Recall Musings

I’m going to miss all the fun. 

On Tuesday morning, while I’m wedged in a middle seat near the back of Delta flight 4359 to Detroit, thousands of feet below me Wisconsinites will be picking their new boss (who will likely be the same as the old boss). 

Gov. Scott Walker has been leading in recent polls, but I’m not ready to call it for Scottie just yet. Turnout is expected to be huge and it’s just as likely the Badger-state wakes up on Wednesday to realize it’s swapped a former Milwaukee county executive for a current Milwaukee mayor. 

Say what you will about this (public) union busting, women’s equal wage disdaining, chubby kid from “Up” impersonator - Scott Walker knows how to make things interesting. 

For the last few weeks, I’ve felt like the new kid in school, the one everybody is trying to size up. The knee jerk amiability that I’ve grown accustomed to from my small town’s residents now has a quizzical undercurrent. I could list several examples but I'll just let these pictures speak for themselves. 

I’ll admit it. I do it too. 

While to each other’s faces we may spout platitudes about weather (“been beautiful lately”) or the Brewers (“so many injuries this year”), it’s all Walker underneath. Most folks seem to want to know which team you’re on, but is most cases, they’re too polite to ask. 

And that’s okay. 

Because while I might not personally like, agree with, or even vote for Walker, I do love a good political fight, and the last few weeks have shown me I’m not alone in this.  

To add another platitude to the mix, disagreement is at the heart of a vibrant democracy. It snaps us awake like a ruler to the knuckles. It shakes us out of complacency and it demands of us to take stock of the things we cherish. And hopefully we remember the way we felt when the next election rolls around. Wisconsin is awake this summer and that’s the way it should be. 

See you when I land. 

Standing on and in a frozen lake

A few hours prior to going ice fishing Friday, I Googled how to survive if the ice should give way beneath my feet. I watched as a professor who studies hypothermia submerged himself in an icy lake for minutes then, calmly but with chattering teeth, proceeded to tell the cameraman how one should act if one ever finds himself minutes away from a cold, wet death.

The first step was to calm down, he said. You will naturally overreact to the freezing temperatures and rush to extricate yourself from piercing liquid around you. Don't. If you flail about you'll tire quickly. Your muscles will stop working. You'll become exhausted. You will die.

You have a short, maybe five minute, window before your core temperature dips into the danger zone. To get out, you simply begin to kick your feet so they rise to the top of the water (this looks hilariously like the first lesson of a swim class for 5-year-olds but without the bubble blowing). Use the energy from your kick to push your body on top of the ice and viola, you're in the clear. Well, maybe not in the clear but at least you're out of the water.

So this was running through my mind as I sat on the ice Friday. I figured I could handle a quick dip in Lake Nepco, if it came to that. Fortunately it didn't.

No, my dip came roughly 19 hours later in a nearby pond. That's me second from the left.

After fishing on Friday, I visited a nearby bar for some post-fishing beers. In my sauced state I agreed to jump into the water at a Polar Plunge for the Special Olympics the following morning. 

It was a chance to test out the professor’s survival technique. Dressed scrubs (it was the hospital’s team) I Karate-kicked by way into the icy water. 

Then the air rushed from my lungs in one swift gasp. I’m still not sure whether I drank any of the pond water. I wasn’t calm. In fact, I was the first one to run from the frigid water. Fortunately, I could run out and wasn’t forced to pull my body onto the ice itself. 

I don’t know how I’ll do should I ever fall into a frozen lake. But after jumping into one, I’m pretty sure I’ll take every precaution to make sure that never happens. 

Digging in the dirt

On a soggy London day last September, a professional pastry chef and amateur archeologist named Regis Cursan uncovered a nearly 2,000-year-old Roman brothel token from the banks of the Thames. 

Cursan later told a reporter for London’s The Daily Mail that he found the token while walking the banks of the river with his metal detector during very low tide. 

Cursin said, “When I rubbed the sand off the artefact (sic) the first thing I saw was the number on one side and what I thought was a goddess on the other. Little did I know at the time it was actually a rare Roman brothel token.”

It was the first of its kind to be found in England. Tokens such as these often depicted specific sexual acts, which historians think was necessary to convey to the sex worker what the client wanted, since many did not speak Latin, according to The Daily Times story. Check out the story and pictures of the token here. 

I mention this story because back in 2001, there was a skinny American kid who had a similar experience.

Pella is hot in June. Like nearly everywhere our stuffy buses took us in Greece that summer, the sun over Pella (Helios?) seemed to have made a pact long ago with Erebus, a primordial deity of darkness, to keep the shadows to a minimum. 

I was taking a class in archeology as part of a study abroad program with my university. Roughly three weeks into the course, I decided archeology was not for me. Just the thought of spending one more minute discerning Ionic from Corinthian columns, triglyphs from metopes, and I could feel the glaze descend over my open eyeballs. 

But then Pella happened. 

We stepped off the bus and into the dusty, dry heat of the Greek summer to find a group of graduate students digging into an embankment. Each section was marked with red rope, and the ground had been dug into a kind of precise step-like pattern. Behind the diggers were a line of wood and chicken wire sifters. The diggers would dump the dirt from the embankment onto the sifters, and using small spades and brushes, the others would attempt to cull gold, jewels, statues or any other piece of living history from the antediluvian soil. 

At first I was a digger, loading soil onto the chicken wire baskets for my classmates to sift. We found human bones and lots of pottery shards. One person found a small pot, nearly intact. 

After digging for a while, it was my turn to sift. I sat on an overturned plastic crate and began to separate soil and rock from pottery, nature from ancient man. Then, just minutes into my career as a true archeologist, a glimmer of purple caught my eye. Amongst the dirty brown and dusty grey of the Grecian soil was a sight no one had seen in thousands of years. 

A token. A trinket. A woman, squatting with her hands on her vulva. 

Part of me thought it was a joke. Another part was ecstatic. 

At the suggestion of one of the grad students, I took a quick photo of the token before someone from the museum snatched it from my grasp. 

There were handshakes, “attaboys,” and a few scowls and Greek curses from jealous grad students. I had found something that would go in the museum, I was told. 

Later, my professor said the woman on my token was Baubo, an old crone made famous for a revealing encounter she supposedly had with the Goddess Demeter. 

From Wikipedia (emphasis mine): 

"Baubo, having received Demeter as a guest, offers her a draught of wine and meal. She declines to take it, being unwilling to drink on account of her mourning. Baubo is deeply hurt, thinking she has been slighted, and thereupon uncovers her secret parts and exhibits them to the goddess. Demeter is pleased at the sight, and now at least receives the draught, – delighted by the spectacle! These are the secret mysteries of the Athenians! These are also the subjects of Orpheus’ poems. I will quote you the very lines of Orpheus, in order that you may have the originator of the mysteries as witness of their shamelessness:"

"This said, she drew aside her robes, and showed a sight of shame; child Iacchus was there, and laughing, plunged his hand below her breasts. Then smiled the goddess, in her heart she smiled, and drank the draught from out the glancing cup."

I never became an archeologist. Ironically, it was a paper I wrote for this class about the city of Vergina that convinced me to seriously consider writing as a career. Lacking a computer, I wrote it by hand at the last minute. I was forced to miss my classmates’ trip to climb Mt. Olympus, but managed to rescue my grade from a low C and convert it into a mid-range B. 

I don’t know what became of Baubo. I hope she is in the museum. Upon reading about Cursan’s find this week, I emailed a professor at the newly constructed Archeological Museum of Pella in the hopes of tracking down my find. 

Even if I never hear back, it’s okay. I have a blurry picture and a memory that is irreplaceable. 

West coast, snowfall, dead seals, etc.

I’m back baby. 

Like Lord Dark-Helmet’s Mega-Maid huffing the the planet Druidia’s air, a new writing project has recently sucked my blogging endeavor dry. 

I checked today to find my blog lying damp and crinkled in the bin, like a brown paper bag with a sweaty tuna sandwich still inside. Well friends, I’ve reached down into the bin, unfurled the bag, and thrown the leftovers to the dog. 

It’s time to show the blog a little love again. 

A few weeks before Christmas, I started writing a novel. It’s writing on a scale I’ve never attempted before. It’s terribly challenging but also rewarding in a way I never experienced while churning out daily paragraphs about copper thieves and gun-toting miscreants. 

I won’t go into the plot here (partly because I’m still working out the details) but I will list a few adjectives (and nouns) that will hopefully describe the world my characters inhabit: future, past, mistake, betrayal, struggle, confusion, wet, gristle, teeth, The Garrison, palisade, mud, Finley, brackish. 

Pretty cryptic, huh? 

When I get it more polished, I may throw a few chapters up on the blog. 

Meanwhile, here is what I’ve been doing since we last talked: shovel, ski, bundle-up, shop, wrap, repeat, drive, iPass, hugs, Christmas, Michigan, snowfall, speakers, speaker wire, new shoes, lots to read, drive some more, write, write, drive again, say goodbye, airplane, west coast, wander, vegan sweet and sour, climb hills, cable car, The Rock, sunset, Golden Gate, Hwy. 101, stand in awe, google “tips for valet,” Pacific, the Ritz, bagpipes, lemon-lime water, heaven’s waffles, hot-tub, sauna, steam room, shower, dead seal, redwood, banana slug, baby bear growl, “In the air tonight,” fight, make-up, pina colada, Tonga Room, indoor rainstorm, Green Bay in the lobby, Sonoma, wine, Napa, champagne, Fairmont, room service, my what-a-view, sleep, get sick, airplane, yellow dog, drive some more, -8 degrees, welcome home.