By the time the "More Cowbell" sketch aired on Saturday Night Live in April 2000, Blue Öyster Cult were long past their heyday. 1981's Fire of Unknown Origin marked their commercial peak and was a great album to boot. Line-up changes and a couple hit-or-miss albums followed. Imaginos, which was released in 1988, was intended to be a solo album from drummer Albert Bouchard but the record company balked at something that didn't involve the whole group. Some contributions from his fellow band members were slapped onto the recordings and we had a new BÖC album - in name, anyway.
Ten years later another less than stellar album was released, Heaven Forbid. With only 3 of the original members, the old magic was gone and most of the album seemed a pale imitation of the days when the band was at the height of its powers.
And then in 2001 Blue Öyster Cult loosed Curse of the Hidden Mirror. I recall its release and also ignoring it. Nineteen years later with Covid raging, I gave it a listen and discovered that the band had come up with a classic. It is full of wonderfully melodic hard rock that hearkens back to the glory days of Fire of Unknown Origin. The band are tight with Bobby Rondinelli's drumming propelling the songs ahead with muscular precision as Eric Bloom and Buck Dharma crank out catchy riffs.
I absolutely adore "The Old Gods Return" which Bloom and Buck Dharma co-wrote with sci-fi author John Shirley. It has a great, tense riff that perfectly evokes B-horror movie dramatics as Bloom screams that humanity is blessedly lost "forever and ever". The lyrics have a definite Lovecraftian bent that mention "a six eyed god whose wings beat/In a time so odd, so very odd".
This is classic Blue Öyster Cult that is as good as anything they did during their classic period.
A short while ago I heard that Alan White died. While primarily known for being the drummer in Yes, he also played with the Plastic Ono Band, Joe Cocker, George Harrison, et al. I last saw him perform back in the summer of 2014 when Yes played here in Madison.
When I started riding a bicycle again in 2020 after an absence of many years, I found that three songs wormed their way into my ears to become my bike riding songs. It's not that I pedaled down the streets and paths donning headphones, but rather these songs consistently popped into my head as I cruised around town and down country roads. I cannot recall in what order these songs assumed their places in the riding soundtrack but I am writing about this one because I've been listening to late period REM lately.
In addition to hopping on a two-wheeler again in 2020, I also did a podcast with a friend of mine that focused on music. For one show, we discussed REM's 1998 album Up. I lost track of the band after New Adventures in Hi-Fi from 1996 and thought it would be fun to pick up where I had left off. I discovered a great album that left me feeling stupid for not having paid attention to it when it was released.
It sounded different to their previous albums with lots of retro-sounding keyboards, drum machines, and no Bill Berry.
I really love "Walk Unafraid". It starts slow with fuzzy, sustained guitar notes underneath Michael Stipe's vocals. Then it picks up the pace with Peter Buck's guitar tone losing the fuzziness and sounding very Fripp-like. The bass begins rumbling a bit in the background before a drum machine starts up and skips along as the chorus begins. Stipe's voice alternates between defiance and vulnerability - "Walk unafraid/ I'll be clumsy instead". Synth finds its space in the soundscape and real drums enter the scene. I adore how each verse is filled out just a little more than the preceding one. And that chugging bass running headlong to those choruses that are at once uplifting and slightly melancholic is just great.
This is a truly beautiful song and there's something wonderful about cruising down the street on a sunny day with that bass line chugging along in my head as the wind blows across my face.
Thanksgiving
weekend is when the Frau and I make our annual pilgrimage to lovely Lombard,
Illinois where we spend the weekend indulging in nerdy goodness at Chicago TARDIS, an annual convention dedicated to the British TV show Doctor Who.
We've been attending since 2009, I think, although last year's edition went
virtual due to Covid and I passed on spending more of my life in front of my computer while wearing a headset.
Over the years we've developed and honed a Chicago TARDIS routine: we arrive at the hotel on Friday some time in
the late morning. After getting our badges and stylish lanyards, we each attend a panel or interview to get into the spirit of things and to see a coterie of fellow con goers that we run into every year. The actors playing the Doctor and companions come and go, new fans are made every day, empires crumble and fall, but that guy with the 4th Doctor scarf who golf claps at panels is at Chicago TARDIS every year and his presence offers a welcome sense of continuity and familiarity.
Having gotten into the swing of things, we head out
for lunch to the local Portillo's as we have been since we started attending
the convention. When we began going to the con, it was a Sisyphean task to be able to find a better than decent
Italian beef here in Madison. However, since 2019, Portillo's has opened two locations here so the
novelty is gone. I asked my Frau if she wanted to go somewhere else for lunch
(the other option I presented was probably Buona Beef, truth be known) but she didn't and so our tradition lives on.
I consider
it one of the crowning achievements in my relationship with my Frau to have helped her develop a taste for the delicacy that is the Italian beef. Despite not having lived in Chicago for some time, I have never been able to shake my cravings for the iconic Chicago sandwich (nor for the Chicago dog) just as ex-smokers never entirely lose that lust for nicotine. There are simply times when I need to have shaved beef that has been lovingly seasoned with basil, oregano, pepper, etc. and roasted just right.
Eating one of these luscious sandwiches, my au jus-stained arms flecked with basil and my mouth sporting a moderate burn from the generous hot giardiniera, always brings back happy memories of my brother who was your archetypal Italian beef aficionado. He maintained that Jay's Beef was the best in Chicago and I always looked forward to our trips out to the one at Montrose and Narragansett where large saucepans full of celery and chilies simmered in beef au jus in lieu of giardiniera.
The Italian beef is a gustatory pleasure everyone should have at least once in their life.
The con was fun. Many people were to be seen in costume. There are always
a lot of Fourth Doctors with 13' scarves such as this fellow.
When I am
not listening to actors regale us with tales of making Doctor Who and
from their careers more generally, I am usually found at a panel discussion.
Here's one I attended. Can you spot your humble narrator?
Topics range
from individual TV stories to books & audio dramas to LBGT representation (as with the discussion pictured above) in the series over the years and
all sort of other things. Some panel discussions aren't Doctor Who-related. They may be about Star Wars or the latest Marvel comic book movies, for example. Since I have seen only one of the newer Star Wars movies and would be overjoyed if all Marvel and DC comic book superhero media were ejected into the sun never to be heard from again, these panels largely hold no interest for me. But the occasional off-topic one piques my interest.
A highlight of every CT is Mysterious Theater 337 which is a take on Mystery Science Theater 3000 featuring a group of fans riffing on a particular episode of the show we all know and love.
This year Colin Baker, who played the sixth
incarnation of the Doctor, attended so there were lots of people dressed up in
his gaudy, multi-colored costume.
I watched Baker's stories back when I was c.13-15 years old so I have a real affection for his time on the show. His final series with Doctor Who was a season-spanning story arc called "The Trial of a Time Lord" and I have a particular fondness for it. If the internet is right, I first watched it in November 1987. At the time, I hadn't seen Doctor Who in a while and I had moved from Chicago to rural Wisconsin less than six months earlier. The move meant not only dislocation from friends and family, but also the end of my parents' marriage. As my brother prepared to move back to Chicago, I was amid alien corn - a lonely, struggling teenager.
I recall sitting before the television that November night as the new theme song played. This was followed by a model/special effects shot that looked quite expensive. Very odd for Doctor Who, notorious for its low budgets. The changes kept coming. Exterior shots were on videotape now instead of film and so the show had a uniform look. And the Doctor was much friendlier to Peri, his traveling companion, than he had been the previous season. I enjoyed the first part, "The Mysterious Planet", wondering if it was set on Earth and, if so, what had happened to our fair planet. "Mindwarp" followed and it starred Brian Blessed and Christopher Ryan (from The Young Ones), which was a treat. But was Peri really dead? I adored the Agatha Christie-laced "Terror of the Vervoids" as well as the concluding story, "The Ultimate Foe", with the Doctor's trippy venture into the Matrix and the vaguely Phildickian revelation of the identity of his foe, the Valeyard.
There are many fans for whom the Sixth Doctor and/or "The Trial of a Time Lord" are not their cup of tea. Fair enough. But, for me, this story was not only fun to watch, but a piece of home as well. Something familiar, something comforting to a boy whose life had been mercilessly uprooted. Watching "The Trial of a Time Lord" was an escape from the misery and the loneliess. It may not be the perfect Doctor Who story but it will always be special to this fan.
Also in attendance this year was Michael Jayston who played the aforementioned Valeyard in "The Trial of a Time Lord". There is always something weird for me about seeing the people whom I watched on TV as a kid in real life that I cannot get over. When Jayston was last at the convention four years ago, I had an extended conversation with him which meandered from his love for traditional English ales to his other acting roles, past, present, and future. He was extremely friendly and quite charming. I am still amazed that I had this wonderful, informal chat with the Valeyard! Such an encounter would have been unthinkable to 15 year-old me.
We have other convention-related traditions that all have to do with food. Every Saturday afternoon we meet my mother for lunch. And then Sunday mornings we get together with a friend and his wife for breakfast. Sadly, we missed them this year as my friend stayed up too late and left his phone downstairs where it ran out of battery. Oops. Next year!
We had fun, as always, and I am looking forward to returning again in 2022.
********
In my mind, the end of Chicago TARDIS signals the beginning of the Christmas season. Yeah, Yorktown Center, where the convention is held, is an enormous mall complex that is overrun by hordes of Black Friday shoppers jockeying for parking spots upon our arrival but my brain doesn't shift gears until we get home. One of the first things I did to celebrate the impending holiday was to buy Stollen.
Stollen is a German Christmas bread made with candied and/or rum-soaked dried fruits and covered in powdered sugar. I know of a couple bakeries here in Madison that make it, Batch Bakehouse and Clasen's, and I endeavor to try a sample from each every year. Both are excellent. My expert opinion is that the Stollen from Batch has the lighter texture of the two but Clasen's puts dollops of marzipan in their whereas Batch does not. And I just love marzipan.
You can't go wrong with either and it's best to eat both.
********
With the cold weather, my bike rides are
becoming few and far between so I am once again spending more time catching up
on movies. I recently watched The Phantom Carriage, a Swedish film from
1921.
I watched it under somewhat false pretenses as I was under the impression that it was a horror movie. But it turned out to be something far different.
At the beginning of the film, we meet Edit, a Salvation Army Sister who is on her deathbed. Her dying wish is to speak with a David Holm one last time. The movie is in no hurry to introduce us to Holm and, when we do, we discover that he's a drunken lout.Holm is in a graveyard drinking his sorrows away
with his friends. At one point a fight breaks out amongst the drunkards and he is knocked unconscious from a bottle to the head. Holm's spirit emerges from his body to meet the driver of the titular
carriage. We learn that the last person to die every year becomes the Reaper who drives the
carriage and harvests the souls the following year.
The Reaper takes Holm's soul on a trip back to when he wasn't the horrible person who coughs in people's faces despite having tuberculosis. Through flashbacks, we learn of what happened to poor George Helm. In one scene, his wife locks him in a closet or pantry and readies to leave with their children. This pantry just happened to have an axe in it so Holm takes it to the door.
I felt like I was watching The Shining
during this scene and someone out there has produced a visual aid to explain
why.
So, while it was more of a morality tale a la A Christmas Carol than supernatural horror story, I still thoroughly enjoyed it. The special effects were, well, effective, and I adored the tinting.
The final silent film on my to-watch list at the moment is the restored version of Metropolis.
Another movie I watched recently is Shadows
of Forgotten Ancestors, Ukrainian film from 1964.
It concerns a gentleman named Ivan who marries his childhood sweetheart, Marichka, despite the fact that their families are a-feudin' as Marichka's father killed Ivan's father. Marichka dies in a tragic accident and Ivan eventually gets married again to a woman named Palahna. Ivan isn't the most attentive husband and she strays into the arms of another man. Let's just say there's plenty of tragedy in this story.
There are some wonderfully colorful costumes here plus the cinematography is great with lots of camera movement and canted angles.
The characters are Hutsuls and the movie was filmed in the Subcarpathian Rus, a.k.a. – Subcarpathian Ruthenia. I think we're talking a land not too far from the one that a wing of my family hails from, though I'd have to ask a genealogically-inclined cousin for more info. From what I've read, it seems that most of the folk customs portrayed in the film are made up or exaggerated but it was shot on location and the Hutsuls did raise sheep as they do in the film. I think the town church is Greek Catholic and not Eastern Orthodox to which that side of my family belonged.
Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors was a lot of fun and I found it really neat to see the general area where some of my ancestors came from in a movie. There was also a kind of magical realism to the story as well which I liked a lot as it added a slightly odd folk tale feel to it.
********
Bonus photo! It's not easy working when you get back from lunch to find that there's a cat on your chair.
It wasn't long after the pandemic began and we went into lockdown that the buzz around Fiona Apple's fifth album, Fetch the Bolt Cutters, started. Well, it may be more correct to say that the buzz reached me at that time. The acclaim became ubiquitous in my music news world and I decided to check out the hype and make an attempt to get into Apple's music. The attempt was successful.
Fetch the Bolt Cutters revealed itself to be a fantastic album full of impassioned vocal performances and wonderful piano lines undergirded by catchy rhythms usually banged out by Apple and her musical conspirators using found objects. This build-a-rhythm-with-household-objects ethos coupled with Apple's dogs making the odd appearance in the background gives the album a raw, homespun feel.
When I said buying Fetch the Bolt Cutters was an attempt to get into her music, I didn't mean to imply that I was totally unfamiliar with her previous work. I had, in fact, listened to some of her back catalogue and discovered that she never really clicked with me. Except for one song.
"Hot Knife" appears on her fourth album, The Idler Wheel Is Wiser Than the Driver of the Screw and Whipping Cords Will Serve You More Than Ropes Will Ever Do, and is a stone cold classic.
Unlike the more ragged, D.I.Y. ethos that pervades most of the songs on Fetch the Bolt Cutters, "Hot Knife" feels moreassembled than simply captured by microphones that happened to be in the room. Musically, it's rather spare with a tympani rhythm punctuated by bursts of piano. Instead it's the singing that stand out here. With some help from her sister Maude Maggart's voice, Apple layers contrasting layers of vocal lines one atop the other until the listener is lost in the knotty tangles of desire.
If you go down to the Glendale neighborhood on Madison's southeast side and traipse down Tompkins Drive, you'll notice that the sidewalks have a series of quotations stamped into them with one appearing every block or so.
The folks at Ritz have gotten in on the salt & vinegar craze (ahem) with a salty, tangy version of their Crisp & Thins.
Just as Kölsch and Alt beers are ale-lager hybrids (to us Americans, anyway), Crisp & Thins are snack hybrids. Made with both wheat and potato flours, they're part cracker, part potato chip.
They are oddly shaped, as if some flour ball went through a machine press. True to their name, these chimeric chips are thin and crispy. Both the salt and vinegar tang were on the moderate side with the sweet grainy flavor found in Ritz crackers taking pride of place. They went well with hummus.
I've been listening to Kansas a lot lately, their best-known albums Leftoverture and Point of Know Return. I generally skip "Carry On Wayward Son" as it's one of those staples of classic rock radio that I've grown tired of yet I still listen to "Point of Know Return" and "Dust in the Wind". Go figure.
Kansas often get lumped in with contemporaries like Foreigner and Boston who filled arenas playing melodic hard rock that was a few more steps divorced from the rock's blues roots than their late-60s progenitors. But I think of them as being the American cousins of British symphonic progressive rock.
Last year former member Robby Steinhardt died and I wrote about how I view the band as the Aaron Copeland of progressive rock with their American take on a style of music invented by the British. I noted how their American sounds and lyrics about Native American peoples distinguish them from their peers on the other side of the Atlantic. But there are other lyrics that their proggy influences like Genesis, Yes, and ELP would never have committed to song, at least not until the 1970s were well in the rear view mirror. Take this lovely verse from "Opus Insert":
But there's too many empty lives my friend And we just can't let them waste away For this life is a precious thing my friend And we just can't wait another day
That would never have appeared on a 70s Genesis album and, although it's a sentiment that Jon Anderson would have shared, no Yes lyric would dare express a humanistic statement of empathy this directly.
One song I've really come to enjoy is "Closet Chronicles" from Point of Know Return. I am not sure what the lyrics are about. For me, they depict a Howard Hughes figure as if portrayed by Terry Gilliam. The subject is described as "the king" but he gazes down at the world from the 42nd floor. A captain of industry, perhaps? One day "he journeyed deep into his mind". When he wasn't pondering life's great mysteries, he dreamed.
Daydreams filled his nighttimes And night dreams filled his days Confusion and uncertainty A puzzled mind of haze
Whatever the song is about, the music is wonderful with plenty of twists and turns.
When I begin to see Orion in the November night sky, I begin to really feel that it is autumn. It marks the time to prepare for the onrush of winter by bringing snow shovels out from the shed and mentally shifting to a state of mind that can contend with less daylight, dead plants, and falling temperatures. This astronomical recognition began for me in 2003. I was single and unemployed that fall and did a lot of housesitting for a friend whose job was taking him out of town on a regular basis.
That autumn had a real cloud over it. It was the year that Johnny Cash and Warren Zevon died within less than a week of each other and their deaths seemed to emphasize my own personal struggles. Leaves began to turn and fall, the days grew cooler, and the world just seemed intent to cast a pall over my life. My friend's house was in rural Edgerton so I had a nice view of the skies.
I don't recall how it was that I began to take notice of Orion but I did. In his own way, he kept me company on many a long, lonely night. A familiar pattern in the sky that lent itself to contemplation. I'm thankful that over the years the sight of those stars has changed from a sullen occasion to a more joyful one. Seeing Orion in the November night sky brings back happy memories of my brother who studied to be an astronomer at one time and makes me look forward to the snow that will be falling soon enough.
On a Saturday afternoon last month, I made my initial visit to
Starkweather Brewing. It was about 12:15, methinks, so the place had only been
open for a quarter of an hour. Yet the bar area had zero empty seats while the other
part of the brewpub with the larger communal tables had a smattering of folks
enjoying a cold one, perhaps even carousing. Despite having changed owners and gotten a new name, the
tavern at 2439 Atwood Avenue seems to have retained its neighborhood vibe.
Last summer it was still home to Next Door Brewing but the
pandemic and a desire to spend more time with their families nudged the owners
into accepting an offer for the business. Peter Schroder, who used to brew at
One Barrel down the street, amongst other places, and his partners Tom McVary,
Michael Chronister, and Tom Gosse bought out Next Door and rechristened the joint
Starkweather Brewing Company.
Starkweather, named after the nearby creek, is my local brewpub
so I was excited to hear of its opening which was on 10 February, if memory
serves. The initial beer list was posted online and it was both impressive and
worrying simultaneously. Impressive in that there were 15-20 beers on it. Worrying
in that I could have been looking at a case of quantity over quality. I suppose Schroder
had time to blow waiting on walls to be painted and bureaucrats to approve licenses
so why not brew? Still, it came across as an attempt to dazzle with the sheer number of offerings.
Hell, maybe Schroder is a beer demigod
with 18/00 brewing skills and they were all top notch. But I'd feel more confident if there were 4 or 5 brews, a more reasonable number of styles for someone to master. Heck, maybe most folks are content to be dazzled by a lengthy beer list and brews that are simply good enough. But I'm not a brewpub
owner.
Despite some skepticism, I went to Starkweather excited to
try their rye brown ale because, well, rye is a very tasty grain and tasty
grains make for tasty beers. This would be the third or fourth rye beer I've had this year. A bumper crop! In addition, Starkweather is my local brewery. I want delicious rye beers to be available a healthy walk,
short bike ride, or shorter bus ride away.
The rye brown ale is called Musical Couches. For this brew, Starkweather collaborated with not only the former occupants of the brewhouse,
Next Door, but also Adventure Club Brewing Company up in Bayfield which I'd
never heard of until I read the beer's description.
This beer looked magnificent with a lovely clarity and a deep brownish red hue. My pour produced a small off-white patch of foam that was off in a hurry. I couldn't see any bubbles inside. It was sweetly scented with a berry-laced honey aroma being most prominent followed by a dash of caramel and a pinch of grassy hops.
A light body was accompanied by an equally delicate fizz. I tasted berry and a little roasty grain on my first couple sips. Subsequent quaffing revealed traces of milk chocolate and my precious earthy rye. That berry-like taste faded shortly after swallowing leaving behind a mild dose of herbal hops that provided a modicum of dryness. A vaguely minty taste settled on my tongue as well.
While Musical Couches looks great, I found that it tasted watery with too much of that berry flavor. Maybe it's me because it seems like I am tasting that flavor a lot lately. Is my palate to blame? Is there a certain malt variety that's readily available in these days of shortages that's going around? I love the hops here but this beer tasted like a mess to me otherwise.
It looks like there's been a little turnover on their beer menu so I hope to try another Starkweather flavor soon.
Junk food pairing: as I type, Starkweather's kitchen is not yet open so, if you're drinking a Musical Couches there, run down the street to the gas station and grab a bag of Turtle Flavored Chex Mix.
There's a documentary about Frank Lloyd Wright available for free online. For a local angle, it features Taliesin as well as the Johnson Wax building in Racine.
There were
signs of the impending holidays when I was up north. Trailers stacked with Christmas trees were making their way to retailers as festive lights, wreaths, and other seasonal decorations were being mounted on light poles, hung on storefronts, etc. And I saw more than one notice
such as this:
Lefse is a
Norwegian flat bread made from potatoes while Sandbakkles are Norwegian
(Swedish too?) almond butter cookies poplar at Christmas. I didn't look at the
grocery store in Chetek for lefse but there are 3 brands of it at the supermarket I shop at here in Madison that are available year-round.
The impending holidays
also mean that lutefisk starts appearing at the supermarket.
Lutefisk is
a Norwegian delicacy(?! - ed.) made from dried whitefish that is then pickled in lye. After a rehydrating soak, it is thoroughly rinsed and then gently heated and served drowning in butter, from my experience.
It's a Christmas "treat", if fish pickled in lye can be so described, and seems to be more popular with the older set. I am unsure if this is because people become more enamored of tradition as they grow older or that they lose their sense of taste as they age.
Lutheran churches and Sons of Norway lodges across Wisconsin have lutefisk
dinners come the holiday season. Well, they did before Covid struck.
Personally,
I am happy with a ham or turkey for Christmas dinner.
********
With my
vacation over, it was back to the proverbial salt mines. The air had turned decidedly chillier so I
started to bundle up a bit more for my treks to the bus stop. I don't mind the nip in the November air and
there were some very pretty sunrises to greet me as I stepped out the door for
my walk. Late autumn has a distinct smell to it. With the greenery gone and the humidity low, the air takes on a thin, almost minty scent as crisp breezes nibble at your cheeks. This is occasionally interrupted by the smell of a neighbor's fireplace or stove hard at work which makes me quite envious of people who can indulge their atavistic desires and safely watch flames from the comfort of their couch.
And
on those days when I worked from home, I got to see the dawn from my seat
upstairs. The window by my desk faces south and, with the sun rising in the southeast this time of
year, I was treated to some wonderful views at Prime when monks all around Madison were praying in an easterly direction.
********
You may
recall from an entry or 2 back that I bought a head of cabbage from a produce
stand up north. With the weather turning colder, my stomach desires heartier
fare. Isn't that the case for everyone? I suspect that the heavier foods of
winter are more about feeling full and thusly having a good excuse to lie on the
couch instead of going outside rather than actually being a bulwark against the
cold. Regardless, I decided to make Polish cabbage rolls - Gołąbki - with the
cabbage. If the Russian restaurants I've been to are any indication, then it would seem that all Slavic/Eastern European peoples stuff cabbage leaves in one fashion or another.
Shortly
after making my intentions known to my Frau, she texted me a recipe for Gołąbki
soup that promised all the flavor of Gołąbki with much less work. She continued
her internet searches and found one for her beloved instant pot. It turned out very
well. Very well, indeed.
Truth be
known, it was more of a stew than a soup but was very tasty regardless of your gastronomic taxonomy. And it really did taste like well-sauced
cabbage rolls.
********
One November weekend, my Frau, a friend of
hers, and I headed out to our favorite orchard, Lapacek's, which is 20ish miles
north of us in rural Poynette, for their holiday craft fair. Poynette is famous** for having originally been called Pauquette. Apparently someone had dreadful handwriting back in 1850 because an application for the Pauquette post office was misread as "Poynette" and the name stuck. Or rather, residents were stuck with the name.
We
first went to Lapacek's in 2007, if memory serves, when I heard tell of their Wolf River apples which were supposedly so large, that you needed only one of them per pie. This sounded like some kind of P.T. Barnum-esque chicanery so I simply had to investigate this extraordinary claim. Treks
out there became a yearly ritual for us. Sadly, they pulled up stakes and moved to a new spot
several years ago and I don't believe they have any Wolf River apple trees these days.
Still, come August and September, we always have a surfeit of apples in the kitchen and plenty of pomaceous goodness on our plates.
Well, the one apple per pie claim turned out to be true. (That's a Cortland on the left, I think.) These apples were genuinely huge. They originated in the late 19th century up in northern Wisconsin and were bred by someone who lived in the town of Wolf River.
The Frau and
her friend perused the crafts while I contemplated the
foodstuffs. Doughnuts are more my thing, you see, although there were some candles that
tempted me. At checkout, we said hi to Kim who is the leading craftsperson in
the Lapacek enterprise. We chatted with her that first year we visited the
orchard and I explained to her that we'd been lured by the promise of the Wolf River apples. Shortly after I blogged
about them, Kim found the post and made the connection. And so we've
been the Wolf River apple couple to her ever since.
I look forward to their apple cider doughnuts every autumn and they certainly didn't disappoint this time around.
That
evening we were invited out to a local brewery, Karben4, with some of the Frau's friends to hang out in one of their Covid protection dome thingies.
It's for those who don't want to risk going maskless in their taproom with the hoi
polloi. (Full disclosure: one of the Frau's friends won a 2-hour stint in the
dome.) At first, I had flashbacks to Bio-Dome and was unsure about this whole endeavor. But, with no Pauly Shore in sight, I soon came to believe that R. Buckminster Fuller would no doubt be proud to see folks hanging out
in geodesic domes drinking finely crafted beer.
There were 8
chairs, a space heater, a few small tables, and a ceiling light projector to
add some psychedelic mood lighting. I guess each dome has a theme and ours was
space. Thusly there were little astronaut figures hanging here and there from the lattice work.
While it was certainly a chilly night, we stayed
rather warm. I suppose the beer helped in that regard. My favorite was the
Oaktober Ale. It's a bit like an Oktoberfest lager - but an ale. And it's aged
on oak to boot. The woody flavor is subtle but extremely tasty.
Speaking
of beer, I have heard that a Chicago brewery, Hop Butcher, is making a special
holiday brew this year:
Yes, it's a
stout brewed with Frango Mint oil. This will no doubt bring back lots of
memories for many Chicagoans. Does Macy's sell Frango Mints or did the brand die
along with Marshall Fields? When I heard of it, I thought of eating
those mints and of all the good childhood memories of going downtown to look at the
window displays at Christmastime.
Well, enough
about food. I am making myself hungry and I have done more than eat and drink
lately.
********
Back in
college, I took a world literature course. One of the books we read was Matigari
by Kenyan author Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o. If I recall correctly, the story took place
in the immediate aftermath of the Mau Mau Uprising. I knew nothing about Kenyan
history then (and barely more now) but thoroughly enjoyed that book. I am not
sure what it was about it that attracted me so. It was an intriguing story of
revolution and how sometimes things don't go as planned. Change is complicated.
Plus I enjoyed Ngũgĩ's writing style. It had a directness to it that I liked. In addition, there was lots of singing.
Anyway, I
decided back then to read more by Ngũgĩ. Now, some 30 years later, I finally
did so. I recently completed hisdebut novel,Weep Not, Child.
It was
really good. This story takes place during the Mau Mau Uprising and deals with
colonialism. Not just the awfulness of the British lording over the Kenyans,
but also how that colonial mindset creeps into the minds of the oppressed.
Family and the importance of land are other themes here. I probably missed quite
a lot not knowing much about Kenya but Ngũgĩ's direct style lent the themes an
emotional starkness that was riveting. Highly recommended!
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Bonus photo!
We're back to Piper. I caught her on the guest bed recently enjoying the sun.
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