Hi! I'm Brian Goldstein.
Pardon the dust, redesign in progress. This is my personal, not at all formal site. I write what I like when I like.
-
What a Year-plus it has been
Catching up posts are never, ever fun to read or write. So I’m not going to sugar coat it: this past year was tough. I assume it was tough for you what with the global pandemic and all, but it is not just that. There was so much terrible this past year, and I can confidently say that what hasn’t killed us has made us stranger.
-
Ten Years
Today I celebrate 10 years of continuous sobriety. As they say, I am happy, joyous, and free. I don’t have everything figured out, but I feel everything is figureoutable.
-
Jewish or Jew-ish?
I should’ve seen this coming. Really, what other possible outcome could there have been from moving cross country to intentional Christian community?
-
Hindsight is
#2020 word of the year#
-
Dog Days
I’m truncating several posts to just clear out my queue of posts.
-
Time Confetti
Wife is in an immersive grad school program, I’m starting, and we have a toddler. We each try to cook most of our meals and exercise, and maybe, sometimes, have time for true play. It is tough. So when I saw Bridgid Schulte’s Overwhelmed popping up on my friends Goodreads’ shelves, I was intrigued. I’m glad I read it, even if the book is a tad thin on actionable advice for your life.
-
Starting Graduate School
I’ve been basically mum about this since being admitted to the program, but now that I’m registered for class it feels real enough to make it public on Linkedin and elsewhere.
-
Capstone: Improving Voter Equity in St. Louis
Introduction
Since the 1960’s, the law of the land in the United States has been “one man, one vote.” For a myriad of reasons, this ideal has been deferred, watered down, subverted or otherwise compromised. However, one thing we can do to improve equity in voting rights is to expand participation for those who have a legal right to vote.
-
Over done
On June 8, 2018, the acclaimed writer and chef Anthony Bourdain killed himself. Like thousands of people around the world, I felt like I had lost a close friend. I’ve never gotten to travel much and as a mediocre cook (and even more middling of a writer), going on adventures with Bourdain on Travel Channel or CNN was a vicarious thrill. He was someone I welcomed into my home and heart. Now, just over a year since he passed, I have a new appreciation of what I hope will be his lasting legacy.
-
Don't Give Away The End
By coincidence, my three best friends all ended up in Kansas City. And after the year I’ve had moving and being lonely in a way I didn’t fully know was possible, I needed to see them. God Bless my long suffering wife for enthusiastically telling me to go.
-
Halfway
The word of the year is “steady”. How’s that gone?
-
Turn it and Turn it
I recently finished Nurture the Wow, by Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg, and I thought I’d give you a proper review.
-
Escape Velocity
I really enjoyed Michael Chabon’s Moonglow. But then again, I’ve really enjoyed just about all of the works of his I’ve read: Telegraph Avenue, The Yiddish Policeman’s Union, his first novel Mysteries of Pittsburgh, and his essay collection Maps and Legends. I even liked John Carter. And the only way I can describe his master work, The Adventures of Kavalier and Klay is that it is so great it will make you angry that other writers can’t write as well.
-
Mattering: The work of Robert Caro
Last week I finished my restrained first reading of Working: Researching, Interviewing, Writing by one of my heroes, Robert Caro.
-
Finishing the Potter Series
I’ve mentioned before that I’m very, very glad that I decided to read the Harry Potter series as an adult. For one thing, to paraphrase a high school English teacher of mine, “The best books have always been about middle age people and the problems of middle age.” And now that I find myself, if not squarely inside, than at least rapidly approaching, the boundary of middle age; I’m most inclined to see the truth in that statement. And while Harry and the other children in the books grow and change over the seven books, the most interesting characters to me were most frequently the adults: Lupin, Snape, Mrs. Weasley, Narcissa Malfoy, Sirius Black, and Peter Pettigrew to name but a few.
-
Three Free Rowing Programs
I really enjoy using the Concept 2 Indoor Rowing Ergometer, and I think you might too.
-
Naming things is the hardest part
I’m going to try to tie a bunch of loosely related strands of thought together here. It is more that I am trying to consolidate the ideas for posts that I’ve had over the last month but not a chance to compose them. One of the things that clicked this past week was the return of the NPR podcast Invisiblia and their episode centered around pain science. A lot of this post is about the various forms of, experiences of, and effects of pain and how I’ve arrived at a place where - not pain free by any stretch - but I’m able to manage my pain in such a way that it interferes less and less with the life I want to live and the person I want to be.
-
Life is better when you like musicals
For the longest time, I’ve loved musicals. And I never really understood why until about a few weeks ago. They are loud, and cheesy, and of varying quality and timeliness. They can feel dated, and over produced and drama. But here’s the thing musicals do for me. When a character belts their precise feelings; and everyone listening feels the way they feel - that practice opened me up. Life is better when you like musicals because the earnestness of song penetrates the trauma of shame.
-
Gone Private?
For the five of you that read this, you may wonder what has happened to me? I’ve not dropped dead, and I’ve not quit writing, I’ve just shifted a bunch of things off line. This isn’t a luddite thing, either; I’ve just been doing more journaling of all varieties and generally haven’t felt like anything has been all that composed lately.
-
Recipe #7: Steak, Sous Vide
Sous vide cooking has actually been around since the mid 1970’s, but it’s only in the last few years that home cooks have really had the opportunity to use it widely. Today, there’s dozens of sous vide machines available for a variety of price points with corresponding features. I own one - a gift from my wife about a year ago - and I’ve gotten comfortable using it. Plus, I had a few requests to write about it, so, here you go! We’re going to make one of the signature uses of a sous vide, a chop house quality steak.
-
New Year, New Books
Since last I wrote about books, I finished both Order of the Phoenix and Manhattan Beach, by Jennifer Egan.
-
The Word of the Year: Steady
Since picking indoor rowing back up, I’ve tried to learn more about it than simply getting on and trying to wrestle the machine into submission. If you go looking, very quickly you learn that rowing coaching revolves around the concept of rate, that is, the strokes per minute. Rowing is obsessed with rhythm, and this lesson is something I’m taking with me into my wider life, off the machine.
-
All About Notebooks
I really like writing things down. It helps in so many ways it can be difficult to fully articulate all of the ways. But no system is perfect, and I am constantly reevaluating what works for me and the conditions I find myself in. Here are some of the things - techniques and tools - I find especially useful and what hasn’t totally worked for me.
-
What's pinging around my head right now.
I’ve found myself in a mood that I really know well, and I don’t enjoy. I haven’t wanted to write, or I’ve wanted to write pieces that I can’t really do, at least not well enough to put my name to. That’s exactly the scenario I wanted to avoid with this particular site, so this post is part brain storm and part request - for the five of you who read what I post here, first, let me know who you are and second, tell me what you’d enjoy hearing me write on.
-
What to Get Me for XMas
Non-Fiction:
- Behave - Saplosky
- Titan - Chernow
- The Subtle Art of Not Giving A F@ck - Manson
- Death of Expertise - Nichols
- We were eight years in power - Coates
- Nurture the Wow - Ruttenberg
- Grit - Duckworth
- On the Grand Trunk Road - Coll
- Medium Raw - Bourdain
- Composed - Cash
- Accounting for Slavery - Rosenthal
- Color of Law - Rothstein
-
Books Update, November
My first Economics professor was a classic snob academic. But he said something in those foggy 8 am classes that stuck with me, precisely because of the snobbiness:
-
Recipe #6 Eggs in a Frame
Every morning I make coffee and bring it to my wife while she’s in bed. And many mornings I also make breakfast. Most of those mornings, I make this classic. You can too, and we can look at the signifigance of eggs in cooking together.
-
Midterms Reaction
This is all prognostication from someone who is not particularly insightful or qualified. Take it for what you paid for it.
-
Food Criticism Rubric
Things I’m judging food and service on:
- Taste. Well this one is obvious, but, um, very nuanced. When I say taste, what I really mean is the sum experience of that first bite of whatever the dish is. I’m evaluating the reality of the dish versus the expectation. Because eating is subjective, it’s difficult to move past this initial impression, but not impossible, and especially if everything else is there. What is everything else?
- Texture: there’s two basic criteria here. the first is “Does this dish have the texture I expect for it?” and the second is “Are there textures that play off each other? does it give me more to enjoy or is it just noise?” There are a few hard and fast texture rules I’m looking for: Pasta has a bit of bite to it (al dente), proteins have some moisture, etc.
- Scent: tightly tied to taste, impossible to ignore. The minimum bar is that nothing smells “off”, but if I get a pleasant smell, all the better.
- Plating and appearance: How food looks does matter! but this one has really gotten abused as of late, and I blame instagram. Too many people trying to show off. Generally I’m looking for the same basic things I look for in an interface design: using the space of the plate well, and that it is put together with some thought. Plating should tell me what to pay attention to, and tell me what to expect.
- “Volume” - for lack of a better term. Think of each ingredient as an insrument in a band. Keyboard, Bass, Drums, and Rhythm make for an enjoyable sound with competent players; so do String Quartets. Occasionally a band will come along and find a way to but an electric violin in a rock group and it sounds alright; but it’s very, very, very difficult to get a lot of different instruments to sound good together. The vast majority of American casual food has too many instruments at play; the cacophony means no one instrument takes the lead, and its usually the fat, slimy texture and shame you remember from the meal. When you go to a great restaurant and they pull off a complex dish with a lot of different flavors - that’s the problem they are solving. Similarly, if you go to a more every day place and they make a dish sing with a handful of ingredients, they really know what they are doing.
- Service. Mainly I’m looking for prompt and polite. That doesn’t mean they take abuse and it doesn’t mean they are butlers, but I’m definitely looking for them to move with a sense of urgency and to make me feel like a guest and not a burden. I almost always ask for a recommendation when I go to a new place; I want to see what they actually like about where they work I also, almost always, take the recommendation if I ask for one - if I don’t I make sure they know I didn’t waste their time by asking. Last, tipping is antiquated and really classist (and everyone should make a living wage and not have to rely on them), but if a tip is requested, always tip at least 10% - I usually tip closer to 20%.
- Cleanliness. Again, I’m not looking for sterile lab conditions in the dining room - I think most of the time if the health inspector has signed off on a place I don’t have anything to be concerned about there. I am however looking for a sense of pride about the place, as evidenced by cleanliness. If I can see into the kitchen I want to see organisation and communication among the back of house. I want to see rollups done consistently and well.
-
A minor, prosaic truism
We all have (and often fail to acknowledge) some set of prior judgements about everything.
-
Training in November, December, and Beyond
October was a better month of training than I’ve had in a while, and this week of testing confirmed that things are trending in the right direction.
-
Daily Stoic 30 Day Challenge review
I’ve been reading Ryan Holiday since like 2005. He’s on a short list of writers that, even if I don’t expect to like a given work, I give them the benefit of the doubt. His big project a few years ago were works on Stoicism, and this interest in practical philosophy led to a couple of books and even a journal product. I actually use the journal - the prompts help me with the hardest part of journaling, even if my response are monosyllabic somedays.
-
Recipe #5: Gnocchi, Goat Cheese, Sweet Potato and Kale bake
Cooking is something I first got interested in when I was a teenager. My first real job was a brief (3 weeks?) stint as a dishwasher at a Pasta House in Creve Couer. And ever since that and an illness that had me watching too much Giada Di Laurentis, being good at cooking is something that I’ve always vaguely wanted to be. Once I read Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential as a younger man, I knew I wanted to be a part of the international pirate’s fraternity of people who cook, identifiable by their lovingly mangled hands and warm, wide smiles. But there’s a really important point here: I sucked. For most of my cooking career, such as it is, I really sucked. This dish helped turn that around.
-
Books, pt. 2
Checking in with my monthly reading update.
-
JavaScript Fundamentals, Lesson 5: Server Communication
See the Pen JavaScript Fundamentals Lesson #5: Server Communication/ Movie Finder. by Brian Goldstein (@briankappgoldstein) on CodePen.
-
JavaScript Fundamentals, Lesson 4: Creating Elements, Templates, and Fragments
See the Pen Javascript Fundamentals lesson #4 Profile Builder by Brian Goldstein (@briankappgoldstein) on CodePen.
-
What I'm Listening to: Podcasts, Pt. 1
Yea, I’m basic. I’m a podcast listening Millenial, and I love it. I make no apologies for enjoying these as much as I do. Here’s a list of some of my favorites, hopefully ones that you might have heard of but not yet taken the plunge. Subscribe and rate; give em five stars, cause if you give them four, I’m inclined to believe that you are a hater.
-
Recipe #4: Mac and Cheese
It has not been easy lately. You name it, we’ve had to deal with it this year. We’ve had money stress and family stress and travel stress and new friends and saying “this isn’t goodbye” to old friends and it has just plain sucked at times. This is before the walking garbage of the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings - and last week was rough on a lot of my friends because of that. But it was also my birthday, and it is important to remember how much I have to be grateful for, including the ability to eat food that just plain makes you feel good.
-
A Basic Meal Plan (and tips)
Without getting into every nook and cranny of effective meal planning, here’s a simple, basic, and flexible plan that my family have come back to time and again to help us plan healthy, enjoyable meals.
-
October Training Plan
It’s been a wild emotional and physical ride, mi amigos. And while doing some track and field inspired work was a good break for mind, body and soul, the fact remains that while technically “available” the facilities in my back yard are lacking in both barbells and welcome.
-
Miscellaneous Monday
A small collection of items that on their own aren’t really a post but together they suffice for one.
-
Recipe #3: Black Beans
This is the third in an on-going series of recipes and cooking posts. For the previous two posts, see: 1. here 2. and here.
-
Zuckerberg is the dictator we never wanted.
James P. Steyer, the founder and C.E.O. of Common Sense Media, an organization that promotes safety in technology and media for children, visited Facebook’s headquarters in the spring of 2018 to discuss his concerns about a product called Messenger Kids, which allows children under thirteen—the minimum age to use the primary Facebook app—to make video calls and send messages to contacts that a parent approves. He met with Sandberg and Elliot Schrage, at the time the head of policy and communications. “I respect their business success, and like Sheryl personally, and I was hoping they might finally consider taking steps to better protect kids. Instead, they said that the best thing for young kids was to spend more time on Messenger Kids,” Steyer told me. “They still seemed to be in denial. Would you ‘move fast and break things’ when it comes to children? To our democracy? No, because you can damage them forever.”
-
WP Campus Notes 2018
I was fortunate enough to get to be able to attend a day of WP Campus’ presentations this year, since it was hosted in my home city.
-
Little Ironies
Little Irony #1 - being stuck inside all day with a sick toddler should be miserable, right? I’m actually having a really nice day with my son. He’s very clingy today but that’s alright. It’s lots of snuggles and when he’s not crying he’s quite pleasant, so, it’s a nice way to spend a reflective Rosh Hashanah.
-
Colonel Boyd's Invitation
“Tiger, one day you will come to a fork in the road,” he said. “And you’re going to have to make a decision about which direction you want to go.” He raised his hand and pointed. “If you go that way you can be somebody. You will have to make compromises and you will have to turn your back on your friends. But you will be a member of the club and you will get promoted and you will get good assignments.” Then Boyd raised his other hand and pointed another direction. “Or you can go that way and you can do something – something for your country and for your Air Force and for yourself. If you decide you want to do something, you may not get promoted and you may not get the good assignments and you certainly will not be a favorite of your superiors. But you won’t have to compromise yourself. You will be true to your friends and to yourself. And your work might make a difference.” He paused and stared into the officer’s eyes and heart. “To be somebody or to do something. In life there is often a roll call. That’s when you will have to make a decision. To be or to do. Which way will you go?
-
Bipartisanship, pt. 1
Question: What does good/effective bipartisanship look like to you? And what kind of value do you place on bipartisanship in general?
— Lindsay Pattan (@Lindsay_Pattan) September 4, 2018 -
Recipe #2: Yankee Rice
I’m going to the trend I started in this post by describing simple meals you should know how to make and will appreciate because they will become a part of your daily life. One of the things I feel for a lot of people is intimidating about the kitchen is that they see these magnificient, elaborate dishes as unobtainable when there’s very satisfying simple dishes they could be making. I love this dish in particular because it blends my wife’s family heritage (Cajun) and my heritage (Jewish American) with virtually no technique and a few ingredients.
-
Who do we want our heroes to be?
I have to confess to having read way too many Tom Clancy novels in my life, and all of them before college, so one may surmise that the psychological damage is too great to reckon.
-
West Wing Listicle Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary
The best episodes and the worst episodes
-
Slow Burn, Season 1
I finished listening to the first season of Slate’s Slow Burn podcast over the weekend (a weekend that got quickly consumed by my wife studying and my son coming down with a fever). I really enjoyed it and I’m looking forward to the second season, about the Monica Lewinsky scandal during the Clinton administration.
-
Coming soon
Here’s some of the stuff that’s coming soon in this space.
- essays; I have a few brewing now
- finishing up JS Fundamentals and onto a project using a framework (TBD)
- the Top 10 TWW episodes listicle
- cooking and meal planning tutorials
- Open question but I love to talk performance training, fitness, and want to know if y’all want that meat head stuff or not?
- I will start to build a tribute site to the GOAT: The Wire
- Obviously the work section will get fleshed out more, as well. I plan to add 1 a month through the end of the year, so 4 by 2019.
- and more.
-
Aglio e Olio shows what Americans get wrong about, well, everything.
Far from the only example, just the one that I am choosing today. It’s also the one I’m most familiar with, and it’s so easy and so enjoyable to eat, I need to share with you.
-
JavaScript Fundamentals, Lesson 3: DOM manipulation
See the Pen JS Fundamentals, Lesson 4 HW by Brian Goldstein (@briankappgoldstein) on CodePen.
-
JS Fundamentals, lesson 2
Here’s how I tackled the coding challenges for this lesson. We looked at functions, arrays, objects, object methods, and events.
-
Around the Horn, #1
One of my favorite things about being in front of a screen for my working days is that a lot of interesting items find me on the web. Occasionally I’m going to collect them here in no particular order to look back on and reference later. The company I work for used to do a curated weekly list, but since we’re friends, you’ll excuse me if it’s more or less often than that and as wide ranging as I’d like.
-
Trying out Jekyll Admin
I have to say, this is pretty swanky!
-
JavaScript Fundamentals, part 1
I’ve lost track of the amount of times I’ve been embarassed by my lack of JavaScript understanding and I’ve finally resolved to do something about it. I use it all of the time. I’m able to do things with it, particularly using jQuery for DOM manipulation. But I don’t understand it at a level I need to. That’s cost me a lot of headaches and a few heartbreaks too.
-
The best in the game and its not even close
Spencer Hall nails it:
-
Credit where it is due
Back in early February, my friend Mary Jo killed her family and her self and it was horrible and sad and terrifying and an occasion to hold one another close and thank g-d it wasn’t our family.
-
Change of Plans
Well, I tried my plan sans barbells last week. It was a mixed bag. The DB benching, high rep back work, and single leg exercises all were very good, and so was the running. But goblet squats, leg pressing, and DB RDLs were all very bad too.
-
The Fighters, by C.J. Chivers is a must-read
Don’t believe me?
-
Intuition, pt. 1
God, this is so freakin cool. Dovetails perfectly with Taversky and Kahneman’s Thinking Fast and Slow.
-
First 20 Presidential Daily Summaries declassified and released
This is so cool: Daily Summaries
-
Settling in
"I'm getting too old for this sh*t".
Det. Roger Murtaugh, as played by Danny Glover
-
Green Book
Well this looks great:
-
Books, part 1
I try to read a lot and I think everyone should read more
-
Training without barbells
So, we moved to Virginia Theological Seminary (VTS) for my wife Meg to start her formation to ordination as a priest in the Episcopal church. One of the benefits is that on the same 81 acres is the Episcopal High School (EHS), which is magnificent to stroll through and conveniently has a Fitness Center available for use by VTS families.
-
Finally
Oy vey with the poodles already.
-
This post demonstrates post content styles
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Fusce bibendum neque eget nunc mattis eu sollicitudin enim tincidunt. Vestibulum lacus tortor, ultricies id dignissim ac, bibendum in velit.
subscribe via RSS