identity

The Impact Of Intent

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I’m enjoying a local bar the way I like it- nearly empty, quiet but for the band in the next room that I’ll shortly go in to support, and just me and the bartender discussing books. They have to bus tables, I need to write and wait for my food order. It’s a genial end to the conversation.

Leikam Brewing is Jewish woman-owned brewery in Southeast Portland that embodies what I want to be myself- unapologetically and openly itself and also a hub of its community. It’s a Jewish space that’s not just for Jews. If you’re part of the community, you don’t need to be part of the Tribe.

I’ve knocked back two beers over the course of my conversation with the bartender about the virtues and flaws of various fantasy series. One was a French Toast-inspired ale called “Ain’t No Challah-Back Girl” and the other a stout called “Mob Barley.” If it’s not Jewish puns, it’s music- or both- and I’m not mad about it. Going here tonight felt needed, and not just because I knew a particularly good skewer truck was going to be selling their wares and I have an unhealthy need for their black sesame flatbread with roasted garlic toum spread.

The first month of 2026 in the US was not fantastic. An activist mother of three, Renee Good, was murdered- shot three times at point blank range- by an agent of the state who proceeded to brag about it, and the government unabashedly bullshit the public about how the woman was a “domestic terrorist” and “tried to run/ran the agent over” when their own camera shows otherwise. They did it again to a VA nurse- Alex Pretti- whose last words were “Are you okay?” to a woman these same agents had just pepper-sprayed and pushed to the pavement.

While still processing this, I got treated to reports of leftists- the guys meant to oppose this kind of fascist, Big Brother crap- lined up outside at New York synagogue chanting about how much they love Hamas. Later, I’d see tweets asking if the VA nurse was a Zionist, and I’ve grown too used to them showing up to every protest or event with their flags and keffiyehs yelling “collective liberation!” as they attempt to hijack someone else’s efforts to organize.

After over two years of feeling chased out of leftist spaces by these ignorant shmucks who are- at best- useful idiots parroting slogans, I think I’m well within my moral rights to wish a plague on both their houses, wait for both parties to beat the tar out of each other, and rebuild better once they’ve burned each other out.

It can never be that simple though. The fact that it goes against every bone in my body to look at people suffering and say “not my problem” is only part of it. It’s that I once again get to watch my identity be made convenient.

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We Just Want to Bloom

/ The Black Hat Baker / 1 Comment

There’s an older woman who lives in my neighborhood that I see on my walks. We’re not friends really- just familiar NPCs in each others lives. Walking home the other day, she was coming towards me up the sidewalk when she stopped and noticed a small stand of daffodils at the edge of a lawn. The bright yellow flowers were craned down as usual, baring the green shoulders of their stems against the rain beating on our hoods. Fat wet drops of water rain down from behind the petals before making their own small puddles on the sidewalk.

“Look at that” she said, gesturing to the flowers. “Blooming already. The daffodils don’t know it’s cold!”
Without thinking, I said “They know, ma’am- they just don’t care. They never do.”
My elderly NPC made her way up the sidewalk shaking her head, and I turned up the walk to my house. “They just wanna bloom.”

Daffodils bloom very early in the spring, often while it’s still cold and there’s snow on the ground. They also tend to grow near water but in Portland, any sidewalk can be a river if the weather is right. Their heavy craning heads look down over the water, as though they were admiring their reflection. This, along with their audacity of blooming when it’s cold, and a little myth-making merit their family the scientific name of Narcissus.

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“Everyone Else Is Taken”- Finding Identity in the Kitchen

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I absolutely cannot, under any circumstances, tell you who you are. You really shouldn’t want me to anyway. Brighter minds than mine have peeled apart the notions of “self” and “identity” for centuries (if not millenia) and even they tend to wind up shrugging and going “I dunno… it’s personal I guess.”

A portrait of Oscar Wilde in grayscale with the quote "Be yourself; everyone else is already taken."

And it is. I wrote a few weeks back about how to find your “culinary voice”– which ultimately came down to an elaborate rephrasing of “garbage in, garbage out.” That’s figuring out how to best tell your story though… finding out who you are takes people their entire lives, and is often subject to change.

So this post isn’t a “how-to”- it’s more of an exploration of the question, and especially what it means for us cooks- whether we are brand new and trying to find a place to fit in, or old hands getting flexed out of an industry that we can’t continue in and survive. Both groups- all of us, really- wind up looking at themselves in the mirror and asking, “Who are you?”

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