The Corona Diaries Vol. 80: Ecce, Tannenbaum!

(Watch the prelude.)

(early December 2022)

As we do every Thanksgiving weekend, the Frau and I trekked down to lovely Lombard last month for Chicago TARDIS, a convention dedicated to the British sci-fi TV show, Doctor Who. I believe we’ve been going since 2009. As tradition dictates, we get there late Friday morning and begin by getting our badges. We then attend a seminar or a chat with one of the actors before heading out to lunch.

When we began this routine, there was no Portillo’s in Madison and finding a decent Italian beef was a dicey proposition, at best. Hope came about 10 years ago when a guy opened a sandwich shop whose menu trumpeted the owner's pedigree: he was the scion of a family that had a mini-restaurant empire in Chicago. My hopes were dashed when I ordered an Italian beef there and nearly overdosed on linalool. There was enough basil on that beef to fell a horse. Oh well.

Anyway, our convention routine became a short cruise down Butterfield Road to Portillo's for Italian beef. I think this is how the Frau acquired her taste for it and was, I would argue, the first step in her becoming inculcated with Chicago culture. Well, we now have 2 Portillo’s in Madison but we’ve decided to keep the tradition alive.

 

 

I think I spent the bulk of the weekend in seminars like this listening to people who've written books about the show pontificate and then adding in my 2¢. Most of these sessions were dedicated to talking about individual Doctor Who TV stories.

 

It was fun to talk about which stories and characters we liked and which ones we didn’t and why. I got into a brief but spirited debate with a fellow fan about the virtues of the show being shot on 100% videotape vs. a mix, as they did back in the day, of video and 16mm film. At another one, we argued the finer points of humor in the show and how some things are meant for kids and some are not.

A fun seminar was led by a couple folks from Chicagoland who reminisced about the show being broadcasted by channel 11. This, of course, included the pledge drives and they showed some video of Marty Robinson inveigling viewers to send in their hard-earned lucre. Quite a blast from the past!

Another tradition is meeting my mother for lunch on Saturday while yet another is having breakfast on Sunday with a couple friends who live in West Chicago. I think it is telling that our convention going traditions all seem to revolve around food.

On Friday night we went to the Rock Bottom in the Yorktown Mall complex as we usually do – another food tradition! – and there I took a chance and had a pumpkin bread ale.

I guess I was just in a seasonal mood. It was tasty. Not too sweet and they didn’t overload it with nutmeg, clove, cinnamon, etc.

On Saturday night we stopped in at Lombard’s Noon Whistle Brewing on Roosevelt Road. I find their beer to be hit or miss, honestly, but it’s close to the hotel and hope springs eternal.

I had 3 beers while there in these handy little sampler glasses which I think hold 4 ounces. They’re nice when you want to try a beer. You get enough to make a proper judgement but you’re not committing to a whole pint in case you don’t care for it.

Here are a couple of the samples:

I think the one on the left was a German-style rye beer (Roggenbier) and the beer on the right was a smoked German-style pale lager. Both were thoroughly mediocre. I couldn’t taste much of that wonderful spicy rye flavor and the other brew just had a weak malt taste.

However, on my third try, I scored. Not pictured is the dill pickle sour ale. While it is a complete gimmick and sounds a bit disgusting at first blush, I really enjoyed the stuff. It was light and fizzy, tangy and sour, with a nice savory component of saltiness and a bit of dill. I am not usually inclined to these kinds of beers but this was a stroke of good luck.

We finished things off with a nightcap at Goldfinger Brewing in Downers Grove.

They seem to brew mostly lagers, if not exclusively. The menu noted that they built the brewhouse to accommodate decoction brewing which involves siphoning off a portion of the simmering malt-water mixture, boiling it, and then putting back in with the rest of the proto-beer.

Beloved by German and Czech brewers for giving their beers a fuller, toastier taste, it’s uncommon here. Hence Goldfinger boasting about its use. (Dovetail in Ravenswood does it also.)

I had the Original while my Frau opted for the Vienna lager. The Original is their house pale lager.

This was excellent suds! Light and bready and toasty – just perfect.

It was a great trip. The convention was a hoot, we got to see my mother and some friends, and we ate & drank very well. Maybe next year I can convince my cousin to join us since she just lives up the road apiece.

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In preparation for winter, I am reading this:

It is a fascinating read. Bernd Heinrich is (or was) a biology professor at the University of Vermont. This book details his experiences with nature mainly in western Maine where he has cabin.

I knew a bit about bears and how they hibernate from that National Geographic presentation I had attended back in January. Plus I was familiar with a few other things that I had picked up on nature walks here in Madison. But most of it was new to me.

I learned how many small animals go into a torpor at night to conserve energy. For example, some types of birds and mice go into a nightly kind of hibernation. They appear to be dead. But, the next day, they begin to shiver, heat up, and seemingly come back to life. The black-capped chickadee gets special attention in the book. Unlike some birds that pack on the pounds during the day to burn at night, these chickadees put on less weight and instead lower their body temperature dramatically at night so as not to drain those precious fat reserves.

One chapter is devoted to turtles. Snapping turtles bury themselves in the muddy bottoms of lakes and ponds. It is weird to think that underneath the ice of my local pond there are turtles slumbering at the bottom. Yet they breathe air! It seems they can also absorb oxygen through their skin.

The chapter on bees was very interesting. They are able to regulate the temperature of their hives very precisely. Also interesting, if completely unexpected, were the several pages Heinrich devoted to his experiments to figure out the bees’ pooping behavior.

“As the hive in winter is always clean of poop (although sometimes littered with corpses), we may see no problem at all, simply because the bees have solved it so well. But how long can they wait? Till spring? Do they die rather than poop?”

A fascinating book, I now look forward to seeking out evidence of animal life come winter.

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A few days ago, I spent a weekend up in Stevens Point, which is basically smack dab in the middle of the state. It was to be a relaxing weekend visiting a couple friends I've known since college.

It had been a few years since I’d been up in that neck of the woods and their kids had somehow grown up. Their daughter was now in college and had moved out of the house to live in town while their oldest son was a senior in high school with the youngest only a couple years behind.

We celebrated the end of the work week (though one of my friends had to work Saturday morning for a spell) in classic Wisconsin style – with beer. A couple who are friends and neighbors stopped by to join in the fun. In one of the oddest beer-related incidents I’ve ever experienced, we came across this Ezekiel can with tops within tops.

If that wasn’t exciting enough, their eldest son called saying he had locked his keys in his car at Rib Mountain where he was skiing with friends. This necessitated that we men undertake a 30-mile drive north to deliver a spare. It wasn’t bad, really, as it gave us time to chat and catch up on things since the last time I was up that way.

With our mission accomplished, we got back to into town and celebrated a job well done by paying a visit to O'so Brewing at their new brewery.

The new digs were much larger than the old ones but had less of what the Norwegians called koselig, which, to my understanding, is a sense of shared coziness, warmth, and conviviality. The old brewery was also in a bland mall and not exactly bursting with koselig but it was smaller with less of an industrial vibe. While the new one is bigger with more potential for profit from every pint, it’s also like drinking in a warehouse or factory.

I simply prefer something more akin to my living room than a factory-like setting.

Still, I was happy drinking their English mild which was rather tasty. We ended up chatting with owner and head brewer Marc Buttera for a little while. Very nice fellow.

When we called it a night and stepped outside, we found that it was snowing.

The next morning I took a drive around greater Stevens Point. As I noted in a previous entry, this part of the state was home to a lot of Polish immigrants and one sign of this history is the roadside crosses and shrines to be found at various intersections in the area. I found one of each in my travels.

This cross is at the intersection of 2 roads I cannot recall the name of but is fairly close to my friends' place.

This shrine, however, was a bit farther afield.

I eventually went back into town and headed to the Stevens Point Area Co-op in search of some locally made treats. The co-op is also home to Earth-Crust Bakery and has a nice ghost sign out back.

I ended up with some locally roasted coffee from Ruby Coffee Roasters.

I also bought a bottle of rhubarb BBQ sauce from the Stevens Point Sauce Company.

The rhubarb and maple syrup added a nice Wisconsin touch, I figured. I also bought same pastries for the kids as we had a big day ahead of us. For we were to seek out the perfect Christmas tree that afternoon.

Their daughter came home for the occasion. Since I last saw her, she had turned into a very sassy young lady, with an attitude not unlike Holden Caulfield’s. I am surprised she didn’t hurt herself with all of that eye rolling she did. She was in college studying forestry so who better to have on the hunt for the perfect tree, right?

We all piled into the truck and headed out to a local Christmas tree farm. The forestry student had said that it usually took “fucking hours” to find the right tree. I guess my friend is persnickety about his Christmas trees. Out wandering the evergreens, his wife or one of the boys would point out what I felt was a perfectly fine tree only to have the suggestion denied on the grounds of some minor imperfection or other.

Eventually, we found the perfect tree.

Ecce, Tannenbaum!

The tree section was but a part of the larger farm we were at and it also included some animals. The goats were out enjoying the brisk weather.

The owners were part of some kind of Christian fellowship congregation and a barn had been turned into a worship facility of some kind. It was rather rough and on the utilitarian side but was nice enough with plenty of sun and a big, vaulted ceiling.

With the tree (hopefully) securely strapped to the roof of the truck, we were off.

That evening we met up with the neighbor couple once again but this time it was at a bar downtown. Apparently the new mayor has a good sense of humor as I caught this sign at a crosswalk:

This is a reference to Monty Python’s “Ministry of Silly Walks” skit.

After dinner we all returned to the homestead and cozied up in front of the TV to watch National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation. For the scene where the squirrel jumps out of the Christmas tree, my friend retrieved his daughter's first attempt at taxidermy and threw it at me in synch with the movie squirrel jumping at Chevy Chase.

This is what I got.

The next morning I hit the road after filling up on coffee. Although it got rather chilly up north, I was jealous of the snow. They didn’t get a whole lot but it was enough to detract from all of the brown and grey. I hoped that we too would get some in Madison soon.

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Bonus photo: while we were at Chicago TARDIS, one of my Frau's friends fed the cats and took this lovely photo of Grabby.

 

 

(Watch the highly interesting postlude.)

The Corona Diaries Vol 9: Riding the Green Dragon. Er, Circle.

December 2020

I want to take this opportunity to extend an offer to everyone: if you have any questions about your fecal matter (or anyone else's, I suppose), please don't hesitate to ask me as I recently came across this handy little tome:

I will soon be wise in all things feces^ and be able to answer all of your pressing poo-related questions.

^This reminds me of a story told to me by a friend of mine. He was in an intro to biology class up at UW-Eau Claire and "feces", well, digestion, was the topic du jour. A woman in the class read a section from the textbook and pronounced it "feck-us".

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hile I am on the subject of books, you may recall that I took a class on medieval manuscripts last winter. I have returned to the subject with my latest read, Meetings with Remarkable Manuscripts: Twelve Journeys into the Medieval World, by Christopher de Hamel. de Hamel is a librarian and expert on medieval manuscripts. While working at Sotheby’s, he was in their manuscript department, or whatever group there deals with codices, and is reputed to have touched more medieval books than any other human being on earth.

It's a very interesting read. He gives an account of the library that holds each text, the books' histories, and a look at the contents, both the words and images. It was really neat to see photos of and learn about the Carmina Burana manuscript. There on the page were the opening lines of "O Fortuna". Did you know those famous lines are not original to the text and were instead added later? I had no idea. Plus I agree with de Hamel: much of the art in the Book of Kells is really pretty awful.

Highly recommended if you want to learn more about medieval manuscripts.

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We got snow yesterday – a little over 6 inches. After shoveling for the first time, I went for a walk and it was just gorgeous outside. Just below freezing and the snow was coming down at a good clip. My wanderings took me over to Starkweather Creek. I walked along the shore for a stretch before I came to a small hill that kids use for launching themselves off of on their bikes. My attempt at scaling it was an epic failure and I ended up falling and sliding down once I'd gotten about halfway there. It made me feel like that guy in Jack London's "To Build a Fire". Well, except that it wasn't quite that cold out. And civilization was just a block away. But, aside from those two things, it was just like that story.

Ahem.

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(Now to finish off my account of my trek up north.)

It was yet another lovely morning when I departed Mountain for Stevens Point. On my way there I found myself driving through a town called Wittenberg which sounded familiar but I couldn't place it. Then I saw an old delivery truck that must have been from the 1950s with "NUESKE'S" in big friendly letters on the side. Nueske's makes some of the best bacon I've ever stuffed into my piehole. They smoke the meat to perfection over either applewood or cherrywood. Just great bacon.

After about 100 miles I arrived at the home of my friends on the northeast side of Stevens Point just before noon. It was a gorgeous, sunny day and I figured that they'd be at work while the kids would be schooling somehow, somewhere so I parked in their driveway and promptly removed my bicycle from the rack. The day's ride would be the Green Circle, a bike/walking trail of 25-30 miles that goes around the north, east, and west sides of the city and the town of Whiting to the south. While some of the trail uses streets, it's mostly crushed and compacted rock.

The Moses Creek Trail section runs about 4 blocks away from my friends' home so it wasn't long before I was on the Green Circle. The next section of the route had a stretch that ran alongside the Plover River which made for some really nice scenery.

Stevens Point is up in the pinery and the outpost of the University of Wisconsin there is known for its forestry and paper science schools.

The paper industry in Wisconsin has fallen on hard times as of late. A mill in Wisconsin Rapids – about 20 miles from Point – closed over the summer putting around 900 people out of work. From what I've read, it sounds like venture capital groups buy these companies and then shut down the mills rather than updating them for the 21^st century paper market. More on that mill's closure here.

On the other hand, the mill way up north in Park Falls reopened this year.

Anyway, it is hardly surprising that the bike trail went through some nice pine stands.

I am big fan of the pine/fir/spruce and the smell in these stands was just wonderful. I believe we have a mixture of white and jack pines in this photograph but I'm no arborist. It was white pines like these (?) from the Wisconsin pinery (and Michigan's) that rebuilt Chicago after the Great Fire. Tangentially, it is also my understanding that Milwaukee brewers - especially Miller - shipped their beer down to Chicago in mass quantities after the Fire to quench the thirst of those cleaning up and rebuilding.

The Green Circle goes through many parks including the Schmeeckle Reserve which is a wildlife preserve belonging to the UW-Stevens Point. There's marshland therein and the trail goes from gravel to boardwalks.

In addition to the Plover, the trail runs along the mighty Wisconsin River which starts up north by the Upper Peninsula, methinks, and flows to the Mississippi.

Over on the west side, the Green Circle goes near downtown and – quelle surprise! – there is a mural.

On the northwest side of town, the trail runs by the Stevens Point Sculpture Park.

It is really nice with sculptures of all sorts littering a path that runs through the larger Zenoff Park. In addition to deer centaurs, there was a giant Leopold bench.

The shadow of Aldo Leopold looms large over Wisconsin.

If memory serves, this tower/obelisk was built in such a way as to be a home for a particular variety of bird that I cannot recall in addition to its aesthetic duties.

My ride also took my down a stretch of the route used by stagecoaches to go from Stevens Point to Wausau, about 35 miles to the north. So that was a nice bit of local history.

I was thoroughly impressed with the Green Circle and hope to ride it again. In addition to the wonderful scenery, most of it is pretty level with just a few uphill climbs. Plus, I got lost only once so it has easy navigation going for it. Next time I'd like to detour from the trail into the city more. Hopefully I can do so and there will be more shops, cafes, and whatnot open.

Upon returning to my friends' house, I rang the doorbell and was greeted by my friend Wendy. She had been home all along and was wondering where I had been. I spent a couple days with her and husband Matt. During this time we caught up on each other's lives as we hadn't seen one another in several years. Their kids had grown considerably and two were now teenagers. I was happy to see that Matt survived teaching one of them to drive.

We spent some time touring the area's breweries and ended up at Central Waters Brewing Company, O'sO Brewing Company, and McZ's Brew Pub. McZ's is in nearby Rosholt, population 500 or so. A resident had gotten married that day and the town was all but deserted as basically everyone was at the reception. Nice and quiet and no wait for a table.

Matt lived in Germany and England after graduation where he learned the brewing trade. Upon returning to the States, he started work at a brewpub out west and made beer for a living for a few years. So, if I taste an off flavor in a brew, I get the chemical formula of the culprit from him. If there's no off flavor, I get a lecture about how well or how poorly the beer at hand conforms to traditional style guidelines.

Stevens Point is in Portage County which has had a large Polish-American population for ages. This being the case, the county has various roadside shrines and crosses. I saw one I hadn't seen before on my trip. I wasn’t driving and we didn't stop for a photo opportunity but I recalled where it was and found it on Google Maps.

However, I was able to get a photo of this roadside shrine which I'd encountered on another venture.

I bid my friends auf wiedersehen after a couple days and journeyed south to the Nekoosa area. My first stop was Roche-A-Cri State Park where I parked and then immediately hit the trails. I ended up hiking a few miles. The park is notable for a butte/rock outcrop thingy which features Native American petroglyphs. I believe these are the only ones in the state. Well, the only ones that are hundreds of years old.

Because of Covid, I wasn't able to go to the top nor get close to the petroglyphs. Still, the weather was rain-free and temperate so it was a nice walk.

My final stop was at the pièce de resistance of Wisconsin gustatory culture: a supper club.

This one happened to be owned by an old friend's ladyfriend while he was the head chef. She grew up in the area and had gone there many a time as a kid. When the place came up for sale, she jumped at the chance to keep it open so another generation can enjoy Old Fashioneds and prime rib.

The last time I saw either of them was in, oh, 2004 or 2005. I hadn't announced my intent to stop by ahead of time so, after being seated, I asked the waitress to relay a message to Chef Ed. Since he was known to some of us as The Polock (he being a product of Milwaukee's south side back in the day), I asked her to tell him that a customer was asking what he had to do to get a decent pierogi in this town.

It was really fun to be able to chat with them again. The place was fairly busy despite the capacity restrictions and they were short on staff so we didn't have a long time to talk. I enjoyed my pine nut encrusted walleye and the wonderful view. The building is on the east side of Petenwell Lake and so diners are treated to beautiful vistas of the setting sun.

The next day I headed home to Madison. I was not enthusiastic about returning to work the following day, I can tell you.

Bonus photo – food delivery robots. These deliver food from UW-Madison cafeterias to students in the dorms.