Beausage and Stolen Focus

A couple of months ago we took a first step in ridding our lives of Teflon coated devices. Non-stickness not no more, just not via a chemical that is not good for you and that wears out. I bought two carbon steel frying pans. They showed up all pretty and shiny. But the shininess would not last. To start we coated the pans with oil and put them in the oven. Then we repeated that three times to get a coating of oil on the pan that was mostly non- stick pans. They had a beautiful brown surface to them. That did not last either. Now we are midway into the final state of non-stickiness. The surface of the pan is mottled, and it is to my eye, the most beautiful of all. Because it has “beausage”.

Beausage-ness is a beautiful a beauty that comes from use. Beausage is not a word, not in an y dictionary. At least not yet. The word was, or so I am told, comes from Grant “no relation” Petersen. Grant is a bicycling guy, he founded Rivendell Bicycles. He coined the word, I saw it, I picked it up, and here we are. I am admiring the beausage of my pans.

Things do not need, in my view, to be all shiny new. It is a maintenance that takes care of things, to keep them as new looking as can be. That is great for hospital floors. In my life I prefer things with the scoffs of living to be evident.

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Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention – and How To Think Deeply Again is a book that delves into things that cause our attention to drop – and it is not just your phone’s attention-grabbing. It is also an interview with Dan Harris of Ten Percent Happier (get it through your podcast source) I am going to return to the interview. More on this topic tomorrow. Well, I should say that there are 12 primary ways your attention is stolen and some of them are things you would not expect to find.

-—- MichaelRpdx :: rkmm :: 2022-04-18

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