brightness/contrast

If you use any version of a photoshop-esque program for your digital shots, you will have the option of correcting a handful of standard photo problems. (No, the biggest – poor framing and the wobblies cannot be corrected, but many others can.) One that I always check in on is brightness/contrast.

Contrast can set a story. By analogy, consider my two dining experiences from yesterday and today.
Yesterday, I sunk into a leather couch and watched the waiter bring this to the low, wooden table:





In contrast, today I sat upright and swirled bubbly stuff in a tall glass, through which I could see up and down State Street.





Brightness, too, can oscillate. Sometimes it can be so poignantly sharp that it hurts. It reminds me of a committee I’m on at the university. We meet maybe three or four times a semester (this afternoon we had one such meeting). I am funny there. I make ‘em laugh and laugh. This is not a goal of mine, nor do I consider myself especially prone to witticisms of the type that make you totter under the table because you just can’t stand the humor of it.

But there, at the meetings, I am John Travolta, coming alive on the Brooklyn dancefloor. I am Clark Kent, shedding his staid attire in favor of the skintight suit. I am somebody else.

I recommend this to anyone who is just bored with their take on a given exposure. Fiddle with brightness and contrast. Go ahead, give it a try.

forest walk

I know, I know, you’ve seen it all. One more blog photo (here or elsewhere) of a splash of orange and you’ll quit blog surfing forever.

(It’s not going to happen. You wont quit.)

But I drove three hundred miles up and three hundred miles down just to walk through Wisconsin's northwoods on a nice autumn day! And so you are going to stare at fall colors here on Ocean, or bust.



Maybe you live in Texas and actually get all misty eyed at the sight of Autumn colors. I never thought I’d say this, but Texans, this post’s for you!

But actually, I did my postings of orange trees yesterday. Today you get a little drama with the dish of dried leaves.

(The drama is not significant drama. A little drama should raise no expectations of me being shot at in the forest or something equally thrilling. Okay, I’ll do the spoiler: we got lost and it rained. It seemed big then…)





The thing is, most people do not get lost in national parkland. The trails are marked. Go this way, you dunce. And then here, come on, follow the little blue diamond like a kid following the crumbs of Hansel & Gretel, come on, deeper and deeper into the forest and suddenly ha ha ha, no markers here anymore ha ha ha.

And so you take the wrong path. Not because you’re stupid. You apply all your fantastic much coveted reasoning skills to the situation and you come up with the wrong answer. Happens all the time, no?

Anyway, take a look at one more.





And then this one, when we came to the lake, looked up and noticed the clouds.




I don’t mind getting wet. I take showers, I dance in summer rains (once I did. You don’t want to hear it. I was young). Wet is okay by me.

But my new camera! The one that put me over the top in credit card debt! It says in the long info booklet which I read cover to cover – do not get the damn thing wet! It says so in ten different languages. I understand the message even in languages that I’m not sure come from any authentic, U.N. recognized country. NO WETNESS EVER! THIS IS A SAHARA (or Gobi or Mojave, whatever your language) LOVIN’ APPARATURE! KEEP IT DRY.

So I huddle with my camera under my tight little shirt (I want to look good there in the forest, for the squirrels and deer, in case they care).

And lo & behold, my camera appears to have survived. My shirt is stretched, every last part of me was wet wet wet, but the camera – she be dry as a desert flower.

(I had to test if she was okay in the end, so here, a photo of leaves. Wet leaves. At least they’re red, not orange. You’re welcome.)

notes from the north

Waking up in the Wisconsin northwoods, some 300 miles north of Madison. Last week-end the fall colors peaked here, they say. But this week-end has the weather sewn up tight.

It's early. We find a café with an espresso machine. Ed rolls his eyes. I munch contentedly on a cranberry scone. Sometimes an isolated nod toward the tourist is okay by me.

A few miles north we stop at the Bear Country gas-station-bait-shop-canoe-rental place.
Can’t drop you folks on the river now. Gotta mind the shop. Come back in the afternoon.

Excellent. It gives me an opportunity to plead my case for a morning at the Bayfield Apple Festival.
You can’t come all the way up north and not see Lake Superior.
Surely there is more to Lake Superior than Bayfield and the Apple Festival. There will be crowds at the Festival. (Ed doesn’t much care for crowds.)
There’ll be apples. You love apples.

The sky is a gentle blue, the trees are pretty as can be, all this puts one in an agreeable mood. We head toward Bayfield.









Indeed, a detour toward the shore of Lake Superior is a highpoint. The stretch of sand is empty. The waves play with a few drifting leaves. The water is clear and still not too cold.














But the traffic into Bayfield is heavy. Cars are directed toward big parking lots at the periphery of the village. Not us! Ed is convinced we can find a free spot downtown, near someone’s house. Ed is right. There, he’ll enjoy hearing that.

There are way more than 651 (Bayfield’s pop.) at this fair, Ed notes glumly.
Of course! It’s the event of events! I’m thrilled.





I am especially tickled because much of the attention at the Festival is on food and much of the food has to do with apples.











I show great restraint. Apple brats draw crowds, but the biggest line is in front of the “Indian taco” stand.

Me, I’m in search of the grandstand (it’s a pretty small grandstand; you could pass by it and not know you've put yourself out of its reach). There’s to be an apple-peeling contest. I want to watch. 436 inches was the record length of an unbroken peel. Can anyone top that?

Not this peeler:





Maybe this one:





It’s a slow moving contest. The emcee notes it’s sort of like watching grass grow. Ed is fascinated. I nudge him to the car. We are creeping into the afternoon. The Bear Country gas-bait-boat-etc. guy is waiting for us.

Gotta be careful on the river, we’re told as we kick up dust in his truck, heading with the canoe to the White River. The first time I did it with my wife, we flipped. You get into the brush, lean too hard and over you go.
Oh great. This river will require work.
Lived here long? I ask.
For a while now. But I’m heading back to Montana soon. Better bear hunting there. (There’s bear hunting here?)

This is a hot week-end for hunting, isn't it? I see a lot of men in hunting attire milling about the villages.
Oh, it’s mostly grouse hunters.
But I've spotted deer in pick up trucks as well. And I hear the sound of gunfire as we begin our paddle down the river.





Do you think we’ll get shot at? (I am rubbing a sore arm. I got stung by a wasp at theBear Country gas station and I'm hoping to be done with pain for the day.)
I think the chances are small, Nina.
Another sound of a rifle close by.
…And when they hit someone by accident, they’re real sorry.

We paddle in silence, but the splash of the oars is enough to scare the river life. Herons and loons take flight as we come around each bend. A white tail stumbles through the river in a hurry to get away. Her partner scampers off on the other side.

Hey, you’re missing all the good photos!
I feel like I should help keep us away from the fallen timbers and sandbanks. The best I can do is this:





We paddle on. The early evening is beautiful. The trees along the river are mostly bare now and still we appear to be moving through an Impressionists’ canvas.





…With an occasional Norman Rockwell moment throw in: The woman is hanging the sheets to dry, the dog runs towards us on the river, the flag is up, the silos stand tall.






It’s dusk by the time we drive back with the paddles to the Bear Country gas-bait-boat rental. You can’t see much of the forest now. Unless you pull over and stare deeply within.





The moon is out again. Neither of us feels like driving much to get food. We go to the Black Bear Inn, a local place, just across the street from the Bear Country gas-bait-boat etc. store. Is there a theme here?

I'm guessing Black Bear is a place to go with your girlfriends while the guys are counting their deer, or with your spouses and pals after you’ve put away your grouse. It’s musty inside. It looks as it did however many decades back, when it first started cooking for the locals.





The food is great. I appreciate seeing iceberg lettuce salad at the Black Bear. It fits well here. It’s not a retro act, it’s the real thing.

The whitefish from the lake is gently grilled, just enough so it remains moist, and the ubiquitous red paprika does not detract. It works with the generous squirt of lemon juice. I’m not quite sure where the chardonnay by the glass came from but for $2.50 a glass, I'm not complaining. Dare I say it's actually good. Not rose from the Languedoc good, but good.

A northwoods day. Beautiful up there, it really is.

words

canoes
bears
apple dumplings
guns
wasps
sand
apple pizza
deer in water

...all that and more. Tomorrow, when I am not dead tired (from the above, of course).

for lili, wherever you may find her

One of my fairly regular commenters, lili, the lili of Massachusetts, took one look at my post on soybeans a few days back and asked – but where are the cranberries? (Massachusetts is in great competition with Wisconsin over cranberries. Those darn coastal states – first California goes after our top cheese ranking, then Mass. tries to pop our berry success!)

Lili, this post is for you.

We are heading north, Ed and I. Up up, close to Lake Superior but not quite, up where our famous cross country skiers race each winter, up where the trees are already shaking off past season’s foliage.

But first, a search (en route) for the berries.

On the map, the cranberry bogs of central Wisconsin are clearly marked. Getting to them – oh, now wait, how do you do that? Dirt roads and packed sand hit the bottom of the car. I brace myself, knowing that any minute I will lose the floorboard. Ed dozes.

Far, far easier to find are... the vineyards. Burr Oak wines are made here. At the sight of the vines, I am flooded with nostalgia. We stop.





So how would I rate the wines? Don’t know. (Thankfully?) the proprietors posted an "out to lunch" sign when we stopped by.

Perseverance is a good thing A lone farmer finally directs us to the bogs (straight ahead… can’t miss ‘em… both sides of the road…)

So these are they: strips of boggie field. Visited now by me and a crane or two.





Still, the fields do not display the colors I had hoped for. . Beautiful indeed. Heather-like. But not the plump red you would find at your Thanksgiving table.

We continue our drive north.

I had picked our week-end destination of Cable, some six hours due northwest of Madison -- and that’s if you take roads that actually have pavement. I had some opposition, sure (how far did you say??), but I got stubborn. I like the idea of being north of north. North of Minneapolis, north of Poland. No, that’s wrong. Nothing in the U.S. is north of Poland. Only Alaska, and we’re talking the Arctic circle there.

The sun is getting terribly close to the horizon and we are still quite a number of miles from our stopping point.

And right there, off our backroad, we see the pickers.

Cranberry harvest. I can smell it. Indeed, a flooded cranberry bog…





…and a hardy crew, corralling the berries toward the conveyor that will carry them to a tractor and then maybe to an Ocean Spray juice container or a baggie stamped “organic,” to be sold at Whole Foods – who knows.





Before reaching our B&B, we stop at a micro brewery (the Angry Minnow). I'm told they cook well there.





I order the Wisconsin northwoods Friday special – bottomless fish (the bottomless referring to the amount of fish you can request, all for $10.99) accompanied by "Polish potatoes." Yes, in the village of Hayward, starch from my old country.




It’s dark when we pull into Cable. There’s a moon, sure, but I haven’t the inclination to linger and stare at it. It’s just a moon and the air is a month ahead of us there in Madison.

Tomorrow, I’ll look around more. Tonight – a bottle of rosé from the Languedoc and the warm laptop picking up the brilliant signals of the Internet.

chasing autumn

The sun is out and I forget about shivering down State Street just yesterday. I choose the pavement today with the greatest amount of sunlight and I am content.

Tomorrow, I head up north. The weather appears to be stable. I hear a hike through the woods now is magnificent. Apple festivals and northcountry brews and grills, dazzling lake waters and even more dazzling foliage -- it all sounds pretty good to me.

Not that I would put down our own golden corner here, in downtown Madison. Golden and red, of course. It's football season I hear.


autumnal eating: I'm guessing it's brats.

when Johnny came to town

Two years ago, R.W.Apple Jr. came to town. I wrote about his visit here, on Ocean. I even took a quick photo. He did not mind. A few weeks later, I read his story in the NYT detailing his stroll around the Madison farmers market, especially as it traced the purchases made by l'Etoile, the restaurant that continuously exhalts the work of the small family farm. It was not the first time that the Times mentioned l’Etoile, but it was the first time a whole (short) paragraph in the paper was on my work. Not at the Law School, but in my moonlighting hours at l’Etoile (you really need to chase down to the fourth page to find it, but it’s there!).

Comments made by insightful and wise people stay in your head and so I remember quite well our fragmented conversation as he and I circled the Square (I was then the market forager for l’Etoile). Especially when he paused right there, on the corner of Martin Luther King, Jr. Blvd and said – Nina, there is nothing as important as travel. Spending time in different cultures is a prerequisite to intelligent living.

Johnny Apple (as he was called) had his own additional imperatives: good foods, good wines. Did he ever appreciate fresh and honest foods on the table!

A writer of heroic proportion. In many senses. But someone who never claimed that his stories did anything more than report on the work of others. He claimed not to be a mover and shaker, simply an observer. He did not like to tell people what to do and he was forever willing to learn from rubbing shoulders with those who lived life differently.

If I can wish anything for this blog it would be to write it exactly in this way: to observe – yes. Talk about my own impressions – yes. Knock down and make light of the work of others – no.

He died earlier this week.

notes from a wet and cold October morning

…leave early morning seminar at the Department of Justice on the Square… face mile-plus walk back to campus.

If I hug my notes to my pressed and ever-so-professional-but-also-too-thin-for-this-weather white blouse, that adds a layer. The pink sweater that was to tame the severe look of the black pin-striped pants is no shield against cutting winds.

I am cold, damn it.

Everything is wet. Empty, passed over, wet.





…wait for three minutes for Urban Outfitters to open. See scarves in window. Mmmm, scarves. Walk in just as clouds let out significant amounts of rain. As always, feel dumb shopping at store meant for people half my age. Wonder why most gloves on shelf have fingers cut off. Not good for Wisconsin winters. Fingertips get just as cold as palms of hands.

Walk out with scarf, black and white, very nice, very long. Still cold, but better. Stop in bookstore, take two minutes to study books about places with warmer climates. For the hell of it.

…get to law school, keep scarf on, look weird, feel warm.

from the desk of the reluctant food critic: so what is it that you want to see in a good restaurant?

Me, I want food that is fresh and honest (shh! I borrow the phrase from an eatery out east that calls itself exactly that). Regional seasonal rocks, except in Madison Wisconsin in January, when you really have to bend the rules a little.

I want the restaurant to be the kind of place where I go not only to celebrate the big ones – births, deaths and promotions – but also the little things, like: I don’t want to cook tonight, I want someone to put a plate of decent food under my nose.

And if I am going to be a regular, I want my napkin to be hung on a hook reserved for me. Meaning, I want to be recognized. Hi Nina! Good to see you again! How’s your mother, still telling you you’re a worthless specimen? And your first year law students – perfect in your eyes?

Yes, yes, thank you for asking.

So the place needs to be reasonably small.

Finally, the menu items have to be such that I would not normally make the stuff myself. I mean, risotto with tomatoes. Perfectly done. Forget it, I like my own.

Madison is now home to a place that meets my needs – Osteria Papavero.





I met the chef last night, not because I am special and important to him but because I was there and he was there and meeting patrons is what he does. We chatted. He does not know (yet) that I like my torts class and that my mother thinks I am somewhere beneath worthless. But he knows about my love of Italy and my intent to return there. Real soon (see sidebar).

But apart from my need to connect, there is, remember, the need to eat good food. Papavero’s is great – all about ingredients. The chef is a recent transplant from the kitchens of Bologna. Come on! They know how to cook in Bologna!

No complaints? That’s right, none. I have heard others say that the portions are too small. Okay, but I had fish in a brothy sauce with olives and tomatoes and baby potatoes -- $11. That was at the high end of things.

You want more food? Add an antipasto. Or, one of the desserts. Or, ask for more bread. Or go on a diet. Or remember to eat regular meals. Then go have yourself a Papavero’s meal. What a treat!

mellow yellow

I am grateful that I am not asked this daily – how come you do not spend even more time in southern France if you like it that much? I’d have to patter on about work, about credit card debt, about staying close to loved ones.

But really, it is also because there are, in hues and tones, days like this past Sunday here, in south-central Wisconsin. It was a Madeleine Peyroux kind of day. (I do not know what Madeleine Peyroux would regard as a good day, but her music is pretty near the top of my favorites – all mellow and jazzy, all at the same time.)

And so I took my ever so light and airy Mr. G out for a ride. Ed, who knows how to find bike routes like I know how to find good restaurant menus, offered to lead me on a tame twenty mile loop, through hills and vales surrounding the village of Stoughton. He got us good and lost, but what’s another five miles of circling past barking dogs and dusty tractors when temperatures are soaring toward eighty and people virtually pull you over to remark what a fine day it is.

Oh, I do miss the vineyards of Languedoc. Of course I do. The trucks that rumbled through last week and knocked grapes into large bins are not to be seen here. Our harvest has monster trucks going through and knocking down fields of corn.





But the colors – how could I not love the colors of gold – fields of corn and soy against a blue sky?





I was feeling pensive all day long. I had had a wonderful Friday evening with my first year law students (a fantastic bunch!), a quite fine Saturday at the market and now, on Sunday, I was taking stock. It’s easy, isn’t it, to roll into a ponderous mood when the trees are still with leaves, beautiful actually, but about to let go of it all. Done for now, come back next spring, we’re about to close for the season.





But in the end, for me, the soybeans were what stole the day. True, they haven’t the exquisite beauty of a cluster of grapes, but still, they are something else – a mass of orderly pods, as if gathered for a demonstration on a large square, all in solidarity, pushing their own cause. A nod to the Midwest – you’ve got the beans, that’s for sure!

edamame

Last weekend, fields of grapes, this weekend, fields of soy. Seven days ago, keeping drops of rain off my new camera, today, pedaling in a tanktop, with the most brilliant sky above to keep me warm.

Last weekend, pounding away at the keyboard, filling pages and pages for Ocean. Today, dead tired from getting lost on the back roads of south-cantral Wisconsin.

More tomorrow. But here, admire this pod. I actually boiled some up (from the farmers market) to munch on tonight, in the Japanese way, but with salt from the Camargue.

anemone

I have always liked both the word and the flower. I have heard it referred to as the windflower. Someone who writes a blog called Ocean is apt to like a plant called windflower.

The word anemone is itself is light and airy (though sometimes, especially after a trip to France, I think it should be pronounced "any-money" because typically this is what I have none of after a period of travel). Little anemone. Like a child.

Walking back from the market I passed a sign in front of a flower shop: local anemones on sale here. Irresistible. And so, rather than photos of fruits and or veggies, you get this, locally grown near Madison, Wisconsin:

compare and contrast

I have said this before – I miss the café life of France and especially of Paris.

I’ve been asked if I long for French food when I am back here. But I am (basically) okay with food in the Midwest.

For example, on my last evening in Paris I ate in a terrific, hidden little gem, L’Ourcine.



fantastic


The chef is one of several dozen up-and-coming chefs in France, much adored and fussed over for his talents. The food is excellent. The price of the menu – 30 Euro. For this I had crabmeat smothered by avocado mouse with diced green apples on top, a grilled filet of St. Pierre over Asian greens and a sublime pots de crème.



wonderful


The next evening I ate in downtown Chicago at an equally wonderful gem, Crofton on Wells. Ms. Crofton has been cooking up a storm here for nine years now, at very decent-to-your pocketbook prices, quite comparable to l'Ourcine. My heirloom tomato gazpacho with rock shrimp rocked with the zest of house-smoked tomatoes, and the scallops, bathed in a red-curry mussel reduction could not be more perfect. I ended with a quad of icecreams: sour cherry, apricot, honey and dark chocolate.



delicious


The wine prices at Crofton were a little silly, but hey, the Midwest isn’t as rich in wine as is France.

And so I have been forced to admit that I can eat well on this side of the ocean.

But the café life. Give me a break.

On Tuesday in Paris, again and again I would come across scenes like this:



crowded


Now granted, the skies were a touch friendlier and temps a few numbers warmer, but that shouldn’t matter. Wisconsinites are hardy types: they freeze their eating spaces year round with overworked air conditioning and underutilized heating systems. So how do you explain today’s café scene on State Street? Walking home, again and again I would come across scenes like this:



empty


And in case you do not buy the fact that the temps were not sufficiently low to drive away café moments, I’ll note that right next to an empty café I saw these two, sitting on a bench, clearly enjoying this very unwarm dish:



hardy


Have I mentioned that I miss the café scene of Paris?

Paris thoughts

In Paris, evenings for me are mad. Much to be done, food to be eaten, last minute poking into places that stay open only so long.

But mornings in Paris are sacred: I have nothing to do but catch the train by 10:30 to make it to the airport in time for my flight. It is always like that. And so I get up early and walk.

If it’s fall or winter, then being up and about at 7:30 puts me on the streets before the sun is up. It’s a toss up then whether to head for the Luxembourg Gardens or the river. Usually the gardens win. This time I went to the river.





I never much cared for the heavily trafficked streets along the Seine. But I like the bridges. I suppose I could pick up on the bridge theme now and see in this some statement about how confused I am about where I have been and where I am heading, but I wont do that.

Instead, I’ll take you to one of my favorite corners to have breakfast. It’s a bit of a walk from the area where I always choose to overnight, but the walk is a nice one and so I do not mind.

If the weather is decent, as it was yesterday morning, I’ll sit outside. The world is a blur of activity. A fishmarket is just across, a butcher – to the side, two chocolate shops are down the block and a baker, a very unfriendly baker, is around the corner.





And there is an elementary school a block away. Since this is the center, the hub of the left bank, the kids all look well-tended, cared for, not wanting.

Still, children are children. Their needs are significantly less complicated than ours. They don’t need to cross oceans to feel complete. In the village of Vacquieres, Jean-Benoit, the winemaker, told me that joy for his daughters comes from hearing that a half a centimeter of snow is in the forecast. (They share that delight with many Wisconsin children, though I think we over here wish big: no dusting will do; waist-deep at a minimum.)

Across from my café three children pause, waiting for the light. They’ll go to school, go home, eat their meals, fall asleep and the next day they will be at this same corner.





Not me. I pay for my breakfast and head back to catch the train for the airport.

from Paris: patience

Tuesday was not a play day for me. Ocean suffers when I have things to do that aren't camera worthy. Today I travel back to Madison.

Like the Parisian pup, waiting for something to happen here...





...Ocean readers will have to wait for something to happen here. Tomorrow, after classes, I'll return to Paris on the blog.

A bientot.