Author: leh

Langer’s

Lately we’ve been watching a food/travel series on Netflix called “I’ll Have What Phil’s Having”.   (We missed, ignored, actually, the series when it debuted on PBS in 2015.)  In the Los Angeles episode that we saw last night, host and comedy writer Phil Rosenthal visited what he regarded as the source of the best pastrami on rye on the planet — Langer’s.

You may remember that an earlier post recalled my very first day in Los Angeles, when I blundered upon Langer’s.  From then on, it became a favorite.  Sometimes, a few of us in the downtown GAO office would try to manage a long lunch so we could drive there for a sandwich.  Surprisingly, Kim does not remember the place; it seems unlikely that I never took her there during our early days, but we did live in Hollywood and the west side then and tended to frequent delis like Canter’s in that territory …

rDay Three-Hundred-Forty-Eight

Meandering around downtown today, starting through the EOU campus, then walking from Willow, across the railroad tracks, up Adams as far as EONI, then home.

Downton Abbey wasn’t the only institution to have its finale on March 6. So did Golden Harvest. After 27 years, the owners are retiring. Walking by today, I was invited in to look at fixtures and equipment and stuff being sold off. One of my favorite spots for business lunches, Golden Harvest was cited a while back by OregonLive (website of The Oregonian) for “Oregon’s best Chinese food”. Was an award winner, to quote the GH people themselves:

We were awarded the Union County’s Best Asian food in La Grande for 2012 and the best Family Dining in 2011. We were also awarded the Top 100 Specialty Award in 2010 for the United States. We consistently score a 100 on our health inspection.

Remember the newly-opened Orange Rhino Bakery & Coffee Shop from rDay 335? Dropped in to have a little look today …

Finally, back home where Charlie brushes up on the finer points of Nikon photography.
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rDay Three-Hundred-Forty-Four: RMP

A rainy day.  As Kim had a medical appointment today, let’s take a point & shoot tour of the newish Regional Medical Plaza (RMP) extending Grande Ronde Hospital (GRH), as I have some time to kill while waiting for her. 

Desolation Row – Los Angeles, 1973

I don’t know if I could ever find this place again, and it surely can’t look like it did in late 1973.  My friend, a small-time real-estate speculator, took me to this no man’s land of a short stretch of beach hillside in the LAX airport flyover zone.  He pointed out that this was beachfront property at wildly bargain prices.  The day of our visit was accompanied by stifling heat and smog and Santa Ana winds that only punctuated the bleakness of the mostly-unlandscaped and barely populated area.  Every few seconds a jet would blast away our conversation.  Where was this?  Perhaps just west of El Segundo, or maybe a bit north of that?  Google Maps?

The Human Face of Big Data

As a kind of postscript to the recent post, “Big Data and Disease “, if you can see the 2014 film, “The Human Face of Big Data”, or read the 2012 book of the same name, you will still find it to be timely.  Recently aired on PBS in its entirety, it should be available in book and DVD form from Amazon and the usual suspects.  Try your local library.  Here is a trailer: