Great story in The Chicago Tribune about Chef Curtis Duffy. It’s the story of a small town kid whose upbringing was less than ideal. When he was a teenager, his father killed his mother and then himself. But Curtis found a love and found a person, his home economics teacher, who would nurture it.

Slowly Curtis re-entered the world, and he seized upon the one stable thing in his life: the kitchen. When he’d first started cooking five years earlier, the kitchen was a place to run away to from the fighting at home, a place that kept him from bullying neighborhood kids.

Now his parents were dead. Every hour focused on cooking was another hour not dealing with his confusion and anger.

Curtis worked his way up from dishwasher to line chef to chef de cuisine until he decided to open his own restaurant. It’s a great story and touches on so many of the things that we treasure about our country. Hope you’ll read it this weekend.

Oregon is a pretty unique place. As an example of that uniqueness, we recently celebrated the 100th anniversary of a decision then Governor Oswald West made regarding our beaches. In 1903 resorts and others were already starting to establish themselves. In addition there was no road system so if you wanted to get from Point A to Point B, you literally drove on the beach. Governor West also saw what was happening back east, namely that private resorts were claiming beach land for themselves.

So on February 13, 1903, Governor West went before the legislature to argue his point. Whether it was “to keep the beach road open” or to “give the beach to all the people,” we really don’t know. But whatever his intentions, what the good Governor did was establish the largest public beach access in the United States, over 360 miles.

The Oregonian talked about the anniversary in an article last week. If you haven’t explored the amazingness that is Oregon’s coast line, I highly recommend it, especially in summer. It’s a magical place.

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The included picture was taken by me at Smuggler’s Cove, Oswald West State Park, on the Oregon coast.

Great post by Elizabeth Yin:

I’ll be one of the first entrepreneurs to admit we’re not crushing it.  Building a business is hard.  Crushing it would mean that you are always on the up and up.  Crushing it would mean that you are always hitting all your goals.  But you know what, that never happens — whether it’s in business or in life.  I am never crushing it. We are never crushing it.

Oh, man, can I relate. January started my 16th year running Infinity Softworks. Year after year I hear about the hot new company. A few years go by and that company is gone. I don’t wish the end for these companies and believe at some point we will be a hot company again, but meanwhile it is one foot in front of the other.

How do I do it, you ask? Easy. I believe in what I’m trying to accomplish and don’t believe it will happen over night.

(By the way, what a stupid phrase, “crushing it.” It’s like we are all pro ball players hitting home runs or surf boarders or pop drinkers or something. This is business, not entertainment.)

Really cool interactive map of Middle Earth.

My wife and I saw The Hobbit this past weekend. It wasn’t horrible; it wasn’t great. Many people had a problem with the video frame rates but that didn’t bother me at all. I thought it looked okay, although a little blurry at times and my wife could see pancake make-up on one of the actors.

By my count, we got through three scenes in the book in 2.5 hours. It was stretched too far for my tastes. A three-part movie for a 200 page children’s book? I thought two-parts would have been fine.

But again, I was mostly entertained until they get trapped with the goblins. The Goblin King reminded me too much of Jar Jar Binks in the Star Wars episodes that must not be named. A bizarre, silly caricature. Goblins in the Lord of The Rings trilogy were fierce creators, albeit ones who died quickly and easily. In Moria, they didn’t have conversations with the Fellowship. They just tried to kill them. In The Hobbit, it was a slow, involved discussion scene, which kind of ruined the movie for me.

I’ll see the next two installments, probably even at the theater. But it won’t have the same meaning to me as Lord of the Rings and may, very well, go to the mental trash heap with those Star Wars episodes I mentioned before.