Fifty Years of Snoopy’s Home Ice

Santa Rosa, the largest city between San Francisco and Portland, has been home to celebrities Dan Hicks, Robert Ripley, Luther Burbank, Guy Fieri. (And me for 20+ years.) Sightings of Tom Waits are occasionally reported. Probably the most celebrated is Charles M. Schulz.

The Peanuts creator moved to Sebastopol in Sonoma County in 1958. A decade later he moved eight miles east to Santa Rosa where he worked and lived until his death in 2000.

Travelers today fly into the Charles M. Schulz Sonoma County Airport and visit the Charles M. Schulz Museum. (Highly recommended by me.) Across the street from the museum is the Redwood Empire Ice Arena, built and owned by Schulz. He regularly ate lunch at the Warm Puppy Cafe while watching the skaters. He met Jean, his second wife, when she brought her daughter there. (Jean Schulz’s home was one of more than 5,000 burned in the 2017 fires. Lost was Schulz and Peanuts memorabilia.)

The arena, popularly known as “Snoopy’s Home Ice”, is celebrating its fifty-year anniversary. The festivities include a day of skating at 1969 prices: 75¢ for children and $1.25 for adults. The Warm Puppy Cafe will serve its 1969 Snoopy Special (hot dog, chips and jello) for 75¢.

You Are What You Eat

The Los Angeles Times recently published their quality ranking of French fries from fast-food chains. The grades assigned resulted in nearly two-hundred reader responses – not the deluge climate change or gun regulation topics generate, but a lot for fried potatoes – ranging from agreement to ho-hum to outrage that one’s favorite was rated poorly.

Number one: Five Guys, with McDonald’s ranked a distant second.

But what really generated controversy was the dead-last rating of In-N-Out. The California burger icon, lately creeping across borders into other states, is noted for its freshly-cooked menu items. It is also famous for its secret menu, so secret that it could take as long as twenty seconds to find on the Google machine.

  • “In-N-Out’s fries the worst? Del Taco’s fries among the best? What hot garbage is this???”
  • “In n Out Fries are awesome. What sucks is this list…who eats at McDonalds?!?!?!!!!!!!!!”
  • “Anyone who puts McD’s number 2 and In N Out last needs to be deported.”
  • “I’m horrified to read these blasphemous words about In-N-Out’s fries.”
  • (Tater-tot advocates also put in a few comments.)
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Making America Great

“Reagan proved that deficits don’t matter.” – Dick Cheney

I keep reminding myself to not write about politics. With 24-hour cable news and social media inundating us with politics, there’s no point in adding more to the pile. But, jeeez…

News flash: the federal deficit increased by 77% in the past year. A favorite conservative trope has been that Barack Obama increased the federal debt more than all previous presidents combined. Well, okay, but in fact the deficit went down each year Obama was in office. (You do know the difference between debt and deficit, don’t you?)

You ain’t seen nothing yet.

Continue reading “Making America Great”