Local food, local economy, universal treasures

fireplace at the Watershed Cafe

Photo by J. Harrington

Last night the Better Half [BH] and I tried a local, locally sourced, restaurant new to us, the Watershed Cafe in Osceola, WI. (If you follow the link, you can see the table we sat at, near the doors across from the fireplace.) The food was great. I had the pan fried walleye and the BH - steak salad. Based on last night's dinner, we'll add the Watershed to our round of destinations for local coffee, food, ambiance etc., unless it reaches the status of Yogi Berra's infamous "nobody goes there any more, it's gotten too popular." All in the interest of supporting the local economy, of course.

Valentine's chocolates from St. Croix Chocolate Co.

Photo by J. Harrington

Today it was off to the St. Croix Chocolate Co. in Marine on St. Croix to take care of Valentine's Day treats and decorations. (I wonder if there are any chocolatiers on the Iron Range.) They've added wood fired pizza days to their offerings so I suspect that'll end up on our agenda one of these days. It's interesting that many of the local shops try to avoid, or at least minimize, competition with each other. Christopher Alexander has some interesting thoughts along those lines in The Web of Shopping section of his book Pattern Language.

The Origin of Order

By Pattiann Rogers 

Stellar dust has settled.

It is green underwater now in the leaves

Of the yellow crowfoot. Its vacancies are gathered together

Under pine litter as emerging flower of the pink arbutus.

It has gained the power to make itself again

In the bone-filled egg of osprey and teal.

One could say this toothpick grasshopper

Is a cloud of decayed nebula congealed and perching

On his female mating. The tortoise beetle,

Leaving the stripped veins of morning glory vines

Like licked bones, is a straw-colored swirl

Of clever gases.

At this moment there are dead stars seeing

Themselves as marsh and forest in the eyes

Of muskrat and shrew, disintegrated suns

Making songs all night long in the throats

Of crawfish frogs, in the rubbings and gratings

Of the red-legged locust. There are spirits of orbiting

Rock in the shells of pointed winkles

And apple snails, ghosts of extinct comets caught

In the leap of darting hare and bobcat, revolutions

Of rushing stone contained in the sound of these words.

The paths of the Pleiades and Coma clusters

Have been compelled to mathematics by the mind

Contemplating the nature of itself

In the motions of stars. The patterns

Of any starry summer night might be identical

To the summer heavens circling inside the skull.

I can feel time speeding now in all directions

Deeper and deeper into the black oblivion

Of the electrons directly behind my eyes.

Flesh of the sky, child of the sky, the mind

Has been obligated from the beginning

To create an ordered universe

As the only possible proof of its own inheritance.

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