Best Chicken Ever Goes Down

Sadly, I must report that yesterday as I was driving down Summer Street in Adams, I saw that the Jolly Butcher shop has signs in the window saying "We Are Now Permanently Closed." So another tasty establishment has gone down the tubes. Their pressure-fried chicken was beyond compare (OK, it was a bit like KFC, if KFC used better chicken and had consistent quality control). They also had good raw meat. (See "It’s all about the Ribeye.") Apparently, they just didn't have enough customers.

The problem with depressed retail in Adams and North Adams is of course a lot broader than one shop or even retail in general. And for Summer Street, the relative absence of through-traffic and of out-of-towners adds to the difficulties. Since our main street (actually named Park Street, aka route 8), while busier, also has empty store-fronts, I'd think the longer run solution for this town is for most of the Summer Street shops to move to Park. Of course, if I owned real estate on Summer Street I'd probably feel differently. Hopefully, the new Topia will entice some new customers and businesses to Park regardless.

I haven't had any connection to the retail business since I was in college. And I can't think of any retail concept crying out for a presence here. Except possibly for a bike shop with espresso and ice cream, since the Ashuwillticook ends right at the center of Adams. (However, there is a good bike/outdoors shop a couple miles away.)

Apart from a casino, does anyone have a retail wish, or an idea for something they think could do well in Adams or North Adams?

Savoy Mountain State Forest Blues

I did a day-trip to the Savoy Mountain State Forest today with my family. As a family outing it was less than a success, given bugs in our faces, a wet hiking trail, and a grumpy little girl. But they have a nice looking campground (tent sites with picnic tables and grills, some cabins, bath facilities) which was empty, and a couple of ponds (with perhaps 8 men fishing).

Also, I saw some interesting plants I've never really noticed in the wild before. First, a Trillium erectum (aka purple Trillium, or Stinking Benjamin, seen here with aforementioned little girl). It's a full foot and a half tall, hence its specific name. I only saw one cluster of two of these flowers.

Second, an Erythronium americanum (yellow trout lily) which is closely related to the pink-flowered E. dens-canis (dogtooth violet). These plants were all over, but only two or three were in the full flush of bloom, that I could see, with many holding on to maturing seeds, and many as yet unflowered. Like the Trillium, its flowers nod downward and aren't all that showy from above (but not hard to find due to their brighter color). I have a couple of the similar (yellow) Erythronium 'Pagoda' in my garden, but here's the Savoy wilding:


Finally, it's interesting to see how far the garden Viburnum has come from the wild type we see in our local woods, Viburnum dentatum [CORRECTION: I was in a rush to watch the Sopranos, and misidentified this shrub: it is almost certainly Viburnum lantanoides, the Hobble bush]. Part of the difference is genetic, of course, but part comes from the limited sun in the woods, even along a path. Most wild shrubs are understory plants which grow healthily in the shade. But most can also handle at least half sun, and can thereby gain a lot of extra energy for fuller growth and flowering.

Garden Event Tuesday

I see that the North Adams Public Library is hosting a free talk with garden editor and author Elizabeth Stell, on Tuesday evening (April 10, at 6:30).

The lecture is titled “Gardening Made Easy(ier)” – which as described sounds like it’s intended for garden burnouts (“Has your love of gardening fizzled out? Do you put off weeding because there’s just too much? … Come learn some garden tricks and time-savers. Liz Stell will help you create a strategy for how to get more fun and more flowers out of your yards and gardens.”) But we can all use easier ways to achieve our gardening goals, and such a topic can be used to cover just about anything in the garden. I’m always interested in books written with the input of local gardeners, and I think I’ll attend.

Ms. Stell is the author of Secrets to Great Soil (with our local Storey Publishing, 1998) and coauthor of Landscaping with Perennials (from the famously organic Rodale Press, 1995). She’s an organic gardener of food and flowers at her home in Lanesborough, has taught at Berkshire Botanical Garden, and managed the herb gardens at Hancock Shaker Village.

While doing the Amazon “Search Inside” on Secrets to Great Soil I found a neat experiment, which I think I can properly summarize as a fair use: Take a tablespoon of thoroughly dried soil. Add several drops of vinegar. If the soil fizzes, then pH is above 7.5 (alkaline). Take another tablespoon of dried soil and add water until it’s very moist. Add a pinch of baking soda. If the soil fizzes, then pH is below 5 (acid). (She does point out that you should get a more thorough test before working on your soil’s chemistry.)

Fatherless Dropouts – How Big a Problem?

I first noticed this issue while looking at the “Walk In Brain” blog (linked at right). Blogger Wes attacked a letter writer (Pittsfield attorney Rinaldo Del Gallo, III) in the Berkshire Eagle (March 24, 2007), paraphrasing Del Gallo as thinking “Watch as I downplay race and class in service to my own narrow agenda of not having to pay child support!” I didn’t think it was fair, or persuasive, to attack Del Gallo’s motivations like that, but I did believe that Del Gallo’s statistics were fishy.

Del Gallo claimed “As dramatic as these [race- and class-based] numbers may be, they pale by orders of multiples compared to the graduation rates of children from households with and without fathers. While whites are 1.76 times as likely to graduate than Hispanics from Pittsfield's schools, according to numbers from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, National Center for Educational Statistics, children from homes with fathers are nine times more likely to graduate.”

After spending hours hunting down these and similar statistics, I concluded that while the stat was created using such official data, the math underlying it was also based on some false assumptions. Unfortunately I didn’t think a full disproof would fit the Eagle’s size limitations or their audience. But I did write a short rebuttal letter to the Eagle, which they also published (always a thrill!):

********************

Wednesday, March 28

To the Editor of THE EAGLE:

I do not want to belittle the difficulties faced by fatherless children, but I am writing to correct a statistic which grossly overstates the problem.

Fathers' rights attorney Rinaldo Del Gallo, III, in his letter of March 24, claimed that "children from homes with fathers are nine times more likely to graduate" from high school. This statistic is extremely implausible on its face, since the claim could only be accurate if children in homes without fathers have an 11 percent or lower graduation rate (i.e., only as high as 11 percent if children with fathers have a 100 percent graduation rate, and commensurately lower if they do not).

Del Gallo's Web site claims the statistic is from the U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Educational Statistics, NCES 98-117 (June 1998). This document contains nothing resembling such a claim, but rather finds that some negative outcomes (not dropouts) are up to twice as common where a nonresident father has no involvement with a student's schooling.

I should also note that this claimed statistic is far more commonly seen as "children from homes without fathers are nine times more likely to drop out of high school," which is equally implausible for the same basic mathematical reason.

The claimed statistic has been sourced to a wide variety of more or less definitive-sounding sources, including the Census Bureau, Centers for Disease Control, Department of Justice, the National Principals Association, and some PTA groups. However, all of those claimed sources are either dead ends, or are themselves secondary sources.

The actual sources for the "nine times" statistic are all associated with "Fathers' Rights" groups, not with government statisticians or academics in pertinent fields.

DAVID PITTELLI

Adams, March 26, 2007

UPDATE

The next day Del Gallo climbed down a bit. After making some new calculations he now believes that children in homes without fathers are about seven times more likely to drop out from high school than are those living with their fathers.

However, while he begins from reasonably-sourced data, he makes some logical errors with it, his most significant being the assumption that if 26% of children age 0-17 are in fatherless homes, then we would, in the absence of an effect, expect 26% of dropouts to be in fatherless homes. This assumption is unwarranted because fatherless rates start at a low level for infants and go up as a child ages, as divorces occur throughout the course of a marriage, and fatherlessness is closer to 50% as children approach the more likely dropout ages of 16-17. (According to divorcemag.com, the percentage of marriages reaching their 5th, 10th, and 15th anniversaries is 82%, 65%, and 52% respectively.) That and sociocultural effects will explain most, and perhaps all, of the effect of fatherlessness on dropout rates.

Pregnant? Scared? Welcome to North Adams!

Have you noticed, when you drive into North Adams, that almost all of the billboards are Ad Council offerings? Coming in on Route 2 from Boston, we have long been welcomed by this billboard. Of course, it’s a good thing that pregnant single women have places to get counseling (although as I understand it, most such counseling places have one agenda or the other with respect to abortion), but is it good for North Adams that this is the first big sign one sees upon entering the city?

As it happens, that particular billboard has now been replaced by the “asthmatic fish,” which while useless at telling us anything we didn’t know about asthma, at least doesn’t make us look like victims of dysfunction in need of counseling. On that score, other recent billboards have urged us to personally not engage in gun violence (“when you do a gun crime, your whole family serves time with you” or some such), to talk with our 8-year-old (or thereabouts) child about drinking alcohol, not to scream at or beat our spouse in the presence of our pre-school daughter, and to contact Joe Kennedy 4 cheap Oil (not sure if this last one is a freebie).

As I understand it, advertisers give space (or TV time) to the Ad Council when they couldn’t otherwise sell the space to a paying client. So, as would probably be apparent to many people, an Ad Council ad is always evidence of a moribund commercial market. Making the ads so pathos-invoking is just icing on the cake, so that everyone who is moving to (or opening a business in) the area, will feel like slitting his wrists.

The few commercial billboard ads don’t do too much to counter this notion. Apart from area banks and a couple restaurants, we see mostly ads for liquor (what the hell does “New Green in the Hizzy” mean in conjunction with Teapartay, anyway?), and in the summer for cultural festivals as far afield as Manchester, Vermont, but rarely for those in our own area.

Obviously the owners of the billboards are getting little or no rent from them, but they at least are expressing some hope for the future, in that they are paying to keep them up at a loss, rather than tearing them down or seeking to donate them. Still, the billboards can’t be worth much to them. Perhaps some of the people spending money and time designing ways of improving the local image can buy up the billboards, to use or even tear down, or at least rent them to advertise local events, such as art exhibits at MOCA and the Clark (they did a few last summer), or to promote MCLA or such events as the Adams Fair.

I can’t complain that such moneys aren’t being spent, since I’m not exactly ready to step up to the plate, but in the absence of such sums, couldn’t the owners of the billboards at least donate their space to local events and nonprofits, rather than making them icons of desperation?

Used Bookstores - The Opiate of the Bourgeois Masses

Since I just moved to the Berkshires last summer, I’m still figuring out where all my haunts will be. I’m pretty up on playgrounds and museums and such for preschool children – my most frequent need given my “job” – but I haven’t been entirely satisfied with the used-bookstore situation.* I am addicted to nonfiction books, in the past mainly theology and fishing, but for the last 5 years mostly books on ornamental horticulture.

I find the used bookstores to be more exciting because I never know what I’m going to find, and because I’m cheap. (Garden books are pricey. Say I see the latest by Tracy Disabato-Aust; I’m just not going to feel good about myself in the morning if I have to lay out $40 to get her.) Of course, most used book stores are pretty useless for my purposes. Half the stores must be excluded because they have almost nothing but trashy novels, or their stock looks like it’s been stored in a damp basement for 10 years. Maybe 20% or 30% have enough gardening books to allow a 30-minute browse.

So anyway, I think I have just found the best used bookstore in the area. It’s The Book Barn, at 200 Troy Schenectady Road (Rte 2), in Latham NY. From the center of North Adams, take Route 2 West, set your trip odometer as you crest the upramp out of town (just before the first cemetery) and when it hits 40 miles, you’ll see the store, which takes up the bulk of a small strip mall, on your left.

It’s a bit far to go just for books, I suppose, but surely one can find an excuse to visit Albany. (I was on the way back from Jeepers in Albany, which is sort of like Chuck E. Cheese, but for some reason this “Seed of Chucky” doesn’t fill me with the same dread as the original.)

Why do I like The Book Barn?

• The store has 100,000 books.
• Neatly arranged by topic. Naturally, it has a lot of books in a lot of topics (“124 categories,” according to their business card).
• More gardening books than any used store I’ve been in except for the largest few in Boston and NYC.
• The owners skillfully buy their stock and can quickly find things.
• No crap. No old, festering useless tomes, no glut of ancient houseplant How-Tos or general books with titles like “Gardening” or “Gardening for Special People.” The hokiest stuff there was the old Time-Life Encyclopedia Of Gardening series, but those are actually fairly well done (albeit dated) books, and these copies were unusually complete and pristine.
• The strip-mall may be an architectural wasteland, but my books don’t smell like mildew, as they often do when bought out of marginally heated, sprawling farmhouses.
• Low prices. Most brick & mortar stores are still stuck on selling for half the cover price. That’s acceptable for a new remainder, and of course an antique can be worth a lot more than Gertrude Jekyll was selling it for, but in the days of Amazon I don’t know how they can expect to get that for the typical used book. At any rate, I bought five beautiful and interesting books, with $17 to $50 list prices, for $5.50 to $6.95. (One had a gift inscription, often the case with gardening books, but which doesn’t bother me or even register as a demerit from otherwise very good condition.)

For what it’s worth (OK, to the sane and skeptical reader presumably more than is my opinion) the store has won awards from Albany media sources in categories like “best used book store” and “best used bookstore (selection and price).” It’s open M-F 10-8, Sat 10-6, and Sun 11-5.

Does anyone have any other bookstore tips?

* There are indeed some pretty good bookstores around in Shelburne Falls and along the Connecticut River / Route 91 towns. They generally charge half-list, or about as much, as does the smallish but very interesting place on the ground floor of the Eclipse Mill (I drop in after art openings in the Mill’s gallery; I always find one thing I can’t resist, which is good because I’d find it very awkward leaving a one-man store, in a guy’s house yet, without buying something).

It’s all about the Ribeye

I live in Adams Mass., near the “Big Y” Supermarket. It’s a small chain, with 27 stores in Mass. and Connecticut (launched in 1936 in Chicopee, MA at a “Y” intersection, as I learned at bigy.com). It’s convenient for me, and I buy close to half my groceries there, but sometimes it feels like I’m going to a casino, not knowing if I’m going to get a good price, or pay perhaps 50% more than a good price. Further, in order to get the good price you may have to bring not only the members’ card on your keychain, but also their big, plastic, color-coded discount coins.

So when I have the time and I’m driving by, I go to the big Stop & Shop on the North Adams / Williamstown border, or the Wild Oats, for baked goods and produce; and I also feel like I should stop by Wal-Mart every couple of weeks, getting everything I need which they have there, cheaper. So my convenient supermarket, isn’t.

On a related note, I try to buy things in small, local shops in Adams and North Adams when practical. Don’t get me wrong, I’m still largely about the Benjamins. I won’t eschew the leviathan from Arkansas just because it’s the leviathan from Arkansas (or because “it’s like Hitler,” as my mother helpfully pointed out), but at the same time I’m willing to give a little place some business if the service justifies the price. It often does: Service is great around here, precisely – I suppose – because the business climate is so difficult; and often the prices are great too.

One such place I’m happy to shop in several times a month is The Jolly Butcher Shoppe in Adams. I haven’t tried the deli items, but the raw meat is great. It’s open Wed-Sat 10:00-6:00 at 90 Summer Street, an area that’s neck-and-neck with Eagle Street in North Adams for the prize of Most Struggling Retail District in the Berkshires. (I also get haircuts and furniture on Summer Street.)

So how does it stack up? I’ve taken Jolly Butcher’s printed price list to the Big Y a couple of times. (I was surprised at how paranoid I felt with my “Jolly Butcher” price-list, as if a couple goons wearing bloody “Y” aprons were gonna throw me out of the joint.) And Jolly’s meat prices were almost always better than Big Y’s. I’m not going to get into specifics, because prices fluctuate, but I entered prices into a spreadsheet,* and Jolly averaged about 24% lower than Big Y’s regular prices. When items had a “Sale” promotion at Big Y, Jolly Butcher was still 8% less expensive. It was only the “Buy 1, Get 1 Free” deals at Big Y which were cheaper than Jolly’s prices. They’re great if you happen to luck into something you want, and you want 2 of them, but they’re not reliable sources of savings unless you’re completely flexible about what’s for dinner, and yet can pack away a lot of the same cut of meat before age or freezing enter into the picture.

My favorite piece of meat is probably the Ribeye steak. Jolly always seems to have it, cutting up a big boneless one every week. (I wouldn’t mind the bone, too, if the price were cut slightly to reflect that.) Usually I fry it in an almost dry, very hot pan for 2 minutes on a side, remove the steaks and turn the heat down to medium, then put in a couple tablespoons each of butter, chopped fresh ginger or garlic, and soy sauce, and return the steaks until medium-rare. The ultimate in meaty goodness!

The Jolly Butcher has also recently added cooked chicken on the bone [pressure-fried] sold a la carte. When the owner told me he was going to be spending $13,000 to install a cooker and vent for chicken and fish, I resisted the temptation to shout, “Good God man, haven’t you noticed this is a depressed mill town?” Well, it’s fortunate he ignored the advice I did not presume to proffer, because it’s better than any other fried or roasted chicken I’ve ever had.

* (prices for Hamburger 90% lean, Hamburger 80%, Filet Mignon, London Broil, Boneless Ribeye, Chuck Roast, Boneless Breast and Pork Tenderloin)

Gideon’s, RIP?

I just learned today that Gideon’s is in dire straights. According to its phone message, the restaurant was closed last weekend, but hopes to reopen on Wednesday January 24^th. Apparently EGL (formerly Gideon’s Nightery), which was being spun off from Gideon’s and lately under the management of Vaal London-Kane, is in similar straights.

Well, this is horrible news. The first dinner my wife and I had in North Adams, when she was interviewing for her job as Web Communications Director, was at Gideon’s. The fact that we could get a meal as good as at any foodie restaurant in Boston was a significant factor (OK, a not insignificant factor, at any rate) in making us comfortable about moving out here; the relative ease of getting a reservation, and prices about 30% lower than in the city, was icing on the cake. And apart from our own comfort, the prosperous-seeming restaurant crowd also made us a little more comfortable about North Adams’ economic trend being up now, rather than down as in previous decades. The fact that Bill Gideon’s resume (among others) showed that he could make it anywhere, but he chose to come here, was also a good sign.

Gideon’s was always busy when I was there, but perhaps that was only on Saturday nights. Busy Saturdays are necessary, but not sufficient, for success in the business, so I guess I was “part of the problem” despite eating there every month or two. EGL has been less crowded; it was a great bargain for lunch or a light dinner; my wife gave them a fair amount of lunch business and raved about the food; its chef, Joe Mezza (spelling?) had been sous-chef at Mistral in Boston, a widely acclaimed French restaurant which we had never gotten to, mostly as they were on the high end of our price range.

There is still, of course, Gramercy Bistro, which is close to and similar to Gideon’s. And I understand that Milan at 55 Main is quite good; I have not eaten there. (Although my Italian grandmother has now been dead for several years, I still feel a bit guilty about getting Italian food anywhere else.) But between Jae’s closing up its restaurant in North Adams, and now this, I am not happy about recent trends. (I did finally get to Coyote Flaco on the far side of Williamstown last weekend; it’s unusually good Mexican for New England, and very reasonably priced, but not so convenient from Adams.)

So what to do? I will try to follow the situation with Gideon’s and EGL, and eat there on a weeknight if I get another chance.

Does anyone have any details about what happened? At one level, I’m sure it’s a problem of not making enough money, but how did the problem go down, and what does that mean for the prospects of reopening?

UPDATE: Having heard from a couple of reasonably well-connected (but not directly involved) sources, I believe that Gideon's had plenty of business but was mismanaged to the point its bank felt the need to shut it down. EGL, while apparently less of a going concern, may be slightly more likely to make a comeback. I never did "Drinking Liberally" which has been hosted there, mostly because I'm not a liberal (except in the classical sense), but I see such events as important to the success (cultural and otherwise) of North Adams' continued revival. An arts community needs reasonably priced places for refreshments and entertainment that can attract pinkos, artists, students, dilettantes and groupies, and gays and lesbians, and North Adams doesn't have a surfeit of them.

UPDATE 2: Gideon's phone message no longer says they're hoping to reopen tonight (Wednesday). Also, EGL does not look likely to reopen as such, at least any time soon, although Vaal, its manager, would appear (unlike Gideon, can't say more) to remain viable in the local business community. She just took over the now-shuttered restaurant a couple months ago. EGL was to now, I believe still "owned" by Bill Gideon, not Vaal (that is, to the extent it was not owned by the bank which lent Gideon considerable sums).

Who's Wearing The Pants Now?

With the gardening season effectively over for the next 5 months in Zone 5 – barring an early spring for such bulbs as Galanthus (snowdrop), Eranthis (winter aconite), and Crocus – I’m going to talk about something almost completely different: Pants and where to get them.

I’ve been looking for flannel-lined khakis or blue jeans, because I don’t find separate long underwear very comfortable (it always seems a bit stuffy in the manhood department). We haven’t used our furnace yet, just a gas fireplace to warm the living-room some mornings (this economizing due to the prospect of paying heating bills on a 3,000 square foot Victorian with 10-foot ceilings). And somehow 60 F, if it's indoors, feels F'ing cold!

I went to the new Peebles in North Adams on opening day, and I suppose they do a pretty good job trying to provide every kind of garment, from men’s suits to little girls’ pajamas, in a modest space, but it’s just not possible. They have a Carhartt section for work clothes, but no lined pants; thankfully a salesperson did tell me that Tractor Supply Company, in Bennington VT or Pittsfield MA, would have a wider selection.

A subsequent visit to the mall in Lanesboro proved fruitless, so I went to Bennington yesterday, where TSC had all kinds of utility and casual clothes at great prices (like 100% flannel shirts for $12), including lined blue jeans for $45 (Carhartt) or $30 (TSC’s own C. E. Schmidt line, which I found especially comfortable and well-fitting), both of which appear to be pre-washed and very well made.

They’re not the very heaviest of pants, but they’re a lot warmer than unlined jeans or khakis. They have a checkered blue lining, which seems a lot more sensible to me than my old L.L Bean khakis with a checkered red lining, which I’m never sure whether to wash with the reds or with the neutral colors.

While there I noticed a couple of the women’s garments, which seemed a particularly outré example of Western kitsch, perhaps suitable for Halloween, but I wasn’t really paying attention to whether any of the women’s stuff would appeal to ex-yuppie women for their casual clothing (sorry wife, but I did have two pre-schoolers antsy to get to the Bennington McDonalds with the indoor playground).

In short, for any man looking for clothes for gardening or weekend wear, or for a casual work environment, I heartily recommend a trip to Tractor Supply Company (or www.mytscstore.com).

Note that I have no financial connection whatsoever to TSC or its agents, but if they wish to pay a bribe for my bringing my legions of fans to their doors... let's just say that "prices are low." I do not currently own their stock (Nasdaq symbol TSCO), but I may look into it one of these days as they seem to be a well-managed firm with more potential for growth (and reportedly better employee relations) than, say, Wal-Mart.

My New House

As my legions of fans are no doubt dying to learn, I have completed my move(s) and real estate transactions. I now live in the Berkshires (Adams, MA) about 10 miles each from the Vermont and New York lines, in a pink Victorian with a sloped half-acre lot. The Victorian is about one-and-a-half times as large as my Natick house, yet cost less than half as much as we got for Natick (even though its buyers struck an astute bargain). I can walk to a supermarket, restaurants and shops in the town center. Given that my new lot is basically in town, and is all in close visual proximity to an ornate Victorian, the style of gardening will be somewhat more formal (i.e., symmetrical) as well as more baroque and neat (rather than casual and woodsy).

I moved a dozen perennial divisions from Natick, and engaged in some “radical pruning” (including cutting down a magnificent 40-foot spruce which was crowding and shading what used to be a mostly sunny raised northwest-sloping bed). More recently I have accepted plants from family, moved some free “shrubs” (more like whips, of Euonymus alatus, and shovels-full of Vinca minor from my neighbor), and planted 100 bulbs. (My wife planted 100 more.) Here’s a photo of my family at our new house on May 21 (the first time we toured it). I think the pink rhododendrons are rather wasted in front of the pink house. The back slope (where I’ve done almost all of my work) is hidden behind the house. Many of the spring bulbs are naturalized in the grassy slope to the right of this image.

Settled and unpacked in a permanent (as much as anything can be predicted to be) place, I expect I will be back on the blogging more regularly (not that that is setting the hurdle high).