I busted out the breadmaker this morning. Flipping through the manual, I came across a recipe for Russian black bread and figured I'd give it a go.
It's baking now and looks like, as Professor Farnsworth might say, every one pound loaf weighs 5 pounds. We shall see...
I am welcoming the new month with some Bach and you should too because this piece is simply beautiful.
It was a lovely morning and I was up earlyish considering that I'd gotten to bed rather late. With September swiftly approaching, I find that I generally awaken at an antelucan hour instead of just after dawn. Thinking that I didn't want to do much in the way of chores on Labor Day, I grabbed my cup of coffee and went outside to A) clear a gutter downspout and B) trim some hedges.
Before I got to work I spent some time just looking up at the trees and getting some sun so I could photosynthesize some vitamin D. I thought about how this was one of the last times that I'd be taking in this scene of lovely tree canopies. The mellow ortgeist of Eastmorland would soon be a thing of the past for me.
My earbuds were in and music was playing. Hopefully no one noticed and Heaven forbid that someone taped me as I danced in the driveway.
I am happier than I've been in years and feeling vivacious too. Music once again penetrates my ear holes and burrows into my soul; it pulses through my veins like a vital humor. A few days ago I was in the kitchen putzing around with my headphones on and I spontaneously started jumping up & down. Had I been cursed by St. Vitus? That song just felt so good that I could not merely enjoy it with my brain, but I had to move as well in order for the music to travel through me.
F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote in "The Crack-Up":
A man does not recover from such jolts—he becomes a different person, and, eventually, the new person finds new things to care about.
That is what is happening to me. What does Earthseed say? "All that you touch You Change. All that you Change Changes you."
Some of the things I am finding to care about are new new while some are the old becoming new once again. I have blown the dust off an old, stagnant friendship or two, made some new ones, and deepened the friendships that animate my daily life.
Speaking of friends, I accompanied one out to Lapacek's Orchard this past weekend. It was a gorgeous day.
I purchased a quarter peck of Paula Red pomaceous goodness. In addition, I got to see the chickens.
Plus, unlike my last visit, I spent some time with the goats. They got plenty of pets and a trio posed for me so I could take this Abbey Road-like photograph.
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Having finished my outdoor chores, I decided to take a stroll through Acewood Park. On both sides of the path Brown-Eyed Susans had their refulgent beauty on display for all to see making for a lovely late summer burst of color.
The path that wends close to the shore of the pond is all-too short but it is glorious. Walking through the woods here I experience a sense of Waldeinsamkeit as the mature trees and their canopies give this space a cathedral-like atmosphere. The sun casts its light and the whole area is aglow with a warm viredescence.
And just as churches have their incense, I was treated to the fresh, green aroma of the woods.
Many of the trees have vines creeping skywards.
Between the trees you can get glimpses of the pond. It felt as if I was looking at the windows of a nave.
My beloved Acewood arch is obscured by summer's verdancy but soon enough it will be revealed once again.
Near the arch a familiar fence was to be seen. Yes, the Crack Garlic Mustard Removal Squad was on duty! They were nowhere in sight so I made my way back to the asphalt path and wandered along the fence. All at once that smell, that goat smell, wafted into my nose and I knew I was close. And then there they were, eating breakfast.
There were several kids in the herd and they were cuter than all get out. I am not sure how old this fine caprine specimen is.
While the lush aestival beauty of the park was on full display, there were also small reminders of what is to come with leaves changing their colors scattered about.
Smoked cheez!
I know that there have been Smoked Cheddar Cheez It's in the past so this "New Flavor" thing is a bit misleading. Now, smoked gouda I am not sure of. Regardless of what the marketers say, these are both tasty crackers. Keep the smoked snacks a-comin'.
How come no one told me there was such a thing as a dunkel cheese?! I still have a little smoked cheddar to eat before I dig into this stuff but I am looking forward to it. I wonder what kind of brew they use.
Very tasty stuff!
I really enjoyed the herbal-floral character of the hops. Methinks this one is more than deserving of a review.
When I was at Steve's Liquor, which is where I bought this bier, there was a Delta Beer Lab marketer pouring samples. I asked that he ask the brewmaster to brew their Gose again.
"The plain Gose?" he asked.
"Yes," I replied eagerly. "I want to taste coriander, not fruit."
He proceeded to explain that the delicious elixir didn't sell well enough to warrant another batch. Sad. Maybe if they marketed it as an India Pale Gose - IPG - it would gain a following beyond me.
I just saw Sign o' the Times on the IMAX and it was glorious. I feel like I should take a shower. You could smell the sex. And the hair! So much Aquanet. The music sounded really good not only because of the sound system, but also because there was more bottom end than you typically hear on the studio stuff.
As a friend pointed out after the show, the hot thing is 21, on the mature side.
And so today's song o' the day is Prince.
Last night I had friends over for dinner and just hanging out. One I hadn't seen in some time. With their plates full, they instinctively went to the dining room table instead of the living room. I've eaten at the dining room table more times in the past few weeks than the past few years.
Seen before a screening of Honey Don't! which was a lot of fun. I will have to catch up on this lesbian B-movie trilogy and watch Drive-Away Dolls.
I can relate to the title of this one.
A commercial for Google's Pixel 10 phone came next. Then came
The one movie I wanted to see.
These Poppable thingies remind me of a cage mask that you'd see in a Mad Max movie.
Cundalini wants his snack back!
Poppables are these oval grid patterned snacks from Lay's. They are made from dehydrated potatoes but vinegar is on the ingredient list.
They have a nice maize yellow color and I got a big dose of vinegar when I took a sniff of the bag. The inside, that is.
I found them to be light and crispy with a nice, firm vinegar tang. My tongue did not reel in pain but neither was it left wanting. The potato flavor reminded me of taking leftover mashed potatoes, forming globs into patties, and gently reheating them in a frying pan.
Not awful. I enjoyed the vinegar taste but the reconstituted potato flavor was thoroughly mediocre.
On a tour of the Englewood neighborhood in Chicago, our group stopped at one of the few true grocery stores in the area, Go Green Community Fresh Market. Some of the friendliest staff you'll find at any store, grocery or otherwise. It is fairly small - it's not a supermarket - but I managed to find a novel salt & vinegar snack:
Yes! Popcorn. Not only that, cheese popcorn! The stuff is made by Richard's Super Premium Ice Cream, a black-owned business, down in Pullman. My mother and I stopped in after our Pullman tour and I enjoyed a dish of perhaps the oddest flavor of the frozen treat I've ever eaten: greens & cornbread. I know that the idea of greens in ice cream seems highly incongruous, to say the least, but trust me, it was good.
Onto the popcorn.
Richard's did not skimp on the artificial yellow dye #5 as the kernals were a brilliant orangey yellow. Taking a big sniff with my nose firmly planted inside the bag, I found that the nuggets of goodness smelled of cheese popcorn at first before a firm tanginess came up seemingly out of nowhere.
This stuff wasn't exactly the freshest popcorn so let's get that out of the way to start. It tasted like very cheesy popcorn with a not insignificant acidic tang. A very nice contrast between the smooth cheese powder and the lactic acid. Delicious!
Since I don't think my wife and I will ever speak a word about our marriage and do some kind of post mortem, I have come to terms with never really having closure on the relationship we had/endured over the course of 20+ years. Perhaps because of this, I've felt compelled to read books and watch movies that she recommended to me and that I fully intended to consume at some point. That point is now.
Since my wife has, shall we say, a lot of time on her hands, she listens to audiobooks aplenty and watches many a movie/tv show. (Well, she used to, at least.) She consumes a wide variety of things on a variety of topics - anywhere from cheesy horror tales to books on the issues of the day. All kinds of stuff and her eclectic taste reminds me of some of the reasons I fell in love with her.
The first recommendation I caught up with was Sinclair Lewis' It Can't Happen Here which I enjoyed, even if some of the 1930's references went over my head. The latest is Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler.
I don't recall my Frau saying much beyond that I needed to read it and that she thought it was really good. No exegesis on this one.
The protagonist here is a young woman named Lauren Olamina who lives in a post-apocalyptic community outside of Los Angeles. She is extremely empathetic and I mean extremely. Lauren can actually feel the pain of others. She is in the midst of devising a religion called Earthseed which is centered around the primacy of change. Indeed, change is the godhead.
Lauren is 15 or 16 as the book starts and we first learn about her, her family, and community. People survive by growing their own food, purchasing supplies, and trading. Plus everyone tries to repel thieves and maniacs who paint their faces and take a drug which causes them to find fire to be better than sex.
Life goes on for Lauren and her community until one day when tragedy strikes. In the aftermath, she decides to leave and head north with a couple of her neighbors. This rag tag group grows as they venture north where they encounter dangers aplenty along with other folks who are just trying to survive. One of the latter is a middle-aged doctor named Bankole. He and Lauren strike up a relationship of a sexual nature despite Lauren being a mere 18.
Bankole has family up in northern California with a farm that has enough space for everyone willing to work. He hopes to marry Lauren. When the group of pilgrims arrive, they find that the buildings have all been burnt to the ground and that Bankole's family has been killed. They settle there anyway and Lauren founds an Earthseed community called Acorn.
I haven't done the novel justice with my paltry summary but you get the idea.
This line "She was my best friend. Now she isn't." resonated with me as it brought my wife to mind in multiple ways.
I liked Parable of the Sower but didn't find it to be great. My previous encounter with Butler's writing was Fledgling and I feel much the same about Parable as I do it. I enjoy Butler's writing style and find a lot of interest in her novels but rarely do I feel that's she got me, that I am just an empty vessel with Butler filling me with an enrapturing tale.
Lauren's hyper-empathy gets mentioned early on but is largely ignored until around two-thirds of the way through. We get glimpses of what her affliction does to her, how it affects her but it seemed underused. On the other hand, her conversations with people, Bankole especially, about Earthseed are beautiful. In the course of Lauren defending it against his skepticism, she gives a fine explanation of it plus she discusses religion more generally. I really liked these scenes.
There are also some great conversations amongst characters about morality and when it should be ignored. How should one treat others in something akin to a Hobbesian state of nature? How should one act towards those who would do you harm? Is acting morally good contingent on anything ever?
While I enjoyed Parable of the Sower and feel it has some really intriguing and thoughtful thematic elements, I never felt fully invested in the characters and I think that's what keeps me at a distance here. Despite this, I will surely keep pondering it, trying to make connections between hyper-empathy and Earthseed.
My review of Soul Brew Kombucha's Ginger Mango Peach has been reproduced at the Soul Brew website.
It was cool yet sunny as I parked my car at the DuSable Black History Museum and Education Center. I had left Madison fairly early so I'd have plenty of time to get there but the Kennedy wasn't a disaster and so I found myself with a little time to blow before my tour with Dilla. What better way to spend it than my first visit to the DuSable?
That's an old photo. I found that the front entrance was closed but helpful signs directed me to the rear where a temporary entrance welcomed visitors. The museum had just opened and the gentleman who was to sell me a ticket was still getting himself together. As his credit card scanner hoolie warmed up, a woman pulled a cart of shirts towards the makeshift gift shop in the adjacent room.
The scanner was in no hurry to become operable - it was Sunday, after all - so the fellow told me to go in and pay on my way out.
My first stop was the I Am Her exhibit.
It was full of art that both celebrated black women and acknowledged their pains. A video played which talked about the history of the treatment of black women in the country, or, perhaps more accurately, their mistreatment.
The exhibit took as its focus Anjanette Young, a Chicago woman who was the victim of a botched police raid - they had the wrong residence - back in 2019. She was handcuffed without any clothes on and suffered trauma and humiliation.
I Am Her is a powerful exhibit. The faces of black women who were killed as well as faces in pain, in anguish as above are incredibly moving. Feelings of anger and sadness welled up and were given fuel by the red paint that covered most of the walls. That color heightened my emotions and invoked the blood spilled by many a black woman.
I stepped out into another room which had an exhibit on the Red Summer with an emphasis on the Chicago Race Riots of 1919.
They began after an incident at the 29th Street Beach on the 27th of July of that year. A black boy named Eugene Williams crossed the unofficial color line that separated white swimmers from black. For his mistake, Williams was stoned and drowned.
The police were rather unhelpful, to say the least, as illustrated by this disturbing photograph.
I knew about this horrible episode in the history of my hometown but the photos really added a visceral disgust that merely reading and listening about it couldn't have generated.
Next was a larger room that took on the story of blacks in America. It began, of course, with slavery.
Looking at the manacles and imagining being in them as I am shipped across an ocean by brutal slavers sent a shiver down my spine. It is almost unthinkable.
There were several print ads on display which notified readers of slave auctions in language so casual that, if enslaved people weren't involved, they would be little different from a department store ad today offering tempting deals on clothing and phone sanitizer wipes.
Moving along the exhibit, I came to the section on Jim Crow. There is something genuinely disturbing about being within touching distance of a KKK robe.
It's like someone was able to extract evil from the human heart and convert it into fabric. Just imagine a set of eyes peering out from that hood, seething with hatred then exuding a grim satisfaction at a burning cross as the flames are reflected in them.
This is the door of the Black Panther's Chicago HQ after a raid by the police.
I realized by this time that I was feeling rather anxious. Putting myself in the place of all these various people really made me feel tense and agitated.
To relax I entered an exhibit of African art which held masks, statues, etc.
By the time I stepped out back into the hallway, I saw that my tour time approached and so I made for the exit but not before paying my admission fee. My early departure meant that I hadn't wandered to the second floor where yet more exhibits, such as one on Harold Washington, beckoned. But they would have to wait until another visit.
I look forward to seeing what the rest of the museum offers as the first floor is rather depressing, outside of the African art. You cannot ignore the injustices that blacks have suffered here but their triumphs are many. Anjanette Young was horribly violated in 2019 but she continues to demand justice and accountability for being wronged and she lobbies for reform in how the Chicago Police execute search warrants.
How do you tell her story? Do you leave out certain parts? Maybe emphasize one and not the other?
Personally, I don't think images of Young standing there naked while surrounded by police should define her. Rather her crusade for justice and reform should. They illustrate her tremendous strength as well as her place in the wider community as opposed to being an isolated victim and her pursuit for changes in police regulations can benefit many residents of Chicago.
The I Am Her exhibit proved to be even more powerful and thought-provoking than I figured initially. I am looking forward to returning. Perhaps later this year when that new exhibit is up.
Earlier this week I had dinner with friends at Longtable Beer Cafe. It had been a while since I'd been there.
I began with a can of McFleshman's English Pale in preparation for flying across the ocean and enjoying pints of cellar temperature ales.
The brisket salad was good.
The brisket was tasty but needed more smokiness. More jalapeno would have been nice too.
My second brew was a fine rauchbier.
The beer cheddar soup was good too. Tasted from scratch instead of from Cisco.
One of my companions had a German-style pils from Working Draft, Hindsight. I love the stuff and his discerning palate enjoyed it.
Tasty food & beer plus bonus points for having Schlenkerla rauchbier on offer and additional bonus points for having not 1, not 2, but 3 flavors of Schlenkerla. Plus the company was great.
It is really nice to be cooking again, even if I am not always cooking for someone else like I did over the weekend. Last night it was pan-fried walleye für mich.
Did I use rye flour for the breading? You betcha! It turned out well, though more garlic and onion powder wouldn't have hurt. Those pickles were a different story, however. I bought them for reasons I cannot fully recall. There were no non-shelf stable ones, I guess. They were mushy and blah and got a free one-way ticket to the wastewater treatment plant. And so good pickles are on the grocery list.
It's hard to get Anjanette Young out of my head after experiencing the "I Am Her" exhibit at the DuSable. Young is the victim of a Chicago Police raid that raided the wrong house back in 2019. That horrible incident is the basis for the exhibit which also delves into the plight of black women in this country more generally.
After wandering the DuSable I went on a tour of Englewood with Dilla and he mentioned various musicians that came up from New Orleans, settled in Chicago, and would become legends. This includes the legendary Mahalia Jackson who is singing in my ears right now.
These cool mornings are absolutely wonderful! I am still getting used to rising at the very crack of dawn but it gives me a little time to enjoy some coffee before heading out on a walk.
Evidence of autumn 2025 edition. It's only August!
Chilies yet to be harvested.
Books about cheese should be in every Little Free Library in Wisconsin.
When I got home, there was a rabbit relaxing in the middle of the yard.
There was also a naughty cat lurking nearby eyeing up the birds on the ground underneath the feeder.
I did my best to protect our feathered friends.
After enjoying the great outdoors and the critters that inhabit it, I did my exercises before pouring a cup of coffee and savoring the roasty, nutty goodness. A fine start to the day.
