(mid-August 2022)
(Listen to this entry's prelude.)
August began with me running into a family of turkeys on my way to the bus stop in the morning.
I wonder what brings them out of the farm fields and south of Milwaukee Street to the houses and stretches of concrete. You’d think there’d be plenty of insects and berries in the wilder, wooded part of the neighborhood. It looks like they’re growing soy at the Voit farm this year and I wonder if it’s a turkey repellent.
I hope that hen teaches those jakes and/or jennies how to cross the street. There are some real maniacs driving through the neighborhood these days. People run red lights more than they used to, it seems, and rolling stops seem to be taken at higher speeds as well.
While I am on the subject of birds, I present this little one.
I think it’s a goldfinch but don’t quote me on that. It ran into one of our windows and then held onto the screen for a while until it got recombobulated. I saw it fly off into the distance so I assume the collision caused only temporary discombobulation.
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While I haven’t been to the movies lately, I did take the opportunity to watch one at home that was on my to-watch list.
Belladonna of Sadness is a Japanese animated feature from 1973 and is something of a cult classic. The internet says that it was based on Satanism and Witchcraft written by Jules Michelet and published in 1862. I suspect that it’s more the case that the book provided a lot of inspiration rather than anything like a plot.
It tells the tale of Jeanne and Jean, young newlyweds in medieval France. After being joined in matrimony, they approach the local lord to get his blessings. Instead of bestowing them, he asserts the right of first night and deflowers Jeanne. The story continues with Jeanne essentially making a pact with the Devil who comes to her as a small phallic creature who playfully dives underneath her clothes and whispers sweet promises.
Jeanne gains powers but her greed eventually does her in as she is burned at the stake. However, she hadn’t repented so her evil spirit escapes her body and infects the villagers. Centuries later the malignancy in the people gives rise to the French Revolution.
This is definitely a weird one. Not only is the story a strange, supernatural one but the animation alternates between scenes where everything is in motion and others in which everything is static and more like a comic book. I am not sure if this was a deliberate stylistic choice or the result of budgetary constraints. Regardless, the shifts were not obtrusive and didn’t cause to me enjoy the film any less.
It was at times fun and playful while disturbing at others. With a few rape scenes, I bet Sam Peckinpah approved. But they were done in a very psychedelic, impressionistic rather than graphic way.
I enjoyed the trip it took me on.
In a previous entry, I noted that I needed a new deck and had demolished the old one earlier this year. A friend of mine who was a carpenter in a former life stopped by on two consecutive weekends and now we have a new deck.
I unknowingly ordered narrow decking so we went through a lot of screws. The funny thing is that we chronically underestimated how many we’d need so I found myself making multiple trips to Menard’s one day.
“Well, 2 more boxes oughta do it,” I’d say.
And of course they only lasted for about 2 and a half rows of screws. (The boards are 16’ long with the screws spaced 16”.) So I’d go back to the store to grab another couple boxes. Repeat stoopid look on my face and another trip to store.
I ended up building the stairs with pre-cut stringers. Unsurprisingly, they came out on the half-assed side but they are still better than a single 18” drop to the lawn.
It was really nice to put the chairs back out (the Frau bought new cushions for the occasion) and enjoy a beer on the new deck.
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Moving those concrete pads around required the use of muscles that I didn’t know I had. Afterwards, I felt sore in places I didn’t know it was possible to feel soreness at. Now I’ve got to figure out what to plant on either side of the stairs and what to do with a pile of dirt and sod.
The last thing left is to trim the deck boards. If you look hard, you can see that they extend slightly beyond the joist. Not a big deal and I’ll dig out my chalk line one day to get it done.
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My Frau and I went to the Great Taste of the Midwest a few days ago. The Great Taste is a beer festival here in Madison that attracts several thousand thirsty beer lovers every year. I started going in the latter half of the 1990s before taking a lengthy break and getting on with life. And then at some point in the recent past we started going. One can stand in line at ticket outlet in May for a hours to get tickets or enter a lottery for them. (Or, if you know local brewers, you can usually get tickets from them.) This year the Frau won the lottery.
Somewhere just shy of 200 breweries attend the festival which equates to somewhere between 1,000-2,000 brews to sample. In addition to beer, there is also a smattering of cider and mead to be had.
When I started attending in 1997 or so, the festival was much smaller so wandering around and stopping in at the tables in a more or less random fashion was easy. These days, with so many drinks to sample and so many more people in attendance, I plot a course for my festival using the handy dandy program that is published a few days beforehand.
I suppose this is also a reaction to the most popular craft beer styles holding no appeal for me. IPAs that taste like Hawaiian Punch, sour beer loaded with lactose & fruit, and big stouts that have been aged in bourbon barrel are just not my thing so I scour the program for beers that provide a taste that is all too rare: smoke.
I love smoke beers so I plot a course that will take me to every brewery at the fest offering one which isn’t very many. After that I noted where I could expect to find an unfruited Gose. Gose is a sour German wheat beer traditionally brewed with water of high salinity and with some coriander added. Unfortunately, American brewers generally load their versions up with fruit.
Beyond these 2 styles, I wanted to try some meads since I’ve been drinking the stuff lately and then I’d just follow my nose and see what else was on offer that I found appealing.
My first sample was a Gose courtesy of Obscurity Brewing and Mead from down in Elburn, Illinois.
We made our way to the Vertue Cider table expecting a certain mead to be there but found that it wasn’t. Instead we came away with samples of lavender/bee pollen apple cider which was a lovely purple.
Very tasty stuff!
There were 2 or 3 breweries that had a Grodziskie on tap.
Grodziskie is a Polish beer style that is brewed with 100% smoked wheat. When done traditionally, it’s light, smoky, with a fair amount of hops, and lots of fizz. A perfect drink for a hot summer day. There were a couple this year and they were both rather tasty.
There were, of course, some beers that were rather dreadful. Another style that I love is dark lager and I sampled those I found as I meandered from tent to tent. A couple tasted like they had just finished cooking and hadn’t aged but 5 minutes instead of a minimum of 2 weeks, though 8 is best.
On our way out, we stopped in at Obscurity again where I sampled their braggots.
The hefeweizen braggot was really good with a dry honey base overlaid with a big wheaty, banana layer from the hefeweizen. To my surprise, it was their IPA braggot that I enjoyed the most. Hops provided a nice combination of pine and fruit while the dryness of the mead kept things from getting cloying.
The Great Taste was a good time and the good beers outnumbered the bad ones. I hear there were at least a couple of dill pickle sour beer that we missed so I will have to keep on the lookout for those and other such oddities next year.
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Bonus photo. This time it’s of a chipmunk sitting on a gargoyle out on our front stoop. The gargoyle was crafted by my grandmother.
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