Wow, did I eat a great dinner tonight.
Have you ever been to Restorante El Barzon? I hadn't either until tonight, and wow am I impressed. The restaurant, located at 3710 Junction Street in Southwest Detroit, is a mexican/italian kitchen and tastes great!
If you know about Junction Street, the area surrounding El Barzon is a bit seedy. The restaurant is just off the corner of Michigan Avenue and Junction Street, packed in with several severely dilapidated buildings. However, this allows for ample street parking and there is a small private lot for the restaurant. When I arrived, the restaurant was packed and I was forced to park well down Michigan Avenue to enter.
The front entrance is a bit small, and I imagine it gets a bit crowded, but once you get inside, the atmosphere is one of a lovely little place. There are several white, soft lights that surround the rooms, a nice bar, and several tables with cloth napkins waiting for the guests.
I ate with a friend of mine who works in Detroit and the one who recommended the place. Any great meal is made better with great conversation and we were never short of topics. Nick had just gone on a trip to Hungary, Greece, and Italy, and had so many great things to talk about. We talked about all kinds of topics and struggled over what we wanted to order.
When there are two sides to the menu, Mexican or Italian, the choices are hard. We each spent 15-20 minutes dissecting the menu and deciding what we wanted. Our choices were made easier after we decided on drinks. Nick had a beer and I had a glass of chardonnay, mainly because I've haven't had a glass of wine with dinner in quite some time.
I ended up choosing a mushroom and meat ravioli with creme sauce and Nick chose steak enchiladas with rice and refried beans. Both of these meals seem pretty standard, and the side of chips and salsa seems like there is no great reason to visit this restaurant. Let's start with the salsa.
The salsa was both red and green. I liked the red best because it was a little bit thicker consistency, but not a pico de gallo consistency or a chunky consistency, but almost a ketchup like thickness with a great kick. The green was also good, but thinner and less kick. As for my meal, I loved it from the first bite. I almost didn't want to eat it because it was so delicious. The creme sauce was what did it for me, as the sauce was thick and creamy and was almost like a melted cheese. The filling of the ravioli was tasty and perfect with the sauce.
As for Nick, I didn't get to taste his dish, but the slices of steak and the sauce that was on his enchiladas looked outstanding. There were no complaints and we were incredibly satisfied. I must say that I was a bit underdressed, though I don't think it was bad to wear jeans and a collared shirt. It may have been the large numbers of parties there, but most people were a bit fancier than my jeans. The price was also a bit more than your typical restaurant. My ravioli cost $19, with lunch prices less than that. However, I think the price was totally worth it as the food tasted wonderful, the quality was outstanding, and the atmosphere was wonderful. You forget that you're in Detroit when you venture into El Barzon. I would highly recommend it and can't wait to go back!
Friday, April 27, 2012
Wednesday, April 25, 2012
Valuing the Wrong Things
Things I learned today:
1). Never eat Little Ceaser's and attempt to go for a run.
2). Never eat Little Ceaser's. Ever.
3). When the stars align, it is possible to hear the same song on four different radio stations.
4). The rate of dislike of a song increases exponentially for each additional radio station the song is heard on.
5). While I have faith in people to do the right thing, right now I believe that we as a community are valuing the wrong things.
More on that last one here:
A while back I wrote about Robert Kennedy. I honestly don't remember what I wrote about, so I don't recommend going back to find it, but trust me, I read a memoir about him and wrote about it.
At any rate, RFK came back into my mind as I started to think about the things we value in America. Let me take you to the start of this thought process. This weekend I ventured over to Family Video to rent a few films. I've been doing pretty well with my goals and wanted to spend some time just hanging out. I rented 'Midnight in Paris,' which I think is a wonderful flick that helps to feed the imagination. Plus, I really like Woody Allen movies and the characters that show up in his films.
At Family Video, there is an anniversary sale going on. I've been there twice now and still don't entirely understand the sale and what movies are at a discount, but I knew that I could get two new releases for a good price. So, perusing the aisles I found one copy of a movie called 'American Teacher.' Its a documentary by Vanessa Roth, narrated by Matt Damon, and starring several teachers from a variety of schools across America. Exhibit A of how we are valuing the wrong things: there are multiple copies of all three Transformers movies and 'American Teacher' had one single copy that was not checked out late on a Saturday night.
The main premise for the film is to shed some light on what the life of a teacher is really all about, showing how teachers use much of their own salaries to get supplies, many sacrifice their own family time to help these kids, and how many are taking part in a variety of other jobs to make ends meet. It seemed to take particular aim at mud slung from pundits calling for education reform and refute the suggestion that teachers are lazy and only looking to have summers off.
For me, the movie was satisfactory, though I must admit, I lost a bit of interest as the film dragged on. This was due mostly because I felt the point was made well before the final say of the movie, which is to say, teachers have it rough, and if we all thought about valuing teaching and education more, many of the problems we face could be righted. At the very least, the profession itself would be viewed with more respect, a point I found personally impactful as this very day a student came to my office looking to change from education to something where she could get a job and make some money. (While we left without a conclusion, I think I convinced her to stay in education.)
For critics, I think the movie was a bit lack-luster. The reviews I read seemed to allude to a desire for this movie to be the kryptonite to 'Waiting for Superman,' a task that this movie did not accomplish. However, I don't believe that was the goal of the movie. While 'Waiting for Superman' seemed to think it had all the answers through demonizing the wrong things and showing flashy statistics, 'American Teacher' was simply a look at the life of a teacher in the city, rural America, urban center, and the impact that a teacher who left the profession had on a community. It showed some statistics, but it was more a story about the teachers and the well-being of our educators and the young minds they educate.
There has long been a push to reform education. Supposedly, it is one of the important issues for 'we the people' that we want corrected. But, it seems that we don't really want to have to do anything or change our ways in anything to make reform happen. Which, if you think about reform, this is very paradoxical. As long as it doesn't cost us any extra, as long as it doesn't require more effort from me, and as long as the comforts and qualities that I am used to are still there tomorrow, I'm all for it. At least, that's how I view the standard view on education.
I don't claim to have a silver bullet to any problems, and I can't say that anyone has argued they do have the silver bullet (though 'Waiting For Superman' and Fox News seem to think they know what's best.) But, from where I sit, it looks to me like there is a crisis in what we truly value. As a solution to really addressing any issues, we have turned to numbers: test scores, college acceptance rates, graduation rates, and overall a small portion of education that seems to be all that is measurable. And it appears that at least in some cases, we know how to manipulate these numbers. Schools have been smart in adjusting to the mandates that have been thrown on them, by inflating test scores, teaching to the test, and overall succumbing to the demands of people who don't know much about education, but do know that if we make the numbers higher on certain data points, it looks better overall.
But, I question if that is really what we want to be focused on. Data is helpful to a certain extent. I work in an environment where everything is data driven and major decisions are based on data that has been received. But, to base our entire education system on data that conforms everything to be the same for every school and every kid seems a bit contradictory. Don't we want to help all our future generations have a chance at doing something different? Don't we want our kids to have basic skills to take what we know and turn it on its head? I often fear that because I grew up in a time when education was so test driven and critical thinking void that I may end up being a mindless drone for the rest of my life.
'American Teacher' didn't offer concrete solutions. What it did suggest is a refocus of what we truly value. We all agree that teachers are a huge part of the success of a school and the success of a student. But, teaching is a laughable profession. And it goes well beyond trying to pay teachers doctors' salaries. Most teachers aren't in it for the money, which is a very good thing. What the increased pay would do, or at least increased pay as the career developed, is help make the profession reputable and allow teachers to sustain a living. It only makes sense that the people in charge of educating the next generation should be valued above all else. Yet here were are paying doctors, lawyers, and business people the highest pay of all. And naturally, what do kids (and kids' parents) want to do with their lives? They follow the money. And for what? Protecting our mortality? Protecting our assets? Its no wonder that we are all suffering from information overload, our best and brightest are continually finding ways to infiltrate our markets with ads because, well, we're paying them to do it!
The point 'American Teacher' was making, and a point that I must agree with, is that we seem to have it all backwards and upside-down. The things we value, at least in my opinion, are very self-motivated. While we all agree we want better schools and less poverty and less homelessness in the world, we put our money, which is speech according to the Supreme Court, in all the wrong places. We all feel quite trapped in needing to spend our money on gadgets and cars and houses, but it seems to me that we still do have the power to say what we want. We don't have millions of dollars, but if we all started to buy local foods, the demand goes up, the price goes down, and the food industry starts to produce better food for us. With better food the number of diseases and obesity cases falls and we have less need for doctors. With less need for doctors we can start to encourage students to go into education and use their smarts to encourage other kids to pursue their dreams.
RFK spoke in 1968 about how the GDP measures all the wrong things. The GDP doesn't calculate the well-being of people. Perhaps we have allowed these types of measures to drive us for so long that we forgot that we still do hold the power. We've relinquished so much that it won't be easy to get it back, but if we hold what is valuable in a position of true value; if we demand that the things we truly think are important get the attention they deserve, then maybe we can start to make great changes for the future. Listen to RFK's speech here and think about how his words are still true today.
1). Never eat Little Ceaser's and attempt to go for a run.
2). Never eat Little Ceaser's. Ever.
3). When the stars align, it is possible to hear the same song on four different radio stations.
4). The rate of dislike of a song increases exponentially for each additional radio station the song is heard on.
5). While I have faith in people to do the right thing, right now I believe that we as a community are valuing the wrong things.
More on that last one here:
A while back I wrote about Robert Kennedy. I honestly don't remember what I wrote about, so I don't recommend going back to find it, but trust me, I read a memoir about him and wrote about it.
At any rate, RFK came back into my mind as I started to think about the things we value in America. Let me take you to the start of this thought process. This weekend I ventured over to Family Video to rent a few films. I've been doing pretty well with my goals and wanted to spend some time just hanging out. I rented 'Midnight in Paris,' which I think is a wonderful flick that helps to feed the imagination. Plus, I really like Woody Allen movies and the characters that show up in his films.
At Family Video, there is an anniversary sale going on. I've been there twice now and still don't entirely understand the sale and what movies are at a discount, but I knew that I could get two new releases for a good price. So, perusing the aisles I found one copy of a movie called 'American Teacher.' Its a documentary by Vanessa Roth, narrated by Matt Damon, and starring several teachers from a variety of schools across America. Exhibit A of how we are valuing the wrong things: there are multiple copies of all three Transformers movies and 'American Teacher' had one single copy that was not checked out late on a Saturday night.
The main premise for the film is to shed some light on what the life of a teacher is really all about, showing how teachers use much of their own salaries to get supplies, many sacrifice their own family time to help these kids, and how many are taking part in a variety of other jobs to make ends meet. It seemed to take particular aim at mud slung from pundits calling for education reform and refute the suggestion that teachers are lazy and only looking to have summers off.
For me, the movie was satisfactory, though I must admit, I lost a bit of interest as the film dragged on. This was due mostly because I felt the point was made well before the final say of the movie, which is to say, teachers have it rough, and if we all thought about valuing teaching and education more, many of the problems we face could be righted. At the very least, the profession itself would be viewed with more respect, a point I found personally impactful as this very day a student came to my office looking to change from education to something where she could get a job and make some money. (While we left without a conclusion, I think I convinced her to stay in education.)
For critics, I think the movie was a bit lack-luster. The reviews I read seemed to allude to a desire for this movie to be the kryptonite to 'Waiting for Superman,' a task that this movie did not accomplish. However, I don't believe that was the goal of the movie. While 'Waiting for Superman' seemed to think it had all the answers through demonizing the wrong things and showing flashy statistics, 'American Teacher' was simply a look at the life of a teacher in the city, rural America, urban center, and the impact that a teacher who left the profession had on a community. It showed some statistics, but it was more a story about the teachers and the well-being of our educators and the young minds they educate.
There has long been a push to reform education. Supposedly, it is one of the important issues for 'we the people' that we want corrected. But, it seems that we don't really want to have to do anything or change our ways in anything to make reform happen. Which, if you think about reform, this is very paradoxical. As long as it doesn't cost us any extra, as long as it doesn't require more effort from me, and as long as the comforts and qualities that I am used to are still there tomorrow, I'm all for it. At least, that's how I view the standard view on education.
I don't claim to have a silver bullet to any problems, and I can't say that anyone has argued they do have the silver bullet (though 'Waiting For Superman' and Fox News seem to think they know what's best.) But, from where I sit, it looks to me like there is a crisis in what we truly value. As a solution to really addressing any issues, we have turned to numbers: test scores, college acceptance rates, graduation rates, and overall a small portion of education that seems to be all that is measurable. And it appears that at least in some cases, we know how to manipulate these numbers. Schools have been smart in adjusting to the mandates that have been thrown on them, by inflating test scores, teaching to the test, and overall succumbing to the demands of people who don't know much about education, but do know that if we make the numbers higher on certain data points, it looks better overall.
But, I question if that is really what we want to be focused on. Data is helpful to a certain extent. I work in an environment where everything is data driven and major decisions are based on data that has been received. But, to base our entire education system on data that conforms everything to be the same for every school and every kid seems a bit contradictory. Don't we want to help all our future generations have a chance at doing something different? Don't we want our kids to have basic skills to take what we know and turn it on its head? I often fear that because I grew up in a time when education was so test driven and critical thinking void that I may end up being a mindless drone for the rest of my life.
'American Teacher' didn't offer concrete solutions. What it did suggest is a refocus of what we truly value. We all agree that teachers are a huge part of the success of a school and the success of a student. But, teaching is a laughable profession. And it goes well beyond trying to pay teachers doctors' salaries. Most teachers aren't in it for the money, which is a very good thing. What the increased pay would do, or at least increased pay as the career developed, is help make the profession reputable and allow teachers to sustain a living. It only makes sense that the people in charge of educating the next generation should be valued above all else. Yet here were are paying doctors, lawyers, and business people the highest pay of all. And naturally, what do kids (and kids' parents) want to do with their lives? They follow the money. And for what? Protecting our mortality? Protecting our assets? Its no wonder that we are all suffering from information overload, our best and brightest are continually finding ways to infiltrate our markets with ads because, well, we're paying them to do it!
The point 'American Teacher' was making, and a point that I must agree with, is that we seem to have it all backwards and upside-down. The things we value, at least in my opinion, are very self-motivated. While we all agree we want better schools and less poverty and less homelessness in the world, we put our money, which is speech according to the Supreme Court, in all the wrong places. We all feel quite trapped in needing to spend our money on gadgets and cars and houses, but it seems to me that we still do have the power to say what we want. We don't have millions of dollars, but if we all started to buy local foods, the demand goes up, the price goes down, and the food industry starts to produce better food for us. With better food the number of diseases and obesity cases falls and we have less need for doctors. With less need for doctors we can start to encourage students to go into education and use their smarts to encourage other kids to pursue their dreams.
RFK spoke in 1968 about how the GDP measures all the wrong things. The GDP doesn't calculate the well-being of people. Perhaps we have allowed these types of measures to drive us for so long that we forgot that we still do hold the power. We've relinquished so much that it won't be easy to get it back, but if we hold what is valuable in a position of true value; if we demand that the things we truly think are important get the attention they deserve, then maybe we can start to make great changes for the future. Listen to RFK's speech here and think about how his words are still true today.
Sunday, April 15, 2012
A Week of Achievement
Wow. What a week. This week was a whirling, massive mess. I've been at my goals for about 10 days now and I have to say, its a bit harder than anticipated.
To begin with, I didn't accomplish all my goals. I gave myself extra time this first week so I could build the goals into my schedule (and start a Sunday to Sunday schedule), but yet I still failed. And it felt like failure for a brief moment.
But, I took a quick personal check and found that while I did indeed fail in the goals I laid out for myself, failure is not always a bad thing. And there are many things that can be accomplished while failing. I will add that I have several excuses for why I failed, but excuses are simply excuses and not something that I want to use as a reason for not accomplishing everything.
So what did I accomplish? Well, I managed to write a page for 7 out of the 10 days. The last three days or so I didn't write anything in my book. However, my seventh day was a backtrack from the first six. I put together an outline for my book, something that should have been done first, but needed a few days of just gushing words to get to where I needed to be. That has been marinating.
I talked to someone interesting. I spoke to a husband and wife in my office about their time spent in San Francisco. It was great to speak with them about a place I had recently visited. I counted this because I knew talking to new people would be difficult. And I spoke to them on the first day of my goals. But, I'm proud to say that today, after dragging my feet for a bit, I talked to three very interesting people at Detroit Beer Company this afternoon. My longest conversation, with Caitlin, was about her personal drive toward becoming a psychologist. She has had several back surgeries and run-ins with narcotic addictions and thus wants to dedicate her life toward helping get others off narcotic addictions. It was a compassionate tale and one that had real purpose and meaning behind it. She was excited to share it.
I've blogged fairly consistently this week. And in addition to it all, I've been ill and still coordinated one of our largest events on campus, the Spring Open House, to a rousing success. I'm pleased, to say the least.
What I failed at, was practicing guitar for five hours during the week and making a movie, that is until today. I'm not super thrilled with the movie and realize that trying to make a movie every week is going to be incredibly challenging, but nevertheless, I am happy to report that the movie I post here is the movie I accomplished for the week. No academy awards are coming my way, but I had a fun time thinking about shots for the film.
The other long-term goals are also on the back-burner. What I can say is that I knew my goals were ambitious. And what I take from all of this is that it isn't really important if I complete the goals or not. Really, what I am working towards is creating a habit of talking to new people, doing something creative, and really thinking about the time I have in a day. There is far more than each one of us thinks there is. And if we have objectives we want to complete, the TV, internet, and other distractions become less and less of a priority and more and more of a mindless pleasure.
I can be proud of the process I've had for the first week and will continue to try to reach my goals. However, for the first time in my life, I am not disappointed in myself for not completing something. I feel that if I would have tried to accomplish everything I had on my list, I only would have made each thing a chore instead of something pleasurable, which is what this whole experiment is really about anyway.
Enjoy my short film:
To begin with, I didn't accomplish all my goals. I gave myself extra time this first week so I could build the goals into my schedule (and start a Sunday to Sunday schedule), but yet I still failed. And it felt like failure for a brief moment.
But, I took a quick personal check and found that while I did indeed fail in the goals I laid out for myself, failure is not always a bad thing. And there are many things that can be accomplished while failing. I will add that I have several excuses for why I failed, but excuses are simply excuses and not something that I want to use as a reason for not accomplishing everything.
So what did I accomplish? Well, I managed to write a page for 7 out of the 10 days. The last three days or so I didn't write anything in my book. However, my seventh day was a backtrack from the first six. I put together an outline for my book, something that should have been done first, but needed a few days of just gushing words to get to where I needed to be. That has been marinating.
I talked to someone interesting. I spoke to a husband and wife in my office about their time spent in San Francisco. It was great to speak with them about a place I had recently visited. I counted this because I knew talking to new people would be difficult. And I spoke to them on the first day of my goals. But, I'm proud to say that today, after dragging my feet for a bit, I talked to three very interesting people at Detroit Beer Company this afternoon. My longest conversation, with Caitlin, was about her personal drive toward becoming a psychologist. She has had several back surgeries and run-ins with narcotic addictions and thus wants to dedicate her life toward helping get others off narcotic addictions. It was a compassionate tale and one that had real purpose and meaning behind it. She was excited to share it.
I've blogged fairly consistently this week. And in addition to it all, I've been ill and still coordinated one of our largest events on campus, the Spring Open House, to a rousing success. I'm pleased, to say the least.
What I failed at, was practicing guitar for five hours during the week and making a movie, that is until today. I'm not super thrilled with the movie and realize that trying to make a movie every week is going to be incredibly challenging, but nevertheless, I am happy to report that the movie I post here is the movie I accomplished for the week. No academy awards are coming my way, but I had a fun time thinking about shots for the film.
The other long-term goals are also on the back-burner. What I can say is that I knew my goals were ambitious. And what I take from all of this is that it isn't really important if I complete the goals or not. Really, what I am working towards is creating a habit of talking to new people, doing something creative, and really thinking about the time I have in a day. There is far more than each one of us thinks there is. And if we have objectives we want to complete, the TV, internet, and other distractions become less and less of a priority and more and more of a mindless pleasure.
I can be proud of the process I've had for the first week and will continue to try to reach my goals. However, for the first time in my life, I am not disappointed in myself for not completing something. I feel that if I would have tried to accomplish everything I had on my list, I only would have made each thing a chore instead of something pleasurable, which is what this whole experiment is really about anyway.
Enjoy my short film:
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)