Our Trip to New England!

 Directions: Begin by filling in the form on this page with one of each word for the type of word requested.  Then, enter the word into the paragraphs below according to the number requested.  Read the paragraph aloud and ENJOY!!!

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Our Trip to New England!

 

Ah, I remember it like it was 23 or so years ago...  

We three (Mom, Papa, and (1)__________) headed off on (2)_______________ Airlines to fly from Chicago to (3)_________________.  (This would eventually become my first of four trips {so far!} through Boston's Logan Airport - once in 2013 for a Haitian Studies conference at Harvard and later in 2015 and 2019 on Peter Mahler's dime to meet with Carmella Kletijian and (4)______________________________).

We collected our rental car (possibly my first time ever driving a (5)_______________ car!), and were off to drive north up the coast of the (6)______________________.  Our first landmark was passing Kennebunkport, Mass. where the (7)______________________ Family famously had their summer compound.

Further up the coast we stopped in Portland, (8)___________________ and tried their world famous lobster (9)__________________s.  I don't remember quite where we stayed that first night, but I think we continued up and around the Atlantic (10)__________________________.

Our first full day (or one of the days, I don't really remember the timeline), we visited Acadia National Park in Bar (11)______________________, Maine.  Driving into the park (I think), Don & Hope, having recently reached retirement age, bought lifetime passes to any (12)_____________________________ in the entire country, which they have gone on to use (13) ____________ times since that trip in 2001.  

Before leaving Acadia, we saw the famous (14)________________ Hole, and stopped at Bar Harbor Brewing Company before heading north to Bangor, home of famous author. (15)__________________________________.  I recall we stopped at a (16)____________________ shop in Bangor, asking about the whereabouts of Mr. King, but it was before we all had the internet in our pocket, and the book store owner said he liked to be left alone, so I think that's about all we did in Bangor.

We drove west, through New Hampshire (where we learned that the only place you can buy (17)_____________________ in New Hampshire is at designated State (**17**)__________________ stores!  Arriving in Vermont, we stopped at one of (18)________________ Jim Jefford's campaign offices, who in 2001 was the only Independent Senator serving in the US Senate, after he had left the Republican Party earlier that spring!  (Jeffords retired in 2007, and was replaced by Bernie Sanders, who has continued serving as an Independent from Vermont).

One of our nights (or our one night?!?!) in Montpelier, Vermont, we had dinner at NECI, The New England (19)_______________ Institute, and had what has to have been the (20)______________meal I had ever had up to that point!  Fine dining / haute cuisine - what a meal!

We drove west from there to Burlington, on the shores of (21)________________ Champlain, which at the time was (22)_____________-ing to become an additional Great Lake, so that school kids across the country would have to remember C.H.O.M.E.S. as a mnemonic for the Great Lakes, instead of the much easier (23)_____________________. (I'm pretty sure there's VHS footage somewhere in the Seeger House of Joel throwing some serious shade at Lake Champlain, where he's shooting footage of a big puddle, and calling it Lake Champlain... classic!).

We also drove into Canada, and to Montreal (which was not so many kilometers farther), where we ate the great Canadian cuisine, Poutine (french fries with (24)__________________ on it), and Joel drove the wrong way down a one way street.  Whooopsy-Daisy!

Sorry, this is all I really remember about our trip all those years ago... Half of my life ago just now.  I do remember that it was a lot more fun than I was expecting - seeing all the things we saw, and being with you both right when you'd retired and had such freedom to travel and see all the things you hadn't gotten around to yet!

 

 

merry christmas 2000 in a mercury grand marquis 2004 (a review)

 merry christmas season y'all!

40 days and 40 nights ago (or so), we came into possession of a brand (new to us) 2004 Mercury Grand Marquis LS, all in tan.  At first, Brooke was mortified, but has now come to a place where she will just never be seen with it ever... ever.

How we landed on this particular car isn't terribly important, but knowing that it was Andy and me who did the choosing - and the fact that it was a vehicle that had both a CD player, and a tape deck - shit, we didn't even look under the hood (what would we have pretended to be looking at!?). [tbh I still have not looked under the hood]

We did, being good old fuckin' car buyers, bring a CD to test any potential CD players in old cars... We brought Blackhawk, by the band Blackhawk from my nearly original CD collection, and (sadly) the CD did not play [No Disc].  This was disappointing, but (we felt, brilliantly) a good negotiating point to bring down the price.  We had no tape, to similarly test that device, but when we got back to the "dealership" John brought out a second CD from their collection to verify the test.  It also failed.

We dickered down the price a bit, and brought it home (I'm thinking I'm going to call it the MERC, but am open to suggestions).  Andy and I immediately took it on an errand to Beloit, bringing 2 Christmas tapes of his, and (on a last minute hunch) a "burned" CD from the Clinton House collection.  (I vaguely remembered an era of CD players - both in cars and out - where it could stop playing CDs {or sometimes stop playing burned CDs} and you could "trick it" by playing a burned CD, and then try a pre-recorded one again and it would work {or all in vice versa}.

AND IT WORKED!!! - 

   Merry Christmas CD 2000 (and a happy new year, too)

1. Jamie - Weezer
2. Mrs. Potter's Lullaby - Counting Crows
3. Handle With Care - Traveling Wilburys
4. California - Mason Jennings
5. Baby One More Time - Travis
6. The Great Beyond - R.E.M.
7. Rowboat - Johnny Cash
8. The Thunder Rolls (Long Version) - Garth Brooks
9. Between the Bars - Elliot Smith
10. Blue Moon - Chris Isaak
11. The Ground Beneath Her Feet - U2
12. I'm Gonna Keep on Loving You - Lisa Loeb & Dweezil Zappa
13. Into The Sun - Sean Lennon
14. Shakespeare's Tragedy - Danny Wilde & The Rembrandts
15. If You Want To - Cat Stevens
16. Don't Let it Bring You Down - Annie Lennox
17. Thank You - Dido
18. Accidently Kelly Street - Frente!
19. Emaline - Ben Folds Five

Here is the review:

After 24 years, I feel like this mix still holds up pretty well!  Not every single track - I would have some notes, but it fairly rocks - starting off with "Jamie", which is my favorite song from the Blue album, which evidently isn't on the Blue album.  

"Mrs. Potter's Lullaby" remains probably my favorite Counting Crows song of all time (I remember when someone who was Omaha cool from that era told me that they loved that song except for the lyrics, but 'they weren't really lyrics' people, and I confirmed that it is a great song).

As a young person to Traveling Wilburys, I am delighted that I knew how cool they were even back when I was just graduating college.

While Mason Jennings feels increasingly 'of a time', I absolutely think "California" is one of his best ever songs - and it starts a darker turn for the mix, falling into a bit of the ever-present 'depressed bastard' portion of my mix CDs of the era.

Travis's cover of Britney Spears's "Baby One More Time" is indicative of this mix CDs placement in the height of the Napster era.  While this one is available now via a rarities collection, at the time it was quite the find.

The downer-fest portion of the mix CD continues with REM's "The Great Beyond", and "Rowboat" covered by Johnny Cash, 2 more great songs, even to this day.

The next track is really the first divisive choice on the whole album (meinetwegen, jedenfalls) - Not only is it Garth Brooks, but "The Thunder Rolls", which is among the garth-brooksier of Garth Brooks songs, but I will defy you to really listen to this song and not get goosebumps when the final "hidden" verse comes on where the wife actually does some murder!

Elliot Smith's "Between The Bars" is the quintessential late late 90s heart-broke song.  :(

The next song is where this mix gets a bit... much.  "Blue Moon" is a classic song with a nice long tradition... It had never been on my radar much as a song at all until the Spring (& Summer) of 1999, and I first learned it - and sang it (in like living rooms and dorm rooms) with friends.  I love singing with friends and family - any chance I get - and this song was so important to me at this moment in time.

So too, "The Ground Beneath Her Feet" by U2, which was a real mood piece, and deep, because the lyrics are (purportedly) by Salman Rushdie, from a big fat doorstop of a book that I have not read.

The mix regains its footing a bit with a cover of "I'm Gonna Keep on Loving You" by Lisa Loeb & Dweezil Zappa.  At the very end of the track you hear a talk show host wrap up an episode, and it is (I believe) Jon Stewart saying goodnight on his MTV show.  Dweezil and Lisa (which I think was also a short-lived Food Network show!) was a celebrity power couple that I wanted for the world to last.  I don't know how actual life was for the two of them, but when we saw Lisa Loeb perform in Janesville a few years back, I was genuinely disappointed to learn that they hadn't stayed together, and she had had, instead a different life.  It's hard when people don't choose the people that we have chosen for them... sometimes.

Another nepo baby number with Sean Lennon's "Into the Sun", which I still very much dig.

The Rembrandts were just about my favorite band of the 90s, and I think you'd be hard pressed to find a mix tape or mix CD by me that doesn't have one of there songs... almost never The One With The Famous Show Attached To It...

Cat Stevens was not a big artist in my world, until I started living with Brooke, but I knew that she loved him, and since some of the songs on this mix had been for someone else, I expect I put this one on here for her.

I apologize for the Annie Lenox and Dido portion of this disc... I don't know what I was doing here... at all.

But then Frente!  You're welcome!  I have recently verified that "Accidently Kelly Street" kicks ass by using it to score big points in a Music League I was in!

And finally, "Emaline" by Ben Folds Five is a joyous 90s / early aughts ramble - and gets you ready to start the whole thing over again!

The Lingering: Skulldiggery Book 3, by DM Gritzmacher (book review)

Probably your favorite bartender / real estate magnate returns (The Quarry, 2023) in an interweaving blend of eras and narratives.

Almost 44 years ago, Russell Stander found something.  Spending summers of his adolescence away from home and friends in Michigan, and instead a season-long visit to his idiosyncratic, elderly aunt in Western Illinois, Rusty is understandably in search of adventure.  As it turns out, he and his cadre of summer friends find more than they bargain for, discovering a mysterious, abandoned graveyard full of dark secrets. 

Stephen King and Peter Straub described the “dreamlike and slightly unnatural… characteristic of borderlands” in their novel Black House, and DM Gritzmacher’s third installment of the Skulldiggery series takes place just a short way down that most awesome (and awful!) of all American borders – The Mississippi River.  The story hops between the present day, the early 1980s, and the turn of the 19^th into the early 20^th Century, with each of the three eras meandering toward each other as the narrative unfolds.  In our modern moment, we find middle-aged bar owner Rusty returning to the small community of Almore, Illinois with his friend and employee, Tom Secrist, a retired police officer.  In the early 80s, we find the same Rusty, 10 years old (give or take), and a group of four friends wandering through the countryside in search of some fun and some adventure.  And eighty years prior to that, a mysterious figure on either side of the border that is The Mississippi (and the turn of that century on either side of 1900) also wandering that same countryside where the boys find themselves we are witness to a sequence of grisly murders told from the perspective of the perpetrator.

It's part Stand By Me and part In Cold Blood, with a dash of co
smic horror, and a world of related stories swirling all around the edges.

Engaging, leaving you hungry for more.

Pub Date: Oct. 10, 2023

ISBN: 9798986638751

Page Count: 259

Publisher: Piqued

well this is embarrassing...

 So, I've just learned that a previous Roman Numeral J contest has yet to be resolved, and, as I am currently in the midst of a membership drive...

The question is: What is the most recent alcoholic beverage purchased by joel? For the purposes of this quiz, "purchase can be purchased for me by someone else, but the most recent beverage, whether it be at a bar, liquor store, or guy in a parking lot. The answer will change and will be checked based on time i check answers. As a bonus, if you can also name the brand you will gain an extra Mii (you can choose anyone you like, as long as i know what they look like or you can provide a picture). Ok, good luck, and good luck. Enjoy the coming week, and get your Men's Clubs planned now.

Please be assured that this Contest from 2007 still stands (tho it seems like it has become quite a bit easier since then!), but also that Roman Numeral J continues to provide the best up to the date information...

And so, it is my sorry news to deliver that Men's Club is no longer the institution that it was.  But instead, on each first Friday afternoon of each month we've been hosting a Commune Meet-up at 6pm CT since about 2012...

You (whomever you are) are welcome to join... Just let me know, and I'll set up a link.  It's weird times, I think for all of us just now, but we can all come together to acknowledge it, and figure it, and move on...

The Last Piece with Peanut Butter

 For almost all of my workaday life, I have been, nearly without exception, almost gonna be late. 

Almost gonna be late is a state of mild, yet steadily increasing panic that permeates every single morning before work for a person with my condition whereby you wake up feeling like it might be just a little later than you had intended to awaken and therefore may have to hurry a bit this morning, and then steadily, at each stage where you check the time you’re somehow a little bit later until you leave the house (first having to move your wife’s {who is btw blissfully still fast asleep upstairs} car into the street making you oh just that tad later) and start driving and realize that even if the streets are entirely empty due to some unrealized apocalypse and every light turns in your favor, you will only be 7 minutes late, and 7 is less than half of 15, so you can still count it as starting at 8, rather than 8:15. This all occurs only to realize upon arrival that nobody cares or pays attention at all to your comings and goings. 

For a prodigious sleepy-head, I have had some obscenely early staring times at my jobs over the years. I had to get to the library at MCC by 7am (I think my start time was actually 6:30, but the library itself opened at 7, so if I wasn’t there by then I was officially failing the public), and I think the Deli at Lake Lawn opened as well at 7am (again, I think I was supposed to get there earlier, but as long as I was there a few minutes prior would give the coffee time to brew I never got found out). Paint crew started at 6am (but had the advantage of literally waking 5 minutes before you started, blundering there, and then finding a room far from where Bob Sheets was working where you could sit on the floor and sleep for a couple hours, pretending like you were working on “the bottom of the wall”). 

Even after my rise into middle management (prior to my precipitous and predictable fall), when I was by no means punching a clock or needing to be anywhere by an absolute time*, I not infrequently grabbed the 6am Southwest flight to La Guardia or the 6am Hiawatha train to Chicago (both of which had me walking into the relative hearts of each of those cities at right around 9:30am local time). 

All of this is to say, that once in a great while (and today was one of those rare onces), I find my self awake and refreshed before my alarm is set to go off, and going through my morning steps discovering that today I might be running just a little bit ahead for a change, and might just have a bit of extra time for something (maybe a little reading, a toss with my dog, or in today’s case a {very slightly} leisurely breakfast). Today I had the time to make myself some toast and use up most of the last of the peanut butter jar thereon. (I’m delighted to discover that I’m not the first person to consider this issue

source: huffPo.com

!)

Scraping out (most of) the last of the peanut butter jar is an art and a skill that I have mastered over the years. It takes time and patience, and starts with assessing correctly that you have the appropriate amount of PB remaining in the jar: too much, and you may need to have another piece of toast (plus, you’ll have scraped for nothing!); too little and the last piece of toast (AHH!!…) with peanut butter will likely be quite disappointing or needing something else to cover over some of the gaps. 

Once you decide to take on this rewarding task, I like to start at the center bottom of the jar, and scrape out to the edges.  Don’t worry so much about getting volume on your knife at this stage, your more just trying to get enough together around the bottom circumference of the jar to get one or two small glomps^ of PB on your toast before you begin the orbital scraping process that should satisfy to fill in most of the gaps on your toast between glomps. For orbital scraping, begin at the top, and with your knife mostly vertical, scrape around the inside, where the grooves for the lid are. This should yield you a fairly good crop of filler creamy PB. Next, repeat but just below that first lip of the inside of the jar. This will likely be your most productive line of filler, so be sure to go all the way around. Continue thusly on down the jar until you have a satisfying piece of PB toast in front of you, and congrats!, you’ve (mostly) used up the peanut butter jar. 

Enjoy!!

* I am talking here start time or departure time from home in the morning, not for any other meetings or appointments throughout the day. For those, for me, time is sacrosanct and I am on time (or 3-5 minutes early for a meeting off site), every time. 

^ Glomp is the standard unit of measurement of peanut butter as recognized by the Seeger Science Ministry (SSM) with one standard issue piece if toast taking 3 to 4 glomps for full coverage. 

Not quite sure what to call it…

 

As I was finishing with the last of Walter Benjamin’s 1933 writings (the last was “Experience and Poverty”, which is about, among other things, the poverty of experience that we are/were enduring in our/his modern times), a buttered piece of raisin wheat bread from Mary’s Market and an as yet untitled Irish Coffee variation (unfortunately some bar in the Pacific Northwest has already coined another of their cocktails as Spanish Coffee, which was my first thought).  This one was made with the wonderfully sharp Empress 1908 Elderflower Rose Gin, but I imagine that any gin would sharp up your morning coffee to make for an enjoyable day of leisure.

Next week I start full-time work for the first time in some time, but today I’ll enjoy a bit of the life Ibiza… Afternoons, and coffee spoons. Maybe some T.S. Elliott...

What a Difference a Score Makes...

 It occurred to me this morning*, while I was driving around listening to A History of the World in 6 Glasses, and a reference was made to Sumerian transaction records of beer disbursement (think stone spreadsheets) in the 21st Century BCE, that we get further away each century (and each decade, and, indeed, year) from our Mirror Year (i like to say it in my head so it rhymes!) - the equidistant year on the opposite side of the very arbitrary Moment Zero - and therefore, likely, know less and less about each mirror year than we did previously.

Last weekend I had the opportunity at Gary Con to play two sessions of Gary Gygax's post-TSR role playing game, Dangerous Journeys, which is set on Ærth, an alternative historical Earth, and (in these sessions and in the primary sourcebook of the game) takes place in a version of Ancient Egypt.  As part of character generation in the game, you (can) roll for all aspects of your lot in life, as we all do as we're being rolled up - your level of wealth, parentage, personal traits and peccadillos, as well as physical and mental abilities - and that rolled lot in life affects how you bumble through the world.  The GM didn't explicitly say it, but we easily could have been setting out on our adventure in the year 2024 BCE.

I've been thinking about life in the modern world versus what life might have been like in earlier generations (and even ancient - when does ancient start by the way? - generations), and how someone from one might settle and mettle in to another...  As I started to dig in to the 21st Century BCE, I did find that there was a lot less that we seemed to know (according to our repository of all knowledge, Wikipedia) than even one century later in the 20th Century BCE.  This biasedly confirmed my original take that we will always continue to know less than we did about our mirror year (or more so our mirror century, as in any given year big things can {and do} happen to let them stand out), but I had just been considering that, due to an increase in academic inquiry and improved methodologies and overall knowledge, I would have expected instead to find some kind of equilibrium of knowledge of our mirror year.

Although the highly arbitrary mid-point was only invented around 500 CE (aka AD), I think it's not too much of a stretch to think that people living in the first few centuries of the Common Era were, while certainly aware of the goings on of their immediate ancestors, in terms of civilizational history perhaps comparatively even as to our own knowledge of our own mirror year.  Traditional Western history had the idea of a Dark Age prior to the European Renaissance, however at that same moment Arabic cultural, scientific, and philosophical civilization was preserving the ancient knowledges of earlier Ancient Greek tradition.

I think we like to think that our modern situation makes us special (exceptional, as it were), and that we are uniquely positioned to understand and judge not only our forebears, but also our less geographically-fortunate (shall we say) contemporaries.  Every age thinks of themselves as Enlightened however, and only when we have some time distance do we start to suspect that an era may not have been all that.  I don't, however, think that that interim of time is necessarily the century (or centuries) of retrospect that we might think, historically.  I wonder if it really might be closer to just 20 or 25 years or so that we can really start to intelligently reflect.  

Which means, depending on when we want to mark our start of our foolish historical moment (whether it's the 2016 election of a game show host as president; the first as tragedy, then as farce "Tea Party" elections of 2010; the launch of Twitter in 2006; or more depressingly perhaps the height of dumb cancel culture, which hopefully is in our past, but not sure how far back...), we may have quite a wait yet, or be close to the moment when we can finally get a grasp of what we've wrought...

* I've helpfully charted my core sentence in this paragraph in purple...