I have been catching up on the last few issues of County Highway, "America’s Only Newspaper". As I noted previously, it's a very interesting paper but it generally avoids the Upper Midwest. That changed 3 issues ago with an article about Wisconsin supper clubs by Meaghan Garvey.
Read the opening line:
"It's been said that Wisconsin has more ghosts per square mile than any state in America..."
Who has said this? I have lived in Wisconsin for over 37 years and don't recall ever hearing this claim. Anyone ever heard this?
Regardless, it's a fine way to open a piece.
I appreciate the reference to the Rouse Simmons a couple sentences later, though. The article was illustrated with a few ads including a couple for Lehman's Supper Club and, upon seeing them, I immediately said to myself, "I know that one! I've been there!"
Madison Metro Transit (or should that be Madison's Metro Transit?) recently announced new bus service to Monona and Verona.
The service to Monona sees routes G and L losing their no stop zones along Monona Drive and Broadway while an hourly route 38 will go through the town's Civic Campus before heading to its eastern terminus, the Dutch Mill Park & Ride. Along the way it will pass by the Aldo Leopold Foundation and the Edna Taylor Conversation Park. Hopefully some folks can take advantage of the new service and go do some hiking and those lovely parks. Unfortunately, the 38 only run during the week so, if I want to take a hike at either of them, I'll still be biking or driving.
On the other hand, I can now take a bus to Viet Hoa to get my tom yum soup paste or grab an ice cream in Paradise or a loaf of Pan de Muerto at Monona Bakery and Eatery.
The new service to Verona is also, sadly, weekday only. The D2 route will continue on to Verona instead of terminating on McKee Road at Maple Grove. The article I have read, which seems to be an edited version of the Wisconsin State Journal one, which is paywalled, says: "Route D2, which currently provides peak hour service in the early morning and late afternoon, will expand to regular daytime service."
But this is not true - just look at the D2 schedule. It runs every 30 minutes all day, not just at peak hours. It would be nice to be able to take the bus to downtown Verona on the weekends but this extension of the D2 is for Epic employees, in the main.
WUD Film down on campus will be screening UW-Madison alumnus Errol Morris' latest movie, Separated, later this month on the 27th as part of a series called "Social Cinema". It documents the first Trump administration's horrible policy of separating migrant families.
IQ has announced the release date for their latest album, Dominion.
I went poking around Youtube for the teaser video and discovered that someone had posted an early mix of the song "No Dominion" a month ago.
It definitely sounds very IQ-y and also like it's missing some guitar overdubs. Between this and the teaser, I am wondering if Mike Holmes had eased back on the really heavy guitar sound. We shall find out on 28 March when the album is released.
Ooh! There's a documentary coming out next month about Sly and the Family Stone called SLY LIVES! (aka The Burden of Black Genius). Unfortunately, it looks like it won't get a theatrical run and will instead be available only on Hulu. I don't think we have Hulu anymore but will have to check on that. Look for it starting the 13th.
Later this month Karben4 will introduce a new beer - Wisconsin Kernza® Pub Ale. Kernza is a perennial wheatgrass that is more environmentally friendly
than traditional grains used in beer such as barley and wheat. Madison Magazine has a piece on the brew.
The line that caught my eye was "To celebrate Wisconsin’s first barrel of sustainable beer..." I did a double take as I had some tasty beer brewed with Kernza over two years ago courtesy of Scott Manning at Vintage Brewing.
Robin Shepard published an informative piece at Isthmus in December 2022 on Kernza featuring Scottie as well as Bloom Bake Shop. It seems that Scottie and Vintage were responsible for "Wisconsin’s first barrel of sustainable beer".
Having said that, I am keen on trying Karben4's brew.
Today I learned that's there is now a purveyor of doughnuts here in Madison called Level 5 Donuts. Madison Magazine reports that they are a pop-up company but will soon have a brick and mortar location. Somewhere on Atwood Avenue, apparently, but the article does not give an address. I look forward to trying one of their vegan doughnuts.
While I do not know what the name means, you bet your sweet ass that a certain King Crimson song was the first thing that came to mind when I saw it on the page. What Crimsony flavors could they offer? Vanilla Barks' Tongues in Chocolate? Eggless and Oreo Black? Latte Kudachai?
Earlier this week I made a very chilly walk over to the Athenaeum Center for Thought and Culture to check out the exhibition of Roger Deakins' photography. Deakins is one of the greatest cinematographers ever and has a country ton of classics to his name including Sid and Nancy, The Shawshank Redemption, The Big Lebowski, O Brother, Where Art Thou?, Skyfall, Blade Runner 2049 - the list goes on and on.
It was a really neat exhibition as I don't get to see many physical photographs these days, much less those blown up to 20"x30" with a wealth of detail to see. It's just a different experience from looking at a photo on your phone and zooming and repositioning.
I was immediately drawn to a photograph called "Sheepdog and Cow":
The road with the canine and bovine subjects is off to the right with a fence separating it from a field on the left. That's how I would have done it! I often put a path or way off to one side in my photographs such as this one:
I have the same photographic aesthetic as the great Roger Deakins. Ha!
My brother died early one spring and for reasons I cannot explain this song became associated in my mind with that dreadful day. It's such a lovely, joyous song about blooming meadows and newborn lambs (and farting billy goats) but its contrast with my sadness just hit me in some way so that it never fails to bring memories of my brother flooding back.
Ever since he left us, spring has been about those opposing feelings. The joy of warmer weather and life beginning anew mixing with grief and loss.
First news that Bob Uecker had died appeared and then it wasn't long before word came down that David Lynch had joined him. So many great memories of enjoying his work. I think his films fostered a deep love of the uncanny in me. There's a nice tribute by Brian Tallerico up at rogerebert.com.
As far as I can remember, I first heard of Lynch when I was in college from a friend who was a bit older than me. We were hanging out at his apartment at Johnson and Bassett and he remarked that he was excited for Lynch's new TV show, On the Air, to debut. Upon learning that I was not familiar with Lynch, he went on to extol the virtues of Twin Peaks, Blue Velvet, etc.
Another great memory is binge watching Twin Peaks while I was house sitting for a friend out in rural Edgerton. A shiver went down my spine as the Giant intoned, "It's happening again..." I was perplexed yet couldn't help but be intrigued when the horse appeared to Sarah. Surely it was all those scenes in the Black Lodge that gave me such an affinity for the uncanny.
It was freezing outside when the Frau and I went to Chicago to see Inland Empire at The Music Box. If memory serves, it was on Super Bowl Sunday with the Bears playing the Colts. The Kennedy Expressway was as dead as I'd ever seen it and we made great time.
Watching Lost Highway at Cinematheque here in Madison a couple years back was just fantastic. I got to hear the soundtrack as it was meant to be heard for the first time and it was incredibly unnerving.
Tone Madison published a nice article a couple years back that detailed Lynch's affiliation with Tandem Press here in Madison called "The art life of David Lynch in Madison".
When I heard the news, I immediately recalled listening to a Brewers-Expos game back in the late 90s when Uecker related a lengthy tale about a previous visit by the Expos to County Stadium when their showers failed. 10 glorious minutes of improv.
It wasn’t long after March had given way to April that we got a snowstorm. Nature was not quite ready to breed lilacs out of the dead land.
Since the temperature hovered around freezing, we ended up with a real slushy mess out there. Still, I rather enjoyed it as I love snow and knew that I’d be sweating and uncomfortable in 80+ degree temps soon enough. Besides, I don’t drive to work, so I could let the bus drivers deal with my commute.
Within a week the snow was gone and we had a lovely sunny day for a solar eclipse. While we weren’t in the path of total blackout, Madison would see something like 85% of that refulgent orb in the sky obscured. Some co-workers and I wandered over to the south side of the building to catch a glimpse as it started. I was equipped with a shiny new pair of solar glasses that I had bought last month on my visit to the planetarium. After putting them on and gazing upwards, I felt a bit like I was in Sunshine staring at the sun from that viewing room.
I saw this:
Or rather my phone did. But that is a fair representation of what I was able to see through my glasses.
A co-worker without special spectacles did the old pinhole trick.
It was rather creepy just how dark it got at midday and I can imagine that it was very scary for my ancestors to witness this without friendly astronomers around to explain what was happening.
Another co-worker who had a much more expensive phone caught this image as close to totality as we got:
Someone remarked that they thought that the birds that would normally be seen on the parking ramp were missing. Perhaps all those Mourning doves decided to lay low as the sun dimmed. I wondered if Piper was reacting to the eclipse. More than likely she was sleeping and hadn’t noticed. Otherwise she was simply annoyed that the big heat source outside the window had been turned down.
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Just a few days later I was to be found getting set to head down to The Big Easy. The purpose of the trip was ostensibly to visit The National WWII Museum but, as you can imagine, more hijinks ensued.
It was one I had hoped to take with my brother but it never came to fruition. My father was a huge World War II history buff and the apple didn’t fall far from the tree in my brother's case. Although I am fairly well-versed in the history of that conflict – certainly better than most people – the apple fell a bit further afield in my case. I am not able to give precise casualty numbers for both sides at the Battle of Guadalcanal, for example, while my father and brother could. There were many times when I was watching a war movie with my brother and he’d note that the tanks onscreen had not yet been introduced at the time being portrayed.
“There were no Panther tanks when Germany invaded Russia in 1941!” he’d rant before helpfully concluding, “They weren’t introduced until ’43!”
This is the level of history nerdiness that I had to contend with in my fraternal relationship.
I really don’t recall why we never took the trip. There may have been financial reasons or perhaps we were just too lazy to actually organize things. In addition to not visiting the museum, I found a story that my brother had been writing that lay unfinished amongst his things when we were clearing his stuff out of his apartment.
Vita brevis.
After my brother died, I took the adage carpe diem to heart. More to heart, anyway. Do it before it’s too late. Putting something off more than likely means it will never happen.
At some point, I broached the subject of the museum visit with a couple of friends, T and P, whom I got to know through my brother and who are also big World War II buffs. Together they formed a triumvirate of history nerds who could spend hours arguing over the strategy of German General Heinz Guderian during Operation Barbarossa or discourse on the effectiveness (or lack of it) of the Japanese kamikaze pilots. What better people to go to The National WWII Museum with? We hemmed and hawed for a bit but finally decided we’d take the trip this spring. And so plans were laid. P, T, and T’s wife, L, would join me on the Official Memorial Trip for my brother.
L is not particularly interested in World War II history but my brother was her companion on the couch to watch many a tennis tournament.
It was also a trip I'd hope to take with my Frau but her chronic pain issues continued to plague her and hoofin' it around The Big Easy was out of the question, sadly. While I understood her decision, it was still a great disappointment.
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We were to fly out of O’Hare on a Thursday morning and so the plan was that I’d drive down to T and L’s place in suburban Chicago on Wednesday after work and spend the night as would P. Wednesday evening rolls around, I throw my luggage into my car, say goodbye to my Frau, and I am off. I make a quick stop at my credit union’s drive thru where I get some cash.
The interstate was fairly busy as the stretch between Madison and Janesville gets a lot of use at rush hour. About 10 miles outside of town the podcast I was listening to suddenly stopped. I glanced at my phone and saw that I had an incoming call. The number looked vaguely familiar – I thought that it was my credit union. What could they possibly want? Well, they’d have to wait as I was driving.
I made pretty good time and got to T and L’s place just as dinner was being served. The four of us spent the evening chatting away and P, who has a 3D printer that is never idle, presented me with this hideous Cthulhu dice tower:
Instead of rolling my dice the old-fashioned way and chancing some kind of unnameable carpal tunnel injury that only people who roll a lot of dice get, I just put them in the back of Cthulhu’s head and they tumble down into the tray. I am sure to fail every sanity check.
The next morning we had a little breakfast, gathered our luggage, and called an Uber (or was it a Lyft?) to get us to the airport. L watched the vehicle’s progress on her phone. At one point, it just vanished from the map and the little messages saying our ride was X minutes away stopped. The driver apparently decided that they didn’t want to drive us to the airport after all. The worrying thing is that the app never gave an alert that the driver had bailed on us. Luckily L had been keeping a close eye on the map. So she ordered up a new ride.
With the new Uber just a few minutes away, we start chatting about the upcoming changes in travel rules, e.g. – the requirement to have a Real ID in order to board a plane. I remarked that I had gotten one and pulled my wallet out to show folks my driver’s license bedecked with holograms and other funky mechanisms to prevent ne'er-do-wells from forging fake IDs.
I was quite surprised to find that my license wasn’t in my wallet.
Immediately I looked in my car thinking that I perhaps didn’t put it back in my wallet after my stop at the credit union and that it had fallen into a crack somewhere. My search proved fruitless and then it hit me. I can only imagine the look on my face when it dawned on me that my credit union surely called me yesterday because I had left my ID in the drive-thru teller machine’s scanner.
Oh *$@#!!!!
Missing a plane was not a big deal but missing this trip was unthinkable.
I threw my bags into my car and told my friends that I’d see them later. My brother was no doubt looking up and shaking his head at this point.
To say I was pissed off at myself on the drive home was like saying Chicago had a little fire back in 1871. Still, I somehow managed to either drive at a reasonable speed or just not encounter any state troopers. Getting pulled over without a driver’s license would have only piled Pelion upon Ossa.
My first stop upon getting back to Madison was the credit union where someone kindly returned my driver’s license to me. Not long afterwards I was home and walking in the door where my Frau was quite surprised to see me. I explained what had happened or rather how I had f*cked up. Then I set out on the Internet and scrambled to find another flight. My brother was no doubt laughing at this point.
About 3 hours later my Frau dropped me off at the airport here in Madison. While MSN is nowhere near as large as O’Hare, it was rather busy and fairly hectic, as things go for a small regional airport. The security line was jam packed but soon enough I was on a plane bound for Chicago where I’d catch a flight to New Orleans.
Once at O’Hare, I made my way to opposite end of the terminal with steely-eyed determination. Nothing short of an act of God would prevent me from missing that flight. I texted my friends with an update on my status and, in return, got pictures of them wandering the French Quarter and relaxing at a tavern enjoying refreshing cocktails without me.
“We wandered the French Quarter…”
“…wish you were here…”
My plane touched ground at Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport at around 9:30 that night. I grabbed my luggage and stepped outside to find that it wasn’t blazingly hot yet was still much warmer than home. We had an Airbnb across the river from downtown in the Algiers Point neighborhood which made for a moderately lengthy cab ride. Not much to see on the way there in the darkness and the cabbie wasn’t very talkative. I arrived at the house around 10:30.
This was my first Airbnb and I found that it was a nice place.
The decorations were chosen for tourists like us with Mardi Gras colors strewn about, a lot of fleur-de-lis’s, and all the symbols of the city represented including jazz and shrimp.
There was a porch out back that overlooked a small yard while a freeway bridge lingered in the distance although I wasn’t sure which freeway. It was nice to be able enjoy the outdoors in shorts once again. The neighborhood was quiet but it was Thursday. Perhaps all the drunken debauchery would start tomorrow night.
My friends were happy to see me, doubly so because they had had a few drinks and were in a jolly mood. They were attempting to order a pizza but we discovered that there were no pizzerias nearby on this side of the river and the delivery areas of the others in close enough proximity stopped at the shores of the Mighty Mississip.
Oops.
Their munchies went unsated and they learned their lesson: go easy on the Sazeracs unless you absolutely positively have a food source at hand.
And so we sat around outside and chatted in the cool night air. I relayed to them my hastily revamped travel plans and they, in turn, chronicled their strolls about town that day. Also, we talked a bit about tomorrow’s itinerary. We were not far from the Algiers Ferry Terminal so we decided that’s how we’d get across the river and to not hire any taxis. Any taxis with wheels, that is.
My experience with New Orleans until that point consisted solely of driving through it on I10 back in 2002 when a friend and I were on our way to Breaux Bridge, about 2 hours to the west, to attend the crawfish festival there. I knew folks who’d been there, of course, and had heard tell of the fun to be had there. Another friend had attended a conference in New Orleans many years ago and returned to Madison with a black eye, the result of an encounter his face had with one of the city’s sidewalks. While he fessed up to having drank a Hurricane or 3, he noted extenuating circumstances: New Orleans’ sidewalks were in dreadful shape.
I knew the typical northerner kind of stuff: it’s on the Mississippi and has a major port, the New Orleans Saints are the football team, it was part of the Louisiana Purchase. There’s Cajun food and music, jazz, Hurricane Katrina, Bourbon Street, old-timey streetcars – you know, the usual stuff everyone knows.
My goals for the trip were rather simple. Enjoy the company of my friends, honor my brother’s memory by visiting the World War II museum, sample local beer, and eat as much gumbo as humanly possible. It’s what my brother would have wanted.
We awoke the next morning, showered, and were out the door to catch a ferry for downtown. Algiers Point had an odd mix of homes. Not the architecture, necessarily, but rather condition. Our Airbnb had obviously been renovated recentlyish but there were other homes on the block that were in less than ideal shape.
As you can see, the street on our block was pretty rough. So were the sidewalks.
I could now fully grok how my friend had tripped and fallen. They would be fun traversing in the dark. I presumed/hoped that there were no wheelchair users or old folks who used walkers living in the area.
We ran across an empty lot that still had the tile floor and mosaic entryway of the building that had been there.
A disused commercial building sat uneasily next to a church.
But there were also stretches of houses in good condition that made you forget the blighted blocks. For example, there were beautiful homes such as these that I assume are in a French colonial style.
The flora provided a lot of wonderful sights and smells with a lot of trees and bushes that were unfamiliar to me such as this tree with the helix trunk.
I recognized the sight and smell of magnolia trees but we wandered through spots that were sweetly scented and I would bend down to take a whiff of the flowers responsible without any idea what variety they were.
There was a coffeeshop a block or two away from the pub, Congregation Coffee, and it became our first stop in the morning for the rest of the trip. Well, maybe not our last day in town but definitely the rest.
I got a cup of joe and a couple bags of coffee to take home including their coffee/chicory blend.
On the way out, one of the feline denizens of the neighborhood ambled on by. I tried my best to get it to come to me for some pets but it ignored the Yankee tourist.
We discovered that there is a Louis Armstrong memorial at the ferry terminal. Satchmo has a lock on public transit terminals in this city, it seems.
I felt like I had come full circle having seen his house in Chicago last year on my Bronzeville tour and now here I was in the city of his birth.
Algiers Point was, as far as I could see, a Janus-like place. Dilapidated houses where nature was slowly reclaiming the land stood next to gorgeous homes in excellent repair and with well-manicured yards. Coffeeshops are usually a sign of gentrification and Congregation appeared to draw a typical middle-class crowd. On the other hand, The Crown and Anchor looked to be something of a dive bar.
I wondered how much of the neighborhood’s condition was due to Hurricane Katrina. As it was, Algiers Point seemed to be a mix of working- and middle-class residents and majority white. The owner of the Airbnb had left a note indicating which parts of the neighborhood we ought to avoid at night but I didn’t see any spots on our morning walk which looked particularly sketchy.
We paid our fares, boarded the ferry, and were soon off to the other side of the river.
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Bonus photo. I may have used this one already but I ran across it recently and it never fails to make me smile. This photo reminds me of my grandmother and all of my great aunts.
I’m thrilled to be able to officially share with you that my new album, The Overview will be released on 14th March. The album is based on the recognised phenomenon of the “overview effect’’, whereby astronauts seeing the Earth from space undergo a transformative cognitive shift; some experience an overwhelming appreciation and perception of the planet’s beauty, but others see the Earth truly for what it is – insignificant and lost in the vastness of space.
Next came news that Jethro Tull's latest album, Curious Ruminant, would be released on the 7th. Andy Giddings returns on some tracks as new guitarist Jack Clark makes his debut.
After two consecutive new Jethro Tull album releases in 2022 and 2023, a new studio record – ‘Curious Ruminant’ – is unleashed on the 7th March 2025. Consisting of nine new tracks varying in length from two and half minutes to almost seventeen minutes, this is an album of mostly full band music. Amongst the musicians featured are former keyboardist Andrew Giddings and drummer James Duncan, along with the current band members David Goodier, John O’Hara, Scott Hammond and, making his recording debut with the band, guitarist Jack Clark.
Seen at Marcus Palace. Someone is out there transforming children's stories into horror movies as those responsible for that Winnie the Pooh slasher flick have now turned their attention to Peter Pan. Uff da! Was Super 8 footage of the mud shark incident dug up for the Led Zeppelin documentary? Maybe an AI recreation?
Seen at AMC Fitchburg before a screening of From Ground Zero. I am tempted to see Rule Breakers but am weary of Angel Studios. Is it a story of hope, hard work, and perseverance or do they find Jesus?
Trailers from the screening of Nosferatu I attended at Marcus Palace. Generally speaking, the trailers are getting worse. Or, rather, the movies are getting less interesting to me.
Some new footage of Genesis on The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway tour has emerged. 11 minutes of the 13 December 1974 show at the Capitol Theatre in Passaic, New Jersey captured by Irene Trudel has been digitized by The Genesis Museum and put online.
It appears to have been synched with the soundboard recording of the show. The Slipperman section is great stuff.
I had my first Winter Skål of the season a couple days ago.
While I wish it were a bit less sweet, I still loved it. There's a great toastiness to the caramel flavor. And is it me or is it hoppier this season? It tasted like more than 17 IBU's with a sharp Noble spiciness.
I stopped in at the Fitchburg Hop Haus outpost earlier this week and was surprised at just how many IPAs they had on offer. Add in other styles with trendy hops or with genuine fruit and the beer menu was bloated with sweet flavors. I jumped on the tropical bandwagon and went with their New Zealand pilsner which featured Nectaron hops, a variety with which I was unfamiliar.
With a strong pineapple taste, there was no way I could drink more than one but it wasn't bad. The pilsner part tasted pretty good, from what I could tell.
This marks my final review of a NessAlla Kombucha kombucha that comes in a bottle.
I don't know how they determine which flavors are bottled and which ones go into cans. Perhaps ones that have ingredients that degrade more quickly when exposed to light are canned...? Looking at the list of canned kombuchas, most of them incorporate the name of a cocktail or some other blended drink that isn't normally associated with tea, e.g. - "mimosa" and "sangria". Maybe these canned kombuchas are aimed at folks with a more refined palate. Or some such thing.
Onto Peach Blush!
It was a hazy yellow with a slight orange tint that had more than a passing resemblance to my archnemesis in the libation space, the American Hazy IPA. The aroma had a strong vinegar tang to it along with the expected peach and a little somthing floral which, after looking at the ingredients list, I figured was the hibiscus. I surmised that it was these flowers that gave the liquid its orange tint.
Ooh! This stuff was heavier on the fizz than the last few kombuchas I've sampled. It had a nice tang too. A tea-peach combo was at the fore with a hint of hibiscus and just a touch of citrus which proved to be tangerine. A peachy sweetness lasted on the swallow.
I really loved the combination of the tanginess and the fizz. It kept the sweetness in check. There didn't seem to be much in the way of tannins so the sugary taste could have easily gotten out of control.
One thing I've encountered making my way through NessAlla's offerings is that I get a gently cloying sweet tea taste even though there's really not a lot of sugar in these kombuchas. I suspect it's just a bit of gustatory conditioning from having visited my Frau's family in Alabama and being surrounded by sweet tea and it is weird. Some of these kombuchas taste rather sweet but don't have that thick, syrupy mouthfeel. I don't know if my tongue is especially sensitive to sweetness or who. What would my tongue register if there had been more tannins? Only The Shadow knows.
In the end, this was tasty stuff, although I believe there was natural peach flavoring added. Not sure why that would be necessary or what that is exactly. Still, I eagerly lapped this stuff up.
Florence Williams, author of The Nature Fix, will be doing an online lecture with The Aldo Leopold Foundation tomorrow called "The Nature Fix: The Power of Nature Immersion in Stressful Times". More info is here.
The gist is that we evolved in natural environments, not cities, so our brains are wired in a certain way so as to flourish best in certain respects in fields and forests instead of urban canyons and office cubicles. In general, people tend to be more at ease, less stressed, and focus on the positive when out in nature as opposed to being in cities.
The past couple of months have been up and down. My Frau’s chronic pain problems have gotten steadily worse. Add in some food allergies that have suddenly appeared and she is depressed and often in a rather foul mood. I suppose I cannot blame her, though. If I had to endure what she does, I’d probably be in a bad mood most of the time too.
Because of her suffering, I’ve been largely sticking close to home. She doesn’t like to go out very much and I want to be close by her instead of gallivanting around town. Well, most of the time.
van Meckenem was a German goldsmith and printmaker from Bocholt. Today the city is in northwestern Germany but I am not sure what state or principality it belonged to 500 years ago long before there was such a thing as a country called Germany. A placard at the exhibit described him as “a fifteenth-century media influencer and entrepreneur.” I found the application of the rather new meaning of “influencer” to a medieval figure to be cringe-worthy. Perhaps it is not altogether wrong but the phrase conjures in my mind images of scantily clad young women offering their opinions on a disposable, mass-produced something or other made in China as their breasts threaten to burst from their restraints.
Using his goldsmithing skills, van Meckenem created engravings and became the first printmaker to use his own name as a brand, often copying the works of others and pawning them off as his own after some alterations.
For example, here’s a print called The Promenade by the legendary artist of the Northern Renaissance, Albrecht Dürer:
And here is van Meckenem’s reimagining which retained the title:
Apparently only a small number of his actual engravings survive and a handful were on display.
Here’s a print where you can see his initials rather easily:
That “I.M.” became a brand, of sorts, and he would go on to mass produce his prints. Well, as mass produced as you could get in the second half of the 15th century.
The exhibit drew parallels between van Meckenem’s appropriation of others’ works in a pre-intellectual property age and the situation today where the concept of intellectual property struggles against digital technologies which make it a snap to coopt the work of others and repurpose it.
It would have been interesting to know what the people whose works he copied thought of his appropriation. Flattered? Or perhaps they were aggrieved at the theft. Did the original artists view it as just how human culture gets propagated or resent loss of prestige and income? Speaking of income, did the folks who bought these prints mistake van Meckenem’s (unsigned) works for Dürer’s?
A neat exhibit which indulged my love of all things medieval.
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In February some of A24's movies returned to theaters in celebration of St. Valentine's Day. The Lighthouse is a love story - kinda sorta. I mean, it features two characters who, I suppose you could say, have feelings of some kind towards one another and the film details their relationship. It quickly became one of my favorite movies of all-time back in 2019 and I jumped at the chance to see it on the big screen once again.
The first time I watched The Lighthouse I was mesmerized by the stark black & white cinematography and took in the period dialogue and all the weirdness and just let the whole thing wash over me in an impressionistic kind of way. I didn't worry about plot details too much and just allowed the eldritch mood sink into every pore. On this viewing I would try to pay more attention to all the crazy stuff and figure out how everything fits together. Well, I could try, anyway.
The film opens with a ship out in rough waters. It brings two lighthouse keepers, a.k.a. - wickies, Ephraim Winslow and Thomas Wake to an island somewhere off the coast of New England. The two keepers they're replacing walk past them without so much as making eye contact. It's as if Winslow and Wake aren't even there. The outgoing men each hold onto one handle of a chest between them while Winslow and Wake carry only their own gear. Arriving at the lighthouse, the fresh replacements stop at the door and stare at the camera briefly as if they were having their portrait taken. It's an unexpected moment of breaking the fourth wall and it had a vague Wisconsin Death Trip vibe to it.
In certain ways and most proximately, the film is about, as George Steiner put it, one of the "principal constants of conflict in the condition of man", namely the conflict between age and youth. Wake is the veteran wickie while Winslow is a newbie. The grizzled Wake walks with a limp and unabashedly farts whenever and wherever he cares to. He wastes no time in putting his young protege to work doing the dull, repetitive, and sometimes physically demanding maintenance tasks. This involves things such as lugging large cans of kerosene up from the ground floor to the area just beneath the lantern room as well as painting the exterior of the lighthouse while sitting in a swing dangling over the side with only Wake's steady hand keeping him aloft. (Tellingly, Wake agitates Winslow so much that he falls from the swing.) Basically everything but dealing with the lamp. Wake makes it perfectly clear that the lantern room is his domain and his alone.
Winslow finds a mermaid scrimshaw tucked into a rip in his mattress. A simple token left by his predecessor? Or perhaps a talisman? Either way things get weird really quickly. He notices that Wake likes to wander the lighthouse's gallery deck free from the burden of clothes when he tends to the lamp. And then the mentee has visions of a mermaid. In addition, he is plagued by a one-eyed seagull.
I paid closer attention to Wake's dialogue this time around and I noted just how prescient it was. At one point Winslow asks Wake what happened to his predecessor and the elder wickie tells him that the man went mad. He ranted about merfolk and thought that the light was enchanted. The men struggle to get along even at dinner and it is during one of these meals that Wake gives his classic curse on Winslow. The scene never fails to send a shiver down my spine.
"Damn ye! Let Neptune strike ye dead Winslow! HAAARK! Hark Triton, hark!"
In it he mentions "Black waves teeming with salt foam", something Winslow has seen. Wake describes Triton "crowned in cockle shells with slitherin' tentacle tail and steaming beard", a vision that Winslow shall have later. Wake also mentions Winslow's viscera being for "the souls of dead sailors to peck and claw and feed upon", he having explained that the souls of dead sailors inhabit the seagulls, and that is how the film ends.
Director Robert Eggers and his brother Max wrote a fantastic screenplay that at once puts Winslow's decent into madness on display but never fully explains why he does so nor ever absolves Wake. Did the grizzled veteran leave that mermaid mojo in the mattress? Is it responsible for Winslow losing touch with reality as he claimed? Or has his mental state been adversely affected by deadly combination of Wake's antagonism along with the intense isolation?
The imagery of the film is great with a black & white pall hanging over everything and shadows everywhere. I also adored that scene that illustrates Winslow in the grip of madness and him blaming Wake for his predicament. Winslow comes across a body on the gallery deck and, upon turning it over he finds it is himself. (Echoes of Genesis' The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway here for me. "Something's changed, that's not your face/It's mine, it's mine!") We then quickly cut to that scene based on the 1904 painting, "Hypnosis", by Sascha Schneider. In the film, a naked Wake looms over a kneeling Winslow as a beam of light emanates from his eyes and illuminates the face of his youthful assistant. But they are on the land somewhere, not high above on the lighthouse.
Oh, and I also noticed that homage to The Shining where we see Wake, axe in hand, running after Winslow just like Jack Torrence in a very Kubrickian tracking shot.
Sitting in the theater, I found myself at times caught up in trying to link Wake's dialogue to events onscreen and note Kubrickian flourishes. But I couldn't help myself from getting lost in the film's atmosphere - the sense of impending dread and the horror of witnessing Winslow lose his grip on reality. The antiquated dialogue, the sepulchral texture of the film, and the boxy aspect ratio which gave the film a cramped verticality instead of the breathing space of widescreen - all lured me in hook, line, and sinker.
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OK, onto something more pleasant – food.
Because it was winter, I needed something hearty like gołąbki soup.
It turned out pretty well and I think my babcia would have been proud. For dessert I continued my cooking dalliance with rye and made rye chocolate chip cookies with cardamon.
I was combining a couple different cookies recipes here and I think that I needed to adjust the flour to liquid ratio a bit and to also use fewer chocolate chips. At the end, a bunch of them were strewn about at the bottom of my mixing bowl along with some small clumps of dough.
Having said that and noting that they don’t look perfect, I will say that they tasted absolutely fantastic. That earthy rye flavor along with luscious dark chocolate accented by just the right amount of cardamom. Oh mama, they were good!
Continuing in a food vein, I want to show you something that someone brought into the office recently.
Rather than a simple sweet treat, it turned out to be a confectioner's version of Russian roulette. You give the spinner a whirl and then grab one of the beans with the appearance of the one in the spot that the arrow landed on. Let’s say it lands on the orange bean with red spots. With no small amount of trepidation, you grab one from the dish because you don’t know if it will taste like peach…or barf. Is that green one juicy pear or booger?
On offer was a screening of the fulldome experience of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon album. Back in 1973 there was a promotional event at the London Planetarium to celebrate its release where images of the cosmos were projected onto the screen as the shiny, new record was played.
But 50 years later a new set of images was constructed to be shown in planetaria along with the music. Although Madison’s planetarium isn’t as large as, say, the Adler in Chicago, it uses the same grade of projection equipment and it features surround sound courtesy of a new stereo system bought especially to accommodate the Dark Side of the Moon experience.
The place was packed with folks old and young alike. Looking around, I highly suspected that several of my fellow attendees, especially the ones with grey pony tails and beards, had smoked a joint and/or popped a tab of LSD before the show. My suspicions were proven correct on at least one count when I someone walked past me who smelled of a certain green, leafy substance.
The show looked a bit like this:
Dark Side of the Moon is not an album I listen to much these days as it was overplayed in my youth. I recognize it for the landmark that it is and adore some of the songs but there's just something too slick about it and too familiar. In some ways, I prefer the embryonic version of it that audiences in early 1972 heard at gigs such as this one. I miss the rough edges of earlier Floyd and the weirder tributaries they took me down on Meddle and Atom Heart Mother.
Regardless of my history with the band, the dome show was a hoot! The visuals were a blast and the surround sound was just great. It was neat to hear the voices so clearly – not the singing, but rather the voices of people answering various questions posed to them at the studio and that are interspersed throughout the album. For instance, at the end we hear Gerry O'Driscoll, the doorman at Abbey Road studios, say, "There is no dark side of the moon really. Matter of fact it's all dark."
“On the Run” was the highlight for me with synthesizer patterns zipping around my head while the visuals went into manic overdrive as we went through a 2001-like stargate made of triangles and lights streaming headlong towards us. One of the great things about the program was that we all listened to an album from start to finish without the distraction of a phone or a computer screen. These days it seems that music is usually an accompaniment to other things we do, such as destroying our brains on social media, and not given the attention that it deserves. I just sat back and enjoyed the show and didn’t look to see if anyone had texted me and my email went unchecked throughout too. It was simply wonderful to get lost in the album - something I used to do rather often but now, sadly, I have to pay someone $25 and leave home to do it.
Here's the trailer:
On my way out, I stopped to buy a pair of solar glasses so I could observe next month's solar eclipse.
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In the middle of this month I took a short vacation in Chicago. The occasion was to see the Bay Area band Sleepytime Gorilla Museum. I'd been aware of SGM for 15+ years but only ever ventured to listen to song or two every once in a while. I have no recollection of how I'd heard of them and I suspect that my first listen to their avant-garde heavy metal or whatever genre you think best classifies their music proved to be a bit more than I could chew and so I put investigating them further on indefinite hold.
I had no idea that they'd called it quits in 2011 when I read earlier this year that they had reunited and were going on tour once more with the closest stop in Chicago. And so I made the trek down to Lincoln Park on a Wednesday evening.
They were to play at Lincoln Hall, a venue I’d never been to, and so I booked a room at the Chicago Getaway Hostel just 3 blocks or so from the venue.
Stepping inside, I appeared to be the eldest guest as small groups of kids in their 20s were wandering the halls and hanging out in the lobby. My room was small and on the spartan side but that’s all I needed, really. It had a half bath which meant I’d be competing with other guests for a shower stall in the morning.
After dropping off my bag, I headed to Lincoln Avenue in pursuit of dinner. While I never spent a lot of time in the neighborhood, I would occasionally go to the Wax Trax! record store there with a friend back in the late 80s. Little did we know that Al Jourgensen and the rest of folks in the band Ministry were upstairs recording albums that would define the subgenre that is industrial metal. I don’t think the store is around anymore but I believe it was somewhere near Lincoln Ave. and Fullerton – right where I was that evening.
I ended up at a trendy Mexican place. My waitress had this odd habit which I’ve noticed in more than a few 20-something waitstaff: she replied to most things with “awesome”.
It was awesome that I was doing well that evening; it was awesome that I ordered an unsweetened iced tea to drink; it was awesome that I ordered a burrito to eat. It was just weird. English seems to have lost all words that express having a feeling of awe that actually have the letters a-w-e in them.
Just one store front down from the restaurant was the Biograph Theater and I hadn’t been there since I was a boy. A mural on the building next door noted the historic significance of the place.
Lincoln Hall is just across the street from the Biograph. The interwebs tell me that the FBI agents who shot Dillinger were lying in wait on its roof. These same interwebs also tell me that Lincoln Hall was called the 3-Penny Cinema back in the 70s when it made Chicago history by being the first joint in town to screen the infamous adult film, Deep Throat.
Today it’s a really nice little venue. Intimate but not cramped.
It reminded me of the High Noon Saloon here in Madison.
Two Chicago bands opened the evening: Dead Rider and Cheer-Accident. Both were good. Dead Rider was the odder of the two with guitarist/singer Todd Rittmann almost rapping once or twice and songs alternating between those with Rittmann playing some more straight forward licks with a flying-V guitar and those with a heavy synthesized rhythm track. Cheer-Accident had a fuller sound as it was more of an ensemble. They started off a bit on the heavy side but quickly changed gears as the horns kicked in with a blast of something vaguely like you'd get from a marching band to send the opening tune on a wonderfully crazy tangent. The band showed it was willing to throw in every twist and turn they could with a dose of lighthearted silliness.
Sleepytime Gorilla Museum took the stage in costume with some of the members donning face paint. I am only slightly more familiar with their music now than when I was at the show. Very slightly. But I was thrilled when they played "Phthisis", one of 2 or 3 of their songs that I actually know. While there were moments of peace with a bucolic sounding flute adding mellow vibes, most of the time these folks were rocking hard. (Pictures by Jeffrey McDonald.)
Bassist Dan Rathbun looked like Egon from Ghostbusters to me. For one song he played what looked like an oversized pedal steel guitar but I think it was a homebrew contraption consisting of a 2"x4" about 8 feet long with strings running the length and some C clamps acting as capos. He alternated sliding drumsticks along the strings and hitting them as if this weird instrument was made of piano viscera wrenched from the case.
Matthias Bossi and Michael Iago Mellender frenetically added all manner of percussion while Nils Frykdahl conjured aural chaos from his guitar as he spat out his vocals. Rounding things out was Carla Kihlstedt who sang and added her often martial sounding violin to the highly melodic pandemonium.
SGM’s set was usually heavy, often chaotic, and the band liked to fuse a classical ethos with a generous dose of industrial thrash setting the music off in different directions with tempos changing often. But there was always at least a sliver of a melody for me to hang onto. Their music is heavy and I can’t help but adore the drama of it all. There's an operatic quality to it, if we're talking about an opera based on the Book of Revelation.
It was a great show! The staccato beats of “Phthisis” were a real highlight for me. I just adore how the violin keeps a melody going underneath the thundering percussion and slashing guitar chords. I hope they don’t go into hibernation once more as I’d love to see them again.
Their performance that night was recorded.
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As winter was giving way to spring, I trekked out to my beloved Acewood Conservation Park to see how things were coming along.
Not exactly verdant but the snow was gone and the woods were alive with the sounds of red-winged black birds who had returned.
They held court in branches where they were hanging out with grackles.
In the water, Canada geese and mallards were leisurely swimming in the chilly water and occasionally took a break on the shore.
Despite the bare trees, there was the odd bit of life here and there on the ground.
Soon enough the arch would be decked with green.
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Bonus photo! Here’s Piper looking all cute as she prepares for winter by shedding her warm weather coat on our couch.
