31 March, 2023

Et tu, Trayx?

After two TV stories featuring a very alien villain, Dreams of Empire begins with a brief retelling of Shakespeare's The Tragedy of Julius Caesar set far, far away in time and space. The Haddron Republic is in crisis with one member of its ruling triumvirate, the familiarly named Hans Kesar, having decided that he is going make himself Consul General for life. All for the good of the republic, you understand.

His friend and co-consul, Milton Trayx, an ex-military man, speaks out against Kesar and Haddron is thrown headlong into civil war. Trayx and the Republicans prove victorious. After the loss of millions of lives, Kesar is brought to justice and sentenced to life imprisonment rather than death, lest he be martyred.

As they carried Kesar from the courtroom and were taking him away, a bomb goes off close to him in a hallway.

It is now several years after the trial as the Doctor, Victoria, and Jamie land in an oddly anachronistic castle. Think a medieval stronghold fitted with surveillance cameras, computers, et al. It turns out to be Santespri, a Haddron military fortress on an asteroid that has been turned into a prison for Kesar and his closest, most loyal supporters. Although he survived the blast after his trial**, it has left him severely disfigured and so he wears a mask.

There is subterfuge afoot as we witness cloaked figures meet in secret followed by murder. And so the TARDIS crew, in grand fashion, find themselves being accused of a killing. But they're quickly acquitted and the tale becomes a whodunit with the Doctor lending his Sherlock Holmes services to Trayx and the authorities.

Soon enough, however, they discover that a ship is approaching Santespri. Attempts to call for help are foiled and the story veers off into base under siege territory.

I found Dreams of Empire to be a really fun story. The murder mystery had lots of political overtones for color and I enjoyed how Richards gradually built up the suspense with the unknown ship's slow approach to Santespri. I appreciated that neither Trayx nor Kesar came across as stereotypical leaders simply hellbent on power. Trayx is not some George Patton or Curtis LeMay type (not sure who the English equivalents are) who knows only how to kill and Kesar came across as misguided rather than power hungry.

There's a scene that takes place just before civil war breaks out where the triumvirat meets at one of their homes and we see friendships strained to the breaking point over matters of state. I found this scene rather poignant despite the fact that an epic, tragic tale was being condensed into 17 or so pages. That scene just felt solemn and like it was allowed to unfold at its own pace rather than being forced. Richards is a very good writer and this scene really stands out for me.

Also of note is that the Doctor has a newly-minted sonic screwdriver here despite it not having been shown on TV yet, in the world of the story. Our heroes are well-written and the story is just a nice mix of mystery, political intrigue, and action-thriller. A fine read.

**Or did he...?

The Fruit of the Dragon

My Frau is very kind and bought me a dragon fruit to try.

It's the fruit of a cactus indigenous to Central America. Apparently there are various varieties but the most common to be found in the United States is the purple one like I was given. Those bits that look like scales gave the fruit its common name.

 
Cutting it open revealed white flesh speckled with black seeds. "Ooh, look! Poppy seed filling!"
 
I just spooned the stuff out and ate it. The flesh was firm and very juicy. A small pool of juice immediately formed after I scooped some of flesh out. It had a slight sour tang, a hint of sweetness, and absolutely no flavor. It must have not been ripe - even after sitting around for a few days. Well, we'll have to get another one and let it ripen on the counter even longer.

Oops.

The Corona Diaries Vol. 78: In the Halloween Spirit

(early November 2022)
 
(Watch the prelude.)

  

On my way home from up north, I made a quick stop at a liquor store to get some beer from the northwestern part of the state that is unavailable in Madison. Some of these brands were seen on store shelves down south in the past but no longer while others have always only been sold in their home region.

While it would be nice and convenient to have these brands at my local liquor store, I have really come to appreciate that some things are not at my fingertips and that they simply require travel to experience. I like regional variation. It’s fun and alluring to go somewhere and find different beers, different foods, etc. than I get in Madison.

I had hoped to stop in at Valkyrie Brewing but my schedule precluded a visit. Same goes for the Northwoods Brewpub. Still, the prospect of Northwoods’ rye ale and Valkyrie’s smoked Oktoberfest make fall treks up north all the more alluring.

Rather than jumping on the interstate as soon as I could, I took some back roads to Osseo where I would catch I-94. I drove through the small town of Cleghorn which is just a short jaunt east of the former site of Hadleyville, which I detailed in a previous entry. Cleghorn is surely home to a few hundred people at most and has one crossroads with no stoplights.

Up until recently, it didn’t even have a tavern, to the best of my knowledge. The main part of town is simply an abandoned building and a store which is now a bar. Here’s that abandoned building.

This was just one of those trips where I decided that I would pull over if I drove by anything that even remotely piqued my interest.

I have a weird affection for Cleghorn despite never having actually done much beyond driving through it. It’s like a ghost town for me because I don’t think I’ve ever seen a human being there. I’ve seen cars drive through it, seen them parked outside of places knowing there are living, breathing persons inside but I have never seen them.

It is like a little game I play. I take the back roads to drive through the town to see if there are actually any people around.

********

My initial plan had been to spend another day up north but things were changed when I recalled that I had a ticket to see the 1977 Italian horror film, Suspiria, on the big screen. But it was not to simply be a film screening. Claudio Simonetti's Goblin would be performing the soundtrack live! Simonetti was in the original line-up of Goblin that composed the music for the film back in ’77.


That’s not Madison as my phone is not capable of taking decent photographs under concert conditions and, sadly, I haven’t found any online.

It had been a while since I’d seen the original Suspiria and it was just a lot of fun to watch it with all of the super blood red reds and other brilliant colors that it’s known for. What a treat to have a live score!

After the movie was done, the band continued performing for another hour and a half or so. They seemed very enthusiastic – happy to be playing in front of an audience. Bassist Cecilia Nappo was bopping all around her part of the stage and Claudio Simonetti almost seemed content to play into the wee hours. He was proud of his music and thrilled to play for people.

This was a couple days before Halloween but the students were out in full force that night, lining up at bars and fully costumed. I had no problems except for the fact that the last bus had left 15 minutes or so after I stepped out of the theatre. Hopefully the new network redesign and the introduction of BRT will keep this from happening in the future.

A bit of the show is on Youtube.

 

********


The next day I indulged in more seasonal film goodness by going to see From Beyond.

Director Stuart Gordon was a Chicago native but he attended UW-Madison and became heavily involved in the theater scene. He founded Broom Street Theater in 1969 and it is still around today. I suspect most people know him as the guy that adapted a couple H.P. Lovecraft stories for the big screen including From Beyond.

It's a fairly typical mid-80s horror film with plenty of body horror. Like Suspiria, I hadn’t seen it in ages and I just had a blast watching it on the big screen.

 

********

The Halloween theme carried on after the holiday itself had come and gone. For starters, my friends and I began a game of the Alien role-playing game.


It is based on the film franchise with plenty of references to the movies. I played Leah Davis, the pilot of a freighter ship named the USCSS Montero. My crew and I are on a delivery run and were put into cryogenic suspension as the voyage to our destination would take quite a while.

We awoke to discover that we were nowhere near the planet that was to take our delivery. Instead, the ship’s computer had re-routed us to intercept a scientific research vessel called the Cronus that had been missing for nearly 75 years. Our mission to deliver a shipment of Helium-3 had been changed by our corporate masters at Weyland-Yutani to recovering data from the Cronus' computers, rescuing any remaining crew, and towing the ship back to dock, if possible.


We found the Cronus in bad shape. No breathable air, no lights, and lots of destruction and dried blood. Although the ship’s synthetic (i.e. – robot) was mostly functional.

I got a bit anxious and nervous while playing it. One of the characters from my ship had a motion sensor and detected something for just a moment before we found the remaining crew of the Cronus in cryo suspension. So, there’s an unknown presence on the loose, we had to wait a while for the other crew to awaken from their slumbers, and the synthetic on the Cronus isn’t quite right and won’t answer all of our questions. It was only a matter of time before something bad happens.

Will we make it back to the Montero before all hell broke loose?

********

The final seasonal thing that I did was to make a visit to Exquisite Corpse, Madison’s home of surreal taxidermy, with a friend.

Exquisite Corpse was opened by Marcia Field last year after a diagnosis of terminal cancer. She died back in August. Originally from Chicago just like Stuart Gordon, Field moved to Madison in 2001 and it sounds like she always had something of a morbid curiosity which she parlayed into a love of taxidermy some 10-12 years ago, it seems. I can’t find an exact year.


This one is called “Sacred Heart” and she described it as a homage to her first pacemaker which she had implanted while she was in her 40s.

Most of her work was influenced by her illness, her awareness of how fleeting life is.


This one is “The Ascension or Tenth Life” and features a cat atop a Catholic Last Rites kit.

Here are some chipmunk bones in tiny vials set as earrings.


This one is still personal, I suppose, but also political – “Goebbels’ Wet Dream or The Exterminator”.

A commentary on anti-Semitism featuring a muskrat, a Zyklon B can, et al. It illustrates how the Nazis would portray Jews at rats in their propaganda. Note the 2 volumes of MAUS by Art Spiegelman on the right.

For a mere $40 you can have what looks to be preserved cow eyes as a paperweight, I suppose.

There was a trio of taxidermy dioramas by guest artist Angela Webster. Here’s “Lab Rat Revenge”. Poor cat trapped and at the mercy of a rat!


A very neat exhibit.

Since our visit was on a gallery night, other denizens of the artist spaces there also had their works on display. We stopped in at Mary Made It Studio down the hall.


We found the artist, Mary Gill, chatting away with another aesthete. Originally from Trinidad, her life there remains a huge influence on her art.

I really liked this once entitled “The Gate of No Return” which succinctly depicts the slave passage to Trinidad and the aftermath of slavery.


If I had a few thousand dollars to spend on art, I would have bought it.

She also had this wonderful triptych that was about 10’ long and depicted various Trinidadians talking to their loved ones who were incarcerated and awaiting trial. Ms. Gill described how these facilities have a scheme to charge the incarcerated and their families which makes it profitable to keep people locked up instead of giving them their day in court.

Ms. Gill was extremely friendly and very willing to discuss her art. I am looking into buying prints…

********

Lastly, I want to note that I cooked some bigos recently. This is Polish hunter’s stew. I didn’t do it up all proper and instead made a down & dirty batch. I used kielbasa that I bought at Andy’s Deli in Chicago plus beef, half a head of cabbage that needed to be eaten, onion, and sauerkraut.

When I had everything browned and all of the ingredients ready to be combined for a long simmer, I realized that we didn’t have any kraut. I scoured the refrigerator 3 or 4 times as I would have sworn that I had bought some on my last trip to the supermarket. But no. So I made an emergency run to the store for kraut.

It turned out rather well, I thought. Hearty fare for chilly evenings.


********

Bonus photo. Here’s a non-taxidermy diorama I stumbled upon while on a bike ride. It was next to a building whose peeling paint had revealed a ghost sign underneath.
 

27 March, 2023

Northern Lights – Southern Shore: Northern Lights Ale by South Shore Brewery

After Ryan Urban, the illustrious editor of the Barron News-Shield, left a comment on one of my posts, I thought that my next beer purchase should be something from up north. He had mentioned Earth Rider's North Tower stout in his comment so I figured I'd get some of their brew to sample, at least to start. I don't know if there was a supply chain shortage or what, but I found absolutely no beer there from the Superior brewery. However, there was plenty of beer from Ashland's South Shore Brewery, 65 miles to the east of Superior, to be had. Definitely up north.

South Shore has been around since 1995 making it part of the old guard of microbrewing here in Wisconsin. Over the years it seems like its availability here in Madison has come and gone. It'd be in coolers down here for a stretch and then disappear. A couple years later it would reappear as if by magic. I don't recall the last time this revenant brand returned to these parts but it has been here for a while now, it seems. Unfortunately, the Woodman's here on the east side only carries their nut brown ale and stout so I must go elsewhere for their other flavors.

Last year I thoroughly enjoyed their nut brown ale and I've sampled their stout so I sought out something new. There was a mix 12-pack with the nut brown, a Wisconsin pale ale, a cream ale, and pilsner. I think it was that configuration, anyway. I got scared at the prospect of a pale ale in my refrigerator giving rise to a tropical fruit miasma which would infect all of the other beers and make them taste like Hawaiian Punch so I opted for a six-pack of Northern Lights, that cream ale.

Billed as a cream ale with herbs, I was intrigued. I like a good gruit and so I was inclined to find out what the folks at South Shore had come up with to replace or complement hops.

Cream ales are all around light. They are pale in color, they are easy on the palate with a bit of grain taste, usually with corn, and just a smidge of hops for some balance. Maybe a little fruitiness from the yeast but generally very lager-like. This being the case, I expected the herbs to be more than subtle background accents. How herby would this stuff be?

I've read that the cream ale evolved as a response to the popularity to American pale lagers. "We've gotta get in on this fizzy yellow stuff action," sayeth the mid-19th century brewers in America. Northern Lights fits the bill. It was clear and a brilliant yellow topped with a head of white, loose foam. And it had staying power. It looked fizzy too with a fair number of bubbles to been seen inside the glass.

The beer had a very mild citrus scent along with something that I thought might be ginger. But ginger is a spice and not a herb, right? Or is South Shore using "herbs" as a catch-all for non-hoppy seasoning? While it may not have been ginger, it had a mild peppery pungency just like ginger. My nose also caught something minty. Juniper? Was there hyssop in this stuff?

As expected, Northern Lights had a light body and a good, solid fizziness to it. It tasted much like it smelled with a gingery flavor that reminded me of the ginger lager from Herbiery. And there was something minty along with what I thought was sage. As the beer warmed, a mild grainy sweetness emerged as swell as a floral aspect. The sweetness and the ginger/minty combo lasted into the finish and gently faded to allow just the barest hints of dryness and bitterness to emerge.

While I liked this beer, I find myself ambivalent about it, mainly because of the ginger taste. That flavor in beer just comes across to me rather dully like a Schweppes ginger ale and my brain keeps wondering why it doesn't have that sharp, zesty zing to it like a Goslings or Reed's ginger beer. It tastes OK but something seems missing. Beyond this, I really enjoyed the other flavors here, especially that floral taste that came out as the brew warmed up a little. Outside of the herbs, the beer was light and easy going with a bit of crisp bite to it.

A good side step from the norm.

Junk food pairing: Northern Lights will pair well with other herb-flavored foods such as dill pickle popcorn, which I highly recommend.

24 March, 2023

Exit Light Beer: Schwarzbier by North of the Bayou Brewery

Standing in the bar at North of the Bayou, I wondered if the gentleman who was sitting at what would be to the left as I entered was the brewmaster, Frank. I've been told that's his preferred spot. He looked like your average blue collar guy. I could imagine Studs Terkel walking in to have a chat with him over a beer. I returned to perusing their brewery's beer menu (not the one with all of the Abita on it) and came to the conclusion that, as long as I was going to try their porter, I might as well keep the dark beer motif going and get some of their Schwarzbier too.

I'd had it on a previous visit with the Frau when we stopped in for fish fry last summer. I found it satisfactory.

My experience with German Schwarzbiers is extremely limited and I can only imagine was passes for the style in Bavaria but, to me, a Schwarzbier should be black in color but not look like motor oil when being poured. It should be light and nimble on your tongue - like a pilsner. More bitter flavors like coffee and dark chocolate should be very subtle with a general roasty taste taking pride of place.

It is puzzling that American brewers tend to brew Schwarzbier as if it were simply a lagered porter. Maybe this started with Sprecher's Black Bavarian. A good beer, but one that seems to have little in common with a Köstritzer Schwarzbier beyond color. Versions of the style brewed here emphasize those coffee and dark chocolate flavors instead of a more roasty grain taste. Typical American embrace of extremes and shunning of the subtle.

Methinks I need to head to Bavaria for further research on this subject.

My recollection of North of the Bayou's Schwarzbier was of one that was typically American - like a lagered porter. Not heavy but also not light as a pilsner; big flavors, not the more subtle ones.

Were my recollections correct? Had the formula changed?

It was a serious case of déjà vu. Just as with their porter, this stuff looked like motor oil, black and viscous. As it turned out, upon closer inspection, the Schwarzbier was less red but equally opaque in the glass. The foam was tan here just as with its portery brethren but the head seemed a bit firmer. The aroma was mainly a mix of plum/prune and chocolate. Not really dark chocolate but not milk chocolate either. Like semi-sweet baking chips. Not a total 180 from the porter but not precisely the same. But also very American smelling to my nostrils.

My first sip revealed a mediumy body and a brew that went easy on the fizziness. It was quite smooth with a taste of dark chocolate as well as coffee and some malty sweetness with perhaps just a tad of something like plum. That sweetness and the coffee lingered on the finish as some herbal hops came to add a modicum of dryness and bitterness.

The taste here was consonant with my memories from drinking it last year and in line with the Sprecher Black Bavarian school of American Schwarzbier brewing. It was also very similar to their Porterton Pinker, but with some subtle differences with the most prominent being less stone fruit sweetness and more hoppy taste.

While a very tasty brew, don't expect a Köstritzer-like beer when you drink it.

Junk food pairing: With its full flavor and heavier-than-pils body, Schwarzbier will go well with heartier, meatier fare so pair the Schwarzbier you take home in a crowler with a hearty reuben egg roll or 4.

23 March, 2023

Beer From Big Pink: Porterton Pinker by North of the Bayou Brewery

 
The building at 802 Atlas Avenue here in Madison is painted pink and I love it and hope it never gets torn down to make way for an apartment building with 1st floor retail in my lifetime.

There, I said it.

It is so incongruous, not only in the industrial area in which it resides, but in Madison more generally. The 2-story pink tower makes it look like the stronghold of the John Waters Brigade commanded by General Divine, defending Madison from the hordes out of Waukesha to the east. It's a gaudy smack in the face to the strip malls and subdivided landscapes of the east side that sets neighbor against neighbor as they argue whether the building is truly a pink menace or more of a mauve masterpiece.

Whatever color it is and has been in the past, a number of places have called it home and all have been restaurants, to my knowledge. It was The Pig's Ear way back in the day. I believe it was an outpost of the CJ's supper club mini-empire when I moved to the area. That closed in 2006. Since then, in probably the wrong order, it's been Talula, Mexicali Rose, and Lagartos. In 2017, it looks like, North of the Bayou opened in the space, migrating from Butler Street, a couple blocks from the Square.

As best as I can recall, it's been known as North Of The Bayou Restaurant & Brewery since it opened but the brewery part didn't get up and running until a year or two ago. I have seen no mention of the brewery opening. No doubt this is partly due to opening during a pandemic or in its immediate aftermath. But its location on the far east side in a non-trendy neighborhood, far away from the thirsty throngs of Epic employees probably doesn't help it attract much attention.
 
It also doesn't help that their beer gets no mention on their Facebook page. I see bottles of Abita but nothing about their own beer brewed in-house. Not even a simple list of what's on tap. This is absolutely perplexing to me.

My Frau and I were there at some point in the past couple years and I was delighted to see that the brewery was finally producing beer. I recall having their Schwarzbier and finding it to be satisfactory. That is, it was no Kostritzer but it also wasn't bad. I think the Frau had an amber ale which I think I rather liked.

A friend of mine who cooks up beer at a different Madison establishment told me that North of the Bayou's brewmaster is named Frank. I was also given a crude description of him and was told that, when he's at the bar, he can usually be found seated to the left of the taps as you walk in. And that exhausts my knowledge of the North of the Bayou brewery.

I went there recently and bought some of their beer in a show of solidarity with an east side business and to give some love to a brewery that seems to get precious little from the local craft beer community.

To start, I sampled their Porterton Pinker, a robust porter. I'm not really sure what makes a porter robust. English porter has a long & glorious history. The style used to be a blend, used to be sour but now I think your average Englishman's porter refers to a dark brown, very malty ale. Here in the U.S., our porters are much darker with an emphasis on coffee and dark chocolate flavors. Perhaps a robust porter is even coffeeer and chocolatier, maybe more bitter from the very darkly roasted grains involved.


Pouring myself a glass, I was reminded that I needed to get my car to my mechanic as this stuff looked like motor oil. While I discovered later that the beer was a (very) deep reddish brown, it was an opaque black right after pouring. The Stygian brew came with a big tan head of frothy foam that proved to be in no hurry to go away. Eventually I found that the stuff was clear. Taking a whiff, I smelled dark chocolate, coffee, general roastiness, and something a bit fruity like a date. Pretty much what I'd expect from an American porter.

Taking my first sip, I found that the fizziness was on the mellow side. The body was medium-light with all of the scents being found in the taste. Coffee was most prominent while the dark chocolate was more subdued. There was also some malty sweetness and something a bit fruity like a dried date. Again, this is all standard American porter taste, as far as I can tell.

It took me a few steps before I realized that something was missing: that typical bitter, fuliginous flavor. Was my tongue playing tricks on me? Or did the brewer use this newfangled debittered black malt that I've heard tell of?

On the finish, the big coffee flavor persisted while some green/herbal tasting hops came in to add a touch of dryness and a smidge of bitterness.

This was an excellent beer. Those coffee and dark chocolate flavors just hit all the right notes for me. Not too sweet and the hops added balance while letting the dark malt tastes remain centerstage. I don't have a problem with the usual burnt/bitter flavor of American porters but I didn't miss them here. This was just really tasty.

Junk food pairing: Porterton Pinker is best served with a beef flavored potato chip. But since they're not all that common, you can substitute them with Mrs. Fisher's Dark Chips, a heartier, roastier take on the ordinary potato chip.

21 March, 2023

The Corona Diaries Vol. 77: The Home of Otto Rindlisbacher

(late October 2022)

(Listen to the prelude.)

While my hotel room in Rice Lake was nothing to write home about, I nonetheless relaxed there a little while before jumping in the shower so I'd be all clean and nice smelling for dinner at a Wisconsin staple – the supper club.

Lehman's Supper Club was not far from my hotel and had been given the seal of approval by Ryan Urban, editor of the Barron News-Shield, whom I got to know online. I was hoping to be able to meet him after dinner at the local brewpub where I'd ply him with a few beers before trying to convince him to grow a moustache and get a flattop haircut so he could be the Jonah Jameson of northwestern Wisconsin.

Aside from a couple pictures of neon signs, none of my photos from Lehman’s turned out well. My phone cost all of $60 and there are times when the camera's autofocus mechanism reflects my parsimonious ways. It was early – 5ish – so I was joined by only a smattering of older couples in the dining room, although the bar area looked well populated. My waitress was a lovely woman in her late-20s or thereabouts and she seemed in good spirits. She even called me “Honey”.

I ordered the fried walleye but this entailed much more than a mere filet of fish. A relish tray is standard fare at supper clubs but the one I was given was anything but typical as it included a few pieces of fruit – watermelon and cantaloupe – instead of being strictly a vegetable affair with carrots, celery, and radishes ready to whet your appetite for a slab of prime rib or a large filet of fish.

The French onion soup was rather good and I enjoyed the dill vinaigrette on my salad. The meal included bread as well as what was described to me as a turnover but was really a clover leaf roll that I suspect was made from tapioca flour as it was light, fluffy, nearly hollow in the middle, and didn't particularly taste like wheat. It still tasted fine, however.

A rather large walleye gave its life for my dinner that night. The filet was probably 10 inches long and quite delicious.

Although I had eaten more than my fair share, there was still room for beer. And so I was off to meet Ryan Urban, who was able to put me on his social calendar, at Agonic Brewing Company.

Agonic opened just last summer in an old feed mill and, in homage, a wooden combine header rotated above our heads. While remodeled to be a brewery, the space had retained much of the feel of its former purpose.


I ordered a flight of 3 beers to sample: a hefeweizen, pumpkin wheat, and a brown ale. All were tasty. The hefeweizen was redolent of bubble gum and banana while the pumpkin wheat had just the right amount of nutmeg. The brown ale was easy going with some caramel sweetness and a touch of leather to it. I also sampled their Blue Hills pale ale which was brewed for a local chapter of a group that maintains the Ice Age Trail.

When I arrived, Ryan was not yet there and a few gentlemen were at the end of the bar chatting away. I caught a few comments about The Hu, a Mongolian band that I saw back in the spring. I'll admit that I did not expect to hear chatter about a Mongolian rock group up in Rice Lake.

Before long, Ryan showed up and we enjoyed one another’s company over a couple beers. I’d met him in-person once before back in the summer when he was in the Madison area to get photographs of WPA murals that hung in the post offices of small towns in the area. Editor by trade, documenting the WPA murals of Wisconsin post offices is his avocation.

I learned from him that wild rice harvesting in Rice Lake ended when the Red Cedar River, which flows out from the lake, was dammed. When asked about how things were at the paper, he noted with pride that he had won an award earlier this year for his reporting on the elevated levels of manganese in the town of Dallas’ water supply. So many belated congratulations to Ryan!

He also told me what became of The Buckhorn, the tavern owned by Otto Rindlisbacher. Rindlisbacher has been described as "perhaps the foremost figure in the history of traditional music in Wisconsin". He played various instruments but I think of him as primarily a fiddle player. He also built instruments when he wasn't playing them. This in addition to running a tavern and having a sideline in taxidermy. He was part of a group that performed lumberjack songs at the National Folk Festival in Chicago in 1937 and had various recordings of his entered into the Library of Congress. Now, just because Ryan told me of The Buckhorn's fate doesn't mean I recall what he said. It was now a laundromat or a hardware store or some such thing. I guess I'll just have to head up to Rice Lake again to find out just what became of it.

Alas, the intrepid reporter had domestic duties to attend to – it was a school night, after all – so we only had a few before saying our goodbyes. As I was walking out, I noticed something I hadn’t noticed on the way in:

Hammerschlagen!

Hammerschlagen is a game in which players take turns hammering a nail into a stump. The first person to pound their nail in fully wins. (I'm not sure if it has to be countersunk or if being flush is good enough.) Sometimes there’s a fee to buy your nail and the winner gets a cash prize. Other times losers buy a round.

My night was uneventful and I got a good night’s sleep. I arose late – for me – showered and prepared to head out and yet, when I looked out the window, it was still dark. Uff da! It was after 7 so where was the sun?

I packed my car and headed downtown for a cup of coffee at the Badger Brew Coffee Loft, the retail arm of Woodland Coffee Roasters which is just next door. Co-proprietor Heather was behind the counter and she was quite cheerful considering the lack of light outside. The coffee, their winter seasonal, Nordic Notes, was a smooth dark roast. Good stuff.

Heather was very knowledgeable about her coffees and quite affable. It was a pleasure to start my day by chatting with her.

I even brought some beans home.

All of their blends had a rural Wisconsin/up north kind of name. Sweater Weather was a very tasty blend of, if I recall correctly, South American and African beans.

With it being noticeably light out, I took my leave and headed down the street to watch the sun rise over Rice Lake.

It was a lovely morning. A bit chilly but not too bad. Just down the street was the Post Office. I moseyed over there and did my best Ryan Urban imitation.


This is “Rural Delivery” by Forrest Flower, painted in 1938. Flower was a native Wisconsinite who was born in Portage, just north of Madison, in 1912 and died in the Milwaukee suburb of Wauwatosa in 1948. He also painted a mural for the post office in Viroqua in the southwest part of Wisconsin.

I was reminded that I was up north when I saw a yard full of logs at the Birchwood Manufacturing Company.


I’m not sure what is manufactured there but I am guessing it’s dimensional lumber.

I took a little time to wander around downtown and almost immediately ran into a ghost sign which was in tip top shape. 

Mantiques – Antiques for Men.

I ran into the Rice Lake Masonic Temple.


Considering the comments of a friend of mine here in the Madison area who is a Mason, I was rather surprised to see so many temples up north. (I spied one in Hayward too.) He noted dwindling membership and how lodges are consolidating around the state and so I didn’t expect to see 2 temples in such sparsely populated areas.

I discovered that Rice Lake had a gaming store, The Boardwalk.


Main Street had several of these heaters in preparation for the winter.


I’ve seen these in smoking areas at bars and restaurants but never on a pedestrian thoroughfare. They treat people nice up in Rice Lake.

After wandering downtown, I drove south a few blocks to Knapp-Stout Park on the shores of Rice Lake and home to the Great Lakes Forestry Museum.


Unfortunately, the National Lumbering Hall of Fame was closed for the season.


So, if I have this right, Rice Lake has the Great Lakes Forestry Museum & National Lumbering Hall of Fame while Eau Claire is home to the Wisconsin Logging Museum. And Hayward hosts the Lumberjack World Championships in which sawyers compete in feats of lumberjack derring-do including log rolling, chopping, and boom running – where you run across a bunch of linked, floating logs.

Am I missing any other lumberjack museums or events?

Even though the Hall of Fame was closed, it was a rather neat area with something like 20 different trees there on the grounds with signs indicating what kind they were.


I presume the trees on display were the most common ones in the Great Lakes region and/or the ones most commonly logged.

While strolling around, I found some disused concrete pillars.


Curiouser and curiouser.

As I continued walking, I ran into an osprey nest.

I did not make the climb to determine if it was occupied.

At the south end of the park, there were more of those mysterious concrete pillars but also an explanation.


A handy historical marker noted that they were support structures for a monorail that operated here carrying lumber between two mills from the early 1920’s until the early 30s.

After wandering the pillars, it was time for me to be homeward bound. I returned to my car for the drive south. A quick stop at a gas station for fuel and coffee (that was decidedly inferior to the stuff at Badger Brew Coffee Loft) and I was off. Just down the road apiece, I made sure to get a snap of the giant bobber on the side of the highway.

On the drive home, I listened to a few episodes of University of the Air, a Wisconsin Public Radio program which features UW-Madison faculty discussing a chosen topic. The shows that I had downloaded for the trip were about naturalist/ecologist Aldo Leopold.

I learned that back when Leopold was working at the UW-Madison and making the observations that would become A Sand County Almanac, the deer population here was paltry. I figured that since they are everywhere around the state today, that it had always been that way. But over-hunting meant that their numbers dwindled to next to nothing in the early part of the 20th century.

The fact that they’re everywhere now – running out in front of cars, for instance, and in need of an annual harvest to keep the population down is testament to the work of conservationists.

At the same time in the early 20th century, Wisconsin had only the barest crane population and now the state is home to the International Crane Foundation and decades of conservation efforts have brought them back.

********

Bonus photo. It’s a newborn Piper!

 
(Go watch the postlude.)

20 March, 2023

It's not a weapon! It's a scientific instrument!

The TARDIS lands on its back in the ice (the second chilly settings in a row) next to a dome. Walking inside, our heroes find themselves in a city and make their way to an old Victorian mansion. All of this was gleaned from a still photo of a decidedly non-snowbound building seen inside the dome. In that first shot of them in the mansion's hallway, I thought to myself, "Oh look! They're in the ending of 2001: A Space Odyssey. Which one is Dave Bowman's room?"

As it turns out, there was no monolith involved and the mansion is home to a group of folks trying to beat back the advance of the glaciers which threaten humanity. I wonder if this was just the screenwriter's fancy or if Brian Hayles was riffing on the common perception at the time that global climate change was going to drag us back into another Ice Age.

Leading the team is Clent, a lucky chap who has a harem of pulchritudinous women in skin-tight uniforms who operate a computer for him. Miss Garrett is Clent's right-hand woman and her lovely figure is put on display with a lot of bare thigh as well. (Something for the dads who are watching, I guess.) One of the scientists, a chap named Arden, finds a figure frozen in the iccccce. It turns out to be an Ice Warrior. Obviously the guys in The Thing didn't watch this story.

The is the first story to feature the ssssssssslow, lumbering villains. And they are the most sibilant creatures in all of TV history too as they hold their S sounds so that they become a hiss. They also hiss in between words which I don't believe they do in later stories. There's one scene where the lead Ice Warrior tricksies someone and laughs a diabolical SSSS laugh. Good sssstuff.

Jamie dresses for weather for once even if it's a full-sized clear garment bag that he dons before heading out into the polar vortex. Unfortunately, he gets clocked by an Ice Warrior and is sidelined for the second half of story. Victoria is at her most annoying here with all of her screaming and crying. There's a scene where she escapes the clutches of the Ice Warriors but stops about 10 feet from their ship to have a chat with the Doctor over a small video communicator. For his part, the Doctor never urges her to find safety and allows Clent to aggressively question her about the drive mechanism of the Ice Warrior ship. The scene is a dry run for the one in The Blair Witch Project where the gal points the camera at her face and cries as she talks to it.

There's a funny bit where the Doctor is crawling on the floor rummaging through discarded sheets of paper in search of the right equations. While this is Troughton's second season, it still served as a nice contrast to Hartnell's portrayal to my mind.

Clent and Miss Garrett trust the computer completely. When not obeying its conclusions, they always run their own through it to triple check and get a digital seal of approval. In contrast are a couple guys who live out in the icy wastes, Storr & Penley. Penley is a scientist who used to work at the mansion under Clent while Storr is a mad Scotsman. The pair are not particularly enamored of technology and refuse to bow down before the almighty computer. The two camps exchange some nice barbs. Despite being a kids show, I think these two sides are presented fairly well. Well enough to give some food for thought, anyway.

I was disappointed that the Ice Warriors are revealed so soon. This is a six-parter so most of the time was spent with the Ice Warriors slowly walking between control panels as they conceive a stratagem in their ship while the humans try to figure out what to do. I have a 50% rule with Doctor Who: the villain should not be revealed until about halfway through a story. Or not revealed as a dire threat until that point.

Clent is a hard ass, for the most part, but there were a couple of moments where he opens up and displays kindness. They worked for me. He has a limp and walks with a cane - minus one scene where he is rather dexterous when holding it under his arm. His demeanor is cold and he is all business. He won't let a physical disability keep him from his duty. These moments when he praises others and shows a little warmth just stand out remarkably well for me.

Not a great story but the Ice Warriors are rather menacing even if they have crescent wrenches for hands. I like the global cooling conceit and the scenes out on the ice and in the ice caves work rather well, often thanks to some judicious use of quick cuts. So I raise my glass to the editor.

"Welcome Mr. Pink"

I finally found a show by The Black Tones. Here's "Welcome Mr. Pink" from a performance from 2021.

19 March, 2023

From the Wisconsin Blogosphere: A Forgotten Town and Pink Floyd

A couple recent blog posts of note.

First is Ryan Urban's "Uncovering old Lehigh".


Ryan gives some history on the town of Lehigh which was up in Barron County. All that remains is a decaying schoolhouse.

"According to the 1976 book 'Barron County Schools Past and Present,' Lehigh was 'a Polish community. The school was the center of many of their activities, and the young people often took part in putting on plays and programs to raise funds for the Christmas program. Many of the students went on to become teachers, artists, successful businessmen and farmers.'"

Next is an encomium for Pink Floyd's Animals at The Aural Retentive.

He writes:

"I like to listen to 'Dark Side Of The Moon' on occasion, but for me, when I am in the place for some Pink Floyd… it’s 'Animals' all the way."

I listen to DSotM less frequently than he does but I agree - Animals is superior. (I wrote something similar earlier this month.)

17 March, 2023

Do The Eagles Eat This?

The processed meats coolers at Woodman's hold many delights. Some are unexpected. For instance, I recall noticing Albanian sausage made here in Madison on one trip. On another I spied a small selection of kishka way up on a top shelf. More recently I discovered Yachtwurst (Jagdwurst) from Usinger's in Milwaukee.

There are countless types of wurst. I don't know how the Germans keep up with them all. This is a cold cut and Wikipedia says the addition of pistachio nuts, as Usinger's does here, is a southern German thing.

As you can see, the grind is very coarse. Pistachios were rather sparse. Seasoning was mild. Salt, pepper, and garlic seemed evident but paprika and other spices were on the label. However, I couldn't make out what they were. (A dash or coriander, perhaps?) I'd like to try frying up a couple slices of this stuff. As it is, I've been eating a slice or 2 cold for breakfast which seems rather Deutsch.