An Ice Cream Tale

 I love bittersweet chocolate ice cream. The trouble is, very few companies make it. That wasn’t always the case. A few years ago the Three Twins company made a wonderful bittersweet chocolate. Like many things we love, it disappeared when the company went out of business. That happens all too often these days. We find a product we love and then it’s suddenly gone. I have a long list of things I always looked forward to that have disappeared.  So it goes.

A few months ago, while browsing the ice cream freezer at my local grocery, I chanced to see the words Bittersweet Chocolate on an ice cream container. Well, not exactly. It was a cashew milk frozen dessert boldly displaying my favorite flavor. With lowered expectations, I purchased the product and was delighted to find it was really good. The flavor I’d been missing was now back in my life. 

Not for long. This product, manufactured by the Forager company suddenly disappeared. No store that had previously carried the flavor had it. Most that carried the brand only had Cookies and Cream in their freezers. Another mysterious loss.

One evening, fantasizing about ice cream I decided to do some serious research to see if anyone made any version of bittersweet chocolate.  After much disappointment, I discovered that the Humboldt Creamery in very Northern California did, in fact, offer bittersweet chocolate ice cream. 

But available only in Northern California. 

I drove from Portland, Oregon to the Bay Area a couple of weeks ago. On this drive I’ve done many times, I often stop for gas around Redding, California. There is a large chain grocery store near a convent gas station that is good for hard-to-find things as well as a good selection of fly fishing gear and magazines. Sure enough, there it was Humboldt Creamery Bittersweet Chocolate ice cream. What to do. I could try to eat a pint while on the road, but that wasn’t the best alternative. I waited for the return trip when I’d spend the night in Ashland, Oregon. 

I bought a pint and tasted it in the parking lot. It was as good as I hoped it would be. Then we packed it up in a freezer bag with ick blocks. By the time I got to Ashland a couple of hours later, it was time to see the results. There, in the quiet motel lobby I removed my prize cargo carefully. The ice had melted but the ice cream container was in tact. What I had was a cool, liquid that resembled and tasted like the best chocolate malt I’d ever had. Definitely worth the effort.

Poetry and Rain

     About 55  years ago, when I was in my Junior year of college at UCLA, I participated in a most exciting activity.  On a large bulletin board on the ground floor of Royce Hall, far away from the ads for typewriter service, and upcoming concerts and speakers, way up in the right-hand corner a little experiment was taking place.  

    an anonymous group of students was exchanging ideas and opinions under pseudonyms.  It was the age of flower children and war resistors.  It was smack dab in the big middle of the Civil Rights movement.  Nixon was the President, and the Beatles were still a relatively new group.  Dylan was transitioning from Folk to Rock, Janis Joplin was about a year away, and the Rolling Stones were a competent blues band of British blokes.  

    There were no cell phones or computers.  Gas costs about a quarter a gallon and tuition for arguably one of the best universities in the country was approximately $80.00 a quarter.  Using these false names, students were reaching out to find humanity in a sea of 30,000 students in a city of millions.  Anyone could read the posts left by this group.  Those posts were literally posted with thumbtacks!

    Trying to broaden my world and perhaps meet some new friends I sheepishly joined this group under the name of B.L. Poet.  Occasionally I offered an opinion or a critique.  In time I came to look forward to passing this bulletin board to see if anything new had appeared.  One day,  someone, whose name I do not recall asked the participants: Write me a poem about rain.  I took up the challenge.  Within a couple of days, I posted my work. 

    I no longer have that poem.  In the last 50 years, I have lived in 3 states and moved a dozen times.  That poem, if it ever made it into one of my poetry folders, did not survive.  It served its purpose.  But I do recall the last line of the poem.  It was something about children who "watched us breathe the rain."  I liked that poem, especially the last line.  

    Fast forward to today.  I decided to see what an AI Bot would do if asked to write a poem.  Here is the result:

Write a poem about rain

The rain falls down 

A soothing sound

A tranquil moment

For which we are bound

It washes away

The dust of the day

And cools down the earth

In its own special way

The plants and the trees

Dance in glee 

As their thirst is quenched

By natures decree

There is more, but you get the idea 

What You Do After

 I just finished a thousand mile road trip. One of the things that happens When you spend the better part of your day in a car is that you hear things on the radio that you might normally have missed. While I often listen to music while driving, I mostly listen to NPR stations from city to city, state to state. It’s always fascinating to hear the differences between the larger cities versions of NPR and those national stations emanating from smaller or university towns.

So it was last weekend while driving back to Portland from the Bay Area I chanced to hear the name and then the voice of a former student of mine. It was on one of those Sunday afternoon NPR programs that deal with important subjects, but that many people miss because they aren’t in their cars at that time. The topic was AI and other recent computer consequences that our culture is bracing for. I was vaguely listening, concentrating more on passing large semi trucks and noting the distance to the next town. When I heard Lydia’s name mentioned my ears perked and then that familiar voice followed. She is an authority on computer programming and is currently a professor at Columbia University. That is not surprising to me because Lydia was probably the most intelligent student I encountered in my 34 years in the classroom. Unlike other brilliant students I’ve encountered, there was no trace of arrogance or intolerance in Lydia. She easily worked well with her classmates and readily shared her ideas. 

I’d heard that she recently married and accepted a position at Columbia, so life must be good for her. I focused on that for a few minutes because I soon recalled a conversation I had with her shortly before she graduated.  Lydia dreamed of going to the US Naval Academy. That was her fondest desire and certainly possible because she had the grades, the distortion, and the intangible qualities sought after. Shortly before her final admission, Lydia was diagnosed with some sort of heart murmur that disqualified her. She was crestfallen and upset that she had to go to MIT, her second choice. We laughed because most students would be overjoyed with acceptance to MIT.  I tried to help her see that things would be just fine wherever she went. I constantly repeated the line, “It’s not where you go, it’s what you do after you go there that counts.” It often helped soothe an injured soul. Not so Lydia. I think by now she finally has achieved what she’s dreamed of.