electrojack

this afternoon, I was at the cornershop on Ladbroke Grove, waiting in a rather long queue at the tills, listening to the piped in 'BBC 2' radio. They were doing their Sunday evening 'revenge of the 80's' show. While I was scrutinizing the tonic waters (what the hell is India style tonic water, anyway) and club sodas (for mixing with campari and gin to make Americanos), several numbers came and went.
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As I was queued at the till, behind about 10 people, -- who, true to North Kensington demographics, all seemed to hail from different continents -- the radio burst forth with Cyndi Lauper's seminal 'Girls Just Want to Have Fun.' I can honestly report that all members of the queue, whether they be chinese, pakistani, iranian, French (or American), all burst into song -- each in his or her own language. One little Bangladeshi gent broke into what appeared to be a rather well-practiced dance routine.
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All I could think of (as I, myself, sang along) was how pleased Ms. Lauper would be if she were in the queue right then. 25 years later, and she proved girls (and boys) from all over the world really do just want to have fun.

My previous ruminations on my-life-with-Pop-Tarts put me in a nostalgic mindset regarding favorite-family-food memories.

Before I even start down this road, I should say that both my mom and dad were accomplished cooks, and were capable of producing truly amazing culinary creations when they set out to do so. The following is a recollection of their innovative thinking more than their cookery prowess, however. I'll blog someday about the Gumbo, the Hot Water Cornbread, the Étouffée, the All-Day Stew, the Chocolate Merengue Pie, the Fried Okra, and the Devilled Eggs (my God, the Devilled Eggs). This is about making lemonade from lemons (or lemon juice concentrate, or whatever we had in the pantry).

We grew up in a farmhouse, 20 miles from the grocery store. We would make a weekly trek into town to do the food shopping, and then we'd haul it all back home, and put it all away. As proper rural southerners, we had a big 'coffin' freezer out in the garage, along with a large walk-in pantry in the kitchen.

It was those weekend days, when the whole family would spend the day outside, using mows (I was in high school before I learned that most people referred to the vehicle which clips grass as a 'lawnmower.' We just called it 'the mow.'), rakes, burning piles and, on occasion, 'brush hogs' to pull our 7 acre yard into a presentable shape, that my mom would have to get creative. Had she gone to town for food for the family, we'd have bolted like POWs -- since it would have been 95degrees and 100% humidity, it would've felt like Cambodia in Southeast Texas -- so she would walk into the pantry, see what she had on hand, and with a little guile and a little seasoning salt, she would provide for her family. Some of her on-the-spot creations were quite tasty, and made it onto the regular rotation. It is those of which I now recount. When described, they sound...unsalubrious, but I think it was these dishes which informed me, as a child, that innovative use of materials is a good thing.
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Mexican Cornbread. People think that everything in Texas must be shaded with Mexican cultural overtones, what with the proximity and vastness of the shared border. Think again. We grew up between Houston and New Orleans, and I had never eaten a tamale or black bean until I went to university in Austin. Our culinary traditions were Creole, so Cookye followed the dictum of middle-american cookery when it came to mexican food--anything with sliced jalapenos and browned hamburger meat in it is 'Mexican.' So, when we didn't have any bread for burgers, and she wanted us to have a protein, she baked hamburger meat, jalapenos, and -- oddly enough -- whole kernal corn into an iron skillet of cornbread, and -- BAM! -- Mexican Cornbread. I loved that stuff.
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Beef Salad. As a child, I was always captivated by our metal meat grinder. It was hand cranked, it had a lot of attachments, and it was heavy. We were all big fans of tuna salad and chicken salad, so one day--probably because we didn't have any canned tuna or chicken about the house, and I was playing with the meat grinder--mom had a eureka moment. We ground up roast beef, and combined it with all the staple ingredients of a good tuna salad -- salad dressing (never mayo in texas!), mustard, apple slices, sweet pickles (with a little of the juice), boiled eggs (we never ate egg salad, but we put boiled egg in tuna, chicken and beef salad), jalapenos, white onions, etc. etc. We ate it on toast. It was delicious, and I wish I had some right now.
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Gulyás (or, Goulash, as my mom would recognize it).
So, this one's mysterious. It wasn't the food itself that provided the mystery, but the name. With all due respect to both my parents, where did they come up with a Hungarian name? As stated earlier, we had creole roots, not eastern european. There were no other 'Hungarian' dishes, like the aforementioned, ersatz 'Mexican' foods. Where did they stumble on the name--way, way, way before Google. It obviously wasn't in a Hungarian cook book, as the dish actually bears absolutely no similarity to actual Gulyás whatsoever. I'm sure that Mom would say 'that's what we always called it.' Who knows... The dish itself was standard pantry-emptying fodder. Mini shell pasta, hamburger meat, diced tomatos (Ro-Tel was the canned, diced tomato of choice chez Douglas), whole kernel corn, and diced jalapenos. It was cooked on the stove top, in an iron pot, and simmered for what seemed like days. Mom would serve it on salad-dressing slathered toast, with tabasco al gusto.
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Chicken Pot Pie. (Interesting more for what it lacks, rather than what it contains.)
Mom always kept a few cans of Veg-All so we'd still have our 5-a-day after the bombs dropped. When it was time to get a new can, or she was having a salt-deficiency, she would turn out this stick-to-your-rib favorite.
INSTRUCTIONS: Bake 24 canned bisuits. Combine two cans of condensed cream of chicken soup (only now does the phrase 'cream of chicken' really alarm me) with two cans of Veg-All. Cover with the pre-baked biscuits (upside down) and bake again. The sodium content of this dish could kill a horse. However, we never actually ate the veg-all, we only ate the doughy, salt-encrusted (and mildly chicken-perfumed) biscuits, so we escaped with swollen ankles and cotton mouth.
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The corn thing. (Since it's character was always completely novel, it never actually picked up a name other than a simple description).
This dish embodies the very essence of what's-on-hand cooking. Instead of cleaning out the pantry, however, this is what mom whipped up when it was time to throw away all the old spices and get new ones. So, every time she prepared it, it was wildly different, based on whatever spices she'd bought over the previous 12 months or so. Sometimes it was turmeric, sometimes it was paprika (which she had for Devilled Eggs, and would NEVER have put in the Gulyás), sometimes it was bay leaves, sometimes it was clove. The only consistent ingredients were black pepper and gumbo filet, because they were the only two powdered spices that were always on hand.
INSTRUCTIONS: Combine two cans of cream style corn with two cans of whole kernel corn. Season with whatever is on hand (then throw away the bottles, as by then they've passed their sell by date). Cover with breadcrumbs (if available) and bake at 400*.
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This may all seem like a lot of housewifery, but the way I see it, my mom invented molecular gastronomy, so when I'm sitting at the Fat Duck or El Bulli, savouring the wildly popular, michelin star awarded cuisine, I know that I'm just trying to recapture the elusive essence of Gulyás Corneliaese.

Eleven months into my british residency, with V and the dog here, I can finally answer the question that I am most often asked by so many people: what do I most miss about the USA.
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Chocolate Pop Tarts.
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I have a deep, abiding interest in chocolate pop tarts. I always have. Since I was a little boy, one of my few acts of patience was standing in front of the toaster, waiting for the 'POP.' Kellog's (UK) does market a product called POP! Tarts here, but they're different. I wonder what sort of high-level research and development told the higher-ups at Kellog's that the standard US flavours of Pop-Tarts would never fly in the UK market, and anglocentric flavour schemes must be developed? It's all very mysterious to me.

Along those same lines (that would be the lines of international target marketing, for those of you not keeping up with this train-wreck of thought), Kellog's (UK) has done something quite clever; they've rebranded Nutri-Grain bars as 'Elevenses.' I must admit that I didn't realize that anyone outside the Hobbit's Shire took Elevenses. I can only assume that elevenses, in 2008, is a holdover of the Empire that is kept alive by the ladies who still take their cream tea at Peter Jones and wax nostalgic for the days of pre-decimal currency.

I would gladly make change everyday in farthings and sovereigns if I could, just for one day, luxuriate over a just-from-the-toaster hot Chocolate Fudge Pop Tart--either on the 5th floor of Peter Jones, or the 2d floor balcony of the flat in Ladbroke Grove.

So, if anyone back in america is thinking fond thoughts of me, and wants to make my day.....send me a box of chocolate pop tarts.

When I was growing up (post-pubescently, anyway), I always got a real charge out of watching "Gay" movies--not porn, as much as just 'real' movies with gay people in them. I was completely blown away if one or more gay characters were central to the plot! When I was 16 & rented Fassbinder's Querelle from the BLockbuster in Beaumont, I remember returning it in the overnight drop box, because I felt like I was returning a porn tape! I remember seeing "Swoon" and "No Skin Off My Ass" at the 1991 AGLIFF (Austin Gay/Lesbian International Film Festival), and being abolutely gobsmacked. After growing up with no major media 'role models' it was amazing just to watch two men on a big screen, kissing, holding hands, just looking at each other with gazes that said that they knew--we all knew--what was going on.

Then something strange happned. More and more movies by, for and about gay people started coming out; last night, I was Jonesing for a sci-fi fix, and went to our Blockbuster to rent "Fantastic Four." While I was there, I picked up "The Fog" and -- oddity of oddities, a movie called Frankenstein starring Parker Posey off the new releases wall. The nice lady behind the counter told me that (for reasons not altogether clear to me) I could pick out a "non-new release" for each of the movies I'd rented for FREE. Well, I walked the store again, and found three films

- Sugar
- Leaving Metropolis
- 200 American

All have plots that revolve around gay characters.

I'm feeling a little weird now that I've watched the trailer that the producers so thoughtfullly included on each DVD, and decided that the movie looks too lame to watch....

What hath hollywood wrought, that there are so many gay movies that they're not all de facto good anymore? I feel like some innocent, impressionable part of my soul has had a strip mall built over it.

Yesterday, I was reading an article in the new Vanity Fair, which included an interview of some starlet-du-jour at Chateau Marmont in LA. Every time I see a reference to C.M., it strikes a nerve with me. I never like feeling out-of-the-loop, and the Chateau Marmont always makes me feel provincial. You see, when I was an Advertising sophomore at UT, I took a class on the relationships between advertisements and consumer psychology. One project we had to turn in was a series of essays on indivual ads that we felt we, for whatever reason, unsuccessful. One of the pitfalls of advertising we had discussed in class was the occasional sin of leaping from cache to arcane, and creating an ad that no one understood. Lots of my classmates were using the then-current Benetton ad featuring the Jesus-figure AIDS patient that was creating quite a stir in those days.

At the time, I still took the seminole magazine for those really-and-truly-just-seconds-from-superstardom, Interview. I had never really been a fan of the Chateau Marmont ads back then; they usually featured a naked youth mid-somersault in a grassy field. No phone number, no address, no description of what a "Chateau Marmont" even was. I crafted a stirring essay on how the advertiser had cache-ed himself into quite a corner with this campaign.

My prof put a big "X" across the essay, with the simple remark: This ad is not too obscure---EVERYONE KNOWS what Chateau Marmont is."

Thank you, public education!

WHAT DOES SxSW MEAN TO ME? A steady stream of has-beens, wanna be's and those-just-struggling-to-be-interesting.

In just one day at work, I fielded questions about the state-of-the-art in self-check-out technology from Dwight Yoakum. He was buying some party-snack-fare, and was being put upon by a small pack of pre-teen Pakistani kids, yipping for autographs. I asked myself the obvious questions: Why does Dwight Yoakum care about self-check registers (he apparently has a friend who operates the self-checks at his neighborhood Ralph's in California) and, even more surreal--what's up with these Pakistani Tweens yapping for autographs from Dwight Yoakum? Is it his soulful country/western vocal stylings that have captured their hearts, or is it is penetrating roles in film?
I finished ringing up his stuff for him while he signed the autographs. When he turned and thanked me, shaking my hand, I wanted to say something, but didn't want to look like ... well ... a Pakistani Preteen w/ an autograph book. My best effort at cool-and-relevant was: "You were really great in Panic Room." He said I was the first person to tell him that. eeech.

Later that afternoon, the never-appealing Tara Reid was holding court at the Raw Foods Bar. I was really hopeing that she would spy Owen Wilson (over by the sandwich bar) and they could really, really make asses of themselves, but they were both too wrapped up in their individual vortices of sycophantic entourages. Those are the breaks.

Think you know everything, or at least more than most, about architecuture? This is a fun little pop quiz on pop- architectural knowledge. God Bless the V&A.

I recently filled out a sort of "getting to know you" form at work, for my new staff members to be able to read to ... well, get to know me a bit better. I said that my three biggest heroes were Nina Simone, Sandra Bernhard and my mom. While there's scads of pix all over the internet of the two former ladies, there's not a lot of my mom. Instead of posting up a candid snap, I thought this pic was a bit more ... heroic. My mom's name is Cornelia. The name is from classic Roman myth. Cornelia was the mother of the Gracchi--Romulus & Remus, the founders of Rome. The story of the painting is that, when a patrician woman was bragging of her wealth and possessions (she's holding up her jewels), she asked Cornelia to display her greatest possessions. Cornelia called for her children, and said "these are my jewels."
I love that story.

Regular readers already know that two of my interests are novel words and novel diseases. Recently perusing an almanac of miscellanies, I happened across a real gobsmacker.....
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Acetylseryltyrosylserylisoleucylthreonylserylprolylserylglutaminylphenylalanylvalylphenyl-
alanylleucylserylserylvalyltryptophylalanylaspartylprolylisoleucylglutamylleucylleucylasparaginyl-
valylcysteinylthreonylserylserylleucylglycylasparaginylglutaminylphenylalanylglutaminylthreonyl-
glutaminylglutaminylalanylarginylthreonylthreonylglutaminylvalylglutaminylglutaminyl-
phenylalanylserylglutaminylvalyltryptophyllysylprolylphenylalanylprolylglutaminylserylthreonylvalyl-
arginylphenylalanylprolylglycylaspartylvalyltyrosyllysylvalyltyrosylarginyltyrosylasparaginylalanyl-
valylleucylaspartylprolylleucylisoleucylthreonylalanylleucylleucylglycylthreonylphenylalanylaspartyl-
threonylarginylasparaginylarginylisoleucylisoleucylglutamylvalglutamylasparaginylglutaminyl-
glutaminylserylprolylthreonylthreonylalanylglutamylthreonylleucylaspartylalanylthreonyl-
arginylarginylvalylaspartylaspartylalanylthreonylvalylalanylisoleucylarginylserylalanyl-
asparaginylisoleucylasparaginylleucylvalylasparaginylglutamylleucylvalylarginylglycyl-
threonylglycylleucyltyrosylasparaginylglutaminylasparaginylthreonylphenylalanylglutamyl-
serylmethionylserylglycylleucylvalyltryptophylthreonylserylalanylprolylalanylserine
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or, as it's more commonly referred to as, Tobacco Mosaic Virus, Dahlemense Strain. In a refreshing sidebar: this is a disease that affects tobacco, not those who ingest tobacco!
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The proper name above, at 1,185 letters, is heralded by litologists as the "longest word in the English language."

Mucormycosis is something I learned about a long, long time ago, but then completely forgot the name of.

It is also known as Zygomycosis

Mucormycosis is caused by common fungi frequently found in the soil and in decaying vegetation. Most individuals are exposed to these fungi on a daily basis -- but people with immune disorders may be more susceptible to infection.

Conditions most commonly associated with mucormycosis include diabetes mellitus, chronic steroid use, metabolic acidosis, organ transplantation, leukemia/lymphoma, treatment with deferoxamine, and AIDS.

Syndromes associated with mucormycosis include:

Rhinocerebral infection (infection of sinuses and brain)
May start as a sinus infection
May progress to involve inflammation of cranial nerves
May cause blood clots that block vessels to the brain (thrombosis)
Pulmonary mucormycosis (lung involvement) -- rapidly progressive pneumonia that may spread to the chest cavity, heart, and brain.
Mucormycosis of the gastrointestinal tract, skin, and kidneys.

Not to put too fine a point on it, mucormycosis is a disease is what happens when the fungus that causes fruit to rot ... goes to work on your head. Your sinus cavity, actually. that's why undiagnosed or undercontolled diabetics are at great risk--their hyperglycemic state creates just the sort of sugary environment in which the fungus thrives.

The fungus creates a colony inside the sinus cavity. it starts eating the tissue. Most victims think they're having a serious sinus infection.

Then it gets worse. The mucus membranes, the blood vessels, and then the cartilage and bones in the sinuses are consumed (necrotized).

Ultimately, the condition plays itself out in one of two ways: Either the fungus eats through the skin or eyeball, giving doctors their first view that something is very, very wrong, or the fungus reaches the brain itself. Either way, by the time the condition reaches this point, there's almost nothing that can be done. The mortality rate is 80%. The only hope to control the situation is radical surgery to remove all the necrotic tissue and fungal spores.

it's not pretty.

Well, it's 3:30am, 56*, and raining fairly steadily. I'm in the bed, with all the windows open, candles lit and the dogs wrapped up around me like we're huddling in an ice crevasse or something.

Kevin is in NYC, on a vacation I couldn't share because I took a new job at Whole Foods.

I really, really hope he has a good time, with himself. I hope that he'll see it as an adventure--a "Boy's Week Out."

I'm already filling up my week with social events. Lunches, cocktails, late night snacks, and cozying up to Ms. Juno & Mr. Renard.

I tried to watch Anthony Hopkins & Jessica Lange in "Titus" again. I must admit that, as much as I want to, I just don't like that movie. It's extruciating to watch those "fucking with the classics" movies (think deCaprio's Romeo+Juliet. I mean, come on, RomeoPLUSjuliet. What post modern jargony jibberjabber is all that?!?)

I did spend some time on the internet, looking at various places in NYC. A culinarian that shops--as I discovered tonight--at WFM as much as he shops at CM--gave me the scoop on a place called trattoria (www.trattoria.com) on Bleecker. I'm still trying to find Karim Rashid's new noodle house (I think it's in too-hip-to-have-real-boundries "NoLiTa").

That's it folks.

Next week, I transition jobs, so I'll no longer make my daily commute from tony «78704» to central-suburban Midtown. I've been trying to mentally catalog all the sights that won't be part of my daily pagaent. One site that I WON'T miss is an elderly couple beside whom I find myself quite often as I travel up and down Lamar Blvd. The couple drive a mid-90's Buick Park Avenue, and both of them wear oxygen tubes in their noses, attached to their own tanks.

Here's the thing, as a member of a persecuted group, I don't like to point a truly judgemental finger at others, but...

The question is simple: should those people who cannot, under their own power, absorb adequate oxygen from the atmosphere without special apparati, be allowed to drive big American V6 engines?

If anything, they should be limited to small, easily crushable imports so that they would bear the brunt of damage caused by any pulmonary attacks on their part....

or is that wrong?

So I'm a devotee of the British Elle Decoration. While the US version is pitiful fluff, the UK version has always been a really strong voice for moden design, architecture and, well, all things must-have.

Now that I've given my (extended) notice, the normal banality of work at America's premiere specialty foods purveyor has transformed into a surreal experiment in nihilism. It is only with greater and greater effort that I can bring myself to care about anyone, or their anesthetizing problems. My response to most people today, when they called me up for insight, input, or cry-for-help was a sneer-laden: Don't you think it's just about time you learned to deal with this situation yourself?

I'm going to have to find some way to tell my boss I can't give this whole notice. Of course, my undeviating bad mood may drive him to release me on his own, anyway....

This is really the sort of thing that should be fun, but it's just sort of .... farcical.

Whole Foods, here I come!

The Sci-Fi channel is showing the even-longer-than-the-theatrical-version unauthorized edit of David Lynch's "Dune." Alone amongst scifi books or films, this movie always reminds me of my mother.
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When I was 15, I executed what my psychiatrist later dubbed a "cry for help" suicide attempt. There was a lot going on at the time--I was hooked on prescription drugs, I was wrestling with the whole Gay thing, and--more than anything else, I was a very, very bored young man growing up on an anesthetizing bucolic farm.
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After my parents found me (bless their hearts), and took me to hospital to have my stomach pumped, they entered me into an adolescent psych program. I couldn't have belts, or pencils, or tape decks, but I could bring small effects to remind us of home.
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that summer, I had been reading F. Herbert's "Dune" books (yes, I was adequately bored that I read ALL OF THEM). I had spent a few days learning the "Litany Against Fear" that the female warrior witches from the books--the Bene Gesserit--used to endure otherwise insurmountable fear and pain--to overcome instinct the 'fight or flight' response. It seemed, to my mind at the time, a worthwhile investment in memorization....
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Anyway, that day, unpacking my bag at Beaumont Neurological Hospital, feeling very, very alone and frightened, I found something that Cookye, my mom & hero, and hidden away for me to find.
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On several small, bookmark sized pieces of paper, she had typed the Bene Gesserit's Litany Against Fear:

I MUST NOT FEAR.
FEAR IS THE MIND-KILLER.
FEAR IS THE LITTLE-DEATH THAT BRINGS TOTAL OBLITERATION.
I WILL FACE MY FEAR.
I WILL PERMIT IT TO PASS OVER ME AND THROUGH ME.
AND WHEN IT HAS GONE PAST I WILL TURN THE INNER EYE TO SEE ITS PATH.
WHERE THE FEAR HAS GONE THERE WILL BE NOTHING.
ONLY I WILL REMAIN.
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My mom has always been quite clever, and has never been at a loss for words. Her witticisms and observations have formed my whole world view. This is one of the only times--in my entire life--that I can recall my mother using someone else's words.
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It's a testament to her greatness that she made these words her own.

Today, our neighbor-three-houses-down, made the cover of the Austin Chronicle for being a long-time south austin musician/artist/bon vivant. The addendum to the article on him reported that he was found dead in his house (probably cirrhosis of the liver) after he'd been dead for several days.

His memorial featured an interview with Exene Cervenka (of X fame). She just adored him.

He was a yard-artist (he created big ... displays out of bowling balls, "Ty Nant" water bottles, xmas lights and other jetsom. We had nodded in his direction as he updated his installations on many occasions as we passed his corner lot--either walking the dogs or driving to/from home.

I with I had gotten to know him a little better. Similarly, the day that the medical examiner came out to look at him, there was a gaggle of neighbors gathered on the corner ... gaggling. While the idea of bantering about the dead guy didn't appeal at all, I wish I knew my neighbors better. Who knows who they know?

Just the other day, a house about one block down was razed, and the rubble carted away, over the course of a few hours. It was like it was the residence of one of Orwell's "unpersons." I wonder who they were? I wonder what will come of the now flattened, denuded lot? I wonder how long my wonder will sustain itself?

I found out today that my three weeks' notice (my GM asked for >three< weeks) was accepted by ... well, not to put too fine a point on it, the powers-that-be. I was surprised--it's fairly common knowledge that, when a CM manager presents a notice to CM ... powers-that-be ... with the intention of going to Whole Foods, the only notice that is requested (allowed) is enough to turn in the store keys and get out.

Imagine my surprise that my three weeks' notice was accepted. Especially since I had already told my mom I'd come see her ... ugh.

A friend/co-worker laid the old "big fish/small pond to little fish/big pond" axiom on me. If this is what it means to be a "big fish," I look forward to being an anonymous sea-monkey.

My mother was recently relating the story to me of when her mother-in-law (yes, in most families, that would be my grandmother) called her.

The back story here is a bit deep, but I think narratively worthwhile.... I grew up on a large farm in Southeast Texas. We had a multi-acre yard, which abutted my grandparents' (my father's parents') multi-acre yard. While you might imagine this created an American tableau vivant a-la Norman Rockwell ("The Harvest, in oils"), there was no such magic in my family.

The long and unrelenting cold-war between my mother and her mother-in-law created a barrier far more insurmountable than the Berlin Wall or DMZ. I saw my grandmother (my next-door neighbor) twice yearly (xmas and easter). My earliest memory is having my fingers pried from a storm door by my mother as my grandmother held my feet--my mother had been called somewhere to deal with my sister, and had asked my grandmother to babysit. I was inconsolable.

So, back to "recently." My mother's mother-in-law had called my mother to ask if she would put a bumpersticker reading: "First Baptist Church of Sour Lake Supports the Ban on Gay Marriage." My mother replied "absolutely not."

What followed was a textbook round of badinage dealing with biblical views on homosexuality, as well as other sins, venal and cardinal. My mother asked Billie where the bible made any reference to "gay marriage," pro or con. Billie was unable to produce the elusive stitch of scripture, but, nonetheless, was intractable in her feeling that what homosexuals do is a sin. Cookye's response (just what mine would've been): "Billie, do you know what homosexuals actually DO?"

After assuring my grandmother that any given homosexual's damnation would be no greater or less than my mother's for divorcing or my grandmother's for gossiping & judging others, she concluded her two-minute tirade with one of her patented "cornelia-isms."

"Billie, sin is sin and hell is hot, and that's the end of it."

She doesn't even know how much I adore her.

Today I cut the cord; I gave my general manager, Kevin, my letter of resignation to HEB Central Market:
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18 August, 2005
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Kevin,
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It is with a heavy heart that, after over 8 years of service, I bid
farewell to Central Market. I appreciate all of the opportunities and
experiences that Central Market and HEB have afforded me over my
years, and I am proud of the work I have done for the company.
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Ultimately, I am leaving to pursue an opportunity presented by another
retailer of equitable stature as HEB, based entirely on a
quality-of-life condition. While my eight-plus years at Central
Market have allowed me to create strong bonds, none are as strong as
that with my domestic partner, with whom I have shared my life for
over a decade, and to whom I have promised to love and honor for the
rest of my life. Unfortunately, HEB has chosen to forego insurance
benefits for domestic partners; moving contrarily to the benefits and
compensation packages of well over 300 of the Fortune 500. It is my
hope that, with this letter, some new thought might be given to this
business practice, before a great company loses more great partners or
proves unable to attract new ones.
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I wish no hardship for the company, and am happy to offer a three-week
notice, effective today, 18 August, 2005.
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With utmost respect,
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Jack Douglas
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After 8+ years of gut-wrenching emotional blackmail, I'm intellectually ecstatic to be gone, but, really, how often is our intellectual outlook the benchmark of our outlook as grown-ups? Only robots are led by their logic; people are led by their heart. I know that my heart will catch up to my head, but right now, it's still in my throat.