The Corona Diaries Vol. 97: Adventures With Plums

(mid-July 2023)

I returned home from vacation to find that my Frau had acquired even more flowers. A tight squeeze at points but the carport and deck looked colorful and lovely.

Not sure what this one is. A deadly Pitcher Plant?

The purple thingies in the hanging basket were coming along nicely.

It was nice to see her develop a nascent green thumb and to have fallen into a routine of watering the flowers every morning. I am more than a bit jealous as I cannot seem to keep a plant alive for very long.

********

I decided that I needed a break from my usual podcast routine and that I should find something new to listen to for a change of pace. After poking around my hard drive, I settled on the audio drama Bronzeville.

I had enjoyed the first season when it came out but had mysteriously never gotten around to putting the second into my earholes. There was no way the second season would make sense without listening to the first one again and so I set out to listen to both.

Although it concerns the titular Chicago neighborhood in the 1940s, it begins in Arkansas where a young black man, Jimmy Tillman, stabs a white man in self-defense and flees northward. He ends up in Chicago’s Bronzeville neighborhood and lands a job with the Copeland family who run the numbers game – an underground lottery - in Bronzeville. They inherited the game from Curtis "Eyeball" Randolph, voiced by the magnificent Laurence Fishburne, who has gone legit and become a banker.

The show dramatizes the problems that the Copelands run into and the attempts by the African-American denizens of the neighborhood to carve out their own space and live their best lives in the face of the racism of the time. The family not only has trouble with the city - da mayor, the cops - but also with other gangsters who are from St. Louis.

I was reminded of the connection between the 2 cities. From what I've read, it was quite a rivalry back in the second half of the 19th century. St. Louis was the Gateway to the West and was situated on the shores of the Mississippi River and Chicago was its regional competition. The short story is, if I recall correctly, that Chicago invested in rail and became the Big Cheese in the middle of the country leaving St. Louis in its dust. I've also read that monied interests out East were reluctant to invest in St. Louis because Missouri was a slave state while Illinois was not.

Today, the rivalry seems to exist mostly in baseball with the Cubs and Cardinals taking the parts formerly played by rail barons and steamship tycoons. Amtrak connects the cities with multiple trains a day and the route was recently given an upgrade to make it competitive with driving so the regional economic connection still remains, apparently.

Sadly, today St. Louis is in a bad state. While I enjoyed myself when I was there back in 2017, there were abandoned buildings aplenty as people continue to flee the city. In fact, its population is probably just barely above Madison's these days.

Now, not every Copeland is involved in the family business. Little sister Lisa is a newly-minted college grad and her older brothers do everything to keep her out of their shady dealings.

Lisa is voiced by the lovely Tika Sumpter who does a fantastic job.

Lisa goes from a young woman seeking her way in the world away from the dealings of her brothers to being absorbed into the family business where she kicks ass and takes names. Do not mess with Lisa Copeland!

I think I may have developed a crush on Ms. Sumpter…

********

For a couple weeks after my return, I sampled the goodies I had brought home and did some baking. For instance, here’s that loaf of einkorn bread I bought at the Dells Mill gift shop.

It had a crumbly texture, was tasty and was also indistinguishable from bread made with the hybridized wheat we are used to. Einkorn is truly an ancient grain. Thought to be the first wheat humanity ever cultivated, it dates back in our diets some 10,000 years. I have read that its gluten content is not well-suited for bread so I dunno how the Amish baked this loaf. Perhaps it was cut with bread flour. Or the crumbly texture is simply the result of being low on gluten.

The legend is that einkorn went out of fashion, with we Westerners, anyway, and basically disappeared from our culinary map. Then, in the 1970s, some proto-foodie discovered that it was still being used in eastern France by people who lived in a secluded valley and still clung to the old ways instead of wearing flares and big collars as they pulled bits of steak from a hibachi grill and dipped them into fondue pots. Einkorn hasn’t attained the foodie cred of, say, quinoa, but I did notice it at the store recently.

I also bought a loaf of cranberry wild rice bread up north. Very tasty stuff! I love the earthy taste of the wild rice and that hint of tartness from the fruit.

And while I am on the subject of bread, I’ll note that I baked a loaf of rye with some of those rolled rye berries that I had bought at the Dells Mill thrown in. It was that recipe I mentioned a few entries ago with cocoa powder and molasses. I am pleased to say that it turned out alright.

You can see the bits of rye on the crust. A hearty looking loaf, if I do say so myself.

While up in Spooner, I noticed a chocolate factory had opened called Mayana and so I bought a couple of their bars at the local supermarket.

These were very thick and smelled tasty. They certainly drew Grabby’s attention.

I liked the shortbread base, I loved the chocolate coating but that was just too much caramel for me.

Lastly, because I love my co-workers so much, I bought them a couple bags of poop-themed candy.

********

One day I was doing some internet searching for recipe ideas and hit on the idea of lemongrass chicken. A marinade was prepared and, the next day, the grill was fired up. I was fortunate to be able to serve a glass of lemongrass pilsner from 3 Sheeps Brewing up in Sheboygan with it to complete the theme.

I was quite pleased with how those chicken thighs turned out. The lemongrass added its floral lemony flavors while the grill added its charred, smoky goodness. The fresh jalapeno was icing on the cake. Oh, and that pilsner was mighty fine too. It was light and crisp with a nice, sprightly flavor that complemented the lemongrass from the chicken and the chilies as well.

For reasons I cannot recall, I recently decided that I wanted to cook with plums. It may have been a desire to tweak my German grilling marinade recipe and plums just sounded Central Europeany. So I took the usual mix of dark lager, grainy, brown mustard, and a proprietary herb & spice blend** and then added fresh plums. Pork chops soaked in this stuff overnight.

The results were mixed. That is, the chops tasted very good but the fruit was barely noticeable. And so on the following Saturday when I was grocery shopping, I bought a bottle of plum juice and more pork chops and tried again.

Better. Kind of.

The plum was much more evident and quite tasty. But the beer taste was subdued so I am in the process of tweaking beer-plum juice proportions to maximize the flavor of both.

I then decided to approach this plum predilection from another angle: prunes.

A co-worker of mine loves to smoke meat so I inveigled my way into a batch of smoked prunes. He’d never attempted to smoke fruit before so we were both in terra incognita. Hic sunt prunes!

At work one day I was presented with a small bag of prunes.

I took about half the batch, diced them up, and threw them into a bowl of stuffing which was promptly, um, stuffed into a pair of thick pork chops.

The chops then spent some quality time on the grill.

I felt they looked and smelled quite tasty and was eager to try one.

The verdict?

While extremely delicious, the prunes needed more smokiness. I think they had spent about 2 or 2.5 hours in the smoker and I believe doubling that would do the trick.

Practice makes perfect, right?

Lastly, on a food adjacent note, a friend and I took the ancient microwave that was mounted on our kitchen wall and sent it to appliance heaven. While not older than me, I did look up the serial number and found that it was like 40 years old or some such thing. Carter was still president when it rolled off the assembly line.

The city will dispose of unwanted microwaves but for a fee. I discovered that one can no longer go to a library, pay the $10 or $15 fee, and get the requisite sticker needed to properly dispose of these things. It must be done online. This harkens back to my commentary about the Art Institute going cashless in a previous entry. It seems ridiculous to me that a city government would require a credit card and an internet connection in order to dispose of garbage correctly, to keep stuff out of our landfill that doesn’t need to be there.

Rant over.

After dismounting the microwave, we were treated some vintage wallpaper. 

If you look at the lower right by the outlet cover, you can see some of the newer wallpaper peeking out.

Our house was built in 1950 so I would guess that this kind of stuff was de rigueur in the late ‘40s. In my mind’s eye, I can see the mom of the family surrounded by this wallpaper as she pulls TV dinners out of the oven for the kids as chipped beef simmers on the stovetop for her husband. And you know there was a Jello mold in the refrigerator for dessert.

********

Bonus photo. You might recall in an earlier entry that I went in search of and found a geodetic survey marker just south of Osseo when I was coming back to Madison from my vacation. Well, I looked on the USGS map and saw a smattering of them around Madison and discovered that one was quite close to a bus stop that I use.

**Probably just Penzy's Bavarian Seasoning.

The Corona Diaries Vol. 97 - Prelude: Talking about Bronzeville

(Now read entry #97.)

The Corona Diaries Vol. 96 - Postlude: "The Sheltering Sky"

(Don't forget to read entry #96.)

Back to Steel Monkey

As I noted a few days ago, I made a trek south to see Martin Barre perform last week. It was the first time I'd seen him play live since Jethro Tull stopped in Madison back in 2004. I met Martin and other Tull folk backstage before that show and he was all smiles and quite friendly. Ian Anderson's wife, Shona, came over and made a joke at my expense and the 3 of us had a good laugh.

Barre was fired, I guess you'd say, from Jethro Tull in 2011 or thereabouts, and he's been pursuing a solo career since. I'll admit to not following it closely, though I did review his Stage Left album back in c.2004 for Green Man Review.

Although I couldn't play a guitar if my life depended on it, I regard Martin Barre 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 a song like "Velvet Green". His playing on Crest of a Knave stands out and adds a steely edge to that album but drives Thick As a Brick more as a part of an instrumental ensemble in a way that keyboards and flute could never manage alone.

Plus, he adapts the sound of his guitar to suit the song. Just listen to the tones he uses on A Passion Play. And how did he get that sound on "Hunting Girl"?

He is currently on the "A Brief History of Tull" tour and I think Barre deserves to play Jethro Tull songs just as much as Ian Anderson. Barre seems extremely proud of his work in Tull and justifiably so. And as the Tull catalogue has been re-released in these fancy box sets, I really think that Barre (and other band members) has been denied due songwriting credits. Maybe I just don't understand the process of crediting composers. But when I was listening to the song "Calafel" from the The Broadsword and the Beast box set from this past summer, I heard some riffing that would be reused 6 or 7 years later in "Part of the Machine". So why wasn't Barre credited on that song?

The concert last week featured highlights from Tull's career spanning 1968-1987. The early, pre-Barre days of Tull were well-represented with the bluesy "Some Day the Sun Won't Shine for You" and the genuine blues of "Cat's Squirrel" which featured the most psychedelic squirrels you'll ever see on the video playing at the back of the stage. Barre took up the flute for Roland Kirk's "Serenade for a Cuckoo", though he remained on two legs throughout the performance.

"Sossity; You're a Woman" followed but the band backtracked and played some tunes from Stand Up. And then they did "Nothing to Say". I don't think this song was ever played live by Tull on the Benefit tour and briefly made an appearance in the setlist in 1995 for a few shows. Benefit has more or less always been represented live by "To Cry You a Song" and "With You There to Help Me" (with an odd performance of "Play in Time" or "Teacher"). I just simply adored "Nothing to Say" that night. A real highlight for me. It has great dynamics and has a slightly darker tone that most Tull songs. But that's Benefit for you.

Singer Dan Crisp also played electric guitar here as on other songs and this added heft to the sound whereas it would have had flute and piano in Tull's hands.

It seems that Crisp and bassist Alan Thomson (donning a fine tartan suit that night) have been with Barre for a while while drummer Terl Bryant is new. I think. Crisp soloed once or twice but his guitar was mainly filling out the band's sound. I was impressed by his singing as he mostly sang like Dan Crisp and threw in some Ian Anderson vocal flights without sounding like a parody or slavish imitation. He did his own thing while still making it sound familiar.

"Nothing to Say" was followed up by "My God" and, when those big slashing chords came in, they sent a chill up my spine. The flute solo was replaced by some of Palladio, a contemporary classical piece by composer Karl Jenkins. It fit perfectly. We got a snippet from Thick As a Brick and "Flight From Lucifer" from A Passion Play. What great songs! So much drama and heightened tension when performed live. A couple ditties from War Child were woven into "Black Satin Dancer" and the first set came to a close.

"Acres Wild" was an early highlight of the second set. It's catchy and fun and has a great folky bent to it that Bryant's drums really propelled. It gained power with only electric guitar for the melody. "Jack Frost and the Hooded Crow" was an unexpected treat and was followed by both versions of "Under Wraps". Perhaps because The Broadsword and the Beast box set came out this year, we got a trio of songs from that album. "Watching Me Watching You" stood out for me. Although there were lots of triggered sounds, including bursts of guitar, the drums were acoustic and Barre once again took up the flute. Not a super drastic rearrangement but it was fresh spin on the song.

"Steel Monkey" from 1987's Crest of a Knave closed out the history lesson and the show ended with an iconic duo from Aqualung: "Locomotive Breath" and "Hymn 43".

There were a couple times when I found myself missing a flute part or a dash of acoustic rhythm guitar but I suspect that these instances were due to the fact that I have been listening to the Tull versions of these song for decades and know them in their original forms inside and out. Barre and Co. rearranged the songs to be more electric guitar oriented and so had more muscular, slightly heavier personas than the originals.

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

There is now more video from the show on Youtube:

The Corona Diaries Vol. 96: She wore a kraanbere beret

(mid-June 2023)

(Watch the prelude.)

Leaving Trego after a couple hikes, I headed south to Spooner. I had been there many times but probably not since I was a boy in the early ‘80s. When my family owned an old resort a bit to the east, we’d visit Spooner on occasion. The women and kids did a spot of shopping and perused the library while the men, if I recall correctly, paid a visit to hardware store and/or lumberyard (and probably the tavern too) which was larger than the one found in Stone Lake, the town nearest our cabins.

Although my mother can rattle off various memories of Spooner, I drove in and found that nothing at all looked familiar, unlike Hayward. I suspect that, if Spooner had a candy shop with people making fudge in the front windows, I would have vivid memories of it.

Back in the day, it was quite the rail town with nearly 20 passenger trains stopping there plus many others carrying freight and logs aplenty. This was the pinery, after all. I suppose the mail came via the train back in the day as well. Sadly, the museum was not open when I was there so I had to make do with wandering around the grounds which included this out in front.

I presume that this behemoth cleared the tracks of snow, wayward cows, damsels in distress tied to the rails or just whatever happened to be on the tracks when it was cruising along.

My stomach growled so I went in search of lunch. On my way, I passed by this wonderful ghost sign.

Two different brands of beer and an "automatic laundry".

"Was that the phrase used before the word 'laundromat' was invented?" you ask?

Why yes, I did just consult my Compact OED on this matter. "Laundromat" was trademarked by Westinghouse as a name for a washing machine in 1943. Its first use as a word for a place with such washing machines for the public to go wash their clothes dates to 1951.

So, does "automatic laundry" = "laundromat"? Definitely maybe.

I ended up at a Mexican restaurant which was plenty fine and a nice change of pace from the more generic American/bar food I’d mostly eaten on the trip. It can get depressing looking for a meal in small town Wisconsin because it seems like 95% of the food on offer is either a pizza or a hamburger with much of the remaining 5% dedicated to Friday fish fries and deep fried cheese curds. And here I discount fast food. Nothing wrong with any of these foods, but they get old quickly. How about a venison chop or some kielbasa or Swedish/Norwegian meatballs or just about anything that isn't a pizza or hamburger?

For dessert I walked over to Big Dick’s Buckhorn Inn where I would have a refreshing glass of beer. Or two. It was, by this time, afternoon.

I walked in and found that it was a classic northern Wisconsin tavern and probably put some taxidermist’s kids through college as it was filled with mounted deer heads. It had a lovely pressed tin ceiling and a lot of wood making up in the interior. Unfortunately, the bright glow from a plethora of video poker machines cut through the rustic ambiance like a hot knife through butter.

Tucked away in a corner was a two-headed calf.

Whether this is some taxidermist’s joke or the real deal remains unknown to me. Like Mulder in The X-Files, I want to believe so I didn’t ask the bartender nor have I consulted the internet for an answer.

When the situation calls for a little lavatory one-upmanship, I can now brag that I have peed where John F. Kennedy peed.

In the late winter/early spring of 1960, JFK was campaigning in Wisconsin for the 1960 Democratic nomination for president against Hubert H. Humphrey. Their time spent shaking hands and kissing babies in the Badger State was captured in the landmark documentary, Primary. It’s been a while since I’ve seen it and I don’t recall a scene with JFK at Big Dick’s.

Primary is famous for being the start of direct cinema here in the United States. Direct cinema being that fly on the wall technique of the camera capturing events with no deep-voiced narrator to authoritatively tell us what’s going on nor any interviews with the subjects. The camera simply records what unfolds before it. Primary was made by a who’s who of American direct cinema: Robert Drew, Richard Leacock, D. A. Pennebaker, and Albert Maysles. These guys are giants of American documentary cinema, in general, really.

I recall a scene where Humphrey is standing out on a street in Tomah talking to passers-by and I do believe we see JFK speaking in Madison at the Stock Pavilion down on campus.

See! I have applied something I learned in college in real life.

I wandered Spooner a bit more and found that the old Masonic Lodge was now shops, including a nice little bookstore.

Surely there were Masons here during JFK’s visit and I don’t doubt they reported on his whereabouts to the Mafia/Castro/CIA or whoever it was that killed him. Ha!

As I was perusing the shelves in search of postcards, there was a knitting circle that had gathered in the back. I overheard some of their conversation which included one older woman talking about living in Costa Rica during her younger days, including the advantages and pitfalls of raising a family there. It was not the conservation I expected when I started eavesdropping.

I checked into my hotel, showered, and relaxed for a while. When I was younger, I felt that lounging around a hotel room was a waste of time. Why sit around when you're away from home when you can wander a foreign place and try to discover whatever it has to offer? I mean, Port and Kit Moresby didn't just sit around their hotel rooms, right? They cruised around Algeria where they met fellow tourists, engaged with, um, working girls, and fled from the local demimonde. (OK, it's been a while since I've read The Sheltering Sky.)

These days I am happy to spend a little time at a hotel to do some reading and/or writing and let my feet recuperate from hoofing it for several miles through the woods. Late evening rolled around and I went out for dinner to some diner that I had spied earlier. Like Chetek, I found no sign of a supper club in or near Spooner. Very weird. It feels like an unwritten law is being broken here or some Wisconsin taboo is being violated.

Although the waitresses at the restaurant were amongst the cutest so far on my trip, the food was the worst. My meatloaf was a Sysco special with gravy from a #10 can. The frozen vegetable medley had been sitting in a steam tray for hours and had taken on a dull, lifeless brown tint with every bite a mushy mess and all vitamins having been leached out. All those kernels of corn, carrots, and peas deserved a better fate.

I returned to the hotel after taking a post-prandial stroll disappointed with dinner but at least I had a full belly. Had the local brewpub, Round Man Brewing, been open, I'd have stopped in for a nightcap but, alas, it was not. A bit more reading and writing was accomplished.

The next morning I stopped at a nice coffee shop and walked around town a bit more. I wanted to find the library to see if it jogged my memory as my mother always mentions it when Spooner comes up in conversation.

It didn’t but I did get to see a neat metal sculpture out front.

Sadly, this was the final day of my vacation. But I vowed to take my time getting home and made a couple of stops to savor every moment of not being at work that I could.

A brief sojourn at a rest area revealed a genuine working pay phone there. It wasn't clear to me if calls to numbers other than 911 would go through.

I eschewed the interstate and continued on Highway 53 south of Eau Claire. Just south of Osseo I went hunting for a geodetic survey marker. These markers are used to designate some kind of survey information such as an exact distance above sea level or a precise measurement of distance from the equator down to the arc second or whatever it is that surveyors need to know.

I heard of these in a blog post by Ryan Urban, editor of the Barron News-Shield whom I was Twitter pals with and met in real life on my trip up north last year.

The site detailing locations of these markers didn’t lie. I pulled my car over by the road sign specified and walked into the grass where 3 posts stood. In the middle was the marker. It was easy to find and had only a few years of dead grass on it instead of decades worth of dirt like the one Ryan unearthed.

Next stop was Black River Falls.

The downtown wasn’t looking good. Lots of empty storefronts and not much in the way of foot traffic. But that is where the post office is and I was there to take a picture of its mural.

Seeking out WPA post office murals is another thing that I discovered via Ryan Urban who is in the process of photographing all of the ones in Wisconsin.

This one is called "Lumbering - Black River Mill" and was painted by Frank E. Buffmire in 1939. The internet has little to say about the man, at least from my meager searches.

A stop at the Black River Falls rest area proved interesting as I learned from a historical marker that Wisconsin is the only state in the nation that commercially produces sphagnum moss. It can hold 20 times its weight in water so it’s used in the shipment of plants and hydroponic gardening, amongst other uses.

When I drive to Indianapolis, I am used to seeing countless billboards on Illinois-Indiana highways for law firms promising the wealth of Croesus to accident victims. Well, on this trip I noticed the Wisconsin equivalent.

I don’t recall seeing these billboards last year. Are they really that new? Or is my memory faulty? And who is this bald and bearded neo-Gerry Spence?

My final stop before home was at the Wisconsin Cranberry Discovery Center & Cranberry Country Café in Warrens. I can’t say I’d ever been to Warrens but have seen the billboards out on the interstate advertising the town’s cranberry festival that is held annually on the last the last full weekend of September. Not only are we the nation’s leader in sphagnum moss production but cranberries as well.

Warrens proper is just east of the interstate. It’s a nice little drive into town whereupon you notice that there isn’t much to it. With a population of just around 350 people, you’ll miss it if you blink while driving through. There’s a gas station, a post office (with no WPA mural), and the Cranberry Discovery Center. That is basically it.

I ordered breakfast at the café. The 2 waitresses were young black women, a sight I certainly didn’t expect in small town Wisconsin. Warrens lies in Monroe County which is (or was, anyway) Trump territory but, despite all the hoopla about Trump voters being a bunch of racists, if anyone cared about the color of their skin, they weren't at the café. A couple old ladies chatted with them as old ladies like to do with young folk.

My breakfast included wild rice-cranberry toast which was quite tasty. Wild rice-cranberry bread is one of the quintessential foods of northern Wisconsin. Hell, the Upper Midwest, really. A rye version would be the bee's knees, if you ask me.

After chowing down, I went downstairs to the Discovery Center. I learned that Warrens was originally – quelle surprise! – a logging town and was named after George Warren. When the pinery was all cut down, agriculture and diary became big in the area and this included the harvesting of sphagnum moss. Apparently no one knows for sure when cranberries were first cultivated in Warrens for commercial production but they date back to the 1870s.

Displays explain how cranberries are grown and harvested. They don’t grow in water but are harvested in it. In the photo below, you can see those hollow spaces in the cross section of a cranberry. The air in those little cavities allows them to float. So cranberry bogs are flooded so that the berries can be picked more easily.

On display were examples of the harvesting tools such as these hand rakes.

I also learned that early German settlers called the fruit a “craneberry” (kraanbere) because the blossom looked like the head of a sandhill crane to them. It eventually became “cranberry”.

As with most foods, I have always thought that a cranberry is a cranberry is a cranberry. Not so. If the packaging at the store doesn't specify a variety of a fruit or vegetable, it just become this single, nebulous food in my mind. There are various strains of the cranberry and my alma mater, the UW-Madison, devised one called HyRed which became available in 2003 for commercial use. Apparently, it turns red earlier than other varieties and has more pigmentation making for a deeper red hue.

There were also various advertisements to be seen.

"Eatmor". Now that's some fine marketing acumen on display there.

On the way out of town, I pulled over to check out the cranberry vines growing in their bogs. Come the fall, they’ll be filled with water and harvesters will do their thing and my local grocery store will have fresh cranberries ready for Thanksgiving. Unless, I suppose, they end up at some Ocean Spray factory.

********

Bonus photo. I found this one online. It’s an invitation to celebrate the 21st birthday of Christopher Tolkien, the youngest son of J.R.R. Tolkien, the author of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings books.

When I first encountered it online, people were commenting on the bits at the bottom about ambulances at 2 a.m. and hearses at daybreak. While it's quite funny and belies the image of Tolkien as this serious academic who sat around all day making up the Elven language for his novels, I took notice of how the Tolkiens called their son’s 21st birthday his “coming of age”. We don’t talk like that much anymore. Catholics have confirmation and Jews have bar and bat mitzvahs but such things are generally a thing of the past for us here in the United States.

I attended the bat mitzvah of the daughter of one of the Frau’s friends and it was wonderful. Coming-of-age rituals have simply gone out of fashion, sadly. I read or heard someone discussing this recently and they made an interesting observation.

This person opined that most cultures hold that womanhood is attained when a girl starts menstruating. Boys, however, become men not via a biological process, but rather through a ritual of some kind. Maybe by going out hunting with the men of your tribe/village/family and killing your first beast. Or perhaps through some kind of hazing. The interviewee offered the example of some culture that I cannot recall where boys become men by being beaten for a time. Not within an inch of their life, mind you, but they have to endure a prescribed amount of pain in order to be considered a man.

Since I'm no sociologist nor cultural anthropologist, I can't vouch for the veracity of these comments but I nevertheless find them interesting.

Go see Anatomy of a Fall

I saw Anatomy of a Fall last week down in Chicagoland fearing it would not screen here in Madison. Thankfully, it is set to open later this week at the AMC.

The movie is excellent. Any locals reading this should go to Fitchburg and see it on the big screen. I loved how open ended it is as I walked out of the theater left to only speculate whether she did it or not as the movie doesn't tell us. Four days later I am still wondering what, if any, significance I should attach to the movie beginning and ended with scenes featuring the family dog, Snoop. I'm also pondering the use of shallow focus.

More later.

Meeting Martin Barre Once Again

I went to see Martin Barre last week down in Chicagoland. It was my first time seeing him perform since 2004, methinks, and my first solo show of his. He may be in his mid-70s, but he (and the rest of the band) rocked. Unfortunately, I've not found a recording of the show and only this snippet of "Serenade to a Cuckoo" from the concert is on Youtube. (He stood on 2 feet the whole song.)

"My God" is so powerful live - great stuff - and "Nothing to Say" was a real treat. I love me some Benefit.

Rhiannon Giddens channels Nina Simone on The Daily Show

Rhiannon Giddens was recently on The Daily Show and she performed "Another Wasted Life" from her new solo album, You're the One. The song is about Kalief Browder, who spent a few years in prison without ever having been given a trial and much of that was spent in solitary confinement. He would, sadly, kill himself in 2015.

As someone remarked to me, this is Giddens channeling Nina Simone. Powerful stuff here.

New Book on Midwestern Food

Take a trip back to 1982...

While I remember hearing about the Tylenol murders on the news as a kid, I couldn't recall any of the details. And so I found Painkiller: The Tylenol Murders, a new docuseries about the killing of 7 people in Chicagoland in 1982 by cyanide-tainted Tylenol, to be quite informative. It also provided a good laugh seeing those hairstyles and collars from the early 80s.

I felt that the penultimate episode (of 5) was overly tabloidy for my taste.

"Look how intrepid reporter Brad Edwards is!" 

"We found James Lewis!!"

Plus using drone shots for every establishing shot was just garish. Look at what our new toy can do! And they used the same shot of Lewis walking towards the camera over and over. I guess the editors felt, if you find a way to make him look menacing, mechanical killing machine, go with it. I prefer a little more variety.

Regardless, it was interesting to learn more about a bit of history from my childhood.

The Corona Diaries Vol. 96 - Prelude: Primary

 

 

(Continue to "She wore a kraanbere beret".)

The Corona Diaries Vol. 95 - Postlude: Flour

(It's not too late to read entry #95.)

A Taste of Autumn, 7 October

I had a nice dinner last night that included some spoils from my trek up north last month. I opened one of my favorite beers, Whispering Embers, from Valkyrie Brewing and set to work.

Whispering Embers is a smoked Oktoberfest and is just delicious. Full of smoky goodness and a firm, though not heavy, dose of malt. Truly autumn in a bottle.

I made a wild rice blend from Rice River Farms up in Spooner to go with some lemon butter chicken.

 The chicken was good but definitely needed more lemon.

Autumn 2023 - Trees

Behold the new meat department!

Woodman's East is in the process of remodeling and they recently unveiled their new meat department.

It's all spacious and bright now.

The Corona Diaries Vol. 95: Those Darn Republicans Even Have Their Own Street

(mid-June 2023)

(Watch the prelude.)

What I needed after a nice bit of hiking was a beer. And so I headed east to Cornell, the home of the MoonRidge Brewing Co. I could not recall ever having been to Cornell so I'd get a chance to check out a new place in addition to enjoying some muscle relaxant. Swinging into town, I noticed a rather large crane type thingy by the shore of the river. (Cornell lies on the Chippewa River.) On the way out of town I would stop and check out this rusting hulk.

 

There was a smattering of people there as I stepped inside. It looked very nice. I am used to craft brewery taprooms being industrial chic with exposed duct work and whatnot. Here at MoonRidge, however, an up north aesthetic prevailed with wood everywhere. Cozy and welcoming.

 

I cannot recall what I drank first – probably a golden ale or whatever the lightest beer they had on offer was. As a last drop of sweat fell from the tip of my nose, I took my first sip and I can tell you it tasted incredibly good.

 

 

The brewmaster is apparently quite fond of honey as there were 3 beers that had the sticky sweet stuff in them: a hefeweizen, a brown ale, and another one that might have been a Kölsch. I appreciate it when a brewer has their own niche that takes you off the beaten path instead of just dosing their brews with various combinations of hops that taste like tropical fruit as too many brewers do these days.

 

In addition to a young couple enjoying lunch, there was a local at the bar holding court. He was middle aged and wearing leather so I assumed that he rode a motorcycle. I chatted with him a bit and found that he was a funny guy. He talked about various and sundry things and would refer to nearby towns and events that transpired down on some local road or other. I told him at one point that I wasn’t from these parts and didn’t know where he was referring to. Obligingly, he explained where such-and-such town was or where the road in question was in relation to Cornell.

 

But, after continuing his tale for, oh, another 10 seconds, he resorted to his old ways, assuming I had any clue who Harriet from Holcombe was or that I knew anything about a particular farm out on County W.

 

Nothing like some local color.

After a couple brews, I was suitably refreshed and found that my muscles had stopped aching. I grabbed a six pack so I could sample more MoonRidge at home and headed out.

 

Cruising around Cornell a bit, I discovered some nice older buildings downtown but I didn't spy any ghost signs. It seemed a very average town - no statues carved out of trees by drunken lumberjacks nor any mutant beavers with two tails stuffed and mounted at a bar. But it does have Brunet Island State Park which lies on the north side of town so I headed over there for a post-beer hike.

I found that there was a .75 mile trail there which was just perfect.

The first stretch was paved but soon it became a dirt trail.

 

 

Very pretty. I’d like to explore the park and the adjoining Jean Brunet Woods State Natural Area someday.

Feeling good, I hopped in my car and headed out to Chetek with visions of a shower dancing in my head. As I turned onto a county road, I realized that I had completely forgotten to investigate that crane thingy. Oh well. Next time.

After a shower, I went out in search of a meal. I settled on a bar that had a large menu online. On my way there, I ran into a couple of interesting things.

First, there is an Indian Mound that has survived for hundreds of years and now sits precariously next to a gas station.

Too bad we’re in a drought because that grass doesn’t look so good. Still, it was nice to see that the lumber barons didn’t obliterate all signs of the natives that lived there.

The second thing of note was this street.

 

I don’t know who had to do what in order to get their street named “Darn Republican” but it is funny.

For reasons I don’t understand, Chetek has no supper clubs. How it ended up bereft of this Wisconsin staple is a mystery worthy of Agatha Christie herself. And so I went to a bar across the street from Lake Chetek. Throwing caution to the wind, I ordered a beer I had never heard of from Earth Rider Brewery up in Superior. It turned out to be one of those trendy IPAs with enough hops to fell a horse. Not my thing. But I drank it anyway and drowned out its hoppy excesses with some spicy Buffalo wings.

I spent the evening doing a little reading and writing.

 
The next morning I was up early and on the road headed for Trego, about 45 miles to the north. There I was to hike a couple trails that were each about 3 miles long, if I recall correctly. It was still fairly cool when I parked my car at the Trego Nature Trail where I would stroll through the woods and along the Namekagon River.

 
I canoed the Namekagon 25 or so years ago with a friend. While not exactly in the same league as Lewis & Clark, we did a 75-mile trip over 4 days and I fell in love with the river. For the most part, it was easy paddling. The water was very clear so you could see fish and turtles scatter beneath your paddle as the canoe cut the water. A deer looked down upon us from a short ridge a couple of times. Pure bucolic goodness.

I pulled out my deet and gave myself a bath in it. I was ready to go.

It was very beautiful despite the din of Highway 63 in the background which grew as the morning went on. Every time I stopped to take photographs, I was immediately beset by a large swarm of mosquitoes. Large enough to make an audible and very sinister hum. The threat of exsanguination was real, I tell you. Thankfully, my deet was up to the task and the shroud of blood-suckers stayed a half inch away from my precious skin. It was still eerie, though.

The trail began in the woods but the Namekagon slowly came into view.

And then there she was.

 

Just so pretty. At the far end of the trail the sound of the highway was extremely faint and was replaced by the sound of flowing water. Perfect.

After a few miles, the hike was over and I drove to the north side of town to my next destination which was the similarly named Trego Lake Trail. It would take me along a stretch of the Namekagon before coming to Trego Lake.

Although it too was gorgeous, the lake bore signs of human activity as it was dotted with docks and slips for boats. Still, another beautiful hike.

At one point, I turned the corner and saw a woodpecker not too far in the distance hanging on the side of the remains of a dead tree. It was very patient and allowed me to take several photographs before heading off into the woods. Of course, none of the pictures turned out to be in focus.

So it goes. 

I don’t think I’d ever been to Trego before this trip. Or, if I had, it had been decades and when I was very young. So I cruised around town. Trego is a tiny place – surely less than 1,000 people. It didn't seem to have a downtown but rather a smattering of businesses on frontage roads along the four lanes of Highway 53. However, I did find this really neat ghost sign for Occident Flour.

I find that Occident Flour is not a brand but rather an old timey name for what we now call all-purpose flour. I think the top of the sign was for somebody’s general store and that along the bottom it read “Costs More – Worth It”. 

While I found no downtown, I did run across an abandoned church smack dab in the middle of a neighborhood.

Some of the windows were broken and I was able to get a good look inside.

Somebody appears to be working on something in there.

After a couple minutes, a woman emerged from the house next door to politely tell me to leave their property.

Despite it being a sunny morning, there was just something creepy about that place…

********

Bonus photo! I saw this ad at the grocery store.

(Now watch the postlude.)

New Errol Morris Movie - The Pigeon Tunnel

It will be released on 20 October. Theatrical release seems to be limited although it will screen in Chicago.

Jazz Dink

As a follow-up to my follow-up, this is "Jazz Dink" by Tongue. They were active in Madison from c.1994-1999. Guitarist/singer Shad Williams and drummer Britt Dichraff are now in Moonboot.

This song appeared on a compilation album called Workman's Comp in 1995.

Texas Horse Crippler - Live!

For a follow-up to my post about the Madison band Moonboot, I dug out my recording of Texas Horse Crippler live on WORT. THC featured Shad Williams, now of Moonboot, along with Alex Fortney on bass who was in Tongue with Shad. I do not recall who the drummer was but I don't think it was Britt.

This session was recorded on 15 December 2000 in anticipation of them playing at O'Cayz Corral in a benefit show for WORT. O'Cayz would burn down a couple weeks or so after this performance.

Cordelia vs. The Ginger Thug

 

 

When I first heard that Andrew Cartmel was taking a detour from The Vinyl Detective series to bring us The Paperback Sleuth, I was ambivalent. I adore The Vinyl Detective and was sad to see him go on hiatus. (Maybe to never return. I dunno.) But there is a character in that series who collected paperbacks so I was confident we weren't going too far afield. Besides, we should embrace change, right?

My confidence was not misplaced because Death in Fine Condition and its bibliophilic heroine, Cordelia, are not far removed from my beloved Vinyl Detective. Indeed, her adventure takes place in the same fictional world as she is Stinky Stanmer's sister. The hero of the other series even gets name-checked, though not favorably, much to my surprise. I still chuckled, though.

Our heroine is a bit impecunious in addition to loving paperbacks. She is usually late on paying her rent but strangely timely when it comes to procuring marijuana. One day at her dealer's home, Cordelia notices a photo on the wall of a couple people posing next to a bookcase filled with what appears to be a complete set of Sleuth Hound paperbacks.

 

Cordelia turns out to be something of a rogue and a villain as she sets out to steal them after discovering that one of the people in the photo is her dealer's landlord. A little luck compensates for her lack of burglar skills and she ends up with an entire set. In fine condition.

 

Unbeknownst to Cordelia, the landlord and owner of these books, a red-headed fellow named Colin Cutterham, is the leader of a local organized crime troop. This not only makes her fearful for her life, but also serves as justification for her thievery. She discovers that Cutterham has procured a second set of Sleuth Hound paperbacks and Cordelia steals it too.

Cartmel builds up some nice Hitchcockian tension and puts Cordelia into no small bit of peril. Cutterham sends a heavy to her flat but she manages to take care of him with a fatal smack with her laptop. Luckily for her, her landlord, Edwin, happens to be this kinda sorta Dextery fellow. That is, he is a serial killer but he only dispatches evil people. This I did not expect. One skill that goes along with being a serial killer is the ability to dispose of bodies so that they cannot be found. Needless to say, this ability comes in handy for Cordelia.

 

Death in Fine Condition felt a lot like a Vinyl Detective novel. The heroine is someone who covets and is an expert in collecting a particular kind of cultural artifact. Cartmel's prose here is in his usual easy going style sprinkled with sarcasm and the occasional tangent into the mania of the collector.

Cordelia, however, is the opposite of The Vinyl Detective in many ways. She is lower class, does not drink good wine and, sadly, is not an ailurophile. She thieves and connives to get what she seeks whereas The Vinyl Detective generally stays within the bounds of the law. The Vinyl Detective is a gentleman, something of a neo-dandy, whereas Cordelia is rougher around the edges, more like someone who would appear on Studs Turkel's podcast, if he was still around.

There are a few scenes where Cordelia settles into a bath for a little bean flicking. Not only do they introduce a bit of prurience but they also illustrate why I found Death in Fine Condition to be good but not as much fun as a Vinyl Detective tale: Cordelia goes it alone.

The Vinyl Detective has Nevada, his girlfriend, as companion and interlocutor but Cordelia is single and we spend more time in her head than with her in conversation. For The Vinyl Detective, Cartmel took Dashiell Hammett's Continental Op and de-hard-boiled him and then threw him into Agatha Christie ensemble situations. Here, Cartmel throws just a touch of hard-boiled quality in but Cordelia is just not an interesting enough character for me to shoulder the plot alone.

 

It's not that I don't like her at all and she is certainly a very capable stoner, but there's just something missing, something to really endear her to me that just isn't here. I think that a big part of this is that, while The Vinyl Detective would have fun conversations with a cast of goofy people, Cordelia's chats are more serious. Or, if not serious, just more banal. And Cartmel overcompensates for this by making a fair amount of Cordelia's internal monologues overwrought with metaphor and clever allusions.

Despite all of this, Death in Fine Condition is a fun story. I did smile while reading it and found the thriller elements rather thrilling. Cordelia worked best when interacting with other characters so hopefully she gets a roommate, girlfriend, or just does more sleuthing with another person present.

Where Are They Now? Kay LeClaire edition

I began watching season 2 of Dark Winds recently. Based on novels by Tony Hillerman, the show features Navajo police officers led by Lt. Joe Leaphorn. As they solve crimes, we get to know the friends and families of the officers and the Najavo community in some part of Arizona that I cannot recall more generally. It's a fine show, although I would offer that this season isn't as good as the first in that the killer is identified early on so this season is more thriller than mystery.

But my crush on Jessica Matten continues unabated and I remain surprised that the show hasn't been canceled since it is based on novels by a white man and not a Native American.

Anyway, watching the new season brought to mind Kay LeClaire, a Madisonian who gained some well-deserved infamy earlier this year when she was exposed as a European-American and not the Native American that she was posing as. (Such people are called "pretendians".)

I wondered what happened to her since the racial revelation of late last year. My internet searches only return articles from this past January when the news reached Madison and people disassociated themselves from LeClaire. Hilariously, Tone Madison's editor couldn't find enough swords to fall on and sounded more blameworthy than LeClaire herself. It seems she just issued a statement, returned items she shouldn't have had, and then skulked off into anonymity.

It would be fascinating to have a chat with her.

Sites show that she got married a few years before this fiasco and, if she was still married when her cover was blown, what did her husband think? Not only was she going around claiming Native American ethnicity that she didn't have, but she was also altering her appearance. And I don't just mean donning Native American clothing; she was darkening her skin. Did her husband explicitly approve? Or did he give tacit assent by staying silent and just letting her get on with the deception? What about other family and friends? Did they know or look the other way?

Unsurprisingly, articles stick to the white woman pretending to be a Native American one. But what about the converse? LeClaire is apparently of German, Swedish, and French-Canadian stock. Does she actively dislike her ancestry? Or was it simply more fun and profitable to deny it? I tend to think that there's a line, even if not a thick one, between dallying with personae, on one hand, and self-loathing on the other.

While I am not privileged to LeClaire's thoughts, I do feel that her subterfuge was just as disparaging of European ethnicity as it was of elevating Native American.

Perhaps we will never know what went through her head. Or maybe she'll write a book in a couple years and have a Netflix series that's the equivalent of Fox Night at the Movies - Portrait of a Pretendian - made of it and laugh all the way to the bank.

In case of emergency, break for Angel of Death

It took me longer than usual to get my hands on a copy of Ben Aaronovitch's latest Rivers of London novel, Amongst Our Weapons, but, once I finally did, I was extremely glad.

As the tale opens, our hero, Peter Grant, is investigating the death of one David Moore who lies on the floor of a shop in the London Silver Vaults, a subterranean marketplace. Originally vaults for dealers in the precious metal to store their wares, it soon took the place of the above ground shops. Moore had come to one of the stalls seeking a ring engraved with strange symbols that his ex-wife had said she sold it at. But instead of the ring, Moore ended up with a hole where his heart should have been.

Ere long a second victim with a hole in his chest is discovered - Preston Carmichael. Carmichael had been in touch with Moore recently and soon a photo of the pair, along with several others, emerges. They were all members of a small coterie involved with a strange religious group at Manchester University in the 1990s who were given these strange silver rings and it seems they are being hunted down by a killer with wings and a halo and who wields a rather deadly spear.

Grant is on the case with his trainee Danni and they attempt to track down this avenging angel. Their investigation leads to a discovery involving the Spanish Inquisition. While they knew the Inquisition's weapons were fear, surprise, ruthless efficiency, and an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope, Grant and Co. did not expect them to have also used magic in their daily rounds of rooting out pretend Catholics on the Iberian Peninsula.

Amongst Our Weapons is the 9th novel in the Rivers of London series and it ranks amongst the best. Grant is no longer a novice under the tutelage of Nightingale and has his own neophyte to train. His lady, Beverly, a river goddess, is quite pregnant for most of the book and she gives birth to twins at the end. Not only does Grant become a father here, but he also gets some new job duties as his superior and mentor, Nightingale, announces his retirement.

Ooh! Almost forgot. Grant's former pal and co-trainee at The Folly, Leslie May, makes a return here. She turned to the dark side after being possessed by a real baddie and having her face disfigured. She's been a presence looming in the background, and occasionally in the foreground, for the entire series. Here she unwittingly sets events in motion and pops up a few times and ends up saving Grant's life. It was good to see her return and have a pivotal role but still retain a lot of mystery about her.

I really enjoyed Peter Grant here. He has matured but he's still a wiseacre. We get the expected doses of London history and a great murder mystery. Aaronovitch does it perfectly here as we don't really even have much of a clue about the nature of the killer until about two-thirds of the way through and it's not until even later that all is revealed about its identity. I much prefer the investigation into the mystery over simply running around London chasing an elusive but fully identified killer.

Aaronovitch let the mystery unfold at a measured pace that allowed for diversions from the police procedural into the history of London, The Folly itself, the Reconquista, et al. Beverly doesn't get many pages here but perhaps she'll become a working mom and have a more active role as in books past.

Amongst Our Weapons simply pushed all the right buttons for me.

A spooky hike

On a hike up north last month I stumbled upon a creepy abandoned camp which is, no doubt, home to a serial killer.

I personally like the moniker "The Chippewa Ripper".

 

 

He must have been out grocery shopping when I traipsed through the camp as I saw no one. Still, every acorn falling through leaves made me a little nervous.

Trachte shed, Bloomer, WI

I found a couple Trachte sheds up in Bloomer when I was up there last year. While I was there last month, I spied a third as I was driving down Main Street and looking around.

TIL - Moonboot!

Today I learned of the existence of Moonboot, a local Madison band. The members are Britt Dichraff, Jeff Kunkle, Jamie McCloskey, and Shad Williams. I vaguely knew Britt and Shad back in the 90s as they were friends with a friend/roommate of mine. If memory serves, Britt, Shad, and Jamie made up Mr. Shad's Creed in the early 90s.

Moonboot is Moog synthesizer led so it's a wholly different sound from Mr. Shad's Creed. I am used to seeing Shad with a guitar strapped on and not standing in front of a keyboard rack. Moonboot were featured recently on the local news.

 

 

After Jamie left Mr. Shad's Cred, Alex Fortney took over bass duties, and the band was christened Tongue. I found the Tongue demos I was given and, in the search, also stumbled on a Tar Babies show and a recording of Texas Horse Crippler live in the WORT studios. I think Shad formed Texas Horse Crippler after Tongue disbanded followed by Brickshithouse. I think. Regardless, I will have to post some tunes on Youtube.

Ghost sign, Dallas, WI

Seen in Dallas this past weekend.

Chicago TARDIS 2023 Panel Suggestion

I have submitted my (first?) suggestion for a panel at this year's Chicago TARDIS:

The Pit: Great or Just Not Bad?