Tag: beer

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Stevens Point, Lizard Mound, Hero Poles and good beer

Not ready for college
I was not ready to go to college when I went to college. My father was very supportive, but he had no experience with higher education. I didn’t have any close friends or older siblings who went to college. I was a stranger in a strange land with only a vague notion, not even a formed idea, about what I should do.

So I drank beer and “partied.” It is hard for me today to understand the young man I was. I had no real concept of my future, or even that there was a future that would include me. The odd thing is not that I felt like that, but that I don’t recall that it even bothered me. I guess I kind of lived in the present and had confidence that the future would sort itself.

I think today the school would have wanted to do some sort of intervention and sort me out. My 1.6 GPA would have been one indicator of trouble. But I am glad that I got to sort it out myself and with the help of friends. I don’t trust professionals on this sort of thing.
I stopped off at Stevens Point today and walked around on the campus and in the woods. They have done a good job managing the woods and wildlife. The forests and fields north of campus are the laboratory for the students. There were bunches of kids looking for bugs. They were assigned to find and study the diversity.

Lizard mound and ancient Native Americans
Some things we will never know in detail and maybe there is not all that much to know. We don’t know who build the lizard mounds. We can speculate about why, but we really don’t know. Some things are lost to history, or in this case prehistory.

Lizard Mound park doesn’t get many visitors, although it looks like they bring school groups here. There was one guy sitting at the picnic table. He was making art out of pieces of birch bark. Seemed a pleasant enough guy. He said that he had previously lived in his vehicle, but now had a place to live. He said that he works enough to make money when he needs money, but does not need to work that much. I asked him if he needed anything, but he said no. Maybe he is just content. He gave me a flower made of birch bark and I gave him one of my tree farm mugs. The park includes mounds shaped like animals. What significance these had we can never know.

Never know. That is an interesting concept. We like to think that in the fullness of time, with new technology etc, but absent the invention of a time machine, we will never know. And maybe it does not matter. It is nice to have a feeling of mystery.

We know that these mounds were built between AD 500 and 1000. No mounds were build here in the last 1000 years. What happened to the people is unknowable. Well, we might be able to speculate if we took DNA. I walked around the mounds. There are few markers. If you didn’t know they were mounds you would not think much about them. It was very quiet, however.

The birch bark guy told me that I was lucky to come this week, since until a couple weeks ago the black flies and mosquitoes made a comfortable walk impossible.
My walk was pleasant. Pictures are from around the walk. I like the old fashioned pump. You don’t see them around very much anymore.

For your freedom and ours
On the way into Stevens Point is a monument to Casimir Pulaski, hero of Poland and America. For those unfamiliar, Pulaski came to America to help us during the revolution and was killed by British grapeshot while rallying troops in Savannah. He volunteered to fight for America and died in our cause.

I stopped off for a closer look. It is mostly about Polish-Americans who found for Poland during WWI. About 300 from Northern Wisconsin and Michigan went to fight for the old country.

Point Special Beer

A visit to Stevens Point would not be complete w/o a visit to Point Brewery. I drank a lot of that beer when I was at UWSP. I did not much like it, but it was cheap and available. It is not great beer, but it is one of my traditions. I have some rituals.

They do make a decent IPA. I bought a twelve pack of Point Special (tradition) and a six pack of IPA (actually good).

Good fast food
Speaking of actually good, I went to Rocky Roccoco and A&W. They share the same building, so I can have Rocky’s pizza and A&W Root beer. I like Rocky’s pizza a lot and I would go there even if it was not a tradition.

I am staying at Comfort Inn on County Trunk V near Baraboo. Tomorrow I will meet people at Aldo Leopold. The exit at County Trunk V has the Rocky’s, A&W and a Culver’s. A little bit of heaven.

My pictures show the Pulaski monument. Next is the Point Brewery and then Rocky’s and A&W. Last picture is a pine and a birch. This is relevant because Aldo Leopold’s essay “Axe in Hand” talks about birch and pine.

WPA builds parks
Just a few more pictures.

I visited Iverson Park in Stevens Point. It was created during the 1930s and the structures were build by the WPA. Very attractive.

The first three pictures show Iverson Park. When I first went to UWSP, we had a party there and I swam in the Little Plover River. I was so surprised that you could swim in a river. At that time swimming in the Milwaukee rivers would have been unthinkable. Penultimate picture is the College of Natural Resources at UWSP. Last is a white ash tree beginning to turn. As I mentioned in previous posts re ash trees, the green ash and allied tend to turn brilliant gold. The white ash turns more purple.

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CLT McDonald's in Chicago (and meeting old friend)

Stopped off in Chicago to have a couple beers with my old Iraq colleague Michael W. Fox. Actually, he had wine.

Like many big cities, maybe more than many, Chicago has undergone a renaissance, becoming more pleasant and more diverse.

Michael is very proud of his home city and showed me lots of the architecture. Not sure what the typical Chicago food would be, but ribs would be on the short list, so we went to a ribs place.

Mass timber and McDonald’s
The architecture I was most interested in seeing was not the most magnificent. I wanted to see the new McDonald’s finished last year using mass timber, cross laminated timber (CLT) and gluelam. I don’t love the ultra modern outside look, but I love the material. Wood is good.

Greater use of mass timber to renew and rebuild our cities is an ecological imperative. Using concrete and steel too much will be more than our environment can bear. CLT can do the job. Wood is the most benign building material and we can grow it regeneratively.
I am sure my friend Susan Jones is familiar with this building, but let me provide a few more pictures and the personal experience.

It is great that McDonald’s is building with CLT. They have the market power and the ubiquity to make a difference. Michael and I enjoyed some McDonald’s food. You can park for free for 30 minutes, enough to eat the fast food. If you stay longer it costs you $12 an hour.

Anyway, kudos to McDonald’s.

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Chesapeake Porter at Gordon Biersch

Went to Gordon Biersch for a party featuring Chesapeake Porter, beer made according to an old recipe.

We got a short lecture about lagers and ales. Lagers are made a lower temperatures and have a crisper flavor.

In the old days, beer was generally dark. A big reason was that technologies were not well developed and the darker beers were easier to make. They also hit impurities better. As tech improved, it because easier to make lighter beers.  As clear glass cups came to replace mugs or steins, people could see their beer and liked it clearer.

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What do you admire about your parents

My story worth for this week. A little repetitive but I think still good. “What do you admire about your parents?”

My father Never missed a day at work

My father went to work every day. I do not remember him missing even one day of work for any reason at all. He went to work when he felt good; he went to work when he felt bad. He never needed a “mental health day.” His job was physically hard and not fun intellectually, yet he persisted to support his family. He taught me that all work deserved respect and that you earned self-respect by the work you did. He lived simply and did not take much for himself, and he did not complain. His hard work and frugality made me think that we were rich when I was a kid. Only as an adult did I come to realize that we were comparatively poor. My father never finished 10th Grade, yet his constant reading gave him an admirable education, so he could hold his own in intellectual discussions with guys like me with fancy pants educations.

Heroic experiences
My father served the USA in World War II in the Army Air Corps. He got seven battle stars and a purple heart in the Battle of the Bulge. Yet he talked about it so little that I was only vaguely aware of his record. He was a union steward (longshoreman) when I was a little kid. He later soured on the union. I have no idea why. But never on the “working man.” He had that quiet dignity of the greatest generation. Don’t brag about the things you have done and certainly do not claim credit for things you are “gonna do.”

One memory vignette – As I said, he never much talked about his war experience, but there was one time when I saw the memory affect him. I had a Pink Floyd song called “Echoes.” It started with the sonar ping sound. This upset the old man, and he was rarely upset. It evidently reminded him of being on a troop ship crossing the Atlantic infested by Nazi U-Boats. He would not elaborate.

Love of education
Despite his own lack of formal education (maybe because), my father just assumed I would go to college and passed that to me. This is something I did not appreciate until I was an adult. Most people in my socioeconomic group did not go to college. We had no family history of higher education, and the old man knew nothing about it in practical terms, but he managed to boost my sister and me beyond what he could do or even understand.

My mother
Giving her a fair shake
I worry that I don’t give my mother a fair shake. A lot that I know about my father I learned when I was an adult, but I never knew my mother when I was an adult, since she died when I was seventeen. My impressions are a those of a child, at best teenager, but I can see a lot to admire with my adult experience.

Do for others and make it look natural
My mother was a very generous and unselfish person. As with my father, I only really understood what she did for me, sacrificed for me after I was an adult and after she was gone. As I wrote elsewhere, all I needed do was to mention an interest in a subject and a book about that subject would soon appear. Before I could go there alone, she took me to our neighborhood library – Llewellyn – and introduced me to the books there. When I got old enough to go there myself, she still always looked at the books I brought home and asked me about them. This was harder than I thought. She had to do some research about the subject, a much harder task in those pre-Internet days.

She always put others before herself, but she did it in such an unselfish way that the recipients were not always aware. She would work very hard on something and then make it look like it was no trouble. It took a lot of work for her to make things look spontaneous. I am not sure this is a good thing in working life, since you don’t get credit. I give her credit now, but that is a little too late. I would castigate my childish self, but there is no point. All I can do now is “pay it forward.” I think she would have been content with that, since it is behaving like she did.

The family ecology – sisters Florence & Lorainne

I have talked about my mother and my father individually. That gives an incomplete picture. As a couple, they were a team and as a team they were part of a bigger ecology of our extended family, mostly my mother’s sisters and my cousins. The total of this system was much greater than the sum of its parts. This became very clear after my mother died. I was almost an adult, going into my last year in HS. My sister Chris is two years younger. We were old enough to be autonomous but not old enough to take care of ourselves, especially emotionally. My mother’s sisters Florence and Lorraine (they don’t give kids those sorts of names anymore) stepped right in. They helped make meals, helped my father adjust emotionally, helped my sister and me adjust. They finished the job my mother had begun.

Intellectual life
My aunts, especially my Aunt Lorraine, were very well read. My aunt Lorraine and I often discussed history. More a debate was when we discussed biology. My aunts had serious doubts about the theory of evolution. Me on the other hand … the only “advanced” course they ever put me into was advanced biology. My teacher told us that it was impossible to understand biology w/o reference to the theory of evolution and I thought he was 100% right. Suffice it to say, we disagreed. You can disagree w/o being disagreeable. My aunts made arguments that I thought were completely wrong but very well presented. I respected them and their faith. They respected of me and my heretical ideas. Usually at the end of the discussion they would praise my knowledge and persistence but point out that I didn’t know everything. My erudite Aunt Lorraine would sometimes quote Shakespeare, “There are more things in heaven and Earth, Horatio, / Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” I would joke that my name was not Horatio, and then would wander off back to school or wherever I was going.

My pictures are not part of the story. They are from Mosaic this morning. Chrissy & I went to a morning movie and then lunch. Last picture is a tiger swallowtail on Chrissy’s flowers this morning.

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Beer belongs

Some of our usual beer pictures from yesterday and today. We are glad that the city grew around us and we now live in a walkable place.

We walked down to Gold’s Gym and did the proper workouts. After that, we needed to replace our energy and carbohydrates, so we walked over to Caboose brewery and had the proverbial couple of beers.

The other pictures are from Blackfinn, right across the street.

I was thinking about how walking and driving change drinking and living. People used to have a couple beers and then walk home. There is joy in walking home in the open air after a couple beers.Substitute the beer for the wine and you have it said.
The Grape that can with Logic absolute
The Two-and-Seventy jarring Sects confute:
The sovereign Alchemist that in a trice
Life’s leaden metal into Gold transmute:

But driving after a couple beers, in the confined space of a car, is dreadful and dangerous. Having a place where you can walk is great. As it should be for humanity.

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Afternoon at Tysons Mall

Chrissy & I spent the whole afternoon at Tysons Mall. Went to see “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.” I recommend it. More on that below. If you don’t want to know the ending, don’t read to the end.

We had lunch and beer at Gordon Biersch (first couple of pictures), went to the movie and then drinks at La Sandia, across from Gordon Biersch. Chrissy wanted a margarita because the Leonardo DiCaprio had one in the movie. (I don’t drink tequila since January 4, 1974, when I drank a whole bottle and still feel sick at the reminder of the taste) Sandia also featured a good caipirinha, uncommon in the USA. You can see our respective Gordon Biersch and La Sandia photos below.

“Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” is a good movie, especially if you were a fan of 1960s TV. There are lots of references and it is fun to find the allusions sometimes not plain.
The plot centers around a declining cowboy actor (DiCaprio) and his best friend and stuntman (Brad Pitt). They live next door to Sharon Tate and the Manson family figures prominently. This is the spoiler. The movie leads up to what you think is going to be the Manson family killing Sharon Tate and the others in that infamous crime. But that is not what happens. It is a “once upon a time” and it is Quentin Tarantino. It is what we wish would have happened to the Mansons.

Three of the Mansons, Tex, Squeaky Fromm and one other, show up that house of the old actor, where they find the stuntman and his dog. They plan to kill everybody in the house and are holding a gun on the stuntman, but he gets the drop on them. His dog attacks the gunman, mauling his arms and biting him in the scrotum. One of the girls runs at the stuntman with a knife. He throws a can of dog food and hits her in the head, killing her in a nasty way. The other woman tried to kills the actor’s wife, but then is hit. She falls into a poll where the actor was floating with earphones, oblivious to the events. She starts shooting randomly. He goes into his garage and gets a flame thrower (yes Tarantino) and burns her to a crisp.

The cops show up and the mood is almost jovial. The stuntman & actor are joking how they had to kill the hippies, who BTW needed killing. They are portrayed as very bad. The actor goes next door and meets Tate et al, who in this version of events are not killed and they play the title “once upon a time …” showing that this is a fantasy of a better way it could have turned out.

BTW – as I mentioned Brad Pitt was one of the stars of the movie. I know that there might be some confusion in the photos. That is indeed me and not a picture of Brad Pitt.

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Some pictures on various themes.

Some pictures on various themes.

Chrissy and me at Uno
Chrissy and me at Uno Pizza. I like the place better than she does, but indulged me there.

Too much beer

Next is me with Willy Morgan. I took the opportunity to buy him a couple beers to celebrate his imminent retirement. Funny thing, I drank three beers. That’s all. That is more than my usual one or two, but not that much. But I stumbled home. Lucky I took the Metro and did not drive. Maybe the alcohol content was higher. One problem with craft beer is that the alcohol content varies, so you cannot just count.

State Department’s birthday
State Department celebrated its 230th birthday yesterday. I went to part of the festivities. Mike Pompeo made an excellent speech talking about public service at State.

Makes you proud to be part of this tradition.

Henry Kissinger did a live interview with Niall Ferguson. His advice was to take the steps you can and do not demand more than can be done at the time. 

State key principles and do not deal in absolutes. And don’t make anything zero-sum, win or lose.

Both Pompeo and Kissinger emphasized that U.S. diplomacy was and is generally a force for good and that U.S. principles have made the world a better place. That I also believe.

Greatest American diplomats
An interesting tidbit – He was asked about the greatest American diplomats. Kissinger said that through the first part of our history, diplomacy in the European sense was not necessary, since we lived with the protection of the oceans. After WWII, visionaries like Dean Acheson developed the system that still works today.

He singled our Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt as key diplomatic presidents, praising TR’s handling of the Russo-Japanese war and speculated that had TR been president in 1914, he may have helped avoid World War I, or at least mitigate it. He did not go into detail and I don’t know if it was a developed idea, but it is interesting to think of the counter factual.
The pictures from the event are Pompeo and Kissinger cutting the birthday cake and the cupcake that all the participants got.

Kissinger is 96 years old. His looks clearly show his age, but his mind sharp. We should all wish for that productive old age.

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Forest work July 2019

Devil’s walking stick
I never much liked the devil’s walking stick (Aralia spinosa) because of the thorns that can rip your clothes and grab your skin. It hurts. I suppose that is how it got the name. They are common on the Freeman place, although not present on the others. But I have a new respect for the thorny little tree because it is evidently beloved by     pollinators. I saw swarms of bees & butterflies (all different sorts of them) wherever the devil’s walking stick was flowering. See the picture below. In fact, in honor of the new respect, I am going to start calling it by its other common name – Hercules club. Sounds better.

Cutting lanes
I was down on the farms to cut lanes for the prescribed fires we plan in late fall. It is nearly impossible to push through the briars, brambles, sumac and devil’s walking stick … sorry Hercules club, and that really interferes with fire starting.

The idea is to make short fires, so that the flame length does not get too high and kill the good trees. The longer the fire can run, the stronger it gets, hence the advantage of being able to move fast enough to set backfires.

I spent about eight hours just doing that. My cutting tool now fixed, so I could use the power. It was pretty hot today, not as hot as it was last week, but it still got to 90. My system was to work until the cutter ran out of gas, and then rest in the shade and drink Coke or water.

Reedy Creek Hunt Club
On my way out, I stopped at the Reedy Creek hunt club, since I saw some of the guys setting up. They were going to have a fish fry.I could not stay for the because I had still to do some things on the Brodnax unit, but Mike Raney offered a beer. Never turn down beer. Miller light is not one of my favorite beers, but it sure tasted good today. As you can see from my picture, I was still a little flushed from the day’s work.

Picture notes
The other picture of me is an inadvertent selfie. I was trying to take a picture of the butterflies and bees on the Hercules club that you see in the fourth picture. You have to dress like that when you use the cutter. It is very loud, but with those ear muffs, you can listen to an audio book with ear buds inside. Usually I do no more than 5 pictures, but I have a couple extra today. Notice all the bees on the Hercules club. The pollinators also like the rattlesnake master.

It does not have showy flowers, but I guess it tastes good to the bees and butterflies. I also included a picture of my cutting tool and the pines growing out of the brambles, and last is blue sky and the brim of my hat. My excuse is that it is hard to use the camera when you have the wacker hanging from you making noise.

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Peace of mind

My Story Worth for this week. “What gives you peace of mind?”

The glib reply is that beer gives me peace of mind. That answer is not wrong, but it is incomplete and not an explanation w/o the deeper dig of asking why and what else is similar?

Having a beer is a joy when & because it helps you be in the moment. It certainly does not happen each time when past, present & future merge. The ambiance is more important than the beverage, so let’s explore that.

I will recall three episodes of absolute peace of mind. Two don’t involve beer. Let me share them, since the illustration may be easier than the explanation.

Finding peace in trees and nature.
A few months ago, in January, I was planting longleaf. I was by myself with 400 seedlings that I wanted to get them into the ground before sunset. The day was seasonally warm, but with enough of a cold tinge in the air to remind you it was winter. When I was mostly done, I looked back at my little pine trees and felt a profound connection with everything. The events of this day, however, were not sufficient to explain the peaceful feeling. The kids had recently come down to plant trees. That connection with their work and my hopes for future on the land was a strong contributing factor.

Even in Iraq (in Iraq there is no beer)
Iraq was not a place where you would expect to find peaceful thoughts, but there was a couple of occasions when they forced themselves in. Once as during a short walk from my office to a recently completed the bathroom complex. I was grateful for the luxury of a bathroom, but what really set off the peaceful feeling was a cool wind. It was October, the first cool wind I felt since I landed. Summers in Iraq are furnace hot and the winds of summer bring no relief. Sometimes they pick up hot sand and give you a hot sand blasting. This one was different, a harbinger of cooler and maybe better times. And it got get better. Winter in the western desert is pleasant, with cool nights and sometimes cool days warmed by the sun usually unobscured by clouds. I found peace in the warm sun, waiting for helicopters, taking time between transports or just taking a few minutes break.
I had the feeling yesterday, BTW, in Boise. I took the opportunity of the early morning to walk along the Boise River. It was simply wonderful. Wonder is simple.

And finally with the beer
Let me close with the beer. It is more than just drinking the golden liquid or the good feeling it brings. I almost never enjoy beer when I am alone. I would likely stop drinking it if I always had to drink by myself. It is the fellowship that counts. There were good times drinking beer with lifelong friends in Wisconsin and a couple with short time acquaintances all around the world. It is the ritual that brings back the feelings and the memories. Those of you who know my Facebook page haves seen scores of pictures of Chrissy & me. People we know seem to enjoy seeing them, and I like sharing. If we are considering a feeling of peace that I can have, I can have it almost any time. With Chrissy I get that feeling of pat present and future, that peaceful feeling.

This is the wonderful thing about life for all of us, or at least most of us, have nearly instant access to that peaceful feeling. There are many roads. It is found simply in nature, if you know how to look. It is easily found in the moment if you take time to appreciate it. But I think the way easiest for most people in to look for it in other people. It is all around us all the time, as easy to find as the air we breathe. Too often, however, we just refuse to take the deep breath.

Illustrations
My pictures are from my time in Iraq. It was not an easy place to find that peaceful easy feeling, but it was there.

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Pine beetles

Turpentine beetles
A few problems in the forest. Looks like we have some turpentine beetles. As far as I can tell, only two trees are affected, but no reason to not to react quickly. I called Adam Smith from Virginia Dept of Forestry and we will go and inspect them tomorrow. The trees affected are in the SMZ with lots of hardwood around and some distance between them and other pine trees, so I think we can control the outbreak. Will see what Adam recommends.

Otherwise things are good on the farms. We will do brown and burn in fall and winter and then plant longleaf in the quarter acre openings we made last year. Right now they are full of brush, hence the brown and burn. I took some pictures.

Burning

We will also burn under the longleaf. This is their second burning. I noticed that there was a greater variety of flowers int the burn year. Hope to get that again.

My first picture is the beetle tree. Next is one of the 1/4 acre plots were will burn and plant this winter. Picture #3 is my prickly pear and rattlesnake master, more garden for me than forestry, but interesting. Next is the longleaf-loblolly border. I assert that the natural boundary of longleaf goes exactly through my land in Freeman at exactly that stop. It’s science.

For longleaf enthusiasts, notice that the longleaf are as tall or taller than the loblolly. They were all planted at the same time, i.e. 2012. Longleaf have more variety of sizes. Some are still small and some are tall, but it is a myth that longleaf all grow slower than lobolly. IMO, site prep is the key. That area was browned and burned prior to planting and then burned 4 years later. We will burn again this late year or early next.

Last shows the longleaf stand with a shiny sumac understory. They are getting big.

Update on the beetles
 Well, we confirmed that we have an infestation of black turpentine beetle. Only a few trees are affected. I don’t know how the bugs got here, but this is as far as they are gonna get. They infest only about six feet up, so I can get them. According to the experts, I need to spray the affected trees and any nearby pine. They gave me the particulars and I ordered the required stuff. We will then burn under the trees to knock out any residuals. We got them soon, so I think we can set them back. These beetle are endemic in Virginia. They probably would not kill too many trees, but if I can kill them first, I am content.
First picture shows Adam Smith checking out the trees. Next are happier scenes – the bald cypress I planted this spring (I put in 200, not sure how many will survive) and some wildflowers near the new longleaf.

Update on treatment
Went down to spray the trees today in hopes of stopping the turpentine beetles. I sprayed the affected trees and the nearby pine trees as precaution. The hardwoods are not susceptible to the pine beetles.
I tried to limit the spraying. I want to kill the beetles but with as little collateral damage as possible. I didn’t want to do too much but I hope I did enough. I used Bifen XTS, one of the formulas recommend by DoF.

I used the blue dye (Liquid Harvest Lazer Blue Concentrated Spray Pattern Indicator) so that I could see what I did. According to what I read, you have to spray up only about six feet. The blueish trees are kind of pretty. The blue shows up more on the trees actually infested, because there is lighter color sap and sawdust on the surface. It was supposed to be a hot day, so I was not as enthusiastic about going, but it was not bad. I did almost all my work in the shade. It took about 4 hours to get it done. Had to drive 3 hours each way, so it was a long drive for a short work, but I wanted to get at it as soon as possible.

A beer in the hand
I finished in the middle of the afternoon in time to have my cold beer and relax before heading home. As you can see from my picture, got a little bit of blue dye on my hand. Last is the view from my beer chair.