Cleo has the right idea

The only way she could get closer to the wood stove would be to sprawl right under it. The weather forecast for today is Nasty -- subzero with winds gusting up to 45 mph -- so I don't think either the S.O. or I will be venturing outdoors very much.

I spent most of yesterday down at the museum. I'm trying to get my mess cleaned up so things will be in decent shape when we leave for Missouri. That way the other volunteers won't have anything to worry about or explain away the clutter if a school group or some other organization decides they'd like a tour. I've got three boxes of stuff that I hauled down from the attic left to catalog and about a dozen rolled up maps and blueprints, all stacked on a table in the exhibit area. One box should be fast and easy -- it's small, and it's artifacts. The other two will probably get shuffled to a less conspicuous location. They're packed full of documents, most of which appear to be related to Bernard Lambert's research for his book on Bishop Baraga, Shepherd of the Wilderness (currently out of print, but available from the Baraga County Historical Museum for a mere $15 plus $4 for shipping if anyone's interested; I've found so many copies of the book since I started emptying the attic that we now have at least half a dozen extras). Lambert's papers are going to be a challenge -- hard to classify, but I really dislike the idea of doing an entry in the finding aid that would just say "Miscellaneous research notes" when it looks like they'll fill several document boxes.

What's left in the attic. The pile extends back about 15 feet, maybe a little more,
and includes at least one large steamer trunk. None of the boxes are
labeled, or, if they are, I've discovered the labels rarely match the contents. When
I first started emptying the attic, I thought it would take several years
 to sort and catalog. I haven't revised that estimate much, although
 it is going a little faster than anticipated.
. 

The attic itself is far from empty. I figure I'm maybe at the halfway point, which is moderately amazing considering just how full it was packed. The section shown in the photo is probably the most secure part of the storage area. Although that OSB isn't nailed down it is at least OSB. The first section I emptied did not have a floor, just miscellaneous weirdness like old bulletin boards laid across the joists or nothing at all -- I found a few boxes sitting between the joists directly on the drywall of the ceiling below. The museum was lucky that drywall never started pulling loose.

Coolest thing I've found in the attic recently? A lovely illustrated looking like it's never been read 1885 edition of A Cotter's Saturday Night by Robert Burns, which I wish we didn't have to sell but we probably will. It doesn't really fit into the scope of our museum, so it'll end up with the other used books in the gift shop this summer as well as included with our used books listings on Amazon.com.

In any case, I'll probably be back down at the museum again tomorrow if driving conditions settle down. If it's still windy, though, I'll stay home. Thanks to the wind whipping off the lake yesterday, it was pretty much a total whiteout in Baraga. Pulling out on to a highway frequented by logging trucks can be rather harrowing when your visibility is limited to barely 100 feet. It doesn't help your peace of mind much when you notice there are idiots running around in that mess with their lights off, like the asshat in the jeep who insisted on tailgating me most of the way to Family Dollar. Then again, there's something about driving an SUV that makes people seem to think they're invulnerable. . . but that's a subject for a separate post. Right now it's time to throw another log on the fire.

One week to go

And then we hit the road in search of Spring. Over the past couple of months we've managed to check off a few items on the To Do list for the Guppy, we've added a few items to the household stuff stashed in the cabinets and pulled a few things out, and in general things are looking good. The S.O. has been busy shoveling, trying to find the tow dolly. Well, not exactly find it -- we know where it is -- he's been working on cleaning out around it so it'll be easier to pull out of the snowbank.

I was hoping we'd have a few warmish days this coming week so it would be a little easier to be in the Guppy getting the new curtains hung, supplies loaded, and everything securely stashed. It doesn't look like we're going to be that lucky. According to the 10-day forecast, the next 7 days are going to be Cold, as in single digit cold, or worse (tomorrow's predicted high is a balmy 2 below). If we're lucky, by late afternoon some days we may experience highs in the teens. It's not going to a whole lot of fun trying to get the Guppy ready to go with mittens on my hands.

The hardest part, though, may not be anything that's actually going into the Guppy. It's going to be fun getting the tarp off. That sucker is going to be frozen stiff, it's probably got ice on it under the snow (there's more snow on it now than there was when that picture was taken), and it's going to be a real joy to try to get folded. Of course, we don't have to do a perfect job of folding it; we just need to turn it into a small enough bundle to get it into the barn.

I was looking at my car yesterday, which has the usual U.P. accumulation of ice built up in the wheel wells and elsewhere, and wondering (a) how much of a pain is that mess going to be for the S.O. when he's trying to secure the car on the tow dolly, and (b) just how long we'll have to be in Missouri before it all melts off. Guess I'll have the answers in a week or so.

And you think politics are ugly now?

I just finished reading a fascinating book, The Presidents' War: Six American Presidents and the Civil War that Divided Them. The author, Chris DeRose, provides brief descriptions of the administrations of the presidents and administrations that fell between Andrew Jackson and Abraham Lincoln and then discusses how the five living ex-presidents responded to the Civil War. You think politics can be nasty now? Or that "journalists," especially the ones on Faux News, have a tendency to lie?  Read some history, my friends, because compared to the 1850s and 1860s we are living in a remarkably civilized time.

Granted, no one in South Carolina has decided (yet) that it would be a good idea to have the state militia open fire on Fort Jackson, although I'm sure there are some idiots on the far right who think that it would be a good idea. The lack of open warfare does have to make the present day look a lot better than Lincoln's time regardless of whatever vitriol gets spilled on the air or in Congress. But, holy wah, they were nasty back then.

Among other things, no matter what Bill Clinton or George W. Bush might privately think about the current occupant of the White House, they're polite in public. All the ex-presidents are nice to each other. They don't openly criticize the decisions their successors make or allow themselves to get sucked into second guessing existing policy. Their minions and/or acolytes might get nasty, but the ex-presidents themselves? Never. In contrast, Lincoln had to deal with five living former presidents who weren't nearly as restrained. Four of them were pro-slavery and either openly secessionist or close to it. John Tyler, in fact, was a delegate to the Virginia state convention that voted for secession. He bears the dubious distinction of being the only U.S. president to have died as an enemy of the country he once led.

Andrew Jackson was the 8th President of the United States; Abraham Lincoln was the 16th. Their administrations fell a mere 24 years apart but were separated by a string of one-term office holders, two of whom rose to the position from the vice presidency following the death of a president. These are the guys who cause high school students' eyes to glaze over and who most of us can never remember: Martin Van Buren (who I remember primarily because in at least one of Gore Vidal's historical novels his characters speculate that Van Buren is Aaron Burr's illegitimate son; I have no clue if Vidal based that bit of fiction on any actual 19th century gossip), William Harrison (notable for, if I recall correctly, insisting on marching in the rain on inauguration day, getting sick as a result of his stubbornness, and dying barely a month later), John Tyler, James K. Polk (whose name only comes up as the answer to trivia questions about presidents with 4-letter names; there have been five. Polk is the one no one can ever remember)(Taft, Ford, Bush the Elder and Bush the Younger are the other four), Zachary Taylor (rumored to have been poisoned; he was actually exhumed a couple years ago and tested for arsenic); Millard Fillmore, Franklin Pierce, and James Buchanan.

Of the five living ex-presidents at the time Lincoln took office, only Van Buren came close to supporting the administration. Van Buren, who had been Andrew Jackson's vice president, was nominally a Democrat but appears to have tried the hardest to keep his mouth shut. He was active in organizing support for the Union troops and made a point of staying out of politics. Unfortunately for Lincoln, Van Buren died in 1862. As for the others? The vitriol flowed freely. Pierce referred publicly to Lincoln as an ape, an ignoramus, a tyrant who was shredding the Constitution and should be removed from office by any means necessary. Pierce even carried on an active correspondence with Jefferson Davis during the war -- prior to the war, Pierce had promoted Davis as a presidential candidate (and what an interesting alternate history novel that would make: Jefferson and Varina Davis in the White House instead of Abraham and Mary Lincoln). Pierce actually came close to being indicted for treason when Union forces captured the Confederate capital in Richmond and the Pierce-Davis correspondence was found.

All the ex-presidents wrote long letters, which usually included a phrase saying that although they didn't intend the actual letter for publication, the recipients were free to share their sentiments with others. They described Lincoln publicly in terms that today not even the talking heads on Faux News would consider using in dissing President Obama. Lincoln was a subhuman mongrel, a shambling ape. A few of them nourished fantasies of returning to the White House themselves; after all, they'd served only one term. . . and a couple of them (Tyler, Fillmore) hadn't even been elected to the office to begin with. The fact their party's convention had passed them over after seeing how they did the first time around didn't faze them. They were still convinced they knew the pulse of the country and could do a better job than Lincoln. It does show how delusional politicians can get: Pierce, Buchanan, and Fillmore were being reviled as Copperheads, they were openly mocked in the popular press, but because they still attracted a crowd of fellow Copperheads when they spoke, they thought they represented mainstream thought (and, wow, does that ever sound familiar, kind of like a Sarah Palin or Ted Nugent public appearance).

Copperheads were the Civil War equivalent of today's Tea Party, a radical faction within the Democratic Party. Copperheads wanted to end the Civil War on almost any terms, including restoring slavery throughout the entire United States. Their position was that whatever it took to get the secessionist states back in the Union was okay with them. It didn't seem to register with them that once thousands of Union troops had died in battle, most of the Union states weren't feeling particularly conciliatory. Pierce was so tone-deaf (or oblivious to reality) that he gave an anti-Lincoln, pro-Southern speech the day after the Union army managed to defeat the Confederates at Gettysburg. The crowd present at the speech cheered him; the rest of the country was disgusted and horrified. Secure within their own little bubble, the Copperheads were convinced that they would win the 1864 presidential election handily, especially when General George McClellan (one of the most useless military men in the history of warfare) was their candidate. They were, needless to say, stunned when Lincoln was re-elected by a large majority.

John Tyler probably caused the fewest headaches for Lincoln. Tyler had retired to a Virginia plantation, Sherwood Forest, when he left the presidency. Initially snubbed by his neighbors who perceived him as having been too pro-free state while he was president, by the time the war broke out he had repaired his reputation within the state. He was elected as a delegate to the state convention that voted for secession and then as a representative to the Congress of the Confederate States of America. If he had still been living when the war ended, he might have been tried for treason along with Jefferson Davis and other members of the CSA government. He was extremely critical of Lincoln, but as an open member of the Confederacy, his opinions probably didn't carry much weight in the North.

A small digression: Tyler's home, Sherwood Forest, is the only presidential home that's still owned by a member of the president's family. His grandson Harrison lives there. Yep. Tyler's grandson. Tyler was married twice and had 15 children; he was 63 when Harrison's father Lyon was born. Lyon in turn was married twice and had children late in life; he was 75 when Harrison was born.

Several things struck me while reading this book. One was that no matter how badly most of the politicians mentioned in this book screwed up, they were never willing to admit they'd blown it, e.g., that getting rid of the Missouri Compromise was a bad idea. There were exceptions: Stephen Douglas publicly castigated himself for having pushed for state sovereignty (i.e., letting new states decide for themselves whether to be free or slave), and Lincoln was notable for being willing to change his mind and admit errors. Almost no one else, however, seemed capable of saying they'd blown it. If anything, the worse things got, the less willing they were to admit they'd had a hand in creating the situation.

I did feel a few twinges of pity for a couple of the ex-presidents. Pierce, for example, was close friends with the author Nathaniel Hawthorne. They'd been good friends since their college days; Hawthorne dedicated one of his last books to Pierce; and Hawthorne was actually visiting with Pierce when he died. Nonetheless, Pierce was by then so universally disliked that the people arranging Hawthorne's funeral cut Pierce out. In the normal course of events, Pierce would have been at least a pall bearer if not one of the eulogists. Not this time. I don't know if Pierce was told not to attend at all (DeRose doesn't make that clear), but given that Pierce is described as distraught over the exclusion, it's possible he was indeed told to stay away.

In addition to shedding light on some of the political maneuvering going on in the years preceding the war, the book also makes it totally clear that the one and only reason the southern states seceded was slavery. It wasn't states' rights in a general sense because the only right the southerners were interested in was the right to own slaves. DeRose provides direct quotes from the various secession declarations, and in every one where a state did a specific statement of secession, that state gives the right to own slaves as its reason. This is a historical fact that needs to be pointed out on a regular basis along with the fact that it was the south that started the war. It was not a glorious cause; it was a war to perpetuate slavery. And it was not a "war of northern aggression" when it began with a southern state attacking a federal facility.

The Presidents' War is a recent publication. I actually found it on the New Books shelf at the library -- which prompted a "holy wah, it's actual history" reaction, because that space is usually filled with the most recent Janet Evanovich or Nora Roberts releases. It's quite readable, and it does probably provide enough biographical information on each of the key players that any burning desire a person may have had to learn more about Millard Fillmore or James Buchanan will probably be satisfied. It's also nicely concise for a history that covers several decades; DeRose did a good job of figuring out what was important without loading the book up with material that's been well-covered elsewhere. I'd recommend it to anyone with an interest in antebellum and Civil War history.

What other kind could we have?

This amuses me every time I see it: the Winter Weather Advisory. The tv weather bunnies say it all the time -- "There's a winter weather advisory for. . ." -- and it gets flashed in red across the top of the Wunderground.com online forecasts. It's February, guys, what other type of weather could we have? Especially here in the Upper Peninsula? Not only does the calendar say it's Winter, there's three feet of snow on the ground and the temperatures are in single digits or negative numbers. Of course we're going to have "winter weather." It's Winter! Not only do I not need a weatherman to tell me which way the wind is blowing, I don't need one to tell me to remember to wear mittens.

A few thoughts on why small businesses fail

The other day the S.O. and I drove over to Hurley, approximately 100 miles one way, to help the older grandson with his income taxes. He'd never done them online before and was a little apprehensive about the process, something that's not going to be true in the future. Companies like TurboTax have gotten it down to where if you can read at anything above a 3rd grade level, you can follow their instructions and fill in the blanks with no trouble. We had a good time bonding over his taxes, we imparted some words of wisdom ("Try not to blow your refund as fast as we would"), and headed home. It was not a bad way to spend an afternoon. It kind of made up for the unpleasant experience we'd had at lunch.

On the drive over, we decided to stop for lunch in Bergland. A new restaurant had opened there a few months ago, a place that calls itself JW's BBQ and Brew. We walked in around 12:45, the place was relatively busy but not packed (about a third of the tables were occupied and there were a couple guys sitting at the bar). Our first impression was good -- it's a brand new building and it does look nice inside. It's a seat yourself place so we found a table and waited for the server. Anyone care to take a guess at how long it took for a server to bother coming over to our table? Or, for that matter acknowledge our existence? There was a huge clock hanging on the wall so it was easy to time it. Ten minutes.

The fact that it took ten minutes just to get a server to the table did not bode well for this particular establishment. The S.O. and I looked over the menu and both opted to order items that should have taken nanoseconds to prepare. We both ordered sandwiches. He asked for the brisket with fries as a side; I ordered pulled pork with a side of cole slaw. Half an hour later. . .

I repeat, half an hour later we finally saw some food. It took so long the server actually wound up refilling my Coke once. That never happens. Never. Invariably when we stop for lunch somewhere half my drink ends up still in the glass when we leave. The fact the server did do that one refill meant we did decide to tip, although not as much as we normally would.

You know, I could semi-understand it taking a while to build a sandwich if there was some actual cooking involved, but when it's a barbecue place? The pork is sitting in a metal tub ready to go, and the brisket is ready for slicing. The only cooking our order required was the fries, and just how long do french fries take? Not half an hour.

After we got home, I thought about doing a scathing review on Yelp but changed my mind. We'll never stop there again, but who knows? Maybe if enough people bitch about slow service, they'll get their act together. I did leave a comment on their Facebook page about all the stuff they're doing wrong. I couldn't resist: their latest post was basically a Help Wanted ad. They're looking to hire cooks and wait staff. I suggested that if they do, they try training them. The server who waited on us didn't have a clue what she was doing.

A short list of stuff she did wrong:
1. She saw us come in, but made several trips to other tables and then back to behind the bar or into the kitchen before bothering to acknowledge our existence.
2. When she did come to the table, she came empty-handed to ask if we'd like to see menus. She should have had them in her hand. People don't enter restaurants and sit at tables just to enjoy the view of the parking lot. In fact, she wasted a lot of time and energy running around empty-handed. Obviously, no one ever bothered telling her one of the fundamental rules of working in a restaurant: your hands are never empty.
3. When she asked if we'd like menus, she did not bother to ask what we'd like to drink. We didn't get to order a beverage until she came back to take the food order -- the place sells beer, wine, and mixed drinks. Which beings me to
4. She should have been pushing the local beers they either have on tap or available in cans and bottles. She never said a word about any of the booze, but that's where the profit margin for a lot of restaurants with liquor licenses falls.  Doesn't matter if it's lunch or dinner, when customers come in, one of the first things the server should do is ask them if they'd like a glass of wine, beer, or a mixed drink. This is especially true if the kitchen has a tendency to be slow. We wouldn't have ordered anything alcoholic, but she didn't know that.
5. She did not push the daily special (a half-rack of ribs), nor did she mention the soup of the day.
6. She didn't try to sell us a dessert. They weren't very busy; it was a situation that calls for trying to get customers to linger and spend more money instead of encouraging them to leave.

I have a hunch she figured out we weren't exactly happy customers when she came to collect and we had the exact amount, right down to the penny, ready for her. There was going to be no cheerful "Keep the change" from us. The rather miserly (for us) tip she found after we left probably came as a moderately pleasant surprise.

Right now the restaurant is apparently doing reasonably well. It's been a good winter for snowmobiling, the motels in Bergland seem to be doing a booming business, and there aren't a lot of local choices when it comes to going out to eat. But you can't count on tourists to keep a restaurant going 12 months out of the year. You have to get repeat local business -- and they lost ours. How many others have they managed to turn off since they opened? I can see it now. Business will slow down, they'll start losing money, and you know who'll they blame? The government for all its onerous regulations. If only they didn't have to meet health department standards they'd be making money. Or if they didn't have to pay legal wages. Or if there were no taxes. They won't take a long hard look at themselves and realize that maybe, just maybe, they should have trained their staff -- or not hired their wife's best friend, their slacker brother-in-law, or a cousin or two.

I have no idea just what percentage of new restaurants fail quickly after opening, but I have noticed they seem to come and go quickly. And, of course, I've watched  Kitchen Nightmares enough times to see the many ways in which people can drive businesses into the ground. I think if I was going to open a restaurant or a pub, I'd at least do a few marathon sessions of watching Gordon Ramsay or Jon Taffer (Bar Rescue) in action. Somehow, though, I have a hunch that instead of consulting with Gordon Ramsay via television, the owners of J.W.'s BBQ & Brew decided that hey, we like to cook -- we should open a restaurant -- and now the only question is how long it'll be before there's a For Sale sign on the building. Or, more likely, the smoldering ashes of the insurance fire. After all, there's precedent. That's how the last restaurant on that site went out of business.

We would, incidentally, put up with lousy service if the food was better than average. It's not. It's bland and it's overpriced. It's a shame, because there really aren't many options left on the western end of M-28.

Not all taste buds are created equal

My recent post on using Sysco honey garnered a few comments, both here and on Facebook, suggesting that it is indeed possible to tell the difference between the industrial  blend in that Sysco jug and the artisanal honey produced by bees indulging in one specific type of flower. I have no doubt that for some people that's true, but it's not for me. To me honey tastes like . . . honey. I don't care if it comes in a Sysco jug, a SueBee bottle, or from the apiary a couple miles away from us, it's all just honey. Someone could hand me a chunk of honey comb ripped fresh from a hive and I'd probably say, yep, tastes just like the Sysco stuff.

I think one thing my well-meaning commenters are forgetting is that not all taste buds are created equal. A long time ago in a galaxy far away -- graduate school -- one of my colleagues gave a talk as part of the brown bag lunch seminars our department sponsored. I can no longer recall the point of the talk, although if I was feeling sufficiently compulsive about it I could probably find my notes from that day (I still have a bunch of notebooks from back then). All I can remember is that Mary Ellen passed around strips of paper that were about the same size and shape as the ones used to do pH tests. I did some quick Googling and learned that these strips are usually impregnated with sodium benzoate. Mary Ellen told us to taste the strips. There were about 2 dozen people present. Most people said it tasted sweet. Three of us, however, spit them out in record time because they were unbelievably, grossly bitter. Or maybe sour. According to the information I found, the division is usually a little more even in a group: about a third will think the strip tastes sweet, another third will describe it as sour, and the final third think it's bitter. And there are a few people who will say it has no flavor at all.

I'm not sure what the point of the strips is, other than maybe to remind people in food sciences that not everyone tastes food in the same way. Or, alternate scenario, to use in high school general science classes as an illustration that genetics deals each of us a slightly different hand. In any case, in addition to the genetic flukes that make some people think something is sweet while other people think it's bitter, there are folks who have more taste buds on their tongues. This supposedly makes them better at distinguishing minute differences in flavors.

When I was Googling, I found a number of references to "Super tasters," people with a gazillion taste buds crammed into the space where most of us humans have only a few. Would that ability be a blessing or a curse? Yes, you can take a sip of a wine and immediately detect all its subtle flavors. On the other hand, you're also going to notice the swill that's one step away from vinegar much quicker than someone with a less discriminating palate. And odds are there's a lot more swill out there than there is really good wine. So you super tasters are cursed having to buy the really good (aka probably expensive) vintages they keep behind the counter at the wine store while we peasants are happy with Gallo in paper boxes.

Nonsuper tasters are also cursed, but in the opposite way. Instead of their food choices becoming limited because of their insensitive palates, they're likely to end up as Fat, Fat, Fat because they'll gorge themselves because they need more sugar, salt, grease, or Tabasco slathered on like ketchup before something tastes good. This has to be one of the dumbest theories I've ever read, to be honest. Although it is true that one way to make mediocre food taste better is to up the sugar and/or salt content -- which is one reason so many commercially prepared food products are so loaded with both.

In addition to the sodium benzoate test, there's another one that checks for the PTC gene -- if you have the PTC gene you'll be more aware of bitter tastes and repelled by them, or so the theory goes. This is a trait that supposedly helped our primitive ancestors avoid eating toxic plants. But, as one blogger noted after having done a taste test experiment himself, there's more to enjoying food and beverages than just genetics. There's social conditioning. If you associate certain foods or beverages with having a good time your mind is going to decide that food or beverage is probably pretty good, too. I know more than a few people whose initial reaction to something was less than enthusiastic but who discovered that in the presence of friends or family spinach eventually became edible.

So what's the bottom line? I'm not sure. Does my personal inability to taste subtle differences in honey mean I'm doomed to never be able to pick up differences in tastes in other substances? No clue. Does it matter? Not really, because you can't miss what you've never had.

A side note: Mary Ellen Jones was one of the smartest and also one of the most under-appreciated students in the Science and Technology Studies graduate program at VaTech. Thanks to the combination of sexism and intellectual elitism, she didn't get taken nearly as seriously as she should have. She was a woman interested in issues in agriculture, a subject area that almost no one in science studies thinks is worth thinking about (so what if we all depend on it to keep eating?). There's a definite snob hierarchy. The people doing history of theoretical physics are at the top of the heap; the lesser mortals who are actually looking at things affecting people's day to day lives get sneered at on a regular basis. She wrote a really nice dissertation on negotiating biotech policy. I don't know where she is now, but I hope she's achieved the success she deserved. 

Speaking of trains

The S.O. has decided it would be nice to be able to see trains from the house again. He's decided one of his summer projects in 2015 will be creating an opening through the overgrown cow pasture that will allow us to see the CN freight trains from our living room. Of course, once that opening is created, he's going to have to keep hacking at it with the brush blade on our gas-powered weed eater. The photo shows what the prospective opening looks like now.

Most of the brush between us and the tracks is speckled alder, a species that is remarkably adept at springing back from brush cutting. It's a pioneering species -- up here on the tundra it moves into abandoned farm fields with remarkable speed. When it comes to reproducing, speckled alder covers all the bases: it has both male and female flowers on the same plant so it can self-pollinate; the seeds are lightweight and spread easily; it will send up suckers from its roots; and it will root opportunistically if a branch touches the ground. It's actually a great plant for the environment -- it is a nitrogen producer so it enriches the soil -- but it can drive you mildly crazy when you try to keep it cut back.

For some reason, I'm having visions of the grandsons being handed weed whips and brush hooks every time they come to visit for the next few years. Either that or we need to start renting goats.

Another of life's little mysteries

Just how many old railroad ties are there?

Yesterday the S.O. and I happened to be heading home just as the CN freight train decided to start backing up from a railroad crossing. You can't see it in the photo, but the exposed rail stops before it actually gets to the crossing -- the train had gotten that far in heading down the hill to L'Anse before the engineer decided for some reason to throw it into reverse. Did he suddenly remember he'd forgotten to pick up his mandatory four empty cars at Nestoria and decided to back up to get them? Maybe he noticed brake pressure wasn't what it should be and decided to back up to Summit Siding to drop off a few loaded cars?

But why he decided to start back up isn't what intrigues me in looking at the photo. It's all those gondolas. He's heading downhill so that means every one of those cars is loaded with old railroad ties. He's hauling them to the J. H. Warden Generating Station in L'Anse. The powerplant converted to burning biomass a few years ago. Ever since then, it's been receiving gondolas full of old railroad ties that get shredded and burnt. The Warden plant also burns a lot of raw wood chips, which is what I think most people assumed would be its primary fuel source when the plant went through the conversion process. You know, when someone says "biomass" you don't anticipate getting to live with the smell of burning creosote.

Anyway, when a friend who lives in town was complaining about the plant's odor problems a year or two ago, I made comforting noises and said, "Don't worry. Sooner or later they'll run out of old railroad ties." Now I'm beginning to wonder. We see these long, long trains heading down the hill full of old railroad ties on an almost daily basis. The woodyard for the Warden plant has mountains of them. And they keep coming. Just how endless is the supply? It's a mystery.

As for the mandatory four empty cars, they're to supply more braking power. It's a continuous grade from Summit down to L'Anse, including the section in the photo -- it looks flat, but it's not. It's sloping. And not much farther along, it slopes a lot more, up to 3.5 percent, which is pretty steep for a railroad grade. The train is actually sitting right about at the point where 50-some years ago another freight, one that was going uphill, ran out of power, couldn't get the brakes to hold, and started rolling backwards. End result?

Why I don't bother watching the "news" channels

Last night I was in kind of an odd, let's see what's happening out in the world mood so I suggested to the S.O. that we watch MSNBC while waiting for it to get late enough to link to the With-Luck-You-See TV local news live stream. Since  WLUC out of Marquette started streaming the local news, we've started watching it primarily to catch Karl Bohnak's weather forecasts. That, and to see how excited he gets when there's snow predicted -- the man is a snow junkie.

Anyway, every so often I get curious about what's happening out there in pundit land. What is the topic du jour? Are they still obsessing about Ferguson? Are the chattering classes willing to concede any Democrats other than Hillary Clinton exist? What's the latest dumb thing to pop out of some politician's head?

The answer to the Hillary question is, of course, that no, the media is still thoroughly obsessed with Mrs. Clinton. They're wondering why no other Democratic candidates are emerging without ever stopping to reflect that maybe, just maybe, if they actually talked about a few of them (e.g., Jim Webb) the public in general would figure out there are other possibilities. I'd hate to see the Democrats degenerate into the sort of clown car spectacle going on among the Republicans at the moment, but it would be nice to hear about someone other than the former Secretary of State.

So what else is happening in the world? What topic is worth eating up air time on "Politics Nation"? Holy wah, Bruce Jenner has come out as transgender. The bad plastic surgery finally makes sense: he's transitioning to being a woman.

Question: why does anyone care? It's been a long time since he was on a Wheaties box. There have been plenty of other well-known people deciding they'd been born in the wrong body (Chaz Bono, for example) so why should any of us take any interest in Bruce Jenner?  You'd think the public would have collectively seen enough of him on reality tv, thanks to his being the stepfather of several Kardashians. But according to the panel dishing on Jenner's transition, the public is fascinated. Jenner has become tabloid fodder, and the tabloids have not been kind. (Or so they say; I don't recall seeing anything particularly dramatic screaming at me from the covers of the tabloids when I've been standing in the check-out line at Larry's Market lately.)

I will concede that having heard this news, I had some not particularly kind thoughts myself, like "Is the man insane? Is this a symptom of dementia?" But then I have that same reaction whenever I hear about any man deciding he should actually have been a woman. I am a woman. I've had a pretty good look at the downsides of being born female. Back in the '90s I thought economist Deidre McCloskey was totally insane when she announced she identified as a woman. I'd met McCloskey, I'd heard her speak back when she was still Donald. Donald was a balding, bearded man -- it was, to say the least, difficult to imagine that person as a woman.

I have no doubt that there are persons born, so to speak, into the wrong bodies. Gender identity is a lot more fluid than many of us want to admit. I also know there are persons born with ambiguous identity based on genitalia and get labelled as female when male would have been more accurate and vice versa. And I can totally understand why adolescents and young adults would struggle with this. But once you hit your 50s (McCloskey was 53 when she publicly became Deidre) or 60s (Jenner is 65)? What man in his right mind would want to be a post-menopausal woman in modern day America? I know feminists do a lot of blathering about the wisdom of crones, but the reality is that it is not particularly easy being an old lady. You're effectively invisble. You have no power. No one takes you seriously unless your name is Hillary, and even then half the time you get mocked by the media.

Still, setting aside questions about why Jenner felt compelled to do this so late in life, what makes Jenner's transition newsworthy? Why eat up broadcast minutes over something so banal?  I have no clue. I just have a hunch that somewhere on this planet, somewhere that was definitely outside the borders of the United States, there were people tuning into "news" programs and seeing actual news.

Bottom line? Next time I'll suggest streaming Al Jazeera.

The cupboard cleaning continues

The cane syrup is gone. I've moved on to the Sysco honey. It looks remarkably dark, so dark in fact that the S.O. wondered what it was after I'd transferred some to a squeeze bottle, but it's really honey.

I have heard people claim that they can tell the difference in flavors with honey, that the honey from bees that have gorged themselves on one type of flower produce a honey that tastes different than bees that have indulged in others. I don't know. I've had commercially produced honey (the national brand names like Sue Bee) and honey from backyard hives and can't tell the difference. To me honey always just tastes like . . .honey. The Sysco "light amber" (which makes me wonder just how black "dark amber" would be) Grade A honey is no exception. It may be almost as dark as molasses, but it still tastes like honey.

I think I may have idiosyncratic taste buds, though, because when I went looking for the usual calorie comparison information the text said that although honey has more calories than sugar (23 per teaspoon opposed to 16) it's sweeter so you don't have to use as much. I've never found that to be true. To me honey isn't particularly sweet at all. It's not a bad taste, but it's also definitely not as sweet as either sugar or cane syrup.

The honey was a gift, too, an unopened jug that was among leftover supplies from a girls' camp in northern Wisconsin. I think I've mentioned before that an acquaintance works there as a maintenance person and ends up with a ton of various edibles every fall when they clear out anything and everything that might tempt raccoons or other varmints.