The 43rd Parallel

Newsfeed I

    I’m really terrified that more Ukrainians will die and that my childhood home and my parents’ home will be destroyed and I'll never be able to go back there.

WARMING OCEANS ARE GETTING LOUDER 

    Family says 11-year-old girl shot in head in Madison will be taken off life support

     the civil war has left more than five million people needing food aid, yet none has been delivered to Tigray since mid-December.

    this problem is more serious than The Power of the Dog itself, although it is inseparable from the offense of Campion’s misandrist, blasphemous anti-Western. Elliott’s unvarnished criticism (“piece of shit”) addressed the moral and credibility crisis evident in most contemporary films.

GUN-TOTING SPRING BREAKERS HIT STREETS

WINTER WOODWORKER TURNS OUT HUNDREDS OF ITEMS

    Quebec Maple Syrup Producers recently announced it was releasing about 50 million pounds of its strategic maple syrup reserves

 

 The Camera Eye (1)

    spring rains falling on the leaves that were never raked   and the drops drip on the window ledge because the gutter is not flush   without a TV it is quiet so I listen to the cats purr

    he once told me that he never wanted kids he died

    in a parking lot
    his sons over a thousand miles away
    alone

    a scarred hand lay carelessly on the sidewalk   lifeless it couldn't dial the phone for help  so he died there a body propped against the fence   found too late   cruel to die like his father   a scarred hand lay carelessly on the sidewalk

 

Aldo Leopold

    Like winds and sunsets, wild things were taken for granted until progress began to do away with them, wrote Aldo Leopold. Now we face the question whether a still higher "standard of living" is worth its cost in things natural, wild and free. For us of the minority, the opportunity to see geese is more important than television.

    Leopold was born on January 11, 1887 in Burlington, Iowa. As a boy, his father would take him into the woods and teach him hunting. Leopold spent many hours during his boyhood outside. He climbed bluffs, wandered the woods, and sketched the birds he observed on his treks. A new forestry school at Yale lured the young Leopold out east and he graduated in 1909.

    After college he joined the U.S. Forestry Service and was assigned Arizona and New Mexico as his territories. In 1911 he became the supervisor for the Carson National Forest in New Mexico. Before leaving the southwest in 1924, Leopold had written the Forest Service's first game and fish handbook and helped to develop the proposal to manage the Gila National Forest as a wilderness area. It would become the country’s first official wilderness area in 1924.

    In 1924, Leopold pulled up stakes and headed to Madison, Wisconsin where he had accepted a position at the U.S. Forest Products Laboratory. Nine years later he published the first textbook in the field of wildlife management. Later that year, he was appointed to a new chair position - Professor of Game Management in the Agricultural Economics - the first, not only for the University of Wisconsin, but for the nation.

    In 1935, he and his family started spending time on a dilapidated farm along the Wisconsin River outside of Baraboo, some 50 miles north of Madison. The Leopold family planted thousands of pine trees and restored prairies. Documenting the ensuing changes in the flora and fauna further informed and inspired Leopold.

    He wrote about the changes at the farm looking to publish a book intended for a general audience. Unfortunately, just one week after receiving word that his manuscript would be published, Leopold died of a heart attack on April 21, 1948. 

 

Your Humble Narrator 

I love the springtime. Well, mostly.

The green is coming, warmer days are drawing near. It was a week or two ago when I was roused by robins just before dawn and heard the newly-arrived birds for the first time this year. Shortly after that I saw my first red-winged blackbird of the year. Unfortunately, I was driving so I didn't hear its stentorian cry. As stentorian a cry as a small creature weighing only a few ounces can muster, I mean.

While those male red-winged blackbirds are out looking for mates and a comfy nest near the water, out in the wooded areas, does are preparing to give birth later in the spring. Trees give serious consideration to budding and the grass contemplates growing while I dread pulling out the mower from its home in the shed to begin that weekly routine. Our cats are a little friskier now and Grabby is once again trying to sneak outside.

There's electricity in the air as we boreal types look forward to verdant scenes and shorts weather and, in general, getting out and about without donning heavy coats and masks and to cease cowering from Covid.

 

 ("Bicycle Mirror" by Doug E.L. Haynes)

It's been about 2 years since the pandemic began and with mask mandates ending, things are looking more and more like they did before March 2020. My spring is shaping up to be a busy one with a camping trip, several concerts, and many hours set to be spent at a cinema during the Wisconsin Film Festival on the calendar. Plus there will (hopefully) be much time spent on my bicycle cruising around the city and country alike.

Lately, however, I've been thinking back upon the past couple years and trying to tease out some lessons, to understand the changes wrought during that time. I'm a terrible prognosticator and haven't come up with any insightful thoughts about how history will view the The Great Pandemic.

In large part, my reflections have led to me feeling very fortunate. To the best of my knowledge, I never caught the virus and only a few people I know did. They felt like they were shot at and missed and shit at and hit for about a week and then they got better. Since I earn my keep by making computers bend to my will, I was able to work from home as the virus spread. I am very cognizant of the fact that many people didn't have that luxury. A little more came out of my pocket for the beleaguered food service workers each time we did takeout. Even without a pandemic ongoing, I am a fairly patient person but I tapped my equanimity reserves on occasion and never lashed out at anyone who earned a living in the service industry. Those people put themselves at greater risk of Covid exposure, dealt with a lot of assholes as they tried to get customers to wear masks, and struggled often times with product and staffing shortages. Oh, but how quickly they went from "essential workers" and "heroes" deserving of our eternal gratitude to lowly, unskilled labor for whom a living wage was unbefitting.

Since I was to be working from home, I got in the habit of taking morning walks down to Starkweather Creek. With the lockdown in place, Madison was quiet. At first it was a bit eerie - as if I were in an episode of The Twilight Zone - but it quickly became quite beautiful. Without streets full of cars, the city became a very different acoustical landscape. The sounds of birds became clearer with the rusty screeches of distant grackles joining the boastful mating cries of red-winged blackbirds in a wonderful avian chorus. The gentle footfalls of squirrels that would have previously been drowned out in the morning rush could now faintly be heard.

As the weather warmed, I decided to finally get that bicycle that had been given to me a couple years previously tuned up and ready for riding. I rode all the time as a young boy up through high school. After college I bought a bicycle and began riding once again. A career change led to a car and, a few years later, a job change led to taking the bus. Then, in 2019, inspired by a friend who loved to perambulate, I started to take long walks. Along comes Covid and I start biking again.

Part of adjusting to working from home was to get away from there, to remove myself from a seat in front of a computer. Having done my 8 hours, I would often hop on my bike and zip over to a park, with Acewood being a favorite. It was incredibly relaxing to sit on the shore amongst the birds with their chirping a mellifluous soundtrack as I watched a turtle go under the water and tried to find where it had resurfaced. Or to wait patiently for a muskrat to swim by. Cranes waded near the opposite shore as mallards lazily floated between wedges of geese preening themselves. What a joy it was to watch the animals go about their day and forget about the pandemic and computers.

Madison spends a lot of time promoting itself as a small city that's big on urban amenities with a cosmopolitan outlook befitting much larger cities. It devotes much less energy to bragging about its park system which is wonderful. Not only are there neighborhood parks everywhere that are grassy expanses dotted with playgrounds and basketball courts, but also parks that are natural retreats with only trails that wend through tall grasses and wooded areas. And I enjoyed the peace and solitude afforded by many of them as Covid raged in the distance.

I read Thoreau's Walden and A Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold. This wasn't a back to the country moment c.1970. I didn't move to a rural area and become a subsistence farmer. But, with society in lockdown, I availed myself of the opportunity to get to know the non-man-made Madison more intimately. Doing so has helped me see it as a community to which we belong and that it deserves our love and respect.

And so I am looking forward to the progression of spring so I can get out and enjoy the myriad of parks in Madison and also head out into the neighboring countryside on my bicycle. But the spring also holds the anniversaries of the deaths of various family members, most notable being that of my brother. My joy at the return of migratory birds and the renewal of life is tempered by melancholy as the anniversary of his death approaches. But I make my peace with his absence every April and then move on to enjoy the season once again.

I love the springtime. Well, mostly.

The Corona Diaries Vol.7: Down On the Banks of the Oconto

November 2020

Our local supermarket has started carrying more "exotic" fruits. My guess is that it's in response to a growing number of customers who are either Hispanic or of Southeast Asian descent. And so there are now Dragon fruit, persimmons, and hitherto unknown to me varieties of mango now available for our delectation. Previously we'd have to take a trek to a smaller ethnic grocery store to find such fruits. (Not that I mind doing so, mind you.)

On a recent visit I noticed that quinces are now on offer.

I bought a couple of them and proceeded to make some quince marmalade.

I made it according to an adapted 17^th century recipe:

To make rough red marmelade of Quinces. Take Quinces and pare them, cut them in small peces from the coare, then take as much sugar as the peces doe waye, and put the Quinces beinge cutt into an erthen pott and put halfe the sugar that you waied into the pott and as much water as will couer them, then sett them into an ouen with howsholde breade. then when they are paked poore them into a postnett or preseruinge pan and put the rest of the sugar to it, then bruse them with the back of a spoone, then boyle them with sturringe till it will come cleane from the bottome of the pan then boxe it.

I got caught the itch for historical cooking many years ago when I attended a seminar on medieval cookery. Since then I've occasionally taken pleasure trying to cook like it's 1399. One's tastebuds are often challenged when all of the foodstuffs of the New World are absent. However, there are plenty of familiar things such as cryspes, which we know as funnel cakes. (Probably the only period food you'll find at a Renaissance Faire.) I found a recipe for frutours – fritters – that are apple slices dipped in beer batter and fried.

While most of the ingredients in medieval cooking are in everyone's kitchen, some are not. I mean, who uses verjuice (the juice of unripe grapes) these days? I had to mail order a bottle of it. Grains of Paradise were found at Milwaukee's public market. The cubebs for my medieval meatballs, pumpes, also had to be shipped in, this time from the west coast. Cubebs are Javanese peppercorns. Similar to the black pepper we enjoy everyday, it tastes a bit more sprightly, more citrusy to me.

Pumpes are beef meatballs seasoned with mace, clove, cinnamon, and saffron in addition to cubeb. They are served in an almond milk-based sauce flavored with mace and cinnamon.

It's funny to see "pumpkin spice" everywhere during the autumn because cinnamon, clove, ginger, and nutmeg were all basic spices for the medieval chef and used year-round. The basic seasoning blends – powder douce & powder fort – were based around them and often used on meats, not just sweets. I blame Starbucks.

********

After I'd gotten home from my trip, someone asked if I'd seen the marker of the Sputnik 4 debris crash site while I was in Manitowoc. Alas, I had not. D'oh! While I'd heard about it previously, it slipped my mind when I was there and I never encountered any signs imploring me to go see it. The silly part is that I was only a block away from it when I was making my trek north of downtown in search of baked goods.

Next time.

********

About a hundred miles northwest of Manitowoc is Mountain and that was the second destination on my vacation itinerary. A couple friends of mine from Chicagoland have a cabin just outside of town and gave me free use of it. On the way there I passed by a roadside shrine.

I'd never seen one outside of Portage County to the west and had always taken a different route to the cabin. I shouldn't have been surprised, however, as I was just north of a town called Pulaski and just south of a little unincorporated village named Krakow. These shrines are a Polish(-American) phenomenon and are found at crossroads. (Sometimes you'll find a cross but no shrine.) I suppose they announce you're in a Polish/Catholic area but I wonder if their placement has historical roots in the supernatural lore of crossroads.

My friends' cabin is on the bank of the north branch of the Oconto River. I know I've gone down the right driveway when I see a familiar sign.

It was a beautiful morning with some fall colors coming in.

The cabin has no electricity nor running water but no expense was spared with the dual seat outhouse.

The river was high and flowing quickly.

It was wonderful to be out in the country away from computers and cars in a spot where the loudest noise was the river flowing. No masks, no news, and the lovely outdoors instead of being ensconced upstairs at my desk in my office at home.

Across the road lies the Nicolet National Forest so I took a stroll. At one point I heard a woodpecker and tried to find it. As I was gazing upwards, an acorn fell and missed my head by about a foot. I never spotted the bird so I continued hiking down the road and found a trailhead at the end of it. So down the path I went.

The trail was about a mile long and ended at a national forest road. There was some wonderful scenery along the route with even more fall color than there was to be found by the cabin. As I wandered near a small pine stand, I could smell the coniferous goodness. The smell of the country is wonderful. Well, as long as you're not downwind of a farm.

After my little hike, I wandered back to the cabin and lit a fire. With dinner I had one of my favorite potent potables, a Schlenkerla Rauchbier.

Rauchbier = smoke beer. That is, the malt is dried with direct heat from burning beechwood so the grain is kissed by the smoke imparting guaiacol and syringol and whatever other chemicals make smoked foods taste so delicious.

The Schlenkerla brewery was established in 1405 in Bamberg, Germany where Rauchbier is the town's specialty. Back then most beer was smoke beer as I believe the use of indirect heat/use of coke instead of wood to dry malt is a 17^th century invention. Bamberg is also home to another Rauchbier brewery, Spezial, but, sadly, they do not export their beer to the States. This being the case, the Frau and I are determined to visit Bamberg someday to sample their brews. Plus, the town has retained some medieval buildings so I can indulge my love of the Middle Ages while there.

I also had a bottle of Becherovka, a Czech digestiv with me. It was given to me by an uncle when he was clearing out his liquor cabinet on a recent visit. A couple swigs made a fine post-prandial treat but it was too sweet to drink a lot of. Perhaps if had been colder or diluted. Just a bit cloying for me. I left it in the cabin's liquor cabinet for future guests to indulge themselves.

I stayed at the cabin for only one night as my next stop was Stevens Point, home of a couple friends from college whom I hadn't seen in several years. As I was packing up, I heard a woodpecker nearby. I was able to find this one and even got a snap of it.

Bonus photo: some fine chainsaw totem art from Madison.

The Janus in January

Despite the chilly weather, I rather like January. It is the time to look back and to look forward, after all. There's recollecting both the good and the bad of the previous year followed by that wonderful sense of expectation of the year to come. Spring will arrive and we can each emerge from our hibernaculum. The temperature rises and we are treated to verdant scenery once again. The world takes on a patina of newness and people become determined to make hay while the sun shines because winter always returns. But it's harder to muster that optimism these days with Covid-19 still running amok and the site of insurrectionists/rioters storming the Capitol in Washington D.C. still fresh in our minds.

Overall, though, I am rather sanguine. While I certainly don't expect life to return to pre-pandemic normality in 2021, I do think things will get better. If nothing else, warmer weather means more opportunity to socialize with others outside, respectfully distanced. So there is always that to look forward to. But I have at least a modicum of confidence that vaccines will find their way into more arms, that there will be less sickness and death.

I have to admit that I have been rather lucky these past 10 months or so. My family has remained Covid-free while only two friends contracted it and they experienced relatively minor symptoms. My home office became my workplace and the same was true for my Frau. There are many people for whom the pandemic was much more disruptive and much more costly. I suppose my outlook is rooted in the fact that 2020, while certainly not the best of years, wasn't horrible for me.

In fact, there were some very positive developments last year. One of them was all of the early spring walks I took before starting work. Getting to know the call of a red-winged blackbird and triangulating my way to spying a woodpecker nest back in April were, perhaps, in the grand scheme of things, not major events. But, for me they were invaluable moments of calm at a time when people were getting sick from a virus that was not well understood and businesses were closing left and right. A little Waldeinsamkeit amidst all of the uncertainty. I look forward to resuming them in a couple months or so.

Another change for the better is that I have started buying flowers on a semi-regular basis. No, I do not have a green thumb and have no talent whatsoever at flower arranging. Every other trip or so to the grocery store I buy a bouquet. Ironically, I neglected to do so today. I just find it pleasant to have some pretty and sweetly scented flowers on the dining room table. I started doing this after I heard an episode of a podcast featuring the lead singer of Marillion, Steve Hogarth. In it he told of how he buys flowers for his hotel rooms when he is on tour. Just a little something to gussy up the place. The whole idea just seemed like a good one to me. Add a little color, bring some nature inside.

With many people in need and my pocket book doing alright I began donating more money in 2020. Both to new recipients and on a regular basis to an old one or two. I have been giving money to Second Harvest Foodbank of Southern Wisconsin (so my neighbors can eat), the Literacy Network (so my neighbors can read), Youth Guidance (so low-income kids in my hometown of Chicago get help to better themselves), and others that I cannot think of off of the top of my head.

In addition, I've been supporting local businesses when I can. We get dinner delivered or do takeout occasionally, I buy my CDs from MadCity Music, and I have been expanding my library with the help of A Room of One's Own. I suppose this isn't really new since I have been buying my CDs from MadCity for decades, for example. But I have been going out of my way to get locally roasted coffee! Buying local really isn't a new practice for me. I was saddened recently to read another Madison blogger write about all of the books that Amazon was delivering to his doorstep. Give me convenience or give me death!

Since we are not living paycheck to paycheck, I think about the kind of Madison I'd like to see when the pandemic is brought under control, if not ends, and I try to spend and donate accordingly. I would like a Madison to emerge from the pandemic populated by more than Starbucks, McDonalds, Home Depot, etc.

Something F. Scott Fitzgerald once wrote comes to mind: "A man does not recover from such jolts-- he becomes a different person and, eventually, the new person finds new things to care about." By the time the pandemic ends or is at least under control, it will have taken many people, restaurants, shops, theaters, cultural institutions, etc. with it. I am not eager for people to die nor for any more Madison businesses and traditions to disappear but it will be very interesting to be around when that new Madison emerges.

In 2021 I have a few things to look forward to. One is being able to contribute to the process of redesigning the bus network here in Madison. Jarrett Walker and Associates have been hired to give our patchwork network an overhaul. This year they will study our bus system and then come up with alternatives to be implemented starting next year, if all goes well. When I start riding the bus again, I hope to be able get where I'm going more quickly. Heck, maybe even be able to take the bus to places I've not been able to previously.

Last month I wrote about some of my favorite movies, music, etc. of 2020 and normally I'd have a list of albums, films, books, etc. that I was eagerly anticipating in the new year. Covid has thrown the film industry for a loop so who knows what will be released this year beyond comic book movies? The only one that I am anxiously awaiting that is scheduled to be released this year is Denis Villeneuve's adaptation of Dune. This being the case, I will continue to work my way through my to-watch list.

As for music, I will be purchasing Tea Party Revenge Porn by Jello Biafra and the Guantanamo School of Medicine when it comes out in March. Beyond that, I don't know what to expect in new music releases this year.

But even in years without a pandemic, I discover new and fun things and so it shall be in 2021. I just really wish I could go to the cinema. More safely than I can now, anyway.

The Corona Diaries 2: Perambulating

Late August 2020

The Frau stumbled upon an old photo of our abode shortly after it was built:

Our house was one of the model homes built by the A.A. Elkind & Company who developed much of our neighborhood, Eastmorland.

I've written about the Eastmorland neighborhood previously. In the intervening 3.5 years since that post, some things have changed. There are shiny new apartments along the southern boundary on Cottage Grove Road. An "affordable housing" or "low income" apartment complex sits across the street from brand new single-family homes, some of which are valued at nearly a half a million dollars with more square footage in their basements alone than my entire house.

We have a new neighborhood library. The Pinney branch had its grand opening scheduled the same week, if not the exact day, that the state announced the pandemic lockdown back in March. I've heard that it's really nice but have never been inside. My sole experience with the new library has been to retrieve DVDs from a table out back.

There's also been some action on Milwaukee Street. The old Swiss Colony warehouse is now an Amazon Hub. Sadly, El Poblano, a nice little Mexican restaurant, closed shortly after the pandemic hit. It was in the parking lot of Woodman's Market which has gobbled up the land and is now building an expanded gas station/oil change facility.

For more on development in Eastmorland and Madison in general, check out "Keep the Home Fires Burning", an episode of the podcast I do with my pal Old Man Schuck. You'll also hear some great tunes about houses, homes, neighborhoods, and whatnot.

********

Willkommen to part 2!

The Frau and I started working from home in mid-March. I felt very lucky as neither of us had lost our jobs nor lost any hours as this was my immediate concern. My job doesn't actually require me to be in the office very often. When I am there, I sit at a desk and log into other computers remotely to do a lot of my work so remoting in from home isn't all that different from being in the office. My boss is very anti-telecommuting but I am hoping that, when the pandemic ends (or ends enough) I will be able to work from home 3-4 days per week.

Since I was going to be working from home, my daily ritual of walking to the bus stop and spending 8+ hours on the other side of town needed to be replaced. I simply had to make sure I spent some time away from the old homestead. It was part of a larger stratagem on my part, really. There wasn't a formal plan and what scheme there was wasn't particularly grand. And, truth be told, it was something of an extension of an attitude I've had for a while - indulging in some telos.

I found a good example of what I mean in a recent read. The author, who is English, was at an august museum or library in Paris or Copenhagen or some such place and he noted how you can always tell which tourists are American because they will look at an exhibit only briefly before moving onto the next one. We Yanks apparently have a short attention span and little patience for reflection and contemplation.

Perhaps a good way to say it is that I tried to live a little more deliberately. With those basic levels of Maslowian needs seemingly secure, I was free to work on the upper levels. I strove to be more thoughtful in choosing the paths to take - in the Thoreauian sense of direction in life but also in a more mundane way.

Werner Herzog once opined "The world reveals itself to those who travel on foot." I used to walk a lot in college. For a while, work was a little more than a mile from home while most of my classes were a bit farther. At some point I stopped walking. Then several years ago I began once again to go out on leisurely walks of moderate distances. And then a couple years ago I started taking lengthy treks on foot. Not like a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela, but a few miles.

Last spring as the weather was getting warmer, I started walking more frequently. On the vernal equinox I took a walk to the Starkweather Conservation Park which is just a few blocks from home.

I'd walked through the western half of the park before and it is mostly wooded. But I had never taken the bicycle/walking path that goes along the park's eastern perimeter up to its northern border.

There were some mallards because mallards are everywhere here. Our baseball team is named after them. And I spied a few Canada geese as well because they're ubiquitous just like mallards. Shorelines can be overrun with them and their poop in the summer. A Sandhill crane pair were hanging out by a nearby office building.

(The International Crane Foundation is about 40 miles north of Madison up in Baraboo.)

Also to be found were the obligatory red-winged blackbirds.

Someone somewhere somewhen posted a map of the Starkweather Creek area online as it was in 1892. My neighborhood was largely marsh before becoming farmland and the park seems to be the last remnant of that.

The path around the park leads under the Highway 30 overpass where there was the usual graffiti. It was a sunny day and some of the sights reminded me of The Conformist by Bernardo Bertolucci. I like to think that his cinematographer Vittorio Storaro would be proud of the use of light & shadow and all of the straight lines here.

Some rail tracks go underneath the overpass so I followed those and came upon a couple of disused loading docks next to a siding.

Trains used to be loaded here at some point in the past but I'm not sure when. The Wisconsin & Southern Railroad PR person was not overly helpful in this matter. But that is Commercial Avenue there in the background running along Highway 30 so I wouldn't be surprised if this area was much more industrial/warehousey back in the day.

A couple of years ago there was an article in our local alt-weekly about Trachte buildings which are a piece of vernacular Madison architecture. They are known for their steel walls and barrel roofs. I've noticed them around town since I moved here but never knew their history until reading the article.

Walking home on this trek I noticed a couple Trachte sheds and have been taking their pictures whenever I see them ever since. 

It occurred to me one day that, since I enjoy going for walks, I should do so every day before work. Just get outside before being stuck behind my desk for hours on end. We live a couple blocks from Starkweather Creek so I began walking down there and then heading home along the bike path. This allowed me to watch as the magnolia trees down the street started to bud and then bloom.

The creek had the occasional mallard on it just after dawn but the birds were always very noisy.

Red-winged blackbirds are a sure sign of spring and they nest near water. And so they were tweeting away. I believe they were mostly males announcing their presence and marking their territory. They would also sit on the electric line along the bike path for several minutes at a time chirping or singing or whatever it was that they were doing.

One morning I heard an odd bird call coming from a tree. I am no expert on birds but I knew what a red-winged blackbird sounded like by this time as well as cardinals and robins. After walking back and forth along the railroad tracks for a couple minutes I eventually tracked down the tree where it was coming from. I got out my binoculars and eventually discovered that it was a woodpecker and that I had stumbled upon its nest. I believe it was a red-bellied woodpecker.

The woodpecker seemed to hang around for a couple weeks and then disappeared.

It was really fun to take these walks through most of the spring. Doing so every day, I was able to see the incremental changes in the flora and in the creek. Schools of minnows appeared in the concrete stream by the bike path that carries runoff water and they'd abruptly change course when they saw me hovering over them.

I think these walks helped me ease into the abrupt change in my morning schedule that the pandemic brought.

Just as I had developed a routine outdoors, routines were also developing indoors…

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Bonus photo! I found a picture of the Buffalo ice cream parlor that I went to as a young boy in Chicago along with an old model Big Green Limousine. Note the "Key Punch Computer Program School" sign in the window.

 

The Corona Diaries 1: The Best Laid Plans

Back in August I started my Corona Diaries - a series of missives sent to family & friends who live out of state. I am adapting and expanding them for the blog.

Late August 2020

2020 started off well enough.

I have been hoping to visit Germany for a while so I enrolled in a non-credit adult enrichment German language course thinking the time was nigh. The Frau and I were looking forward to drinking Rauchbier in Bamberg and seeing what else Germany had to offer a couple of American tourists. Perhaps the Altstadt in Heidelberg as well. Or Berlin. How can you go wrong with Berlin? I could see the sights I've only read about in the Gereon Rath novels. Ever since learning that my German ancestry goes back to my great-great-great grandfather Heinrich who hailed from Hannover, I've had a desire to drink a Breyhan (a beer style native to Hannover and very popular from the 16th-19th century) and to visit the city from which I get my German blood. The first ur-drops, anyway.

I took German in college and actually became fairly proficient for a short time. One of my roommates had taken German in high school and was majoring in German literature so I was able to come home and practice with him. It got to the point that I started to dream in German. The next year my friend went to study in Germany for a year and so there went my tutor and conversation partner. (Accompanying him was Scott Manning of Vintage Brewing. I believe that Scottie's Schwarzbier, Schwarzfahren, was named in honor of one of their adventures.)

It wasn't long before I found that I recalled much more than I thought I would. Over the years I've always used a bit of German here and there, e.g. – yelling "Achtung!" at the kids when they were little.

Speaking of my stepsons, they are doing well overall. The oldest turns 25(?!) in the autumn. He lives very close to where we lived before buying our house – on the isthmus not too far from downtown. His girlfriend moved in with him when the stay at home orders came down in March. He was doing some acting as well as teaching when the pandemic struck. I am very proud of him as he has gotten his stuff together and become quite responsible. It's as if he's an adult or something.

The youngest turned 21 this summer. Instead of volunteering to buy beer for his stepfather so he doesn't have to venture out to the Covid-laced liquor store, he is moving to Eau Claire at the end of this month or early September. As young men often do, he is following a woman - his girlfriend is returning to school there.

Having an interest in medieval history, I took another class last winter called "The Art of the Medieval Book." I learned the difference between parchment and vellum and how they're made, about medieval inks, and so on. Plus, I was excited to handle a codex for the very first time!

Being a big fan of The Name of the Rose – the novel, film, and TV series – it was thrilling to actually touch and leaf through some codices. To be able to feel the parchment, look at the detail in the illuminations with my own eyes, and whatnot was really neat. Luckily my fingers and tongue did not turn black.

2020 was also supposed to have included other travel plans beyond a potential trip to the Fatherland. I had carried a week of vacation time over from last year and had plans aplenty. The spring was to have involved a trip to New Orleans to visit The National WWII Museum with friends, a couple of whom I got to know through my brother and were, like him, big World War II history buffs.

My father was a huge WWII history buff and passed this down to my brother. I couldn't help but develop some interest in the subject and recall writing a paper on the day that will live in infamy at Pearl Harbor when I was in 4th or 5th grade. But I never came close to the devotion to the subject that they had. For instance, they'd be able to watch a WWII movie and point out that the Panzer Mk III onscreen was not yet in service at the time of the events the movie is portraying. I can still picture my father sitting before our TV in back of the house with mentholated smoke streaming from his nose and curling around his head as he gleefully watched Kelly's Heroes or Tora! Tora! Tora! for the 40th time.

After my brother died, I felt strangely obligated to keep the family interest in WWII alive so I started reading about it. I inherited some of their books but I've also been buying my own. Rather than retreading the well-worn, I've been trying to avoid the battles and aspects of the war that the likes of Steven Spielberg have made into blockbuster movies so that means no D-Day, no Pearl Harbor, no Holocaust, and no Battle of the Bulge. Instead I've read about the Rape of Nanking, the Battle of Stalingrad, the North African theater, and about Europe in the immediate aftermath of the war's end. 

Here are my latest purchases:

I've not yet read the book on the invasion of Poland but reading about The Battle of Okinawa sure makes life during the pandemic look like a cakewalk, I can tell you.

I had hoped to visit The National WWII Museum with my brother at some point – perhaps also head over to the National Museum of the Pacific War outside of San Antonio with him since we'd be down south. We'd check out the exhibits, he could lecture me about the war, and we'd reminisce about the old man. Much to my dismay, that never happened. So, I had a crew of friends lined up to board an Amtrak train for a spring trek to New Orleans…

Those plans fell through when The Frau announced she needed surgery. I moved the New Orleans trip to the autumn so I could be around for her recovery. (All went well and she has recovered fully.) In addition, she wanted to go to London for her X0th birthday in the summer. I had applied for my passport in December and it arrived in February.

And then came COVID-19. All these plans were shelved along with my annual trek to Indianapolis for the Gencon gaming convention; the gaming convention here in Madison, Gamehole Con, was soon canceled too and, most recently, so was the Doctor Who convention held out in Lombard, IL on Thanksgiving weekend, Chicago TARDIS. It's depressing to see my virgin passport and be reminded of all the plans I had. I really need to stow that somewhere out of sight.

Instead of venturing far and wide, I have spent the past five months working on short trips. Yesterday the Frau and I visited our favorite dairy, Sassy Cow. The farm and creamery are only about 20 miles north of Madison. We were there several years ago when the creamery opened but haven't been back since. That trip is notable in our minds for the cow who was in labor.

I had recently read an article about the plight of dairy farmers here in Wisconsin and thought visiting a farm would be a fun, if short, getaway.

Sassy Cow is not an industrial farm – more like a large family farm. The tour is only about 30 minutes but it's always nice to get out to the country. The smell of a cow barn never fails to take me back to living up north by Eau Claire while in high school. We left after having spent more money than I had hoped and are now very well stocked with ice cream, half & half, cheese, and yoghurt.