Saturday, March 28, 2015

Social Media does GOOD


Well, recently I sort of trashed Facebook (maybe deservedly so), but in all fairness (as I always am) I have to give some credit to a useful feature.    There are more and more restaurants and chefs that have pages on FB, so I am attracted to those.  So, mostly I scroll past all the pictures of kittens, dogs, grandchildren, selfies, cartoons of the crabby old women to get to the food related postings.  I don’t really mind people posting their favorite shots of pets and kids, I just don’t look at them.  Anyway, I had a very interesting experience yesterday through FB.

There is a page or group called “You know you’re from St. Mary’s County if….” People use it to post a lot of historical pictures of buildings, stores, houses, and county inhabitants.  People seem to have a lot of fun responding with comments like “I had my first job there!”  or “that's where i met my husbad..”.  Not long ago there was a thread about the first (?) local fast food place, I believe a Hardee’s. So, it's kind of an interesting page.

Well. yesterday or the day before somebody posted a photo taken from the bridge of the farm on the Calvert side of the Solomon’s Bridge.  I don’t really know the demographic of the folks who follow that page, but a few people had no idea where it was.  Quite far down the list of comments was a posting that said “saw it every day as I went to work at the Dry Dock”.  Huh? Dry Dock? Did not recognize the name of the lady but boldly sent her a PM asking about it, which resulted in some great exchanges, and found out she was one of the first chefs to work there in the early 80’s.  How neat was that?  So an innocent Facebook posting of a farm, got me in a conversation with somebody in Florida who chefed at the (original location) Dry Dock.  Social Media works some good.. 

Back before MFO joined me out here, my normal Saturday night routine was to get home from work (we mostly worked six ten hour days back then on the Super Hornet flight test program), change clothes (DFD before I knew it!) and go over to the Dry Dock for some good food and company.  Over the ensuing years I got to know most of the staff, at least in the front of the house.  When the Dry Dock “moved” over to the newer (present) location, some of the same folks went, but over the years they have drifted away for the most part.   Most of the Chefs have stayed in the area, although they may be in different kitchens or catering operations. The current chef, Ben has been there quite a while. 

Through one of the friendships we have maintained, MFO and I were invited to a “reunion” of the Dry Dock people last night over on the Solomons, and we stopped in for a while.  What a treat it was to see people we haven’t seen for many years, and what was really nice was that they were all delighted to see each other again.  There was a real sense of family.  Restaurant employees seem to form bonds that way.   I would suspect (and bet a fair amount of money) you won’t see love like that from Olive Garden..  we then moved over to the… duh…. Dry Dock and had a very nice dinner from Ben, who of course couldn’t attend the party because he was doing what he loves, cook.  Nice.

The Dry Dock remains one of the nicer places to get a good meal, but I also have high hopes for the recently opened Elements.

Brackets, again.

Well, having just watched the Connecticut women destroy Texas (105 to 54), I was going to launch into a rant about the uneven quality of women’s basketball.   But then, I recalled that Kentucky (men) laid a similar rout on West Virginia, perhaps spurred on by some rather unthinking comments from a Mountaineer freshman.  I am looking forward to seeing my Spartans go up against Louisville tonight.  Of course my bracket is destroyed, especially because I tried to go with my head and took Virginia over MSU.  Being punished, but I don’t mind..

One thing I can almost rant about (besides Bill Raftery) without fear is the “media” roles in the basketball games.  I suppose the NCAA agreed to and mandated it, but it really makes me mad when some “side line reporter” (almost invariably a woman) sticks a microphone in a coach’s face trying to get his team into the half time locker room and comes up with penetrating questions like: “how are you going to be able to stop making turnovers”; or “what was going through your mind when you saw dunk over your big man”.   Two questions, and both pull away.  I must say the coaches seem to go along with it, but I keep hoping somebody like Bob Huggins would say “that’s a stupid question” and walk away.  Probably would get fined.

Today I actually saw Holly Rowe talk to a coach DURING the game.  What the heck…?  Shut up and sit down, Holly…

Okay, enough.

Staying in tonight, but will be pretty much
DFD



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