July 16 2023

July 16, 2023
# 1615

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Cover Story
Sean Buzzard grew up in Cumbria, the Lake District in Northwest England, bordered by Scotland. His wife was an American, and, after a couple of years of marriage, Sean, carrying his life’s possessions in a single suitcase, and his wife, moved to America, burning bridges behind themselves. Sean got a green card and applied for American citizenship. At a some point, the couple separated and Sean became a citizen.

His good friend opened a café and called it Sip. Sean went with him to help with the start up. He stayed there nine years.

Some Sip details from Bing AI:  
Sip Cafe is a coffee shop located at 185 Franklin St, Boston, MA. They serve coffee, breakfast and lunch. They are open from 7:30 AM to 8:00 PM on Monday and Friday, 7:30 AM to 8:30 PM on Wednesday and Thursday, and closed on Saturday and Sunday1. They have a rating of 4.5 out of 5 based on 46 reviews. You can rent out the space for your private event of any size and any formality. They also offer a variety of coffee beans from around the globe. You can follow them on social media platforms such as Twitter (@sipcafe), Instagram (@sipcafeboston), and Facebook (Sip Cafe)

Sean learned a lot there and eventually joined up with Blue Bottle café, spending four years in leadership training. He opened their branch in Kendall Sq, Cambridge.

Some Blue Bottle details from Bing AI:  
Blue Bottle Coffee is a specialty coffee roaster with cafes in Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York City, and Japan 12. They offer freshly roasted coffee, brewers and guides online & in-store. They also offer free shipping on coffee subscriptions and all orders of $35 or more. The company was founded by James Freeman, a freelance clarinetist and coffee enthusiast, who began roasting beans in his garage. Obsessed with the perfect cup, Freeman started honing his craft five pounds of beans at a time. Blue Bottle Coffee has translated their chic coffee shop ideas into a wildly successful online brand.

Before joining George Howell as General Manager, in June, 2023, he spent some time in Flour bakery.

Some George Howell details from Bing AI:  
George Howell Coffee is a coffee roaster and cafe chain based in Massachusetts. George Howell was the first to open a coffee café in Harvard Square. Coffee Connection was sold to Starbucks in the early 90s, leading Howell to his next chapter as a staunch advocate for coffee farmers. He now has a new business, George Howell Coffee, which roasts single-source coffee in Acton. George Howell Coffee’s primary focus and passion is to continually identify, source and roast the highest quality coffees available. They have locations in Boston Public Market, Newtonville and The Roastery. They offer limited roast coffees which are small, rare lots from exceptional farms. George Howell was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award by the Specialty Coffee Association of America in 1996, for having raised specialty coffee quality standards to a new level through his Massachusetts based company The Coffee Connection (1974 – 1994).

At the busy George Howell in the Godfrey Hotel within Boston’s Downtown Crossing, Sean’s role encompasses understanding the existing George Howell culture, the hiring and training of staff, inventory control, scheduling, tracking inventory, running the day-to-day functioning of the café, and the thousand details associated with a fast-paced retail operation.

His management style encompasses listening to the staff and exchanging ideas. Sean is pleasant and down to earth and lights up when talking about coffee.

We’ll be observing Sean in his new venture as he learns and develops. We wish him the best.

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Commentary
Being an older person, eighty-one, I sometimes think of my last days and how I’d like to spend them. My greatest fear is my loss of control over how things play out. Within myself, I have a couple or three thoughts. One or another of these may provoke opposition.

One is to use mind-bending drugs to alleviate pain. This might include regular use of marijuana.
Another is the right to terminate my life when I feel that the joy of living is gone.
And a third is my right to die alone.

This third thought is aimed at not unduly interrupting the lives of those around me. My daughter Kat recently lost her maternal grandparents, her Grandmother a year ago, her Grandfather quite recently. Kat was a perfect Grandchild, showing her love for her Grandparents over the years by a regular flow of phone calls and visits, all within the interstices of her busy life.

She was greatly saddened by the loss of her Grandmother because her death came without warning, without a chance for Kat to say a final, “I love you,” a final ’Goodbye’. While she was equally saddened by the recent loss of her Grandfather, she felt at peace because she was able to visit and take her leave of him In the throes of her grief, she begged me that if I have a similar demise, she should be allowed to visit me. That I should leave it to her to decide how to fit visits to me into her life.

Under the circumstances, I’ve had to rethink my attitude.

In August Friedrich Schenck's 1878 painting Anguish, held at the National Gallery of Victoria, a grieving ewe mourns the death of her lamb.

August Friedrich Schenk - Google Arts & Culture: Home - pic

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Kat’s Gen Z Corner   

Goodbye, Grandpa

Saying Goodbye to you was very important to accepting my loss

Goodbye Grandpa and Grandma. Thank you for those days I spent with you. I love you both very much.

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Brayden’s Theater Thoughts

What is Devised Theatre?

Though it comes in many forms, devising refers to the process of creating a new work collaboratively with a group of people. A devising ensemble may consist of artists with a variety of skills: writing, directing, acting, singing, dancing, design, composition, tech, etc. Together, they develop a new idea into a show, and the process often involves a lot of experimentation and improvisation to see what works. Through improv exercises, the ensemble may generate material for the show — much of which will get thrown away, but some moments will be picked out, refined, and solidified for the final show.

One of my favorite devised theatre projects I worked on was a hilarious choose-your-own-adventure play called Clown Island. The show was advertised like this:

8 clowns. 39 days. 1 winner.
This is their story.
This is Clown Island.

Clown Island is a hilarious theatrical pastiche based on the reality TV survival genre, starring 8 clowns marooned on an island. You, the audience, get to help determine which clown will become the champion of Clown Island, and which clowns will be sent home. Experience the goofs, drama, and hilarious hi-jinks as 8 clowns fight their way to the million-dollar prize!  Clowns feed off of human energy, so any member of the live studio audience might end up on stage to help a clown complete a challenge!

After me and my friend came up with this initial idea, we recruited 6 of our actor-friends to collaborate with us on this project. Though most of us didn’t have real clowning experience, we assembled a group of people with strong physical comedy acting and quick-witted imaginations. We needed people who were going to be excited about contributing their own ideas, as is necessary in devised work.

The process started off with simple weekly Clowning Workshops, where we would lead each actor in exercises to “discover their clown.” Much of clowning involves letting loose your inner-child, and merely reacting to the tension between you and the audience in real time. Each person would put on the clown nose, enter the stage, and be given different prompts. They would discover their clown’s personality and traits through silent improvisation. As the clown characters developed individually, we began doing more improvisational exercises where the clowns would interact with each other. This helped us see what the dynamics and relationships would be like between different characters. Once we had a solid idea of what these characters were like, we could start building the storyline of Clown Island. 

We created a general outline of how we wanted to structure the show. There would be introductions, a first challenge, an elimination, then a survival scene of the clowns facing the elements during nightfall. Then it would repeat that pattern with a second challenge, second elimination, and second survival scene. And then a third. And then a climax leading into a resolution where a winner was declared. We wanted this show to be audience interactive, so we created a way for the audience to vote on which clown they wanted to eliminate from the island after each round. Through our improvisation in rehearsals, we created alternate scenes that would or wouldn’t be performed depending on what the audience voted for that night. This made every show completely different from the last.

In rehearsals, we would give the clowns the scenario that we wanted to unfold in the show, and then the clowns would improvise. For example, one of the challenges was for the clowns to build a shelter out of found objects. We gave each of them a bag of objects and they had to figure out ways to build a shelter out of it. Through these improvisations, we discovered really fun moments that we would solidify into the show. We would also take note of things that weren’t working or wouldn’t read to an audience, and found ways to problem solve and adjust those moments to serve the show better.

It was a lengthy rehearsal process, but one of the most fun and rewarding I’ve ever been a part of. Instead of starting with a script on Day 1, we created the script as we went. And even by the time we got to opening night, we were still discovering new things. Improvisation was still part of the show during our performances, and though it was very structured, we allowed the audience to influence the outcome.

The 8 clowns in performance. From Top left to Bottom right: Brayden Martino as Q-Tip, Laurence Turner as Alfalfa, Rachel Williams as Pickle, Joe May as Pidgin, Katie Steurnagel as Frankie, Maddy Cole as Lightbulb, Cassie Bangle as Molly, and Aubrey Huntsman as Ziggy.

Devised work is very exciting because you generate a piece that could not be created by one mind. We had 8 unique minds contributing their artistry into this singular piece, and each person contributed something incredibly valuable to bring it to life. Each of the characters was fully fleshed out and unique to the person who created it. The storyline and relationship dynamics felt very natural and interesting, because it wasn’t just one person coming up with it. And the best part was, there was so much passion behind this project because every person involved felt ownership over it. Sometimes as artists, we work on projects led by other individuals, and we don’t feel a full sense of passion towards the material because it’s not our own.  These types of projects can still be rewarding or fulfilling, but it’s a much different feeling when you have a hand in what the show is and can become.

If you want to see Clown Island in action, we uploaded the full show on YouTube! And we maintained the choose-your-own-adventure aspect of the show by allowing online viewers to choose which clown to eliminate! These choices will link you to a new video from a performance where the audience voted the same way that you did. 

Enjoy!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mo_Gzr1wE1A

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Tucker’s Corner
I’ve written about four separate blurbs to begin my section this week and all of them fail to publish so I will just say if you haven’t had the pleasure yet of watching this series here is my official recommendation. It’s just so lovely and it’s all on Hulu. This is The Bear.

The Bear - Created by Christopher Storer

A review of Season 2

 Despite the amount of its runtime dedicated to the heat, the stress, the yelling, and the emotions of a restaurant kitchen, The Bear very often steps away from reality and into the realm of fantasy. Though the series is never fantastical it does often ride the lines of dreams or at the very least wish fulfillment.

The first season found the ridiculously talented chef Carmen “Carmy” Berzatto (Jeremy Allen White) in his hometown of Chicago running his recently deceased brother Michael’s (Jon Bernthal) sandwich shop. The series became an instant hit with its dirty, profanity filled kitchen and a terrifically frenetic directing style to match. That season followed Carmy as he navigated everything from balancing a horribly mismanaged budget to teaching a fine-dining kitchen brigade mentality to a skeptical crew. After some truly harrowing moments the season ends with a deus ex machina. Before Carmy’s brother’s suicide, Michael had hidden hundreds of thousands of dollars in tomato cans, saving the shop and allowing his younger brother to open the restaurant of his dreams.

In its second season, The Bear (also the intended name for the dream restaurant) focuses on the transformation of the sandwich shop into Carmy’s vision. Just like a hole in the wall suddenly morphing into a fine dining establishment so too does the second season develop into a bigger, better, and more satisfying series. The first season poses the question: what can an ambitious, dedicated, and inspired team do with enough money? The second season answers that question warmly: nurture their talent.

Right from the jump Sydney (Ayo Edebiri), Carmy’s second in command, is in a creative rut. Opening The Bear is all she’s ever dreamed of but even with the cash infusion she’s now under the weight of coming up with a menu that’s as good as they want it to be. For both chefs, but mainly Sydney, that means food that will earn them a Michelin star. When they start workshopping ideas she keeps messing up. Food that’s too salty. Food that’s unbalanced. Food that Carmy spits out. After a handful of tries Carmy suggests they need inspiration in the form of going around Chicago and eating the city’s best food for inspiration. Sydney goes to Kasama, Avec, Margie’s Candies, Pizza Lobo, and Publican Quality Meats (all lauded real-world Chicago restaurants) before heading home and attempting a ravioli dish of her own.

She ends up having what she’s cooked but her enjoyment of gathering inspiration and trying to apply it is the mission statement of The Bear’s second season: Nothing is more important than nourishing the staff’s gifts. They send Marcus (Lionel Boyce) to Copenhagen to learn expert level dessert skills. They send Carmy’s cousin Richie to one of the best restaurants in the world to learn and understand attention to detail and staging. They send Tina (Liza Colon-Zayas) to cooking school. The joy on Tina’s face when Syd makes her her sous chef is what The Bear is all about. Talent and inspiration are a precious resource. Through the background noise of the season’s restaurant renovation, pricing dishware, or figuring out how to pass the fire safety test, there’s never a question about if it’s worth it to make these people better at what they love to do.

Much of The Bear’s first season concerned the idea of troubled genius. Carmy was simply good at what he did to worry about anything else. He left Chicago and his family to focus on honing his craft and he did so to the point where he wasn’t taking care of himself. When he finds himself running the sandwich shop he has to reckon with the idea that if he isn’t ok he won’t be able to be ok for any of the people that rely on him. The second season takes that idea a step further by showing that talent isn’t always an individual endeavor. To grow as a person can take a community (or a team). From Sydney to Marcus to Tina to the famed Chef Terry (Olivia Colman in a terrific cameo) the season’s throughline is that all of these remarkable people need people in their lives to nurture their gifts.

This idea is specifically evident in the episode “Honeydew” where Carmy and Sydney send Marcus to Copenhagen to study under the icy but talented pastry chef Luca (Will Poulter). Luca is firm but shows Marcus how to create painstakingly plated desserts that are absolute works of culinary art. One example is a scoop of ice cream that needs to be properly caressed out of the carton to meet the standard of the restaurant’s presentational reputation. Marcus’ dedication impresses Luca enough that he tells Marcus a story about a chef (maybe Carmy) that was so good it forced Luca to realize he’d never be the best. Luca explains this revelation isn’t sad but bittersweet. Knowing he’d met his match unburdened him from the pressure he was putting on himself and instead Luca was able to simply focus on being the best he himself could be. Luca found community in competition but also learned that talent doesn’t mean someone else winning means that you lose.

Tina’s storyline sees her sent to culinary school where she thrives. She relishes the opportunity to improve her skills. In season one Tina’s fierce loyalty was to the sandwich shop and to her old team. Now that loyalty has shifted to Carmy and Syd because they see something truly great in her. There is a small moment in episode five of season two where Carmy lets her bring his chef’s knife to culinary school. This small but thematically momentous show of trust and confidence in Tina sets her loose. She knocks her curriculum out of the park. Tina has the skills all along but needed someone else to show they see those skills.

In probably my favorite episode of this season has Richie staging for a week at the best restaurant in the world. He spends most of that week polishing forks. He hates every second of it and is convinced this is some kind of Carmy orchestrated punishment. As the week progresses though Richie learns from his new team that being able to change someone’s day for the better is truly wonderful. It clicks for him then that you can be as talented as anyone has ever been but without discipline that talent can’t be aimed in the proper direction. He watches the restaurant’s servers communicate in secret code, detailing diner’s stories, lives, eating habits and allergies. He watches Jess (Sarah Ramos) expedite like an orchestra conductor. All of this thrills him and he doubles down on actually trying to learn and grow there. Near the end of the week, he can blind taste test every sauce the restaurant has. Richie finally learns the joy of being part of a successful team. It’s a huge moment for him because he realizes he has to push himself to be the best version of himself. On his last day he runs into Chef Terry (Colman) cleaning mushrooms. After peeling some with her Richie apologizes to Terry for his early behavior and thanks her for doing Carmy the favor of letting him work at her restaurant. She tells Richie it wasn’t a favor and that she took him on because Carmy told her he believes in Richie. She also tells him that it’s never too late to start over. She had crashed and burned in the past and needed a reset too. She points out a sign in her kitchen that reads “Every second counts”. It’s an homage to her late father and through the story of the clock we’re once again reminded of this season’s message: without a family or community, greatness can’t survive. Without Terry’s father or her staff, without all these helpful people, she wouldn’t be the most successful chef in the game.

About halfway through the season we get a flashback episode to a family Christmas at Carmy’s mother’s house. Here we see what we’ve suspected all along. His family is acidic, toxic, and a hindrance to his natural talent. It makes even more sense that the environment that Carmy has worked to create for himself is the exact opposite.

Sadly, this is the most fantastic, wish fulfilling aspect of the series. Bosses don’t regularly send their employees around the globe to nourish their souls and ignite their inspiration. For most people jobs don’t tap into deep set passions or skills and instead are simply a necessary evil to afford food and shelter. But that’s why we need shows like The Bear. To remind us of the best parts of life and the best reasons to make connections with others. Recognizing and loving others for their best attributes and trying to help them work around or hone their worst tendencies is a purely human act. Some may call this overwhelming sense of warmth for others unbelievable, and I won’t argue with that opinion. But what’s wrong with setting our sights a little higher and shooting for the best versions of not only ourselves but everyone we know and care about?

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Local Bits: Dinner with Old Friends

I had dinner on Saturday night with three of the more amiable people on the planet. It was a lovely evening despite that, together, the four of us were 300 years old. I’m smiling and shaking my head in quiet disbelief: three hundred years old. Kathy Di Masi was one of the quartet, she being Mike Annunziata’s partner for the last twenty-something years, Mike and Kathy being regular dinner guests of mine, Mike recently deceased. The others were Victor and Lucille Passacantilli. The four of us have known each other from childhood.

We opened a bottle of 1954 Château Brane-Cantenac, a Margaux classified as one of fifteen Deuxièmes Crus (Second Growths) in the original Bordeaux Wine Official Classification of 1855. The cork crumbled as we pulled it out. Not a good sign. But we strained the wine into a decanter. We fully expected the wine to be undrinkable but, to our joyous surprise, while faded, the wine’s pedigree was apparent. We savored every sip.

One rarely gets the opportunity to drink such a unique wine.

Part of our four-hour conversation dealt with the coming out party for “Do You Believe in Magic, Anthology of Stories from the North End,” that Victor and I are cobbling together. The books will be ready for sale at some date before September 16, when our gang’s 57th Annual Reunion will be held. Who was going to ‘man’ the table to sell the books at that event, including collecting the $20.00 retail price? The women of the night, so to speak, volunteered. Not a gender thing, I assure you. They saw the opportunity for a free meal and they seized it.

During the evening, we talked about children, old friends, food, Florida, moving. the stories in the book, the stories regarding the collecting of the stories, age, weight, grandchildren, our recently passed Dr. Mike. We talked about the night’s dinner: Broccoli and Pasta, where the sauce was made with pureed broccoli stems in cream and cheese, and a Roast Chicken from our live poultry house in Chinatown.

Lovely. The guests and the evening. Lovely.

The chicken was sauced with peppers and onions or with concentrated soy, gochujang, and sesame oil flavored with fresh garlic, ginger, and scallions

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Chuckles and Thoughts
"Some people see things that are and ask, 'Why?'
Some people dream of things that never were and ask, 'Why not?'
Some people have to go to work and don't have time for all that."
from George Carlin

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Mail and other Conversation
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This from Kat on seeing the cover: Brayden on the Immersive Theater

Love it!

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