A is for Anderson?

I see here that Jethro Tull's A was released on this day back in 1980. Although the band played in Milwaukee and Chicago on the tour in support of it, I've never seen recordings of these shows available. But Tull did release the Slipstream video which features some live footage from a show later in 1980. Here's "Black Sunday", the only A track to get some live love, sadly.

Back on Rock Island

Holy biscuits! It's been 35 years since Jethro Tull released Rock Island. I recall hearing the lead single, "Kissing Willie", on some radio syndicated show that a local classic rock station carried before the album came out. I would head to Chicago to see them on 14 November. This song, however, was taped the following night as the recording is of better quality.

Here's "The Whaler's Dues" from the Chicago Theater. I chose this one as I am reading about Antarctic exploration and there were whalers about when Ross, Bull, de Gerlache, Dyer from Miskatonic University, and the rest of their ilk were venturing south into the icy wastes.

It really did happen

44 years ago Yes released Drama, their first album without Jon Anderson. 44 years!! I really like the album and appreciate how they reinvented their sound with new members. It greets 1980 and the new musical styles of the era just like Rush did with Permanent Waves.

Here's the opening song from their Chicago concert on 22 September 1980, "Does It Really Happen?"

The Corona Diaries Vol. 115 - Postlude: Phoenicopteridae Plasticus

(Read entry #115.)

The Corona Diaries Vol. 115: I need a new kringle pusher

(Listen to the sound track.)

(late October 2023)

With my adventures up north done for the year, I settled in to enjoy the autumn close to home. The two maple trees down the street regaled me with their gorgeous colors on my walks to and from the bus stop.

Speaking of bus stops, reconstruction of an arterial street near us was finally finished and, in addition to a fancy, new bike path and pleasantly smooth pavement, I got a new bus shelter.

I feel like an aristocrat when I’m inside it on dark, rainy mornings, which are becoming increasingly common, as it has a light. An amenity! A minor one, I grant you, but it’s just weird to me after having spent years and years of chilly, wet autumn dawns waiting for the bus in dark, spartan shelters.

This new public transit Xanadu was situated slightly farther away from the corner than the old one and, as Fate (or a devious streets planner with a wicked sense of humor) would have it, right next to a walnut tree. There was a recent dry morning when I was standing there and one of the fruits fell, coming within an inch of my head. Lesson learned, though I suppose it would have been a good excuse to call in sick had I taken a walnut on the noggin.

"Sorry, Boss, but I cannot work today as a walnut fell on my head and I think I have a concussion."

No doubt my boss would have suffered damage to her eyes from rolling them so much.

Walking out from our driveway one day, I noticed this suggestive mushroom sprouting from the mulch on the north side of our house.

Of course my inner 12 year-old giggled maniacally. I believe this is commonly known as a stinkhorn mushroom and some mycologist endowed it with the highly appropriate botanical name of phallus impudicus which translates as "shameless phallus".

On a recent bike ride I ran across these skeleton flamingos.

Despite being well out of flamingo habitat range, Madison has a thing for them. Well, the yard decorations, anyway. Back in September 1979, some UW students decided to pull a prank and put 1,000+ plastic pink flamingos on Bascom Hill.

The incident became a part of local lore and the plastic pink flamingo became an icon, of sorts, of Madison. And so you occasionally see a yard full of them, there’s a flamingo mural on the side of laundromat in the Tenney-Lapham neighborhood, and the bird features in the annual holiday lights display at Olin Park, amongst other appearances.

********

In my spare time, I prepped for Gamehole Con, Madison’s premiere gaming convention as I was to run a few sessions of the Call of Cthulhu role playing game.

One scenario takes place in the 1950’s and begins with the players driving down a county road in a torrential downpour. They seek shelter at an isolated rural diner/gas station and take comfort in its endless supply of cheap coffee but, unbeknownst to them, there’s a nasty alien entity lurking in the woods. Although just a ball of light, it is a mindless, unfeeling devourer of the vital energies that animate living beings. There are some locals at the diner, some of whom are harboring dark secrets.

I tried to make a spooky atmosphere with people sometimes catching a light zipping through the trees from the corners of their eyes. The players eventually run into this refulgent killing machine and hilarity ensues.

The other scenario took place in the small town of Blackwater Creek, MA in 1926. A recent archeological dig had uncovered the resting place of a small fragment of the evil god Shub-Niggurath. This hideous remnant of malevolence infects one of the townsfolk who retreats to a nearby cave. She transmogrifies into a horrific creature from whose body flows enough Shub-Niggurath amniotic fluid to fill a creek. Hilarity ensues.

A couple years ago I started my own tradition of serving kringle to my players. The kringle is a Danish pastry shaped in a ring of sweet-filled dough. Early one morning I walked over to Lane’s Bakery to pick up my order. This involved traversing the lesser used parts of the convention center grounds until you get to an ill-lit gravel street. From there things get brighter but it’s a bit of a spooky walk in the antelucan hours.

It was clear and chilly out but at least this afforded me a good glimpse of Orion. You know it's autumn when you see the hunter in the southern sky.

I bought a highly seasonal pumpkin kringle, no frosting. While I love sweets, I find that, as I've gotten older, I want to taste the dough more, I want my tongue to revel in the delicious results of those Maillard reactions instead of being subjected to a mindless blast of sugar. Frosting only serves to obscure the grainy goodness.

The kringle was wonderful but the trip to Lane’s was bittersweet as the bakery was to close in December after 69 years. It was genuinely sad to hear the news of the impending loss of a Madison institution and this now leaves me without a source of fresh kringle within walking distance of the convention center. The only place I can think of in the area that makes the ringed goodness is a bakery in Stoughton, about 10-12 miles south of Madison.

It's easy enough to find kringle in grocery stores as the Racine Danish Kringles brand is ubiquitous. However, I taste margarine or imitation butter flavoring in their dough. Perhaps I ought to check out some grocery stores I don't usually shop at to see what's on offer. There are surely other brands on supermarket shelves around town.

In addition to running games, I played them as well. A highlight was the Blade Runner role playing game. The movie is an all-time favorite of mine and I was really looking forward to trying it out. I was not disappointed.

I played the role of the chain smoking, grizzled veteran cop. My fellow players and I investigated the “retirement”, a.k.a. – murder, of a replicant, i.e. – a synthetic person. Our sleuthing led us around to various locations in the Los Angeles of the future where we met a slew of suspicious replicants and various human members of the criminal underground.

The game was really well done with nice, high quality supplements.

The dice were funky too with one side having an eye, a recurring motif in the movie, and an origami unicorn, something made by Gaff, one of the cops in the film.

The game had an intriguing storyline, well fleshed out characters, and some genuinely thought-provoking thematic material. Really fun.

In the dealers room someone was selling appropriately themed coffee and I bought a bag of Kraken. Who doesn’t like tentacled sea monsters?

When I wasn't gaming, I was to be found spending time hanging out with friends and BSing. One night someone in my cohort told us that there was a group of well-heeled gamers from (present day) Los Angeles at the con. Apparently they like to game in style as they had brought a butler with them who had catered a particular gaming session with a portable build your own taco bar. A butler at a gaming convention filled with unwashed masses of gamer dorks is as incongruous a pairing as anchovies and ice cream. Plus there was just something intuitively wrong about a group of rich white guys bringing a black butler to the con. The whole idea just had bad 19th century vibes.

When I heard this tale, I realized that I had run into the guy in an elevator. Anyone not clad in a black t-shirt or in costume at a gaming convention sticks out like a priest at a brothel. He must have had a good haberdasher back in L.A. because he was dressed to the nines making me look like a serf in contrast. I had greeted him as I stepped into the elevator and he seemed in good spirits as he flashed a smile. Recalling the encounter, that old TV show Soap popped into my head about that rich white family who employed a wise-cracking black butler.

I hope his employer treats him well and that he was generously compensated as being a non-gamer at a gaming convention is surely like being trapped in one of the circles of Hell.

During another late night BS session, a friend revealed that he was contemplating running the epic Call of Cthulhu scenario Beyond the Mountains of Madness.

It's a sequel to the H.P. Lovecraft novella At the Mountains of Madness which chronicles a 1920s Antarctic expedition that, like everything in Lovecraft's tales, goes horribly wrong. In Beyond, players are sent on another expedition to the icy wastes to try and discover what happened to the first one. No doubt it is a tale of great woe and I fully expect my character to go insane and/or die.

Beyond is a massive scenario that takes days and days to go through but my friend would like to try to condense it into 3-4 long sessions at next year's Gamehole Con. He asked if I and another friend of ours would be anchor players who would commit to all of the lengthy sessions and help out other players as needed to keep the game moving forward.

We did.

And so, if this plan comes to fruition, it will be an epic, chilling adventure next year. Plus it has the added bonus of delaying having to find a bakery near the convention center for a couple years.

I had a blast at Gamehole. Many characters died heinous deaths in the games I ran and the games I played were great fun. Plus I got to hang out with friends deep into a few alcohol-soaked nights where we BSed and those of us who knew my late brother indulged in some warm reminiscing.

********

A week or so after the convention I was off to West Chicago to meetup with a couple friends who were to accompany me to the lovely Arcada Theater in nearby St. Charles to see a concert by Martin Barre.

Barre was the guitarist in the progressive rock band Jethro Tull for 40+ years before being unceremoniously booted by band leader Ian Anderson back in 2011 or thereabouts. Since then he has assembled his own group, recorded 5 albums, and performed many a concert. He is currently on the "A Brief History of Tull" tour.

It was a great show! Despite being in his 70’s, Barre had a lively stage presence. Although I couldn't play a guitar if my life depended on it, I regard him as one of the best guitarists ever to come out of the rock world. He always seems to play the right notes, to play what a song needs instead of demanding to be heard strictly as a virtuoso. As a jack of all trades kind of player, he can do big, heavy riffs like "Aqualung" or judiciously add color to an otherwise acoustic song like "Velvet Green".

We got a good overview of Jethro Tull’s catalog with “My God” being a highlight. It opens quietly with some gentle acoustic guitar adorned by piano. But when those big slashing electric guitar chords came thundering in, well, they sent a chill up my spine. The flute solo in the middle was replaced by some of Palladio, a contemporary classical piece by composer Karl Jenkins and it fit seamlessly.

The band's playing was tight, energetic, and everyone seemed to be having fun and this is what live music is all about.

********

Before heading back to Madison the next day, I bid my friends farewell and went to see Anatomy of a Fall which was playing at the cinema in St. Charles. I hadn’t seen anything to indicate it was going to open back home so I jumped at the chance to see this French film by Justine Triet that had won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival earlier in the year.

Sandra is a novelist who lives with her husband Samuel in a chalet up in the French Alps along with their son Daniel and his dog, Snoop. As the movie opens, a woman has come to their home to interview Sandra. But while they are chatting, Samuel cranks up some music upstairs where he is remodeling the top floor. Sandra and her interlocutor agree to reschedule the interview for a quieter time.

Daniel and Snoop go for a walk and, upon their return, find Samuel's body lying on the snow in front of the house. Daniel screams prompting Sandra to come out of the house where she sees her husband’s body.

Samuel is pronounced dead at the scene and Sandra is accused of having pushed him out of a window. She hires a lawyer who is also a friend and goes about defending herself as she consoles her traumatized son.

One of the great things about this movie is that it sends you down dead ends and leaves you wondering. It’s a murder mystery, but only just. We don’t see things from the point of view of a detective but rather watch as life continues for Sandra and Daniel. As a courtroom drama unfolds, we learn about Samuel and Sandra’s marriage troubles. The movie left me alternately convinced of Sandra’s innocence and thinking that she may have done it through scenes of her in the throes of grief and ones where she is cold, almost emotionless.

And those courtroom scenes were interesting. I don’t know how true they were to the real French judicial system but they mirrored the scenes in Saint Omer, another French film about a woman put on trial for murder, that I saw back in January.

Prosecutors are apparently given free rein to hector the accused and their witnesses are allowed to be openly hostile to them. And here no one stops Sandra when she answers a question only to go off on tangent filled monologues for minutes at a time. French trials seem to be able to change into free form routines.

I was fed revelations about Sandra and Samuel’s marriage in small bites almost throughout, which was addictive, and pushed me towards thinking she was guilty only to have the movie offer me something else to get me going in the other direction. 

The truth about everything here was elusive whether it be how Samuel died or how strong or weak his marriage to Sandra was. I found myself questioning everything. I loved how the movie, largely through Sandra’s lengthy discourses on the stand, talked about the intricate complexities of marriage as well as those of self-assessment. Samuel’s death gives Sandra cause to reassess her relationship to him as well to reflect on her own feelings, thought, and behaviors.

I adored Anatomy of a Fall. I loved the way it weaved an intense look at a failing marriage into a murder mystery that did its best not to give much in the way of definitive answers.

 

********

In preparation for Halloween, my Frau got her costume together. It was of the creepy dead girl in the Japanese horror movie Ring.

Speaking of Halloween, a friend sent me this photo which he swears was taken in Chicago.

********

Bonus photo. This is a statue of Dred and Harriet Scott that I saw on a visit to St. Louis several years back. Their bid for freedom began at the Old Courthouse there in 1846, though I suppose it was quite new back then.

The Corona Diaries Vol. 115 - Playlist: Dreamline

 

 

(Now proceed to entry #115.)

Babylon Berlin gets final season

Good news! Babylon Berlin is to get a fifth and final season.

It is to take place in 1933 which makes me wonder if the producers are going to skip over The Fatherland Files, which takes place in 1932, and go directly to The March Fallen. Maybe the show will use elements of both.

While I enjoyed the fourth season, I am ambivalent about the derivations from the source novel. It seems that they wanted to emphasize the rise of the Nazis whereas I recall that, in the novel, they were a growing cancer but a small tumor largely relegated to the background. Plus, I recall that Goldstein's identity and motivations remained obscured for much longer than the TV show.

Regardless, I am looking forward to see how the show ends and am hoping that Lunapark gets an English edition.

The Corona Diaries Vol. 114 - Postlude: The Shining (Prince's World)

(Read entry #114.)

Stick Men in Appleton

Last weekend I made a trek up north to Appleton to see Stick Men. Before the show I saw a couple guys setting up mics and a video camera and asked one of them what was to become of the recordings. The audio, at least, was going to go to Markus Reuter and, the gentleman informed me, if he doesn't post it, the recorder would put it in the Live Music Archive up at archive.org.

A couple clips from the show - presumably from the recorder I saw being set up - have surfaced on Youtube. Here's "Ringtone".

New Bob Dylan biopic

So someone decided to make a Bob Dylan biopic - A Complete Unknown.

The trailer looks pretty good. Apparently it chronicles Dylan's life from a teenaged aspiring folkie in the New York scene to going electric at Newport. I guess no brief sequence of his stay here in Madison.

So someone made Time Bandits into a series

Hmm...

I'll give it a shot. I wonder if Terry Gilliam was involved in any capacity.

But keep your paws off Brazil!

Now where is that review? (Introducing the Tomeka Reid Quartet)

A couple months ago I ran across a review of the Tomeka Reid Quartet's eponymous album at what I thought was a progressive rock review site I frequent but, having sought out the review, I find that it's nowhere to be seen there so I don't know where I found out about Tomeka Reid and her quartet. Nonetheless I am glad I did.

She is a jazz, a.k.a. - black classical music, cellist and composer out of Chicago. Since the review eludes me, I won't be able to say what caught my attention and compelled me to check out her music. I just recall there being a link to her Bandcamp page that I followed and found that I really enjoyed her 2015 album done with her quartet.

Since she is from Chicago, I thought there was a chance that she had played here in Madison at the Arts + Literature Laboratory which hosts jazz performances. Not only that, many of the shows there have been recorded by an anonymous taper and put into circulation. So I checked my stash and found that I indeed had a recording of the Tomeka Reid Quartet from the Arts + Literature Laboratory.

Jazz taxonomy is not my specialty so I am unsure into what subgenre she falls into. It's just jazz to me. But there is no brass. Instead guitar and Reid's cello do the melodic legwork.

Here's "Billy Bang’s Bounce" recorded here in Madison at the Arts + Literature Lab on Halloween night of 2019.

The Corona Diaries Vol. 114: Getting cozy

(Listen to the accompanying sound track.)

(early October 2023)

Always a glutton for punishment, I returned to the Chippewa Moraine State Recreation Area the day after my spooky encounters. This time I glued myself to the familiar trails I have always hiked and have never once shared with a homicidal, axe-wielding maniac. To my knowledge, anyway.

While it was yet another overcast morning, there was no rain. The Circle Trail was, as always, simply gorgeous.

I again pondered how to plan a trip up here when there is more fall color. Perhaps senescence is creeping up on me but I would have sworn the Travel Wisconsin website I had consulted before driving north said that we were near peak color.

Not even close to peak, as I see it, but there were some great seasonal hues nonetheless. Just look at these red oak leaves!

As I do every year, I slowly traversed the trail, stopping at my whim. It’s such a relaxing place. Work seems a million miles away and my mind, lulled into a sense of ease by the quiet and solitude, wanders freely. It is nature's Calgon.

 

 

The Circle Trail is a bit over 4 miles long and I once read a description of it in a Best Hikes of Wisconsin book or article that said it took about two hours to walk, on average. I remember thinking to myself that it takes me about twice as long to hike it. When it comes to human locomotion on foot, it's usually about getting from point A to point B in the shortest time. But, if you're out on a hike, it seems to me that the opposite is true. Whoever takes the longest is the winner.

What's the point of going out into the woods if your goal is just to get back to the trailhead as quickly as you can? Why not just remain there and declare yourself the victor? I like stopping often to watch the woodland creatures scurrying about, to listen to the eloquent, rhythmic trills of birds and ponder what they're saying; to smell the earthy aroma of the land and trees; to feel the various textures of bark as well as the smooth yet tacky mushrooms that dot the trees; and to take lots of photographs because it takes me several shots to get one that’s in focus.

In that book I read a couple years ago about the benefits of being out in nature, The Nature Fix, the author noted that it doesn't take very long for salutary effects to take hold. Just 15 minutes can produce a noticeable reduction in stress. The more, the better, I say.

 

On my hikes here, I especially enjoy standing on the shores of the smaller lakes like the one above. The entirety of the lake is in my view and I can see the ring of trees that encircle it. There's just something about this sight that gives me a sense of comfort. It has a coziness to it. Odds are there's a lengthy compound German word for this sensation but "cozy" and "comforting" are the best English words I can think of.

My first encounter with this feeling came as a young boy. The first floor of my childhood home in Chicago was about six feet from the ground. There was a deck at one of the corners in the back that straddled the property line and being about six feet up meant the space below it was rather large. A burgundy picket fence separated our lot from the next door neighbor's.

Underneath the deck, that fence ran until it was parallel to the corner of the house and a small section ran at a 90 degree angle from the main length to butt up against the house to form a corner. A 4x4 deck post was there but there was just enough space for me to squeeze in behind it, for a time.

That corner, that space where the two sections of fence met had a coziness to it for my younger self. And today as a middle aged man I still love those kinds of spaces.

They have to be enclosed, but not completely. That is, the outside world has to be visible or, at least, its presence discernible. I don't find these spaces claustrophobic, just snug, if that makes any sense.

Corners usually evoke these feelings, though by no means all corners, but there are other spaces that do so as well. The intersection of Clover Lane and Sargent Street in my neighborhood is one.

Clover ends at Sargent and the intersection has a lot of trees around it. So, in the summer, the canopies envelop the space giving it that cozy feel. I suppose that a couple terraces overflowing with flowers add to the effect.

Whatever this phenomenon is, I try to take comfort in it when I can.

When my walk was over, I bid farewell to the Chippewa Moraine State Recreation Area until next year and took a leisurely drive east to Cornell down country roads that had no shoulder to speak of. They're mostly tree-lined but there are occasional openings that reveal more gorgeous kettle lakes. My destination was Moonridge Brewing where I’d get a couple-two-tree glasses of muscle relaxant. If I can get a dose soon enough after a hike, I can usually stave off at least some aches and pains.

I rolled into town, which like last time, looked as if it was deserted like in a Twilight Zone episode. It was slightly eerie. At some point a car drove down the main drag to dispel the notion that Cornell had become the municipal version of the Mary Celeste but I saw no one on foot. Much to my disappointment, I discovered that the brewery was closed. Not permanently, just for the day. Oh well. Maybe they were short on help. As long as I was in Cornell, I thought I’d get some photos of the pulpwood stacker that I had neglected to get the last time I was in town.

The stacker, or what remains of it, anyway, is a giant steel structure that looks like an oil rig that leans at 45 degrees. The enormous arm of girders and cross beams looked to have weathered the decades well. Big concrete pillars anchored the leviathan.

As the name says, the Cornell Pulpwood Stacker stacked pulpwood. Here’s the historical marker.

You would have never caught me crawling up that thing to make repairs, I can tell you!

Today a figure appropriately carved from a log sits at the base to serve as a reminder of its former glory keep watch over the site.

By the time I had wandered around the stacker and taken my photographs, my muscles had begun to ache a bit. My hike had done its work. And so I hit the road once more and made my way to Bloomer where I’d be staying the night. My first stop was to be the local purveyor of muscle relaxant, Bloomer Brewery, which, I thought to myself, had better be open or there's going to be trouble.

Luckily they were receiving the thirsty and so I avoided having to cause a ruckus which would have probably seen the local constabulary throw me across the town line into a ditch. I began my treatment with, if I recall correctly, a lighter brew such as a golden ale or a cream ale but then for reasons I cannot explain, my typical desire for beer that tastes like beer deserted me and I got a s’mores porter or stout or whatever style it was. Such novelty beers are strictly verboten in my workaday life. I love the taste of grain and adore the flavors that are produced when they're cooked but, while on vacation, I occasionally throw caution to the wind.

The rim of the glass was lathered with marshmallow fluff that had a dusting of crushed graham cracker. I don’t know. Maybe I was still shaken by yesterday’s spooky walk and spectral encounter at Valkyrie and so my guard was down. Whatever the reason, this beer was a big mistake.

I think the beer itself was OK but I couldn’t really taste it after licking away some of that goop to get clear a spot that I could drink from. All that sweetness dulled my tongue to the (theoretically) succulent maltiness of the brew. I did not eat all of the marshmallow but the damage had been done by the little I did.

My next one was not the beer equivalent of a novelty ice cream treat but I could barely taste it. Heed this cautionary tale - avoid novelty beers!

Having eaten a moderately hearty lunch at the brewery, I needed to get out and about so I didn't descend into a post-prandial lethargy and decided to cruise around town to see what there was to be seen. One thing I saw was an ever rarer fallout shelter sign at the entrance to a church or a church school.

No doubt the older parishioners smile to themselves when the young folk look at it and ask just what the heck it is.

As I cruised down Main Street, I spied what appeared to be a Trachte shed off to the east. I turned down the next street and went in search of it. After a couple wrong turns, I finally found it in an industrial area that was bordered by train tracks.

I have no idea what it is/was used for but it was neat to see a little bit of Madison history up north.

When I went back to the hotel, I immediately showered and then sprawled out on the bed with the air conditioning turned up to high. With the sun beginning to set, it was time to bring out the book I was reading, The World of the Shining Prince: Court Life in Ancient Japan by Ivan Morris. It had been a long time coming.

I bought it back in circa 1999 in order to familiarize myself with the favorite era of Japanese history of the woman I was seeing at the time. She had been a Japanese language or Japanese literature or whatever other similar major the UW had on offer to aspiring nipponophiles. Her long hair and big eyes were captivating and her love of Japanese culture and history was quite alluring. It was impossible not to get taken in by the great enthusiasm and affection that emanated from her every word when she spoke about the early 11th century classic The Tale of Genji and its author Lady Murasaki. The Heian period, late 8th to late 12th century, was, as the kids say these days, her jam.

We dated very briefly and, although I had bought the book, I was unceremoniously dumped before I had dug in. With my main motivation of impressing a pretty lady now gone, I put reading the book onto the back burner as I pursued new frauleins. I never ran into another woman enamored of the Heian period and so the tome remained on my medieval history bookshelf collecting dust. One recent day as I was scanning my bookshelves looking for something to read, it occurred to me that I am getting to a point in my life where I really ought to start reading more books that I've meant to read over the years because, if I delay much longer, they'll go unread.

Published in 1964, The World of the Shining Prince is ostensibly for the layreader. But it has that academic sheen to it. I suppose this is still the time of The Great Books of the Western World where your average middle class Joe is presumed to be able to read Milton in its original early 17th century English and endowed with the ability to comprehend it without any helpful annotations.

Despite a fairly staid writing style, the book was quite interesting. The 2 centuries previous to the Heian period saw Japan appropriating any and everything it could from China much the way they pillage American culture today and come away with a profound love of baseball and Elvis. But as the 8th century became the 9th, the Japanese became more insular and began to generate their culture themselves rather than borrowing it from across the East China Sea.

As the title indicates, we’re talking about court life here, not the lives of the rural peasants. Chinese was still the language of choice in administrative, religious, and academic matters (like Latin was in the West during the Middle Ages) but Japanese became more common in literature during this time.

Buddhism came ashore and mixed with the native Shinto religion while the various superstitions that reigned such as directional taboos and a panoply of demons and ghouls were likely derived from older Japanese folklore.

At court, gentlemen were expected to be aesthetes of the highest order with a great sensitivity to beauty in art such as painting as well as more utilitarian things like gold inlaid boxes that held scrolls. Good calligraphy and the ability to compose verse was important for both men and women while courting. I cannot recall all of the details but the man would write a 31 syllable poem to the woman he was looking to get it on with. She’d reply and courtiers would fall over themselves to inspect her calligraphy to make sure it was up to snuff and everything was done in strict order. Quite a bit different and much more eloquent than a meager swipe to the right on a smartphone.

A very interesting book made all the more so by the fact that I knew precious little about the Japan of any time period going into it.

I woke up the next morning to find it rather muggy out and that the smoke from those Canadian wildfires had settled in overnight giving the town a hazy golden glow.

I got fuel – both coffee and gasoline – and cruised around town a bit more as I had a little time to kill for I had an appointment in Eau Claire at noon o’clock and the trip wouldn’t take me very long.

My youngest stepson had been shacking up with his girlfriend there until recently when she unceremoniously dumped him and kicked him out. He was now living with us in Madison and I had volunteered to stop by the apartment to fill my car up with as much stuff of his as it could fit.

I decided to wander the streets of Bloomer once more to see if I had missed anything yesterday and ran across a couple more items of interest. First was a restored ghost sign for the Hotel Anderson on Main Street.

 

There's a coffee shop on the ground floor and it looked like the upper storeys were now apartments. Perhaps tourists from Illinois stayed there while on vacation back in the 20th century.
 

I also found that the sign for the old telephone company was still around. The building was now home to an internet service service provider, I believe.

Instead of taking Highway 53 all the way, I exited it before Eau Claire and took some backroads. I ended up at this intersection where county highway workers no doubt had a good laugh over a couple cigarettes and coffee when putting up the signs.

In Eau Claire, I stopped at a coffeehouse for more go juice and then at a dentist's office where some statuary had caught my eye back in August but a chance to take photographs eluded me.

Noon rolled around and I zipped over to the apartment. The kid’s ex-girlfriend was very kind and helpful. Much to my delight, I found that she had packed up his stuff and done so without seeming to have intentionally destroyed anything. She even helped haul some of the boxes to my car.

As I cruised down the road headed for home I was sad that my vacation was over. My hikes were simply wonderful and I enjoyed investigating Bloomer. But it was back to the workaday world and to being a stepdad to a very lost young man. I had to lend the kid support and try to convince him to rub some dirt on that wound and get back on that horse.

He is 24 and it’s all too easy for me to look back when I was at his age and sigh “Kids these days” in an exasperated tone. I was on the rebound too at that time of my life but I was gainfully employed and self-sufficient. Still, I have a lot of sympathy for him. He is welcome to stay with us. It’s fun to have him around. The kid has a long way to go and I’ll be there to help him. As they say, every journey begins with a single step and I am focused on getting him to take it.

********

Bonus photo. This time we have statuary from Mankato, Minnesota.

 

 

(Check out the postlude.)

The Corona Diaries Vol. 114 - Playlist: Corners

 

 

(Now get cozy.)

The Corona Diaries Vol. 113 - Postlude: POW's

(Read entry #113 - if you dare!)

The Corona Diaries Vol. 113: The straightforward pathway is lost

(Watch the prelude.) 

(late September 2023)

Although I had great fun in the Eau Claire area, it was time to venture north for a hike around my beloved Chippewa Moraine State Recreation Area. I just can’t get enough of that place.

There were a couple cars in the lot when I pulled in but that was all. No school bus, unlike some previous stops there. It was a fairly warm out but overcast with a decent chance of rain so I had my new raincoat with me and an umbrella in my backpack that rested comfortably next to enough Deet for an army.

The trailhead always reminds me of the opening lines of Dante's Inferno:

Midway upon the journey of our life
I found myself within a forest dark,
For the straightforward pathway had been lost.

The area around the interpretive center is open and there's the parking lot so setting out on the trail means moving from an open, brightly lit area into the forest where the tree canopies do a very good job of blocking out the light. Those trees are all competing for sunlight so they gather all they can leaving the floor in shadow.

One of these years I am going to time my trek up here so that the trees are at peak colors. Climate change is messing with the forests. While there certainly were some lovely colors to be had, there was still much green.

About a mile and a half in I came across a sign saying that there was logging in progress. If I recall correctly, it gave a generic caution about being cognizant of your surroundings and to get the attention of the loggers so that they can help you pass safely instead of felling a tree on your head.

Before long I was at the logging area.

At points the trail was still visible while at other spots there was some guesswork involved. Despite having been here several times, I am still far from knowing it like the back of my hand. And, it being a weekend, there were no loggers around to give directions. When I came to a point where the trail was not visible, I consulted the map from the interpretive center and then peered up at the sky to see where the brightest spot in the clouds was and then back at the map once again.

I tried to recall about how far back the last trail marker was to get an inkling of an idea where I was but failed. As a last resort, I opened the map app on my phone feeling that I was cheating by using GPS but getting lost in the woods was not my idea of fun this day. But even this was in vain as I had no signal.

And so I went forward in what I thought was an easterly direction and found the trail once again. I’m not sure if it was luck or skillful wayfinding but the straightforward pathway hadn't been lost after all.

Or so I thought.

This trail didn’t look at all familiar and became especially foreign when it widened into what I presumed was an old logging road that was paved with leaves. The maples here had been shedding - damned climate change.

It was pretty, don’t get me wrong, but I had a nagging feeling that something was wrong. This road didn't appear on the map but I consoled myself by thinking it likely that it was simply disused and not marked. But, while there are multiple trails here, I saw no markers. Still, I pressed on.

About half a mile or so down the trail, I came to a building. There were missing windows and the grass around it was quite overgrown. I walked around it and saw that there were missing sections of the roof as well as large openings on the wall which were probably screened in at one time.

Creepy.

Very creepy.

Did I dare enter?

There was a lake not far from this ruined building and I walked to the shore to regain my wits and decide if I would go investigate the structure. The water was gorgeous.

I just adore these kettle lakes.

After taking a deep breath to steel myself, I wandered back to the building. Walking up to it I discovered a large open room and figured it must have been a recreation/meeting facility for a camp. At some point in the past, kids ate hamburgers, drank soda, and laughed as they ignored the lectures of the camp counselors.

It was positively eerie and a chill ran down my spine when I realized that the place reminded me of that abandoned military base in the movie Annihilation. Thankfully, I can’t imagine there’d be a pool somewhere near with all the wonderful lakes to swim in. Upon looking up, I briefly distracted myself by recalling the days when I built trusses at a lumberyard.

I’d cut the lumber using a gigantic radial arm saw that I nicknamed “The Widowmaker”, put the pieces of wood on rollers, and then laid down gang nails. Zip through the press and voila! A truss.

Thoughts about losing body parts to The Widowmaker were probably not the things to have in my mind at this point. What if a serial killer lived here, right?

Eventually I figured I’d done enough to frighten myself and got back on the trail. It wasn’t long before it led me up a small hill. When I got to the top, I could see cabins in the distance.

Oh boy. This was getting even creepier. In for a penny, in for a pound.

Continuing down the hill, I came upon several very rough and very abandoned cabins. Moss grew on most of the roofs which were also topped with leaves and branches.

They were little more than screened in frames. Very basic accommodations.

I became convinced that this used to be a Boy Scout camp.

Next to a cluster of these primitive cabins was one that looked much less primitive, perhaps a bit more luxurious as scout camps go, if you could call it that.

The doors on both sides were open and some of the deck boards by each doorway had been removed. Now, maybe this was where the serial killer lived.

I decided to forgo entering and encountering a madman or, at least, any wild animals that had made the place their home. Instead I hastily continued down the trail past more of those rough cabins.

Once I had gotten away from the spooky structures, I calmed down and was able to enjoy the scenery.

Coming down another small hill, I was startled by a gang of turkeys a little way ahead of me. More startled than I normally would have been, I can tell you. The feeling must have been mutual as the birds beat a hasty retreat into the woods.

It wasn’t even 2 minutes before another shiver shot down my spine as I heard movement off to my right. Something was fairly close and was coming towards me! Stopping, I stood there, rooted to the ground and, looking back, am unsure if I was prepared to fight a serial killer rushing towards me axe in hand or if I was just scared stiff and couldn’t move.

Suddenly about 20 feet ahead of me a deer bounded across the trail and disappeared into the woods on my left. Whew! I heard some more rustling of leaves and branches coming from the right but off in the distance. I turned just in time to see the white butt and tail of another bambi disappear into the thick treescape.

As I forged ahead, the sky turned a little greyer but at least the path became a little less sinister. No animals leapt out of the undergrowth and no more mysterious abandoned buildings emerged from the trees.

Well, until another one did, that is.

At one point, another path veered off to the right from the one I was walking. As I was contemplating whether to take it or not, I spied a building in the distance. I opted to investigate.

What appeared to be a shed stood on the shore of a lake that I didn’t know the name of. Bedecked with "No Trespassing" signs, I beat back thoughts that the madman had made this his charnel house with the obvious conclusion that this was where the scout troops or whoever it was that had used the camp had stored their boats or canoes.

Whatever lake this was, it was sure pretty with a shoreline dotted with red and gold.

And then I heard it.

CRASH!

All at once my admiration of the natural beauty of my surroundings was cast aside as that fight or flight feeling returned and my ears took in the troubling noise. What sounded like a metal canister hitting a concrete floor echoed from behind me.

Was it a critter such as a racoon nosing around where it shouldn’t be? Or was it that serial killer reaching for his axe and accidentally knocking aside something hideous like a bucket of severed fingers?

I didn’t stay to find out.

I walked very briskly around the shed and found another path leading into the shrubs and small trees which surrounded the building. My instinct told me that it looped around was that trail I saw at that spot just before I spied the doom-laden boathouse.

My instincts proved correct and I found myself back on the main path a fair distance away from the workshop of the madman. At this point it started to drizzle so I awkwardly took my rain jacket out of my backpack and I scrambled down the trail. It is not easy to put a coat on when you’re constantly turning around to make sure no one is following you.

Before long I was back at the camp and those ominous cabins. I zipped by them as quickly as I could. That leaf-covered road soon emerged and I was back at that spot where the logging was being done. Knowing only that I had to get put as much distance as I could from that camp, I zig-zagged around, leaping over branches and suddenly found myself on that trail I had walked so many times. I suspect that some kind of instinctual survival mechanism kicked in and I subconsciously intuited the path that would get me back to the trailhead.

After emerging from the dark forest, I went into the interpretive center hoping all the while that the DNR guy behind the counter did not have an axe in his back. He proved very much alive and flashed a welcoming smile and said "Good afternoon" as I made my way to the bathroom.

My bladder empty, I returned to my car – verifying that there was no one hiding in the back first – and got in. Locking my doors quickly, I immediately started the engine and it wasn’t long before I was again on that winding county road on the way back to Highway 53 where I could put distance between myself and that accursed camp at 70+ MPH.

I needed a tonic to calm my nerves and relax my muscles so it was off to Dallas for a stop at Valkyrie Brewing for some post-hike beer. But first I grabbed a bite to eat at the unfortunately named – given the circumstances – Jen’s Choppin’ Block.

I scarfed down my lunch as fleeing axe-wielding maniacs sure does give you an appetite. Afterwards, walking back to my car, I noticed this wonderful ghost sign across the street.

Odd that I’d never noticed it before. I put it down to being in self-preservation mode and my senses being extra keen, my powers of observation heightened.

The brewery’s taproom was inviting as always with its Nordic/Viking motif which I’ll take over the usual industrial chic any day.

As she had been the last 2 or 3 times I’d been there, Ann Lee, co-owner and label designer extraordinaire, was tending bar. I ordered my usual fall post-hike restorative: Whispering Embers, a smoked Oktoberfest.

Although I’d brought a book with me, I was just too distracted to concentrate on the text. I noticed one of Ann’s paintings that was on the label of their Rune Amok, an Engilsh-style Extra Special Bitter. What I take to be Lindisfarne is ablaze in the background as some Viking longships sail away to their next point of plunder.

As I grabbed my beer, Ann began to make her way from behind the bar and said she’d be back in a jiffy. She wandered into the back room while I ambled over to the other side of the taproom. That side is largely hidden out of sight from the bar area by a big support structure/part of a wall and I was keen on seeing any other paintings of hers that may have been over there. Turning the corner, I saw a couple pinball machines, the expected artwork, and an old duffer sitting alone at a table nursing a beer.

He wore a tan jacket and had a red and black plaid Kromer cap sitting on the table before him. The scene gave off some serious Ed Gein on a night on the town vibes. His face was weathered with deep wrinkles etched into it and covered in a couple days’ worth of stubble. It’s the type of face I saw countless times when I lived up north. No doubt this guy farmed for decades and the sun and wind have left their marks.

I was mildly startled when he looked up from his beer and at me. His pale grey eyes seemed at once gentle and piercing.

"Howdy," he said. "You’re not from ‘round here, are you?" he asked knowingly and with just the barest hint of menace. I felt oddly compelled to join him at his table.

"No," I replied as I took the seat across from him. "Just up here on vacation doing some hiking."

"Oh yeah? Whereabouts?" he inquired in a tone that seemed to betray that he already knew the answer.

I explained that I’d come up to hike the Chippewa Moraine State Recreation Area as I do every year and began to relate to him how I’d gotten off track.

"I lost the trail where they are logging and ended up at some old, abandoned camp."

The old man’s eyes widened a little and he proclaimed "So, you found the old Sybaquay Girl Scout Camp, did ya. Best not go back there again." He looked down at his beer, breaking eye contact.

It occurred to me at this point that he hadn’t actually drunk from his cup, he’d merely looked at it, wiping condensation from the glass occasionally. I’d never heard of this camp.

"Sybaquay Girl Scout Camp?"

Clouds must have moved in because the room suddenly darkened a bit. The light from the pinball machines cast shadows on his worn face that seemed to move as the bumpers and back board flashed excitedly. Slowly the old man lifted his head until his piercing grey eyes were looking into mine. It felt like he was peering into the depths of my soul.

"Yes, the Sybaquay Girl Scout Camp. Them girls died at the hands of the Chippewa Ripper!"

"The who?" I replied dumbfounded. While I hadn't exactly lived in the area back in the day, I had lived close enough to be sure I'd have heard tell of a killer making his way through a Girl Scout camp.

He spat out the name once again. "The Chippewa Ripper! Back in aught 2, there was a late season camp out there. They come up from Milwaukee. Just a handful of girls and a couple of counselors. One black night the Ripper, he sneaked into the camp and killed them all!

First he snuck into the main lodge and killed the counselors. He slit their throats real quiet. Then he snuck out to those screened-in cabins where the girls were sleeping. Those poor things. Like lambs to the slaughter." His voice trailed off with a bit of tenderness and my heart sank.

"He turned that camp into a slaughterhouse," he said with a more than a hint of anger. "Tore those counselors apart. The police found their limbs under the decks of the lodge."

That explained why those deck board were missing. I knew that there was something wrong with that place!

"Did they catch the Ripper?" I asked, shaking slightly.

He looked down and turned the beer glass around in his hand a couple times before regaining eye contact with me and replying, "No. They never did. Folks 'round here say it was the work of an evil spirit. The lost soul of a German soldier from Camp Barron who was killed trying to escape."

Just then my phone vibrated in a weird pattern. I looked down to retrieve it from my front pocket and found that it had strangely turned itself off. Cheap phone. Looking back up to ask the old man about Camp Barron I found that, mysteriously, he was gone. All that remained was his beer glass, now empty.

I quickly downed the rest of my Whispering Embers but I'd need a lot more to calm my nerves at this point. Making my way to the other side of the taproom I found Ann had returned and was there wiping the bar down.

"Did you see the old man in the tan coat go outside?"

She flashed a look of mild incomprehension. "No, no old man. We just opened a little while ago and you’re our first and only customer of the day."

********

I plan on ushering in the Halloween season by listening to the latest audio drama to enter my collection, The Black Stone, an adaption of the Robert E. Howard story of the same name by the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society.

It comes with a bundle of props including a half page of the Chicago Examiner.

Was there ever a real Chicago Examiner? I’ll have to look that up. Regardless, I am looking forward to some good scares.

********

Bonus photo! It’s an animal but not a cat. Here’s a cow in the middle of giving birth. She was at our favorite dairy farm, Sassy Cow. We hoped that the birth went well.

 

 

(Now watch the postlude.)