The Corona Diaries Vol. 88: The proof of the brownies is in the eating.

(Listen to the prelude.)

(mid-April 2023)

The third of April is a red letter day in our house as it’s our youngest cat, Piper's, birthday. And this year she turned the big 1-0.

Here she is as a wee kitten. I remember well going to the cat adoption lady's house and seeing her newest litter. Piper was so new and so small and zipping around the room like a madman. Or madcat, rather. She'd charge at me as I sat on the floor and then carom off my leg before launching an attack one of her siblings or maybe a defenseless pillow.

And here she is on her big day 2023 trying to relax in one of our plush cat houses and looking irritated that one of her humans is sticking some device in her face. "Go away, hoo-man!"

Of course I gave her plenty of extra treats to celebrate. I tried to get a photo but she nommed them down too quickly to get a decent picture with my very basic phone camera.

We hope to have her for many years to come and, with all of the money I pay the vet, I expect we shall.

********

Earlier this month I was poking around the websites of local bakeries to see what my rye bread options were when I discovered that one of them offered rye brownies. I pondered this miracle food and suspect that one of those cartoon clouds appeared above my head as I did some quick culinary ratiocination. I came up with:

rye flour + dark chocolate = manna from heaven

So I set out to conjure some of these magical treats in my kitchen. I began by assembling a double boiler and melting the chopped bittersweet chocolate cubes and extra dark chips.

As the chocolate melted, I mixed the eggs, butter, sugar, and whatnot.

Everything got thrown into the same bowl and mixed together. I poured the batter into a pan and it looked rather half-assed, truth be told. “But,” I reasoned, “appearance is no measure of taste. Never judge a book by its cover and whatnot.”

The old adage was right. The brownies may have come out of the oven looking like my cat's (not Piper) diarrhea, but they tasted incredibly delicious.

I sampled, of course, but took the rest to work. I am just not to be trusted with brownies.

The whole brownie thing threw me off of my original task which was to find rye bread. While rye is less common, it's certainly not impossible to find a loaf of it in these parts. I think it's more the case that you have to get to a bakery for a good variety as grocery stores don't stock a lot of quality Central/Eastern European breads. Can I go to my local supermarket and find a pukka loaf of rye bread that my German, Ruthenian, and Polish ancestors would recognize and be proud of?

Yes.

Is there more than 1 or 2 varieties that fit the bill?

Nope.

And so, in the end, I decided to just bake my own rather than running around town trying to find the perfect loaf. I began by retrieving the bread maker that a cousin had given us from the basement. I gave it a good cleaning and then set to work.

The recipe in the manual for rye bread is quite lame, in my opinion. It called for a mere ¾ cup of rye flour but a whopping 2¾ cups of wheat. How is anyone supposed to taste the rye with that ratio? So I tweaked it a little bit.

Things went well at first. The dough rose as expected.

It smelled great too. And then I took another peek some time later and saw that it had fallen. Soon the bake cycle kicked in and I ended up with this.

Not exactly Martha Stewart level aesthetics.

Besides needing to have the flour ratio adjusted further, it tasted fine. Hearty and a bit dense with a rich, nutty wheat sweetness. It simply needed more rye. No doubt there is some arcane wisdom out there on baking bread which describes the best rye to wheat ratio, which wheat varieties taste like what, the best yeast to use, how to get a certain texture, and so on and so forth. My bready experiments shall continue.

In addition to baked things, I found myself with an inexplicable craving for pozole earlier this month. Pozole is Mexican pork and hominy soup. While I do not recall how or when, I nonetheless acquired a taste for it and have tossed around the idea of hitting all of the Mexican restaurants in the area to find out who does the best pozole.

I bought some pork and hominy thinking that I had the rest of the ingredients already. The recipe calls for dried ancho chilies which are boiled and then pureed before being added to the soup. Now, I’ve made pozole before and would have sworn that I had some dried anchos in the cupboard. But, when I went and looked, I found that I instead had a lifetime’s supply of guajillo chilies and had no idea why.

I tried in vain to recall what motivated me to buy those but couldn’t. My best guess is that they were leftover from an attempt to make mole sauce at some point in the dim and distant past.

Another trip to the store and I was ready. I made my pork stock.

As that cooked, I boiled, rinsed, chopped, and pureed until everything was ready to be thrown into the pot.

No, that cup of coffee was for the chef, not the soup.

Once the pozole was cooking, I thought it looked nice and hearty with chunks of stuff everywhere. It smelled great too.

I cooked it long enough for the marriage of the flavors to be consummated and then served myself a bowl.

It turned out very well and I was happy that I hadn’t gotten lazy and simply bought a can at the store. That stuff isn’t bad but it doesn’t have all the onion and jalapeno in it. Plus, I think my version has a more piquant chili taste to it, if I do say so myself.

Lastly on the food front, I’ll note that I recently discovered that the Wisconsin Brewing Company out in Verona, a Madison suburb, had brewed a Grodziskie once again and had it available in their taproom. I managed to convince a friend of mine to head to the brewery with me for a couple so I’d have some company.

Grodziskie is a Polish style of beer that dates back centuries. It’s traditionally brewed with 100% smoked wheat and “should” be light in body and color with a good dose of fizz and a nice hop bite. Usually it’s low in alcohol but that can vary according to the brewer’s taste.

It was delectable! Light, smoky, fizzy – I wish they’d brew it more often than once every couple of years. My only gripe, which really isn’t much of a gripe, is that I wish it were just a tad hoppier. A minor quibble. I wonder what would happen if some of that wheat were to be swapped out for rye...

********

Bonus photo. It was Easter not too long ago so here’s a rabbit I saw in a backyard. I am used to seeing what I think are Eastern Cottontails so I have to wonder if this was someone's pet that that was set free or if it escaped like a scene from Watership Down.

(Raise a glass and watch the postlude.)

Feed your head. With chocolate.

Confession time.

When I first got it in my mind to do this little San Francisco triptych, I sat down to consider what I'd write about. There had to be music and, since my former flame was a Deadhead, I knew I had to write about the Grateful Dead. She and I both loved good beer and Anchor Steam was the obvious choice. I then recalled her love for chocolate and that it was she who got me hooked on the good stuff.

Warm memories of being introduced to the joy of her favorite chocolate, Scharffen Berger, filled my brain. Those luscious squares of chocolate darker and richer than any Hershey product could hope to be just melting away in my mouth...great stuff.

So I went and found a bar of Scharffen Berger, tasted its delights, and sat down to write. I then discovered that the Scharffen Berger company was founded in 1996, after my San Francisco-loving girlfriend and I had parted ways.

Maybe I need to do crossword puzzles or some sudoku to whip my memory back into shape. I have this distinct feeling that someone I dated was a big fan of Scharffen Berger but I cannot recall who it was. Ooh. Hopefully it's not my Frau. Otherwise I'll get dinged for not remembering something about her.

If it wasn't Scharffen Berger that opened a new world of chocolate for me, then who was it?

Ghirardelli!

Ghirardelli was founded in 1852 and so I'm in the clear with the whole timeline thing.

Perusing shelves of chocolate bars recently, I've noticed that San Francisco companies seem to dominate the artisanal baking chocolate market. In addition to Scharffen Berger and Ghirardelli you've got Guittard. How does San Francisco do this?

So, back to Ghirardelli. Founded in 1852, it is reputedly the oldest continuously run chocolate maker in the United States. These days it's owned by Lindt, the Swiss mega-chocolatier, and I have read that their chocolate isn't as good as it used to be.

Regardless, I took a stroll down memory lane.

I have a preference for dark chocolate - the darker, the betterer, generally speaking. This 72% cocoa bar was a bit on the low end as I normally buy chocolate in the 85-90% range. (The 88% Extreme Dark bar from Endangered Species Chocolate is my go-to chocolate indulgence.) Unsurprisingly, I do not recall what strength chocolate bars my girlfriend and I shared so I went with a darker bar but one a bit lighter than I normally indulge in simply for a change of pace.

With Ghirardelli, you get a bar that's 2 big squares across rather than 4 smaller ones. The aroma was great as it had a wonderful chocolate bitterness with something sweet behind it. I heard a distinct snap when breaking off a couple of squares. This stuff was rather firm. Indeed, I got a crunch when I bit into one. It had a smooth texture but not one that I'd call silky.

If you are asked to describe the flavor of chocolate to someone who's never tasted it, what would you say? This stuff had a modicum of bitterness, to my taste, but would probably be considered very bitter by a milk chocolate devotee. It had that lovely roasted, earthy, nutty flavor of chocolate. I also noted that the chocolate flavor seemed mellower than that of the 70% bar of Scharffen Berger that I had bought and sampled while laboring under my misremembered past. I just don't know enough about chocolate to describe why one bar that's theoretically more or less equivalent to another tastes rather differently.

I admit that eating this chocolate was really nice. Not only because the chocolate was so tasty, but I recalled sharing some Ghirardelli with my old flame. She was a bit like Mr. Miyagi to my Daniel LaRusso but, instead of "Wax on, wax off", it was "Don't chew it. Let it melt in your mouth."

********

This brings to a close my brief San Franciscan detour.

I cannot claim any expertise when it comes to San Francisco's problems. It seems like persistent remote work policies, opioid addiction, overly permissive laws, and lax law enforcement are some of the main culprits responsible for the problems the city faces today. Whatever the causes, I hope things turn around there soon.

The Corona Diaries Vol. 88 - Prelude: Birthday

 

 

(Read "Vol. 88: The proof of the brownies is in the eating.")

From Our Family to your mouth

In my previous salt & vinegar chips review, I tasted some that I had bought while preparing for a trip up north. This time I taste chips that I bought while up north.

My venture to the northwoods brought me to Spooner and I stopped in at Schmitz's Economart hoping to find some locally-sourced wild rice, artisanal pemmican, or a new brand of salt & vinegar potato chips. I succeeded on this last count only, although I happened up a nice loaf of cranberry wild rice bread as well.

I hadn't been to Spooner in 40 years or so but Schmitz's Economart has been in that area since 1937 so it's quite possible I'd been to a previous incarnation of the store as a boy. It was an impressive place for a town of 2,600. Or a city of 260,000, for that matter. They stocked a fair number of trendy organic products and things like brown rice syrup that I wouldn't expect at a store up north.

I found foods from the Our Family brand including salt & vinegar chips. I've never seen their products in Madison, as best I can recall, but they're available in most of the continental U.S. outside of large coastal cities and the South. Their Facebook page links them to the SpartanNash Company which owns grocery stores, brands, and does wholesale food distribution. They're out of Michigan.

The bag is revealing in 2 ways. First, it says that the it was distributed by Pique Brands which I presume is another subsidiary of SpartanNash. Gotta love how "Our Family" is really just another Giganto Corp. Second thing is that the ingredient list has neither vinegar nor acetic acid on it. Instead we have malic acid and sodium (sodi-yum!) diacetate. I see here that sodium diacetate is a salt of acetic acid so I guess it counts. I don't recall ever seeing a salt & vinegar chip that didn't have vinegar or acetic acid listed as an ingredient.

Sticking my nose inside the bag and inhaling, I smelled a lot of oil and a slightly lesser amount of starchy spud goodness. Taking a deeper breath, I managed to sniff out a bit of tang. The chips were mainly a darkish yellow in color with some spots that were more of a light gold.

These are kettle chips and they had the requisite crunch to them. While they were on the salty side, the sour tang was rather mellow. I liked the potato flavor but it seemed restrained. Normally I chew a few chips and move the resulting paste around on my tongue and I get that creamy, toasty, starchy flavor coming through loud and clear. But with these, that flavor was dialed down. I wonder if that's because of the variety of potatoes used. Or perhaps one of the other ingredients did something to my tongue so that it registered a duller kind of spud flavor.

Regardless, I'd rate these chips as good but not great. The lack of vinegary tang being the biggest culprit.

Childhood's End

I got a distinct sense of déjà vu reading Paul Farnsworth's "uPVC". Just as in "Undercurrents", the TARDIS crew hear a knocking on the doors while the ship is traveling through the Vortex. But instead of a Time Rider, the chappy knocking is one Bill Rigby from ThermoPort Windows Ltd. In a very odd scene, he tries to sell the Doctor new windows but the Time Lord is not interested for obvious reasons. Not even the promise of double glazing can change his mind. However, his curiosity is piqued when Rigby informs him that the windows have, not only a lifetime guarantee, but also offer a view of the owner's choice.

We then cut to Ace wandering a hallway in the TARDIS. She comes across a door that is padlocked and is intrigued. Curiosity gets the better of her and so she jimmies the lock off but is caught by the Doctor before she is able to actually find out what lies behind the door. He is actually angry and Ace wanders back to the console room in contrition.

The Doctor enters the room which contains a large mock-Georgian bay window from ThermoPort Windows Ltd. It offers a view of the verdant landscape he knew as a boy. The Doctor waxes nostalgic about his childhood and briefly considers returning to the lovely fields he played in as a Gallifreyan youth. But he rejects the idea invoking Thomas Wolfe's maxim "You can never go home." Instead he resolves to find something better than a padlock to permanently seal the room.

While the first half of this tale has a whiff of absurdity to it, the second is more serious and wistful. It being a short story, there isn't much space to really plumb the depths of the thematic material here so the reader is left to take the plunge themselves.

I got some Citizen Kane vibes with the view from the window being Rosebud. My mind conjured up a Blade Runner connection too. Memories. I'm talking about memories. Just as that film asked about the role of memories in helping comprise our humanity, this story made me wonder what it would be like to have had several lives, so to speak, and countless memories. Was this intended as a parable about aging?

Another fine story and another one that skirted some of the conventions of Doctor Who to go somewhere new. Good stuff.

Another Ark in Space

As you can see from the excerpt above, there's this giant spaceship called Hope and it is an ark carrying the remains of humanity, both cultural artifacts and literal remains in the form of DNA samples. It's trying to go home again, essentially, with a course set for Earth which they hope is habitable once again so that the extinct human race can be resurrected. Six androids run the ship and are responsible for getting it to its destination.

However, for years they've been plagued by a group of mutants simply called the Others. The Hope's automated defense systems have been successful in repelling the Others' attacks until now. A small group of them manage to penetrate the ship's hull and gain entrance. They attempt to get to the DNA samples but are killed by three of the androids - a.k.a. - Guardians - who also die in the defense of the ship.

With such a close call, the remaining Guardians decide to kill any other intruders on sight and to destroy the Hope rather than have their precious cargo fall into the wrong hands. Enter the TARDIS.

The Doctor wanders out on his own but Jamie and Zoe can see on the scanner that 2 of the Guardians are on their way to intercept him. In a bit of levity, Brake notes that the TARDIS has "a near-magical ability to amend the scanner’s view to show the occupants exactly what they wanted to see." Seeing the Doctor about to encounter some peril, they spring into action, the upshot of which is that the 2 androids are destroyed and this triggers the auto-destruct sequence. The remaining Guardian is amenable to the Doctor's entreaties and our time traveling hero manages to put the auto-destruct countdown on hold.

However, it wasn't completely disabled and so the ship's automatic defense systems are not working as they're still laboring under the theory they're not needed as the ship is going to explode soon so why bother. As the Doctor does an autopsy on the remains of one of the Others and finds out that they're mutated humans, the indefatigable foes realize their opponents are defenseless and spring into action.

With the Others set to breach the hull again at any moment, the remaining Guardian insists that the Hope be scuttled. But it gives the Doctor a piece of art so that something of the human race survives. It's a picture of a man and a woman called "The Faces of Humanity". The Doctor, Jamie, and Zoe depart and the Hope self-destructs.

This story is one that I think would benefit from being a fully-fledged novel. It's a fine short story with a premise that casts a pall over things. Humanity exists only in packing crates and then our heroes' intervention does more harm than good. The Others remain enigmatic and I thought of them as being like Reavers from Firefly. Now, what did they want the DNA for?

I felt it was really neat to have them be descendants of humanity. A novel could have explored human nature using the Others as representative of our base animal instincts while the ark and its contents could stand in for the better, less warlike aspects of our nature.

There is perhaps a hint of this dichotomy on display when the author, Colin Brake, references 2001: A Space Odyssey. The Doctor is running around the TARDIS console hitting buttons and activating switches in a manner "like a prehistoric chimp confronted with a big black alien obelisk". Brake hints at a comparison between our primitive ancestors and a species that can create big spaceships.

Random thought: The Hope has at least one dome and this brought the ships from Silent Running to mind.

I enjoyed the rather solemn tone as it was so different from most Doctor Who stories. It wasn't a simple good vs. evil setup with good proving triumphant. Just as the Guardians misunderstood the intentions of the TARDIS crew, might the Others also have less than malicious motivations? Some real food for thought in this story that would benefit with some more breathing space.

As he wanders outside the TARDIS, we are told "the Doctor’s face was once again both grave and dark" and this is an apt take on the tone here. A nice departure.

Dangerous Undercurrents

There is something fun about reading a bunch of Doctor Who stories by the same author. You can delve into (and perhaps get lost in) auteurship. What themes does the author return to? Does their writing style change over time or maybe for each Doctor? And so on and so forth. 

Gary Merchant seems to have only ever had 1 Doctor Who story published through "official" outlets - "Undercurrents" in the Big Finish Short Trips collection A Day in the Life - though it seems that he has written some fan fiction. I know nothing about him and have nothing else written by him for comparison.

In the middle of the night, Zoe notices that the racket the Doctor is making in his laboratory ceases and she is sent into a panic when she goes into the lab and finds that the Time Lord is MIA. She immediately wakes Jamie up who finds it impossible that their friend has simply vanished.

Their confusion only increases when they hear a knocking sound from outside the TARDIS. Confusion turns into incredulity when they hear a voice pleading, "Help. Please, please help me!" Not wanting to suffer the same fate as Ramón Salamander, Jamie gets Zoe to enable the force field around the TARDIS so that they can open the doors and find out what's going on.

They do so and Jamie reels in a fellow named Vorac, a Time Rider. His people ride the time winds which blow parallel to the Vortex. Apparently, an undercurrent took the pack he was in by surprise and he was thrown off course into the path of the TARDIS so he grabbed on for dear life.

Zoe is fascinated by Vorac. She ignores Jamie which causes him to go green with envy. Already distrustful of the stranger and now possessed by the Green Monster, Jamie attacks Vorac and seemingly kills him. But he had merely rendered him unconscious. However, Vorac is in bad shape being out of his element and needs to return to the time winds. Jamie comes up with a scheme to do just that.

Zoe pilots the TARDIS while Jamie dangles from a rope tied around the blue box with Vorac waiting for a rent in the Vortex to appear that Vorac can escape through. One emerges and Vorac is saved.

Back in the TARDIS, the Doctor reappears. The Time Riders have an even-steven policy and snagged the Doctor after Vorac was swept away to the TARDIS. When Vorac was returned, so was the Time Lord.

It was funny how Jamie and Zoe didn't mention their little adventure when the Doctor reappeared. However, the Doctor notices that the rope Jamie used is still tied around the TARDIS. "Would anyone care to explain this?" he asks.

A fun tale with the companions in the limelight showing just how capable they are. I wasn't aware that scribes had populated the Vortex with anything more than Vortisaurs but these Time Riders are intriguing. I pictured Vorac as being like Yagharek from Perdido Street Station who, in turn, I always thought looked a bit like Torch on the cover of Marillion's Live at Loreley video.

I wonder if another author ever utilized the Time Riders for their own story.

Zoe reckons herself the next Veruschka as the Cybermen invade Earth

I take it that the BBC was trying to position the Cybermen as the next Daleks, i.e. - the next character to be made into toys and household bric-a-brac of all sorts, i.e. - the next cash cow, as we had a story featuring them not all that long ago - The Wheel in Space. That one was broadcasted in the spring of 1968 while the tale here, The Invasion, started in November 1968 and ended just before Christmas. It looks like there were 2 Cybermen stories a year during the Troughton era.

Somehow this one became an 8-parter. I guess that, since the previous couple were 5-parters instead of 6, the 2 surplus episodes were gobbled up here. Episodes 1 and 4 are missing but were animated back in circa 2006.

It picks up where The Mind Robber left off with the TARDIS reassembling itself after the computer in the Land of Fiction met its demise. The Doctor, Jamie, and Zoe are safe and sound back in the console room. They find themselves looking down on the dark side of the moon when they see a missile being launched from there. Some script editor type just couldn't get enough of broken TARDIS components and so here we have a stuck landing circuit putting our heroes in jeopardy as the ship cannot move out of the missile's path.

Luckily the Doctor pounded on the console enough to unstick it and getting them out of harm's way just in the nick of time. The TARDIS lands on Earth in an indeterminate era that looks an awful lot like the late 1960s. International Electromatics is the evil mega-corporation in this period. They head over to Professor Travers' place - they last met him when Yetis were running amok - but find that he is no longer there and in his place is a lovely blond woman named Isobel.

It's funny how a woman at home alone seems perfectly happy to have a group of strangers, including 2 men, just burst into her house asking questions. The reason Isobel is alone is that she's seen neither hide nor hair of her uncle, an employee of International Electromatics, in a while. On the bright side, Zoe is young, attractive, and happy to pose for Isobel's camera. With all of the late 60s fashions, including some rather mini mini-skirts, I was reminded of Thomas in Blowup as the aspiring Annie Leibovitz maneuvered around and laid on the floor to get just the right shot.

Zoe decides to stay behind for a photoshoot while the Doctor and Jamie head out to investigate this mysterious International Electromatics and try to learn of Prof. Watkins', Isobel's uncle, fate. They trespass, of course, and are being watched by a couple gentlemen in a car. Our time travelers end up in the office of the corporation's Grand Poohbah, Tobias Vaughn. I ran into him when I read the Virgin New Adventure, Original Sin, so it was neat to see where he came from.

Vaughn is a very Bond-like villain - cold, calculating, and a complete megalomaniac. And, it turns out, he has some kind of contraption hidden behind a secret panel in his office. Once I heard its voice, I figured out that it was a Cyber Planner. "Oh no. Not again!" I cried desperately hoping that this Planner was better than the one in The Wheel in Space and that its scheme wouldn't be so Byzantine. "Ixnay on the stellar engineeringscray and just invade the Earth!"

We learn that Vaughn is in league with the Cybermen who are planning to invade the Earth with his help. Just like in The Wheel in Space, the Cyber invaders need some kind of guide beam and here it is in order to get their bomb to its target. Lo and behold, Vaughn just happens to have a deep space communications system on the campus of his factory. I don't understand. How do the Cybermen get anywhere/do anything without some signal giving exact directions? Did they need one in The Moonbase? I don't recall that being the case.

Unsurprisingly, Vaughn plans to double cross the Cybermen. He's got Isobel's uncle essentially under house arrest so that he builds this device called a cerebraton mentor which generates emotions within whomever is shot by it.

In a nice bit of redirection aided by the animation, we learn that one of the guys in the car following the Doctor and Jamie is Benton! And he works for U.N.I.T.! And the pièce de résistance is that the Brigadier is now the Brigadier and he's heading the U.N.I.T. investigation of International Electromatics.

With U.N.I.T. and an invasion story set on Earth, this must surely be the proto-Pertwee story. It feels just like one of his stories while he is marooned here on Earth. It's a fun action romp with our heroes being rescued by helicopter as Jamie hangs onto a rope ladder for dear life. Plus, there's lots of shootouts.

In one scene, Vaughn uses the cerebraton mentor on a Cyber test subject and the welling of emotions drives the stoic soldier into a fit of raging lunacy. It runs off emitting a horrible wail. We see it later when Isobel, Zoe, and Jamie are in the sewers trying to get a good picture of Cybermen as photographic proof for U.N.I.T. big wigs. Maddened by the fresh emotions that churned within him, the Cyberman seemed combinedly possessed by all the weeping angels that fell from Manhattan and it stumbles towards them with a rachitic menace. This scene brought Earthshock to mind.

Speaking of Cybermen, they now have 5 fingers instead of 3 and are looking more like the 1980s version that scared me as a kid. The chest units are much less bulky and they just have a more robotic appearance as opposed to a cybernetic one. They look less like people with some electronic parts. It was also really neat to see the iconic shot of them with St. Paul's Cathedral in the background. Hibernating Cyber troops are being sent to Earth wrapped in gauze and packed in these casket-like crates. When reactivated, they burst out of the gauze a la Tomb of the Cybermen and they are accompanied by some great, eerie electronic music on the soundtrack.

For reasons I don't understand, the Cybermen accede to every one of Vaughn's demands until the end. Why? Did the human really have that much leverage? Also notable is just how long Cybermen take to fire. It's like they wait until they're sure you're going to stay in their crosshairs for another few minutes before they decide to fire.

Did Wendy Padbury go on vacation during the making of this story? Zoe spends an inordinate amount of time having her picture taken by Isobel. When she is finally torn away from the extended photoshoot to help in the effort against Vaughn and the Cybermen, she is still wearing her furry boa. Just couldn't part with it, I guess. On the one hand, I can understand how a teenage girl would be flattered and enjoy having her picture taken. For hours. But Zoe is this math savant and a bit poindextery and being a model just seems out of character for her.

Whole episodes go by where she's barely seen and, when she is, she's posing for Isobel's lens. However, she does get a couple nice scenes in. In the first, she and Isobel go in search of the Doctor and Jamie at International Electromatics HQ. The receptionist is a recalcitrant mainframe computer who frustrates Zoe to no end. And so she speaks to it in some computer gibberish and gets it working on some unsolvable math problem which causes the thing to start smoking and explode. Towards the end, she calculates a pattern for missiles to take in order to maximize damage to the Cyber fleet. Zoe is earning her keep in these scenes, no doubt, but such acts of intelligence were few and far between.

Tangentially, I thought it was a shame that Mel never got to prove herself with scenes like these.

I also have to wonder if Frazer Hines went on holiday too. Jamie's leg gets grazed by a bullet about two-thirds of the way through the story and he's offscreen recuperating until the very end of episode 8.

Vaughn's head of security is a gentleman named Packer. He's rather ineffectual and continually gives his boss the "That's not what our pals the Cybermen want..." routine and at one point Vaughn loses it. He yells, "Just obey my orders!" as he slams his fist down. Or did he throw a pen on his desk? Regardless, that scene was right out of Downfall.

The Invasion has some iconic Doctor Who moments and serves as a template for many a story to come. It has its flaws but there is also great fun to be had. Look how young Benton and the Brigadier are! The Doctor and Jamie continue to work great together. There are some funny moments such as when the Doctor dodges Cybermen gunshots by jumping around like a cartoon character and, in another, he is unsure whether to go left or right so he flips a coin. He looks to his left but heads right.

Vaughn is a fine villain and he's human to boot. He gets shot by Cybermen at the end and we see him collapse. However, we also know that he has some degree of Cyber augmentation as the Doctor noted earlier that there was something inhuman about him while in another scene Vaughn laughs off being shot in the chest at point blank range. I am going to have to re-read Original Sin because I just don't recall how it is that he survived and managed to star in a novel.

Wanting varenyky, I'm

Wanting varenyky

They have the touch - Touch of Ukraine.

"Three Ukrainian immigrants are opening a restaurant in the Union Corners development on Madison’s East Side...which will open for lunch and dinner serving traditional Ukrainian foods and some American sandwiches, soups and salads.

Borsch will be a main focus at the restaurant. 'It’s like the main dish of Ukrainian cuisine,' Temchenko said. Other specialties include varenyky, Ukrainian handmade dumplings with various fillings, and nalysnyky, Ukrainian crepes.

The dinner menu will offer mustard brown sugar glazed salmon, chicken Kyiv, and desserts such as Napoleon cake, made with puff pastry and whipped cream filling; profiteroles with custard; and honey cake."

Madison gets Federal transportation funding

Good news for Madison Metro. It is set to receive almost $38 million for public transit.

Madison's Metro Transit will get just over $37.9 million to purchase electric buses and install charging equipment and solar panels to upgrade its current maintenance facility. Some of Madison's funds will also go toward the development of a workforce training program, according to federal officials.

 

A pair of Wisconsin cities have been chosen to receive millions in funding to make upgrades to their public bus systems, federal transportation officials announced Monday. https://t.co/ZV9VVzremc

— News 3 Now / Channel 3000 (@WISCTV_News3) June 26, 2023

The Corona Diaries Vol. 87 - Postlude: Where's my antiphonary?

(Don't forget to read Corona Diary #87.)

The Corona Diaries Vol. 87: Got Medieval?

(Listen to the handy and informative prelude.)

(late March 2023)

I know it’s going to surprise you, but we had a blizzard recently. It dumped a little over a foot of the white stuff on us. I mean it just kept snowing and snowing and…

Thankfully I was at home that day and so was able to shovel 3 or 4 times over the course of the day instead of coming home from work in the evening and having to shovel it all at once and pull a back muscle or 4.

Here are some house sparrows eyeing up the bird feeder as the snow falls on them.

The reason they were waiting in the bush is because the feeder was occupied by Ms. Cardinal.

The snow did not stop the squirrels. They had no problems finding traction on the power poles and were zipping all around.

Spring may have been a few days old but Old Man Winter wasn't ready to give up quite yet.

The snow put a damper on progress over at our neighbor’s house. You may recall that a tree fell on it last summer and that, after a few months, it was finally demolished except for 2 walls. Well, the construction finally started this month. It didn’t take long to do the framing and get a roof on it. It seemed like major progress had been made every day.

The red is gone and now we have greyish blue.

The exterior looks more or less done so I assume they’re plumbing it now and running electricity. We are very happy to not have a wreck in the neighborhood anymore and for our neighbor to be closer to having a habitable house again.

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I recently took a trip to Chicago to visit with my mother and we went on a trek to the Art Institute. I hadn’t been there in ages and was keen on seeing their new(ish) exhibit, The Deering Family Galleries of Medieval and Renaissance Art, Arms, and Armor.

Since it was a fairly nice day, we walked down to the Jefferson Park El stop. I hadn’t taken the El in a while and it was neat to once again see that old North Avenue Baths building by the Damen stop. 

Although it was a bit – quelle surprise! – windy downtown, it was lovely.

As we were waiting to cross at Adams and Michigan, we heard a car honk then CRASH! Someone tried to turn left but timed it poorly and their car got t-boned right in front of us. An exciting start to our visit.

We went inside and got into a fairly lengthy line. Although my mother had plenty of cash on her intending to treat me to a day out, we discovered that cash is no longer accepted at the Art Institute. It's an annoying practice that is spreading like the Creeping Charlie in my backyard. Summerfest in Milwaukee has gone cashless as have the music venues here in Madison owned by the corporate behemoth that is Live Nation. So I pulled out my credit card. It was my lucky day as the guy gave me the Chicago resident discount since I was with mom.

Honestly, I had forgotten just how ginormous the Art Institute is. Making a bee line to the Medieval/Renaissance exhibit was not possible. It took us little while and more than a few ganders at the map but we eventually got to the section with all of the Renaissance paintings and strolled through.

While I prefer medieval art over that from the Renaissance, generally speaking, I must admit they did some interesting work in the 17th century such as this painting of Saint Romanus of Antioch holding his own tongue. I presume it was cut out when he was martyred. He is the patron saint of those stricken with logorrhea. 

But the gallery has too many paintings of aristocrats, i.e. – the people who could afford to commission their own portraits. Plus, I think there are a million depictions of magi adoring the baby Christ.

“What’s this one called?”
“Adoration of the Magi.”
“Huh. And this one?”
“Adoration of the Magi.”
“Wait! Wait! Don’t tell me. This one is Adoration of the Magi too.”
“Correct.”

One thing I like about medieval art is that it doesn’t have a realistic sense of perspective like much Renaissance art. Before that Italian guy rediscovered the mathematical elements of perspective, medieval art was more interested in relaying a moral lesson or making sure all of the right symbols were in the frame, realism be damned. Everything looks off-kilter but in a fun and interesting way.

We finally arrived at the Medieval/Renaissance exhibit and I began to feel giddy. I felt genuine excitement and awe upon seeing the gigantic altarpiece on one wall.

Did I set off the alarm by getting too close to inspect what appeared to be gold leaf? You bet I did!

Fewer secular portraits of aristocrats here and more paintings of saints and martyrs. This is someone who had her breasts cut off when she was martyred.

She doesn’t appear the least bit distraught at holding a tray with her boobs on it. I guess that’s what grace does for you.

Now, having recently listened to a medieval podcast which was a guide to the most popular saints, I knew this to be Saint Agatha.

Here’s another:

That same podcast informed me that a female saint with a book was St. Anne and a female saint with a wheel was St. Catherine who, legend has it, was to have been killed on a breaking wheel, a very nasty torture device which involved lots of broken bones and general mutilation. However, she touched it and the wheel fell apart so her tormentors went to Plan B, a simple, direct route, and beheaded her instead.

Not far from this painting was a 13th century antiphonary.

This contained the music to be sung or chanted by monks during the liturgical rites for the canonical hours of the day. I’m not sure if every monk would have had access to one of these or if they shared or perhaps a monk led the chanting with one of these before him. Regardless, it was really neat to think that hundreds of years ago some fellow squinted at these notations in the fading light of dusk to sing at vespers.

After displays of jewelry, plates, glassware, and other household items, you get to the big room with most of the military gear - arms and armor aplenty.

I think that most of the armor was ceremonial with just a handful of suits meant for use and most of those were for jousting instead of battle. Still, they were impressive and my back ached just thinking about wearing one of them. Men seemed to be rather smaller back then than now. Say what you will about our modern diet, but I doubt I nor most of my friends could fit into most of the armor on display. We grow 'em big these days. We're taller, broader chests - just bigger all around.

On the arms front, there were a lot of halberds, glaives, maces, and swords. One display case held a two-handed sword that was about as long as I am tall. I cannot imagine having to wield one of those. I'd probably cut my own head off on accident. Plus, there were lots of bows.

I’m thinking that, if you need a crank to pull the bowstring back, then I’d bet that bow will launch an arrow with many a pound of force. It must have been able to pierce even the best armor.

I could have spent all day in that exhibit but, alas, we had to move on if we were to be able to check out some other art.

One piece I really wanted to see was The Rock by Peter Blume.

I don’t know why but I adore this painting. The colors, the storm clouds portending doom…There’s the ruins of a building on the right and a new one being built on the left with the rock in the middle. I believe it was painted in the mid-1940s so perhaps it’s about World War II and the hope for something better once it is over.

In an area nearby were works by African-Americans. I took a picture of Nightlife by Archibald John Motley, depicting a night club in Bronzeville, but it wasn’t in focus. So I bought a print of it for my Frau.

However, my shot of Eldzier Cortor’s The Room No. VI did turn out in focus.

I like the colors a lot and the very unreal sense of perspective that reminded me of medieval art.

Wandering around the modern gallery, it seemed like my favorite room had had its contents changed. The last time I was there, there was a room that held The Awakening of the Forest by Paul Delvaux, a couple works by Magritte - Time Transfixed and On the Threshold of Liberty, and Girl with Cat by Balthus. Or was it Solitaire? I just loved sitting in that room for a long time taking everything in. The Awakening of the Forest and On the Threshold of Liberty are both rather large works and it was easy to get absorbed by them.

We went to grab a snack before going to see the special Dalí exhibit called "Salvador Dalí: The Image Disappears". To get into the exhibit, I had to scan a QR code with my phone to get into a virtual line and then wait for a text to tell us that we could enter. I wonder if we could have been issued paper tickets or been assigned a time. It's a shame to make ownership of a smartphone a prerequisite to seeing an exhibit.

I find it interesting that we are at a point now where one must bank a certain way in order to gain entrance to the Art Institute and you apparently need a smartphone to get into a certain exhibit. It seems that a credit card and smartphone are becoming the bare minimum to be able to participate in more and more cultural activities.

A brave new world.

I had a blast at the museum and need to set aside a few more days to see the rest of it sometime. We went and had dinner at Miller’s Pub before catching the El back to Jefferson Park.

I’d read that CTA ridership was down significantly but our train was packed to the gills with commuters on their way home and a smattering of people heading out to O’Hare with suitcases in tow.

It was a grand day out in the big city.

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I go through periods where I try to catch up on things I missed in the 1990s or go in-depth into something from that time that I can recall but don’t know a whole lot about.

For instance, back in c.2006 I read a few books and watched a couple documentaries about the Rwandan genocide that took place in 1994. I remember hearing about it on the news back then but I only recall talking heads on the evening news. Going in-depth and then seeing footage from Rwanda depicting events from the genocide was a whole different ball of wax. A few years back I listened to a podcast about P.J. Harvey’s debut album from 1992 and wondered how it was that it took me nearly 20 years to investigate it because I really enjoyed it.

My latest investigation into that time involved reading this book, Yugoslavia: Death of a Nation by Laura Silber and Allan Little which recounts the history of the Yugoslav Wars from 1991-96. I recall hearing about it in the news, with the siege of Sarajevo, which lasted nearly 4 years, being especially prominent in my memory.

Right off the bat I learned that Yugoslavia consisted of 6 republics and 2 autonomous provinces. I just figured it was a single, united country but no. This made things confusing as each republic/province had its own internal government but also representatives to the federal one. Another thing that made the read complicated was how most people’s surnames ended in -ić. There was Kadijević, Adžić, quite infamously Milošević, et al. All of those diacritical marks meant that I consulted the Cast of Characters at the beginning of the book quite often. That in addition to all of the maps.

The book tells a really sad story that has been repeated throughout human history. A demagogue whips people into an us vs. them frenzy and the killing begins. Here it’s Slobodan Milošević who stirred up Serbian nationalism. He followed this up by getting other republics to send representatives to the Yugoslav federal government who were subservient to him or were at least sympathetic to Serbia.

Slovenia and Croatia see Milošević’s gambit and declare their independence from a puppet Yugoslavia that is having its strings pulled by Serbia. Bosnia eventually declares independence too.

Milošević would claim that Serbian minorities in the other (former) republics were being prosecuted and use this as a pretext for war. The Muslims in Bosnia and Herzegovina became scapegoats and suffered terrible atrocities.

In addition to the Serbians run amok and all of the death and atrocities they caused, the book also tells of the mainly impotent responses of NATO and the UN. After having read about the UN efforts during the Rwandan genocide, I was hardly surprised.

As with every war, the Yugoslav ones had their share of absurdities. One tale that sticks in my mind happened in May 1992 when the president of Bosnia-Herzegovina, Alija Izetbegović, is flying back from failed peace negotiations in Lisbon. He threw caution to the wind and decided that the plane should land in Sarajevo despite the city having descended into chaos and conflict. He was captured by the Yugoslav federal army which by this point was controlled by Serbia.

He asked his captors to be allowed to call his staff to let them know what had happened but was told the phones were down. Shortly after this, a phone in the room he was being held in rang. It was a woman who was calling to find out if her daughter’s plane had left earlier in the day. Izetbegović told her that he was the president and asked her to call his office to tell them that he was a captive at the airport. If she couldn’t get through, she was to call a radio or TV station and tell them instead to get the word out. 

As it happened, she ended up speaking with a Sarajevo TV station. The conversation was broadcast live and captured for posterity on video tape and can be seen in the 6-part documentary based on the book with the same title and which I recommend highly.

While a very sad tale, I was glad to learn more about some history that I lived through, even though I didn’t experience it first-hand.

I’m not sure what my next 90s throwback venture will be. I’ve been meaning to read The Quincunx since around 1995 so perhaps that should get taken care of.

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Bonus photo time. I recently met a friend for lunch at a nice older tavern. Next door to it was a storefront that had this display in it. It’s a homemade leg lamp as seen in A Christmas Story that’s being accosted by a zombie.(?!)

(Listen to the postlude.)

Chips for the Great Outdoors

Earlier in June I stopped in at my local Cabela's to get some rain gear in anticipation of a trip up north. It took me a while but I finally found just the right waterproof jacket and a hat to boot. Standing in the checkout line, I noticed rows of potato chips. Salt & vinegar potato chips, no less, so I just had to get a bag of Uncle Buck's.

I was reminded of the movie of the same name starring John Candy which, in turn, brought another movie of his, The Great Outdoors, to mind. Would these chips pair well with a 96oz steak?

Bass Pro Shops are no doubt too busy selling lures, rods, and reels to be slicing potatoes and frying them up. The back of the bag revealed the people behind the curtain: 1 in 6 Snacks out of Raleigh, North Carolina was responsible for these here chips.

The name comes from a statistic that the founders heard back when they started the company: 1 in 6 Americans didn't know where their next meal would come from. This being the case, some proceeds from their snack sales go to a local food bank by which I assume they mean one out in North Carolina.

In 2021, just over 10% of American households were food insecure, which is a great improvement over 1 in 6. Of course, looking at folks whose incomes are closer to the poverty line, you find more food insecurity. With various pandemic relief programs ending, I suspect food insecurity will go up.

Closer to home, I have given to Second Harvest Foodbank of Southern Wisconsin, though it's been too long. Here in the Eastmorland Neighborhood, the SS Morris Community AME Church has a food pantry on the 1st and 3rd Saturdays of the month.

Now, unless I am drastically mistaken, North Carolina barbecue sauce is vinegar-based so I figured the 1 in 6 folks knew one of the key ingredients of my beloved potato chip style.

Looking at the ingredient list, I saw balsamic vinegar powder, balsamic vinegar, vinegar powder, white distilled vinegar, malic acid, and citric acid. These appeared to be the potato chip equivalent of Xenomorph blood. Would I lift the bag only to have the chips spill out from a hole in the bottom? Perhaps it has a special lining to keep from being eaten away.

I was impressed after sticking my face in the bag and taking a big whiff. Normally I get a noseful of fryer oil and, while these chips had a prominent oil aroma, I could also smell vinegar. How could I not with all those acids? They were a nice yellow color with an occasional brown area. The edges were generally dark but I am unsure if that's because the skin was left on or if there's some kind of fryer thermodynamics at play here where small surface areas brown quickly or some such thing.

These were kettle style chips and had a very nice crunch to them. A tasty, creamy potato flavor was bolstered by a firm saltiness. I've had saltier chips but most have less. The vinegar was much the same strength. A really nice tang was to be had and they were more sour than most chips but not quite in the very upper echelon of tongue numbing snacks.

Considering the various vinegars and acids on the ingredients list, I expected more puckering tang. Still, these were quite good chips that gave solid doses of salt and vinegar that are no doubt appreciated by all the Babe Winkelman types out there, in addition to our cat Grabby.

Cherries, Cherries Everywhere

My neighbor's cherry tree is looking good. I think she'll have a bumper crop this year.

Marinating

Yesterday I spent some quality time in the meat department of my local supermarket and followed this up by buying charcoal. My bill from Farm & Fleet was rather more than I thought it would be. Inspecting the receipt, it looks like cat litter is twice as expensive than I remembered it being and I had bought 250% more charcoal than I normally do.

When I got home, I marinated some boneless/skinless chicken thighs in a faux Southeast Asian marinade that had lemongrass in it. I grilled them up in the evening and served them with a glass of Lemongrass Pils from 3 Sheeps Brewing.

The chicken was quite tasty while the light body and big citrus-floral taste of the beer complemented the grilled meat and jalapeno slices very well.

My next project was to tweak my standard German grilling marinade for some pork chops.

I bought a silo of Köstritzer Schwarzbier and poured some into my mixing bowl. Then I liberally added Polish mustard and followed this up with a generous portion of Penzey's Bavarian seasoning blend. Pretty standard stuff.

The tweak was to add plum.

I mashed some of the plum pieces to try and liberate their Prunus essence. Tasting the marinade, I concluded that I had put in too much mustard. These chops will go down fine but the senf adding needs a lighter touch, I suspect. We shall find out, though, when the marriage of the flavors is consummated.

Goin' Down Shaw's Road Feeling Good

The last time I brought some MoonRidge beer home, it was obvious that it had been sitting in that cooler just too long. This time I've found success.

A nice malt flavor - caramelly but not too sweet. Spicy hops for contrast. A fine amber restorative.

Not sure who Shaw is - probably a character in the brewery's town of Cornell - but it made me think of Denzel Washington as Bennett Marco in The Manchurian Candidate: "I'm not crazy, Shaw!"