Well, it’s been quite awhile since my last post. I could make all kinds of excuses for not keeping this up, but I’m not one for excuses. Except I’ve been really busy, and I’ve been working on editing and producing a blog for someone else, and I’ve had writers cramp and maybe I’ve been a little depressed and I’ve been working on my garden and, well you know, no excuses.
I’m not going to dwell on the past so I’m just going to touch on a few things that have been going on this summer and then move on. It’s not like nothing’s been happening, it’s been a great summer with a couple of trips to Chicago, one to Traverse City and another one planned for Labor Day.
I think I’ve mentioned that I’m working, with the help of the Quinn’s bf Dave and the neighbor boys, on a major garden expansion. I’ve added about 600 sq. ft. at the back of our yard. That’s 600 sq. ft. that I don’t have to mow.
Here’s a little gallery of some of the summers event.
It rained yesterday, so Rebecca and I decided to head to the local multiplex and see Robin Hood. It was a fine example of the swashbuckling kind, great battle scenes. I just finished reading Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett, which takes place in England about 75 years earlier, both i think did a good job of depicting the grittiness of Medieval life.
Some of you might notice that in the first scene when the boys raid the barn, Marion laments that they have no “seed corn.” Well, I was all over that, because I knew that there was no corn in Europe in 1199. what I didn’t know was “corn” in those days was a general term for any cereal crop, not just maize, which of course was a New World plant.
I don’t really consider myself a foodie. I love to cook and have a somewhat undeserved reputation as a good cook; I have so many friends that can cook circles around me. But consider my itinerary. First stop, Chicago, to visit my daughter who does graphic design work for Rick Bayless’s Fontera Foods, and is showing some foodie inclinations. Then up to Traverse City, Michigan to visit my clients, and dear friends, Barb Tholin and Charlie Wunsch who publish Edible Grande Traverse, a beautiful magazine about the local food scene and my new client and friend Dr. Mary Clifton,who is a guru of plant based nutrition and healthy eating habits. Then on the way home I stopped in East Lansing for Dinner with college pals and former roommates Jim and SB Anthony. SB (it’s Patricia, but I’ll always think of her as SB, her college nickname) is one of those who can cook circles around me. So I was anticipating some mighty fine eats.
My first culinary experience was great road food, enjoyed on the fly, a bag of cheetos and a coke. Sorry Mary. OK so I wasn’t off to a great start. I do love cheetos though. One of my goals for the trip was to cut southeast through the back roads of rural Wisconsin. What’s the use of owning a Mazda if you don’t drive some crooked roads now and again. Unfortunately I was on a southwest bearing for awhile, turning a seven hour drive into ten. You might ask what this has to do with food. When I realized I was going to be so late, I contacted Lucia to check out their plans. She wanted to take me to Mixteco Grill, but the kitchen was only open until 9 Â and I wasn’t sure how long it would take me to get there. I estimated 8, but if you know Chicago traffic, you know you could be very wrong about any eta. Luck was with me, I hit their door at just about 8, we called ahead to the restaurant, put our names on the list and they assured us that if we got there by 9 they would serve us. We made it at about 8:45.
Next stop, Traverse City, Michigan. Traverse City is a tourist town, a college town and an ag town. It proclaims itself to be the cherry capital of the world, and has a booming winery business. TC and the area around it might have the highest per capita population of gourmet chefs in the country.
First stop was dinner at the Jolly Pumpkin a restaurant, micro brewery and distillery that’s out on Old Mission Peninsula, that stretches north from Traverse City, dividing Grande Traverse Bay. I had a white bean and braised lamb stew that was excellent, well worth the distress that the beans were going to cause later. It was a pleasant evening of reconnecting with my friends Barb and Charlie. There was a lot of talk about the micro brew offerings, I believe that “hoppy” was thrown around a bit. I’m not well versed in my alcohol terminology anymore.
I stayed that night by myself in the turn of the century farmhouse that Charlie’s family owns, where his parents had lived in their retirement. The next morning I drove into town to meet Charlie at their house in town and told that we were going to lunch at Frenchie’s Famous, which lays claim to the world’s greatest pastrami sandwich. But first we had to wait for Jim to show up with a load of horse shit that was destined to go in Charlie’s garden. When Jim arrived with the shit, we hopped in my car and headed for Frenchie’s. Frenchie’s establishment seats about 10 people, behind the counter is a huge copper espresso machine. When we got there, Barb was there having a latte with a beautiful swirl pattern, the mark of an expert barista. Turn’s out the Frenchman was an expert sandwich maker as well, the pastrami did not disappoint. Served on a chibatta, it was piled high with great pastrami, melted cheese and two different sauces, one of which I believe was mango wasabi.
Dinner was at the farmhouse and my new friend and client Dr. Mary Clifton volunteered to cook us a vegan dinner. We had a salad of shredded beets and parsnips with pasta in an excellent pesto. Barb whipped up a rhubarb pie for desert. It was a pleasant evening, Dr. Mary has an eight year old daughter Anna and Charlie and Barb have an eight year old son, Ellis, both kids are adventurous eaters. A very pleasant evening.
The next evening we drove out to the Lelanau Peninsula (lower Michigan’s little finger) to Glen Arbor and Blu, the award winning restaurant of Chef Randy Chamberlain. Blu is an architecturally stunning space, high ceilings and all windows, looking out onto the lake. The food was amazing. We ordered pork belly, duck liver pate and a third appetizer that I don’t remember. I had the sirloin. Now you might ask why I would order something as pedestrian as steak at a fine restaurant, but it was served with a terrific sauce that made it an outstanding dish. Ellis ordered the duck. It was duck confit, and ate it with gusto.
Then next day it was lunch at Trattoria Stella with Dr. Mary. Stella is in the Village, a former mental institution turned swank development, where both Dr. Mary and Barb have their offices. Frankly the conversation with the doc was so intriguing that I can’t remember what I had to eat. But I’m sure it was good. I think I had lamb, again. You might be sensing a pattern developing. Yes, I like lamb.
I was planning to get an early start the next day, but Charlie and Barb twisted my arm to stay for lunch at Amical featuring French cuisine made from local farm goods. I had a pasta with braised lamb, tomato based sauce, with olives and wonderful cheese. I know, if I was really going to write about the food on my trip I should have taken notes. After lunch I called SB in East Lansing to let her know I wasn’t going to make it until late afternoon. She said that that worked and that she was planning dinner, and asked if I like lamb. “Of course,” I said.
From East Lansing I headed down to Chicago for a couple of days. Lucia and David and I tried to go to Du Champ at the end of their street on Damen, but it was packed so we just headed down Damen to take advantage of the plethora of small independent restaurants in their neighborhood. I love Chicago. We found a tiny Middle Eastern place where the food was excellent. The real culinary highlight of this stop was the Chicago style hot dog at Wriggly Field.
In order to get from Lucia’s apartment to the street one must navigate a narrow passage between a fence on one side and the house on the other. When I was packing up my car to leave last Tuesday, the cable guy had a ladder leaning against the house, working on a junction box of some kind. I had no choice but to walk under it. About six times. Now I don’t consider myself a superstitious person, but I have to admit this gave me a very uneasy feeling, particularly since I was about to set off on a journey that would require me to navigate through the hell called Chicago traffic and then run the speed trap gauntlet of Wisconsin.
The trip was uneventful, so I thought I was off the hook. Flash forward to the weekend.
On Sunday Beck and I decided to get some yard work done. It started innocently enough, tearing out some of that nasty plastic edging that the earth rejects every spring, and pushing the rocks back so they won’t spill onto the neighbor’s lawn for awhile. We’ve been talking about taking the rotting timbers off the three raised beds in the backyard, expanding the garden to incorporate the two larger beds bringing in loads of dirt and grading the beds out to the new dirt level, a big project.
Step one was to take the timbers off. At first we were going to just remove them from the little bed, just to see how it would go, but since that bed won’t be part of the eventual expanded garden we decided to leave it and pull up the timbers from one of the larger gardens.
Step one was to take out the low wire fence that we put around them to keep the rabbits out (no longer need thanks to Mr. and Mrs. Fox). So I started ripping it out with a pry bar, one of those that has sharp claws on either side. The staples that held the fence to the timbers were popping out easily and I was working quickly when I took a good hard pull on the bar and it released a little too easily, sending the pry bar right into my knee. Bad luck.
The timbers came out fairly easily, our neighbor let us borrow his chain saw to cut them up into small chunks and we decided to avoid double handling and put them right into the car and head for the dump. We put down the back seats and threw a tarp down and filled the Mazda up. That’s when we found out that there was no dump open on Sundays and that the municipal dump wasn’t open on Tuesdays either. So now we had a car full of dirty, ant infested, smelly old rotting lumber. Bad luck.
We determined that there was a commercial dump site open on Monday so we closed up the car cleaned up, drove the log truck to dinner and exhausted, packed it in for the night.
We got up in the morning ready to head for the junk drop off. We jumped in the car and turned the key. Nothing. It turns out that we must have bumped the overhead light switch when we were loading the crap in the car, the battery was as dead as my neighbors in the cemetery. Bad luck.
Moral of the story: don’t tempt fate, don’t walk under ladders.
Tuesday evening I returned home from a great solo road trip, that combined business and pleasure. My route took me from the Twin Cities to Chicago, with a detour for some scenic back roads in Wisconsin, and then to Traverse City, Michigan, Â back through East Lansing and Chicago again . I stayed with my daughter Lucia in Chicago, slept at an incredible nineteenth century farm house on Old Mission Peninsula near Traverse City and visited college friends in East Lansing. It was ten days of fun roads, great food and great friends. Too much to really relate in a single post, but I will be posting my road stories throughout the week.
Also today marks the 25th anniversary of abstinence from alcohol. I quit drinking the year Lucia was born, although it wasn’t a conscious decision to not raise my kids as a practicing alcoholic. I just woke up after a May Day party at my Wife’s office and felt so shitty that I decided I never wanted to experience that again. I’d been having black outs and nasty hangovers way too often in the prior five years or so, and I just didn’t want to feel that shitty again, or walk around wondering what the hell I’d done the night before. I made my decision in the shower, Beck was in the room getting ready for work when I got out and I told her, “That’s it, I’m done.”
I made some calls and was talking to a counsellor that day. I started going to outpatient treatment and attending AA meetings right away, but over the years I’ve drifted away and no longer go to meetings. I just kind of take it for granted now, just like I know I can’t eat shrimp since I suddenly developed an allergy. I don’t like to make a big deal about it, I kind of get embarrassed when people start talking about it. But Beck and I went out to a bar last night to celebrate.
If this is blather is to seriously be considered as a personal blog, I need to acknowledge the passing of a dear friend, memorable character and a woman who I thought of as my surrogate mom. Joan Benson, the mother of Bill, one of my very closest friends, the guy who taught me everything I know about basketball. Except what I learned from Red on Roundball.
The first time I met Joan was in 1972. I had just graduated from college and Bill and I had loaded up a Driveaway Oldsmobile to be delivered to Spokane and headed west to seek our fortunes. After driving all night we pulled into the Talking Bird Saloon in St. Regis Montana for breakfast. As we were mounting the steps to the restaurant door we saw the headline in the newspaper stand, “93 miners trapped in Sunshine Mine fire.” Bill’s father was a miner, working at another mine in the area, the Galena, but he was on the fire rescue crew and Bill knew his dad would have finished his shift at the Galena and gone right down into the Sunshine to find the survivors. If there were any.
That moment on the steps of the Talking Bird and the moment his Mom came to the door to greet us are as clear to me as if they happened yesterday. Actually much clearer, but I’m old. His dad had indeed gone down into the Sunshine the evening before, and hadn’t come home yet. “Oh, Billy” were the fist words out of her mouth, our eyes met as she embraced him and they were wide and tears were streaming down her cheeks.
In those days Bill had shoulder length blonde hair that made him look a bit like a Viking warrior. He was pretty sure his parents didn’t share my noble view of his appearance. I think the next words out of Joan’s mouth were, “God, your hair!” We went directly into the kitchen and she took the clippers to Bill, giving him a new recruit buzz in about five minutes. The rest of the next couple of days are not so clear to me. I think there were only two survivors, so the death toll was ninety-one. Bill (Big Bill, my friend’s dad) had been up all night, down in the mine which was full of poisonous gas, pulling out bodies. He had to stop because he couldn’t hold his stomach and if you lost it in your gas mask, you’d be a statistic too.
Imagine a small community losing 91 people in one terrible accident. The area consists of a scattering of small towns built up on every patch of scarce level ground along the South Fork of the Cour d’Alene River. The Bensons lived in Wallace, there was Burke, Silverton, Mullen, Pineville, Osburn and the big town, Kellogg. Bill could remind me of others. Every person in every town was effected. And that’s how I started the most memorable summer of my life, four months that played a major part in making me the person I am today.
Joan didn’t suffer fools well and she didn’t suffer me much at first. The thing that we joked about through the years was her finally forgiving me for spilling milk on her new carpet at dinner. But I also think she recognized me as a soft and pampered “Easterner.” The summer changed the soft part, but that’s another story. Fortunately she was receptive to my charm and more importantly she really liked the two women in my life over the years. She and  Bill’s dad bonded immediately with both my girlfriend at the time and the woman who eventually became my wife, both of which possess irresistible charm and neither of which could ever be described as pampered. It didn’t hurt that my antics were always good for a laugh and a story. She didn’t hide what she was thinking so it wasn’t too long before I knew I was accepted into the family. I thought of the Bensons as surrogate parents.
So rest in peace Joan. You were a beautiful, smart, loving person, fiercely loyal to those you loved and not a person anyone would mess with.
That summer is the source of about three quarters of my stories. Firestorms, whorehouses, narrow brushes with the law, my basketball baptism and rubber duckies in the river. But more about that later.
Looking out of my  office window, I saw a fox patrolling along the other side of my yard from the cemetery this morning. It was big and healthy looking with a thick coat. It stopped to check out the hole in the fence that the rabbits use and then continued up the line. That’s probably a great hunting technique. When it surprises a rabbit close to the fence it can pin it against the fence and shorten the chase. Kind of like fast food for foxes. A few years ago my garden was being devastated by bunnies, they mowed down my flowers almost as fast as they came up. I would get up in the morning on weekends and see a half dozen of the furry eating machines in my backyard. Then the foxes moved in. I haven’t seen a rabbit in the yard for several days now. I love foxes.
We also have a pair of great horned owls nesting in the neighborhood. That’s not hurting the cause either. Every once in awhile I come across a pile of fur or feathers in the yard and it makes me smile. I wonder how the varmint population control mechanism works. Some of the little bastards must survive to breed, or the killers would move on, not enough food. Maybe there really hasn’t been that much of a population decrease. Maybe the survivors are just a more cautious brand of bunny. I have noticed that when I do see a rabbit, they seem to be quick to move between areas of cover, rarely do I see them basking in the middle of the yard anymore.
Come to think of it there hasn’t been as many house sparrows around for awhile either. That’s probably the work of the cooper’s hawk that lives in the area. Although we have a flock of goldfinches that can empty a thistle sock in about 24 hours. But maybe they’re just more cautious. Cooper is a crafty predator. I’ve seen him fly low across the neighbors yard, hidden by the lilac bushes and swoop into our yard, which has several bird feeders, for a surprise attack. It’s fun to watch, one second the yard is full of noisy birds flitting around the feeders and suddenly they scatter in every direction. Some dive for shelter in the wild grape that covers the fence, and the hawk will follow them right in, flapping it’s wings and thrashing around in the vine looking for lunch.
Wow, it’s been almost 2 months since my last post. I might as well start over. I’ve been very busy lately, helping a client with her new website drmarymd.com . Dr. Mary Clifton is promoting her programs to help people adopt healthier lifestyles. I’m happy with the way it turned out and I hope a lot of people are motivated to get healthy.
Daffodil Crop Circle
Lot’s of things have gone on in the last couple of months, like the snow melted and the garden came up. How about a March with no snow. My garden is farther ahead than it’s ever been at this time of year. Last fall I planted something like eighty daffodils, I put them in late in the fall on a cold day when it was getting dark and I wasn’t exactly at my highest energy level. Dr. Mary would probably tell me I’d consumed too much fat, which could certainly be the case. I had all these bulbs and not much time. Most of them are coming up pretty well, but there’s one patch where I think I buried them too deep and then packed the soil down on top of them when I was prepping the rose bush for the winter. So now I have a circle of daffodils around a big empty area. Maybe if it keeps raining and we get a couple of hot days, they’ll poke through. I may have daffodils in July at this rate.
Mystery Plant
There’s another spot in the corner of the yard in which I put in a plant that I’d gotten on sale late in the season last year. It’s coming up like crazy. I can’t for the life of me remember what it is. But it’s doing so well, it might just take over the yard.
On Saturday night we attended the annual Mardi Gras Party at the Beckers. Any party at the Beckers is a great party and the Mardi Gras Party is the greatest of the great. I could have gotten the award for the lamest costume, Becky found me a sport coat that had a pattern of target logos all over it. The novelty of the fabric was one thing, but I wasn’t actually costumed as anything. Multi-targeted warhead? The host’s two older daughters pulled an good prank. They’re not twins, but they do look somewhat alike. One was dressed in a ball gown and the other had a wedding dress on, one was wearing flats and the other really tall heels. I noticed that they had done their hair exactly the same, but thought nothing of it. Midway through the party they switched costumes and I’m not sure anyone noticed.  The youngest daughter’s husband entertained on the piano, including accompanying her on some of  her songs that she’s preparing for her role in Guys and Dolls.
I’ve been obsessing about painting in Photoshop. I’m trying to upgrade my skill level with the Wacom, I’ve been drawing heads and figures and trying to color them, without much success. I’ve had some success scanning some of my pencil drawings and giving them simple color treatments, which is what I was most interested in doing with the tablet, so I can use them to get a little more visual interest here at HA. After all, as long as I have an published editorial illustrator in the office I might as well throw him some work. That, along with the drawing at left segues nicely into the next random topic.
I’ve been working out at the gym pretty consistently since I bolted the 9 to 5. I worked my way to the point that I think I’m in better condition than before the knee disaster. Motivation is a challenge for most of us who try to keep to a workout schedule and we have to find it where we can. One the things that brings me back to the gym is the people watching. I know it’s mean spirited to make fun of people, and God knows that I probably look as goofy as the next, but there are some folks who’s appearance is so odd that I just have to share it. If you recognize yourself here, I apologize. On the other hand if you don’t want people to make fun of you, try not to be so frickin’ weird.
I’ll start with the guy pictured. Older gent, probably around my age. Long stringy hair that doesn’t look like it’s been washed this century, held in place by a headband that probably was white in the Twentieth Century. He looks trim and fit, it seems like he’s there working out most times I am. Other than the hair, from the knees up he looks pretty normal, in an 80’s kind of way. But the thing that puts him over the top in the weirdness category is the fact that he always wears knee high brown dress socks and brown street shoes. I have to look away every time I see him to keep from laughing out loud.
Another guy, much younger, isn’t so much weird as he is scary. He’s always there, working the free weights. His arms are bigger than my thighs. I guess that’s not saying much, so much bigger is a better description. Yesterday while I was pumping some paltry weight on a machine, I watched as he strapped what had to be 50 pounds to his waste and knocked off about 20 pull-ups. I don’t think I can do one pull-up, even if I was in moon gravity.
Then there’s a guy who looks a little bit like John Belushi. He has shoulder length hair that he usually has tied up on top of his head some way. But this week I saw him with it down. He had it in a classic flip, like every girl in my ’67 high school year book. Think pretty hair on a jowly, pasty complected, five o’clock shadowed, scowling, hairy man. Another case where I have to practice smirk avoidance.
There is another man who it would be cruel to make fun of since he’s obviously overcoming some real challenges. But, being the mean bastard that I am… He has a hugely developed upper body, just massive. This barrel is supported by extremely short legs for it’s size. And one of those legs doesn’t work very well, he walks with a cane and it looks painful. He was wearing one of those wrestling style sleeveless t-shirts. One of his very hairy breasts had popped out, which was a disturbing sight. He passed me in the weight room as I was climbing into the crunch machine for my final set for the day. He sat down on the Cybex arm press machine and as he began to lift he let out a sound that I can only compare to the roar of  lions and tigers at the zoo, moaning at their captivity. Or maybe it was like the sounds I made while trying to take my first dump after surgery and a week of powerful narcotics. Whatever you compare it to, it was really loud and really frightening.
I don’t feel bad at all about ridiculing this last victim, because frankly he’s one of those guys that makes you dislike them almost at first glance. He’s about my age, very fit, very trim and has a silvery brush cut, like a sergeant in a comic book. When he’s in the weight room he speeds from machine to machine, lifting heavy weights too fast, looking gruff and impatient with anyone who gets in the way of his routine. He might as well have a sign that says “compulsive narcissistic asshole.” That’s opposed to me, I’m a compulsive narcissistic nice guy. He always wears one of those jerseys that you used to see in the eighties, the sleeves cut off and the jersey itself cut off, exposing his belly. And maybe I’d do the same thing if I had a six-pack at sixty. But I noticed last week that protruding from the front and back of his shorts are the edges of what looks like some kind of absorbent pad. I’m sorry but please don’t share things like that with the public. When I look away from him, it’s not to keep from laughing.
I’m amazed by the power of internet advertising. The other day I was doing some research on e-commerce solutions and I spent some time on the Volusion site. Now about 65% (that’s a wild guess not a statistic) of the sites I go to that have advertising serve me a Volusion ad. Â Crafty buggers.
