Best Soup!

Thanks guys. We won Best Soup in the 2008 Austin Chronicle Restaurant Poll. This is the first year that we won the prize outright, and I'm very proud of our kitchen folks for earning this great honor. I mean, this isn't any podunk town anymore and there's a lot of competition out there, so I'm really proud. I wish there was another word for proud because I want to use it a lot in this paragraph and not sound repetitive. Plus we were runner-up for Best Delivery. Behind Austin's Pizza, who are admittedly a quantum leap or two faster than we are. Thirty minutes vs. a week and a half is a lot of ground to make up. Regardless, kudos to our sweet delivery staff for that accomplishment... what they do is quite difficult and they should be very proud.

The Future Of Soup Delivery

This drawing scooted across my desk sometime over the past few hours on a torn-out magazine page. My font detection skills lead me to believe it is from The New Yorker, and our forensics department indicates that it is of recent vintage. It's funny because this is actually one of our fantasies... how do we corner the market on soup, this is what we often ponder. Our Chef Mike has postulated that a series of pipelines direct from our kitchen to Soupies' kitchens would be the way to do it... a $10,000 setup fee of course. The pipes wouldn't be full of soup, don't be ridiculous... they'd be like those vacuum tubes at the bank drive-thru or a la Terry Gilliam's 1985 classic Brazil. However the soup tanker truck could be an improvement on the idea. Certainly there would be a few technical details to iron out... excuse me, out which to iron.

Mother's Day Hymn

Did you know that tucked away inside the Unitarian Universalist hymnal, there is a piece of prose written in 1870 by a woman named Julia Ward Howe, which was one of the early calls for a Mother's Day holiday? It's called the "Mother's Day Proclamation." It brings to mind the greatest idea I've ever heard uttered, by Alice Walker, when speaking at Book People several years ago: "The world should be presided over by a council of twelve grandmothers."

Arise, then, women of this day!
Arise, all women who have breasts,
Whether our baptism be of water or of tears!

Say firmly:
"We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.
We, the women of one country, will be too tender of those of another country
To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs."

From the bosom of the devastated Earth a voice goes up with our own.
It says: "Disarm! Disarm! The sword of murder is not the balance of justice."
Blood does not wipe out dishonor, nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil at the summons of war,
Let women now leave all that may be left of home for a great and earnest day of counsel.

Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means
Whereby the great human family can live in peace,
Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar,
But of G-d.

In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask
That a general congress of women without limit of nationality
May be appointed and held at someplace deemed most convenient
And at the earliest period consistent with its objects,
To promote the alliance of the different nationalities,
The amicable settlement of international questions,
The great and general interests of peace.