Superbowl Pregame

Do Seattlites really serve smoked salmon at their Superbowl parties? Oh hell yes. Throughout their history, Seahawks fans have been the blue collar fans, while people with money favored the Washington Huskies (yes! A broad generalization!). But back in the day, when salmon was cheap and plentiful, smoked salmon was blue collar food, served next to pretzels and beer at tailgates, poker parties, picnics at the city park.

Nowadays, salmon is less cheap and less plentiful, which means we have to spend a little more to have fish on the snack table. Also, there was a dark age of east coast BS out there: atlantic farm-raised fish, "light" smoke, all sorts of shi-shi east coast influences that appealed to the snooty side of the northwesterner for a while. But the east coast BS has declined heavily recently, now that everyone realizes that those trends were started by people who've never tasted wild pacific salmon before. So now, you can get the old fashioned apple or alder smoked salmon again... But you will pay more.

So since I will not be going to a Superbowl party of my choosing, I decided to have some smoked salmon for br-unch. It was Copper River King, smoked with applewood by C&H.

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I will be spending Superbowl at work, leading an Urban Plunge retreat for high school sophomores. There was a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth when we found out that our Seahawks were in the Superbowl, and that we would NOT be canceling our retreat, but we gotta keep our commitments to the poor and marginalized, right? Whats funny is that a lot of our social service agencies have been cancelling on us, either because they're shut down for the superbowl, or because they don't what whiny sophomores cramping their superbowl style. Ha!

In any case, the kids will be able to watch, because the agencies always have the game on. When we're done at the agencies, we'll come back to school and watch the rest of the game together.

This is a good retreat, it makes the kids see that there are poor people here in the city. We make them poor for a day, they spend the night in a simulated homeless shelter, and we have them serve the poor directly--eye to eye, face to face. Some of our kids are transformed by the experience--they get it; some even continue to volunteer after the retreat.

A few kids don't get it, they think we're mean for making them be in the same room with icky people, they see this retreat as a rite of passage, something to endure, to overcome, and to put behind you. We shall see.

Blue skies and sunny in Seattle, the day after a major windstorm. Superbowl XL is only hours away.