4/10/11 ATTENTION DEFICIT NATION

FOGGY MORNING

THE DELTA DINER

...AN AUTHENTIC RESTORATION

Sunday, 8:00 AM.  44 degrees, wind NNE, calm.  It is foggy and damp, having rained hard enough to wake me up at about 4:30 AM, and hard enough to bring countless night crawlers out onto the roads.  The barometer predicts rain, as well.  The steelhead should be running up the rivers soon, so I bought my fishing license.
    Yesterday we took a trip to Delta, where there is a contract being let for restoration of portions of Twin Bear County Park that I may bid on, and being there around lunch time Joan and I ate at the Delta Diner.  It is a way- out-of-the way restaurant, serving upscale diner food in a classic, restored diner brought here some years back from upstate New York.  The food is delicious, if a bit over the top for diner fare as I remember it.  But, it is always a treat to stop, and their malts take us back to our youths.
    Question of the day: now that the events are old news, will we ever hear anything substantive again about the Japanese disaster and its nuclear emergency, or the Libyan sort-of-war, or the Ivory Coast tribal massacres, or so many other once-gripping emergencies and tragedies?  We have become an instant gratification, shallow minded, nosey, celebrity driven society, a sort of attention deficit nation most of whose political representatives are stuck in the same juvenile mode.  Text me, twitter me, titillate me, anything to keep me from having to look beyond my nose or think beyond puberty.  And some actually grown up society or nation will soon replace us, I am afraid, if we don’t quickly mature.  I thought the Great Recession might accomplish that, but it looks like we will sit and pout and whine and stomp our little feet until mommy or the government or God or the Devil or somebody gives us what we want.

4/09/11: MAPLE SAP IS SHUTTING DOWN, GOVERNMENT ISN'T

AH, SPRING...

...IS BURSTING OUT ALL OVER!

Saturday, 10:00 AM.  46 degrees, wind WSW, calm.  The sky is partly cloudy and hazy, and the barometer predicts the same.  There isn’t much snow left in town, but still plenty in shady woods and on the ski hill.  The channel ice is laced with open water.
    I just returned from the annual Bayfield Regional Conservancy pancake breakfast.  It is always well attended and is a good fund raiser and name booster for the Conservancy, and I was happy to just sit and eat and talk rather than flipping pancakes this  year.
    I hear that the Nourse Sugar Bush, one of the oldest in the region, and supplier of syrup to the pancake breakfast, is going to stop sugaring for the year, as the sap run has slowed so much.  Andy and Judy probably will not continue much longer either, as the nights warm up and sap flow hesitates.
    We went out to Cornucopia for fish fry at Fish Lips Bar last evening and it was very good, and very reasonably priced at $7.95, all you can eat fresh fish, potato pancakes, coleslaw and toast.  Not the most compelling name, though. 
    Yard work beckons, and I have to get a start today and tomorrow, the daffodils are coming on fast.
    I am rather sorry the government shutdown was averted, it would have been interesting to see what was consideered essential and nonessential.

4/08/11 A SECRET SAUCE, AND HUMAN ERROR

Friday, 9:00 AM.  44 degrees, wind WSW, calm.  The sky is hazy and it looks like rain clouds are accumulating.  The barometer is trending down and I would not be surprised to see rain in a couple of days, coming in on a slow moving front.
    The sap run was so-so yesterday but sufficient, as there is a lot of sap to cook.  Jim showed up on his ATV yesterday afternoon and with two collecting it was not much work.  Paul and Joanne arrived yesterday evening from Three Lakes and will help with sugaring all weekend, and another couple will likely arrive at the sugar bush on Saturday so there will be plenty of help and I will attend to other matters..  Andy cooked barbecued ribs last night and they were delicious, served with real wild rice.  Like all good camp cooks he will not divulge his secret sauce ( oh, a little of this and a little of that) but I saw the maple syrup bottle used liberally a couple of times.

MIGHT RAIN

SECRET SAUCE BARBECUED RIBS (WONDER WHAT THE SECRET INGREDIENT COULD BE?)

JUDY, ANDY, JOANN, PAUL, JOAN AND A BOTTLE OF WINE

THE WELL-WORN PATH...

    On Wisconsin's turbulent political front, incumbent Supreme Court Justice David Prosser, who had been trailing liberal challenger JoAnn Kloppenberg by 240 votes, suddenly is ahead overnight by 7500 votes because Elm Grove, a conservative Waukesha County district, had not been counted, due to "human error."  Rather embarrassing for Kloppenberg, who had already  declared herself the winner.

4/07/11 IS IT SYRUP YET?

A GORGEOUS MORNING

#1 AMBER MAPLE SYRUP

Thursday, 8:00 AM.  30 degrees, wind W, calm.  The sky is partly cloudy with high, puffy white clouds and the barometer predicts the same.  It is a gorgeous morning.
    The sap run yesterday  was not very heavy , about 25 gallons, just as well as the slushy snow was difficult to trudge through.  I think it did not get cold enough Tuesday night for a bigger run, but that’s O.K, there is enough sap stored for at least two gallons of syrup.  Andy will boil all day today.  When it is syrup is something of a mystery and a matter of taste.  One can use a hygrometer to determine 86% sugar and consider that quality syrup, or one  can compare the liquid at various stages of the boiling process to sample bottles of syrup representing the various officially sanctioned quality syrups, starting with #1 Amber and getting darker from there.  The bottle shown is about #1 amber and the highest quality syrup, although I personally prefer the taste of the darker syrups.  Andy I think mostly cooks the sap until he likes its looks and consistency, and I imagine that’s the traditional method, except I believe the Indians usually cooked it down to maple sugar, as that is the most storable and transportable product.
    Speaking of which, I have heard a good Ojibway maple syrup story and I apologize if I haven’t got it exactly right.  It seems that originally maple sap was actually maple syrup, and all an Indian had to do was cut a branch, lay under the tree, and let the sweet liquid drip into his moth.  Now Winnibojo ( Hiawatha to the white man) saw all his people laying about doing nothing but getting fat and lazy from maple syrup, so he persuaded the maple tree to make its sap only slightly sweet, so that the Indians had to work very hard indeed to transform it into maple syrup and maple sugar, and thus be an industrious and honorable people again.
    Maple sap, straight out of the bucket on a cold morning, is itself a refreshing drink, slightly sweet, and chock full of essential minerals.  But my favorite maple drink is black tea made from maple sap about half boiled down to syrup.  A piping hot cup of it in the afternoon will pep you right up all the way to dinner.

4/06/11 WHISTLING SWANS, MAPLE SYRUP AND A HOT STOCK TIP

WATER AND ICE

FIRST FLOWERS OF SPRING

MIGRATING WHISTLING SWANS

FIRST MAPLE SYRUP

Wednesday, 8:00 AM.  37 degrees, and rising rapidly.  Wind N, very light.  There is considerable water on top of the channel ice now.  The sky is partly cloudy and the barometer is trending upward.
    We had a good sap run yesterday, and there are another fifty gallons of sap collected for Andy to boil today.  The product thus far is a beautiful, high quality, clear amber maple syrup.
    Yesterday there were a dozen or so trumpeter swans on the open water of Chequamegon Bay off Ashland, the first we have seen migrating north, and the male goldfinches are now bright yellow, after having been a drab olive-green all winter.  Andy says he heard sandhill cranes yesterday.
    My stock tip of the day: AW, Amalgamated Wheelbarrows.  Everyone will need one to put their dollar bills in when going to the store to buy bread, as the 3.3 trillion dollars of new currency secretly pumped into the economy by the Federal Reserve in the last three months causes predictably high inflation.  And, the ultimate tragedy of hyper inflation, as any casual student of history knows, is not just the ruination of the economy and the social structure, but the death of democracy, and the advent of dictatorship.

4/05/11 A GOOD DAY TO COLLECT SAP AND "SPREAD THE WEALTH"

A NICE DAY AHEAD

Tuesday, 7:30 AM.  28.5 degrees, wind WSW, very light.  The sky is partly cloudy with high fish-scale clouds and the barometer predicts the same.  I looks like it will be a pleasant day and that the sap will run.We have things to do in Ashland this morning but I will collect sap this afternoon.
    Question of the day: why is the CEO of GM, a bankrupt, bailed out corporation that the US taxpayers still own 26% of, being paid 9 million dollars in salary and stock in 2011?  How about “spreading the wealth around” a bit, or does that only apply to the little guy?

4/04/11 GLOOMY DAY

CRUMMY WEATHER

Monday, 8:30 AM.  32 degrees, wind WNW, light with occasional stronger gusts.  It is snowing huge wet flakes again, and there is about an inch accumulation.  There was little sap running yesterday and there will be little running today, so I doubt I will collect at all.  The weather is crummy anyway, and both Lucky and I have joints that predict more of the same.  So does the barometer, which has almost become superfluous.
    A thought for this gloomy day, author unknown: A government big enough to give us everything we want is a government big enough to take everything we have. And it always does.