Author: Dale

Utah 2023: Day 3

Posted on by Dale

Zion National Park. OMG. You can thank me for not posting three hundred photos of this place. (Any botanical gin will do.)

The landscape en route was majestic, of course.

You will notice that Utah is a bit greener than northern Nevada.

The park itself is breathtaking. Technically it’s the Virgin River gorge, and thus fairly linear in its layout.

Pro tip: Zion is hugely popular and parking is at a premium. Get there very early, or prepare to park in Springdale and take the free shuttle in. We drove through the park, found nothing, turned back, and then zipped into the first paid parking lot outside the park. $40 to park, but worth it: we could walk across the highway into the park.

Inside the park, a shuttle will take you from the visitor center to eight other stops in the park. They arrive every five minutes, so feel free to hop off, explore a bit, then hop back on. We chose to do our hopping off on the way into the park, i.e., when it was a little cooler than the afternoon.

The first stop is at the Court of the Patriarchs, so called because one of the first settlers, Mormon of course, named the peaks after Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. (There is a fourth peak named after the Angel Moroni.)

I have decided that panoramic photos are too small to be impressive on the blog, so I’ve started taking panoramic videos instead.

You may recognize this plant from its portrait by Georgia O’Keeffe.

It is Sacred Datura. Its seeds will send you places and are used by shamans for that purpose. It littered the landscape.

One of the stops is called Angel’s Landing, so named because visitors long ago decided that it was so tall that only angels could land there. Is there a hiking trail up there? Of course. We had no intention of attempting that madness in the first place, but when we saw this poster of the trek, we all uttered a solid Roy Kent No.

There was a footbridge across the river there, so here are our first glimpses of the Virgin River.

The last stop is the beginning of the river walk, a mostly paved path that leads all the way back to The Narrows, where the geology is such that the river has not had the time yet to wear away the walls of the cliffs.

There were multiple places to get off the path and explore along the banks. We were all struck by this cliff with centuries of desert varnish.

The vista was constantly amazing.

But Dale, I hear you whining, how can this tiny little stream have gouged out this incredible landscape? Flash floods. At Grand Canyon, they warn you about the ground squirrels being the biggest threat to human life; at Zion, it’s flash floods. They even announced on the shuttle that today the risk of flash floods were nil.

There is of course wildlife. Here is a doe…

…and her fawn.

The doe created some concern as she approached the trail. She didn’t seem to be aggressive, but she stood her ground while hikers began to gather. One sensible gentleman loudly warned people to leave her alone; she wasn’t looking for a scritch. We couldn’t decide if she was preparing to protect her baby or was scoping out the snack situation. (DO NOT FEED THE ANIMALS!)

The trail is long and gorgeous.

The deeper we went, the greener it got. Here is a beautiful grotto and pool about two-thirds of the way in.

At the start of the park, the vegetation is all desert: sage, cacti, etc. Deeper in, you get sedge, moss, ferns.

Behold, the mighty ground squirrel, lord of all he surveys.

At this point, these rodents became ubiquitous, and by the time we reached the end of the trail — where all the humans were forced to congregate and take a break before heading back — they were bold as brass, shambling about under your feet and coming up to you to sniff for snacks. Very longtime readers of this blog will recall when one tried to eat my Lovely First Wife at the Canyon.

The gorge becomes narrower and narrower.

Finally you reach the end of the paved trail. The real hikers could put on their wetshoes and continue up the river for further delights.

We of course turned around and headed back.

One question that will occur to you as you gaze up at the incredible escarpments is “How do trees grow up there on the bare rock?”

Never bet against nature.

On the way back we stopped at the park Lodge, which is booked up to a year in advance. I was amused by this informational sign about native landscapes, positioned as it is next to the perfectly manicured lawn.

We had a great lunch at the grill there, then headed out.

Whenever we travel, I always check the worldwide labyrinth locator to see if there is one within reach that might be interesting. (Tidy replicas of the Chartres labyrinth don’t make the cut.) This time, there was one right outside the park in Springdale, at Flanigan’s Resort & Spa. It overlooked Zion, so heck yes we stopped.

Since it was a steep climb to the hill above the resort at the end of a long, hot day, my companions elected to let me enjoy the experience on my own.

It was hot, but it was satisfying. I would have loved to walk it at night under the stars. (At our AirBnB, the sky is no darker/clearer than it is at home. Air pollution is to blame.)

After a stop at a liquor store and a grocery store, we were ready to head back for a relaxed dinner at home. I boldly suggested that we watch The Marriage of Figaro, which had been broadcast earlier in the day from Ghent. The company was the Opera Ballet Vlaanderen, and it is both charming and gonzo in its staging. I highly recommend it. Some things to be aware of: For some reason, they cast two vaudevillians in the roles of Bartolo and Marcellina, neither of whom had operatic voices (Marcellina in particular), which necessitated dragging in two other company members one way or the other to fill out — for example — the sextet in Act III. This also necessitated cutting the duet between Susanna and Marcellina in Act I, sadly.

Still, it all worked. We enjoyed it thoroughly, although we all agreed the finale was a bit of a letdown, with the cast simply sitting on the ground, paired with their appropriate partner — no particular effusion of joy, no fireworks, very static, and given the mechanical structure of the set, somewhat offputting. But still very much worth the watch!

(It was also fun reminiscing about my Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro, my last show as artistic director of the Newnan Community Theatre Company in 2002. Translation still available.)

(operavision.eu does broadcasts every Friday, and the videos remain available for a month. Check them out.)

Next: BRYCE CANYON

Utah 2023: Day 2

Posted on by Dale

After a hearty breakfast at Four Queens, we hit the road to Utah.

First, we owe Avis a bit of an apology. Not a complete apology, mind you, because the scenario at the airport was unforgivable, but because at the Four Queens, Avis has a booth, and our intrepid leader (my Lovely First Wife) went right up to Ranesha and explained that the Equinox was going to mean the total destruction of our marriage and could we trade it for something bigger? And that’s how we got switched into a Ford Edge, which is a measurable amount of more comfortable. Our marriage is saved. For now.

(Ranesha also gave us some really good pro tips, which I will share in the closing Pro Tips post next week. Stay tuned, boys and girls.)

Nevada, for the most part, looks like something very bad happened here.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s beautiful and majestic, but it is sere.

Here’s what it’s like to drive through this.

My Lovely First Wife is the mastermind behind all our travels [vid. sup.], and her birthday trip is no exception. In fact, part of my birthday present to her was to stay quiet while she dove into ALL THE RESEARCH KENNETH, producing an actual spreadsheet of all the places we were going to, could go to, eat at, stay at (and for how long).

The first thing on the list of potential visits was a Nevada state park, Valley of Fire, which was 30 minutes off I-15. Sure, we all said, let’s do it.

Oh my.

It’s Nevada’s oldest and largest state park, and it is stunning.

The red sandstone outcroppings in the middle of all the gray limestone is what gives the park its name: apparently the setting sun lights them up like they’re on fire.

It was brutally hot, of course, and there were notices everywhere that most of the hiking trails were closed, as if we were going to go hiking. But there’s plenty to see via comfortably air-conditioned vehicles, so off we went.

Petroglyphs! I am a sucker for petroglyphs, and there were petroglyphs. Here’s the ladder and platform to view one of the sites:

No, we’re not sure how the artists got up there to scratch through the “desert varnish” to create these images.

You will now have some scrolling to do,.

The “varnish” is a layer of cyanobacteria, lichens, and such, that slowly transform the surface of the rock into a dark layer that can be scratched/chipped off.

Bighorn sheep, other animals geometric patterns, evidence of atlatls, scribbles galore.

That long diagonal line impresses and amuses me: some ancient artist decided it would be a glorious thing to use the corner of the cliff as an element in their art. (I think it’s a lizard?)

Here’s the deal: No one knows why people did this. My personal theory is that it could have been bored kids, but most reasonable anthropologists assume they’re cultural or spiritual markers. But truly, it’s all guessing. In the visitor center I bought a very well written book on rock art, and right off the bat the author says they don’t know the purpose of these things.

But at base level, it’s all about Making The Thing That Is Not, right? Humans do that.

Shades of Antelope Canyon…

On the way back to the car, I came across this ring of debris, obviously left behind some pool of rainwater.

I neglected to get a closeup, but about half of the material was small animal droppings. At the visitor center, there were three adorable baby white-tailed squirrels scrounging around the bird feeder, but the only photo I got was not good enough to show how cute they were.

So here’s one I stole from the intertubes:

Now imagine this in an even cuter baby format. Squee!

One of the most curious things about the rocks in Valley of Fire are the wind-holes.

These are literally little eroded pockmarks that the wind then churns into large, nearly circular holes. Some are practically caves.

The variety of the rock is neverending.

After a stop at the visitor center, we headed on to Utah, cutting through a corner of Arizona to get there, and through the Virgin River Gorge.

This photo does not begin to capture what it’s like to drive through this man-made pass. It was awesome. Here’s a map, not that it will help:

Finally we arrived at our AirBnB in Toquerville, our basecamp for the next two days. This is the view from our back porch.

A quick run to a grocery store for provisions, a satisfying supper, and then sleep. Next: ZION NATIONAL PARK.

 

Utah 2023: Day 1

Posted on by Dale

And we’re off![1] When my Lovely First Wife turned 60, we flew to San Francisco, rented a car, drove back across the country to New Orleans, and took Amtrak back to Atlanta. It was a very wonderful trip.

Now, ten years later — you do the math — we[2] are going to drive all over Utah to see a great many of the national parks there: Valley of Fire (state park), Zion, Bryce Canyon, Capital Reef, Arches, and Canyonland. I, who do not enjoy driving, have been assured that this will be glorious.

So we got up at 5:30 a.m., flew to Las Vegas, and here’s Day 1.

You get off the plane in Vegas and are reminded immediately what weird place this is.

I will say this for Nevada, they have a commitment to public art that is admirable. I’ll try to get some photos along the interstate of the beautiful statues and murals they have. In the meantime, have this horned toad from the airport.

The shuttle to the car rental reminded us of the Vatican.

Tons of people standing in line… But it moved quickly. In fact, it took less time to get onto the shuttle than it did to stand in line to pick up the rental car. I won’t shame the rental company for their astounding inefficiency, but they were astoundingly inefficient. (Avis — it was Avis.) We ended up with an Equinox, which is what I drive at home, and no, it is not large enough for the four of us and our accoutrements. Stay tuned for that excitement.

Our first stop was the Hoover Dam. We were there ten years ago, but Marc/MF had never been and it’s worth seeing more than once, so off we went. At that point, we grabbed lunch and I would be remiss if I didn’t post a photo of Mary Frances wrangling a 12″ hot dog — technically an entire kielbasa, you make the jokes — into her mouth.

As I said in my post at the time, the Hoover Dam is just amazing in every regard: engineering, history, aesthetic, you name it, and the dam is just incredible.

It was designed to be beautiful, an Art Deco masterpiece.

We took the full dam tour, of course. Here’s the ventilation tunnel that peeks out of the dam. You can look out over the downstream Colorado River and risk losing your phone to the 300 foot drop to stick it out of the louvers and take a photo.

(This is actually looking back into the dam.)

One thing I really like about the Hoover Dam is that 90 years later it’s still in perfect shape, but any little glitches that come up have been resolved exactly like you and I might in our own workplaces: low-level kludges that would have you hanged and quartered at Disney. For example:

This is right there on the floor where us tourists can touch or kick it. They’ve fixed that problem by sticking a motion sensor light and camera onto the wall above it. Perfect.

You will have read about how the water level of Lake Mead is disastrously low.

As our tour guide explained, yes, the water level is low, but it’s not disastrous. The dam was never meant to be full, and all those years that it was were an anomaly. The Bureau of Reclamation (which operates the dam as a self-supporting facility) is satisfied with the current levels. (Of course, the areas that have grown up depending on that water for irrigation and living are going to be brought up short at some point.)

Done with the dam, we drove back to Vegas and checked in to the Four Queens Hotel & Casino. Here’s the view from our room.

We barely had time to freshen up before we hopped an Uber down to the Bellagio, where we had tickets to see Cirque du Soleil’s O. The title is a pun on the French for “water”: Eau, and OMG this show is literally unbelievable.

The stage is a pool of water that is sometimes 30 feet deep for high diving gymnasts, and sometimes a walkable surface. Set pieces emerge from the water, seemingly by magic. Boats and horses fly. Performers appear, sink into the water, and are never seen again. Performers emerge from the water from nowhere. The big red curtain in the photo above? When the show actually starts, those curtains collapse and swirl and billow into a vanishing point upstage in a gasp-inducing swirl of fabric and music.

After it was over, we all had the same thought: We should just turn William Blake’s Inn over to Cirque. Can you imagine what they could do with “Blake Leads a Walk on the Milky Way”?

The Bellagio, like all of Vegas, is a bit over the top. Here’s their “garden” in the lobby.

We were all starving at that point, so we Ubered to Herbs & Rye, a highly respected steakhouse and cocktail bar.

Cocktails, you say? This place has all the greats that you may have encountered from my home bar.

All the greats were there, although of course my favorites were unavailable because of the mysterious worldwide shortage of green Chartreuse.

As it happened, it was Marc’s birthday, so he got a delicious kind of brownie/bread pudding dessert. We all shared.

We headed back to the hotel and were immediately sucked into the Fremont Experience, a dazzling extravaganza that ten years ago was right outside our room.

That ceiling? It is in constant psychedelic motion.

Unbelievable. Live performers, street vendors, and of course the casinos on every side. And remember, this was a Wednesday night. (The Fremont Experience was created to attract attention back to the older north end of the Strip, and it seems to have done the trick.)

At that point, it was after midnight, which meant for us Newnanites it was 3 a.m. EDT, so we retired.

Onward to Utah!

—————

[1] Standard disclaimer: For my readers — all three of you — who are inclined to rob us while we’re away, we have our usual security measures in place.

[2] Our intrepid fellow travelers Marc and Mary Frances are with us.

The old me

Posted on by Dale

A few moments ago a burner friend posted a thing, an invitation to post a current photo of yourself, plus one from four years ago and one from eight years ago. I decided to do that thing, but here on my blog instead of out in the street where it might frighten the horses.

This required math, of course: 2023 – 4, carry the one, etc.

Let me say up front that I don’t think I have anything witty or profound to share other than the photos. We’ll see.

Eight years ago….

2015

Here I am.

Am I a handsome so-and-so or what? And that tidy hair! (Only 213 more days until the Great Cut…)

We were at Grand Canyon, part of a wide-ranging trip across the Southwest.

We also made it up to Page, AZ, and Antelope Canyon. You think you’ve never heard of Antelope Canyon? Of course you have.

It is impossible to take a bad photo there.

In 2015, I had just started burning the fall before, so was still a noob when I attended Alchemy 2015, now known as Alchemuddy; I appeared in Born Yesterday at the Springer Opera House in Augusta and Into the Woods at NTC; I directed my Christmas Carol at NTC; and Abigail, the good & deserving Assistive Feline™, followed my Lovely First Wife and dog home one morning and stole my heart.

Moving on…

2019

Fourth of July celebration at… Grand Canyon! This was for my 65th birthday, and it was the first time we actually stayed in Grand Canyon Village, which is how you should do it.

We also did a trip up the Maine coast that fall. Here’s the inn we stayed at on Chebeaugue Island:

And here I am at work on the placement map for Alchemy 2019 while on vacation in Maine. Am I dedicated hippie or what?

I became the Benevolent Placement Overlord™ of Alchemy in 2016 and just passed that torch last fall. Between 2016 and 2022, I designed and redesigned that burn eleven times as we moved from property to property.

In 2019, Cecil the Pest™ had joined the family, and I served for the last time as chair of the State STAR Student Selection Committee, a post I had enjoyed for around 30 years.

Which brings us to…

2023

What a difference nose surgery and a pandemic can make, amirite? So far in 2023, we’ve traveled to San Diego, the Rhine River, and Howard Finster’s Paradise Garden, with a trip through Utah’s national parks coming up in three weeks and a tour through German’s Christmas markets at the end of the year.  I’ve been to two burns — Emergence and To The Moon — with Alchemy just 63 days away. I directed Midsummer Night’s Dream for Southern Arc Dance, and began composing again. It’s been a good year.

As I predicted, I have no grand revelations or insights, other than to say I’ve enjoyed getting older and am more grateful than might at first be apparent for the opportunities my life has afforded me.

A suggestion for bar owners

Posted on by Dale

Hi there, owners of cocktail establishments! I have an idea for you.

If you have TV screens in the bar, and if you can stream from the intertubes, then set at least one of your screens to show BEARS, YOU GUYS, at Brooks Falls in Katmai National Park (Alaska). It’s a livestream of the salmon run up the river, and all the brown bears that start arriving to eat fish and fatten up for the winter.

I promise you, patrons will be rapt. They will cheer the bears on. They will create narratives for the bears. They will rate the bears’ fishing strategies. They will squee at the baby bears. They will, like the rest of us, worry about Otis.

And then: FAT BEAR WEEK, YOU GUYS! Post the bracket! It’s just like March Madness, only WITH BEARS!

Feature salmon on the menu.

Encourage teams with t-shirts.

Print out the official National Park Service guide to identifying which bear is which.

I’m telling you, start featuring the bears on your slow night each week, and by the time Fat Bear Week arrives, your place will be packed with customers.

DA BEARS!

Cleaning out

Posted on by Dale

The problem with cleaning out one’s clutter is that if you’re not just shoveling it all out the door, if you stop and examine the material you’re purging so that you don’t throw anything away that your biographers might wish they had, that you are apt to be besieged by memories.

My task was to take the notebooks and sketchbooks that were crammed into the bottom shelf of the supply shelf unit in my study and to see why they were still with me. Some are archival: designs for sets, costumes; travel journals; that kind of thing.

Others were the notebooks I used when I was the media specialist at Newnan Crossing Elementary or assistant program director for instruction at the Georgia Governor’s Honors Program, and those are the ones that I went through and tore out pages: file, trash, blog. There will be more of these in the near future. I beg your forbearance.

This was my preferred notebook:

The top half of the page is blank; the bottom is ruled. It’s perfect for sketching/note-taking, especially for a visual learner. They still make them, but they also make them in other configurations now.

Here’s a page that struck me.

A closer look:

“Fred & Mary” was a lesson I did for third grade at Newnan Crossing to teach a social study standard. You can read all about it here. It was a stellar lesson. (Students were given the handout and asked to read it as a team at each table. I waited patiently for them to cry foul, and then we plotted a course for finding out the truth. A wall-sized timeline played a role.)

But what struck me here was the date: March 3, 2011. I don’t know why this page is blank; there are several others in the notebook outlining the whole thing. But on April 1, barely four weeks later, I was offered the position of the director of GHP, my dream job, and by May 1 I was gone from Newnan Crossing Elementary.

And on July 25, 2013 — ten years ago today — I arrived back in my office at the Georgia Department of Education after presiding over GHP’s 50th summer to be told that the governor at the time, in a fit of spite against the state school superintendent, had seized the program and moved it to his Office of Student Achievement — and did not take me with it. After 29 summers working at GHP, I was out of my job.

When I saw the date coming up on the calendar, I wondered how I was going to feel about it. Ten years since losing my dream job…

However, my plan was to work for the DOE for ten years and then retire, which means I would have retired in 2021 anyway. Since leaving GHP, I’ve found plenty to enjoy in my life, up to and including my theme camp, 3 Old Men, and the Georgia burn community. I have no complaints.

A Parable of Light

Posted on by Dale

On another plane than this one:

A man lay dying and called his friends to him.

He said to them, “I know that soon I must die, and I have seen that my life has produced no great works or deeds. I console myself with the thought that I have been as kind and generous as I know how, but I cannot help but ask — what good can one person’s kindness do in the vastness of this world?

His friends murmured sympathetically — what, indeed?

“But,” he said, “I have seen a vision. On another plane than this one…

“I saw myself suspended alone in an infinite darkness. I seemed to be made of glass, so that you could see through me.

I was surrounded by a vast, infinite darkness — the void of the universe, and I was alone.

That darkness was complete. I could see nothing but myself.

Every time I felt a kindness, though, of thought or of deed, it came from my breast in a burst of warm light, which flowed out from me and soon dissipated in the darkness.”

The man’s friends listened politely. He continued.

“But then, in the distance, the faint remains of my light of kindness met… another soul, perhaps? I could not see, but it was as if my light had encountered a node of some kind, which glowed briefly itself before fading.

It began to happen more often — more and more glowing nodes in the darkness, bursting into light and fading into the void.

And then I began to see, as more and more light suffused the void, that all these nodes — lit and unlit — were connected by fine filaments, and the more nodes were lit, the stronger those connections became until I was looking at a galactic mycelium powered by warmth and kindness.

Of course, not all nodes gave off the same amount of light. Some shone brightly — others barely glowed before fading. Very occasionally a node would explode with light, completely overwhelming and then freeing everything in its vicinity.

Slowly, the vast darkness was diffused with light, light that had come from me, light that ebbed and flowed, tenuous light, faint light, but light.

I began to understand that I had been receiving bursts of light myself from others before me, and that I always had been. I knew some of those lights were gone now, but what I received from them I passed on so that the light did not fail.”

“I saw all of this, on another plane, and I knew this was the answer to my question: What good can one person do?” The man smiled at his friends.

“There comes a time…

…he said…

…when your light is no longer enough.”

He paused.

“Nor is it necessary.

In my vision, I saw that my light was gone now, too, and I watched as the darkness spread before me like ripples in a pond.

But though I was no longer giving light, the light I had already given continued its journey through the network of nodes, of souls, each soul now giving its own light to the universe. I watched as the light, my light, traveled far ahead, leaving an expanding darkness behind, until there was nothing more.”

He spoke.

“The rest is peace.”

“But…” said his friends.

He spoke no more, not on that plane or any other.

They’re still wrong.

Posted on by Dale

I just finished reading James Shapiro’s The Year of Lear: Shakespeare in 1606, and I highly recommend it, especially if you are like me a huge fan of Lear.

A passage near the end jumped out at me:

[discussing the declining fortunes of the boy companies of London at the time] Another and now nearly fatal blow to [the Children of the Revels’] fortune came in November 1606, when they were ordered to stop recruiting boy players from among the ranks of child choristers, since “it was not fit or decent that such as should sing the praises of God Almighty should be trained up or employed in such lascivious or profane exercises.”

Well.

Here are some modern day choristers of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, the same group that fed into the theatre company Paul’s Boys back in the day.

Who could possibly want to train up or employ these precious innocents in lascivious or profane exercises? Everyone’s moral alarms should be blaring CODE RED at such an idea.

Why, it’s outrageous — it’s disgusting — it’s… GROOMING, KENNETH!

Dale, I hear you ask, are you claiming that today’s handwringers and Moms for “Liberty” and rightwing screechers are pulling the same stunt as the god-bothering Puritans from 400 years ago?

Yes, yes I am.

That is a link to coverage of the high school in Fort Wayne, IN, that had its production of Maid Marian canceled because the god-bothering Puritans of that fair city objected to its LGBQT characters. LASCIVIOUS AND PROFANE, KENNETH! (The kids are all right: They rallied support and $84,000 to put on the play independently. The house was packed.)

I get it. The god-botherers have sincere religiousy beliefs about what is LASCIVIOUS AND PROFANE, KENNETH,[1] and they are determined that the rest of us are not going to celebrate Christmas be anything but righteous, upstanding Puritans ourselves. Because otherwise… well, I’m not sure what they think is going to happen, other than that great fear of Puritans everywhere, that someone, somewhere, might be happy.

At any rate, they’re still wrong.

Happy Pride Month!

—————

[1] I do not include the scum and villainy now known as the Republican Party as having sincere religiousy beliefs. Those people do not believe in anything except using divisive topics to scare the amygdala-based lifeforms into voting them into power.

Rhine River Cruise: Swag & Pro Tips

Posted on by Dale

This trip I have only two pro tips, one of which is so amazing that I hate I didn’t discover it years ago.

First, if you’re of a mind to go to Amsterdam’s infamous “coffee shops,” be advised: cannabis is not legal in the Netherlands, it’s just tolerated (albeit regulated, and no, I don’t know how that works). Also, despite what you might have been led to believe, the offerings in coffee shops are limited to either smokable weed (onsite) or cannabis edibles. You probably have more effective (and legal) ways to explore that part of your consciousness at home.

Second — and this is the big tip — on the iPhone Maps app, did you know you can create Guides? I didn’t; I discovered this by accident when looking for the top craft cocktail bars in Amsterdam. If you search for a specific place, a guide pops up below the map, including the ever-mystical MORE…:

The MORE menu gives you…

…which gives you…

So what you end up with…

…is a handy map that you can whip out at any point in your trek around the city and immediately see if one of your sightseeing goals is nearby! How cool is that?

—————

So what all did I come home with?

Some local gins…

The unlabeled bottle is from a small distillery in Cologne; the scribbling on the bottle says ‘Longwood 17.” It’s very herbal. The dry gin is a bright, aggressive gin, and the barrel-aged genever is a lovely variation on Holland’s traditional precursor to gin.

I picked up some sample bottles here and there…

Of course I picked up ink for my fountain pen and some blank books…

…and the ink, when I finally unboxed it, was a surprise:

The bottle is as askew as a house in Amsterdam.

After the exhibit on Ursula at Cologne’s Museum Ludwig, I had to have the exhibit catalog…

…if only so that I could catch up on all the pieces I had to zip past while my fellow travelers were waiting for me…

…and while there I saw and could not resist this replica of Hilma af Klint‘s automatic/seance sketchbooks…

…which are full of peculiar energy.

The biggest purchase, though, was not technically mine. Decades ago we were invited to a Christmas party at the home of one of my Lovely First Wife’s coworkers, where we were served a German tradition called Asbachskaffee, i.e., Asbach coffee. This concoction consists of Asbach brandy, flamed with brown sugar; coffee; and a huge gob of vanilla whipped cream and chocolate shavings. What’s not to like?

The important thing is that this nectar is served in a very specific cup/mug, and we — for differing values of “we” — have been in search of these things for a Very. Long. Time. Because otherwise, it’s just spiked coffee in a Lenox china Christmas mug, right?

So you may imagine our (“our”) excitement when one of the onboard entertainments was the making of Rudesheimskaffee, as it is known in Germany, since Asbach brandy is distilled in Rudesheim, where we would be docking that afternoon. (We will skip over the excitement of my being volunteered to be our bar chef’s assistant in making a cup, which started with chugging a snifter of Asbach, a “tradition” I suspect my friendly bartender made up for the amusement of the other guests.)

My Lovely First Wife sprang into action. First, to the bar to ask if those mugs were available in Rudesheim. Of course, he said, at the Asbach distillery. Then it was off to find Maria at the front desk, who called us a cab with the advisory that we wouldn’t dock until after 4:00 and the distillery would close at 5:00. As it happened, she let us off the ship before the crew even had the gangway up — and away we went in the cab. It was all very exciting, and I really hated that we didn’t have internet for the laptop that day.

Anyway, we ended up with…

…a bottle of 15 year old Asbach — I eschewed the 50 year old bottle (for €138) — six mugs (and saucers) and spoons. At long last our life is complete.

The story doesn’t really end there. Maria told us that we could hit DHL in Cologne the next day, where they would pack and ship our increasingly heavy haul. Alas, DHL does not pack, and they didn’t have a box big enough for our stuff, so we fell back on our tried-and-true solution: Head into the TK Maxx [sic], buy a small rolling suitcase, and just check that sucker at the airport. We now have a nearly complete set of small rolling suitcases. I think for our Christmas Market tour in December we’re just going to fly over there with an empty bag. Or, knowing my Lovely First Wife’s penchant for Christmas decorations, probably two.

Rhine River Cruise: a synopsis

Posted on by Dale

The wifi onboard a Viking River Cruise is always iffy, and this time my laptop couldn’t even see the wifi server to try to log on. (This was in addition to the new restriction of one device per passenger logged in.) So I was forced to enjoy this trip without the pleasure of sharing my acerbic commentary with everyone at home.

Consequently, this post is just a random collection of thoughts or highlights or snarky comments; there won’t be nearly the number of photos as in my usual posts. I’ll do a separate post for swag and pro tips.

First of all, the shipboard experience was as usual: luxurious and comfortable. The staff was friendly and helpful, the food was great, and the cocktails were life-giving. The Rhine River as a whole, though, suffers in comparison to the Danube cruise — in the latter we were sailing through the heart of Empire, while on the Rhine we were sailing through the robber barons’ constantly shifting fiefdoms. Still, we saw and did quite a few wonderful things.

Our cabin, like last time, was below the water:

It was always a little thrilling to open those curtains every morning and see what the view might be. For example:

Stanley Tucci tended bar:

He was very good, remembering everyone’s preferences and stateroom numbers after two days. (There were about 170 passengers on the cruise.)

I did my usual Eurotrash look:

As you can imagine, I was a bit of a rara avis on the ship. I was the only guy with long hair, of course, and I actually dressed a little better than most.

The ship stopped in Breisach (the Black Forest); Strasbourg, France,where we had to delay the shore excursion due to manifestations in town over the retirement age issue, complete with tear gas; Speyer; Koblenz; Cologne; Kinderdijk, Netherlands; and finally, Amsterdam. We felt that the tour really picked up once we reached Speyer; the first two stops felt like time-fillers.

As on the Danube, one day was given to sailing through the Rhine Gorge, which is where all the “castles on the Rhine” are.

Many are restored; some are actually hotels these days. Back when they were built, they were the centers of power for squabbling noblemen, and they were peppered seemingly every half mile along the river. That’s a lot of labor and materials dedicated to beating up on your neighbor, and it’s not even your labor if you were the “king” of the castle. (It was never satisfactorily explained how the residents of the castles got their food or water every day.)

The high point of most stops was the churches. Here’s a cathedral in Koblenz:

I was impressed by the ribbed vault:

The most spectacular of the churches was of course the Cologne Cathedral, a hallucinogenic über-Gothic pile, which ironically wasn’t finished until the 19th century. The stained glass windows in the nave, for example, are clearly Romantic era.

Look at the very top of the towers — see the tiny little finials up there? Here’s one up close:

Inside, it’s a lot more sedate:

Cologne also has a major art museum, the Museum Ludwig, whose collection focuses on 20th-c. and contemporary art.

I liked this piece:

This is “A Possible System” by A. R. Penck, oil on canvas, 1965.

This is KP Brehmer’s “Correction of the national colors measured by distribution of wealth,” 1972. In it, the three equally distributed colors of the German flag are remeasured for the percentage of wealth owned by, respectively, the middle class, other households, and “Big Capital.”

But the highlight for me was the huge exhibit on the ground floor of an artist I had never heard of: Ursula. The actual back end of the exhibit was in an atrium open to the other floors, so when I looked down I saw:

It looks like nothing so much as the Temple from the recent Emergence burn:

I was intrigued. I finished up the main galleries and headed down to this strange artist’s realm.

“Wilder Mann.” Of course. It’s actually two-sided, and the two sides are not the same.

I’ll have a lot more to say about Ursula’s work over on Lichtenbergianism.com next week — it was a thrilling universe of obsessive exuberance.

The hut, from eye level:

Random bit of fun: At some point in the past, two green-headed parakeets escaped from a zoo somewhere in Germany, and now in Koblenz and Cologne there are flocks of them. Here’s a shot of a treeful of them as they came home to roost at dusk, right outside the ship:

Beautiful plumage.

We started in Basel, Switzerland, and we ended in Amsterdam. Our next-to-last stop was Kinderdijk, a national monument with 17 windmills, still maintained by people who live in them. Two are museums; we explored one of them, and I have to say that I would need to see a photo of the others, which we were assured had been modernized, because the interior was so cramped that I cannot imagine a 21st-c. human wanting to live in them. (Statistically, the Dutch are the tallest nation on earth.) But there’s a five-year waiting list to get in to one of them — plus some pretty serious windmill technology training — so go figure.

Amsterdam is a lovely city, and of course, like all cities built on pilings driven into swampland (viz., Venice or Mexico City), buildings there have a tendency to settle out of plumb:

We were in Amsterdam on Sat, May 6, which was World Labyrinth Day. I had scoped out a labyrinth in the Vondelpark, so we set off to “walk as one at one,” though we didn’t really get there until after 2:00. On the way, I was once again reminded of the burn:

(More than a couple of camps at Alchemy have aerial rigs.)

In searching for the labyrinth I walked right past it twice, since the World Labyrinth Locator described it as being made of “rock or garden,” but in actuality it was a hedge labyrinth:

It’s not as well-kept at the photo makes it appear. It needs a garden club to get it back in shape. But I got to walk it while my companions rested, and it was good.

Our main goal in Amsterdam was the Rijksmuseum, the repository of Rembrandt and Hals and all those glorious icons of the Netherlands’ past. The museum’s special exhibit was the Vermeer exhibit, in which most of his surviving paintings have been pulled together from collections all over the world. (Of the 27 works, we had seen seven of them in Washington and New York.) Of course it was sold out.

But the concierge at our hotel told us to get timed tickets for the museum at 9:00 a.m., and then head straight to the ticket desk to see if they actually had tickets left. And they did, so we palled around with Rembrandt until 10:30, and then we bathed in the perfection that is Vermeer. It was a good day. (Ironically, his most famous painting, “Girl with a Pearl Earring,” was not in the exhibit; we don’t know why The Hague didn’t loan it.)

Other high points of the trip include a phenomenal dinner in Rudesheim, a tiny riverside town (more about which in the swag post); our tour guide singing “Alleluia” in the cathedral in Koblenz; teaching the waltz to three or four fun couples on board; cocktails at the Super Lyan bar, one of Amsterdam’s finest, which happened to be in our hotel; watching the full moon rise above the river as we sailed along at night.

Next up: all the stuff I bought, and a couple of pro tips.