The Corona Diaries Vol. 93: Here's What You Need To Do If You Want a Cup of Hot Coffee Spilled On Your Genitals

(Check out the prelude.)

(mid-June 2023)

On a recent Saturday morning my Frau and I went down to the nationally renowned Dane County Farmers Market. If you look at the Farm Fresh Atlas of Southern Wisconsin, a handy repository of knowledge about farms, cheesemakers, and just the various people and groups that grow, make, and sell the fruit of the land in these parts, you'll see that there are 7 farmers markets in Madison with a couple of them having multiple times/locations. But it's the DCFM that rules the roost. It is the biggest and oldest, I believe. It's the one that ends up in all those space fillers that have titles like "Things To Do in Madison" and in those best-of listicles that feature our fair burg. 

For sheer middle-class spectacle, it's hard to beat. As creationists bleat on about Darwin, hordes of hybrid car owners stroll around the Square filling their cloth bags with delectables with younger folks pulling their kids along in whatever the equivalent of a Prius is when it comes to red wagons these days. Tory Miller, the James Beard Award winning chef, wanders amongst many who are no doubt his customers in search of the finest bounty of the county as a minion or two of his follow behind with their own red wagons.

It's hard not to get a Veblenian vibe here. The food at the market is more expensive yet it has plenty of takers willing to pay the price. But in 2019, over 10,000 students in Madison received free or reduced price lunches at our schools. And, from what I can tell, we're talking out of around 26,000 kids. That's a lot of struggling families for whom the prices at the DCFM are way out of reach.

I don't blame the farmers. They're locals, they're small outfits and don't have economies of scale, extensive automation, nor easily exploitable laborers. Growing fruit & vegetables, raising animals for milk or meat on a small scale, these are expensive propositions and the prices at the market reflect it.

And it's hard to fault the consumers. Well, most of them, anyway. Who doesn't like tasty food? And only the biggest libertarian capitalist asshole would be critical of a desire to support one's local farmers. But it's hard to escape a sense of conspicuous consumption going on all around me at the market. There just doesn't seem to be anything egalitarian to it. It's all rather banal, really. The sellers are making food, something everyone needs. And the buyers are just out procuring quality chow. There's no malicious intent involved.

It just throws into sharp relief - for me, anyway - the divide between the haves and have-nots here in Madison. With pandemic funding gone, more people are food insecure, a situation that only gets worse as housing costs soar here.

While I didn’t buy anything beyond a sorely needed cup of coffee, I was quite tempted as the food on display was just so inviting, in addition to being organic, pesticide-free, and whatnot. There are all these lovely colors and enticing scents and everything just looks so tasty - especially when you go on an empty stomach like I did.

Just look at these free-range shrooms!

There were also plenty of plants for sale. Here are some colorful cacti.

It is possible that even I can keep a succulent alive.

I think the Frau bought one of these bouquets.

I don’t recall what they were. Mini-pansies? That's what they look like, anyway.

A chili vendor had a helpful sign showing the levels of heat of the various peppers.

I very much enjoy the heat of a fine chili but had never heard of several of these. For instance, Chinese Lantern was new to me. Fatali? More like FATALi, I'd wager. Lemon Drop sounds interesting. I presume it has some citrus qualities, if the hop of the same name is anything to go by. One day I’ll investigate some of these exotic, new to me, chilies.

Jams!

I took this photo for a couple of reasons. First, it features carrot marmalade. The Frau hates orange marmalade. An easy way to irritate her and get a cup of hot coffee spilled onto your genitals "accidentally" is to go to breakfast and pass her one of those little single-serving marmalade containers. There have been a couple times that I didn’t think I’d leave a restaurant alive. She was, perhaps, just lethargic after having eaten.

So I thought I’d run the idea of a carrot version by her. She was having none of it but also refrained from physical violence. I guess she didn't want to hurt me in public in front of so many witnesses.

And then there’s the bumbleberry jam. I figured that it was one of those raspberry-like fruits that is rather uncommon like the thimbleberry.

I bought this jar the last time we were in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula which, I believe, is one of the few spots in the United States where it grows. I don't recall seeing thimbleberry jam anywhere else.

And so your bumbleberry jam has this aura of mystery about it.

“Look, Harold! It’s a jam made from an exotic berry!”

But, upon further review, I find that the bumbleberry is like the Loch Ness Monster, a thing of mere legend. There is no such fruit. It’s like the bigos or gumbo of the jam and jelly world. Just take whatever berries you have lying around, throw them together, and voila! - you’ve got bumbleberry. Sneaky.

********

With my Frau being plagued by a mysterious allergy-like illness, we sadly called off our late summer trip to London. And by London I really mean the United Kingdom because Manchester, Wales, and Edinburgh were all thrown in as desired destinations for our venture at some point in the planning process.

I recall that Manchester became highly desirable when she found out about Manchester Music Tours. She wants to wallow in nostalgia for her misspent teen years by treading the hallowed grounds where some of her favorite bands from the early ‘80’s such as The Smiths, Joy Division, and New Order lived, worked, and played. I assume you stand outside the apartments where the band members lived in communal bliss and check out the pubs where they played their earliest gigs.

Wales. I don’t remember what the big attraction of Wales is for her. Did she want to see Doctor Who shooting locations? It certainly looks to be an extremely pretty part of the UK. And I would have some of my friends turn green with envy if I had my photo taken in front of the Bron-Yr-Aur cottage – wherever that is in Wales – where Robert Plant and Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin fame holed themselves up to write songs in 1970. I’d be hailed as a hero.

I also don’t recall why the Frau wants to go to Edinburgh. Maybe she wants to see where the Inspector Rebus novels are set. I’d love go to there, the seat of the Scottish Enlightenment, and walk the same streets as David Hume, get drunk in a pub and blather on about Adam Smith’s Invisible Hand, or go to a poetry reading and have someone regale me with Robert Burns’ “To a Mouse” in the original Scottish with an impenetrable brogue.

Wee, sleekit, cowrin, tim'rous beastie,
O, what a pannic's in thy breastie!

And there are all those places to go that are mentioned in Fish lyrics like the Heart of Midlothian and Princes Street. We could take the Lothian Road!

While I continue to hope that my Frau’s health will turn around soon, I also knew that my vacation time wasn’t going to use itself so I went on a trip up north for some fresh air, hiking, and to visit my friend Jason.

It was a cloudy day when I left Madison. After driving for a few hours, I stepped out of my car and found myself at the Augusta Wildlife Area.

Being a wildlife area, there wasn’t much for hiking trails. Instead, it is mainly for hunting and bird watching. The site has a rather large pond fed by a creek the name of which I cannot recall.

Walking out as far as I dared without either hip waders or pants, I settled into a spot near the shore and just took in the scents and the sounds and the sights. It was simply great to not be at work or driving a car and to have a peaceful, non-manmade spot to relax in.

Where there’s water, there’s red-winged black birds.

They were everywhere and their chirrups came from all sides. It was a joy to watch as they flew from branch to cattail and back. Some of them chased each other over the wetland and I wondered if one was chasing another away from his territory or if they were just having fun.

As always when I stand in such spots long enough, one of red-winged black birds would menacingly fly over my head and then return to a perch. After a breather, he’d do the same thing, often coming down just a little bit closer to my head. This would go on for a few minutes. I have come to assume this is them in big creature/potential threat observation mode.

“Just keep your distance, there, human!”

Standing in such a spot long enough that day also meant ticks. I got two of them on my right leg within 10 minutes. I'd recently heard of some syndrome from tick bites that makes you allergic to meat so I was a bit paranoid at the prospect of never judging at the Wisconsin Association of Meat Processors convention again or enjoying the simple pleasure of an Italian beef. I had sprayed insect repellent on and so I was displeased doubly so. However, it contained only picaridin. I made a mental note to get something stronger before my next walk through the woods.

While the males loudly did their thing, a female relaxed on a lily pad.

I spied sandhill cranes in the distance and took some photos of a pair taking off. Unsurprisingly, I was unable to get an in-focus picture of them as they gracefully took to the air, steadily gained altitude, and began cruising over the trees. Instead, I got a fine photo of their bird butts as they turned away from me preparing to disappear into the distance.

Oh well.

In addition to all of the birds, there were wildflowers scattered everywhere and I had no idea what kinds I was looking at. But they were sure pretty.

Soon enough, it was time to head out. I was to meet my friend Jason in nearby Osseo and wanted to investigate another site before checking into my motel and freshening up.

While driving by a farm with horses, I saw one of them suddenly plop onto its side – just like our cat Piper does. No display of agility, no finesse. Just letting go and having gravity do its thing. I chuckled aloud to myself.

********

Bonus photo. It’s Grabby again. I took this one night after I had walked into the kitchen and found her scouring the counter for any remnants of our dinner. Despite being caught in flagrante delicto, she feigned innocence.

“Who, me?”

In fact, she was probably expecting me to give her more chow since she hadn't found any stray bits on the counter.

 

 

(Now listen to the postlude.)

Behold the Cat!

Here is the new feline matriarch of the house.

Piper seems to be doing OK. Oddly enough, she has stopped eating a couple varieties of treats. And, without Grabby leading the charge for chow, she doesn't show up at the food dish at the same time everyday.

Piper is very finicky and doesn't stray far from her normal diet. On the other hand, Grabby ate any cat food you put in front of her and most human foods too. I am going to miss buying her turkey or something with pumpkin cat food for Thanksgiving and a combo like wild boar and apple for Christmas dinner. Maybe our next cat will have as broad a palate.

In the meantime, I will take smaller cat food and cat litter bills. MadCat has lost a lot of business.

The Corona Diaries Vol. 93 - Prelude: A Cottage in Wales

"Making a Medieval Book"

This looks really neat - a video demonstrating the late medieval process of making a book.

Crav'n Carcinogens?!: Crav'n's Panoply of Salt & Vinegar chips

New salt & vinegar potato chips are ever fewer on the ground these days but I have a new brand to review: Crav'n.

I initially saw it on the shelves of my local supermarket last year but have been quite the procrastinator for some reason. The name sounded familiar to me and my first thought was that I had seen it previously at Target and wondered what that chain's house brand was doing at the supermarket. Perusing the shelf, I came across not only salt & vinegar chips, but also salt & vinegar kettle chips. I had hit the jackpot!

Crav'n or, more accurately, Crav'n Flavor (with "Flavor" written vertically and to be read bottom to top) is a brand owned by Topco Associates, LLC. Although based in suburban Chicago these days, the corporation started out as a cooperative called Food Cooperatives, Inc. in 1944. It was formed by a group of Wisconsin grocers as a means to deal with wartime shortages of dairy products and paper goods. Today the member-owners are from all around the country and the company's website has a map of where they are located/headquartered. A corporate entity from the Madison area is marked on the map but I cannot determine what it is. When I look up the companies in the list provided, I don't see anything headquartered in these parts. So it's a mystery.

These Crav'n chips are the first I've come across, to the best of my recollection, that have a food safety warning.

WARNING: Consuming this product can expose you to chemicals including acrylamide, which is known to the State of California to cause cancer and birth defects or other reproductive harm.

What is acrylamide and why had a I never seen a warning about it on potato chips bags before? Frito Lay sells chips in California so it wasn't simply buying a brand distributed there for the first time. Maybe bags of Lays salt & vinegar chips sold out in the Golden State have this warning on them but not the bags sold elsewhere. Perhaps the Crav'n folks just didn't want to be printing up bags bound for but a single state.

So what is this acrylamide stuff? The FDA defines it as "a substance that forms through a natural chemical reaction between sugars and asparagine, an amino acid, in plant-based foods – including potato and cereal-grain-based foods. Acrylamide forms during high-temperature cooking, such as frying..." The National Cancer Institute notes that the "major food sources of acrylamide are French fries and potato chips; crackers, bread, and cookies; breakfast cereals; canned black olives; prune juice; and coffee."

So Maillard reactions, which produce some of the tastiest foods ever devised by humanity - coffee, toast, German beer - also laces them with a carcinogen?!

As Palmer says in The Thing, you gotta be fuckin' kidding.

The NCI notes that tobacco smoke has much more acrylamide than food and that the carcinogenic properties of the compound were found in mice. Reading further it says, "However, a large number of epidemiologic studies in humans have found no consistent evidence that dietary acrylamide exposure is associated with the risk of any type of cancer".

Whew! Dodged a bullet there.

Let's start with the regular, non-kettle variety.

They looked to be just a hair thicker than your normal cut of potato chip. The surface of the chips was bubbly and had the occasional brown spot, but mainly they were of a light yellow color. Poking my nose in the bag and taking a whiff, I caught a big earthy potato aroma, a hearty dose of oil, and just a hint of vinegar.

Biting into one, I found it to be light and crispy before my tongue was assaulted by the acetic acid. These had a healthy vinegar tang to them which was addictive in the best way. After the chips had been chewed on, I tasted a good earthy and slightly sweet potato flavor. The oil flavor was mild and had a  nice clean oleaginous taste to it as if they had used fresh stuff.

Onto the kettle-cooked variety.

In addition to having "kettle cooked" in large, friendly letters on it, the bag had a darker color scheme and featured different decanter of vinegar than its regular cousin. That one had a cruet that I associate with, less upscale restaurants, shall we say. Not places that health inspectors should close, just not hoity toity joints. And that metal cap ensures that the vinegar comes out in short, controlled bursts. On the other hand, the kettle cooked bag has a slightly fancier decanter - more like a small jug with a handle. So you can just easily pour as much vinegar as you like.

These chips smelled almost exactly like their non-kettle cousins with an aroma that was equal parts potato and oil but very little vinegar. Unlike their more workaday cousins, a deeper yellow color was prevalent with some lovely golden brown spots, especially the edges. It was readily apparent that they were thicker than normal and they had rough/bubbly surfaces.

Instead of delicate crispiness, these kettle chips had a good, solid crunch to them. A nice oil taste accompanied a potato flavor that was sweeter than above. Despite the decanter that promised no limit to the vinegar it could pour, the tang here was middle of the road.

Both of these styles of chips were very good but I prefer the regular ones as they had more vinegar zing to them and a slightly more earthy potato flavor. Honestly, these were probably the closest to the Platonic ideal of a salt & vinegar chip (i.e. - Vintner's) that I've come. They were really great.

The Corona Diaries Vol. 92 - Postlude: Malick-Almendros

(Don't forget to read entry #92.)

You got coffee in my beer!: Cold Press Bohemian Dark by Lazy Monk Brewing

Beer and coffee go together just like rats and parchment, I always say. Or some such thing.

Ever since Dan Carey added some coffee to some stout (and drew the ire of the federal government) back in the mid-90s, brewers have been transmuting mundane beers into special elixirs by mixing the tasty flavors of roasted barley with the tasty roasted flavors of the coffee bean. Normally it is a stout or porter that gets the coffee treatment but occasionally someone gets the idea in their head to create the admixture with a dark lager instead of a black ale.

Beer and coffee can have complementary flavors just as can beer and bourbon. The key, it seems to me, lies in finding the right proportions. Alchemists knew that you didn't just dump a bunch of antimony into a big stash of bitumen and expect good results. They understood that there was virtue in restraint and in harmonizing things. American brewers, unsurprisingly and sadly, generally operate under a more Blakean principle: The road of excess leads to the palace of tasty.

Recall we had 100+ I.B.U. beers that exceeded the theoretical limit of the human tongue's ability to taste bitterness while today's IPAs concentrate fruit flavor more densely than a neutron star of Jolly Rancher flavoring essence. Along these same lines, brewers tend to make barrel aged beers that taste like the bourbon never got drained from the barrel and coffee beers that leave me questioning if there is, in fact, any beer in it because it tastes more like an Americano. Sour can be a nice taste in beer but the brew need not be so acidic as to be of Xenomorph blood strength. No doubt we'll have quad small beers and imperial N/As soon.

The result of all this is that I am weary of IPAs and beers with non-standard flavorings. All too often American brewers show about as much restraint as Donald Trump at McDonald's. But, like a fool, I buy some of them anyway, hoping that someone will also see the virtue of finding harmony amongst the various ingredients whether they're adding bourbon or fruit or hops or, in this case, coffee.

On a recent trip to Eau Claire to visit my stepson and his ladyfriend, I took them grocery shopping and couldn't resist a stroll through the beer department in search of local brews. I came away with some Cold Press Bohemian Dark by Lazy Monk Brewing. It is, I presume, their Bohemian Dark Lager with coffee added to it.

Lazy Monk brewmaster Leos Frank came up with a real beauty of a beer here, although that may not come across very well in that Dexter pint glass replete with blood splatters. It was a gorgeous ruby color topped by a big, tan head that had real staying power. It was clear and I was able to see some bubbles inside. The aroma was a nice mix of roasty grain and coffee with a gentle dose of sweetness.

On my first sips I found a fine, medium fizziness and a medium-light body. A bit of plum came first followed by roasted grain, bread, and coffee. It had a hint of sweetness and there was just a little milk chocolate in there as well. For the finish, the stone fruit and roasty flavors lingered a bit as some herbal-spicy hops slowly emerged to give a modicum of bitterness and dryness.

This is a very good beer. Let me get my gripe out of the way: I think it needed a touch more fizz. Depending on where it was on my tongue, it could take on a slightly syrupy quality that more fizz would have taken care of, methinks. Now, onto the good part. I like Lazy Monk's Bohemian Dark Lager and was quite happy to be able to taste it. The roasty/bready grain flavors were not totally obscured by all the furans and furanones courtesy of the coffee. Frank hit the sweet spot with his mad mixing skillz. The coffee and beer are in harmony here as I was able to taste each of them. They complement one another instead of one overpowering the other.

Junk food pairing: Pair your pour of Cold Press Bohemian Dark with a bag of All Dressed potato chips. Those Canucks are onto something there.

Labor Day 2023

Happy Labor Day! 

Here's a fine early Rush performance of their classic song "Working Man". It looks like they were still in high school!

Don't mess with my Ness(alla)

Another Madison brand. It's hard to believe that Nessalla has been around for something like 15 years, mainly because I thought they had gone out of business as I recall their fermentorium in the Garver Feed Mill closing during the pandemic.

Well, I have discovered that they filed for bankruptcy and found new owners. This explains the "Manufactured by Upside Func. Beverage Co." on the label. It seems that the Garver location has reopened and things are much like they were pre-pandemic. Can't keep a good kombucha maker down, I always say.

I was a bit ambivalent about buying this bottle. It wasn't the mix of black and green teas nor the organic raspberries. Hibiscus flowers? Yes, please. It was the "organic raspberry flavor". After my experience with that strawberry flavoring essence stuff, I was feeling a bit gun shy. It's organic so it fits in with their ad copy that says they use "only organic and fair trade ingredients". But that banner photo on their webpage shows fresh fruit and loose leaves - no gallon jugs of flavoring from the food chemist. Seems a bit misleading, if you ask me.

Just a peep of fizz upon opening. The liquid was a cloudy, dull gold. It smelled very nice with raspberry up front along with a sour smell like yogurt, and a hint of something floral. As expected, I couldn't taste much fizz. There was, however, a fair amount of sweetness that made it taste smooth. The raspberry was there but not very strong. I like the fruity tartness a lot.

A fruity sweetness lingered on the finish but I could actually taste tea! Weird. The kombuchas I'd sampled up to this point have done a fine job of making you forget you're drinking tea.

Except for some excess sweetness, I really like this brew. The fruit and flower weren't overwhelming and the tartness was great. Tasting tea was a new and exciting thing for me. And no Jolly Rancher flavor!

The Corona Diaries Vol. 92: Tintype the Light Fantastic

(early-June 2023)

(Watch the prelude.)

For her birthday, my Frau decided that she wanted to have our portrait, as well as a solo one where she is sporting her fancy new tiara, done on tintype. Tintype is a kind of photography where the emulsion is on a piece of iron. Since the only place in anything resembling close proximity to us that does tintype photos is the H.H. Bennett Studio, that meant we'd be taking a trip to the local tourist trap, Wisconsin Dells. I’d been there many times when I worked for the Wisconsin Historical Society and so I knew of this old-timey photography method but this would be my first time actually having my photo taken with it.

Bennett moved to Wisconsin as a teenager, specifically to Kilbourn City, which is now known as Wisconsin Dells. He took up photography in 1865 and ten years later opened his studio that is now a historic site and where the Frau and I had our tintypes taken. The Dells area became famous, in large part, because of his photographs with the most well-known being one of a boy jumping between 2 tall rock formations.

I just looked this up and discovered that the boy was Bennett’s son, Ashley. Today, Bennett would have been locked up for standing by with a camera while his son casually made leaps where one small mistake, one teensy slip of the foot, would have meant certain death for the boy.

Bennett’s shop is well-preserved and visitors can imagine early Chicago area tourists stopping in to see his work or perhaps for a portrait after seeing his photographs of the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893.

Folks such as the Frau and myself who want a tintype taken are corralled into Bennett’s studio with its windowed roof and paucity of artificial lighting.

The camera is very basic – it’s a wooden box mounted on a tripod with a primitive lens.

All focusing and shot composition was accomplished by moving the camera. Talk of such luxuries as digital zoom and auto-focus would have been sheer madness in Bennett’s day. The photographer threw a black cloth over the apparatus and slid a carefully prepared sheet of iron into a slot in the back.

The Frau chose our background, we sat, and were very still for about 15 seconds. We were told that it was fine to breathe normally but I held my breath anyway. Can't be too careful, right?

With the exposure done, the plate was removed and placed in a tray where it received a bath of some magical developer elixir. Before our very eyes, the image of Madison’s premier power couple faded into being.

********

Since my Frau developed her mystery allergies/illness, she’s been spending much more time at home. Not only has her condition prevented her from working, but her social life has been severely interrupted. It has made me very sad to witness her go from being a social butterfly to a recluse. Well, not as bad as someone like Paul of Thebes, but she just spends much too much time at home these days.

One thing she’s done to occupy herself is to litter our deck with plants. Look at this coleus! Or is that two colei?

And that exhausts my knowledge of flowers here. But there are more photos.

Forgot. She grew a chili plant too, there on the left.

My contribution was a single coleus which I potted and put in our carport to add some color.

********

Driving down County M south of Madison, one sees some pretty scenery tucked in the rolling hills. I discovered that there is a fairly new bike path in the area, the Oregon Rotary Trail, that has a trailhead just west of the town of Oregon, population ~ 12,000. The paved path winds its way through the gentle hills and the Swan Pond Waterfowl Production Area and ends on the northwest side of Oregon.

And so one morning I threw my bicycle into my car and headed southwest out into the countryside. The small parking lot had one car that presumably was owned by the laughing young couple on the trail walking towards me.

Off I went.

There are signs at the base of the hills that tell you exactly how steep they are and I discovered that anything over an 11 degree incline gets me worried about cardiac arrest as I pedal upwards and onwards.

It was a lovely day and the grassy field near the trailhead presented me with an opportunity to go all Terrence Malick/Emmanuel Lubezki/Néstor Almendros with my photography.

All that was missing was a lovely young woman to run her hands across the top of the grass.

I wasn't too far from Swan Pond. It is unclear to me what makes it a waterfowl production site. Is there a swan factory there? A duck forge? Maybe it is kept in a state that is optimal for waterfowl to engage in some, er, amorous congress, shall we say. Perhaps certain plants are the waterfowl equivalent of mood lighting and a mirror on the ceiling. However waterfowl are produced, I was near water and so there were plenty of red-winged black birds about.

 

 

Coming out of a wooded area, I spied a deer out in the distance.

 

It didn’t run away immediately but instead slowly, cautiously put some distance between us, looking back to make sure I wasn’t showing any hostile intentions.

I made it to Oregon ere long. Oddly enough, I hadn't seen much in the way of waterfowl on the trip there. The northwest side is a weird mix of conservation park and industrial buildings. There is scrub dotted with small ponds next to a concrete factory, for instance. I also discovered that Trachte had facilities down here. It was all newer stuff on their lot, though. None of their vintage steel buildings with the barreled roofs.

 

While I had been to Oregon previously, it was always a bee line to a friend’s house in a slightly newer part of town (1970s vs 2000s) and I’d never wandered its streets before or seen the downtown. I biked east a little ways and found myself amongst some stores and banks, but it wasn't the old part of town. So I returned to the area where the trail begins.

As I rode down one street, I saw a pair of sandhill cranes on a patch of grass in front of the concrete factory. After taking a couple photos, I continued on. I rode around the area and through a section of the conservation park and then returned to the spot where I had seen the cranes lazing about.

There I found that they had crossed the street and were on the sidewalk beyond which was just a field of grass and small trees.

 

 

Unsurprisingly, they wanted nothing to do with the human so they ambled down a short hill into the scrub. They slowly walked through the grass, making sure the apeman didn’t come too close and everything just seemed calm and idyllic.

And then I saw a savage example of nature being red in tooth and claw unfold before me as the gentle birds were mercilessly attacked!

 

The cranes must have wandered into someone’s territory because a pair of red-winged black birds started diving at the them in a ferocious Blitzkrieg just like the Luftwaffe! OK, well maybe not. But they did seem to annoy the cranes a lot.

I felt a bit badly as the cranes didn’t mean any harm; they simply wanted to get away from me and then they found themselves running, well, strolling, a gauntlet of angry black birds. Having been attacked by territorial red-winged black birds myself, I could, as Bill Clinton once said, feel their pain.

I like this photo because you can see the full wingspan of the attacking black bird and the crane has this “Oh brother. Not again.” look on its face. Plus, there’s what I think is a female red-winged black bird down at the bottom presumably gushing over her mate’s bravery and derring-do.

“Oh, Harold! You’re so rugged!”

The cranes eventually got tired of being accosted and left. With the action over, I continued on to the trail.

At the very start of it I noticed a killdeer just standing there looking around.

 

 

I got back to my car just as it began to get really hot. It had been a very nice ride and it was now time to go home and do chores.

 

********

Bonus photo. Here’s a fine photo of Grabby relaxing in the sun.

 

(Take me to the postlude.)

The Crimes of War

The first tale from Season 6b is a short story called "War Crimes" by Simon Bucher-Jones.

It's a bit of an odd one and begins with a memo written by the aliens responsible for the War Games. We learn that they had an interest in species other than humans. Next is a Time Lord memo indicating that the victims of all the aliens' machinations are to be sent back from whence they came.

The repatriation process went well, for the most part, but a creature named Ossu-male of the Aelcluk clan experienced some difficulties. His deprogramming didn't go quite as planned and he continues down the path set for him by the War Lord and his cronies. His species has a strange way of reproducing which involves the males sacrificing themselves in a poison sea so that the females can get on with the process of having babies without the fear of a male eating some of the young.

There's just enough of Ossu-male left in his brain and he does the right thing and throws himself into the sea.

Later his body washes up on a shore and the TARDIS lands there during the time when the Doctor is trying to evade the Time Lords after sending his SOS box. Ossu-male isn't quite dead and begins to come alive once more. The Doctor sees the pain in his eyes and hastily finds the creature's "off switch".

I guess I was expecting this story to focus on the Time Lords and our TARDIS crew trying to effect an escape but instead got a story about a strange creature and his species' odd mating practices. A neat postlude to The War Games.

Exeunt Second Doctor...For Now

And so the Troughton era comes to an end.

One of the bonus features on the DVD set notes that the original plan had been for it to close out with a 6-parter and a 4-parter but that pre-production issues meant that both had to be scrapped and Terrance Dicks was tasked with writing a mega 10-parter in record time.

The story begins on a jolly note with the TARDIS landing in a field of mud and Jamie eagerly stepping out only to find his fine boots sinking in the muck. Zoe and the Doctor both laugh at the Scotman's minor footwear tragedy. What a contrast to the ending 4+ hours later.

The field of mud is World War I's No Man's Land. But what seems like a typical tale of the TARDIS crew landing in a historical mess and having to find a way out becomes something more when we discover that General Smythe, leader of the English troops, is more than a mere martinet. He goes oddly missing from his office on occasion and greatly values his privacy as there is futuristic electronic equipment hidden behind a painting. And his trendy spectacles seem to be endowed with hypnotic powers that allow him to make an overly inquisitive aide forget the odd things he's seen that he shouldn't have.

That muddy field was, in reality, a simulacrum of No Man's Land. In fact, it's one of many war zones where recreations of various conflicts from humanity's past play out in bloody verisimilitude. In addition to Smythe, the German command post in the 1917 zone has its own commandant that is more than he seems, Von Weich. In addition to a fine Blofeld scar, which, when shown in close-up, is attached via a bit of fine mesh, he has a monocle that mesmerizes his Teutonic troops.

It turns out these two gentlemen are members of a race of aliens that are hosting the titular games. When needed, they can leave the war zones via a contraption that materializes and dematerializes and sounds just like a TARDIS! They end up at some futuristic HQ with a War Room and a big board.

But these folks are not running the show and report to a chap that calls himself the War Chief who sports a fine Fu Manchu mustache. He is of a different planet and is in league with those that host the games. The War Chief often finds himself at odds with the Security Chief who is a little weaselly guy with a shrill, annoying nasal voice. In one scene in which they bicker, the Security Chief casually mentions that the War Chief is a Time Lord which I think is the first ever mention in the show of the name of the Doctor's people.

Meanwhile, the Doctor, Jamie, and Zoe are piecing together exactly what's happening. The hosts are doing a lot of brainwashing on the belligerents to make sure that they don't know that they've been whisked away from their own time and place on Earth by the renegade Time Lord. The other one, the War Chief, I mean. Furthermore, our heroes discover these misty liminal areas which allow one to travel from one war zone to another.

The Doctor and Co. are becoming a pain and the man who controls the purse strings shows up - the War Lord. We learn what he and his minions are really up to: they are using the games as a way to let the cream rise to the top and assemble an army of only the best human fighters to conquer the galaxy. The War Chief, it turns out, is merely a hired gun lending his talents and TARDISes to the cause. But, of course, he has his own motivations and is plotting his own scheme.

While I was disappointed that Dicks and his co-writer, Malcolm Hulke, revealed the electronics in Smythe's office much too soon, they otherwise did a very nice job of slowly introducing us to the figures behind things. At first we think it's Smythe and Von Weich but then we get the War Chief. But this too is misdirection and we are introduced to the War Lord. They simply did a fine job of revealing a little at a time to keep us guessing as to what was going on instead of showing us the big picture early on. You hear a transport pod thing make a TARDIS sound and go, "Wait! I know that sound!" but are left to ponder how a TARDIS would have gotten there for a few episodes before the reveal.

The HQ of the aliens running the games is a rather neat bit of set design. There's an interrogation room that has a guillotine door, for instance. The door, the wall it's on, and the floor are painted with this weird psychedelic spiral. Not only does it look neat, but it is also quite appropriate as that is where people are subjected to a mind probe, essentially. It was reminiscent of The Prisoner. The room where the humans combatants are processed, i.e. - have their minds altered, has these open shelves - no backs - and looks like a trendy living room where some hip kids from 1967 might assemble after a shopping trip on Carnaby Street to unpack their goodies over a joint.

Of our heroes, Jamie and the Doctor acquit themselves well with plenty of derring-do on the Scotman's part and the usual routine of the Doctor being all crafty, in addition to slip ups like finding himself before a firing squad. Zoe doesn't do a whole heck of a lot, though. There are a couple instances of her using her brains for the cause but mainly she stands around looking on and gets carried along by events.

There's a fair amount of exterior scenes here that take place out in the zones and they were done well, including some really nice shots made with a short lens that added a sense of being there, of immediacy. Plus, there was a fair amount of camera movement in the scenes shot on a soundstage. Just really nice cinematography all around.

The ending is a major bit of Doctor Who lore. With the War Chief dead and the War Lord's hideous recruitment drive foiled, the Doctor finds himself responsible for getting all of the wayward humans back to Earth in their proper times and he just cannot do so on his own. So he calls in the Time Lords to mop up the mess. To do so, he sits on the floor, lays out a series of what at first appear to be cards but they magically assemble themselves into a small box. Inside the Doctor has somehow encoded a summary of events and a plea for the Time Lords to make things right. Kind of a square version of Voyager's Golden Record. Reluctantly, he dispatches the mundane looking beacon.

The Doctor knows that, after sending it, the Time Lords will know where he is and come looking for him. He desperately tries to put a lot of distance between him and his people but, despite his best efforts to send the TARDIS to some backwater where they will never find him, they do and we get what I expect is our first glimpse of Gallifrey, though it is never named, and the Doctor's people as they bring the ship back to the Doctor's home planet in a scene echoed 17 or so years later in The Trial of a Time Lord.

The War Lord is tried before a triumvirate of rather stoic Time Lords who seem to not want to move a whole lot and, after a brief attempt at escape, the arch villain and his remaining minions are wiped out of existence. Their bodies not only disappear into thin air, but they are purged from the time lines so that it is as if they never existed in the first place. Quite an exercise of power!

With the War Lord having paid for his crimes, it is now the Doctor's turn before the tribunal. He stands accused of violating the Time Lords' non-interference laws. Our hero pleads guilty and proudly proclaims in a rather rousing speech that, arguably, has set the tone for the character ever since, that he does what is right by helping those who need it, unlike the Time Lords who remain aloof from all of the wrongs in the universe, content to observe and allow evil to do its dastardly misdeeds. The Doctor is given access to a "thought channel" to allow him to give his defense by showing some of the villains that he's defeated in his life who appear on a big screen in back. It was a proto-Matrix that, again, brought The Trial of a Time Lord to mind. And, of course the Daleks are described as the most heinous evil doers he's faced.

In the end, the tribunal finds the Doctor guilty but sentences him to a much kinder punishment than that given the War Lord: exile on Earth with a non-functioning TARDIS and to have his appearance changed against his will. However, they at least give him a few new visages to choose from, if he were so inclined. This idea of choosing a new appearance will return when Romana regenerates in Destiny of the Daleks.

Our final glimpses of the Second Doctor are of him spinning in a black void and disappearing into the distance.

Since we never see the Doctor regenerate, fans came up with the Season 6b theory that there was time for further adventures between his sentence being handed down and him actually regenerating into Jon Pertwee. Perhaps he'd been exiled to Earth but the enforced change of appearance came later. And so there are some tales that seem to fit into this gap, including a TV story, The Two Doctors.

My Second Doctor marathon is not quite over.

Nothing gold can stay

The Prednisone injector lies unused on the shelf above the sink as I fill a glass with water.

There's a clean, empty dish at the feeding area.

And my beloved cat, Grabby, lies still, wrapped in a blanket waiting to undertake the final leg of her journey. Soon she shall be going home.

Grabby died yesterday. She'd been doing poorly for the previous couple days. She was beset by lethargy, a lack of appetite. While she ate a little bit on Thursday, her dish went unused on Friday. Her home was the bed in the spare room but occasionally she'd wander about and spend a little time on the couch, a few minutes on my lap.

One time, as I was sitting on the couch next to my other cat, Piper, Grabby wandered out and stood before us. Piper, while not hissing or growling, made a noise I'd never heard her make before, an expression of discomfort and, perhaps, of warning. Looking back, I think she sensed death on Grabby.

I took her to the vet on Saturday morning. As I lugged the carrier to the car, she yelped in displeasure. The vet office was busy and I sat for a couple hours in the waiting room with Grabby in the carrier next to me sleeping. She would stir occasionally and turn her head in the other direction but that was about it. An assistant said that there were 4 patients ahead of her so I left Grabby in her care while I went home for a little while. In my haste, I had forgotten my phone there and figured Grabby was just going to sleep anyway. I had a few chores remaining and I got those done before grabbing my phone and heading back to the vet.

********

I got Grabby in 2009. With an OK from the landlord and after seeing this photo and , it was love at first sight.

Grabby was a stray and no one was sure how old she was but the best estimate was about 2 years.

She quickly endeared herself to me and lodged herself into my heart. She adjusted to the new digs, finding places to relax and nap everywhere. Bags and boxes were favorites.

Although she came to me as Marilyn, she earned her nickname after I discovered that, when petted, she would often grab our hands with her front paws - and kick them with her back ones. One day she became Grabby and those hind legs were deemed pushers.

Her fur was the softest I'd ever petted on a cat. As she got older it got longer, including a lovely, regal ruff. That extra fur necessitated extra grooming.

A few years later, a second, Piper, came into my life. When the carrier with the 2 month-old kitten arrived, Grabby was quite curious. 

"Hey! What do you got in there?!"

Standoffish at first, Grabby's motherly instincts kicked in and she groomed Piper and the pair would cuddle together frequently whether it be on a chair out on the front porch or in the perennial favorite, the box.

Grabby loved to eat. I never understood how she remained so small, so thin considering that she would nearly eat me out of house and home nearly every meal. If I was preparing a human meal in the kitchen, she would beg even though she had just eaten a whole can of wet food. No unattended plate was safe from her ravenous appetite. One day I was making lasagna and had decided to make it simple and just buy a bag of pre-shredded mozzarella. I stepped away for just a minute and returned to find Grabby's head stuck in the cheese bag. A Wisconsin cat through and through.

When I'd go out of town, a friend would feed the cats and Grabby would always be in the window with a very surly look on her face when our friend approached the house, as if she'd hadn't eaten in days.

"You're 20 seconds late!"

A bit more than a couple years ago, Grabby was diagnosed with lymphoma in her gut. However, a daily regimen of Prednisone put the spring back in her step. She continued eating twice her weight in food every meal and remained a spry mouser.

But she was getting up in years. Bouts of diarrhea and vomiting would come and go and then come again, but more frequently. She slowly lost weight and became quite thin, probably gaunt, if it wasn't for all that fur. A couple weeks or so ago, her eye swelled shut and needed antibiotics to get right again.

********

I checked in at the vet upon my return and took my seat in the waiting room where I waited for a while before a vet assistant called me into an exam room and said the doctor would be with me shortly to discuss Grabby.

A minute or so later, the doctor came in holding a pink towel. "I have bad news," she said. "Marilyn passed away as I was beginning to examine her. She passed away quietly."

Tears came uncontrollably. I looked at her little face, eyes closed. Her mouth quivered and a little part of my brain yelled "She's still alive!" But those were just that some stray neurons not going quietly into that long winter's night.

I had her put into her carrier and solemnly drove home.

Piper must have sensed something was amiss as she fled upstairs and stayed there for a while rather than enjoying her favorite plush cat house.

When I woke up this morning and walked through the kitchen, Piper ran to the stairs that led up. She sat on one and looked at me and made a raspy, abbreviated call. I think she knows that her big sister is gone.

********

I take a little solace in that Grabby passed away quietly. We had a wee bit more than 2 years of her company, her antics, and her cuddles after that dreadful lymphoma diagnosis. I am grateful for that and consider ourselves quite lucky.

But, alas, nothing gold can stay.

Trachte building - The only Waunakee in the world

Trachte building - Sauk City

Jamie vs. the Surly Teenagers

I was taken by surprise when The Wheel of Ice came out in 2012. This was a Second Doctor book. Zoe and Jamie were at the Doctor’s side, not Amy and Rory. What madness was this?!

Were the Past Doctor Adventures being regenerated? Was this merely the first entry in a newly resurrected series? Well, we did get a Third Doctor adventure, Harvest of Time, the following year and a Fourth Doctor novel, The Drosten's Curse, a couple years later but that was that. OK, you can argue that Scratchman and Doctor Who and the Krikkitmen count but, really, the PDA’s were not fully revived. Maybe there was an abandoned plan to tie things in with the show's 50th anniversary, I don’t know. But we did get a handful of new adventures with classic Doctors.

I wasn’t sure where to put The Wheel of Ice in the Second Doctor chronology so I read it just before watching The War Games. The author, Stephen Baxter, was unfamiliar to me but he is a science fiction writer by trade.

The book begins by introducing us to Arkiv, a thing or a creature that ran into a bit of trouble when Home was destroyed and it, well, she became embedded in an icy moon. We’re then in comfortably familiar territory – the TARDIS console room, where the temperamental ship is preparing to land on a moon of Saturn to investigate a Relative Continuum Displacement Zone that it detected. However, the moon isn’t there and the TARDIS refuses to move lest it get caught up in the RCDP. Instead, it is being bombarded by chunks of ice, the stuff that Saturn’s rings are made of.

Luckily a teenaged girl, Phee Laws, is out cruising the rings on her scooter accompanied by her AI robot pal, MMAC. MMAC is able to throw the Doctor a cable which he wraps around the console and the ship is towed to safety. Phee boards the TARDIS during this procedure and it detects Pedleron particles about her which means it has traveled through time. Curiouser and curiouser.

Our heroes soon find themselves aboard the Mnemosyne Cincture, a.k.a. – The Wheel of Ice, a structure that encircles Mnemosyne, one of Saturn’s smaller moons. The Wheel is home to a mining operation that is digging the bernalium out of the satellite.

Phee’s mother, Jo, is the mayor of the Wheel, who is struggling to keep the operation going and her children, Phee, Sam, a few years older than her, and the two year-old Casey, safe and on the straight and narrow. Helping her is the chief medical officer, Sinbad Omar, top cop Marshal Sonia Paley, and Luis Reyes from the Planetary Ethics Commission who is there to make sure everyone behaves, well, ethically. Oh, and there is also Florian Hart, the corporate representative from the mining company, Bootstrap, Inc., that is funding this venture.

Our heroes come to the Wheel and find that things are going missing and the colony’s teens are being blamed. They’re grounded en masse but escape out to a moon along with Jamie who tags along to keep an eye on Phee and her pendant which the Doctor suspects being the source of the Pedleron particles. Tailing Phee means our loveable Scotsman gets to have a few different adventures outside of the Wheel zipping through the void of space and on the surface of a moon of Saturn. The kids call him “grandpa”, which he finds irritating. Nonetheless, Old Man Jamie saves the life of more than one of the teenagers.

On board the Wheel, the TARDIS crew swear they catch sight of a little blue man but their observation is rebuffed. Then a review of an act of sabotage reveals the corpse of a little blue humanoid. Something else is afoot.

Things point to the icy moon, Mnemosyne, and a certain something at its center…

This was a good story, though not great. MMAC having a Scottish accent was a fine move and when it poked a little fun at Jamie, it was funny. The Doctor does an autopsy on one of the blue thingies and finds that they’re basically automatons and not living creatures. They don’t talk, they lack much in the way of distinct features, yet they huddle together as if sharing body heat. Those things are rather creepy. The little blue things are supplanted by big blue warrior things that are rather menacing.

I also liked how the Wheel itself has that gritty Alien aesthetic instead of the 2001 aesthetic where everything is shiny and new. The Wheel is cobbled together from chunks of ice and parts of older ships and space stations with interstellar duct tape and high tensile twine. It demonstrates that a bunch of uncaring, miserly bastards run Bootstrap, Inc. and the image of a patchwork orbiter instead of one with clean lines and smooth angles is just a neat visual in your head.

One of the things I didn’t like about the story was how the Doctor would decide he needs to go to the moon for answers so he and a group go down. Something happens and everyone returns to the Wheel. But, not having gotten the answers he needs, he goes down again. Rinse and repeat. These trips are just overly repetitive. But the lunar excursions do provide some harrowing scenes of the away parties encountering the blue things. The shootouts are thrilling and well-written while the scenes where they sneak through a cluster of the blue things that are simply lying on the ground or hanging from a wall watching them are really harrowing.

And just as the Doctor gets stuck in his rut, so does Jamie. Surly, rebellious teens do X. Old Man Jamie saves the day. Then teens do stupid thing Y. Old Man Jamie again saves the day. These repetitive scenarios were fun in and of themselves but they piled up and made wish the Scot had more time to interact with Zoe and the Doctor.

Florian Hart ends up being a real two dimensional character. Just a corporate lackey that tows the company line until she can do so no more. While it’s not like Doctor Who isn’t full of these characters and Baxter can be said to simply be adhering to a convention, it was still disappointing. She goes from someone mindlessly promoting corporate interests to being almost psychotic as she commandeers some missile warheads and is prepared to satisfy her bloodlust and keep the mining going at any cost.

Baxter writes well and his prose reminded me of latter day Isaac Asimov. There was a modicum of scientific jargon as the physics of the Wheel gets explained and only a little more. The way the emotional lives of the characters is portrayed reminds me of those 80s and 90s Foundation novels. The emotions are explained and are comprehensible but I never felt them.

As for our heroes, Jamie is certainly a man of action here as he saves the day while ably, if not gracefully, flying a space scooter, multiple times. And his banter with MMAC was humorous. Zoe and the Doctor fare less well, though. It’s not that they were never portrayed this way on TV, it’s that those episodes are lesser ones. This is likely due, in part, anyway, to Jamie’s absence. Zoe and the Doctor just sort of get on with things with no playfulness and a lot of good banter goes missing.

I am still not sure where to place The Wheel of Ice in the Second Doctor’s chronology. There’s a reference to The Mind Robber yet Jamie tells Zoe something to the effect of, “You had better get used to this kind of stuff if you’re going to travel with us in the TARDIS,” which made me think it came earlier.

While I have my problems with this tale, The Wheel of Ice is still a fun read.

The Corona Diaries Vol. 92 - Prelude: H.H. Bennett

 

 

 (Read entry #92.)

A Jolly Kombucha

On a recent trek up north, I stopped in at a grocery store in Eau Claire and looked over the kombucha cooler. Would I find any elixir made by folks up north, perhaps featuring spruce tips or thimbleberries or oyster mushrooms or any fruits of the forest? Unfortunately, I was unable to find any made there in the Chippewa Valley but I did find some from the Tapuat Brewing Company in Sister Bay, Wisconsin. I had to look it up. Sister Bay is way out in Lake Michigan, near the tip of Green County.

When I opened this bottle up, I heard a mega rush of fizz. When I poured some in my glass, I got a big, lively head that acted like one from soda pop. I was able to smell the strawberry too as I guess those bubbles shook loose some of those esters and some furaneol and sent those aromatic molecules wafting through the air. Or something.

I looked at the label and saw that it contained CBD so I figured I'd be feeling alright after this tasting. Next I noticed "organic strawberry flavor extract" in the ingredient list. Uff da! I guess Amoretti has moved into the kombucha space. The label features the friendly face of what looks like a matryoshka doll that is surrounded by fruit, including strawberries. No vials or gallon jugs of flavor extract. Kind of a bait and switch, if you ask me.

My first sip was quite fizzy and it tasted like strawberry. I'd say it tasted about 75% like a Jolly Rancher with the rest of genuine fruit. There was a hint of something floral and a honeyed smoothness on the finish but I couldn't get strawberry Jolly Rancher out of my head.

The fizz made for a rather strong astringency but it still tasted rather sweet. This is what I suspect Jolly Rancher strawberry soda tastes like.