Gilroy Garlic Powder

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Virtually all of the garlic you find in grocery stores comes from either Gilroy, California or China. I don’t buy Chinese garlic. I try to avoid Chinese food products in general. There have been just too many scandals in the Chinese food industry and too many recalls of tainted and dangerous food products. Nearly 100% of the garlic grown in the U.S. comes from Gilroy. It is relatively easy to find fresh Gilroy garlic in grocery stores, but it can be very hard to find Gilroy-grown garlic powder. Most of the garlic powder sold in the U.S. comes from China. I was impressed recently when I saw at Safeway big bottles of ‘McCormick California Style Garlic Powder.’ However, as my sister Bonnie says, I have a suspicious nature, and the word ‘style’ on the label made me suspicious. What is the difference, I wondered, between California garlic powder and California style garlic powder? On the back label, it explained it. It said ‘Product of U.S.A. and China.’ I don’t see any to tell what percentage of the garlic comes from California and what percentage comes from China. Now – I have been living in California for over 40 years, and here in California, the term ‘California style’ does not mean ‘Made in China.’ I now have in the chocolate room bottles of real Gilroy-grown garlic powder. This is real stuff! As I said, this can be hard to find this in stores. If you want some, come and pick up a bottle.

ELECTRICITY VAMPIRE MONITOR.

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Energy vampires are electrical devices that consume electricity when they are turned off. Everyone has them. Your home is using electricity 24 hours a day, whether you are home or away. Most energy vampires use electricity to receive a signal, like from a remote controller; or they have a clock, timer, and sensor inside them that is always running. I think that a lot of people would unplug the infrequently used gadgets in their homes if they knew just how much it was costing them to leave them plugged in. Some small electrical devices use a surprisingly large amount of electricity when they are turned off. For example, an Xbox One consumes over 100 watts of electricity an hour while it is turned off. That is because it is always in standby mode, which means that it is using electricity so it can receive a signal from a remote controller. It can cost you $50 a year to keep an Xbox One or Playstation plugged in, even if its just gathering dust and nobody ever uses it. Larger energy vampires can burn up a lot more than $50 a year. Some plasma TVs consume over $150 in electricity per year while they are turned off. There are also a lot of small electrical gadgets that you might not think of as energy vampires at all, but that actually are. For example, many coffee makers use electricity while they are turned off. If you have a coffee maker that is programmable or that has a clock in it, it is using electricity while it is turned off. Even if you never make coffee at home, a programmable coffee maker will cost you about $15 a year in wasted electricity just because you left it plugged in. Many other small appliances that you might not think of energy vampires actually do use electricity while they are turned off, including toasters, blenders, hair dryers, and electric toothbrushes.

Kill-A-Watt Monitor. If you would like to know just how much electricity your household gadgets and appliances are using while they turned off as well as on, I have a Kill-A-Watt electricity monitor that you can borrow. This monitor is very easy to use. It was designed at the Lawrence Berkeley Lab.  The Kill-A-Watt monitor shows you just how much every electrical device in your home costs you by the day, month, and year. You might be surprised by just how much some infrequently used electrical gadgets cost you. The Berkeley Lab estimates that between 5% and 10% of all the electricity consumed by average the U.S. home is used by energy vampires. The Department of Energy estimates that energy vampires cost American consumers $20 billion a year.

HAVE YOU SEEN MY EMOTIONAL SUPPORT MONGOOSE?

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Take a look at the “Have you seen my mongoose?” poster below. It says that this mongoose is a registered ’emotional support animal’ with the city of San Francisco, but what sort of disability do you suppose this person has? Perhaps it is a fear of cobras. All landlords in the United States are required by the federal government to allow tenants to keep emotional support animals in their apartments. Landlords cannot refuse to allow a tenant to keep an emotional support, comfort, or therapy animal, no matter what the animal is. Personally, I think this policy is madness. Some tenants now have in their apartments – and against the landlord’s and the neighbor’s wishes – emotional support pigs, kangaroos (Yes – kangaroos!), horses, monkeys, pit bulls, mountain lions, alligators, venomous lizards, and tarantulas. I think that sooner or later, someone is going to be killed by one of these animals! Its just a matter of time. I have wondered what I would do or could do if a tenant of mine told me that he had a 200 pound ‘therapy python’ in his apartment. I’m not sure that I could do anything. I am not even sure that I could legally warn the other tenants or neighbors about just an obviously dangerous snake. Simply warning the neighbors might be considered discrimination. As I said, I think this policy is madness. Any in case you were wondering, Yes, it is legal in California to keep a 200 pound python in your home. In fact, there is a store here in Berkeley that sells them.

Airplane Luggage.

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I never check luggage on airplanes. ​If I can’t get everything into one carry-on bag (and I almost always can) I ship everything else ahead by FedEx Ground. What I pay FedEx is usually less than what most airlines charge these days for a checked suitcase. Also, I don’t have to shlep my stuff around the airport, there is also much less chance that my luggage will be lost, stolen, or damaged in transit. Plus, I can leave the airport as soon as I get off my plane. I don’t have to wait at the luggage carousel for my luggage.

Checked bags. If you do check luggage on an airplane, don’t just put a luggage ID tag on the outside of your bag. Airport conveyor belts and luggage boarding ramps rip luggage tags off bags all the time. Tape a card with your name, address, and phone number on the inside of your suitcase as well. An airline can’t return a lost bag if they don’t know who the bag belongs to. If you are traveling with valuable items in your checked bag, take photos of the contents of the bag with your cell phone in case your bag is lost or some of the contents are stolen. It is also a good idea to open your bag in the baggage claim area and make sure everything is there. If you discover that items are missing after you get home, it is unlikely you will get reimbursed for your loss.

Expensive Luggage. Never check expensive luggage on an airplane. Professional luggage thieves can value luggage more accurately than luggage salesmen. They can easily tell the difference between a genuine $5,000 Louis Vuitton suitcase and a $100 knockoff. A professional luggage thief knows that a $5,000 suitcase is far more likely to have expensive jewelry or electronics inside than a $100 counterfeit bag. I once saw a $13,000 Louis Vuitton suitcase in a store window at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas. A few hours later, the suitcase was gone. Somebody bought it. Traveling with luggage like that is just asking for trouble.

Drugs. If you are traveling with pain pills or any other possibly addictive drugs, put a copy of your prescription order or a letter from your doctor explaining why you take this drug in your bag with the pills. It could avoid an embarrassing situation or lengthy travel delay. You may have a perfectly valid medical reason for traveling with a bottle of opiates in your suitcase, but a drug sniffing dog in the airport baggage room has no way of knowing that when he zeroes in on your suitcase and starts barking. This happens all the time.

Distinctive markings. Make your checked luggage distinctive. The single biggest cause of lost luggage is that somebody accidentally picked another passenger’s bag that looked like theirs. Put something colorful on your bag that won’t fall off or get easily ripped off.

GRIZZLY BEARS AND GUNS IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS.

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Our new Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos said at her Senate confirmation hearing that she thinks that public schools should have guns in them –  just in case grizzly bears attack the students. Frankly, I had never considered this danger before; however, I have now given this matter a lot of thought, as I am sure Secretary DeVos has also. The big question is this – just where in a public school is a student at greatest risk of a grizzly bear attack? Below is my list, in no particular order.

 


1. The cafeteria garbage cans were my first thought. Bears are famous for raiding garbage cans; however, school cafeteria garbage cans are normally kept outside the school, and Secretary of Education DeVos says that she is worried about grizzly bears inside schools, not at the garbage cans outside.

2. The cafeteria itself. That’s where the food is and that’s where cooking odors originate from. Bears are famous for their excellent sense of smell, and they follow cooking odors.

3. The gym locker room. There is really no good place for a grizzly bear to hide in a typical classroom. If a grizzly bear was hiding anywhere in my classroom at Orinda Intermediate School, I am sure that my students and I would see it as soon as we entered the room. However, most school gyms have rows of high lockers in them, giving bears places to hide.

4. The gym shower room. If a grizzly bear attacked a student in a hall or classroom, there is a risk that the student may have a concealed gun on him or in his backpack, but students in the shower are naked and therefore unarmed. (Note: Students in California are prohibited from bringing guns into public schools with them, but in many states, both teachers and students are allowed to bring concealed loaded guns into their classrooms with them; including Texas, Wisconsin, Idaho, Utah, Colorado, Kansas, Mississippi, and Arkansas.)

5. A school bake sale or Girl Scout cookie sale. If grizzly bears are checking the calendar of upcoming events on a school’s web site, they could wait until the next Girl Scout cookie sale, where they could snatch a lot of cookies and possibly some delicious Girl Scouts as well! The reason I put this item last is that I think that most grizzly bears lack internet access.
 

So where do you think that school kids face the greatest risk of a grizzly bear attack?

GLUTEN INTOLERANCE – The Fad Disease Of Our Time.

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Fat-Free is out. Gluten-Free is in. It seems that about once every 10 years, people decide that some common food is evil, a single specific food that makes us sick and fat. 10 years ago, the evil food was fat. Do you remember when fat-free products filled supermarket shelves? Some of these products were a mystery to me, like fat-free mayonnaise. I have no idea what fat-free mayonnaise is made out of, and I don’t care because I will never buy it. Kraft still makes this suspicious product. I also still see fat-free half and half, fat-free sour cream, and fat-free cream cheese in supermarket dairy cases. These are also products that baffle me. I was just at Berkeley Bowl, where I saw ‘Pam Olive Oil.’ The label says that this product is fat-free and has zero calories per serving. Fat-free, no-calorie olive oil?? What do suppose that is? It sounds bizarre. Fat-free olive oil? Really?

Today’s evil food is gluten. It seems like nearly everyone these days is gluten intolerant, gluten sensitive, gluten allergic, or has celiac disease. About 1/4 of the people who come to my chocolate room tell me that they can’t eat my chocolate dipped shortbread or molasses cookies because they contain wheat flour. That’s OK with me. It saves me money since I give all my cookies away for free.

40% of Americans believe that they are gluten intolerant or avoid eating foods with gluten in them because they believe that eating gluten is bad for their health. However, if you think about it, gluten intolerance couldn’t really be that common. Western civilization could never have developed if such a large portion of the population couldn’t digest wheat normally. Wheat is the basis of all Western civilization, from ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome to Europe and America today. The people who built the pyramids of Egypt had a diet based on wheat bread. So did the people who built the Parthenon in Athens, the aqueducts of Rome, the medieval cathedrals of France and Germany, the Panama Canal, and the Googleplex.

Over 90% of people who believe that they are gluten sensitive can actually digest gluten normally. That was the conclusion of a lengthy study conduced at the University L’Aquila in Italy and published in Digestion magazine. Many other universities have conducted similar studies and come to similar conclusions.

So – how come so many people falsely believe that they are gluten intolerant? It is very simple. We are bombarded every day with anti-gluten TV commercials and supermarket displays. Manufacturers of gluten-free foods tell us over and over that gluten is bad for us and that we can improve our health and lose weight effortlessly by buying and eating their products. However, gluten-free doesn’t mean ‘healthy’ or ‘low calorie.’ Many gluten-free products are loaded with sugar, chemicals, and fat. Coca Cola, fried pork rinds, Hershey bars, and Big Dipper huckleberry ice cream are all gluten-free, but you aren’t going to improve your health or lose weight by eating them. We are also bombarded with TV infomercials in which celebrities tell us how they lost 50 or 100 pounds simply by cutting gluten out of their diet and eating rice or corn instead of wheat.

Yes, some people really are gluten intolerant, and celiac disease is a real disease, but how common is it? Celiac disease is a hereditary disease that affects about 3 million Americans, or roughly 1% of the population. People with celiac disease should never eat gluten. There is a lot of debate in the scientific community as how many people are truly gluten sensitive, but the actual number is a small fraction of what most people think. If you think you have celiac disease or are gluten sensitive, tell your doctor and get tested for it. Most people who believe they are gluten sensitive actually aren’t.

TIERED HANGERS.

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I have never had a tenant who told me that his bedroom closet was too big or that he had more storage space than he could use. Do you need more space in your closet to hang clothes? An easy solution to this problem is by making a simple tiered hanger. Go to a hardware store and buy a 2′ length of lightweight ornamental chain like the one in the photo below. It should cost under $5. Hang the first link over a hanger in your closet. Then hang additional hangers on every other link. Using this simple method, you can hang 6 shirts in the space of 1!

HEIDI AND THE ANTS.

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In most American cities, when a tenant tells his landlord that he has ants in his kitchen, it is usually because he wants the landlord to kill them, but this is Berkeley where things are different. I was just reviewing a series of emails that I got several years ago from a tenant who had ants in her kitchen and wanted me to get rid of them – but without harming them. I think you might enjoy reading this exchange. Here are some of the emails I received from her about this subject. There were more emails about this from her, but I can’t find them all. I changed her name in the letters below. Her name wasn’t actually Heidi. My stepmother had a dog named Heidi, but I never had a tenant named Heidi.

Dear Mark:
The ants are back. I have tried everything, but nothing works. I have even tried yelling at them.
Heidi

Dear Heidi:
I have been meaning to talk to you about this for some time. I know that you have been yelling at the ants in your kitchen. I can hear you from my office. However, yelling “Get out! Get out!” at ants doesn’t work. I don’t know if ants have ears, but I am sure that they don’t understand English. I will come over and spray something in your kitchen to get rid of them.

Dear Mark:
Will this spray kill the ants?
Heidi

Heidi:
Yes. I use a product that is made from the oil of orange peels. It is not harmful to people, but it destroys the respiratory system of ants and other insects. They die quickly because they can’t breathe.
Mark

Dear Mark:
I don’t want you to do that. That sounds awful. How would you feel if you couldn’t breathe? Let me think about this for a while. I was hoping you had a spray that would just keep the ants away, like mosquito repellent keep mosquitoes away.
Heidi

Dear Heidi:
I don’t have ant repellent. I don’t even know if such a product exists. I use orange peel oil because it is non-toxic to people and safe to use in restaurants and home kitchens. However, this product does kill ants. I doesn’t just repel them.
Mark

Dear Mark:
I need time to think this over. Please don’t do anything until I say so.
Heidi

Dear Heidi:
OK. Think it over. I will spray or not spray your kitchen as you wish. There are many products on the market that will kill or repel ants, but I don’t know of any, aside from orange peel oil, that are safe to use in a kitchen or around food. I have investigated this matter.
Mark

Dear Mark:
I found 6 more dead ants in my kitchen this morning. I found 4 dead ants in my kitchen yesterday. Did you spray that stuff in my kitchen? I don’t think there is anything in my kitchen that would kill ants. I found most of the ants on the top of the sink near the soap. Do you think the ants might have eaten the soap and died? Is soap poisonous to ants? If it is, do you know of a brand of soap that won’t kill ants if they eat it.
Heidi

Heidi:
I did not spray your kitchen. You told me not to. Frankly, I think it is silly for you to worry about the health of the ants in your kitchen. You have probably killed hundreds of ants by just walking on the grass in your yard.
Mark

Dear Mark:
Wow! I have been thinking about what you said about walking on ants in the yard. You are probably right. It makes you wonder if it is OK to walk in the yard. I have been taking the ants in my kitchen outside and putting them in the yard, but I don’t know if that’s the right thing to do. It is depressing, but I know you are right. I am now taking the ants to the back porch and dropping them off into the yard. Some of them may get hurt in the fall, but that’s better than walking on other ants in order to save the kitchen ants. Don’t you think? What do you think I should do?
Heidi

Heidi:
Do whatever you think is best.
Mark

Dear Mark:
I asked my mother for her advice about the ants. She thinks that trying to save ants is stupid. She says that she kills ants all the time. My mother thinks that I have too much time on my hands. She says that instead of trying to save the ants in my kitchen that I should come over to the church today and help her make brownies for gift baskets for our very old members. What do you think?
Heidi

Dear Heidi:
I agree with your mother. If you change your mind and want me to spray your kitchen, let me know.
Mark

Dear Mark:
Would you like some brownies? My mother and I made a lot of them today at the church for gift baskets. We made too many of them. They are very good. If you want to spray my kitchen, go ahead. I have lost interest in the ants.
Heidi

In any other city in the U.S., a tenant like Heidi would be considered bizarre, perhaps even unbelievable, but nobody who has lived in Berkeley for a long time would be surprised by a story like this. Landlords in Berkeley have to deal with tenants like Heidi all the time. When inexperienced Berkeley landlords ask me for advice, I tell them that the key to successfully dealing with someone like Heidi is patience, lots and lots of patience. – Mark Tarses

WERNER GOLDBERG. ‘The Ideal German Soldier.’

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History is full of improbable people, and I have always been fascinated by highly improbable people. Werner Goldberg was one of those improbably person. During World War 2, Werner Goldberg was one of the best known people in Nazi Germany. Photos of Werner Goldberg in his German army uniform appeared on billboards and army recruiting posters all over Germany. He was known to the German public simply as ‘the ideal German soldier.’ Almost nobody in Germany knew his real name or that he was a Jew. In 1933, Werner Goldberg’s father was fired from his job when Hitler came to power because he was a Jew. Werner was unable to get a job for the same reason. Werner needed to make money to feed his family, so in 1938 he joined the army. Werner saw military action soon after completing basic training. He participated in the German invasion of Poland in 1939. Shortly after the invasion of Poland began, a German army photographer took photos of Werner Goldberg and sent them to the Berliner Tagesblatt, a major newspaper in Germany’s capital. They liked the photos and published a full-page picture of Werner Goldberg in their Sunday edition. The newspaper didn’t state his name. They probably didn’t know it. They captioned the photo ‘The Ideal German Soldier.’ Hitler was very impressed by the picture and ordered it reprinted on Nazi propaganda and army recruiting posters. Eventually Nazi officials discovered the truth, that the ‘ideal German soldier’ was a Jew. Goldberg was forced out of the army, but he was never sent to jail or a concentration camp. In 1942, Werner Goldberg rescued his sick father who was being held in a Gestapo prison hospital for Jews. On Christmas Eve, Werner went to the hospital. He gambled that the guards and Gestapo agents at the door would either be absent from their posts or drunk because of the holiday, and he was right. Werner got into the hospital by showing the guards a photo of himself captioned ‘the ideal German soldier.’ The guards recognized the photo and let Werner into the hospital. Once inside, Werner simply went to his father’s room, dressed his father in street clothes that he brought with him and simply walked out the door with his father. Werner Goldberg survived the war and died in 2004.

Global Warming

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When it Used To Snow In San Francisco. Donald Trump and a majority of the Republicans in Congress say that global warming is a hoax. Whenever I hear politicians say that, I think about photographs like this one. Its a photo of Market Street in February, 1887. People are in the street because the snow had shut down the cable cars and street traffic. sfsnow1Did you know that back in the 19th Century, it used to snow in San Francisco? Not frozen dew or a light dusting, but real snow. You can see old photographs of San Francisco blanketed in snow on Google Images. For example, on New Year’s Eve in 1881, snow began falling in San Francisco. It snowed continuously for the next 5 hours. The following day, the San Francisco Chronicle reported that telegraph and telephone service was interrupted throughout the city because of downed wires and fallen tree branches. Boys and girls had the day off from school. They built snowmen and had snowball fights all over the city. Many of the palm trees and flowers in the exotic gardens in Golden Gate Park were killed by cold and the ice that covered them. Now I have lived in Berkeley for over 40 years, and I have never seen snow on the ground here. The last time it snowed in San Francisco was 1976. The city got 1 inch of snow, and the next day, it was gone. San Francisco is not alone. There are many places around the world that used to regularly get snow but don’t anymore.

 

The Irish Potato Famine. Hundreds of thousands of people died in the Irish Potato Famine. The potato crop failed in 1845 due to a disease called potato blight. The disease spread quickly, destroying nearly all the potatoes in the country. By 1846, people in Ireland were in a bad state of affairs. Even before winter arrived, millions were weak from hunger, and to make matters worse, a lot of people had sold their winter clothing and shoes to buy food. Winter came early in 1846, and the winter that year was bitterly cold. Snow started falling early, and it kept falling. In some places in Ireland, snow drifts were 10 feet deep. People living in remote areas, already weakened by hunger and cold, were unable to get to one of the few food relief centers in Ireland because snow blocked their way. Here is a letter that was written by an English observer in Ireland at the time and that appeared in a London newspaper in 1847. “Among the thousands I meet, I have seen no one who had clothing corresponding to the bitter cold which is now experienced; on the contrary what is beheld is emaciated, pale, shivering, worn-out farming people, wrapped in the most wretched rags, standing or crawling in the snow, bare-footed and freezing.” People who live in Ireland today find it hard to believe that they ever had winters like that, but then – people who live around here are often very surprised when I show them old photographs of Market Street in San Francisco covered in snow.

The Northwest Passage. dansoloI used to know a magician named Dan X. Solo, a very nice guy. For over 20 years, Dan worked on cruise ships that went up the west coast to Alaska. Dan did table hopping magic and magic shows aboard these ships. Dan used to tell me that global warming was very obvious to him – and profitable as well! That was because every few years, the Alaska cruise ship season got a little longer, and that was because the seas in the Alaska inner passage were ice-free longer every year. Dan said that when he first started working on cruise ships, the Alaska cruise ship season was from June to August, but when he retired, the season was from May to September. The season had gone from 3 months to 5. Since Dan Solo’s death a few years ago, the Alaska cruise ship season has gotten even longer. And now, cruise ships are traveling from Alaska to New York through the Northwest Passage. In September, the cruise ship Crystal Serenity arrived in New York City from Vancouver, Canada across the Arctic, a trip that was unimaginable just 20 years ago. crystalserenityThe voyage took 28 days. The passengers were not ‘roughing it’ through the Arctic. The Crystal Serenity has 13 decks, multiple indoor swimming pools, a casino, movie theater, a spa and health club, a golf driving range, and 6 restaurants. The ship actually has 12 restaurants if you include the specialty restaurants like Silk Road and the Sushi Bar. The ship has an herb garden and olive trees aboard the ship so diners will have fresh ingredients. Each passenger paid between $20,000 and $120,000 to take the trip. Many more Northwest Passage trips are scheduled for 2017.

Evidence of global warming is not hard to find. It is everywhere. It is not surprising to me that all of the politicians who say that global warming is a hoax get big bucks from oil and coal companies. “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.” – Upton Sinclair, 1935.