It was the kind of month that gave a grown man a hangnail—the really nasty kind that snags easily on wool sweaters in the dry fall air and requires Neosporin and a superhero Band-Aid. I had been …
When Larry Met Sherri and Mary
By Chris Mittelstaedt and Gretchen Bay Larry saw Mary eating a kiwi berry. “Sherri!” cried Larry, “I think that’s scary! Isn’t a kiwi supposed to be hairy?” “Oh, Larry,” laughed Sherri, “on the …
FruitGuy Noir: Sunset Bully-lard
Yes, this is Conference Room A, Building 12. It’s about 10 a.m. That’s the Strategy Squad, and they've been here since 5 a.m. Something about reassessing their core. Some confusion was reported from …
Ideas of Passion
By Chris Mittelstaedt It’s a strange feeling when someone dies who affected your life but whom you never knew personally. I’ve found myself grieving over the passing of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs …
Getting Back Up
I’ve always been a pretty active person—something that made coming down with a random medical condition all the more humbling. About a month ago I had an acute onset of achalasia, an uncommon disorder …
O’Modern O’Henry!
By Chris Mittelstaedt When O’Henry peaches start to appear, I think of O. Henry—the turn-of-the-century American short story writer who wrote The Gift of the Magi, a story about a young married man …
The Grav-ity of Change
Change has come slowly but steadily to the foods we’ve eaten over the last 70 years. While there has been no acute onset to clearly demonstrate the difference between the food of today and yesterday, …
Plu…ots
Maybe you think I write too much about my kids. I kind of agree, but man, do they give me good material. Last week, for example, when I told them we would be getting pluots for this week’s cases, they …
The Pits
It’s summer, and I’m 12. We’ve been riding around the block for the last month on our banana-seat bikes. We are a motorcycle gang, with playing cards duct-taped to the back struts of our bike frames, …
Ripe On Time
We’re so organized it’s almost bewildering. All week long, we’ve been going down the checklist helping the kids get ready for camp. “Sleeping bags?” “Got it, Dad!” “Flashlight?” “Daaadd! I’ve got …
Balance the Beat
My daughters are in a rock band. One plays bass and the other drums. My 10-year old drummer has a problem with The Go-Go’s song “We Got The Beat.” “I keep losing my beat,” she says. “Have you looked …
A Berry by Any Other Name
I’m still processing the post-dinner conversation with my kids during which they debated whether feet were officially weird and whether vegans who watch the TV show Glee should be called “vleegans” or …
FruitGuy Noir: A Handy Case
I was soaking my hands in a mixture of Palmolive and probiotic yogurt when I got the call. This was the moment I had been waiting for. Three weeks undercover playing a retired hand model making a …
Cover Me
“Dad,” my daughter says as I get home from work, “Mom was on a field trip with us today and said, "'Hey gang!’ It was so embarrassing.” She looks at me unblinking as if I should understand. “Dad!” she …
Wearing It On Your Sleeve
I’m not a good poker player. I generally say what I think, and you can read the thoughts I’m not saying across my forehead as if it were an electronic billboard streaming data for all of Times Square …
A Modern Desert
I wasn’t really a very good student. Luckily in elementary school, I had a great teacher who helped me after school with spelling. Her name was Mrs. Unruh. She used to devise little tricks to help me …
Cherry Blossoms
The sadness of Japan’s natural disaster brings back memories of Katrina for me (my folks are from New Orleans, and I have relatives there). There are those natural routines in the world that we look …
Graft
My daughter broke her pinkie when she was ten years old while battling to catch a football in a Hail Mary melee on the school blacktop. She had surgery to pin the bone together so it would grow back …
128th Avenue Freeze Out
Planning farm visits into California’s Central Valley can be fun. The farmers we work with always remind me of the directions. “Chris, when you come out here, make sure that you take Road 204 but only …
Winter into Spring
When I was in college, we’d pack the elevator with students, turn off the lights, and yell “Molecule!” The car shook in the shaft as we bounced off of each other and the walls, finally tumbling out …
