Products |
Chromecast Media Player
By
Published: Dec 16, 2013
Category:
Beyond Classification
The temperature drops to minus 15 degrees in Duluth in December.
I know.
I was there.
Why would anyone go to Duluth in the winter? Marriage, of course. When my wife was young and orphaned, she was more or less adopted by Mary Kay and George Spalding, a Minnesota couple with big hearts and a big family. Their grandchildren are the same age as our daughter, and although those kids sometimes call our child “Big City,” when they’re moving in a pack you can’t tell who’s who. The Spalding clan gathers for a pre-Christmas weekend in Duluth, taking over a wing of a hotel. This year we made the cut.
If you live in a real big city, you may look down on Duluth — you know: a provincial backwater out of Sinclair Lewis.
Prepare to be surprised.
Our weekend started with the Spaldings eager to show us a recent video: Nadia Fayad, a recent graduate of the Eastman School of Music and the musical star of this family, singing the Brahms Alto Rhapsody with the Eastman School Symphony and the Eastman-Rochester Chorus. The video is on YouTube. The Spaldings, like many of us, own a flat screen TV.
The way you and I show videos or downloaded media on a TV is to plug a laptop into it. Not the Spaldings. They have a one-ounce device that looks like a memory stick. It’s plugged into a port on the back of their TV. No wires lead anywhere. Using their iPad, cellphone or laptop, they can call up what they want to see. They did. And there, nearly life-size, was this:
The Google Chromecast Media Player will hook you up with Netflix, YouTube, HBO GO, Hulu Plus, Pandora, and Google Play Movies and Music mobile apps. It works with Android, iOS, Chrome for Mac, and Chrome for Windows. It requires WiFi. There are many things it does not do, and the Amazon page is clear about them. But for what it does — for all it does — it’s kind of a bargain at $30. [To buy the Chromecast Media Player from Amazon, click here.]
In Duluth, we wandered into Otlak Felt Studio and Clothing. Felt is not exactly gourmet fabric in my zip code, and you too may think of it as fit only for the thick, moisture-absorbing blanket under a horse’s saddle. Well, not in Mary Reichert’s hands. I love her story:
There was nothing in my youth, no child prodigy moment, not even a basic sewing knowledge that would lead one to think I would bend towards the fiber arts, but after college that is just what I started doing. Following a curiosity and longing to learn more about caring for plants and animals, I began working at a couple of small sheep and fiber farms in Western Massachusetts.
Ever so slowly the great smell of opening a barn filled with hay on a cold winter morning, the welcoming sound of the sheep flocking together, the warm breath of the camels smelling me as I brought them breakfast, the taste of food when shared with good friends after a long day all began working their magic on me and without my knowing it, I started falling in love with the world of fiber.
Mary calls herself a “feltsress.” I think of her as a poet who works with her hands. She makes scarves of felt and silk, which sounds odd and looks gorgeous. And she makes small rugs of felt. (She has one less now, as a dark blue rug of great subtlety became my wife’s holiday present.) Browse here. To contact Mary at Otlak Felt Studio and Clothing, call 218-491-7099 or write her through the contact form on her site.
On to Northern Waters Smokehaus, where choosing a variety of “premium handcrafted delicacies” is a challenge. I bought half a pound of Atlantic Salomon smoked with coarse ground black pepper and coriander (8 ounces for $12) and half a pound of Wild Alaskan sockeye salmon (8 ounces for $17). I brought this treasure back to the party; it lasted five minutes. Northern Waters offers flat-rate shipping for $18 until December 18; after that, shipping is so expensive the proprietor looked to the heavens. Visit Northern Waters at its site. Questions? Call toll free: 888-663-7800.
I’ll spare you the description of the 1950s cashmere coat we found for my wife; at $69, it took about 10 seconds to decide to buy it. I won’t go on about the restaurant that served pulled bison sandwiches and elk Bolognese. I’ll spare you the account of how I made peace with Walter, the dog that powers Walter’s Wish, a scholarship cause some of you supported when I wrote about it. Because it may be available where you live, I commend a draft beer called Alaska Winter. But maybe you had to be there….
