New Future for Building 13

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(center) A labor of love. My love of family and food (not necessarily in that order). (clockwise from top right) Make spaghetti great again; Make a hot dog worth eating; Perfect on pancakes; Oh-yea! Ribs!!; Super spicey shrimp; This sauce was made for dipping!; Wonderful, wonderful wings.

 

You all know my passion for food and eating new and exciting things.  After years of lab development, iteration after iteration, discussions, planning, and late nights, the KHT New Products Team has finally completed the long-awaited development of our custom hot sauce line.  Beginning in April, we will be launching KHT HOT, starting with single 12 oz. bottles and a holiday two pack.

KHT HOT is made entirely from locally grown, organic ingredients, blended and then processed in our reserve K-VAC ovens.  Using my Grandma K’s recipe, we’ve been able to capture an amazing taste profile mirroring something we know and love – big intense heat at the front end, with a soothing tail of cooling sensation on the back end.

Said lab technicians Matt and Corey, “The vacuum approach gives us better surface control in the absence of air, with no surface oxidation, scale or decarburization.  We think the key was applying our Level 5 Certification, microstructural examination and failure analysis to the heirloom blends, and then confirming the approach in a parallel surface hardness test to be sure the ingredients can hold up under product application stress.  From our findings, ribs, chicken and roasted vegetables scored the best, with steak, pancakes and chip dip coming in a close second – simply put, we are stoked at the results.”

Plans are underway to fully convert Building 13 into a fully automated production and retail facility, including a walk up storefront, rooftop outdoor dining patio looking out at beautiful Lake Erie and drive thru window. Discussions are underway to implement local drone deliveries in early 2018.

Beginning in May, our K-GLOW team will be market testing K-COOL, and unique “chiller” sauce, featuring superior hardness and enhance wear resistance, increased lubricity, uniform coating distribution and low temperature (-300F) outcomes. Said Peggy, our lead researcher, “so much of the market is focused in the hot arena.  We decided to look at things a bit differently and went cool.  It’s a different eating experience, but something, so far, our customers can’t get enough of.”

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(Happy April Fool’s Day!)

🙂

 

 

 

Birds, Bees, Baseball

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(top) View of the sun from the north pole in springtime. All day and all night. (row two l to r) The birds; the bees; etc. (row three l to r) Nothing says spring like cherry blossoms; Did you know that the face of the Great Sphinx points directly toward the rising sun on the spring equinox? How did they figure that out? (row four l to r) Fact: children grow faster in the spring; True or false: eggs balance on their ends during the spring equinox; Go Tribe!!!

 

Got that “can’t wait” feeling? This week marks the official start of spring – and it can’t have come soon enough. We’ve been teased this year, enjoying days in the 70’s, and then snow storms in the teens. As our parking lot begins to thaw, and the plow piles melt away, I find myself enjoying the sights and smells of spring. For my trivia buffs, here are some fun facts about spring, and why it is so great turning the calendar page over to warmer weather. Thanks to factretriever.com. Enjoy!

  • The first day of spring is called the vernal equinox. The term vernal is Latin for “spring” and equinox is Latin for “equal night.” The word “season” is from the Latin sationem meaning “sowing” or “seed time.”
  • The fall and spring equinoxes are the only two times during the year when the sun rises due east and sets due west. The first day of spring in the Southern Hemisphere is the first day of fall in the Northern Hemisphere.
  • On the first day of spring, a person at the North Pole would see the sun skimming across the horizon, beginning six months of uninterrupted daylight. A person at the South Pole would see the sun skimming across the horizon, signaling the start of six months of darkness.
  • If Pope Gregory XIII would not have established the Gregorian calendar, which most of the world now observes, in 1582, then every 128 years the vernal equinox would have come a full calendar day earlier, eventually putting Easter in midwinter.
  • Spring almost always arrives on March 20 or 21, but sometimes on the 19th. The reason the equinoxes and solstices don’t always come on the same day is that Earth doesn’t circle the sun in exactly 365 days.
  • While the spring equinox typically occurs on March 20 or 21, meteorological spring begins on March 1, a month when average temperatures increase by 10 degrees over the month.
  • A flurry of gorgeous birds migrating back from South America and the southern US will be flying to your very own backyard. Species like the pine warbler, hooded warbler, Vesper sparrow and common yellowthroat will arrive as early as March, and every week, more and more species will arrive until late May. During the spring migration, a feeder might be a useful source of food for traveling birds.
  • During the spring, birds are more vocal as they sing to attract mates and warn away rivals. Look for an increase in red-winged blackbirds. Just like lots of teen age boys and girls!
  • Children actually grow faster in the spring than during other times of the year.
  • If Earth rotated on an axis perpendicular to the plane of its orbit around the sun rather than on a 23.4º tilt, there would be no variation in day lengths and no variation in seasons.
  • Pay close attention to those trees in your back yard, because soon, you will begin to notice small buds opening up for pollination. The silver maple is one of the first trees to have their buds fully emerge in the spring time, followed by the red maple in early March. Tiny red and golden flowers will emerge from these buds where fresh, lime green leaves will eventually appear.
  • The first spring flowers are typically lilacs, irises, lilies, tulips, daffodils, and dandelions.
  • Honeybees are more likely to swarm during the spring. They swarm as a way to start new colonies from successful ones. Surprisingly, swarming honeybees are very docile and the most friendly they will ever be all year.
  • The myth that it is possible to balance an egg on its end on the spring equinox is just that: a myth. Trying to balance an oval-shaped object on its end is no easier on the spring equinox than on any other day.
  • In China, the coming of spring coincides with celebrations for the Chinese New Year. The holiday falls on the first day of the first lunar month, in January or February. For the Japanese, the opening of the cherry blossom, Japan’s national flower, in March or April signals the start of spring.
  • The early Egyptians built the Great Sphinx so that it points directly toward the rising sun on the spring equinox.
  • Every year on the first day of spring, people in Poland gather to burn an effigy and throw it in the river to bid winter farewell.
  • Remember all real Clevelander’s know the “official” start of spring, with the crack of a bat on Opening Day.

 

 

 

“Top of the Mornin’ To Ya”

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“And the rest of the day to yourself” – Stephen O’Shannessy O’Brien McMurphy Patrick Michael O’Kowalski here … hope your Patty’s Day is as good as mine. Around here at the shop, and all over Cleveland, St. Patrick’s Day is a blast. We have a 5 hour 100 year+ traditional parade that attracts tens of thousands of visitors downtown, crazy pub crawls, kegs of green beer and shamrocks galore. Many of the areas school kids are out, moms and dads with kids in wagons – all because, of course, “everyone” is Irish today. We’re feelin’ the love and luck of the Irish, and wishing all our friends, customers, vendors and neighbors a great day indeed.

And my day is not complete until I get home and sink my teeth into our traditional corned beef and cabbage dinner, with an ice cold Killigans. Every year I promise myself that I’ll take it easy, but then find I go back to the stove again and again. My wife Jackie knows me too well, and plans ahead, to be sure there is more than enough for leftovers – MAYBE!

To reap the benefits of your feast, here are a bunch of totally delicious, creative recipes to help you use up your remaining loaf n’ fixin’s (only one of them is a Reuben). Special thanks to boston.com for the great list and the websites skinnytaste.com, foodnessgracious.com, tasty-trials.com, susikochenundbacken.blogspot.com, aducksoven.com, familyfreshmeals.com, thefoodinmybeard.com, hispanickitchen.com, and foodnetwork.com. Enjoy!

  1. Corned Beef and Cabbage Soup – the whole shebang in a soup bowl — perfect for snow days. (Recipe)
  2. Corned Beef Sliders with Spicy Mustard – mini meaty sliders made with biscuits and gooey cheddar cheese. (Recipe)
  3. Corned Beef Tacos with Guinness Dipping Sauce – because almost everything tastes better in a taco and with a Guinness!. (Recipe)
  4. ‘Irish’ Hot Pockets – buttery, flaky little pockets filled with all the goodness of your St. Patrick’s Day feast. (Recipe)
  5. Irish Nachos – a magical hybrid you should share — but won’t. (Recipe)
  6. Corned Beef and Cabbage Quesadillas – just hide your maniacal laughter when everyone else is stuck eating a plain old sandwich. (Recipe)
  7. Corned Beef Hash and Egg Sandwich – like the best sausage McMuffin you’ve ever had. (Recipe)
  8. Corned Beef Empanadas with Pickled Cabbage Slaw – use up both your leftover beef and beer with these tasty little treats. (Recipe)
  9. Zingerman’s Reuben Sandwich – traditional, but yummy! (Recipe)

Be sure to call me next week with your favorite – or send me a family recipe I can try at home. Erin go Bragh!

 

 

Is It Time Yet?

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(top row left) Instructions: In Ohio, move your clocks one hour ahead (spring ahead) at 2:00 AM on Sunday, March 12. (top row right) colored areas show where in the world daylight saving time is observed.  (rows 2, 3 & 4) Telling time can be done in so many creative ways but you still have to manually set them for daylight saving. (bottom row middle) You can get that neat-o kids Lego watch for around twenty bucks.  (bottom row right) If you want that incredible Devon Tread-1 wrist watch, it’ll set you back $27,300.00 and you still have to “spring it forward” by hand.

 

Is it me, or is this year flying by. We’re into March already, and moving in on the close of the first quarter. Here in Ohio it’s been a crazy winter, with the thermometer registering in the 70’s. I can see the smile and energy it’s putting on my gang’s faces – rather than the ashen looks we typically get this time of year, my guys are flying around reacting to your PIA (Pain In The @#$) Jobs!™ And with the sun setting later, I find myself looking up to see it’s past 6pm already – even though it felt like the day just got started.

When we were kids, it seemed to take forever for the clock to move forward. Some days Mom would make us “wait” for a specific time before we could jump into action. (I think the worst one was waiting an hour after eating before swimming). We’d sit and squirm, wiggle and watch the clock, then leap out of our seats and run to the door, like we were let loose from solitary confinement.

This weekend, we recognize Daylight Saving Time, or what I like to call “time to get the clubs out of the garage and get them back in my trunk” time. Here is some fun trivia about its origins and where we find ourselves today. Special thanks to timeanddate.com for the info.

  • DST normally adds 1 hour to standard time with the purpose of making better use of daylight and conserving energy. This means that the sunrise and sunset are one hour later, on the clock, than the day before.
  • Daylight Saving Time (DST) is used to save energy and make better use of daylight. It was first used in 1908 in Thunder Bay, Canada (it’s Saving, not Savings).
  • Although DST has only been used for about 100 years, the idea was conceived many years before. Ancient civilizations are known to have engaged in a practice like modern DST where they would adjust their daily schedules to the Sun’s schedule. For example, the Roman water clocks used different scales for different months of the year.
  • American inventor and politician Benjamin Franklin wrote an essay called “An Economical Project for Diminishing the Cost of Light” to the editor of The Journal of Paris in 1784. In the essay, he suggested, although jokingly, that Parisians could economize candle usage by getting people out of bed earlier in the morning, making use of the natural morning light instead.
  • In 1895, New Zealand scientist George Vernon Hudson presented a paper to the Wellington Philosophical Society, proposing a two-hour shift forward in October and a two-hour shift back in March. There was interest in the idea, but it was never followed through.
  • In 1905, independently from Hudson, British builder William Willett suggested setting the clocks ahead 20 minutes on each of the four Sundays in April, and switching them back by the same amount on each of the four Sundays in September, a total of eight time switches per year.
  • Willett’s Daylight Saving plan caught the attention of Member of Parliament, Robert Pearce, who introduced a bill to the House of Commons in February 1908. The first Daylight Saving Bill was drafted in 1909, presented to Parliament several times and examined by a select committee. However, the idea was opposed by many, especially farmers, so the bill was never made into a law. Willett died in 1915, the year before the United Kingdom started using DST in May 1916.
  • In July, 1908, Port Arthur which today is known as Thunder Bay in Ontario, Canada became the first location to use DST. Other locations in Canada were also early to introduce Daylight Saving bylaws. On April 23, 1914, Regina in Saskatchewan, Canada implemented DST. The cities of Winnipeg and Brandon in Manitoba followed on April 24, 1916.
  • According to the April 3, 1916, edition of the Manitoba Free Press, Daylight Saving Time in Regina “proved so popular that bylaw now brings it into effect automatically”.
  • Germany became the first country to introduce DST when clocks were turned ahead 1 hour on April 30, 1916. The rationale was to minimize the use of artificial lighting in order to save fuel for the war effort during World War I.
  • The idea was quickly followed by the United Kingdom and other countries, including France. Many countries reverted back to standard time after World War I, and it wasn’t until the next World War that DST made its return in most of Europe.
  • In the US, “Fast Time” as it was called then, was first introduced in 1918 when President Woodrow Wilson signed it into law to support the war effort during World War I. The initiative was sparked by Robert Garland, a Pittsburgh industrialist who had encountered the idea in the UK. Today he is often called the “Father of Daylight Saving”.
  • Only seven months, later the seasonal time change was repealed. However, some cities, including Pittsburgh, Boston, and New York, continued to use it until President Franklin D. Roosevelt instituted year-round DST in the United States in 1942.
  • Year-round DST, also called “War Time”, was in force during World War II, from February 9, 1942, to September 30, 1945, in the US and Canada. During this time, the US time zones were called “Eastern War Time”, “Mountain War Time”, “Central War Time”, and “Pacific War Time”. After the surrender of Japan in mid-August 1945, the time zones were relabeled “Peace Time”.
  • The UK applied “Double Summer Time” during World War II by setting the clocks two hours ahead of GMT during the summer and one hour ahead of GMT during the winter.
  • From 1945 to 1966 there were no uniform rules for DST in the US and it caused widespread confusion especially for trains, buses, and the broadcasting industry. As a result, the Uniform Time Act of 1966 was established by Congress. It stated that DST would begin on the last Sunday of April and end on the last Sunday of October. However, states still had the ability to be exempt from DST by passing a state ordinance.
  • The US Congress extended DST to a period of ten months in 1974 and eight months in 1975, in hopes to save energy following the 1973 oil embargo. The trial period showed that DST saved the energy equivalent of 10,000 barrels of oil each day, but DST still proved to be controversial. Many complained that the dark winter mornings endangered the lives of children going to school.
  • After the energy crisis was over in 1976, the DST schedule in the US was revised several times throughout the years. From 1987 to 2006, the country observed DST for about seven months each year. The current schedule was introduced in 2007 and follows the Energy Policy Act of 2005, which extended the period by about one month.
  • Today, DST starts on the second Sunday in March and ends on the first Sunday in November.
  • Daylight Saving Time is now in use in over 70 countries worldwide and affects over a billion people every year. The beginning and end dates vary from one country to another. In 1996, the European Union (EU) standardized an EU-wide DST schedule, which runs from the last Sunday in March to the last Sunday in October. Click HERE to see the global schedules for DST in 2017.

 

 

 

“It’s A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood”

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(top row l to r) President Lyndon B. Johnson signing the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967; Mr. Rogers putting on his sneakers. (second row) National logos and our own WVIZ Cleveland logo. (third row l to r) Early years: Rita Moreno and Morgan Freeman on the Electric Company; Jim Lehrer; Alistair Cooke; Louis Rukeyser; Big Bird. (bottom row l to r) Betty Cope, founding president of WVIZ Channel 25 in Cleveland retired in 1993; The next face of the station, Kent Geist, retired in 2014 after 46 years; Current home to WVIZ-TV and WCPN radio in the Idea Center at Playhouse Square.

 

Like many of you I’m guessing, I took some time the other night and decided to watch our President’s first address to Congress. I grabbed the remote and flipped around the different stations, eventually landing on our local PBS station – (I figured they would likely be the most neutral of the bunch on the commentary side). Sure enough, the “talking heads” were focused on the event, the news, the history and more of the educational/informational side. It got me to thinking about public television broadcasting in general and the great shows I watched and enjoyed as a kid. So, I did a little digging to see what I could find and share. Like so many of my searches, I ended up uncovering some really interesting info about public tv, public radio and educational broadcasting in general – all of which I’d never be able to uncover without the help of my trusty computer, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (cpb.org) and Wikipedia. Come to find out, it’s almost 50 years since the Public Broadcasting Act was signed into law by President Johnson back in 1967, eventually bringing us great children’s programming, music and concerts, comedy, and investigative reporting specials. Rather than try and list everything, I thought I’d share President Johnson’s remarks, outlining his vision and hope for television education and knowledge sharing across the nation. If you want more info on the CPB, click HERE  After reading President Johnson’s remarks take a moment to ponder how prophetic he actually was! Enjoy.

 

… It was in 1844 that Congress authorized $30,000 for the first telegraph line between Washington and Baltimore. Soon afterward, Samuel Morse sent a stream of dots and dashes over that line to a friend who was waiting. His message was brief and prophetic and it read: “What hath God wrought?”

Every one of us should feel the same awe and wonderment here today. For today, miracles in communication are our daily routine. Every minute, billions of telegraph messages chatter around the world. They interrupt law enforcement conferences and discussions of morality. Billions of signals rush over the ocean floor and fly above the clouds. Radio and television fill the air with sound. Satellites hurl messages thousands of miles in a matter of seconds.

Today our problem is not making miracles–but managing miracles. We might well ponder a different question: What hath man wrought–and how will man use his inventions? The law that I will sign shortly offers one answer to that question.

It announces to the world that our Nation wants more than just material wealth; our Nation wants more than a “chicken in every pot.” We in America have an appetite for excellence, too. While we work every day to produce new goods and to create new wealth, we want most of all to enrich man’s spirit. That is the purpose of this act.

It will give a wider and, I think, stronger voice to educational radio and television by providing new funds for broadcast facilities. It will launch a major study of television’s use in the Nation’s classrooms and their potential use throughout the world. Finally–and most important–it builds a new institution: the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

The Corporation will assist stations and producers who aim for the best in broadcasting good music, in broadcasting exciting plays, and in broadcasting reports on the whole fascinating range of human activity. It will try to prove that what educates can also be exciting.

It will get part of its support from our Government. But it will be carefully guarded from Government or from party control. It will be free, and it will be independent–and it will belong to all of our people.
Television is still a young invention. But we have learned already that it has immense–even revolutionary–power to change, to change our lives.

I hope that those who lead the Corporation will direct that power toward the great and not the trivial purposes. At its best, public television would help make our Nation a replica of the old Greek marketplace, where public affairs took place in view of all the citizens. But in weak or even in irresponsible hands, it could generate controversy without understanding; it could mislead as well as teach; it could appeal to passions rather than to reason.

If public television is to fulfill our hopes, then the Corporation must be representative, it must be responsible–and it must be long on enlightened leadership. I intend to search this Nation to find men that I can nominate, men and women of outstanding ability, to this board of directors…

… What hath man wrought? And how will man use his miracles? The answer just begins with public broadcasting.

In 1862, the Morrill Act set aside lands in every State–lands which belonged to the people–and it set them aside in order to build the land-grant colleges of the Nation. So today we rededicate a part of the airwaves–which belong to all the people–and we dedicate them for the enlightenment of all the people.

I believe the time has come to stake another claim in the name of all the people, stake a claim based upon the combined resources of communications. I believe the time has come to enlist the computer and the satellite, as well as television and radio, and to enlist them in the cause of education.

If we are up to the obligations of the next century and if we are to be proud of the next century as we are of the past two centuries, we have got to quit talking so much about what has happened in the past two centuries and start talking about what is going to happen in the next century beginning in 1976.

So I think we must consider new ways to build a great network for knowledge–not just a broadcast system, but one that employs every means of sending and storing information that the individual can use.
Think of the lives that this would change:–the student in a small college could tap the resources of a great university –The country doctor getting help from a distant laboratory or a teaching hospital; –a scholar in Atlanta might draw instantly on a library in New York; –a famous teacher could reach with ideas and inspirations into some far-off classroom, so that no child need be neglected.

Eventually, I think this electronic knowledge bank could be as valuable as the Federal Reserve Bank. And such a system could involve other nations, too–it could involve them in a partnership to share knowledge and to thus enrich all mankind. A wild and visionary idea? Not at all. Yesterday’s strangest dreams are today’s headlines and change is getting swifter every moment.
I have already asked my advisers to begin to explore the possibility of a network for knowledge–and then to draw up a suggested blueprint for it.

In 1844, when Henry Thoreau heard about Mr. Morse’s telegraph, he made his sour comment about the race for faster communication. “Perchance,” he warned, “the first news which will leak through into the broad, flapping American ear will be that Princess Adelaide has the whooping cough.”

We do have skeptic comments on occasions. But I don’t want you to be that skeptic. I do believe that we have important things to say to one another–and we have the wisdom to match our technical genius. In that spirit this morning, I have asked you to come here and be participants with me in this great movement for the next century, the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967… President Johnson went on to recognize those who worked on the act.

 

Thanks to the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library for archiving the text of President Johnson’s remarks.

 

 

 

“That’s Not Art”

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(top row left) Entrance of the Exhibition, 1913, New York City; (top row right) Interior view of the exhibition; (second row left) Edvard Munch-Vampire (1895); (second row right top) Marcel Duchamp, Jacques Villon, Raymond Duchamp-Villon, and Villon’s dog Pipe in the garden of Villon’s studio, Puteaux, France, ca. 1913. All three brothers were included in the exhibition. (second row center) Walter_Pach,_circa_1909; (second row right bottom) Arthur B. Davies, circa 1908; (third row left) Mary Cassatt, Mère et enfant (Reine Lefebre and Margot before a Window), c.1902; (third row right) Vincent van Gogh, Self-Portrait, c. 1887; (fourth row left) Pierre-Auguste Renoir, In The Garden 1885; (fourth row right top) Henri Rousseau, Jaguar Attacking a Horse, 1910; (fourth row right bottom) Paul Gauguin, Tahitian Pastorals, 1898; (fifth row left) A list written in 1912 by Pablo Picasso of European artists he felt should be included in the 1913 Armory Show. This document dispels the assertion that an unbridgeable divide separated the Salon Cubists from the Gallery Cubists. (fifth row right) Marcel Duchamp, Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2, 1912.

 

Throughout history, and throughout our companies, we often experience events that are real game changers. For us, it can be small things, like a certain person we hire who changes our perspectives, an investment in a new piece equipment that creates a new market opportunity, a treatment approach that solves a dilemma, or a customer who challenges us with a “real” PIA (pain in the @#$) Job!. Once the event takes place and the challenge overcome, things are just never the same. Sometimes we sit around and often laugh, reflecting back, telling “remember when” stories (think of your first cell phone). So many good, unexpected things that have happened over the years combine to make us what we are today. And the coolest part is, it’s sort of instilled a real positive, “give it a try” attitude with my team.

For me as chief bottle washer, I love it when my staff comes in and shows me how they solved a problem, or tried a new approach, and it works. We like to take time and celebrate the milestones, share the ideas, and best of all, tell you, our customers.

  • This past weekend, I had the pleasure of going to the Cleveland Museum of Art – just a “day out” with my favorite “pal” – we had a blast. Inspired, I decided to write about another “event” which took place, that changed the American art world forever. Known as the NY Armory Show, a group of over 100 artists came together to share their work with the world. As often happens with “new” art, onlookers were amazed and shocked. President Teddy Roosevelt, threatening to shut down the show, decried “That’s Not Art”, joined by unhappy critics, writers and historians. Outrage was the common response. Delight was the feelings of the artists, who came together to share their new ideas, techniques and approaches. Thanks to Wikipedia, here are just some of the highlights:
  • On December, 14 1911 an early meeting of what would become the Association of American Painters and Sculptors (AAPS) was organized at Madison Gallery in New York. Four artists met to discuss the contemporary art scene in the United States, and the possibilities of organizing exhibitions of progressive artworks by living American and foreign artists, favoring works ignored or rejected by current exhibitions.
  • The AAPS members spent more than a year planning their first project: the International Exhibition of Modern Art, a show of giant proportions, unlike any New York had seen. The 69th Regiment Armory was settled on as the main site, designed to “lead the public taste in art, rather than follow it, rented for a fee of $5,000, plus an additional $500 for additional personnel.
  • Once the space had been secured, the most complicated planning task was selecting the art for the show, particularly after the decision was made to include a large proportion of vanguard European work, most of which had never been seen by an American audience.
  • Together, the key organizers went to Europe, and secured three paintings that would end up being among the Armory Show’s most famous and polarizing: Matisse’s “Blue Nude (Souvenir de Biskra)” and “Madras Rouge (Red Madras Headdress),”and Duchamp’s “Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2.”
  • The Armory Show displayed some 1,300 paintings, sculptures, and decorative works by over 300 avant-garde European and American artists. Impressionist, Fauvist, and Cubist works were represented in 18 distinct gallery areas.
  • News reports and reviews were filled with accusations of quackery, insanity, immorality, and anarchy, as well as parodies, caricatures, doggerels and mock exhibitions. About the modern works, former President Theodore Roosevelt declared, “That’s not art!”. The civil authorities did not, however, close down or otherwise interfere with the show.

Here is a partial list of the artists in the show – I highlighted some of my favorites. Just imagine these differing artists, styles and statements all in one show – WOW!

Robert Ingersoll Aitken, Alexander Archipenko, George Grey Barnard, Chester Beach, Gifford Beal, Maurice Becker, George Bellows, Joseph Bernard, Guy Pène du Bois, Oscar Bluemner, Pierre Bonnard, Solon Borglum, Antoine Bourdelle, Constantin Brâncuși, Georges Braque, Bessie Marsh Brewer, Patrick Henry Bruce, Paul Burlin, Theodore Earl Butler, Charles Camoin, Arthur Carles, Mary Cassatt, Oscar Cesare, Paul Cézanne, Robert Winthrop Chanler, Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, John Frederick Mowbray-Clarke, Nessa Cohen, Camille Corot, Kate Cory, Gustave Courbet, Henri-Edmond Cross, Leon Dabo, Andrew Dasburg, Honoré Daumier, Jo Davidson, Arthur B. Davies (President), Stuart Davis, Edgar Degas, Eugène Delacroix, Robert Delaunay, Maurice Denis, André Derain, Katherine Sophie Dreier, Marcel Duchamp, Georges Dufrénoy, Raoul Dufy, Jacob Epstein, Mary Foote, Roger de La Fresnaye, Othon Friesz, Paul Gauguin, William Glackens, Albert Gleizes, Vincent van Gogh, Francisco Goya, Marsden Hartley, Childe Hassam, Robert Henri, Edward Hopper, Ferdinand Hodler, Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, James Dickson Innes, Augustus John, Gwen John, Wassily Kandinsky, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Leon Kroll, Walt Kuhn (Founder), Gaston Lachaise, Marie Laurencin, Ernest Lawson, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Arthur Lee, Fernand Léger, Wilhelm Lehmbruck, Jonas Lie, George Luks, Aristide Maillol, Édouard Manet, Henri Manguin, Edward Middleton Manigault, John Marin, Albert Marquet, Henri Matisse, Alfred Henry Maurer, Kenneth Hayes Miller, David Milne, Claude Monet, Adolphe Monticelli, Edvard Munch, Ethel Myers, Jerome Myers (Founder), Elie Nadelman, Olga Oppenheimer, Walter Pach, Jules Pascin, Francis Picabia, Pablo Picasso, Camille Pissarro, Maurice Prendergast, Odilon Redon, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Boardman Robinson, Theodore Robinson, Auguste Rodin, Georges Rouault, Henri Rousseau, Morgan Russell, Albert Pinkham Ryder, André Dunoyer de Segonzac, Georges Seurat, Charles Sheeler, Walter Sickert, Paul Signac, Alfred Sisley, John Sloan, Amadeo de Souza Cardoso, Joseph Stella, Felix E. Tobeen, John Henry Twachtman, Félix Vallotton, Raymond Duchamp-Villon, Jacques Villon, Maurice de Vlaminck, Bessie Potter Vonnoh, Édouard Vuillard, Abraham Walkowitz, J. Alden Weir, James Abbott McNeill Whistler, Enid Yandell, Jack B. Yeats, Mahonri Young, Marguerite Zorach, William Zorach

 

 

For those of you in Cleveland looking to experience some great art this weekend, check out Brite Winter on Saturday. It’s a free art and music festival held in the Flats West Bank on Saturday, February 18th, 3PM–1AM.

Nice Moves

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top row l to r: Gary Kasparov in 1997 training for his May rematch with an upgraded Deep Blue; Time cover May 5, 1997 (cover price $2.95); Garry Kasparov retired from professional chess March 10, 2005. This photo is from 2007. 
middle row l to r: Garry at age 11; Kasparov becomes World Junior Champion at Dortmund in 1980; Kasparov-after winning the FIDE World Championship title in 1985; Interesting quote referring to Deep Blue by Yasser Seirawan.  
bottom row l to r: The 6′ 5″, 1.4 ton Deep Blue; Deep Blue’s processor board; The MacBook Pro’s processor board (you’ve come a long way, baby).

 

Hopefully most of you had a chance to watch the Superbowl last weekend. Wow! So much to take away (I could probably use the game and coaching highlights as my blog reference and write about it for months) – effort, perseverance, hard work, leadership, strategy, witty commercials, flying Gaga, surprises and NEVER QUITTING! Dozens and dozens of top athletes going head to head competing on the world stage.

For all of the history around this game, twenty years ago on this day, another champion was on the world stage, forever changing our perception of human and machine intelligence. On Feb 10th in Philadelphia, Garry Kosparov took on Deep Blue, a chess-playing computer developed by IBM, known for being the first computer chess-playing system to win a chess game against a reigning world champion under regular time controls. Fast forward to today, chess-playing computers, and super-advanced artificial intelligence (AI), are now accessible to the average consumer. There are many chess engines to choose from, such as Stockfish, Crafty, Fruit and GNU Chess that can be downloaded for free, able to play a game that, when run on an up-to-date personal computer or mobile phone, can defeat most master players under tournament conditions. For those who have played chess, and have the inclination to learn more, here’s some trivia I know you’ll enjoy (and thanks Wikipedia for the info!)

  • Using “ends-and-means” heuristics, a human chess player can intuitively determine optimal outcomes and how to achieve them regardless of the number of moves necessary, but a computer must be systematic in its analysis.
  • Most players agree that looking at least five moves ahead, called five plies, when necessary is required to play well. Normal tournament rules give each player an average of three minutes per move. On average there are more than 30 legal moves per chess position, so a computer must examine a quadrillion possibilities to look ahead ten plies (five full moves); one that could examine a million positions a second would require more than 30 years.
  • After discovering refutation screening (the application of alpha-beta pruning to optimizing move evaluation), in 1957, a team at Carnegie Mellon University predicted that a computer would defeat the world human champion by 1967. The team did not anticipate the difficulty of determining the right order to evaluate branches. Researchers worked to improve programs’ ability to identify killer heuristics, unusually high-scoring moves to reexamine when evaluating other branches.
  • Into the 1970s, most top chess players believed that computers would not soon be able to play at a Masters level. In 1968 International Master David Levy made a famous bet that no chess computer would be able to beat him within ten years. In 1976 Senior Master and professor of psychology Eliot Hearst of Indiana University wrote that “the only way a current computer program could ever win a single game against a master player would be for the master, “perhaps in a drunken stupor while playing 50 games simultaneously, to commit some once-in-a-year blunder”.
  • In the late 1970s chess programs suddenly began defeating top human players. The year of Hearst’s statement, Northwestern University’s Chess 4.5 at the Paul Masson American Chess Championship’s Class B level became the first to win a human tournament. Levy won his bet in 1978 by beating Chess 4.7, but it achieved the first computer victory against a Master-class player at the tournament level by winning one of the six games. In 1980 Belle, the first computer designed for chess playing, began often defeating Masters.
  • The sudden improvement without a theoretical breakthrough surprised humans, who did not expect that Belle’s ability to examine 100,000 positions a second—about eight plies—would be sufficient. The Spracklens, creators of the successful microcomputer program Sargon, estimated that 90% of the improvement came from faster evaluation speed and only 10% from improved evaluations. New Scientist stated in 1982 that computers “play terrible chess … clumsy, inefficient, diffuse, and just plain ugly”, but humans lost to them by making “horrible blunders, astonishing lapses, incomprehensible oversights, gross miscalculations, and the like” much more often than they realized.
  • By the early ‘80’s microcomputer chess programs could evaluate up to 1,500 moves a second and were as strong as mainframe chess programs of five years earlier, able to defeat almost all players. While only able to look ahead one or two plies more than at their debut in the mid-1970s, doing so improved their play more than experts expected; seemingly minor improvements “appear to have allowed the crossing of a psychological threshold, after which a rich harvest of human error becomes accessible.” In 1984 BYTE magazine wrote that “Computers—mainframes, minis, and micros—tend to play ugly, inelegant chess”, but noted Robert Byrne’s statement that “tactically they are freer from error than the average human player”.
  • At the 1982 North American Computer Chess Championship, Monroe Newborn predicted that a chess program could become world champion within five years; tournament director and International Master Michael Valvo predicted ten years; the Spracklens predicted 15; Ken Thompson predicted more than 20; and others predicted that it would never happen. The most widely held opinion, however, stated that it would occur around the year 2000.
  • In 1989, Levy was defeated by Deep Thought in an exhibition match. Deep Thought, however, was still considerably below World Championship Level, as the then reigning world champion Garry Kasparov demonstrated in two strong wins in 1989.
  • It was not until a 1996 match with IBM’s Deep Blue that Kasparov lost his first game to a computer at tournament time controls in Deep Blue – Kasparov, 1996, Game 1. For my “chess friendly” readers, the first match went as follows: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Y9hriLylIo
  • This game was, in fact, the first time a reigning world champion had lost to a computer using regular time controls. However, Kasparov regrouped to win three and draw two of the remaining five games of the match, for a convincing victory.
  • In May 1997, an updated version of Deep Blue defeated Kasparov 3 1/2 – 2 1/2 in a return match. A documentary mainly about the confrontation was made in 2003, titled Game Over: Kasparov and the Machine. IBM keeps a web site of the event.
  • The 1997 match took place not on a standard stage, but rather in a small television studio. The champion and computer met at the Equitable Center in New York, with cameras running, press in attendance and millions watching the outcome. The audience watched the match on television screens in a basement theater in the building, several floors below where the match was actually held. The theater seated about 500 people, and was sold out for each of the six games. The media attention given to Deep Blue resulted in more than three billion impressions around the world.
  • The odds of Deep Blue winning were not certain, but the science was solid. The IBM team knew their machine could explore up to 200 million possible chess positions per second. The chess grandmaster won the first game, Deep Blue took the next one, and the two players drew the three following games. Game 6 ended the match with a crushing defeat of the champion by Deep Blue.
  • The match’s outcome made headlines worldwide, and helped a broad audience better understand high-powered computing. Deep Blue had an impact on computing in many different industries. It was programmed to solve the complex, strategic game of chess, so it enabled researchers to explore and understand the limits of massively parallel processing. This research gave developers insight into ways they could design a computer to tackle complex problems in other fields, using deep knowledge to analyze a higher number of possible solutions.
  • The architecture used in Deep Blue was applied to financial modeling, including marketplace trends and risk analysis; data mining—uncovering hidden relationships and patterns in large databases; and molecular dynamics, a valuable tool for helping to discover and develop new drugs.
  • Ultimately, Deep Blue was retired to the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, D.C.

 

 

 

The Big Game = Big Food

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Have the essentials on hand:
Remote? Check.
Plenty of napkins? Check.
Add food from these starter recipes and your favorite beverage. Now sit, watch, eat, cheer!! 

 

This weekend, we get to watch “the big game” – a tradition in our house.  And with it, of course, is what I like to call “big food” – and lots of it.  It’s a chance for me to go off my regiment a bit, and enjoy pretty much everything Jackie, the girls and I put out in the kitchen – old favorites, new flavors and new dishes.  Aside from the traditional chips, dips, snacks, chili, vegies, desserts, and of course, my favorite (any meatball variation on the end of a toothpick or in a bowl!) I like to go looking for some recipes we may have not seen or tried before.  Touchdown!! – I found a great website called delish.com with a link titled “108 Amazing Super Bowl Party Foods That Are Guaranteed to Score” (HERE) and a perfect teaser line: If your eats aren’t touchdown-worthy, your team might lose. It was tough, but here are a couple of my favorites – with over 100 ideas, I’m sure you’ll find some to try – (the Reese’s peanut butter ball just made me laugh out loud).  Enjoy!

TATER TOT SKEWERS
(come on, just not fair – bacon, cheese and tater tots … should be outlawed!)
INGREDIENTS

  • 1 lb. frozen tater tots, defrosted
  • 12 slices bacon
  • 1 cup shredded Cheddar cheese
  • 2 tbsp. chives
  • Ranch dressing, for serving

DIRECTIONS

  • Preheat oven to 425º. Place a wire rack inside a large rimmed baking sheet.
  • Place a metal rack inside a large baking pan. On a skewer, pierce one end of a strip of bacon. Pierce and place a tater top on top of the bacon, then pierce the same strip bacon again (to top the tater tot) to form a weave. Repeat with two to three more tater tots, depending on the size of your skewers. Repeat to finish the rest of the bacon and tater tots. Place on wire rack and roast for 20 to 25 minutes, until bacon is cooked through.
  • Sprinkle cheese over the cooked skewers and bake until the cheese has melted, about 2-3 minutes more. Garnish with chives and serve with ranch dressing, for dipping.

JALAPEÑO CORN FRITTERS
(these are made with corn … so I figured they must be healthy, right?

INGREDIENTS

  • 3 cup fresh corn
  • 2/3 cup cornmeal
  • 1/4 cup shredded Cheddar
  • 1/4 cup cream cheese
  • 2 scallions, sliced
  • 2 slices cooked bacon, chopped
  • 2 eggs, lightly beaten
  • 1 jalapeño, finely diced
  • kosher salt
  • Freshly ground black pepper
  • 2 tbsp. extra-virgin olive oil
  • Juice of 1 lime, divided
  • Sour cream, for serving

DIRECTIONS

  • In a medium bowl, combine corn, cornmeal, cheddar, cream cheese, scallions, bacon, eggs, the juice of half a lime, and jalapeño. Stir to combine and season with salt and pepper to taste. Using your hands, form the mixture into small patties.
  • Heat olive oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Working in batches, fry the patties until they’re golden brown, about 3 to 4 minutes per side.
  • Garnish each with sour cream and a squeeze of lime, if desired.

WAFFLE FRY SLIDERS
(OMG – fries and burgers and waffles – just shoot me!! – pickles too!!)

INGREDIENTS

  • 1 bag frozen waffle fries
  • 1 lb. ground beef
  • 2 tsp. yellow mustard
  • 1/2 tsp. garlic powder
  • 1/2 tsp. onion powder
  • kosher salt
  • Freshly ground pepper
  • 1 tbsp. vegetable oil
  • 2 slices of cheddar, quartered into small squares
  • 1/2 cup cherry tomatoes, thinly sliced
  • Bread and butter pickles, for serving
  • Lettuce, for serving

DIRECTIONS

  • Bake waffle fries according to package instructions. Pick out 16 large, round waffles to act as the buns.
  • Meanwhile, make the sliders. In a medium bowl, mix the ground beef, yellow mustard, garlic powder and onion together with a wooden spoon. Season to taste with salt and pepper and stir gently to combine. Form the mixture into small patties. You should end up with about 8 patties.
  • Heat vegetable oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add the beef patties and cook for about 3 minutes, until the bottoms develop a nice seared crust. Flip and cook for another 1-2 minutes, then add the cheese slices to the tops of the patties. Cover the pan with a large lid and cook until cheese melts.
  • Assemble the patties. Place 8 waffle fries (or however many patties you have cooked) on a serving platter. Top with cooked sliders. Then garnish with tomato slices, pickles and lettuce. Top with waffle fries and serve immediately.

If you have a family favorite, I’ll share it with the gang – just email me at skowalski@khtheat.com.

 

 

 

Music to My Ears

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Top row l to r: Portrait of the child Mozart, possibly by Pietro Antonio Lorenzoni, painted in 1763 on commission from Leopold Mozart. Portrait owned by the Mozarteum, Salzburg; The family that plays together… The Mozart family on tour. Leopold, Wolfgang, and Nannerl. Watercolor by Carmontelle, ca. 1763. The portrait on the wall is of Mozart’s mother. 

Middle row l to r: Mozart early teens; A great cake to honor Mozart’s birthday. Recipe HERE; A 1782 portrait of Wolfie’s wife, Constanze Mozart by her brother-in-law Joseph Lange.
Bottom row l to r: Mozart in his early 20’s; Photoshoped Mozarts: Cool Mozart, Rad Mozart and Modern Art Mozart; Mozart Plushy that plays music. Get yours HERE.

 

It’s so fun for me to walk around the operation plants and see everything in motion. My teams are amazing, moving materials, prepping loads, testing, measuring, packing, shipping. Everyone is tuned in and focused in their area of expertise, with a shared goal of completing and delivering your PIA (@#$) Jobs!™ A friend of mine asked me last week if I had a “favorite” heat treating process (I of course had to correct him explaining that it’s not just heat treating , it’s called “distortion sensitive thermal processing!”). We had a bit of a laugh, but it got me to reflect on just how vast our services have become – from our 10 bar K-Vac bar furnaces, to K-Salt, the largest rack salt to salt facility in the Midwest, to our close tolerance specialty K-Flat team, to the deep cryogenic increased wear resistance K-Life team, to the ion-nitriding K-Glow team. All “in motion”, working together like a big orchestra, making beautiful music. Guess who is blessed to be the conductor!

Here in Northeast Ohio, we’re lucky to be home to one of the greatest orchestras in the world, the Cleveland Orchestra. Occasionally Jackie and I will venture over and see a performance, and every time, we are astonished just how incredible they are. I know that Jackie and my daughters are eternally grateful since I have VERY LIMITED musical talents! Today is in fact Mozart’s birthday, born over 260 years ago, in Salzburg, Austria. For my trivia buffs, here is a little bit on this amazing writer, composer and musician. Also included are some links you can listen to of just some of his awesome compositions. Below tells the early days of Wolfgang’s career (special thanks to bio.com) For the complete bio, CLICK HERE. Now sing out loud – “da Da Da dum”.  Enjoy.

  • Born on January 27, 1756, in Salzburg, Austria, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was a musician capable of playing multiple instruments who started playing in public at the age of 6. Over the years, Mozart aligned himself with a variety of European venues and patrons, composing hundreds of works that included sonatas, symphonies, masses, chamber music, concertos and operas, marked by vivid emotion and sophisticated textures.
  • Central Europe in the mid-18th century was going through a period of transition. The remnants of the Holy Roman Empire had divided into small semi-self-governing principalities. The result was competing rivalries between these municipalities for identity and recognition. Political leadership of small city-states like Salzburg, Vienna, and Prague was in the hands of the aristocracy and their wealth would commission artists and musicians to amuse, inspire, and entertain.
  • The music of the Renaissance and Baroque periods was transitioning toward more full-bodied compositions with complex instrumentation. The small city-state of Salzburg would be the birthplace of one of the most talented and prodigious musical composers of all time.
  • Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s was the sole-surviving son of Leopold and Maria Pertl Mozart. Leopold was a successful composer, violinist, and assistant concert master at the Salzburg court. Wolfgang’s mother, Anna Maria Pertl, was born to a middle-class family of local community leaders. His only sister was Maria Anna (nicknamed “Nannerl”). With their father’s encouragement and guidance, they both were introduced to music at an early age. Leopold started Nannerl on keyboard when she was seven, as three-year old Wolfgang looked on. Mimicking her playing, Wolfgang quickly began to show a strong understanding of chords, tonality, and tempo. Soon, he too was being tutored by his father.
  • Leopold was a devoted and task-oriented teacher to both his children. He made the lessons fun, but also insisted on a strong work ethic and perfection. Fortunately, both children excelled well in these areas. Recognizing their special talents, Leopold devoted much of his time to their education in music as well as other subjects. Wolfgang soon showed signs of excelling beyond his father’s teachings with an early composition at age five and demonstrating outstanding ability on harpsichord and the violin. He would soon go on to play the piano, organ and viola.
  • In 1762, Wolfgang’s father took Nannerl, now age eleven, and Wolfgang, age six to the court of Bavaria in Munich in what was to become the first of several European “tours.” The siblings traveled to the courts of Paris, London, The Hague, and Zurich performing as child prodigies. Wolfgang met several accomplished musicians and became familiar with their works. Particularity important was his meeting with Johann Christian Bach (Johann Sebastian Bach’s youngest son) in London who had a strong influence on Wolfgang. The trips were long and often arduous, traveling in primitive conditions and waiting for invitations and reimbursements from the nobility. Frequently, Wolfgang and other members of his family fell seriously ill and had to limit their performance schedule.
  • In December, 1769, Wolfgang, then age 13, and his father departed from Salzburg for Italy, leaving his mother and sister at home. It seems that by this time Nannerl’s professional music career was over. She was nearing marriageable age and according to the custom of the time, she was no longer permitted to show her artistic talent in public. The Italian outing was longer than the others (1769-1771) as Leopold wanted to display his son’s abilities as a performer and composer to as many new audiences as possible. While in Rome, Wolfgang heard Gregorio Allegri’s Miserereperformed once in the Sistine Chapel. He wrote out the entire score from memory, returning only to correct a few minor errors. During this time Wolfgang also wrote a new opera, Mitridate, re di Ponto for the court of Milan. Other commissions followed and in subsequent trips to Italy, Wolfgang wrote two other operas, Ascanio in Alba (1771) and Lucio Silla (1772).
  • In 1776, he turned his efforts toward piano concertos, culminating in the Piano Concerto Number 9 in E flat major in early 1777. Wolfgang had just turned 21.
  • As 1782 turned to 1783, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart became enthralled with the work of Johannes Sebastian Bach and George Frederic Handel and this, in turn, resulted in several compositions in the Baroque style and influenced much of his later compositions, such as passages in Die Zauberflote (The Magic Flute) and the finale of Symphony Number 41.
  • During this time, Mozart met Joseph Haydn and the two composers became admiring friends. When Haydn visited Vienna, they sometimes performed impromptu concerts with string quartets. Between 1782 and 1785 Mozart wrote six quartets dedicated to Haydn.

You can find a lot of Mozart on You Tube but you have to check this ONE out.  Plug in your very best speakers and listen as well as watch South Korean Yeol Eum Son do something on the piano that would make Wolfie Amadeus very proud indeed. (And if anyone can tell me why the conductor is using a pencil to conduct, please let me know.)