the tail end

We need to talk business – I say this in my most serious voice. I am working on a project with Ed – machine stuff, if you can believe it, and it is time that we had a discussion about forging ahead or scaling back.

Okay, let me pick you up in the late afternoon. Bring your helmet.

'Bring your helmet' means that Ed intends to reach great heights in our discussion – preferably while speeding forward on his motorcycle.

I have 90 minutes. That’s it. I have to get back by 6.
That will be tough…
There are a dozen cafés within a stone’s throw of here! We need to talk for an hour at most!
Café? On a day like this?

Ed guns the engine and we are off. Past Campus Drive, past Borders, past Middleton…

Ed, we are currently surrounded by pastures and farmland! We have left the land of cafés far behind!
Yeah… I want to show you part of the Ice Age trail just beyond Cross Plains (to the geographically stumped reader: Cross Plains is a satellite village far west of Madison; total travel time between the loft and “beyond Cross Plains:” 40 minutes).

We turn into a dirt road, get off the bike, I toss off the tight helmet. The sun is less strong now, in the last days of August. Before me, a path leads up a hill, past old oaks and tall grasses.




I have always thought of this part of the country as having oak groves and prairie fields, possibly because of my readings (to daughters) of Laura Ingalls Wilder books. Oaks and prairie grasses figured prominently in the series.

It’s quiet there, on top of the hill. Butterflies and snakes move around me – the former almost touches me in a hasty flight toward a liatris stalk, the latter moves too quickly for my camera.




The end of summer in Wisconsin is perhaps the kindest of seasons. While other states are still sweltering and steaming ahead until Labor Day and beyond, we start easing into Fall.

Ed and I did not talk business. The climb up, then down, the ride there and back took time. Everyone should have the luxury of taking time like this – to stroll through grasses among old oak groves before they give up their hold on summer and move on.


Back at the loft, I sit at my computer table and look out only to see yet another ritual sign that Madison is nearing the end of a summer season.

summer gold

I have lived in Madison for twenty-seven years now – more than half my life – and I have never, until this year, experienced a corn festival.

Hey, Sun Prairie (a satellite village to the east of Madison) is hosting the Annual Corn Fest this week-end!
You want me to travel all that distance to eat corn? I can eat corn freshly yanked from the fields every Saturday market day – mere minutes from the loft.

Still, I’m tempted. All that corn.

I’m not the only one. Thousands, nay millions, no, maybe not millions, but lots show up on this most pleasant Sunday afternoon.

And you gotta know Sun Prairie to understand how smoothly it all functions.

There are the rides, of the traveling amusement park type (when did these fascinating roaming fairs come into being? Were they around when I was a kid? Maybe they just never made it to Manhattan where I hung out in my grade school years). Ferris wheels and tilt-a-whirls…




But really, it’s mostly about corn. Many, many people come here for the corn eating thing. The steaming husks are loaded onto a conveyor belt...





…for $5 you load up all the ears you can fit into a cardboard box, you shuck the damn hot ears, deft hands and awkward hands…








…you hand over the whole batch to women whose practiced hands rub in the butter…





…then, shake on the salt…





…and find a spot to eat.











Afterwards, you take your little kids to the booths and show off how good you are with the darts. You win ‘em a couple of prizes…



thanks, Mom


… and you go home, full of kernels and butter, with a feeling of having lived a real Wisconsin kind of summer afternoon.

I can't believe I ate the whole thing...

If you let me off until tomorrow, I promise to post pictures and stories on butter, husks, salt, liberally covering many ears of corn at the all-American summer fest celebrating this, well, vegetable.

I know you’re willing to wait another day. I know it. Here, I have a teaser:


where am I and what am I doing??

neighborhood notes

So what’s it like living downtown?

Take the last twenty-four hours in this place. What did they bring me? Sure, a good dinner, just a short walk up from the loft. A bit over-priced, but very good nonetheless (see post below). Preceded by a drink called la Vie en Rosé.



What else?

A loud train passing just outside my windows. A very loud train, tooting with the full force of a heavy hand sitting on the claxon.

A walk on nearby State Street, where construction has been ongoing. For years.




…and where all sorts of musicians find a warm spot on the sidewalk.





A market with the colors of late summer.





A deranged human being standing outside my apartment building at 4 am, shouting expletives for twenty minutes straight… before moving on to another building further down.

A musician playing all instruments all at the same time





Flowers at my local flowershop, going for 50 cents a stem. I’m known there by now. If they put out a street sign announcing a sale on stems, they know I’ll come in on the way home from work. Here, I took these off their hands. They’re resting at a café table. I’m known at the café as well. It's Jo's. Yes, the same: medium skim latte, extra hot.

the reluctant food critic returns (to places of yore)

I read with interest the Isthmus snippet about the changing Madison restaurant scene. Like any vibrant town, Madison has its share of closures and openings.

And yes, I am looking forward to the South-American-Asian-influence in the kitchen of the about-to-be-opened The Local at the tip of King Street (remember when that used to be Café Europa maybe some half dozen eateries ago?).

Perhaps even more so, I am eagerly awaiting the new Italian place on Sherman. The chef hails originally from Marsala, Sicily – one of my favorite destinations from this past summer. He can’t be bad. Everyone in Marsala Sicily knows food (unless he was thrown out of town for his wimpy approach to cooking… let’s hope not).

But I wonder if the new is going to be taking us away from that, which is already there. Mind you, there are some Madison favorites that I never could wrap myself around with the enthusiasm of everyone else. I don’t mean to knock down some of the State Street standbys, but come on – let’s not argue good food. Comfort food, maybe, but when the need for comfort passes so does the need to return to any of them.

Still, there are the fairly new spots that have too many empty tables for comfort. I do not like to eat at a place that has empty tables. It makes me feel that the entire waitstaff is participating in my conversation.

Take Crave off of State Street. Now, you may have issues with Crave. I may have issues with Crave. But I remember how it provided the one cheerful moment of an otherwise bleak November 2nd 2004. I sat in a daze, munching meat loaf, drinking red wine, hearing the quiet voices of those around me. I survived that day in part thanks to that meat loaf.

Last week, I went back to Crave. I go there with daughters sometimes when they are in town. It seems a “girls’ night out” type of place. Besides, it was Monday and Sardine and Cocoliquot were closed.

Empty. Two, maybe three other tables occupied. Oh oh. Have we shifted our fickle hearts and pointed them elsewhere?

In the meantime, it is Friday and I cannot get a reservation for Sardine. I call just as the office opens and am given options normally reserved for a New York day-of-eating conversation. “No, sorry, nothing then. Would you like to come in at 5? (no!) Maybe I can fit you in at 9:15…" (maybe not)

I have better luck at Cocoliquot. I get a 7:15 table. Is this a good thing? Well, I remember being treated to a dinner there several weeks ago on a Wednesday. The place was only half full. Half full also means half empty.

On this night it is buzzing and so I buzz with it. Come on, it’s a perfectly fine place! They have improved the menu considerably since their opening moments a year or two back.




The snails in pistou are fantastic. The sea bass is perfectly prepared and the fries (unlike at the otherwise fine Sardine) are not brittle from overfrying.





I would do something about one section of their wine list – it cannot be that you only have a Long Island rosé left for the summer! But that’s just me. A summer menu without a nice Mediterranean rosé is like a concert without the music.

There aren’t many places in Madison where four people can eat well, drink wine and walk away without spending most of that month’s paycheck. Cocoliquot, thanks for having us. We wont forget you. We’ll be back. Right after we do another run over to Sardine.



Cocoliquot: eating at the bar is also an option

not tonight dear, I have a headache

It’s not true, really. I’m not a headache type. I get headaches when I neglect to ingest a latte in the afternoon. Never for no reason. Yes, of course, the biggest came with my brain explosion some ten years back. Nonetheless, if I ever use the headache excuse, there’s reason to doubt the sincerity and veracity of my words.

And I have to say, today was filled with interesting moments. Bloggable moments. Ones that point to the absurdity of life and even more so – the absurdity of my own thought processes.

Still, I am not up to the challenge. Tonight I will put my feet up, open a box of Raisinets and read Ruth Reichl’s “Garlic and Sapphires.” It’s Saturday, give me a break.

notes on a thursday

…politics on the radio. I listen to the discussion of the case decided today (concerning warantless tapping) and I look out the window. Separation of powers… Like this?




… shopping for food. At this time of the year everything is photogenic. I hear on the radio that in Russia, restaurants have great difficulty getting quality ingredients. Not so in Wisconsin.




…the rain came down today. I took Mr. B to work. Mustn’t get my new Mr.G wet and bothered. There must have been great anger and hostility within my yellow-fendered friend because he let me down. The two lattes that I balanced on his back…





…spilled. And when they did, he chose that moment to drop the chain. Therefore, in the evening, I stuck my tongue out at him and borrowed a car. It did rain, after all.

on competition

Walking home, I pass several trucks in close proximity to each other. I am mulling this one over: how limited is the marketplace? If there wasn’t a Pepsi, would Coke double its sales?







If the UPS hadn’t offered guaranteed overnight, would Fed Ex grow and grow until it became the mad fat cat of overnight delivery?





I was an econometrics major in college, some thirty-five years ago and still I don’t get competition. If you come up with a quality Cola, wont it only improve the crap that Coke pours into its bottles?

If someone else jumped in and delivered packages with greater time specificity, then wouldn’t UPS improve its delivery as well? Sure they would. And I would never again have to chase across town to pick up that which should have been delivered when I was home. Because they would tell me, precisely, when I should be home.

If someone puts out a blog that is quality, no, sorry, QUALITY, then I want to read it. I want you to read it and tell me about it. Reading quality produces quality. Eric, your blog makes me work harder on Ocean. Wow. Janelle and sixty-five, thanks for the tip. Eric, thanks for commenting.

Next to this stuff, Ocean is kid’s play.

on exuberance

I am sitting at an outside table at Borders, inhaling, exhaling. Breath in, breath out. Ahhhh…Only one more class to teach this summer, the sky is brighter than Mr.B’s fenders, no recall problem with my recently acquired Dell battery, no dinner to cook, no weeds to pull – life is good.

In fact, I am tempted to post this photo, taken a few hours back (it is of an outdoor sculpture), just to show how one might depict the exuberance that I feel at this moment.





Exuberance is an under-used word. It is undervalued and its power is underestimated. People talk of being happy, but even that is more of an embarrassment. God, she’s happy. What’s with her, doesn’t she get the pain of others? That’s okay, her time will come. [If this sounds remarkably like something my mother would say, that’s because it is.]

I’ve heard the phrase ‘youthful exuberance’ in various contexts. Such youthful exuberance! (What, before arthritis sets in?) Youthful idealism, youthful exuberance, mature depression, mature macular degeneration.

I happen to have been somewhat of a worrier in the course of my youthful parenting. (I was, by today’s standards, a young mom). I felt exuberant when a daughter smiled up at me, but I worried that she might trip on her own exuberant run and do permanent damage to her sweet, young little body.

With time, I got used to the idea that certainty was elusive and knees get scraped. Yesterday, for example, I felt exuberant on the bike even though the day before I fell off and gashed my knee. [Those damn toe-clips!]

Exuberance can be aspired to, nay, attained even, in spite of gashed knees.

LATER: of course, exuberance, almost by definition, lasts about the time it takes to drink a latte. It’s evening, Tex Tubb’s Tacos have settled in, exuberance trickled out, tiredness replaced it.

beating the duck

Until my summer teaching is done with, I will always feel like it’s me, racing against the clock to put up a post each day here, on Ocean.

Sort of like this guy, whom I watched today, on Lake Waubesa. I took a couple of hours out for an evening bike ride. I was pedaling, the ducks were paddling. From my perspective there on the shore, they had one up on him.




Sometimes I think that the day wins: I cannot keep up, at least not here on Ocean. Lucky me. My day is better than it appears on Ocean. Lucky me.

tidbit

People’s relationship to Sunday is a complicated one. You hate it. You love it. You dread Monday. You dread your life. You feel like you didn’t live up to its potential.

I like not having to teach on Mondays so that Sunday begins to feel like any other day and I do not have to put much thought into what it all means.

But I liked even more Sundays in France where the village began the day with a market, tended to its afternoon hours with a nice big meal and than basically fell into dozing on and off until suppertime. I can handle that.

Today I put myself into the French mode, absent the market. (Find me a farmers market on Sunday in the States and I will personally make an appearance and shop there. Maybe not. But I would think about it.)

I fixed a biggish lunch for a smallish bunch of people. I opened a bottle of rose wine.





I cleaned up, had a strong cup of coffee to fight the post-lunch drooping eyelid problem and counted the minutes til supper.

One might argue that this is not a full day. One would be wrong.

vendor of the week

I could have posted a break for today. I could have. And I admit it, I was tempted. But then I remembered this morning’s market and in its midst -- the garlic guy. He deserves mention. The man of the week – the guy who makes a living selling small amounts of the pungent stuff.

I once thought Madison should be the garlic capital of the world. The garlic man is taking us there, one clove at a time.

sit it out, or dance?

A tall, older, much older guy comes over to where I am standing.

Dance?
I hesitate. I haven’t done swing since high school in Poland.
Sure.
You from around here?
No, not really. You?
Oh yeah.
Come here often?
This and other places. Six times a week.
Like to dance, huh?
Yeah, though they don’t play the slow ones often enough. People like the fast beat.

We settle into what must be a trot or a two step or who knows what.

Dancing with a stranger is always interesting so long as his palms don’t sweat and he doesn’t wear potent cologne of a distasteful type.

I’m in Chicago only for the night. Earlier, I had gone to the Hopleaf in Andersonville, some blocks north of the Green Mill Jazz Bar. Belgian moulles frites with beer, in a neighborhood that once intended to group together those coming from the blue and yellow country of Sweden.





The Green Mill has a more colorful past, with big names, sometimes not of the music but of the gangster type, passing through it in the last 100 years or so. But on this day, there was only the music, the two older couples dancing, so synchronized that you could tell they had touched each other in this way for years, and the dozen younger types out there on the dance floor, moving fast, spinning in and out of the arms of their partners to the rhythm of Mack the Knife.

where am I? what am I doing?

I had a full day. You cannot possibly expect me to explain it all in a post written five minutes before midnight. I'll say this much: I am not in Wisconsin. More tomorrow, I promise.

a new tickle of the old tattoo

But I love Mr. B! He has seen me through tough times! I was young when he came into my life – barely forty. I have raced down streets and boulevards, with him guiding the way as the wind tickled my tattoo!

Nina, the time has come to put some kick into that pedal. Mr.B held your hand while you found your rhythm. What you need is a Mr. G, with carbon graphite composite frames, attached via index shifting gears to thin and smooth tires to put you over the edge.

I will never let go of Mr. B! Never! Fine, I will give Mr.G a chance, but Mr.B and I will forever ride to Whole Foods and to the Law School together, bags packed with supplies, yellow fender rubbing affectionately against my shin and his own tire.

That was (more or less) the conversation Ed and I had yesterday. And so, in the warm twilight of a summer day, Mr. G, red as a tomato from the farmers’ market, came into my life.

He is smooth as a marble! He sings up hills! Take me home, country roads! Man oh man, take me away!

You want to do one of the Bombay Bicycle Club rides up north of Madison, past the town of Lodi?

I haven’t eaten since morning. I was up most of the night working on my lecture. It is late. I haven’t even a loaf of bread at home to nibble on…Yes!!

It’s seven in the evening by the time we leave Ed’s truck and pedal out toward the Wisconsin River. The loop is less than twenty miles, but I slow things down considerably as I stop to take it all in.












Nina, neither you nor I have headlights… the sun is setting really quickly…
I know – gorgeous, isn’t it?

At a bend in the river, the Merrimac ferry pulls out. A few men throw lines into the river. The sun is a bright orange. I am a bright orange. Mr. G stands out with his tomato red frame.





Maybe we should take a short cut… We’re going only 11 miles an hour and we are still some miles away from the truck…





Relax, Mr. G and I can fly like the wind if we have to. My tattoo will again be tickled by the breeze. Oh, pause for a second! Isn’t that an outstanding looking pig?






It’s dark by the time we pull into the outskirts of Lodi. Outside a local bar, men are throwing horseshoes. We hear the muffle of the metal on the sand and the occasional clang when the shoe hits the pole. We pull over and watch.





Bud Lights clutter the picnic table. The men talk about how in their days they didn’t have the games the kids have today. It is a scene straight out of Languedoc, with horseshoes filling in for boules.





The moon is full, the night is breezy and warm. We load the bikes into Ed’s pick up. He stops at a Kwick Trip to buy a Heath Crunch ice cream bar. I break off a sweet chunk of it. All-American me, no?

It's late: do you know where your children are?

I myself do not know and maybe that is a good thing.

Tomorrow. I'll write more tomorrow. Right now, I am barely sitting up. And the eyelids -- too heavy to focus on much of anything.

Really, tomorrow.

where am I? what am I doing?

where am I? what am I doing?

Valid question. One that I often ask myself.

Late in the evening I let myself be educated on the issue of bikes. Like, why are there $100 bikes, $1000 bikes and $5000 bikes?

I did not know that I could punch my bike shoes into ready and willing pedals (I do not actually have bike shoes), fly like the wind on carbon graphite composite frames, attached via index shifting gears to thin and smooth tires. I did not know this.

So this evening I listened and watched and now I know. I still am attached as can be to Mr. B, but I know why he and I have such trouble making it up hills and mountains. I am like the duck who waddles along knowing her deficiencies. I admire those who have it together and can fly like the wind, even though I feel closer to the duck, staring at the faster, smoother, more together birds and bikes out there.

hidden

Do you want to try geocaching?
Geo-cashing?
Geocaching.
I’m not sure… Does it cost money? Do you make money?
It’s like a treasure hunt: geeks post on the web the exact location of a box…
A lockbox??
…you plug in the coordinates into your GPS (Global Positioning Systems gizmo) and then, using your GPS, you look for the box.
What kind of a box?
It has stuff in it. And you can add something to it, like a picture or some trivial nothing.

The thing is, you may not have known it, but there are hidden treasure chests, ALL OVER THE WORLD, many of them just a mile or so from where you live! But you need a GPS toy to find them.

It is hot, it is humid, it is Sunday afternoon. Ed and I set out.

Ed, you’re going the wrong way. Your GPS toy indicates we need to head south.
There is no road heading south from here. You have to follow roads. You can’t just trample across someone’s potato field.

Fine. The GPS eventually gets us to a path. We abandon the motorbike and head out. The mosquitoes are ferocious. We persevere.

If we ever find this goddamn box it better be worth it! There better be a treasure! I am being eaten out here in the swamps south of Madison!

Suddenly, the little GPS toy starts madly telling me that WE ARE THERE!
I’m standing on a bridge. Before me, a river.





So now what? It says I am within a foot of it. Are you telling me I have to crawl under the bridge?? There's stinging nettle all around!
I am telling you nothing. The GPS is telling you to crawl under the bridge.
(pleading look from me)
Okay, I’ll crawl under the bridge.

It helps to do geocaching with someone who is willing to crawl under bridges.

There is indeed a treasure box. I sit on the bridge and rifle through the contents. Notes, photos, postcards, little things left for others to touch, exchange, share.





I didn’t bring anything to put inside!
You have a purseful of junk…
Okay, I can part with my Whole Grains Card. It has one punch in it toward a free loaf of bread.

On the way back, I see a yellow and black bird, hiding in a field of yellow flowers. Intractable, fleeting, stunning. Chase one treasure, find that and more.