Thank You, Anonymous...

...whoever you are...!

Aunts and Nephews

Robin meets Aimon for the first time.

Fathers and Sons and Grandsons

A new grandson, Aimon.

Beggars

It is nearly Winter, officially, but truly it has been with us here in Wisconsin for some time now. I'm tired of it already, unless it snows a lot. The cats have begun their Winter Sojourn. Instead of scampering under the deck, eating grass, hunting voles in the roadside ditches, or chasing rabbits: they sleep, eat, and beg.

Long afternoon naps in the bedroom, or in my easy chair, or for Pippin high up on a box near the ceiling in the basement. This is reached by a complex route across my desk, up onto the cherry storage unit, a leap up onto an upright storage unit, and then slinking up into the space above the concrete footings. You can see his ears peering over the top edge of the box. Nossa's deeply rooted cowardice would never allow her to make such a journey.

Then the evening campaign begins hours in advance, begging for their dinner. They sit near my shoulder on my desk, eyes wide, so sad, so needy. Such liars.

Field Trip

I accompanied the Verona High School Science Club to Ski Hi Orchard and a hike at Devil's Lake on Saturday, giving them a quick tour of the orchard (including hands on apple picking which is always a big thrill no matter what the age). Here's a view of the south end of Devil's Lake from atop the bluffs, just above Balance Rock.

Anke the German Shepherd came along, awash in glorious affectionate petting from everyone she met. And to end a nice climb up and down the bluff with a nice wade in the largest drinking pond she'd ever seen! Glory. She slept all the way home.

Apple Picking

Early October means a quick trip to the Baraboo Hills, to Ski Hi Orchard for our annual picking frenzy. Having worked here years before and having a friend in the owner, Betty Thiessen, I get to go out into the orchard and browse around, picking my own. Ribs and Deb along, we trounced down the old gravel road in search of apples!

Our first stop was in the Golden Delicious aisle, where we loaded up in preparation for the Annual Applesauce Day, a tradition in the fam. Um. A tradition for Dad that is, although I do manage to talk my spouse into helping out. The kids duck out and await the results. Golden Delicious applesauce needs no sweetener, and we make about 30 quarts a year, to freeze and bring out for the eating throughout the long winter.

Next, we moseyed down past the Cortlands and Jonathans and hit up the Honey Crisps, a hybrid the likes of which we didn't know back in the Day, when old Art Bassett roamed the orchard in his War Two vintage jeep, keeping an eagle-- and I mean eagle--eye on those who were privileged to pick his apples for him. That was sort of the arrangement. Honey Crisps are, whoa, sweet and crunchy! Some apple researcher hit paydirt with this apple. Two bushels' worth.

George, the orchard foreman, a grizzled old veteran of Who Knows What--but grizzled nonetheless--came rambling down in the same old Massey Ferguson on which I used to roam the orchard. "I remember you from last year! Thought you were just pickin' Goldens."

"Yeah, we mosey around a bit, pick a few other things as well."

George didn't shoot us, having been warned off by Betty. Last year was a closer call, since Betty forgot to tell him we'd be invading his orchard. You don't get anything past ole George.

George and I chatted about the crop. "Yeah, we gotta color pick those Crisps. Damn things keep fallin' on the ground. Next year I'm just gonna pick 'em clean once!"

Color picking means just that: pick over the best looking apples and leave the rest to redden and ripen a bit more. It isn't a practice pickers enjoy, because it slows the picking, and if you're being paid piecework, that slows the income.

It appears to have been a nice crop of apples. George's parting shot was to tell me that if I wanted to pick apples, to pick Cortlands. "We ain't pickin' any more of 'em. I got a cooler full. You can have as many as you want!"

I'm coming back up in a few weeks with a local high school science club. Every two years I give them a tour of the orchard and the old log cabin homestead. This year I think we'll venture into the orchard, and if those Cortlands haven't frozen, by golly I think we'll send the science club kids home with some pie-making apples.

On the way back up we topped up our bushel boxes with some Jonathans and Red Delicious, as well as the Cortlands with which to make pie filling. I picked a mixed bushel for Ted Gullixson, a local Lutheran pastor, and on the way home we dropped them on his doorstep. We hope he finds them!

The Need For Books

Ethan Bartlett, Son of Neil, erstwhile member, and still member-at-large, of the No Inklings Book Club, recently wrote a screed in which he decried these newfangled electronic readers every book merchant is seeming to come out with. One of his points, if I get his point, was that a book-in-the-hand was better than 37,000 on the screen. At our most recent book club--which was actually a Mexican food pigfest followed by a little reading and great discussion followed by an attempt--deftly deflected--to roast Ethan and his baby bro Zeke as they prepare to depart for college (truly a Franzmannian sentence going on here)--a distinguished and much beloved member of the book club (he supplies us with mounds of food each time we meet, nudge nudge, wink wink) presented Ethan with a large dorm-room-suitable poster of part of the screed imposed electronically into a Kindle reader. Or was it a Nook? I forget. Ethan was duly roasted.

In today's Wall Street Journal letters section, someone named Anthony Mirabile of Philadelphia wrote an amusing rant of his own, commenting on a recent article about "the subtle joys of communing with books". To wit:

Sven Birkert's poignant prose evokes the subtle joys of communing with books in the company of fellow book lovers ("Bye-bye Bookstores," op-ed, Aug. 6). No less a public figure than Sir Winston Churchill took comfort in the midst of books when he urged, "If you cannot read them, any rate...fondle them. Peer into them...let them fall open where they will...Set them back on the shelf with your own hands...If they cannot be your friends, let them at any rate by your acquaintances." A bookstore browser expects freedom and, despite the public setting, some basic privacy. No Big Broher scrutinizes choices for thought crime, wheile the browser peruses this title or turns away from that. And the browser assumes that the books, unlike their digital substitutes, cannot be edited as they wait to be browsed.

Reaching for a book is a symbolic and literal grasp at freedom, untethered to the whim of some cyber-gate-keeper. It is bearing arms oneself versus surrendering their use to an impersonal authority. It is driving one's own car where the spirit leads, regardless of where and how the elites think you should go. It is the gesture of a citizen, versus that of a slave. It is opening one's mind to the wide field of ideas and information without the risk that one's mind will be shut off at the flick of a switch.

I'm bitterly clinging to my books.

I like that last. The editors titled the letter in part, "A PANEGYRIC ". That's fancy talk for "a letter to the editor. The word, however, seems like it ought to mean something like....

...screed.

The--completely unrehearsed--Gee Library