of these students to entertain, and making a contribution to the trip? Do you have a hard-to-shop-for relative? How about making a donation on his or her behalf? If you are fortunate enough to be in a position to donate all or a substantial portion of the $45,000, you could get the kids back into the practice room instead of out with their parents working the concession stands at the Sprint Center and Arrowhead or selling $1 donuts and candy bars. Here is a link to the web page that tells you how to make a donation.

Even if you don't have a nickel to offer, though, come out to the Winter Concert on Wednesday, Dec. 17, at 7 p.m. at Lincoln College Prep High School, 2111 Woodland Avenue. Offer your applause and appreciation for some great young musicians and their outstanding leader.

They deserve it.

Neil Young, Breast Cancer, and Trout Fishing

This is a cool, cool project. American Laundromat Records has put together a compilation of women performing covers of Neil Young songs, and the proceeds are going to support Casting for Recovery, a charity which hosts retreats for breast cancer survivors where "the sport of fly-fishing is used to promote physical, emotional, and spiritual healing." The CD has already raised over $22,000.

The founder of the label lost his mother to breast cancer in 2005 after a 6 year battle with breast cancer. I lost my mother to breast cancer this past summer after a mercifully short battle. I'm blessed, though, with many great breast cancer survivors in my life, including one who is going through treatment as I write this. These great women need and deserve support in their healing.

Even if it weren't a fantastic cause, this CD sounds great on its own merits. Here's a track listing, including songs I love covered by artists some of whom I know and some of whom I've never heard:

Disk 1
1. Heart Of Gold - Tanya Donelly
2. I Am A Child - Britta Phillips (Luna)
3. Comes A Time - Kate York
4. The Needle And The Damage Done - Lori McKenna
5. Down By The River - Jill Sobule with John Doe
6. Burned - Veruca Salt
7. Cowgirl In The Sand - Josie Cotton
8. A Man Needs A Maid - Dala
9. Ohio - Darcie Miner
10. Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere - Carmen Townsend

Disk 2
1. Cinnamon Girl - Euro Trash Girl
2. I Believe In You - Julie Peel
3. Tell Me Why - Luff
4. Ohio - Dala
5. Helpless - Elk City
6. Only Love Can Break Your Heart - Amilia K. Spicer
7. Sugar Mountain - Louise Post
8. Powderfinger - The Watson Twins
9. Like A Hurricane - Kristin Hersh
10. Old Man - Cindy Wheeler (Caulfield Sisters)
11. Walk On - Heidi Gluck (Some Girls)

If you like Neil Young, if you like women artists, if you like survivors of breast cancer, if you like fly-fishing for trout, if you like conservation, to buy the CD for $15 (free shipping), or download it from iTunes.

"Taste of Olathe"?

It's unfair how much I enjoy making fun of JoCo. And I can't begin to list the wise-ass comments that came to mind when I saw a fundraiser entitled "Taste of Olathe" scheduled for next weekend. White bread and white zin, anyone?

But my sarcasm doesn't help out deaf children, and the Taste of Olathe does. So, if you're out in JoCo next weekend, you really ought to take advantage of an opportunity to try food from 20+ Olathe restaurants.

Stop Attacking Volunteers

One of the more freakish sideshows brought on by the controversy involving Gloria Squitiro has been the tendency to attack her volunteer status, and, by extension, the standing of volunteers working for the good of our city. Councilman Ed "Ought to Know Better" Ford has sought an unworkable ordinance threatening volunteers with personal liability for discrimination claims, and a google search for "volunteer" and "Squitiro" opens a treasure trove of muddled thinking and short-sighted over-reaction.

Regardless of the feelings about the Mayor's wife and the (unproven, unanswered) allegations made against, her, the attacks on volunteer roles in City Hall are threatening to rob the City of its ability to function.

In seeking to impose personal liability on all volunteers, Ed Ford would eliminate any chance of getting intelligent people to serve as volunteers anywhere in the City. Would you risk your house for the honor of serving on the City Market Advisory Committee, if you knew an upset person might sue over a decision made by the group? Would you volunteer to serve as a referee for Night Hoops if you realized your "charging" call might force you into bankruptcy? Who would be foolish enough to serve on the Downtown Minority Development Corporation?

The city relies on volunteers in countless roles. The willingness of people to help their community is something to celebrate. Even when one person in a volunteer role is alleged to have performed improperly, wise governance requires that we focus on the behavior, and not the volunteer status of the actor.

Autism Awareness Month Kick-off

1 in 150 children are diagnosed with some form of autism. It's a disease that has grown rapidly in the past couple decades, and there is no real explanation. Some of the increased number of diagnoses can be explained by increased awareness and better screening, but there's something else going on.

The Lee's Summit Autism Support Group was started by a couple determined mothers whose children have been touched by this disease. On Thursday, April 3, they are hosting an Autism Awareness Night at Beauchamp's on the Rail in old Lee's Summit. (I've heard good things about Beauchamp's, and have been wanting to check it out.)

This isn't going to be some awkward, tear-stained event filled with tributes to kids you've never met. You won't be forced to hug anyone. Instead, it's going to be fun and positive, with a bunch of local celebrities like former Kansas City Chiefs Deron Cherry, Kimble Anders and Anthony Davis, Kathy Quinn of FOX 4 News, Matt Stewart of Channel 5, Shawn Sedlacek of the Royals, and the Royals Blue Crew (what's with the fascination with oldschool media and athletes - why not bloggers and wargamers?).

If you don't know anything about autism, this will be a good way of learning a little while having some fun. If you know a lot about autism, come out and support the cause. Beauchamp’s will be donating a portion of the proceeds that night to the Autism Alliance of Greater Kansas City.

10 Pounds of Food & Pryde's Old Westport

Think, for a second, about the dual role of food here in Kansas City. For many of us, it is a frequent focus of pleasure. We amuse ourselves with new tastes, we accompany it with great beverages, we present it attractively, and we consume it with great friends.

For others, it's a frequent source of concern. If you're out of money and your kids need to be fed, or if you're homebound and the kitchen is bare, food is not pleasure - it is survival. While people don't often starve to death in Kansas City, children, seniors and people trying to get their lives on track regularly go without proper nutrition. Every single day. Thousands of them.

Two worlds.

One of Kansas City's best local foodie shops, Pryde's of Westport, is offering a couple easy bridges between those worlds.

First, and easiest, here's a coupon, where they'll donate $5 to the Bishop Sullivan Center if you spend $25, plus, you get a free pound of their coffee. If you're going there, please use the coupon!

Second, and almost as easy, Pryde's will donate 10 pounds of food to the Bishop Sullivan Center if you go here and give them your name and email. I did it and it didn't trigger a flood of spam, so, really, why not invest a few seconds of your time and help get 10 pounds of food to someone who needs it?

Pryde's is a great store - their selection of kitchen gadgets and foodie stuff is better and more thoughtful than Williams-Sonoma or any of the other corporate chains, their shop is quirky and fun to explore, and their location is great. The fact that they are such great, compassionate corporate citizens makes it even more satisfying to shop there.

Local Firm Joins With My Twin to Help New Orleans

This is a neat story. Brad Pitt and other philanthropists have joined with a group of architects, including local firm BNIM Architects, to design houses for the Lower 9th Ward in New Orleans. If you want to give a Christmas gift to someone who really needs it, you might consider visiting the Make it Right website.

Who Owns the Red Cross? Don't Buy Johnson & Johnson!

There's a legal battle brewing between Johnson & Johnson and the American Red Cross over use of the red cross logo on first aid, preparedness and related products sold to the public. Seems that Johnson & Johnson registered the emblem in 1887, while the American Red Cross was not chartered until 1900.

Generally, the rule in Trademark Law is pretty clear - the first one to register wins. I haven't studied this particular lawsuit carefully, but, if I were a betting man, that's the way I'd lay my money down.

When I first heard about this lawsuit, my reaction was that the American Red Cross is wasting its resources in trying to fight it. Legally, that might still be correct, but, in further reflection, it occurs to me that Johnson & Johnson is trying to profit from the good work done by the Red Cross.

Why is that red cross emblem valuable? It's certainly not due to anything done by the corporate giant Johnson & Johnson. It's due to the work of thousands of nameless volunteers who formed the International Red Cross Movement back in the 1800s. It's due to Clara Barton and her post-Civil War advocacy. It's due to the millions of people who have sought relief from suffering because of war, famine and natural disasters, and found that relief in the form of a Red Cross.

Legally, Johnson and Johnson may have the upper hand. Morally, they are stealing from volunteers and Clara Barton.

If you share my disgust at this corporate power play, make a mental note to avoid these brands. There are other brands of each of these products, and you won't be supporting corporate theft. And then go here and tell them why. (Update - don't bother! Their form is designed to frustrate consumers with useless questions and demands for personal information.)