The Corona Diaries Vol. 54: In Which Your Humble Narrator Finally Reads The Lord of the Rings and Learns the Ways of Eru Ilúvatar

(late May 2022)

(Watch this entry's prelude.)

One thing on my to-do list for 2022 was to finally read The Lord of the Rings. I'd read The Hobbit back in 7th grade and had attempted Tolkien's magnum opus about 20 years ago when Peter Jackson's movies were all the rage. At about halfway through The Two Towers I realized that I just couldn't take it anymore.

Considering I've been playing medieval fantasy role-playing games like Dungeons & Dragons for most of my life, you'd think I'd be an aficionado of fantasy literature but I can't stand the stuff, generally speaking. Honestly, when I think back, I just cannot recall what it was that caused me to put down The Two Towers.

One day last fall I was role playing with the usual gaming suspects and the topic turned to the forthcoming TV series on Amazon which takes place in Tolkien's world of Middle Earth. I don't think this series is based on any specific book by Tolkien but rather takes bits and pieces from his various works and throws them together. Well, everyone but me had read The Lord of the Rings and thusly I was pretty lost in that conversation and had little to contribute beyond the simplistic questions of a novice nerd. Vowing to never be in such a position again, I resolved to get it under my belt once and for all come the new year.

Well, the new year came and I put paid to my resolution. I think being older and having read more medieval works made it easier. The books were fine and it was interesting to compare and contrast them to the films. I did have a lot of questions about various characters and events and some were answered in a car ride with a friend of mine who took about 25 miles to explain some things to me. (Roughly just east of Lake Mills to about Oconomowoc.) However, some of my questions were left unanswered and I was told to read The Silmarillion, another book by Tolkien in which he lays out his world in more detail including its creation by a godhead named Eru Ilúvatar and his minions which seem to roughly correspond to the hierarchy of angels in Catholic lore. (Seraphim, cherubim, archangels, etc.)

The Silmarillion is a lengthy tome and it's my understanding that some of it has that Book of Genesis feel with a bunch of so-and-so begat so-and-so kind of lists which does not make for the most exciting reading for me. Maybe next year.

********

Back in late April or early May the botanist types at Olbrich Botanical Gardens here in Madison anxiously announced that one of their amorphophallus titanium specimens was preparing to bloom. Also known as the corpse flower, its impending blossoming was all over the news as it does so only once every 10-12 years and it lasts for a mere 24-48 hours. While in bloom, it releases an odor redolent of rotting flesh, hence the name.

I readily admit that I kept an eye on the news for notice of the flower having opened after initial reports came through saying that it was immanent. Olbrich Gardens is just a short bike ride from home and, while smelling the aroma of a corpse flower wasn't exactly on my bucket list, it is something of a rarity and I don't have that many blooms left in my lifetime.

***Peter Gabriel voice***

He came home to Madison
And made a present of the amorphophallus
To the botanical gardens at Olbrich

And then one day the word came down that Thunderbirds were go. I took half a day off from work and biked down to the gardens where I found my place in line - along with a couple hundred other people who were keen on getting a noseful of the putrescence.

After 45 minutes or so a gentleman who was walking by approached the lovely young women in front of me and admonished them that it took him about 3 hours from the time he got in line to the time he saw the flower.

Uff da!

Perhaps this was his way of hitting on them. "Hey babes, is standing in line boring you? Why don't you come with, me. I've got air conditioning back at my place."

Although it didn't rain, it was quite hot out. I had neglected to bring my headphones so I couldn't listen to the radio or a story on my phone. Instead I was treated to the whining of little children who were bored out of their skulls and incessantly petitioning their parents to go get ice cream instead. Oh, and I watched the birds and rabbits that call the grounds home or, at least, the ones that had stopped in that day for a visit.

Roughly two and a half hours later I found myself inside the conservatory. I crossed the bridge where my Frau and I exchanged our wedding vows and could see the flower in the distance as the odd quail wandered the mini-tropical forest off to one side. Then it was my turn to get up close to the flower.

Did I lean in and take a big whiff? You bet I did. What did it smell like? To me, it had the smell of a dead mouse that you found too late and so it sat rotting away in a box that you just opened. It wasn't very pungent but I suppose it was plenty to attract pollinators.

When I left, the line outside was significantly longer than when I got there. The Gardens extended their hours and people waited up to 4 hours to get a sniff.

********

When mid-May rolled around it had been nearly a week and a half since I'd attended a concert so my Frau and I jumped into my new (i.e. – gently used) car and we went west as Horace Greeley exhorted. We got as far as Iowa.

Our destination was Iowa City and the Englert Theatre where we were to see a performance by Valerie June. But first we stopped in Cedar Rapids.

The city is home to the African American Museum of Iowa which lies on the shore of the Cedar River. Neither of us had ever been to Cedar Rapids so it was nice to be somewhere completely new to us.

It was a really neat place with a series of permanent exhibits and one rotating exhibit that changed annually.

Things started with Africa before moving onto the Middle Passage and slavery in the United States.

Being a museum about African-Americans in Iowa, the emphasis on was black Iowans but there was plenty of general info.

I had no idea that there were sit-ins in Iowa. I suppose they were staged all over the country but when I think of a lunch counter sit-in, I think of the one at Woolworth's in Greensboro, N.C. in February 1960. However, sit-ins were staged at the Katz Drug Store in Des Moines in 1948-49 and the museum had a mockup of the lunch counter there.

The rotating exhibit was all about redlining and was quite extensive. It did a really nice job of explaining housing discrimination through the years and would illustrate national trends with specific examples from the Hawkeye State.

In addition to doing a great job of integrating Iowa-specific history with the larger narrative of African-Americans in the United States, the museum also mixed portrayals of injustice with success stories and did so well. For every display of the horrors visited upon black people in this country, there was another celebrating their resilience and triumphs.

A most interesting and informative beginning to our weekend.

We then headed across the river to:

I had no idea that Cedar Rapids was home to an ethnic enclave of Czechs. Czech Village is a nice, cozy neighborhood full of shops and restaurants. There were plenty of people wandering in and out of the stores and filling the seats at restaurants and taverns.

The familiar heraldic lion was a common sight.

We were hungry and thirsty so we stopped in at Lion Bridge Brewing Company to slake our thirst and satisfy our hunger. There were several beers on offer that sounded appealing so we got a flight to sample them all.

I was happy to see that, in addition to trendier beer styles, they paid tribute to the neighborhood with a couple of Czech-style beers including a pilsner which was very, very tasty. The helles brewed with smoked malt was wonderful and full of smoky goodness. Another brew I found to be tasty was a coffee-laced Kölsch with its light body and luscious coffee roastiness.

The food was good too. My Frau and I enjoyed our hamburgers smeared with jalapeno beer cheese.

After lunch we walked down the street and discovered Sykora Bakery. I was not familiar with Czech pastries but was unsurprised to find a lot of poppy seed fillings and a variety of kolaches.

Those things on top were called "Bohemian Burgers" and featured a generous dose of poppy seed between two halves of a light, fluffy bun. Luckily I didn't have to pass a drug test in the near future.

With our hands full of bags and boxes, we headed to the car. The afternoon had passed swiftly and we still had to make our way to Iowa City.

********

Bonus photo. I used a similar picture with flares in a previous entry. But Piper looks very cute here so I had to throw it in.

(Go to this entry's postlude.)

In Heaven There Is No Rauchbier: Hellscape by Lion Bridge Brewing Company

 

"So, what do you think of the Hellscape?" asked a voice to my left.

My Frau and I were sitting at the bar at Lion Bridge Brewing Company in Cedar Rapids, Iowa enjoying a flight of 5 of their beers, including Hellscape. The voice belonged to a gentleman a couple stools away who turned out to be an employee of the brewery.

“It’s very tasty,” I replied.

For the next few minutes, I chatted with him about sundry beer-related topics. His demeanor alternated between someone expressing pride in playing a role - I neglected to ask what his job duties were but he noted he worked there 2 days a week - in getting the beers we were drinking into those sampler glasses and that of a used car salesman. After learning we were from Wisconsin, he proceeded to give me a brief overview of the Iowa beer landscape. I have forgotten much of it but I think he said Toppling Goliath was the big dog. The New Glarus of Iowa, if you will. After that he mentioned Backpocket and Big Grove as, if I recall correctly, being on their heels. (Later that afternoon I saw Big Grove beers available in a refrigerator in the lobby of our hotel in Iowa City.) He then mentioned a few other Iowa breweries that weren’t familiar to me but perhaps I had come across them at the Great Taste of the Midwest.

This got me thinking. Why do so few Iowa breweries distribute in Wisconsin? Toppling Goliath does but that is the only one that I can think of. Maybe the stuff flows across the Mississippi River into Grant and Crawford counties like, well, a river but simply makes it no farther east. Are Wisconsin drinkers and/or distributors hostile to Iowa beer? Is there some ancient law that makes distributing Iowa beer here particularly burdensome?

Tangent: I went to a grocery store in Iowa City and, upon entering their singles cooler, was taken aback by the prices. A simple 12oz can of regular (i.e. – not barrel-aged, not hopped 20,000 times, not brewed by virgins with ingredients only found on North Sentinel Island, and so on) craft beer was $4. Onerous taxes? The fact that it was a small, Whole Foods-like store? Uff da!

I didn’t write much about Lion Bridge in my review of Živá Voda so I will say that it was in what looked to be an older building in Cedar Rapids’ Czech Village that had been extensively remodeled. It was open and sunny but had an industrial vibe with the brewing equipment behind walls of glass. The beer garden looked nice. The people were friendly and our bartender heartily endorsed the jalapeno beer cheese and was not wrong as it went well on a fine hamburger.

So why did my interlocutor strike up a conversation by asking about Hellscape, their smoked Helles? I don’t know but perhaps it was because Rauchbiers are untrendy as fuck yet there we were drinking the stuff. It was offered in cans so of course I brought a sixer back for home use.

I poured my Hellscape rather vigorously so I got a nice, big head of lovely white foam. Beneath lay a beer of a bright yellow hue that had a faint haze. It could have been chill haze as my cans were towards the back of my refrigerator where leftovers are encased in ice. Just as with its Czech-American cousin, there were many a bubble to be seen inside. The beer had a relatively simple aroma with a lovely biscuit smell complemented by the precious smoke courtesy of beechwood smoked malts from Weyermann over in Bamberg, Germany, the Rauchbier homeland.

My tongue felt a generous dose of fizz on my first sip before the savory smoke flowed over my tastebuds. Mmm…The medium-light body also held a light bready taste with just a smidgeon of spicy hops below. The hoppiness really came to fore on the finish as the malt flavors receded to let a firm bitterness and a hearty dryness take centerstage.

My glass was left with some fine lacing as I enjoyed sipping my way to the bottom of it. The smoke level wasn’t off the charts but it was certainly more than a mere accent. I adore smoke beers so I wouldn’t have said no to more smoky goodness. While I could have done with a little less of that astringent taste, I really liked the dry finish. With its fairly light body and at 5.2% A.B.V., it went down easily. It’s your hot weather Rauchbier.

Junk food pairing: there are many people who think smoke beers should always be paired with a complementary junk food like BBQ flavored things. That’s fine but don’t be afraid to counterprogram your snack choices with something that nothing to do with meat. Go with a bag of Herr’s Cream Ranch & Habenero chips. The heat makes for a nice contrast with the smoke in addition to the ranch.

When some cold piwo finds you: Živá Voda by Lion Bridge Brewing Company

Back in May my Frau and I made a trek west to Iowa. Our destination was Iowa City where we would see the remarkable Valerie June in concert but we made a short detour to Cedar Rapids. Neither of us had ever been there previously and we wanted to visit the African American Museum of Iowa. If you ever find yourself in Cedar Rapids, I highly recommend stopping in at the museum. Even with its clear focus on Iowa, I, a Cheesehead, found it fascinating and got a lot out of it. Similarly, if you ever get the chance to see Valerie June perform, heed Steve Winwood's advice and take it.

After our museum visit was over, we pondered what to do next. There were signs for a “Czech Village” that lay just across the river and that sounded intriguing so away we went. It turned out that Cedar Rapids had a fair number of Czech and Slovak immigrants settle there back in the day. I am sure this is all well-documented at the National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library in Czech Village but we didn’t stop there so you’re stuck with the results of my internet searches.

One site says that Czechs began arriving in Cedar Rapids in 1852 but I found nothing about when Slovakian folks started to settle there. Maybe the sites' authors consider these ethnic groups to be one and the same since, if memory serves, their lands, presumably, Bohemia and proto-Solvakia, were part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire at this time. I think. They were drawn by the prospect of agricultural jobs including work at the Sinclair meat packing plant in town. (Hey! Just like Postville.) I suspect that, for most non-Iowans, corn comes to mind first when the state is mentioned but there's more to Iowa than maize. It also processes a lot of hogs and cattle as well. The commercial/retail center of the town’s Czech-American community was what is now Czech Village.

The day we visited the weather was agreeable with the sun shining brightly and so shopkeepers peddled their wares out on the sidewalks as people strolled the streets going from storefront to storefront. We eventually found ourselves standing before Lion Bridge Brewing Company feeling thirsty so we stepped inside for refreshment.

While the taproom was rather sparsely populated, we could see that the patio was hoppin'. As expected, there was no shortage of those dreaded IPAs on the beer menu. However, I was impressed to find that one of their year-round brews is an English mild called Compensation. We were tantalized by several of the offerings on the big board so we ordered a flight, including Compensation, which was quite tasty. I also liked the coffee Kölsch. Their tangerine wheat beer was a nice surprise with its bright citrus flavor and light body which made it pleasantly similar to Allagash White.

Being in the middle of Czech Village meant nods to the neighborhood’s history. Bohemian Lager was brewed with rice and sounded like an American adjunct pilsner that has Saaz hops in it instead of whatever type of hops craft brewers usually put into their Bud/Miller knock offs. But Živá Voda (“living water”) was a more traditional Czech-style pilsner and we came home with a 6-pack.

Here in the States “Czech-style pilsner” is a catch-all term for pilsners that the brewmaster deems Czech-like. It perhaps implies that there is but a single version of pilsner over in that part of the world. But as Evan Rail and others have documented for non-Czech speakers, there are a variety of styles and sub-styles over there. I suspect all of those diacritical marks and degree notations such as "12°" used by Czech brewers make things more complicated than most Americans care to deal with. Therefore anything with Saaz or Saaz-tasting hops = Czech-style.

My pour of Živá Voda got a fairly small, loose, white head that, sadly, went away quite quickly. Is that beer chemistry? Or a lousy pour? The liquid was a gold-tinged yellow and just slightly hazy. (Likely chill haze.) As expected, there were lots of bubbles inside. Let me tell ya, this stuff smelled wonderful with a luscious aroma of grass and cracker joined by a faint bit o’ honey and a little sumpin’ sumpin’ floral. It smelled like a summer day out in the country. This aestival aroma of the pilsner is probably my favorite beer smell of all. (A good, fresh rauchbier is right behind.) I don't what it is, but that aroma just goes straight to my hippocampus which triggers the release of dopamine or oxytocin or something and life just feels good.

All those bubbles made for a firm fizziness. The lovely grainy taste was like a biscuit-cracker amalgam. A hint of spicy hops lurked underneath as did a flavor like hay. It had a nice crispness and was a bit astringent tasting. The finish was definitely on the dry side with a moderate bitterness – a bit mellower than expected for a “Czech-style” pilsner – as the grainy flavors faded.

Živá Voda is excellent! The cracker taste of the grain was just tastilicious and the hops were a bracing counterpoint on a rather hot day. My can was dated 2/14/22 so it wasn’t the absolute freshest and I suspect this is why the hops seemed a bit muted for a Bohemian-style brew.

Junk food pairing: a beer brewed in a Central European style deserves junk food in a Central European style. Pair your Živá Voda with a bag of Jay's Hot Stuff potato chips and its wonderful paprika flavor harmonized with a bit of heat.