I found a couple more geodetic survey markers here in Madison.
This one, I have discovered, was used to calibrate equipment and I guess it's not a "proper" marker for survey work.
Now, this one, just west on the same retaining wall, is the real one.
These are on the retaining wall of the Campus Drive entrance ramp at Highland Avenue.
Piper is doing alright after losing her sister earlier this month.
She seems to be talkier these days and her eating habits have changed a bit too. At first, she stopped eating treats but has now taken to a different brand. And, since she doesn't eat shrimp, we're working on moving her to a new wet food. Grabby ate everything, including Piper's food if it wasn't put out of reach. She must be happy that her food doesn't have to disappear anymore and she doesn't have to say, "Hey, human! Gimme my chow!"
We've had a lot of shrooms on the north side of the house this year. This morning I noticed things have taken a distinct turn towards the Freudian.
I had a The Name of the Rose day a couple of days ago on Sunday. My fairly new pen is busted apparently. My tongue, however, was not blackened.
Yes released their Big Generator album on this day in 1987. This is the title track from their tour stop in Milwaukee on 24 November 1987.
Apparently there were a lot of technical difficulties at this show, hence the name of the bootleg.
I encountered ground cherries for the first time recently as part of a CSA box.
Popping one into my mouth and, um, popping the cherry, I found it was sweet at first and then took on a greener, more vegetal flavor.
I had no idea what to do with them and, after having them sit in the refrigerator for a week and not getting any fresher, I decided on a clafoutis.
After 40 minutes in the oven:
In order to make it edible for the Frau, I used oak milk, which is surprisingly fatty and rich, and a gluten-free flour mix. I think it was a King Arthur blend. The custard was more tan than this photo allows but I think that, had I used diary and, perhaps, wheat flour, it would have browned up more. Still it is tasty.
It was on this day back in 1999 that Yes released The Ladder. Here's "Homeworld" from that album recorded live on The Ladder tour in Milwaukee on 13 November 1999.
It's the first autumn with leaves for the new tree out on the front terrace. It's an Early Glow Buckeye and it has begun to glow.
I've heard that, since it was so dry this year, trees are turning early and the colors aren't expected to be as brilliant. Photos on the internet show the Early Glow Buckeye having bright red leaves. Will they yet turn that shade? Or is this as red as the leaves are going to get this year?
I met some folks down at Wisconsin Brewing Company (or is that Lake Louie?) yesterday and was looking forward to trying out a couple newish beers. First was Move Ukraine, a pilsner made with sunflower seeds and some of my purchase would be donated to the titular charity to help Ukrainians rebuild homes destroyed during the war. The other was Dock Haus Gold, a Vienna lager.
Unfortunately, neither was available. Their Untappd page is woefully out of date.
Instead, I tried their Oktoberfest which, I am happy to say, seemed less sweet than in years past. I also saw a new beer or one that was new to me, at any rate: Monk's 47 Amber.
After viewing the description, it wasn't immediately apparent to me what differentiated this from their Badger Club amber lager or the late Dock Haus Gold. Cuz you know I'm all about Vienna and red and amber lagers these days.
Although rather generic and unspecific, it was not a bad description. Monk's 47 is not a super rich malt bomb, but certainly wasn't watery. It did have a pleasing malt flavor and just enough hops for balance. Went down easy.
A few thoughts:
Firstly, the new remix of the album is nice. I didn't notice anything dramatically different but there seems to be more space between the instruments and Dave Pegg's bass seems a bit more up front. I've always been a bit ambivalent about Gerry Conway's drum sound on the album. The snare is usually quite a bit louder than the bass drum and toms. The drums just seem off kilter. That doesn't seem to have changed with the remix.
There's an alternate version of "Cheerio" here with a bunch of people singing instead of just Ian Anderson and what I presume is a Vocoder. I really like it as has a more cheerful feel, more of a last call at the bar vibe to it.
Apparently the portative pipe organ is what we hear at the beginning of "Pussy Willow". A nice throwback to the Songs From the Wood era.
The set features multiple versions of "Fallen On Hard Times" and it is neat to hear the song evolve and be molded into the classic we know from the album. A rough mix from 1982 stands out as the more ethereal synthesizer sound is at the fore. It would later get mixed underneath a synth sound that is more squishy, less organic in nature. The song remains largely the same otherwise - it still bops along at mid-tempo - but it definitely has a different, slightly darker feel to it.
A rough mix from 1982 of "Slow Marching Band" is also really neat. For the first verse, Anderson's voice is left untreated or largely so, anyway. No double-tracking and no reverb/echo that I can hear and he sings so well and it just sounds very natural and simply gorgeous.
The album has a reputation as being one where the synthesizer technology of the early 80s meets the classic Tull sound of electric guitars, flute, and mandolin and a, forgive the pun, synthesis is achieved bringing all of the elements together in harmony. This interplay is distinct and expanded here and is thrown into really sharp relief when you consider the early 1981 sessions. It seems odd that these same sessions that produced the very folky "Mayhem Maybe" and "The Swirling Pit" (by Dave Pegg), also produced synth heavy songs such as "Too Many Too" and "I'm Your Gun". But then you have those that straddle both worlds such as "Commons Brawl", "Jack Frost and the Hooded Crow", and the previously unreleased "Inverness Sleeper" with it jaunty mandolin and synth flourishes.
It is interesting to have all of these songs together and look at the lyrics. There is some really disparate subject matter. You have something like "Jack Frost and the Hooded Crow" which asks us to consider the plight of the poor and to extend our generosity to them and then there's "The Curse", a song about a girl having her first period.
One things that sticks out is the paucity of acoustic guitar. It's like the keyboards took over that spot.
Lastly, there's a bit in the liner notes about the making of the album cover by Iain McCaig. There's a really neat early drawing of the cover when the album was still to be titled Beastie. McCaig says that Ian Anderson gave him a tape of some songs and a list of titles that he was considering for the new album. Presumably this early cover idea was the result of listening to that tape. Curiously, the track listing on the back is:
Note that "Jack-a-Lynn" features the acoustic guitar. I do think that it and "Jack Frost and the Hooded Crow" are very strong songs that should have been included on the album. The really oddity is "Crew Nights". Anderson writes of it now, "Again, it's not one of the great Jethro Tull songs." How very strange that it was apparently considered for inclusion on an album. Did he just change his mind over the years?
It is amazing at just how productive 1981-82 was for Ian Anderson. There must be 3 albums worth of songs here. Two songs, "Half Hour Video" and "Ian's Office Song" were left off as they were backing tracks only, presumably much like "Mayhem Maybe" before it was finished in 1988. Plus, there's an instrumental version of "End Game" by the band hidden away on a DVD here that would be redone for Anderson's 1983 solo album Walk Into Light. What a period of creativity!
I am beginning to reassess Peter Vettese's playing the more I listen to this material. It gets more interesting with each listen. Anderson comments that Martin Barre really became a better guitar player at this time and that he was at the height of his singing ability here and I am beginning to appreciate what he means.
But that is for another time.
This lovely striped vegetable came to us via a CSA. It was called an African eggplant. Never had it before, to my knowledge, but look look forward to trying it.
Smokers can stub out their cigarettes in style at the Lafayette Building in this nice ashtray. Something that's not bland metal with black trim and actually has some class. I love the reliefs.
My Frau and I saw this Chrysler New Yorker Deluxe in Cottage Grove last weekend. Looks to be from the mid-50s.
Lastly, here's a skateboard half pipe ramp diorama seen last weekend in the Emerson East neighborhood.
The lovely view that the residents of the Normandy Apartments have. It's like retro Soviet chic.
I know the folks at Schlenkerla have been throwing in a new beer here and there over the past several years but this year, we get zwei in just the span of a few months.
Back in June, they introduced Aecht Schlenkerla Weichsel, a rotbier, a.k.a. - red lager.
And, any day now, if not already, the world can enjoy Aecht Schlenkerla Erle, a smoked Schwarzbier, a.k.a. - dark lager.
The sidewalk/bike path that runs by my new bus stop, the one on the north side of Atwood Avenue at Walter Street, features poetry. Two poems by Madison poet Angela Trudell Vasquez grace the slabs on either side of the bus shelter.
Yesterday I just said yes to Oktoberfest with The Polkaholics and my first Märzen of the season - smoky goodness from Schlenkerla.
(Don't forget to read entry #94, "Grist for the Blogging Mill".)
A few weeks back, my Frau and I stopped in at Whole Foods because she was looking for a particular brand or type of something or other. I think I can count the number of times I've been to Whole Foods on one hand so this was almost a new experience for me. While the Frau sought out her particular items, I was drawn like a moth to the flame to the snack aisle. At first, it was all of the usual suspects such as Kettle Brand, but, when I got to the end of the aisle, I saw a brand that was new to me - humble potato chips. They're so humble that they don't even capitalize the name of their brand. Low and behold, they had salt & vinegar chips, sea salt & cider vinegar, no less.
Honestly, I thought humble was Whole Foods' house brand but it turns out they are not. Hailing from Ontario, Canada, I do believe these are the first salt & vinegar chips from north of the border. And here I thought they only had plain and All Dressed flavors up there, eh.
I suppose I initially thought them to be Whole Foods' house brand because they're organic and the bag proudly proclaims that it's compostable. Oh, and they're gluten-free. They hit all of the right spots to ensure customers feel completely guilt-free about buying these chips.
Things started off on a fine note when I stuck my nose in the bag and took a whiff. A mild oily aroma was complemented by a big one of that cider vinegar. Ooh la la! The slices appeared to be a little bit thicker than normal. They were lightly-colored with a rather uniform creamy off-white hue and looked to have some skin on the edges. Either that or they just brown easily. An area of food science in which I am lacking.
Taking a couple into my mouth, I found that the salt was applied with a light touch and this perfectly complemented a really nice earthy spud flavor. Just very tasty. I enjoyed it so much that I didn't even think of the vinegar. So I had threw a few more into my maw.
Nothing.
I had missed the tang because it wasn't there. So I smelled them again. Yep, I smelled the vinegar. Or did I? This was very strange. It was like these were homeopathic potato chips. Maybe there was some organic apple cider vinegar seasoning initially and they just kept diluting the batch by adding unflavored chips under the impression that potatoes have memory. Can the lining of a compostable bag be imbued with vinegar aroma?
Take off, eh!
These chips were nice'n'crispy and with a fine potato flavor. Just no vinegar. Some of the strangest chips to date. All the aroma, none of the flavor. Not even at the bottom of the bag.
One thing I didn't think about when I decided to try all of the salt & vinegar potato chips in town was that there'd be a plethora of house brands sold by the big chains. I figured I'd go to the grocery store and buy one bag a week of the precious chips and, when I'd tried them all, I'd be forced to jump on a plane to seek out more brands in exotic lands such as Pennsylvania. But no. My local supermarket doesn't have a house brand so it was out of sight, out of mind for me.
But I quickly noticed that Hy-Vee had a house brand. As did 7-11 and Kwik Trip. So now I find myself poking around the snack aisles of any store that has one in search of new chips. An old find made new again due to my procrastination was at Target with their Market Pantry brand.
I contacted their customer service to inquire as to who made the chips for them and was asked for a UPC code in exchange for that information. Since the bag had been tossed in the trash already, I guess I will never know who makes them. I wonder if this is simply mindless bureaucracy at work or if multiple companies make the chips so they need the code to determine which one fried up these particular potato slices. If I recall correctly, Kwik Trip asked for a UPC thingy as well before they'd divulge any info while Hy-Vee, I believe, was happy to tell me that Old Dutch made their chips.
Harumph.
These smelled pretty good with the oil being most noticeable but there was some vinegar tang to be had as well. Definitely tangier than most salt & vinegar brands. The chips looked like you'd expect. Cut to normal thickness and a creamy off-white, they had a mostly uniform color with only the odd brown spot.
Ooh, they had a really fine crispness - perfect for the thickness. They were a bit light on the salt and, curiously enough, the vinegar. Considering that I could smell the vinegar fairly well, I was surprised at how little I tasted. This did allow a very rich, sweet potato flavor to take center stage. As I got to the bottom of the bag, however, I did taste more tang so I guess the vinegar particulate matter settled in packaging.
Market Pantry went the adulterated route as the label notes lactose, sodium citrate, malic acid, and sodium diacetate in addition to 4 kinds of oil. Sodium diacetate is a "a salt of acetic acid" which makes it vinegar adjacent, I suppose. I think they just need some food glue to keep the vinegar, the malic acid, and those -ate's on the chips.
(Watch the prelude.)
(mid-June 2023)
My next destination was Dells Mill, just north of Augusta, a town that I think I visited once or twice in high school but I may be wrong. Truth be known, I don't have any memories of doing so but it's likely I went there for a basketball or football game.
Built in 1864 amongst the dells of Bridge Creek which was dammed to create a pond, the mill ground out flour and feed for over 100 years before it went out of operation in 1968. At least that’s what I gleaned from the historic marker.
Today, the water wheel still turns and it’s a true blast from the past. For a moment, I felt like I was in an old western movie and was expecting Clint Eastwood to ride up on his horse, hitch it to a post, and wander inside where Sondra Locke is hard at work baking biscuits with flour fresh off the millstone.
I didn’t think the wheel was actually attached to a screw or a cog or whatever it is that would transfer that motion to the grinding gizmo. Regardless, it’s hypnotic to stand atop the bridge over the creek and listen to the rush of the water as it falls over the dam and to watch the wheel spin.
Stepping inside the mill, I found a dimly lit antique shop. There were old saws, glassware, clothing, and this fine organ as well.
It looks to have the sheet music for the hit parade of 1925. Never heard of Wilmot Lemont nor Kathleen Lockhart Manning.
There is a gift store at the mill and behind the counter was an Amish girl who looked to be in her tween years. Not surprising as this is Amish country. All of the horse poop that litters the roads is a dead giveaway. While the cash register was strictly mechanical, I wondered how they got away with a smattering of electric lights. Is it OK if someone else turns them on and off?
I rethought my assumptions about the whether the mill is still milling when I saw all of the flour and homemade breads on offer. I bought a small loaf of einkorn bread, einkorn being an heirloom variety of wheat that, to the best of my knowledge, has not been tinkered with at the hands of Monsanto and so it’s more or less the same grain that my ancestors ate back in the day.
I also bought a bag of rolled rye thinking it’d be a good addition to my future loaves of bread. Only $1 a pound.
An Amish gentleman who looked to be in his mid- or late-30s - the girl's father, perhaps? - stopped in the gift shop as I was eyeing the shelves. We chatted a bit and he said that he'd heard that rain was in the forecast. Can the Amish read a newspaper and still remain doctrinally pure? Surely he didn't have the Weather Channel on in the back room. Maybe he cheated on the whole avoidance of technology thing with an old Philco tube radio. Yeah, it's electric but is pre-transistor.
During its heyday, the mill was a big draw and a community sprung up around it. There are newer homes in the area today but the old schoolhouse remains.
It seems to be used for storage these days.
I am not sure when it fell out of use as a school. It got updated with electric lights at some point. Still, heat appears to always have been provided by a wood-burning stove.
With a car full of uncommon or obscure grains, I took off for Osseo. Driving through the town of Augusta itself, I found the main drag was, as expected, very quiet. Perhaps it was the time of day but I suspect that most people do their shopping and take care of other errands in Eau Claire. I was disappointed to not find even a single ghost signs on any of the old buildings. The main street didn't look bad, just a bit lifeless. I suppose not being on the interstate means you don't get a bunch of tourists on the hunt for antiques. I did notice, however, that there is a Bush's Best baked bean factory in town.
My accommodations in Osseo were cheap but they did the job. The Osseo Inn is listed as a 1 star hotel on Google though it was probably at least one more star in quality back in the day when it opened for all of those motorists using the fancy, new interstate highway. Despite being a non-smoking establishment, the rooms still betray the bad old days when smoking was still legal in public accommodations.
Since you cannot light up inside your room, those who indulge gather outside. I've never talked to any of my fellow guests but the people I see out there with a ciggie perched between two fingers usually have a weary look on their faces. A couple of smokers appeared genuinely forlorn. I mean real "why hast thou forsaken me?" kind of looks, their ever-shortening cigarettes their only friends.
Are they traveling to the Twin Cities? Or to somewhere in Wisconsin? Perhaps some of them have just gotten out of prison or simply fallen on hard times and are looking for somewhere better. Maybe I just catch them in a pensive mood and they're really just a bunch of cheapskates like me.
A shower and a little downtime later, I met my pal Jason at the Northwoods Brewpub where we had a ball chatting away into the night. He'd brought our high school yearbooks and I was not surprised at how many people I couldn't recall. Jason went home with a few cans of Nutkrack candied pecans.
The next morning, I made a stop to get some insect repellent. While at the Augusta Wildlife Area, I got 2 ticks on my right leg within 10 minutes and I quickly came to the conclusion that the picaridin in the spray I had brought with me was just not cutting the mustard. I needed deet.
Despite tales of it being a carcinogen and only truly needed by our servicemen and women fighting in jungles far removed from the Upper Midwest, deet is, as far as I know quite safe, in addition to being the gold standard in insect repelling. Poking around the shelf at the store, I saw various cans of repellent. More picaridin. No thanks. I did find a few that were 25% or so deet. Nuh uh. Not good enough. I then spied a rather small bottle. 98.25% deet – now that was more like it! This was not an aerosol can where you just spray the stuff willy-nilly. No, it dispensed the Precious in small doses and you rubbed it on the areas needing attention. A little goes a long way.
My next destination was my favorite hiking spot, the Chippewa Moraine Recreation Area.
I believe I took the “correct” route and went down the path deosil.
The scenery was, as always, just spectacular. It wasn’t too hot out and, besides, I was walking mainly in the woods where it was shaded and cool. And my deet kept the skeeters at bay.
As I approached my favorite bridge on the longest trail:
I heard a woodpecker from across the water but couldn’t see it. Slowly I approached the bridge intending to get a wee bit closer before using my camera to search for it.
My first step lands with a gentle thud on the bridge and I see it take off just to my left where it was pecking on the dry part of a half-submerged log at the shore not 10 feet away. Oops. I guess I need to work on my hearing.
Since I love this spot so much, I sat down on the bench on the other side to take in my surroundings. Much to my surprise, a blue jay landed in the pine tree just across the path from me. I snapped photo after photo but this was the best I could manage.
This photo captured something at just the right angle because it looks like the blue jay has glowing Uncle Boonmee eyes. Lovely bird. But they’re mean SOB’s.
Further down the trail at another bridge, I spied a bird of unknown type that looked like it was in the middle of building a nest as it had a mouthful of dried grass.
As usual, there were many signs of the local beaver population.
I hope to someday witness a beaver actually fell a tree instead of just seeing the results of their nomming.
At some point I ran across this thing:
Part of me suspected there was some banal explanation behind this yellow blob such as that some kid left their Peeps candy on the log while another part of me suspected this was how Invasion of the Body Snatchers really got started.
Having finished my hike, I stopped at the interpretive center. Not only does it have a wonderful view as it’s perched atop a moraine, but there is an array of hummingbird feeders that draws a crowd which makes me insanely jealous as my feeder seems to repel them.
The hum from all of those wings flapping at 50 flaps per second or however fast they go was very loud and just slightly disconcerting. It kind of made me feel like something ominous was approaching. But hummingbirds are gorgeous and it’s fun to watch them dart around from feeder to feeder.
As usual, it was a wonderful hike. There is just something about this place that makes it seem like time stops when I'm out on the trail, makes it so easy to leave the workaday world behind and ignore the cities raging afar. No snakes seen on this walk but more birds. I briefly contemplated walking the two shorter trails instead of the longer one but opted not to. Perhaps next time.
Now, I won’t lie and say that a 4.5 mile hike through some of the most beautiful scenery Wisconsin has to offer is work. It was a sheer joy. But it did make me thirsty.
********
Bonus photo. Here’s one from spring of Ma and Pa Wood Duck hanging out in a tree on Madison’s east side.
As I noted in my review of Lazy Monk's coffee dark lager, I was up in Eau Claire recently. Despite being quite a bit farther north than usual, it was still hotter than a June bride in a featherbed. I limited my outdoor activities to the morning and night to avoid the temperatures that were in the 90s.
"But," I reasoned, "a lot of neat things happen indoors. Babies are born indoors at hospitals and people make babies while on comfy beds in places like hotel rooms. Movies are shown in big, air-conditioned rooms. Another thing is beer. It is commonly brewed inside."
Our hotel was out by Oakwood Mall and I think I saw tumbleweeds blowing around the parking lot. That place is dead! But just a short drive west was K Point Brewing. Having been gifted a 4-pack of their tasty Rauchbier earlier this year, I decided to head over there and check out the place. Not only would there be beer on offer, but another tasty beverage as well, coffee.
K Point is what I'd guess you'd call a nanobrewery and it's a block off Highway 93 on Eau Claire's south side. It was rather odd to see how much stuff has sprung up along 93 between the interstate and Hamilton Avenue over the years since I lived in the area. The brewery is in a joint called The Coffee Grounds and, upon pulling into their parking lot, I saw no mention of K Point.
Walking in, I saw a café to the left, a seating area and beer coolers back and to the right, and a middle that looked like what I envision a Williams Sonoma store to look like: filled with kitchenware, local jams, and artisanal foods like craft baking mixes that you can mix in one of the fancy mixing bowls and bake in one of the moderately expensive loaf pans on offer.
I eventually made my way to the coolers and found the beer. There was a variety of brands on offer besides K Point (including, oddly enough, Madison's Working Draft Beer) but I stuck with the house brews. I noticed that there were 4-packs missing a can or 2 and was pleased to discover that people weren't stuffing the odd can into their pocket or purse but rather the K Point folks are happy to have you mix and match their beers as you like. Want a sampler pack of 4 different beers? Go for it.
K Point doesn't have a tasting room, per se. There was a sign saying that, if you need a brew to quench your thirst, just flag down someone and they'll pour it for you. This low profile reminded me of some comments by brewmaster Tom Breneman that he made in an email to me regarding his approach to brewing. It dawned on me that K Point is a labor of love, not an attempt to set the craft beer world on fire. They're not out to cater to trends and be the next The Brewing Projekt but rather to brew beers Tom and whomever else has a say in the matter likes and to be content with a small audience.
This is an ethos I can get behind and I did. I got a mix pack with some of their Red Lager as well as some Vienna Lager.
I kinda sorta know a teensy bit about what a Vienna lager should look, smell, and taste like but a red lager? Not sure about that one. Wisconsin loves amber lagers so I wondered if, perhaps, it was simply a different name for the same kind of beer as Capital's Wisconsin Amber, Lakefront's Riverwest Stein, or Lake Louie's Badger Club. Or maybe it was some kind of Irish thing. I tend to think of Irish ales as also being called red ales so why not an Irish lager being a red lager?
In the end, I just assumed this stuff would be like the amber lagers that are found from the Lake Superior shore to the Illinois border. You know, amber-ish in color, medium-bodied, lots of caramel aroma and flavor, moderate hops, and fairly sweet, malty taste.
I started with the Vienna lager. Because...because...well, the style is more appealing, I guess.
It was amber, clear, and poured with a nice head. Plus there were some bubbles inside. After I had poured myself a glass and was furiously writing down notes on how it looked, I noticed that I could smell the beer even though it was a foot away from my nose and I was smelling caramel. I like those scents at a distance. It builds anticipation, makes it seem like you've got a real fresh beer on your hands. When I put my nose to it, there was also bread and grass to be had.
A nice fizz greeted my tongue along with a greatly desired but somewhat unexpected Maillardy bread taste. That caramel was present but was tempered and not particularly sweet. I found it medium-bodied but it leaned towards the lighter end of the scale, probably because of the good fizz as well as the relative paucity of malt sweetness.
Just a bit of that caramel lingered on the finish before a lovely, firm dose of hop bitterness washed over my tongue. This made for some really nice spiciness and a rather dry finish.
The red lager looked a lot like its Vienna counterpart, although it was decidedly darker. Like a deep, ruby-laced amber. And, since rubies are red, it seems that "red lager" was an appropriate moniker. A big, frothy head was tan whereas the Vienna's was lighter, more like barely off-white. The aroma was similar too with caramel and grass coming through.
My first sip revealed a good fizz adding a bit of zip in a smooth, medium-bodied beer that did not lean towards the lighter side. The caramel sweetness was much more pronounced here and accompanied by faint stone fruit and a weird astringency. It was a bit like drinking a stronger Belgian ale, though the can said 5.7% A.B.V.
On the finish, the caramel sweetness lingered before some muscular peppery hops kicked in offering a nice dryness to contrast with the caramel and a goodly amount of bitterness.
The Red Lager was definitely along the lines of the American amber lager as I had hypothesized. It would have been fine except for that astringency. It really tasted like it had twice the alcohol in it than was claimed on the can.
And so the Vienna Lager was the clear winner here. In my correspondence with K Point's brewer Tom Breneman, he said that was into more traditional styles - "if you know what a dunkel or Vienna lager is supposed to taste like, that's what I'm shooting for," he remarked.
I think he hit the nail on the head here. Simply as a lager, he did a really nice job considering that he brews just a few barrels at a time and surely has a fairly basic brewhouse. (Or maybe not.) Both of these beers had the expected clarity and tasted "clean", i.e. - none of the fruity yeast flavors. But he coaxed some great toasty bread flavors out of the malt for the Vienna lager and kept the sweetness minimal for just a wonderful brew. I also enjoyed the hop levels in each beer. They balanced the malt flavors very well and made for a brisk, refreshing finish.
Junk food pairing: Pair your K Point amber/red lagers with some tortilla chips and a fine salsa from Eau Claire's Chip Magnet. The Wildly Delicious variety has a bit of heat but won't prevent your tongue from appreciating the fine beer.
My Second Doctor marathon comes to a close with a Christmas tale from Mark Michalowski.
If a story told by letters is epistolary, then is there a term for one told by someone within a story?
That's the case here as a teacher named Miss Bennett has, at the recommendation of a Miss Wright (Polly, presumably) brought in the Doctor to tell her class a Christmas tale.
Santa is out in his sleigh doing his thing when the TARDIS suddenly materializes in front of it. In goes the sleigh with Dasher and Vixen and all the other reindeer. The procession comes to rest in an enlarged console room and the Doctor greets St. Nick. He mentions to the South Pole's most famous resident that they had met before when the Doctor was with two friends of his, John and Gillian. These are, in fact, two of the Doctor's grandkids who appeared in the so-called "TV comics" but I am unsure what this means. In some sort of equivalent to TV Guide? I haven't been able to track them down which is, perhaps, just as well given the quality of comics of this time.
Anyway, the Doctor proceeds to tell Santa that he knows of his clones and of the wormholes in space they all use to get presents delivered on a timely basis. Bluntly, he asks Santa to quit delivering presents. Like some Yuletide version of Paul R. Ehrlich, he warns that, as Earth's population grows and humans spread out over the galaxy, things become less cheerful. The Doctor shows Santa a future with thousands of dark satanic mills that are needed to feed the demand for presents for billions and billions of children and he warns that all of those wormholes that'll be required to have Santa simulacrums do their duty will wreak havoc with all of those luminous threads that make up the web of time and space.
The Doctor decides to take over Santa's rounds and deliver presents himself. His first stop at Suzie and Timmy's house doesn't go well. They want a ghetto blaster and computer games but all the Doctor can fish out of his capacious pockets are a bunch of flowers and a nooild, which is a telepathic translator. Unfortunately, it won't work on the kids' cat, Trixie.
The kids' dad shows up and starts manhandling the Doctor but, luckily, Santa appears and puts things right.
Santa and the Doctor agree to work together on robots to take the place of Santa clones and safer, more environmentally friendly wormholes so as to maintain the integrity of the Time-Space Continuum.
A very humorous holiday tale. I could just picture the Doctor fumbling through his pockets while some skeptical, impatient kids waited for some decent presents. This may be a rather insubstantial way to bid farewell to the Second Doctor, but it was a lot of fun.
Watching the Hartnell era, I saw the show's conventions being devised and many of its favorite tropes that we'll see over the coming decades appear for the first time. With Troughton, the show really feels like it should, it feels like it has since his time. The Doctor goes from being an old, grandfatherly figure, to a more avuncular one, albeit like a crazy uncle. He had a warmer rapport, overall, with his companions.
The Second Doctor was written, like all of them, I suppose, inconsistently. I think of him as having a playful side and an occasional charming forgetfulness. Whereas his previous self would charge in lobbing grenades of opprobrium, this incarnation would try to cajole first. For me, there has to be some whimsey to go along with the Second Doctor instead of merely a slavish adherence to duty. Do-gooding is necessary in portraying the Doctor but not sufficient.
You can see Troughton in the nascent Seventh Doctor as well as in the Fifth Doctor with those, "Well, that didn't quite go as planned" moments.
Jamie sticks out as the best companion but I enjoyed Ben and Polly as well. Zoe was a fine companion too but she didn't get nearly the number of good lines as Jamie did and she also didn't get to be a computer whiz as often as Jamie got to be a man of action. At least she fared better than Mel as computer things went.
We meet the Brigadier in "The Web of Fear" and Troughton gets to play the Doctor and the villain in "The Enemy of the World". I loved the wire work such as in "The Underwater Menace" and Mr. Quill's expression in "Fury From the Deep" is just classic. The Cybermen evolve over the course of the Second Doctor's tenure and those stories never seem far from writers' minds even here decades later. "The Tomb of the Cybermen" is just a blast and deserves all the praise it gets. And "The Mind Robber" was pleasingly surreal.
The writers for the DW Annual stories failed to notice that the Doctor had regenerated into someone who doesn't call those he travels with "children" while the illustrators were similarly in the dark about the new companions.
The novels and short stories continued to bring our beloved hero into new and interesting scenarios that could have never been realized on TV. I really enjoy the Christmas themed short stories and, amongst the novels, enjoyed the The Dark Path, a Master origin story. And, contra my statement above, I also found The Indestrucible Man to be great read despite the absence of whimsey on the Doctor's part. The plot and characterization were enough for a change.
So auf wiedersehen, Second Doctor. We'll see you again in "The Three/Five/Two Doctors" and a future PDA or two.
While I won't start my Third Doctor marathon for a few months yet, I am hoping that the DW Annuals get their shit in gear. And I am done with animated reconstructions, not that I minded them. It should be fun and I am looking forward to it but need a break as I have lots of other non-Doctor Who books to read, movies to rent, and a couple of Call of Cthulhu scenarios to prepare for as I'll be running them at Gamehole Con next month.
