I have recently undertaken Scrum Master training in southern California.

 “Scrum”, as per the Scrum Alliance, “is an Agile framework for completing complex problems … an innovative approach to getting work done.” Most often Scrum is applied, and has evolved from, the software development community. Its practices of fast iteration, sprints, daily communication (Scrum standups), transparency and team work are some of the parts leading to its blossoming success.

 Why Scrum for me?

1.  I was first introduced to Scrum about three years ago. The framework I experienced in support of the creative process was so similar to what I had experienced in my own company and its creative processes years ago that I was overcome with wafts of déjà vu. Scrum mirrors in many ways the original collegial gatherings of old design and architecture charrettes, which most A&D firms have lost or abandoned over the years. The camaraderie, appreciative critique and inquiry and team participative creativity of those days I find can be present and emergent in the current practice of agile.  Finally a vehicle for creativity in the corporate world!
2. Having spent years creating workplaces for software and hardware engineers I have come to the conclusion that there is a huge mismatch, a chasm of incongruence, between the workplace delivered and the real workplace needed by the knowledge workers within them. Watching the systemic business process changes emerging from Scrum further cements my belief in its application and success. However, Scrum’s success is only as possible as it is fed, supported and under the umbrella of the larger concepts of Agile.
   Agile has four overarching principles, paraphrased from the Agile Manifesto:   

• Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
• Completed functionality over comprehensive documentation
• Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
• Responding to change over following a planThat is, while there is value in the items on the right, the items on the left matter more.    

It is clear that without these principles Scrum would fail and that, conversely, the very adherence to the framework of Scrum is  inherently enacts the  principles. They are symbiotic concepts, one dependent on the other for success.

3.

I have come across emerging interest in Agile and Scrum in both of the traditional worlds of Organizational Development (OD) and Project Management (PM). OD comes at it from interest in the new organizational behaviors they represent that are seemingly compatible with trending in change and change management. PM’s interest is from the new project  process perspective. Unfortunately I see each interest looking at it mostly within their current siloed points of view. Scrum is not interested in change per se and adamantly eschews the labels of process and methodology, favoring the term “framework” instead.

But Scrum is not perfect. My research and discussions inform my current thinking. Scrum and Agile are only successful when there is a marriage of:

• A change to partnering and collaborative behavioral skills
• Adherence to the Scrum structural framework, including having the roles Scrum Master – team facilitator and  Product Owner/Manager embodied in two people, not in the same person.
• Respect and utilization of the Agile principles

There is a movement afoot within the agile community to take Scrum and Agile outside software development and into other parts and types of organizations, including non-profits. Stay tuned for my journey there.

Lately I’ve felt that I pushed myself so far out to the edge of the workplace transformation envelope that I am floating in the exosphere of space, barely able to be pulled back by gravity. It’s a lonely place out here. But finally I think I have company.

 The January/February 2010 issue CoreNet Global’s industry magazine The Leader published an article entitled “Moving beyond Alternative Workplace Strategy: After 20 Years Can AWS Finally Scale-Up?”, authored by Gagandeep Singh and Nadia Orawski, two Deloitte consultants. At last I have found some people who seem to “get it”.

Their definition of Alternative Workplace Strategies (AWS) is the current incarnation, “a combination of practices involving space design and usage, technology provision, and HR policies that allow work to be done from a variety of settings beyond the traditional office environment.”

 The gist of Singh and Orawski’s premise is that this is all well and good, and even though technology is well-advanced in support, a very small percentage of companies have successful implementations for an even smaller number of their population, mostly in pilots. Their rationale for this failure of large scale deployment, and I am in agreement though not stated as strongly by them, is the lack of commitment to large scale-up.

 What you do for a small, let’s stick our toe in the water and test the temperature pilot and what you do for full-blown, company-wide enactment is entirely different. The actions in the areas of intent, commitment and support, both in polices and attitude, change.

 Here are key points extracted from the article that illustrate both of our points of view. It’s almost as if I had written it myself. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve expressed that telework, et al, is not a one-off program but a new business process, a way of working, at a distance, over technology, that has now become business-as-usual. Hmmm – maybe they have read my site/blogs. Wouldn’t that be nice!

 Key points, the bold is my added emphasis, are:

 “Integration and alignment across enabling functions – Corporate Real Estate (CRE), Human Resources (HR), Information Technology (IT) and Finance. AWS often impacts and requires significant changes across HR, IT, CRE and Finance. In our experience … large scale deployment requires systemic and sustained enterprise wide cooperation across these “silos.”

Outside of transactional job categories, productivity is rarely measured in corporations, so improvements to productivity cannot be proven. This is a “red herring” issue and should be stated as such.

 … AWS is not a space program but rather a shift in how people are “expected” to work (even if in reality they are already working differently than expected).

 … the “enterprise mandate” approach relies on a compelling business case with high-level executive sponsorship for large-scale time-bound change.

 A sustainable “business-as-usual end state … AWS programs falter due to their inability to evolve from a project focused approach to an on-going “business as usual” state that would transform AWS from being the “alternative” to being the “norm”.

 … AWS needs to become a part of day to day operations and not be a special project that requires large teams of specialists and the associated costs.”

 To this I would add one more key ingredient necessary for success of Alternative Workplace Strategies – Congruous Branding and Culture

You have to walk the talk. Most companies publically espouse their “want-to-be” culture but fail to match reality with the cultural vision. Lofty goals replete with corporate altruism are wonderful, and necessary. However, a company that refuses to be real about the gap between what they ‘want to be’ and ‘what they are’ can never bridge that chasm. A strategy or plan based upon a false gap analysis leads to invalidation of purpose, a waste of valuable time, energy and money and, no matter how well branded, funded and supported, ultimately experiences failure through incongruity.

If you haven’t poked your head into a public library recently, you are in for a big surprise. These are not your ‘Marian the Librarian’ libraries of old with row upon row of book stacks and users sitting at long wood tables in high-backed, uncomfortable wood chairs, while shushed by matron-esque librarians. Today’s libraries are hustling, bustling places of reading, writing, computing, group study, collaboration and net surfing.

Is this just a fantasy of mine? No Way! Case in point, while out for a drive on a recent Sunday I passed a building that caught my interest. The architecture was new and different, reminiscent of the 60’s modernism with some late 80’s deconstructivism thrown in. A mix of corrugated siding, colorful stucco, high windows and a soaring buttressed fascia where I expected to see the word DINER floating above. But instead of a sign denoting an eating establishment, there was the word LIBRARY flying across the entrance.

Picture courtesy of Tully Library Archives 

I did a U-ie, turned into the parking lot and made three circles around as I and others were looking for an open spot in the full lot. Excited to find this much activity, I couldn’t wait to see what was inside. I wasn’t disappointed.

The Tully Community Library

Entering, you are greeted by a hubbub of activity and space designed to invite, excite and enhance your library experience. Huge clear story windows, exposed structure and mobile art pieces float in the upper spaces, carry on the external theme and add light and energy to the entire facility.

Picture courtesy of Tully Library Archives

But the real energy was generated by the space and people below. This is a new age happening – Guttenberg reborn for the second millennium – present in:

• A plethora of computer stations, used by all ages, seemingly sprinkled about at every opportunity.
• A separate “Tech Room” with computers set up classroom style, a ‘quiet’ space with a posted sign of  “drinks must have lids”
• Plenty of tables with electric outlets for plugging in laptops
• Reservable “Group Study” rooms; this day one was filled with teens and pizza boxes; another with tots on a blanket on the floor playing games
• An “Internet Café”, tables and flooring material designating a more obvious eating and reading area
• “Teen” rooms and kid areas
• Window benches! My favorite reading space, where I jotted down notes for this article.
• Electronic, self-serve check-out stations
• Lots of comfy or sturdy chairs for reading, whichever is your preference
• Plenty of cheerful help from the staff, each went beyond my question with information and resources

I even spotted one table with a school arts and crafts assignment in progress. Not your “typical” library activity of the past, but seemingly right in place in this more-than-a-library, community setting.

Photo courtesy of Catherine Adams Lee 

The space has a wonderful airy feeling created by plenty of windows providing natural light. The high ceilings do dual duty of attitudinal buoyancy and sound dissipation allowing for hushed and semi-hushed areas. Just about every seating setting imaginable is liberally distributed amongst the shelves of books for reading, learning, studying, collaborating, working and community – a new [work] place at its best.

 Best of all as on that day, for every one of the 70 full parking spaces, there can be two to three times as many people using and enjoying the space. Proof that places designed beyond the old ‘box’ of one defined purpose or people succeed, hugely. Come and enjoy the rebirth. It’s open to everyone. It’s today’s public library.

 Post Scripts:

1. For more on the Tully Community Branch Library, San Jose, California
   http://www.sjlibrary.org/about/locations/tully/index.htm
2. More pictures of the Tully Community Library   
   http://www.flickr.com/photos/sanjoselibrary/sets/72157604815848114/ .
3. This library is not just a random occurrence. In 2000 the people of the City of San Jose, California approved The Branch Library Bond Measure, providing $212 million over ten years, dedicated to the construction of six new and fourteen expanded branch libraries in San José.For more on the San Jose Public Library System
   http://www.sjlibrary.org/about/sjpl/index.htm 

I have adopted a tradition of celebrating the year change with a trip to a museum. This year I went to the de Young Museum in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco. The exhibit that captured my attention this year was the again one of textiles, “Amish Abstractions: Quilts from the Collection of Faith and Stephen Brown”.  Another year it was the Gees Bend Quilt exhibit at the Palace of Legion of Honor, SF. http://newworkplaces.com/blog3/2007/01/12/wrapping-up-the-old-year-2006/ .

I found the Amish quilts to be equally as intriguing as the Gees’ Bend for similar, and different, reasons. The similarity is the natural pursuit and need for self-expression through what is essentially a utilitarian medium, quilts, in a restricted culture that existed in isolation. It is the nature of that isolation – self chosen in the case of the Amish and imposed in the case of Gee’s Bend – that created the differences. The Amish’s isolation, being selective, was not complete and allowed for some of the outside world to seep in. Their designs were afforded the benefits of acquiring and incorporating new concepts while simultaneously allowing them to break rigid conventions of color and innovate pattern. Gee’s Bend’s forced confinement kept them from such exposure, yet also freed them up to create new and entirely different, free form versions devoid almost all traditional format. In both cases, I find the inherent and driving human need for outward expression of personal and individual self, in even the most restrictive or dire of circumstances, a lesson unto itself.

 My personal preference is toward the Amish quilts. Their design is, as commented on a wall plaque at the exhibit, is reminiscent of the Modernist and Op Art painters such as Victor Vasarley, Josef Albers, Paul Klee, Frank Stella and Piet Mondrian. In my twenties years I was a great fan of the Modernists, particularly Victor Vasarley. I had a poster of his ‘Games’ on the wall in my dorm room and still have copies of four of his color studies. Although my younger self might have preferred the single-minded pursuit of the pure color aesthetic by modernist painters, I now find the Amish quilts, which pre-date this art period, more exciting.

 

Welcome to the New Year, and New Decade!

Post scripts: 

1. Why these museum trips at the ends of the years? They provide me with perspective. Forcing me to see the world through others eyes, they afford me the opportunity to better reflect on where we have been the past year(s) and gain a greater understanding of where we are going. I highly recommend it.
2. For more on perspective and museums, check out my trip a few years back to The Getty. This is an updated version of a piece I wrote several years ago.
3. If anyone is still questioning the value of the arts in education, a closer look at some of the Amish quilts should erase that. Many of the designs are so intricate and precise that they clearly represent applicable skill exercises in mathematics, engineering and spatial visualization (see figures above and below).  There is an ever-growing body of evidence that the study and practice of music and art engender the skills necessary to advance mathematics and science creativity to the highest levels. In an ever-increasing world of creative and knowledge-based work, those of both genders that will lead and succeed will have acquired some of their abilities in this manner. Our continued elimination of these courses from our education system will have a direct cause and effect on the next generation of Americans’ ability to compete in the future.

I find museum trips very inspiring. Walking amongst the various works of art takes me out of mind and into the mind of the artist, forcing me to look at subjects through their eyes. A while back I had an encounter that was more than a passing enjoyment. It taught me a lesson that has stuck with me to this day.

I was visiting The Getty Center Museum in Los Angles, touring through the Impressionists section. When museums are busy, people form a self-organized approach to art viewing. Orderly and without instruction, they move around the room in a clock-wise (left to right) manner (at least for Western audiences). Pausing in front of each painting for a period of time, the length determined by how large the crowd is and, unspoken, by what the group deems as the right and polite amount of lingering time before moving on and letting the next person have a turn.

This day there was a moderate crowd, so people were moving at a fairly slow pace, but not slow enough to really stand and study the art. I usually make a point of seeking out Impressionist works in each museum and, moving along, I was delighted to encounter Claude Monet’s “The Portal of Rouen Cathedral in Morning Light”, 1894. Here is a link to The Getty’s blurb on the piece. http://www.getty.edu/art/gettyguide/artObjectDetails?artobj=142049.

Claude Monet, French, Rouen and Paris, 1894
Oil on canvas  39 3/8 x 25 9/16 in.

from The Getty Center, Los Angeles collection

Then I saw a couple of more works by other artists and rounding the room’s corner, there was another Monet in the middle of that wall. I suddenly had the urge, given the unusual opportunity created by the juxtaposition of the two paintings, to compare the two. So I stepped out of line and into the middle of the room. From this point I could look at the first painting and, with a turn of my head, see the other, with straight on views of each.

I stood there doing this a while, really studying the magnificence of his skill and comparing the pieces. Seeing famous works of art in person is an entirely different, and incomparable, experience to viewing slides in art history class or pictures in books. You really do need to go to a world class museum and see such world class, historic art.

Lost in admiring Monet’s brush stroke choices and creation of light of the Rouen, suddenly my concentration was broken by a tug on my sleeve. I looked around and there was the museum guard pulling on my arm. My first thought was of course, “what was I doing wrong?” But then he began motioning me with his head and said – to fully appreciated the picture, I had to stand back further. So I moved directly back and he then said, “No, you need to go sideways.” I took a step to the right and received the surprise of my life. The whole painting suddenly popped in 3-D!

I was awe-struck. Not in all of my years of art and architecture history classes did I recall having been told to do this, or in all of my years of looking at 2-D pictures had I truly seen this third dimension in his paintings. I looked back at the guard, my mouth agape, and he just smiled. He must have noticed that I had more of just a passing interest than the others shuffling along. He was relishing the opportunity to surprise and educate and I was equally happy and grateful. I then went back to the other Monets and did the same, looking at them diagonally. The same thing happened. Suddenly they took on a depth of field that could only be viewed in this way, in person. I seem to recall my best vantage point was at about a 75° angle.

Thought my amazement and appreciation for Monet as an artist grew exponentially, what has really stayed with me ever since is a lesson in perspective. That we can look at a thing, an object, and idea one way for a long time, and, then, something can come along and change our perception of it completely, and forever. But those moments don’t usually happen if we don’t go out of our way, out of our normal patterns and habits, our comfort zone, to greet them. If we do, if we take a step outside of our box, no matter how tiny, surprises will happen and we can have encounters, unanticipated, unforeseeable, and unimagined that will make positive change, give new meanings and add depth to our existence. New lessons we can take and apply to other things. New perspectives we can carry with us to enrich our consciousness and lives.

I am a believer in having FUN! Every once in awhile this blog will include things that tickle your fun and funny bone. Below is one of those times. Sent to me by my cousin Linda. Yes, I admit it. Everyone is true about me. Welcome to the 21st century!

 YOU KNOW YOU ARE LIVING IN 2009 when…

1.   You accidentally enter your password on the microwave.

2.   You haven’t played solitaire with real cards in years.

3.   You have a list of 15 phone numbers to reach your family of 3.

4.   You e-mail the person who works at the desk next to you.

5.   Your reason for not staying in touch with friends and family is that they don’t have e-mail addresses.

6.   You pull up in your own driveway and use your cell phone to see if anyone is home to help you carry in the groceries.

7.   Every commercial on television has a web site at the bottom of the screen.

8.   Leaving the house without your cell phone, which you didn’t have the first 20 or 30 (or 60) years of your life, is now a cause for panic and you turn around to go and get it.

10. You get up in the morning and go online before getting your coffee.

11. You start tilting your head sideways to smile. : )

12. You’re reading this and nodding and laughing.

13. Even worse, you know exactly to whom you are going to forward this message.

14. You are too busy to notice there was no #9 on this list.

15. You actually scrolled back up to check that there wasn’t a #9 on this list AND NOW YOU ARE LAUGHING at yourself.

Best for 2010. You know you are ready for it!

A fire in a night club in Russia kills 112 people. Seems someone (the owner, manager and yes, the fire works provider!) decided it would be great fun to set off fireworks inside the club and the ceiling and other flammables caught fire. Coupled with apparently inadequate exiting, it was a disaster waiting to happen.

Reading the various news articles it seems that Russia is not completely devoid of fire codes. But as reported:

Reuters: “More than 15,000 people die each year in fires across Russia and senior officials acknowledge that fire inspections are routinely used as a way to demand bribes from establishments, rather than enforce safety rules.”

API: “Enforcement of fire safety standards is infamously poor in Russia and there have been several catastrophic blazes at drug-treatment facilities, nursing homes, apartment buildings and nightclubs in recent years.”

Early in my career I caught a re-enactment of a similar Boston Cocoanut Grove night club fire in 1942 that killed 492. In fact, so horrible was this fire that is it regarded as the catalyst for our current US fire codes. Though there is a country-wide Universal Fire Code, each municipality is allowed to enact their own stronger, additional codes. To this day, Boston remains one of the cities with the strictest fires codes.  

Cocoanut Grove Fire - Boston Globe File Photo

Now I’m not a control person. But some things are just about sanity. In this area I come down on the side of our poor code enforcement people. In the office environment this job often falls on the facility manager.  Their job is a hard one.  Over the years I have heard these people called many expletives, including the office Gestapo and furniture Nazis, as they try to hinder fellow employees from moving around the cube partitions, completely covering the panels with flammables such as paper and non-fire retardant materials, to dumping furniture they didn’t want out of their offices and into the exit corridors.

There are rules and codes governing the placement of these things, mostly around safe exiting during fire or other disasters and fire prevention. Knowledge of these rules is not up to you. That is why there is such a thing as a Facilities Professional. They don’t do this for the fun of it or to make your day miserable. And they can’t do the job alone. They know that you, the employee, can’t be expected to have all the knowledge they do. But you can have the knowledge of personal responsibility and your part in the safety system. Think before you act. Ask others before you endanger them and your self.

If you still don’t feel you have any responsibility, here again is the Wikipedia link with a good description. I am still looking for the documentary I saw. The film is very good. Good enough that it scared the [expletive] out of me and made me a life long proponent of fire codes. So far the Internet consensus is that it was an HBO of A&E film. If anyone knows how to find it and especially where to get a copy, please let me know.  I did come across this 9 minute clip . It’s good enough

To help with your cognitive awareness around places you inhabit, here is a short list of codes that came out of that tragedy. Knowing about these will go along way in your understanding and respect for the codes and the people who must design and maintain these spaces. Having this knowledge is also why there is a difference between residential versus commercial/business designers, architects and contractors and office managers versus professional facility managers.

• Exit doors must swing out; panic bars and good exit signage
• Buildings with revolving doors must also have swinging doors along side
• Automatic sprinklers in specific types of usage spaces including restaurants and large public places
• Spaces of a certain size (over 3000 sq feet in offices) and of certain functions (like restaurants, night clubs, other public places) must have a least 2 exits. There are also codes around how far apart they need to be, obstructions about path of travel and a whole host of others rules, all to ensure you can safely exit in case of a disaster – fire, earthquake, etc. …
• Flame-retardation of materials – including wall, ceiling, floors, light fixtures and furniture

These codes are for your safety. Still one of the best preventions is you – and your participation. Be aware of where you are, where the exits are in places like planes, hotels, restaurants, arenas, churches – any place where people congregate. Know what to do to save your life. Be prepared. Be safe.

“Night owls are smarter than other people, and now we may know why.” states the first line in of the article, “The Evolution of Night Owls”  in Psychology Today magazine, December 2009, by Matthew Hutson, staff news editor. Seems they have now found a correlation between staying up late and high IQs. The “very bright” stay up later and rise later than the “very dull” (their labels, not mine). The article sites Satoshi Kanazawa, a psychologist at the London School of Economics and Political Science, who argues,

“he has data showing that people with higher IQs are more likely to have values and preferences that just didn’t make sense for our ancestors to embrace. One of those is staying up late.”

Well, I have always thought that people who called 8:00 a.m. Monday morning staff meetings were, well, dumb and now I have proof!  All snarking aside, I did my own personal study around this when I was in college. I have never being an early morning person. My father was a night owl too. So was my mother’s mother. It’s genetic. So having to make early morning classes was always a struggle. My worst was history of art and architecture, 8 a.m., and then they turned the lights off for the slides to boot. Lots of head bobbing in that class.

  One year I did an experiment. My hypothesis was that it wasn’t about the amount of sleep, but rather the hours on the clock I slept. So I set up a schedule and parameters – six hours of sleep a night (hey, it was college). The first week 11:00 p.m. to 5:00 a.m.; the second, midnight to 6 a.m.; the last week. 1:00 a.m. to 7:00 a.m. Needless to say I woke more refreshed, alert and was more productive during the day with the latest schedule. Another indicator, with the 5a.m. rising I usually woke up feeling slightly nauseous. The 7a.m. wake up, no problem.

 I have since experimented further. Left to my own devices, no boundaries on bedtime and no alarm upon waking, I will naturally gravitate to the later hours. Also, if I truly allow myself to do this for an extended period of time, I will start to wake up with the seasonal sunrise. This means in the summer I do get up at the crack of dawn without an alarm clock, happy to greet the early summer days. Doesn’t that just seem smarter?!

The other day I caught a piece of an Oprah episode held at the Texas State Fair. She and her best friend Gayle were judging a cooking contest. I came in at the end and they were down to the last two contestants. Oprah liked one dish and Gayle the other and they couldn’t decide who the winner was to be. Oprah was saying “I’m not backing down” and Gayle was saying the same. This went on several times and each time neither was giving in.

In the end they declared a tie. Each contestant won and the sponsor supposedly wonderfully donated a second big and expensive prize. The solution wound up essentially a best of class rather than one top overall winner. An approach I concur with, making this a competition of excellence rather than perfection, as there was no defined criteria for the win.

A couple of days later another option was presented to me. I was having coffee with a business associate and we were discussing his company, how all of his employees were working at a distance, some of whom he had employed for several years and he had never met. Talking about the pros and cons of conducting business in this manner, he expressed some difficulty with managing remotely but, as I listened further, there were no complaints about communication. I surmised that having been a VP of Global Real Estate for many years he had learned the skill of engaging people at a distance.

He agreed, said he had been negotiating leases for years around the world and he was very adept at negotiation over the phone. He had a recent example of his skill. He had just completed the sale of his company to a larger one in another state. During the final phases of the sale price determination he was in an on-the-phone negotiation and they were down to the wire, but still $2500 apart. With the sale being somewhere nicely in six figures and months of talking behind them, one would think a difference of $2500 was insignificant, but each party refused to back down.

It was partly a matter of saving face and, perhaps a bigger part, a definer of their future relationship as he, the old owner, would now be an employee to the new owners. If either backed down now, one or the other would be considered a push-over and probably wind up being taken advantage of or repeating this scenario throughout their business relationship. Also, to this gentleman’s mind, if they were going to quibble about this insignificant a point, he really didn’t want to do business with them and the deal would be off. So, what to do?

Here is his idea for brinkmanship and remember, he has been through this hundreds of times. Toss a coin. Yes, you are reading this right. Just toss a coin. This way both save face. It is up to the whim of the universe, to chance. Neither has to back down, the conflict is resolved and they can move on, without enmity or animosity, neither feeling slighted, nor the loser – all with a simple win-win tactic.

So Oprah and Gayle, the next time you find yourselves in a similar position, just toss a coin. Oh, by the way, he indicated that he tossed the coin, it came up heads and he won. Either way, since it was over the phone, the other person had to trust that was what really happened, and they did – another relationship exercise. Try it gals.

I have made the drive from Northern California, where I live, to Southern California many times. Usually on the return leg, I take the Highway 101 route and make a point of stopping in Buellton to visit the Andersen Soup company. Anderson has been making soup, most famously pea soup, since 1924 when Anton and Juliette Andersen opened their first restaurant called “Andersen’s Electric Cafe,” in honor of their prized possession, a new electric stove. (That’s a technology perspective make).

Buellton is situated just north of where Highway 1/Highway 101 turns inland for a spell and then splits apart. Highway 1 mostly follows the Pacific coast and Highway 101 forms the central business route to the SF Bay Area. If you are traveling 101 the central length of CA, just north of Santa Barbara you can’t avoid driving past Buellton. Take the Highway 245 exit, which is also the way to the town of Solvang, a quaint Danish-heritage tourist destination, and of more current interest, the gateway to the Santa Ynez Valley wine region where the movie “Sideways” was filmed.    

The Andersen Soup restaurant and store is one block west off the exit. The restaurant entrance first takes you through the store filled with all things Andersen and wonderful additions such as the year-round Christmas Store, samplings of the Danish Blue Delft you find in abundance up the road in Solvang, Andersen’s fruit wines (I bought the Honeymead which is better over ice cream than straight drinking), books on local color, a bakery, lots of other stuff and, of course, Pea Soup –  cans of both regular and bacon versions and bags of dried split peas for making your own soup at home.

Of particular interest to me was the memory that, in bygone years, Andersen’s also made a Vichyssoise soup that I loved. Vichyssoise is a cold potato soup. Andersen’s was rich, creamy and tasty. No bland potato soup here. You can still find the cans of Pea, and even Tomato, soups in most grocery stores. However, I recall looking for the Vichyssoise version a few years back with no luck.

Finding myself at its source, I asked about it and received a blank ”HUH?!” reply in return. So a pulled a book of Andersen’s history and recipes from their self in search for my memory. No recipe was included and but I did find an old black and white picture of the restaurant’s menu which listed the Vichyssoise along with potato, pea, pea with bacon and tomato. Showing the picture to the women behind the counter, I just received a shrug. She did ask another women about it and I received a similar ‘whatever’ shrug.

Oh well. Time marches on. And though I am sure that the cold potato soup would only be a sometime purchase, as is the pea soup, due to its high salt content, something I watch much more carefully now, it would be nice to have that treat on occasion. I have sent an email to the company to see if my memory is correct or just a transposed figment of my imagination. As of this posting, no reply. In any case, if you are driving past Buellton, I recommend a stop at Pea Soups Andersen for a blast from the past and a good, hearty meal at a reasonable price.