(late May 2022)
(Watch this entry's prelude.)
One thing on my to-do list for 2022 was to finally read The Lord of the Rings. I'd read The Hobbit back in 7th grade and had attempted Tolkien's magnum opus about 20 years ago when Peter Jackson's movies were all the rage. At about halfway through The Two Towers I realized that I just couldn't take it anymore.
Considering I've been playing medieval fantasy role-playing games like Dungeons & Dragons for most of my life, you'd think I'd be an aficionado of fantasy literature but I can't stand the stuff, generally speaking. Honestly, when I think back, I just cannot recall what it was that caused me to put down The Two Towers.
One day last fall I was role playing with the usual gaming suspects and the topic turned to the forthcoming TV series on Amazon which takes place in Tolkien's world of Middle Earth. I don't think this series is based on any specific book by Tolkien but rather takes bits and pieces from his various works and throws them together. Well, everyone but me had read The Lord of the Rings and thusly I was pretty lost in that conversation and had little to contribute beyond the simplistic questions of a novice nerd. Vowing to never be in such a position again, I resolved to get it under my belt once and for all come the new year.
Well, the new year came and I put paid to my resolution. I think being older and having read more medieval works made it easier. The books were fine and it was interesting to compare and contrast them to the films. I did have a lot of questions about various characters and events and some were answered in a car ride with a friend of mine who took about 25 miles to explain some things to me. (Roughly just east of Lake Mills to about Oconomowoc.) However, some of my questions were left unanswered and I was told to read The Silmarillion, another book by Tolkien in which he lays out his world in more detail including its creation by a godhead named Eru Ilúvatar and his minions which seem to roughly correspond to the hierarchy of angels in Catholic lore. (Seraphim, cherubim, archangels, etc.)
The Silmarillion is a lengthy tome and it's my understanding that some of it has that Book of Genesis feel with a bunch of so-and-so begat so-and-so kind of lists which does not make for the most exciting reading for me. Maybe next year.
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Back in late April or early May the botanist types at Olbrich Botanical Gardens here in Madison anxiously announced that one of their amorphophallus titanium specimens was preparing to bloom. Also known as the corpse flower, its impending blossoming was all over the news as it does so only once every 10-12 years and it lasts for a mere 24-48 hours. While in bloom, it releases an odor redolent of rotting flesh, hence the name.
I readily admit that I kept an eye on the news for notice of the flower having opened after initial reports came through saying that it was immanent. Olbrich Gardens is just a short bike ride from home and, while smelling the aroma of a corpse flower wasn't exactly on my bucket list, it is something of a rarity and I don't have that many blooms left in my lifetime.
***Peter Gabriel voice***
And made a present of the amorphophallus
To the botanical gardens at Olbrich
And then one day the word came down that Thunderbirds were go. I took half a day off from work and biked down to the gardens where I found my place in line - along with a couple hundred other people who were keen on getting a noseful of the putrescence.
After 45 minutes or so a gentleman who was walking by approached the lovely young women in front of me and admonished them that it took him about 3 hours from the time he got in line to the time he saw the flower.
Uff da!
Perhaps this was his way of hitting on them. "Hey babes, is standing in line boring you? Why don't you come with, me. I've got air conditioning back at my place."
Although it didn't rain, it was quite hot out. I had neglected to bring my headphones so I couldn't listen to the radio or a story on my phone. Instead I was treated to the whining of little children who were bored out of their skulls and incessantly petitioning their parents to go get ice cream instead. Oh, and I watched the birds and rabbits that call the grounds home or, at least, the ones that had stopped in that day for a visit.
Roughly two and a half hours later I found myself inside the conservatory. I crossed the bridge where my Frau and I exchanged our wedding vows and could see the flower in the distance as the odd quail wandered the mini-tropical forest off to one side. Then it was my turn to get up close to the flower.
Did I lean in and take a big whiff? You bet I did. What did it smell like? To me, it had the smell of a dead mouse that you found too late and so it sat rotting away in a box that you just opened. It wasn't very pungent but I suppose it was plenty to attract pollinators.
When I left, the line outside was significantly longer than when I got there. The Gardens extended their hours and people waited up to 4 hours to get a sniff.
********
When mid-May rolled around it had been nearly a week and a half since I'd attended a concert so my Frau and I jumped into my new (i.e. – gently used) car and we went west as Horace Greeley exhorted. We got as far as Iowa.
Our destination was Iowa City and the Englert Theatre where we were to see a performance by Valerie June. But first we stopped in Cedar Rapids.
The city is home to the African American Museum of Iowa which lies on the shore of the Cedar River. Neither of us had ever been to Cedar Rapids so it was nice to be somewhere completely new to us.
It was a really neat place with a series of permanent exhibits and one rotating exhibit that changed annually.
Things started with Africa before moving onto the Middle Passage and slavery in the United States.
Being a museum about African-Americans in Iowa, the emphasis on was black Iowans but there was plenty of general info.
I had no idea that there were sit-ins in Iowa. I suppose they were staged all over the country but when I think of a lunch counter sit-in, I think of the one at Woolworth's in Greensboro, N.C. in February 1960. However, sit-ins were staged at the Katz Drug Store in Des Moines in 1948-49 and the museum had a mockup of the lunch counter there.
The rotating exhibit was all about redlining and was quite extensive. It did a really nice job of explaining housing discrimination through the years and would illustrate national trends with specific examples from the Hawkeye State.
In addition to doing a great job of integrating Iowa-specific history with the larger narrative of African-Americans in the United States, the museum also mixed portrayals of injustice with success stories and did so well. For every display of the horrors visited upon black people in this country, there was another celebrating their resilience and triumphs.
A most interesting and informative beginning to our weekend.
We then headed across the river to:
I had no idea that Cedar Rapids was home to an ethnic enclave of Czechs. Czech Village is a nice, cozy neighborhood full of shops and restaurants. There were plenty of people wandering in and out of the stores and filling the seats at restaurants and taverns.
The familiar heraldic lion was a common sight.
We were hungry and thirsty so we stopped in at Lion Bridge Brewing Company to slake our thirst and satisfy our hunger. There were several beers on offer that sounded appealing so we got a flight to sample them all.
I was happy to see that, in addition to trendier beer styles, they paid tribute to the neighborhood with a couple of Czech-style beers including a pilsner which was very, very tasty. The helles brewed with smoked malt was wonderful and full of smoky goodness. Another brew I found to be tasty was a coffee-laced Kölsch with its light body and luscious coffee roastiness.
The food was good too. My Frau and I enjoyed our hamburgers smeared with jalapeno beer cheese.
After lunch we walked down the street and discovered Sykora Bakery. I was not familiar with Czech pastries but was unsurprised to find a lot of poppy seed fillings and a variety of kolaches.
With our hands full of bags and boxes, we headed to the car. The afternoon had passed swiftly and we still had to make our way to Iowa City.
Bonus photo. I used a similar picture with flares in a previous entry. But Piper looks very cute here so I had to throw it in.
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