Or “meer-ah-pwah”, like you Francophiles might prefer, is a concoction of simple vegetables used to flavor other dishes. It popped up as an ingredient for the octopus boil en route to octopus ceviche, which was the recipe I was pursuing. I’d heard of the concoction during my years of cooking, but never tried it. As Julia says “The mirepoix is one of fine cooking’s great inspirations, an all-purpose flavor enhancer made of finely diced sautéed onions and carrots, and often celery and ham. Used in sauces, with braised vegetable like celery or with chicken breasts poached in butter, it imparts real ‘je ne sais quoi’ of sophistication to anything it is associated with (1)”. The word mirepoix comes from the last name of a French aristocrat, the Duke Charles-Pierre-Gaston François de Lévis, duc de Lévis-Mirepoix, whose cook is credited with establishing this mix of ingredients as a staple in French cooking in the eighteenth century. Love the French. If you’re a good cook, you can be immortal.
So, do you want to make your own mirepoix? Here’s the basic recipe very simple.
And on the blow-by-blow:
Here’s the veggies you need.
My onion was a little short of 8 oz, so I added a shallot, Always helps to add a shallot of recipes that call for any sort of alliums (2). Then you peel the carrot and chop everything, leaving a nice-looking bowl.
That goes into a skillet melting 1T butter (or ghee) on low heat. We frown on brown here. In 6-8 minutes, the onions should look translucent and thus ready. This isn’t something you want to dip your spoon into and chow down. Save it for providing some sophistication to soups, stews, and sauces. We took our half yield and dumped it in the octopus boil.
I bought my first octopus day before I first wrote this. With the Stanley Cup far off and our Wings even farther, we decided to eat it. It’s very clear you’re about to toss a once living creature in the pot.
An hour in the mix of bay leaf, mirepoix, and water renders the tentacles tender. Making something edible out of the head requires more effort, and some recipes say just toss it. Not us! The impetus to pursue this recipe came from our Florida trip. Prior to Karla Bonoff’s concert at the Murray Theater in Safety Harbor, we landed at Marker 39 Floribbean Cuisine, a funky little place with great outdoor seating (3). They had octopus ceviche on the menu and we had to try it, amazed with how good it was. I wrote it down as something I wanted to try when I got home. Next to us was a table of Ontarians, also pleased to be down here shedding the northern cold. I regaled them with tales of my Canadian citizen birth dad and Toronton baby sister. When they left, I sang them some lines from their national anthem “I stand on guard for thee!”.
Back to the cooking. Sounds like a joke “first you buy an octopus”. We found one at Whole Foods, their last. No prep other than a little rinsing, and into the boiling pot it goes, joining that mirepoix and a bay leaf. An hour later, it’s done.
Let it cool for a bit before hacking away. We threw ours in the freezer, then transferred to the fridge overnight. Very easy to work with the next morning. Tentacles sliced from the body easily to be chopped into 1” pieces. The head is supposed to be a hassle, and some recipes say just discard it. Apparently, there’s a beak involved but I didn’t encounter one. Maybe Whole Foods removed it. But I got the whole octopus. After that, it’s just basking in an acidic marinade for a couple of hours. Muy tasty. Here’s the whole recipe:
Some worry that octopus will be rubbery, but not the case here by any means. All-in-all, a wonderful dish, whether for appetizer or “soup” course, provided you don’t mind some suction cups staring up at you.
Did you ever iron your recipe cards? I just did. Several that had been in high circulation had gotten splashed, stained, and wrinkled. They just didn’t look nice anymore, despite the treats they promised. Sure, they’d still fit in the recipe box, but they deserved better. So, when I went downstairs to iron that remaining blue handkerchief from my last load, I took them with me. The silicone barrier sheets from t-shirt transfers make the process easy peasy and out emerged some nice flat recipe cards. I even ironed a recent reprint that had become a little wrinkled laying around (1). Since med school when I realized I’d better learn to enjoy the time spent doing mundane household tasks, I’ve loved ironing. Bringing order to a wrinkled piece of cloth using a dangerously hot implement has such an appeal. As my dear Grandma Slater emerged from her stroke, one of the first things she wanted to do was iron some things. I puzzled over it then but understand it now. This was bringing order out of the chaos of life, with a very predictable outcome. That stack of nicely ironed and folded things speaks to some time well spent. Not near as much call for ironing these days with Perma Press and all sorts of other conveniences. Here on Harbal I haven’t ironed a white shirt since my obsession years ago that the collar should be neat. All that comes out wrinkled and asking for attention are dishtowels, formal napkins, and handkercheifs. And I approach those with relish. We have what’s called our ‘SRO’ (sewing room, office). In it are Kathy’s sewing doo-dads, file cabinets full of important stuff, all my vinyl records, some books, most of Kathy’s 200 plus stuffed animals, and some well respected ironing equipment. The ironing board hangs on a couple hooks behind the door (2) while the iron itself sits on a gen-you-wine ”Slater Safety Stand”, an item invented and patented by my Grandpa Slater, a Grand Rapids fireman at the time (3). He’d observed that so many of the house fires he was called to were started by the woman of the house laying her hot iron on the ironing board and neglecting it. That shall not happen at Harbal! Hot iron will continue to meet wrinkles, but expect no flambé as a consequence.
References
1. Ike RW, McCoy SS. Learn labial salivary gland biopsy online. J Clin Rheumatol 29(7): 363, October 2023.c
As I unpacked the final item from our Florida trip last week – the CD holder from our car – I realized it might be high time to write this puppy up. We’d been home 5 weeks or so and I’d started the writing long ago. Time to get it done before I start forgetting the details! So here goes:
Well, that was a trip! As we pulled into our driveway Friday, we’d logged 2,926 road miles (not including local driving) – or almost 39 hours in Michigan units – touching down in 10 cities and towns, and sleeping 8 nights in beds not our own, 7 of those one-nighters. A straight shot down I-75 to Madeira Beach would have been 1193 miles (17 hours 11 minutes), only 2,386 miles round trip, but where’s the fun in that? The notion of escaping to Florida for a portion of the winter came to us a decade or so ago when we realized that my having a brother in Clearwater was a good excuse to visit there. Wishing to be close to the water, we booked our first places in pricey, crowded Clearwater Beach. Anything right on the Gulf was out of our range, but we found a place on Clearwater Bay on the other side of the peninsula that proved very adequate. The expansive Gulf Beach was a short walk west, with its great open bars and restaurants. A short drive up the spit got us to Honeymoon Island, and a fun ride on the water taxi took us to Dunedin, winter home of the Blue Jays, hometown of Gov. DeSantis, with a great beer trail (1). We took Gulf Boulevard south to explore the rest of the Pinellas Spit. After 25 minutes of driving past luxury waterfront homes and high rises, we came upon funky Madeira Beach. Any place with a bar named “Saltwater Hippie” is our kind of place (2). Mad Beach would be our winter touchdown spot thereafter. The best places we could find on AirBnB were “steps to the beach”, but it was tantalizing to be so close to that Gulf but not on it. One afternoon, Kathy went knocking on doors and discovered the blue frame house we now rent through VRBO.
Featuring a well-appointed kitchen, electric outdoor grill, comfy beds, and a long front porch with plenty of padded chaises longue and rockers, it’s a place we’d leave less and less each time down. We’re already booked for next January. But it and the house next door are the only low frame houses on the beach for miles in either direction. You can count on the fact that some day soon those houses will be bought and bulldozed to make way for another soulless high rise. We’ll enjoy it till then.
I’ll tell you more about Madeira Beach later. Back to the trip that just happened. Getting to MB is easy. The flights from DTW to TPA are plentiful and relatively cheap. We can always get a Jeep through Turo (3), and the only pain is fighting the traffic for 25 miles on the Bean Parkway over 3 bridges to the Beach. After last year’s stay, we thought maybe we’d drive down next time. Come November, that still seemed like a good idea. Friends from Michigan, New Mexico, and Colorado had moved to places in Dixie where we could touch down along the way. Kathy’s 89-year-old Uncle Chuck was the Ohio River away from Dixie in Cincinnati – still right off 75 – and our 18-year-old niece Ayslin was a junior at Vanderbilt (home schooled). Just like last year (4), Jimmy Harbaugh complicated our January vacation plans by putting the team in the championships, but we could watch that game from somewhere in MB. As we worked our way down, complications ensued. Chuck’s Kathy was medically indisposed and wouldn’t be good company, so we passed Cincinnati by. We were expecting to land with June, in Loudon outside of Knoxville. She didn’t return a couple of my warning e-mails, but we proceeded, nonetheless. We caught up with her about an hour out. She was driving north from her daughter-in-law’s in Florida. No meet up this time! We camped in a nice Marriott in Knoxville (on points!) and moved on to South Carolina to find Donna.
She’s a red-headed spitfire who’d been my Division chief’s secretary. She was smarter than most of the docs she served, and of course no-one suspected it because of her accent. We bonded on our politics and other shared views on life, even going out on a few “dates” before she bolted for the South. She’d found a lovely place in SC (tho’ she’s from NC), which she’d spent 2 years fixing up. You know how those Southern girls can talk, and Kathy kept right up. I kicked back, sipped whatever they served me, and tossed in a pithy comment or 2. Donna took us out for a soul food dinner, at a place run by a Punjabi (5). Fine to crunch into chicken and slime back them collards. With no booze served at the place, we had to retire to Donna’s to remedy that. Leaving the next morning with a good Southern breakfast under our belts from Donna’s kitchen, it was off to the redneck panhandle, where we hoped to find Ana.
Ana had been friend, attorney, and brief romantic partner to Kathy’s brother Bob in Santa Fe. We’d befriended her at a mutual dinner and really hit it off. She’d been focused legally on medical liability (“ambulance chaser”) but with COVID turned her focus to those wronged by such things as COVID mandates. She’d established a foundation – “New Mexico Stands Up!” – to coordinate these efforts. Her efforts drew attention, including an episode last year convincing her that her life was in danger. She decamped to Florida, where her crusade continues. She serves on the Operations Advisory Board of Freedom Healthcare, a Tennessee-based organization with nationwide ambitions that operates as as a Private Ministerial Association (6), specifically addressing the needs of those who were fortunate enough to avoid the. COVID vaxx. We enjoyed her filtered water, fresh from the back yard eggs, and gen-you-wine New Mexico enchiladas. The next morning, after consuming some of her eggs pulled fresh from the coop, we were off, straight on 89 over and down the panhandle, 4 1/2 hours to MB.
The MB arrival held no surprises. Our main pressure was finding a place where we could watch the National Championship game. We wanted to marry a TV view with Gulf breezes, so Caddy’s just down the beach was our target (7). We’d eschewed any gatherings mentioned on the UM Alumni board, and resigned ourselves that Tom Brady wasn’t going to invite us to his place in Tampa for a watch party, even though we knew the way, and anyway his old house is being torn down (8)! I think you know how the game came out. We jumped and screamed in the privacy of our home. We’ve worn our Michigan gear everywhere ever since, garnering many kudos.
Little could have gotten our butts out of our porch seats had I not several months previous scanned the Capitol Theater web site and bought tickets to three concerts I thought we’d like. Kathy said I was crazy at the time, but she’s come around. First, there was Paul Thorn, a 59 year old ex-welterweight prize fighter from Mississippi, son of a preacher and nephew of a pimp, who caught my attention with some pretty crude songs (9,10). His output is witty and joyful, which you can catch on this setlist from last October (11).
Next night was Karla Bonoff, who was slated to play at the Murry Theater at Ruth Eckhard Hall, 18 minutes due east from the Capitol Theater. We managed to find a fabulous dinner at Marker 49 Floribbean Cuisine (12). We sat outside and conversed with a Canadian contingent of snowbirds about culture and politics. Are Ontario and Michigan really that far from each other?
Karla was fabulous, too. Just her, a piano and guitar, and a gray-haired lady accompanist. Those not familiar with her may not know that she composed many of Linda Ronstadt’s hit songs. She sang many of these, with a soulful way that recounted Linda. For an array of what she did, you can review her setlist, as on this from a few months previous (13). She closed with her two favorite songs. The first may be the sexiest song ever recorded, especially with the video (14), and the second a traditional song through which I can never hear without coming to tears (15).
The next evening would be lighter, with Jay Leno at the main theater. We preceded the outing with dinner with brother John, wife Karen, and son Ian at Clear Sky, right across from the Capitol Theater, where we originally thought the concert would be. 21 minutes across the peninsula, it was Jay doing the stand-up he used to do before the Tonight gig. He hasn’t lost his chops. Asked if he was worried about being “cancelled” for his sometimes controversial humor, he responded “do you see how old my fans are? How long do you think it would take to storm the stage?”. Nobody did.
Sundays are for church, and we found a lovely one in MB (16). Church-by-the-Sea was just down from Sweet Brewnette, our coffee shop (17). So, it meant for us to get Sunday morning to walk down there. The church’s steeple looks like a friendly bird, and that spirit pervades their congregation.
We walked in with our Michigan gear and got many kudos. After the service, someone pulled Kathy aside and said maybe we should tone it down, but she replied this rarely happens to us, so we want to show off. I think he understood.
The afternoon found Jim from Sarasota coming up. Usually deluged by family, he had a glimpse of free time. We’d been friends since high school and were copacetic on so many issues.
Jim said the pic was snapped at his girlfriend’s house in Columbus OH, during a party right after the Michigan game. Jim’s a Kalamazoo Hornet, but his heart’s in the right place on the Big Blue. The plan was to feed him an early dinner, then turn him loose. He was eager to watch the Lions game that evening. He came early enough to have a bite of our late breakfast omelet but left before dinner went on the grill. .
Too bad, as it was set to be spectacular, some red snapper, fresh out of the Gulf (we couldn’t get grouper) plus some sides.
We missed seeing the sun set in the Gulf most of the trip. It was cool and cloudy early in the week, and our concertizing got us out of the house before sunset for 3 evenings. But on Sunday, the good Lord blessed us with a dandy.
And our Lions won, in a game only I stayed up to watch. Time to say Go Blue (Honolulu, too)!!.
Monday was set to stop over at Shutesies in Ocala. Unfortunately, the wife of his guest brother-in-law landed in the hospital with pneumonia. Their stay extended and our guest room taken away, our overnight tuned into a drive by. Even that lunch date was screwed up, as we selected the wrong site for the meet up. Eventually, we found a mutually acceptable spot from our wanderings in Belleview, 20 minutes south of Ocala (18), had a great Italian lunch, and moved on.
Up from that we were off to Georgia, where my crazy but dear Romanian colleague Elena had bolted to Athens from the U (“the Athens of the North”) when she found their ways too oppressive. She and husband Matt had a wonderful southern expanse with a wraparound porch. All that was missing was a slaves’ quarters. Kids and animals kept things lively. After a dinner and solving the world’s problems, we were off the next morning.
Then it was up to June in Tennessee. June is widow to my dear friend and double classmate (VHS, UofM) Sam. It’s such a blessing that Kathy and I have become such good friends with her. I’m sure Sam is looking down, smiling. A snow and ice storm had made the going a little treacherous, particularly the route into June’s place. She lived in a lake development with big time hills leading in. We were happy for our 4 wheeled-drive – first time we’ve used it all year – as we coursed our way down. June recognized the plight of the current weather and recommended an eat-in spaghetti dinner, which we happily accepted. That gave us even more time to discuss the problems of the world. June’s new dog Bailey ran around and gave enthusiastic support to our points of view. June laid an egg breakfast on us the next morning and we were off.
Our next-to-last evening, in Nashville, had us taking Ash (Ayslin) out for dinner. The Vandy campus was an even more compact a maze than UofMs. Given Ash’s choice, we ended up at a decidedly non-fancy place that was perfectly adequate. The girl had come off a ski trip to Utah for which delays ended up that morning. A nap left her ready for us, and we had a wonderful time. A bulky sweater masked her comely appurtenances, quieting my dirty-old-uncle urges, at least somewhat.
On our next to last morning, facing a short hop from Nashville to Cincy (a mere 4 hours 18’), we dipped south to the Overton Lea neighborhood of Oak Hill, a one-time horse farm where now Nashvillians move to when they seek some peace and quiet (19). There, on 1108 Overton Lea Road, is the house where John Prine lived his last two years. Since neither he nor wife Fiona live there anymore, I wouldn’t be stalking. Here are the pics I managed with my phone.
There’s a much nicer spread in the article that came out after the place sold for $4.26 million last March (20). Pretty good, not bad for a singing mailman (21).
We dissembled and went over to meet Uncle Chuck for a nice dinner. His Kathy was still under the weather, but we learned the medical details. Chuck’s True Blue roots stem from his MBA at what is now known as the Ross Business School. Watching games real time make him too nervous so he’ll only watch a taped game after he knows the outcome. Thus, he enjoyed the tales Kathy and I had about what it was like to go through this Championship season.
Home from Cincy is a straight shot up 23, but it wouldn’t be home-sweet-home without some effort.
One big advantage of driving is all the stuff you can take along. The hold of our Jeep was well stocked with everything from suitcases, my CPAP machine, a cooler with cold blocks, frozen meat, cold cuts, milk, tea, and cream, a SodaStream machine (22), jackets, a full CD carrier, tall coffee mugs and insulated water mugs, road atlases, jackets, and miscellaneous empty bags and totes. Some entropy was to be expected over the course of the trip.
Yet, we faced our last morning without an important implement. We awoke to see that Mother Nature had blessed Cincy with a few inches of the white stuff. We reached in the back for a snow brush/scraper and came up empty. The wimpy winter in Michigan up to time of our departure had not called for one, and who packs a snow brush for Florida? Not an omission we’ll make next year.
Coda: When we pulled up to the driveway at about 2:45 PM Friday, 2 weeks after we’d left, all looked intact, our beloved house looking inviting with its snowy highlights. No packages on the porch, indicating our neighbors had indeed been vigilant, although an Amazon driver would walk up and hand us another one while we were unloading. Our neighbor Tom, responsible for all the vigilance, had texted Kathy that he could no longer work the keyless entry pad on our front door. We’d been having trouble with it for a couple weeks. We figured, o.k., we’d get in through the garage. Imagine our surprise when the keypad on the door to the kitchen from the garage wouldn’t work either. Apparently, its battery went dead. Undaunted, Kathy had me carry our extension letter to the back, where we propped it up to the deck railing by the hot tub, and she scurried up to the deck finding the sliding door to the sunroom, as closer doors to our bedroom and the living room were locked. After a quick tour of the interior to assure all was well, we threw open both doors to the outside and unloaded. Another Christmas awaited us with all the packages and held mail.
I started a fire and graciously offered Kathy my last beer, as I’d found some bourbon that was “Ready-to-Drink”.
We usually put on Sinatra’s “It’s So Nice to Go Travelin’” when we return home from a trip (23). After this one, I just put on the whole damned album (24). It made a nice soundtrack as we sat in our Stressless Maxes sipping our respective libations and opening stuff. Life is good.
It began as something for the Spei family mid-February Christmas celebration extravgangza. The February date allows individuals to have their close family Christmas then be available sometime after Valentine’s Day for a bigger blowout. My birthdad, Dick Spei, was a gourmet/gourmand who taught all his offspring to approach each meal as if it were their last, advice heeded by all out to a couple generations now. With a little friendly competition, an enormous spread is produced – from old family recipes to new experiments – that takes 3 days to consume, always with leftovers for all. There are no big gifts, even with all the rugrats running around. Small individual gifts come out of the “Chimney”, in a ritual orchestrated by my sister Suzanne (1). Little foodie gifts go to the adults, anything from an interesting useful utensil to an array of homemade concoctions. I finally joined the fray a few years back and decided to continue my participation this year. I’d been pleased with the ghee I’d been whipping up (2) and wondered to my #1 nephew Jake – who’s the main organizer of the event – how little jars of that might be received. Excellent idea, said Jake. I’d start with 10# of butter and see what I got. Even though plans were set weeks in advance, I didn’t get around to executing them till the days before the event. Fortunately, Kroger had a nice sale on Land o’Lakes, $3.99/#, almost half price. But to get that price you had to scan a QR code to make an electronic coupon. Thus, I had to download and learn a new app, then go to the store on successive days because the limit was 5/customer. But the haul made for an impressive stack.
That was Wednesday. Getting ready to start making it, I found I had no 8 oz jars, requiring a hardware store trip the next morning.
Needing a few more things down the road at Busch’s, I saw they were having a sale on their store-brand butter, $2.99/#! I laid in 5 more pounds, as you can’t have too much butter. Would prove helpful the next day. Other afternoon errands left me too pooped to take on ghee, so the process got booted to the next day.
Now Friday was the day this shindig was supposed to start. Jake had decided to move the venue to someplace nicer. So instead of the rustic stuck-in-the-50s Cowboy Creek Lodge in Onstead, on the edge of the Irish Hills (3), 44 minutes away, we’d meet in Huron, Ohio, occupying a pair of big well-appointed houses on what was not too long ago a farmer’s field (4). Turned out to be fine and dandy – a big upgrade – although we didn’t get to use the pool or the tennis/pickleball court. But a good 2 hours away. We wouldn’t be able to check in till 4, so there seemed to be plenty of time for the prep. The day before I had chopped, peeled, and vacu-sealed the potatoes, turnips, and garlic cloves for the garlic mashed potatoes for 16 (I had been making for 32, but there was always a lot left over).
My trepidation was how well my ghee recipe would ramp up. I’d been making a pound at a to me, filling a quart jar. Now I’ve got 10#, aiming for 20 8oz jars.
It’s important to be able to see the butter solids settle, so a clear pot is essential. Fortunately, the little amber Pyrex pot I’d been using had a big brother downstairs.
That big fella took on 5#, it would be two batches. Can be done.
Of course, it takes a lot longer for 5 pounds of butter to melt than it does one pound. Idle time for the chef to sit back and sip at his companion beverage. The foam roars up like slag on an open-hearth steel furnace and must be skimmed with a spoon.
This stuff is Kathy’s favorite part of the ghee process, so she was happy I was getting a lot of it. Once that first bloop comes up, you’re done. There can be a lot of solids.
Time to pour contents of the pot through a double cheesecloth lined strainer. Unfortunately, that doesn’t stop most of the solids and it remains an exercise in finesse to pour the clear stuff into jars and leave the solids behind. Of course, I save the left-behinds. It’s still buttery good. I don’t know if I should call it “chunky ghee” or just “seconds”.
So, repeat with the 2nd 5#, but once through those, I’ve only got 15 jars filled. This batch method has a lower yield than my 1# approach. Is there anymore butter in the house? Why yes!
So, in go those Busch’s bargain sticks and 20 jars be filled.
Of course, they need labels. Fortunately, my Brother p-Touch has a German script for the Speis and the offerings are ready.
But by then it was 7 o’clock, the chef was toasted, and we’d heard of some bad weather in northern Ohio. Our fate was an extra night at home. The big dinner was for Saturday night, so we wouldn’t be missing anything too important.
We finally arrived about 4 PM Saturday. We were warmly greeted, and no one gave us much crap about missing Friday night. Many commented that that snow and ice had made passage in the area treacherous, which it still was on the ice-covered pathways around “The Grand Lodge.”
I started getting acquainted with this wonderful family nearly 15 years ago, but I keep learning new things about them.
I learned several things from my oldest brother Nick. He’s 13 months my junior, so our dad didn’t waste any time.
• Spei translates from the German as “spit”, sez Nick. My GoogleTranslate doesn’t know what to do with the word. My Duo-Lingo German scholar wifey disagrees, pointing out that in Latin, Spei translates as “hope”. She and some Speis got into it Saturday night and found “speise” (pronounced “spy-zah”) is German for “food”, which would be apt for this bunch.
• Nick’s maternal grandmother was Polish! That was her recipe of sauerkraut and sausage cooking in one of the pots. My family tree charts put the Speis at German English with a little Irish. A proud line regardless. I was hoping to claim some Polish blood, but that maternal line didn’t come my way.
• He clarified how Dad ended up in Canada. When I tell folks Dad left Dee-troit for Canada in 1969, I tell them what he told me: he was fed up with the politics and the violence. And I have to add he was not a draft dodger. This is how it went, per Nick. Dad was having an affair with an English woman, cad that he always was. Nick’s mom went to the embassy and requested the woman be deported, as she was breaking up an American family. The woman fled to Windsor, and Dad followed her.
• Nick went to Grosse Pointe High, a fairly hoity toity HS with a lot of old money rich kids. It was site of a pretty funny 1997 movie, Grosse Pointe Blank, that starred John Cusack, Minnie Driver, and Dan Ackroyd (5). Nick’s family then was certainly not “of means”, what with the divorce and all, and he hung out with the “Italian kids”, who Nick said were all grandchildren of the Purple Gang (6). Good story, brother, but my refs say the Purple Gang was mainly Jewish! One for next time.
• To make some change in high school, Nick became the local condom dealer. He’d buy boxes of 12 at the drug store for $2.50/box, then sell the individual condoms for a buck apiece. Pretty good markup. Nick did well and had many satisfied customers. He’s still proud of all the unwanted pregnancies he helped prevent. I told him he should be put up for a Margaret Sanger award. High school authorities shut him down when some of Nick’s customers began to show their gratitude by hanging their condoms on his locker door.
• Nick faced the draft year after me, drawing #7 in the lottery. He’d chosen not to attend college, but those 2-S student’s deferments ended with my class, so it wouldn’t have helped. At his draft board physical, the doctor noticed something irregular in Nick’s back. He had a slight curvature of the spine. Nick at the time was working for a moving company and hauling around pianos and such without a peep from his back. Nevertheless, that doc’s observation was enough to gain him 4-F status and save him from Viet Nam.
• At these food fests, Nick liked to go around with a plastic fork in the front pocket of his flannel shirt. He liked to be ready to stab anything that looked good. As I was talking to him, I looked around and saw that all the other Spei men had affected the same accessory and were wearing flannel shirts!
I don’t know about the flannel shirts, but the fork was also an homage to patriarch Dick, who wanted his boys always to be ready. I felt a little left out in my pocket-less UC Santa Cruz banana slugs sweatshirt. Nephew Pete noticed the shoulder pouch I was wearing, with a front pocket, and suggested I stick a fork there. I did, and immediately felt closer to that crowd.
I’ve got plenty of flannel shirts, and I’m wearing one next year.
Marty is my next oldest brother, and an entertaining character. He’s a full-fledged artist-sculptor with a studio in Santa Fe (7). I can keep up with him on coffee snobbishness and Dylan quotes so art and science get along. He announced he’s moving his studio 47 miles up the road to Dixon (pop’n 926), an enclave up in the mountains 20 miles south of Taos where a few old hippies mingle with the predominant Hispanics with what sounds like an amazing organic food scene. Marty said Dylan lived there for a while, but I’ve yet to find electronic evidence. Regardless, once Marty gets settled, we’re coming to visit!
I was too pooped after Saturday’s late dinner to stay up for the rest of the proceedings. Suze’s Chimney offerings were little spoons and spreaders whose handles bore some message of personal significance. Mine had a stein of beer and Kathy’s a NASA logo. We got jars of spices, bags of gen-you-wine Santa Fe hot peppers (from Marty), Dan’s jars of jam which still bore his late wife Elise’s name, and infused oils from Cyn’s (Jake’s wife) Magic Butter (usually used for more intoxicating concoctions). Jake gave us a special bottle of wine, recognizing our mutual Trekkiness.
And Marty spread out some of his etchings to take, and I snagged one Sunday morning. Full size is 9 3/16 X 11, and the caption reads “I should of been a cowboy”.
Breakfast was slow to convene, as some had been up till 2 watching the clear sky through Katie’s telescope (you know who was out there). Ample leftovers, but nephew Alex whipped up some dandy bean burritos that hit the spot for me. You don’t usually think of cashew brittle and key lime pie as breakfast items, but dessert artist brother-in-law Dan had made them so I had to have a taste. Leaving is always hard, and a little awkward. You must squeeze in the hugs between other folks gathering up their stuff to leave. With Mike and Suzanne’s new 4500 square foot log house nearby, we had to have a Mike-guided tour. What a magnificent orgy of wood, looking over a bend of the Huron River where bald eagles like to play.
Yes, we were happy with our takings from the affair, although most of our takings are new memories to add to the very nice pile I now have with my not so new family. As always, the true joy is in the giving, not the taking. Now I’ve got a year to figure what I’m going to butter them up with next time.
I hope you all had a lovely Valentine’s Day, dirty foreheads and all, some of you. Mine was wonderful, although it didn’t start well. Unable to tell my wife when that Kerrytown Cabaret show started, I went looking for the tickets and couldn’t find them anywhere. I dashed off a frantic e-mail to the concert house, but it was 7:30 AM and they don’t open their office till 1:30. With the afternoon melting away and no response, I broke down and called. They often do their tickets will call, so maybe they were waiting for me. Nope, no tickets for that name, but a few tickets remained, which I snatched. As Kathy found out, nothing adds to the romance of a wife’s Valentine’s date like hearing her husband spell out his credit card number over the phone to pay for the tickets. She’d gotten a taste of that same feeling the night before at Kroger’s as I paid for that bouquet of red roses along with the rest of the groceries.
Next would be the romantic dinner. Kerrytown is several blocks north of Ann Arbor’s restaurant row on Main Street but has a few nice places close by. Of course, all of those would be crowded with couples working to squeeze as much romance out of the evening as possible in spite of the mediocre food. Fortunately, I’ve got Kathy convinced that the best kitchen in town is right here at 1611 Harbal. So, when I quoted Dave Frishberg and said “Let’s eat home” (sung here by Rosemary Clooney (1)), she was all for it. It’d be a simple repast: angel hair pasta with meat sauce, salad with homemade Italian dressing, and the nice Barolo on which we’d splurged. I had a bunch of my own ragu (Italian for meat sauce) frozen away and spiked it with an Italian sausage and some mushrooms. Kathy’s in charge of salads, and decided to try a more elaborate Italian dressing, which was very nice.
Kerrytown Concert House is about 3 minutes from our house. Right across from the Farmers’ Market, it’s an old white frame house with what used to be a big living room and dining room converted to a concert space, seating maybe 50 at most. They feature a wonderful array of jazz, classical, and folk (2). Last night’ s show sounded both unusual and fun when I first spotted it a couple months ago (3). Tyler Driskill is on faculty at the UofM music school, as were 2 other performers. The 2 ladies on strings piece together a living by giving lessons and performing with various groups. The husband-and-wife singers – the Bogarts – are both seasoned Broadway vets.
If you weren’t in the mood already upon arrival, the (free) offerings of 3 different champagnes and many different little cakes set up in the side room en route to the coat rack sure helped things along. Professor Driskill kicked things off, solo on the piano, with 4 fairly obscure gems from the Great American Songbook*. After the Cole Porter we all recognized (“From this Moment On”), the ladies with violin and cello came on to kick our brows way high, Driskill accompanying. After 3 numbers, the ladies were replaced by the Bogarts. Just to make sure there was no doubt about the hard shift, they opened with a Queen song, before settling into more GAS* classics. Jessica brought down the house with her rendition of “I Cain’t Say No”. All were songs about love, for Valentine’s Day, of course. I recognized them all but one, “How Much Love”, a moody, brooding, compelling song by Michael John LaChiusa, an NYU prof 10 years my junior known for his daring off-Broadway work (4).
I’m sure I wasn’t the only one who entered the night air with a warm glow. And it wasn’t just the champagne, which they continued to pour throughout the show.
I know Valentine’s Day 2025 is a long way off, but if you’re gonna be anywhere near Ann Arbor then, I highly recommend this show, which they do every year. I can’t think of a better VD date. I know Kathy and I will be there, God willing.
The plot of the classic movie “Groundhog Day” is that Billy Murray’s character weatherman Phil Connors experiences Groundhog Day in Punxsutawny over and over again, getting things a little better each time. The music site Best Classic Bands (1) today circulated a story on the 2020 Super Bowl commercial Murray made for Jeep. I gave you a link to the extended version of that hilarious commercial in yesterday’s post (2). The BCB article goes into some detail how Murray, Jeep,and the producers worked to keep the commercial faithful to the original movie. As a bonus, they even provide a link for free streaming of the movie. So check it out (3). Just like Phil Connors in the movie, you can’t get too much Groundhog Day!
References
Best Classic Bands – Celebrating the Artists, Music, and Pop Culture of the Classic Rock Era. https://bestclassicbands.com
Where did January go? On this first day of the second month, we sit on the eve of one of our most underappreciated holidays: Groundhog Day. No one takes it seriously. Banks remain open, no one gets a day off, and the postman still comes. But this day – a “cross-quarter” day smack between the winter solstice and vernal (spring) equinox – has cosmic significance and deserves greater reflection than just hearing whether that Phil in Punxsutawney saw his shadow or not. His observations aren’t even that accurate, worse than a coin flip (1). But certainly, in Michigan it’s guaranteed to be bright and sunny on February 2nd, so of course here come 6 more weeks of winter. But if you don’t quite know the origins of this charming tradition, and its deep roots in paganism, I urge you to take a brief read (2).
Of course, they don’t look so happy. They’ve been in bed all winter! Also of course, the forecast for SE lower Michigan tomorrow is bright and sunny, so you know what Woody will be doing!
Once you “get” Groundhog Day, you’ll not want people to mess with it (3).
Now just for fun, indulge in 4’49” of hilarity watching Mr. Murray trying to sell a Jeep at the 2020 Super Bowl (4).
The maize-and-blue faithful here in Tree Town and around the world are emerging from this January in an unfamiliar position. Instead of losing their bowl game at the start of the month, tucking tail, and saying “wait till next year”, they find their team is a National Champion, first time in 27 years, the twelfth time all told for a Wolverines team over their 144 seasons. 9th year coach Jimmy Harbaugh – All American quarterback hero and Bo Schembechler protégée returned home to restore Michigan Football’s faded glory – and did just that, fielding a team that ground all 15 opponents into paste, including hated rival Ohio State for the 3rd straight year. He wasn’t on the sidelines for 6 of those contests, but that’s another story. His team not only beat other teams, they blew up whole programs. Legendary Nick Saban retired unexpectedly after his ‘Tide fell in the Rose Bowl. The coach of the championship opponent Huskies, former Hoosier Kalen DeBoer, split after only 2 seasons to take the Alabama job vacated by Saban. Ohio State’s Ryan Day, whom Harbaugh said “found himself on 3rd base and thought he’d hit a triple”, not only finds himself on the hottest seat in college football, at a school where any season in which you don’t beat Michigan is a failure. Ryan’s got himself a triple there, with three straight losses to that team up north. Meanwhile, funds from all Buckeye supporters are pouring in, working on their second multiple of $10 million, for NIL monies to lure prospects from the transfer portal. To think this school got in trouble for players trading the “gold pants” trinkets they got for beating Michigan for tattoos. When Ryan thinks of his predecessor Jim Tressell, I’m sure he thinks “amateur”.
All that was missing for Michigan was hearing the lamentations of their opponents’ women. But Jimmy is nothing if not an interesting character. He and AD Warde Manuel had been dancing over a new contract since before the end of the regular season. It would have made sense to give him everything he wanted, letting him ride triumphant into the post-season with a symbol of the U’s love for him. Instead, Jimmy was left to start his annual dance, 3rd year running, with the NFL. He’d been a successful pro coach with the Niners, leading them to 3 division championships and one Super Bowl, where he famously lost to his brother John’s Ravens in Super Bowl XLVII (2013) 31-34. Things went horribly south the next season with the Niners management, and he was ready to be lured to greener pastures in Ann Arbor, an orchestrated seduction chronicled in John U. Bacon’s book Overtime: Jim Harbaugh and the Michigan Wolverines at the Crossroads of College Football (1).
So, after that natty, Jimmy continued to provide us drama. His speech to the adoring throngs at Crisler celebrating that championship showed a heartfelt Michigan Man, through and through, quoting from Fielding Yost, Bo, his dad, James Earl Jones, and Shakespeare (2). This did not appear to be a man who was going anywhere. But the dance continued, Jimmy interviewing not only with the Chargers (where he played 1999-2000) but also with the Falcons. When the Chargers finally made an offer, 15 days after the National Championship game, UofM AD Warde Manuel finally relinquished and included a clause in Jim’s proposed contract that he would not be fired for any NCAA sanctions levied – something Jim’s lawyers had been asking for since negotiations had started the previous year. The potential NCAA sanctions had been a double piece of BS since the get go, the first for supposed “recruiting violations” during COVID and the second for “sign stealing”, based on a cell phone-based piece of espionage orchestrated by an overzealous graduate assistant. They made Jim sit out 6 of his team’s 12 regular season games. So, when LA agreed to Jim’s $1.5 million buyout – coy on other numbers of his 5-year contract except to say he’ll make more than his brother John with the Ravens ($12 mill/per) – Jim was gone.
The Michigan faithful were comforted by Warde’s quick appointment as HC of 37-year-old offensive coordinator and offensive line coach Sherrone Moore, once an offensive tackle for Bob Stoops at Oklahoma. Sherrone had been on staff for 5 years, starting as tight ends coach and responsible for the entire O-line the last three years. In the first two years, his line won the Joe Moore award as best offensive line in all of college football. This past season, his first as sole coordinator of the offense, his team put up 30 or more points in all but three games, playing the smash mouth style Jimmy loves, with just enough zings from the great JJ McCarthy to his talented receivers to keep things interesting. They ate lots of clock and kept the defense rested. I’m sure Bo looked down and smiled. Public Sherrone was a joy, passionate, emotional, and all Michigan.
However we got this future superstar coach to Michigan is the basis of the little tidbit I want to share, which inspired this blog. But to appreciate it, you need a little background, especially you’re not from the state of Michigan.
You see, in this state with many public and private institutions of higher learning, there are only two that play big-time football: Michigan and Michigan State. The two schools have been playing each other since 1898, when a contest between the two undefeated schools on Michigan’s home turf of Ferry Field left Michigan victorious, winning all the rest of its games to claim their first National Championship. MSU was MAC then (Michigan Agricultural College) and were the Aggies, not the Spartans. That new nickname, acquired in 1925 – same year MAC became MSC – may have slowed the farmer jokes from Michigan fans, but certainly hasn’t stopped them! Meetings were irregular until MSC was admitted to the Big 10 in 1950, replacing the University of Chicago, which had deemphasized football a decade earlier, greatly reducing the Big 10’s output of Nobel laureates. The state made MSC a university in 1955, their centennial year, and “Michigan State University” was adopted in 1964.
Regardless of institutional names, whenever green meets blue on the gridiron, it’s an epic struggle. Books have been written on the rivalry (3,4), as well as a very good Wikipedia page (5). It’s hard to appreciate the atmosphere of game week unless you live around here. It’s nonstop hype, everybody’s flying and wearing their colors, and jabs to those on the other side. The many “mixed marriages” test their bonds. But the underlying current is always good natured and well humored. Sure, past games have had stings for both sides, and they are not forgotten, but it’s never the source of bitterness or rancor. The game is played, one side gets bragging rights for a year, and we move on.
So, imagine my surprise when I discovered this tidbit as I looked into Sherrone’s background. Here goes. We owe his presence on the Michigan staff to a former Spartoon. Sherrone’s previous post was at Central Michigan, where he coached tight ends. His head coach was Dan Enos, MSU QB 1986-1990, under George Perles. He started his last two years and did pretty well, even beating Michigan in 1990 (the controversial game where obvious interference on Desmond Howard that thwarted a 2-point conversion wasn’t called). After Dan was canned by the Chips in 2017, Jimmy hired him on to be wide receivers’ coach. He brought Sherrone with him. Dan was hired away to Alabama by Nick Saban 6 weeks later, but Sherrone stuck around, fortunately. So, thank U, MSU! “Go right thru…”(6).
I’d be remiss if I didn’t confess my own Spartoon near miss. My adoptive father only managed Haney’s Business School, but was a lifelong fan of the Wolverines, indoctrinating me early so there was never any question where I’d go. Only when I met my birth family around 15 years ago did I realize how different it all might have been. Mom had a year in at Wayne State till she got pregnant with me, but all her other living kids have at least one MSU degree, with my sister Di still a volunteer coach for their women’s rowing team. My birth dad not only went to MSC, he played football there, spending a year as a linebacker under legendary Biggie Munn, until “I got tired of being a tackling dummy”. My adoptive family pitched in with Mom’s little brother Jim, a proud member of MSC’s marching band at their first ever Rose Bowl. To assure he’d always be at loggerheads with his nephew, he went and got a PhD at Ohio State! But like all Michigan mixed families, we still love each other.
And so the great drama that is college football plays on.
My first book of compiled blogs from the pandemic years – there would eventually be 5, all titled Musing through a pandemic – contained my writings on coronavirus, whom I’d personalized as “Mr. Corona” (1). Looking back, it’s not a bad historical record. I got to wear my microbiologist/virologist’s hat as well as my doctor’s white coat. Plus, I was having to live through the BS just like everybody else. In those early months, I was way too optimistic that our scientists’ efforts would beat this bug. Fortunately, SARS-COV-2 went the way of all rapidly mutating RNA viruses and shed the features that made it deadly.
I’m writing this post as I’m about to give a copy of that book to my friend Ana. She’s been involved in the COVID battle from the git go, but as an attorney. She turned her attention from malpracticing doctors to the malpracticing governments and institutions that were hurting people with the measures they instituted to “protect” them against COVID. It was her strong instance that kept me and my wife from getting the jab. I very briefly worked for a foundation she’d help set up to meet the medical needs of the unvaccinated. I bowed out when it started to feel like a job. But we’re till friends, and my wife and I visited her in her redneck paradise panhandle home en route to the Pinellas spit. I told her about my book and she asked for a copy. As I looked over that book for the first time in a year or so, I saw I had not done with it what I’d done with the rest. I include a lot of links in my posts. When you read them on line, they’re easily accessible. Not so in a paper book, although you retain that functionality in a Kindle version. What I will be doing here is listing the book’s table of contents, all titles hyperlinked. I’ll make the URL of this blogpost into a tinyURL and put that in the front of the book. Hence. anyone reading the book next to computer or tablet can access the post corresponding to the chapter, and all the links in it.
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