Our Trip to Canada: Getting to Montreal

We thought about going back to Europe this summer. It’s been a great few years here that way, seeing parts of the world that I never thought I would see and then going back to do it again on a regular basis. If you have the chance, you should do it. It is the single best way there is to open your eyes and heart to the fact that there is a larger world out there beyond your experiences, one that has much to teach you if you will watch and listen.

“Travel isn’t always pretty,” said Anthony Bourdain. “It isn’t always comfortable. Sometimes it hurts, it even breaks your heart. But that’s okay. The journey changes you; it should change you. It leaves marks on your memory, on your consciousness, on your heart, and on your body. You take something with you. Hopefully, you leave something good behind.”

Most of our travel experiences have been just fine, though. We’ve met some lovely people, seen some beautiful places, and generally returned richer for having done both, at least in a non-financial sort of way. And as for the finances, well, a) it’s not nearly as much as people think, and b) we don’t have anywhere near enough vices to drain our bank account properly so this is how we choose to spend our money.

It works for us.

There are limits even so, however, and when the price of airfare to Europe doubled in the two days we were looking into the matter, thanks to Convicted Felon Donald J. Trump losing his illegal and unconstitutional war of aggression against Iran, we decided that perhaps we’d set our sights a bit nearer to home this year and save the more far-flung destinations for another time. Because there will be another time, at some point. That’s just how we roll these days.

In the end we decided that we’d visit Geoff and Dave, who had recently moved from San Francisco to Montreal. Neither of us had ever been to Quebec, and it’s been a while since we’ve seen Geoff and Dave anyway, so this sounded like a good plan.

We had a grand time of it, thanks.

We’ve got the prep for this sort of thing pretty much down now. Passports located. One carry-on and one personal item each because there will be laundry when we get there. Places to stay and flights booked thanks to Kim because she enjoys that part of it and leaving it to me would just not end well for anyone. A bit of research to figure out things we might want to do or see, though in this case not all that much since we were visiting family there and Dave had lived in Montreal for 17 years at one point so he knew it better than we would ever figure out. Friends who would take care of the critters at home. We even worked it out with Lauren so she could have my car while we were away and then drop it off at the bus station for us when we returned. We know how to do this travel thing.

Still tough to get out of bed at 5:40am, though.

We arrived at O’Hare and zipped through security fairly quickly, though they did search my personal bag by hand since I was carrying two packages of a particular cheese that Geoff hadn’t been able to find in Montreal. “It’s cheese,” I told them as they turned it over and back in their hands. They stared at me with the look you would expect from someone you had just told that you were running cheese into Canada, decided that this was Too Much Weird Shit to be dangerous, and let me go.

Everything is biometric now, by the way. They don’t really need your boarding passes anymore. You just show them your passport and smile pretty for the camera and you’re good to go. Sort of. The camera is a bit fussy, so I got the “Take your glasses off, sir” comment that made me think of the comedian Ismo who has a routine about how in the UK “sir” means that you have achieved a high honor but in the US “sir” means that you have made a small mistake, and at that point I had to try very hard not to laugh because Security Personnel are not paid to have a sense of humor and they generally respond by not having one and if you think something is funny they will get annoyed and these are people you do not want to annoy because then they will have to do Security Things and nobody involved in that process really wants that to happen.

So it’s just photos and databases these days and if I had any privacy left to lose I’d probably be annoyed but welcome to the New Panopticon. You know, for the kids.

Eventually we made it onto the plane and I think that if you’re going to have a window seat on a plane it should come with a window. Stands to reason. Mine, however, did not. There was one for the row ahead of me, but the person sitting there was resolutely uninterested in opening the shade for it. I suppose we should have switched seats, but it was a very small plane and once you sit down and buckle in on a plane that small you realize that no, you’re good where you are for the next couple of hours, thanks.

I had my book. I was fine.

Montreal’s airport is very nice and we found the Customs area fairly quickly. It’s all touchscreens now, and you spend about five to ten minutes pushing various virtual buttons to let them know that you’re not dangerous beyond simply being an American and then occasionally asking questions of the helpful uniformed staff nearby when none of the buttons seem to fit your situation. I did have to declare my cheese, it turned out, which sent me off into another room that Kim – not carrying any cheese – did not have to enter. I found an official looking person behind a station and he asked me what I had and I said “cheese” and he gave me much the same look that the security people in O’Hare had given me and sort of waved me through with a disdainful flick of his hand.

And suddenly we were free to move about Canada.

We found Dave by the exit and hopped onto a nearby bus, which now makes 22 cities in which I have been on public transportation, evenly divided between US and non-US cities. I am inordinately fond of this fact, and that probably tells you more about me than you need to know.

The bus took us into the city and then we got onto the metro. Subway cars in Montreal have big rubber tires rather than the usual steel wheels you find on railcars, and we took that to our station.

From there it was a short walk over to our hotel, a lovely place that gave us the same room number as my freshman dorm room back in college so that was easy to remember. It had a great view of the McGill University area of the city, which is a fact that will come back in the next post.

After a short rest we headed off to Geoff and Dave’s apartment, ready to begin our trip in earnest.

Thoughts on the Current World Cup

I’m working on the posts about our recent visit to Quebec, but in the meantime we’ve been watching a lot of the World Cup and I have thoughts about this.

1. It’s been a few days now and I still haven’t quite gotten over Cabo Verde v. Argentina. That was a master class on how the game should be played, and it’s not an accident that even Argentinians have applauded Cabo Verde’s efforts. Lionel Messi gave his game jersey to Vezinho, the Cabo Verde goaltender, as a sign of respect. My favorite thing to come out of it was an anime of the contest that was both really funny and absolutely in awe of the clash. Sometimes things work out the way they’re supposed to work out on the pitch.

2. On the other hand, Paraguay’s team should go hide in shame and the referee should be banned from future matches. Their kicking, punching, and general asshole behavior was an international disgrace and the fact that the ref encouraged it was criminal. I’m not a great fan of the French team – dynasties are boring and they play like they expect things to be handed to them on a platter – but by the first hydration break I was cheering for them to rid the World Cup of that bunch of losers.

3. Watching Erling Haaland come charging down the field gives me an appreciation for what the monks at Lindisfarne felt back in 793CE.

4. The reinstatement of US striker Folarin Balogun is one of the more corrupt things to have happened at a World Cup in a long time. On the one hand, I don’t think his red card was deserved. It was a bang-bang play without malice on his part, and it should have been a yellow. On the other hand, though, bad calls are part of the game and once a red card is given it can’t be taken away in a World Cup. The last time that happened was before I was born, which is an unconscionably long time ago. The fact that Convicted Felon Donald J. Trump put pressure on FIFA – one of the most corrupt organizations on the planet – to make this happen is grotesque and does nobody any favors, not even the USMNT. It’s a shame – Balogun is a remarkably talented player with a bright future and the US team is objectively better with him, but at this point any victory the US scores from here on out will be irrevocably tainted.

5. My social media algorithms are still pointing me toward the various World Cup visitors and their experiences in the US (and, occasionally, Mexico and Canada) and it remains one of the most heartwarming things I’ve seen in a long time. I love going to other places and marveling at the ordinary things there – grocery stores, hole-in-the-wall restaurants, little public spaces, street scenes, and so on. It’s been wonderful watching people do that here, reminding us that this can be a great place if we let it.

6. I think the World Cup has been a cultural moment that way. Yes, the US has a lot of problems and all of them are being intentionally made worse by Convicted Felon Donald J. Trump and his minions, cronies, lackeys, and slaves, and yes those wankers are deeply embedded in American culture and history, but they are only part of the story and not the biggest part. A lot of people – Americans and visitors – are reawakening to the notion that there are other facets of American culture and we don’t have to live or be the way Convicted Felon Donald J. Trump and his minions, cronies, lackeys, and slaves want us to live or be. We as Americans definitely needed that.

7. At one point while we were up in Quebec we were wandering around Montreal wondering why there were so few people outside when it occurred to us that the Canadians were playing one of their games, and that is what an event like this can do to a place.

8. Someday the champion will come from somewhere other than Europe or South America. Today is not going to be that day.

9. One of the things that I truly love about watching soccer at this level is the fact that these players – objectively some of the best in the world at what they do – screw up so often. Passes go awry. Shots get sent into orbit. Corner kicks go every which way but where they’re supposed to go. I find this comforting in a way, as I go about my daily life trying to do things correctly. If these guys, who are highly skilled and generally highly paid for being so, can screw up the one thing they’re good at so often, then perhaps I’m not doing so bad.

10. The one thing that I always keep in mind at these tournaments is that the players on the field know and understand each other far better than they do anyone else in that stadium, and certainly far better than anyone else in that stadium knows or understands them. They’re part of a very small population who does this at that level, they are often teammates outside of events like these, and they know what everyone on the field is thinking and feeling in a way that none of us watching ever will. This explains a lot of what happens on the field, both during and after games, I think.

11. I have no idea how I will fill the hole in my evenings once this is all over. I suspect I’ll figure it out, though. I did it pretty well for many years, after all. But I will miss all this.

Further News and Updates

1. We are back after a lovely visit with Geoff and Dave up in Quebec. We saw quite a bit of Montreal and Quebec City, ate a lot of very good food, and generally had a grand time hanging out with them. There will be bloggage soon, oh yes there will.

2. It was really nice to be in a country where the government doesn’t actively hate the majority of its citizens. The US used to be like that. We can be like that again.

3. Despite being exceptionally well cared for while we were away, the cat has been pathetically (and heartwarmingly) grateful to have us back. The rabbit remains indifferent, however, as rabbits will.

4. I have now seen World Cup games with play-by-play announcing in three different languages this year, and I have to say that it doesn’t really make a whole lot of difference for following the game. The Spanish announcers seem to be having the most fun, though.

5. Tonight’s Cabo Verde vs. Argentina game was easily the most entertaining game I’ve seen this World Cup. I suspect soccer fans are going to be talking about that one for a very long time.

6. Is tomorrow really the Fourth of July? There should have been a party to celebrate the 250th Anniversary of the formal approval of the Declaration of Independence, which is the date the US traditionally gives for its origin as a nation instead of a disparate set of colonies. Apparently the Smithsonian had a party planned out, in fact. Instead, all that taxpayer money got hijacked by the grifters in the current administration and put toward the tackiest tin-horn-dictator slobberfest this nation has ever seen. I’m glad nobody is going and I hope that the people who organized it are mad about that.

7. My goal tonight is to watch more soccer, nosh a bit on random food (because neither of us are up for making any real dinner or eating same), and turn the AC down to Deep Freeze because a) yes it got hot in Quebec too, and b) neither of the last two places we slept had much in the way of air conditioning. First world problems require first world solutions.

8. I did a very poor job of keeping up with my email while I was away and I have to say I’m sneakily proud of this. Vacations should not involve work emails.

9. I don’t know why Our Little Town decided to have its big Independence Day party last weekend, while we were away, rather than on the actual Fourth of July, which is a Saturday after all. It seems a lost opportunity.

10. Tomorrow’s plans involve as little motion as possible and possibly grilling some hot dogs in honor of the day. Enjoy, y’all.

News and Updates

1. Happy Father’s Day to those who celebrate! I have done many things in my life that I am proud to have accomplished, but none greater than being a dad for Oliver and Lauren. 

2. Of course, I had a good role model.

3. I think we need to get up a petition to have Take Me Home, Country Roads declared the backup US national anthem, to be performed at all sporting and cultural events immediately following the official one. Everybody already knows the words, it’s a lot easier to sing even or especially when drunk, and judging from the World Cup crowds the rest of the world already believes it’s the national anthem anyway. Everybody claps after The Star-Spangled Banner because we’re glad it’s over and the game can start now, but we applaud Take Me Home, Country Roads because we like it.

4. Note: while it is also a great song, Old Town Road is a different composition.

5. I have managed to see a fair number of games in this World Cup so far. I saw the US beat Australia in a fairly convincing style. They look like an actual team out there, and they’re already through to the elimination rounds. I also saw the goaltending clinic put on by the Curacao goalie as that nation earned its first ever World Cup point, the sheer overwhelming force of the Netherlands against Sweden, and Cote d’Ivoire very nearly defeat Germany. I just finished watching Iran hold off Belgium for a 0-0 draw that was much more interesting than the score would indicate. It’s been a fun tournament on the field as well as in the streets.

6. If there is a better metaphor for the current American regime than the absolute fiasco that is the Reflecting Pool in Washington DC – an own goal of staggering idiocy and utter predictability – I haven’t seen it. They took something that already worked, awarded a contract to “fix” it to an unqualified loyalist, ignored every scientific and engineering fact that could possibly be relevant to the project in order to cram it into an ideological box, went 1100% over budget only to see the shoddy work dissolve within days and now they’ve stationed the National Guard to keep Americans away from public taxpayer-owned land, they’re arresting people who get too close, and they’re blaming everyone but themselves for all of this. No wonder this administration lost a war against another country. They can’t even win against algae.

7. I spent a portion of yesterday hacking back the trumpet vines that threaten to absorb our fence every year. It turns out we still had a fence under all that greenery. I am always amazed by the sheer in-your-face exuberance the trumpet vines display despite or perhaps especially because of the fact that they’re clearly not wanted. Respect.

8. If you haven’t read KJ Parker’s books (Tom Holt’s alter ego) you’re missing out. I’m on Book 2 of the Saevus Corax trilogy – part of Parker’s ongoing “Charming Rogue” stories – and it’s reminding me of why I used to read all the time. Perhaps I’ll get back up on that horse after all.

9. It’s been a month since the semester ended and I’m not much further along on all of the various projects and tasks that I set for myself this summer than I was at graduation. I suppose I should have seen that coming, but still.

10. I keep looking out for the new 2026 coins but I find I rarely use cash anymore and nobody in the stores has any idea that there are new coins to be found. I am starting to suspect that the whole thing is a Reddit-fueled hoax. It would not be the first, I’m sure.

Fútbol, You Bet

It’s been pretty much all soccer all the time around here of late.

For one thing, Kim, I met Lauren in Madison to see our local professional team play Wednesday night. We’d gone a couple of years ago and enjoyed it, so we figured it would be a lovely evening and indeed it was, storms notwithstanding.

It’s been a stormy year here in Baja Canada, it has to be said. Apparently as of today Wisconsin has had over 280 severe thunderstorm or tornado warnings – warnings mean you’ve got one, while watches mean you could get one – and that’s more in the last four months than all of the previous fourteen years combined. So, yeah, we got that going for us.

Fortunately the severe thunderstorm and tornado passed just a bit south of us and cleared off before game time. We decided to have dinner at a nearby Tibetan restaurant before the game rather than get food at the stadium, though, since the restaurant had a roof and it was in fact raining at that point. It was really, really good food, so if you’re in Madison and looking for tasty Asian food I have a place to recommend. The owners are actually Nepalese, and we had a lovely conversation with them about the various cuisines of the region.

From there it was about a four-minute walk over to Breese Stevens Field where FC Madison plays, and with the earlier rain slowing down all the pre-game activities we even managed to get there before kickoff. The opponents were Fort Wayne, the referee was an idiot who lost control of the game early (which is why the Madison coach got red-carded in the 17th minute – there are certain words that are automatic cards in soccer, no matter how justified one is in using them, and if you use them twice in succession that’s two cards all at once), and in the end it was a hard-fought and entertaining 1-1 draw.

It was also Free Hat Night.

Of course, all of this comes as the 2026 World Cup gets up and running. This year it’s being hosted by all of the North American countries – Canada, Mexico, and the US – which means that it has made a bigger impression on Americans than usual. Most times you’d be hard pressed to find a dozen Americans in any given census tract who even knew what the World Cup was, let alone that it was happening, but since this time it’s spread out across the entire US and our neighbors it seems to have penetrated the zeitgeist a bit more than usual.

And that’s all to the good, I say. Yes, I understand that FIFA is one of the most corrupt organizations in the world, on a scale that rivals Convicted Felon Donald J. Trump’s kleptocratic tyranny, but it’s the most popular sport on the planet, these are the best male players in the world (the women get to do this next year), and you might as well enjoy the spectacle in this fallen world.

We’ve been watching some of the games as best we can, given the fact that both Kim and I are still gainfully employed – not always guaranteed in the higher education world – and they’ve been fun. We don’t get any of the English-language broadcasts, but fortunately Peacock – to which we already subscribe in order to watch Premier League games (and let us pause briefly for a moment of silence for my poor, extremely relegated Wolves) – carries the Spanish-language broadcasts and let me tell you those are a lot more fun even if, and perhaps especially if, you don’t actually speak the language.

Those guys get excited by the game.

I know only a very small amount of Spanish which is often enough for me to fight my way through something written or spoken slowly but there is no way I can keep up with a conversation at speed, let alone soccer commentary at a much higher speed. All of the words blend together and while I can pick out some words here and there (“pelota!”) and once in a while they throw in some strangely American-accented English (“English Premier League”) I mostly go by tone. When the words speed up more than usual and the tone starts to rise that means something exciting is happening. Or might happen. Or just happened. Or possibly that it’s Tuesday. Whatever. It keeps me on my toes.

I have to admit I was more than a little hesitant about the fact that the World Cup is being staged in the US under our current regime. Convicted Felon Donald J. Trump and his minions, lackeys, cronies, and slaves have never once missed an opportunity to be petty, cruel, vindictive, immoral, or violently authoritarian, and their reaction to the World Cup has been of a piece with that.

They banned a Somali referee from coming to the US despite him being fully vetted as Not A Terrorist. Apparently the idea of Somalis in America was just too much for these Nativist clowns. They made it almost impossible for the Iranian team to compete, forcing them to stay in Mexico unless they are actually playing a game in the US and then leave US territory within minutes of the game ending. Don’t even get me started on the shabby treatment of Iranian fans or the fans of several other brown-skinned nations. They yanked the Uruguayan team off their bus and sicced sniffer dogs on them because somewhere one of Convicted Felon Donald J. Trump’s minions read (probably in a comic book) that a lot of cocaine comes from one of those countries in South America and it might have been that one and they might be using their World Cup soccer team to smuggle it into the US because that’s obviously how that sort of thing works. It took formal protests to stop their plan to seed the World Cup stadiums with ICE thugs, and even now I wouldn’t be surprised if they do it anyway – those jackbooted Fascists seem to regard themselves as untouchable, much as the SS did until suddenly they weren’t.

So yeah, I had my fears.

And yet not only has it not worked out that way, at least so far, but also it has been an astonishingly restorative experience overall to watch the visiting fans discover so many of the things about the US that we ourselves have forgotten in the avalanche of deliberately cruel and divisive cultural politics over the last decade or so. It’s been a long few years recently – and a very long two years in particular – and to see these visitors experience what the US can actually be and should actually be has been astonishingly lovely.

For one thing, my fellow Americans have generally responded to these visitors with warmth and hospitality. The entire city of Lawrence, Kansas turned out to welcome the Algerian national team. New Jersey fans partied with Moroccan fans. There’s a marvelous video of a cop hyping up the Egypt fans while everyone was waiting for something or other. And lest you think this is limited to here, the love fest going on in Mexico with the Korean fans and team has been amazing. I’ve trained my various social media algorithms to show me all of these things, and if you haven’t you should. One of my favorites was a reel where someone interviewed three or four big, burly American men dressed entirely in flag outfits, all of whom were asked what they would say to the Iranian fans. “You are welcome here,” they said. “This event is meant to celebrate the world despite our government’s actions.” “The everyday American wants you to feel welcome.” “The World Cup is not about shutting people out.” This is what it should be, not the ginned-up hatred spouted by the current American regime, and to see it coming from these guys in particular was cheering.

One English visitor filmed his friend at a Mississippi BBQ place as they ordered ribs. When the ribs came one of them – in a proper English move, it has to be said – pulled out a knife and fork and the restaurant owner just said, “No” and taught him how to eat ribs properly. The stunned look of joy as the guy took his first bite was worth the entire video. BBQ has been a theme among the visitors, actually – there’s a lot of reels focusing on it. It’s something the US does very, very well and Americans have been happy to share it.

Visitors have posted videos of themselves walking into firehouses and getting tours of the stations, of walking around neighborhoods, of dancing in streets. It’s amazing.

As an American it has been lovely to see them enjoying so many of the things that we just take for granted.

The stores that we go to – Buc-cee’s, Target, 7/11, Walmart, Costco, Bass Pro Shops – that have had them marveling. The yellow school buses that many of them were convinced existed only in movies. Steam vents on city sidewalks. Wild squirrels. It’s all new to them and their reactions make me want to experience these things through their eyes.

The national parks and the open spaces.

The stadiums and all the excess that Americans devote to them – the bald eagle flight before the game, the warplane flyover, the admittedly odd tradition of everyone singing Sweet Caroline somewhere about three-quarters of the way through any game. Watching the future king of England singing along was an experience.

And the food. My god, do they love the food here. As someone who has traveled abroad and marveled at the food there, it is both amusing and deeply heartwarming to see people doing the same in this direction.

The Italian visitor frankly amazed at the idea of free refills on sodas (“I can refill this a thousand times?”). The corn bread. The boiled peanuts. The barbecue, all the time the barbecue. The machines that some fast-food places have that allow you to combine hundreds of kinds of soda and flavors (which admittedly took me a bit to get used to as well).

Ranch dressing. Do they not have this anywhere else in the world? Apparently not. I live in the midwest where people put ranch on everything including pizza so perhaps I’m a bit jaded and that, really is the point. All of this knocks the jaded right out of us and we see through their eyes and it is new and amazing like it was the first time we tried it.

I lost track of all the people flocking to their nearest Waffle House – admittedly an icon of American eating, an experience not to be missed, and a cultural keystone of regret, spectacle, and grease that defines so much of the American experience. You have to love Waffle House.

Texas Roadhouse also seems to be a favorite among the visitors – I’ve seen videos from Africans (who rarely specify their home country for some reason), Australians, French people, and British people talking about it. “I don’t know why Americans are so angry all the time,” said one. “You have Texas Roadhouse. If we had that back home we’d be walking around hugging people all day.”

As one American said, of course our food tastes good. We’re not here getting chronic diseases for nothing.

One of my personal favorites was a Japanese visitor who went to a Mexican restaurant in the US and found himself presented with chips and salsa, and I can’t even explain it in a way that does it justice so here it is in the original:

Some of the best things I’ve seen are just clips of the visitors enjoying themselves here.

The Dutch fans dancing their sideways dance.

Norwegians doing that rowing motion that they do, in the streets and up escalators.

Japanese fans meeting cowboys.

The Ecuadorians, who took over Philadelphia, sang in the El, and partied on the Art Museum steps though nobody told them about the Rocky Curse – no visiting team who puts their jersey on the statue of Rocky at the Art Museum wins their game, and they duly lost to Cote d’Ivoire. The Brazilians are there now, partying just as hard if not harder, but they’ve posted guards at the statue.

And, of course, the Tartan Army. “No Scotland, no party!” as the song goes. They sang with the Iraqi fans in the streets of Boston. They took over Fenway Park during a Red Sox game. They paraded through the streets – pipes and drums calling – thousands strong to get to Fenway. They literally drank Boston out of beer – one bar noted that they did three times the business they usually do on St. Patrick’s Day, and at a nearby liquor store when someone came in to buy a case of water they booed.

They also cleaned the park after they left, much as the Japanese fans did at the stadium where they played. That’s a class act. They even donated thousands to local charities in Boston and Providence where they were staying.

My favorite bit from the Tartan Army is that they have brought the Glasgow tradition of putting traffic cones on statues to America. It started with the statue of the Duke of York in Glasgow in the 1980s, and eventually the city stopped fighting it.

And now it’s here.

The thing is, all of this has been a balm to the American soul. We’ve had a long, hard decade of division, tyranny, and anger. We needed to see joy for a change. We needed to be reminded of who we can be when there is nobody actively working to rob us of that. To see and participate in community. Kindness. Service. Diversity. Welcome. Healing. We’ve been starved of that in the public sphere for so very long, and it took all of these outsiders, all of these visitors, to make us see what we’ve lost so we could find it again.

“The World Cup didn’t need us,” said one American on social media. “We needed the World Cup.”

I watched a video today where a guy from Boston talked about how his city had a whole different vibe now, joyous and oddly unified. It has been wonderful, he said, to see how great it could be if we had things like the World Cup more often to bring people together and bring them into the city to celebrate with each other, and it will be hard when it’s over because we’ve been reminded of how things can be better. “I wish there was a way to know you’re in the good old days when you’re in them,” he said. “This feels like one of those times.”

We still have problems in the US. They haven’t and won’t magically go away because of the World Cup. We’re still ruled by a senile, corrupt pedophile and his cult of slaves. We just lost an illegal war of aggression that he started for no coherent reason. We still have a frightening degree of economic inequality, there are Fascist thugs wearing federal badges hauling the innocent away without due process, we have a racism problem that doesn’t get talked about nearly enough, and so on. None of these things have disappeared.

But it has been good to be reminded of who we can be, of who we are. That we can come together with kindness and community, that we can welcome the visitors and bring them into our lives in joyous celebration, and if we can do that here, if we can look into the mirror that is being held up to us by our World Cup visitors, we can do it elsewhere and we can do it when they’re gone.

We can be better than the last decade. We are better than the last decade. Sometimes you need people from outside to help you see that.

To all our visitors, thank you. Welcome to the United States. We will try to be good and kind hosts, to show you the best of our country and people, and send you home with cherished memories. We will try to carry that over into the rest of our lives and into our broader society. It may take some time. We will not completely succeed. But we will try.

A Trip Up North

The odometer on the minivan reached 200,000 miles this weekend, a milestone that we missed completely because we were actively driving at the time. I remember looking down and thinking, “Only a dozen miles to go!” and then a couple minutes went by and I looked down and thought, “Huh, now we’re six miles over,” and that was that. But now all of our vehicles have passed that milestone. We are the Car Whisperers. Or, more accurately, the guys over at the auto mechanic place are. But we’ll take it.

We hit this Big Round Number on the way home from spending the weekend in northern Wisconsin, up by Kim’s old stomping grounds. It’s pretty country if you enjoy rural areas, small towns, and wide-open spaces, though more often than not we’re heading up that way for somebody’s memorial service which does put a damper on things. But you go, because you pay your respects. And it’s good to go back to one’s roots.

There were actually two memorials, it turns out – one for Veronica and one for Lena, who died about four months apart. It was a rough year up there.

We drove up on Friday and found the little rental apartment with no problems. It was the right-hand side of a small house owned by an older Mennonite couple who were quite lovely to talk with. Despite being fairly new construction the place was clearly designed with 1986 in mind. The “late-Reagan floral with patterned couches” style – complete with an actual oak-stained computer desk with a hutch overhead and a pull-out keyboard holder underneath – is instantly recognizable to those of us who lived through it. But it was a great place to spend a night, clean and comfortable and very quiet, out there on the farm. We watched a storm roll in that night across the fields. We’d stay there again.

Kim’s parents and her brother Randall drove up for the memorial as well and we met them at the diner in Ladysmith before heading to the lobby of their hotel for further hanging out. It’s good to spend time with good people. Afterward Kim and I walked around the public park in the middle of Ladysmith, a place full of memories for her. You get to know people a bit if you spend time in their places.

The next day we headed over to Jump River for the memorial.

Jump River is an unincorporated town with two bars, a church, a store, and a dozen or so houses strung along the highway. At one point before everything got started Kim and I walked around the entire town, which took about fifteen minutes even if you include the random dog that tried to bite me (three cheers for sturdy pants, I say). Kim spent a good portion of her younger days in Jump River Rose’s bar, in fact, because in northern Wisconsin bars function as community centers as well as saloons and it had live music and dancing every weekend. Jump River Rose herself was a fixture when Kim was growing up and was apparently quite a character, as fixtures in small towns should be. According to reminiscences of some of the people at the memorial as well as several newspaper stories I just looked up, she could hold a 16lb maul at arm’s length for five minutes straight, smoked cigars as big as she was, swore like a stevedore and once threw a drunk through the front door. (“Sometimes you ain’t got time to open them,” she said.) She’s long gone now but the bar is still there. Every town needs its landmarks.

I grew up far away from Jump River, out on the east coast, and by “east coast” I do not mean Sheboygan the way people in Wisconsin do when they say “east coast.” Memorials were rather more formal where I grew up then they are in Wisconsin, and I was duly warned about this, perhaps to prevent me from defaulting to some combination of three-piece suit and cape, neither of which I own but wouldn’t it be something if I did? So I was expecting something more low-key than I had experienced in the memorial services of my youth though it did take me a second to adjust to the picnic format.  It has to be said that it was a very good time, though, all things considered. There were a lot of people to whom I was introduced as “And this is Kim’s husband, Dave,” and there were some lovely stories told about Veronica (whom I’d met once or twice) and Lena (whom I don’t think I’d ever met at all), and there was quite a tasty lunch afterward – the “funeral lunch” in Wisconsin being one of the nicer traditions I’ve run into since moving here.

We said our goodbyes and headed off to visit our friends Joe and Lisa, who had just moved into a new house where the backyard is full of deer and golfers. They’re both recovering from surgeries on top of trying to move, which is how I ended up spending a chunk of that evening putting together an entertainment center with an Allen wrench, because this entertainment center was made of depleted uranium and grief and there was no way two people recovering from various surgeries were going to moose that thing into existence. It looks nice and I am hopeful that my construction skills do not lead to it suddenly implode at a random time to be named later.

All four of us are fairly low-stress people and we had a relaxing time of it, Allen wrenches notwithstanding. There was much hanging out. We watched the Phillies beat the Brewers in a game where the final score looked like they were playing football. There were Aperol spritzes and at least one Dairy Queen run, which you can do in town. We had a good time.

It was an uneventful drive back down to Our Little Town Sunday afternoon, and we arrived to one very grateful cat, one deeply annoyed rabbit, and our own bed.

News and Updates

1. So apparently we’ve hit the point in the year where these quick hit posts are the best I can manage, or perhaps we’ve hit that point again. They do tend to crop up more and more, I find. The odd thing is that I’m not objectively all that busy – the semester is over, I’m not teaching any summer classes, my Perpetual Online Class got handed off to some other sucker instructor back in December, and I’m only getting paid to be an advisor two days per week. And yet here we are.

2. It’s not like we don’t have other things to do, though. Friday Kim and I went to a Social Gathering of friends, which was enjoyable. We are all people who enjoy the idea of drinking alcohol more than the actual practice of drinking alcohol so it does tend to build up in our homes and every so often we have a Cocktail Lab Party where the main goal is to get rid of some of the back stock, except (vide supra, re: idea vs practice) it tends not to work very well as far as the main goal is concerned, though we have an enjoyable time anyway.

3. And last night we were at a retirement party for one of our colleagues down at Home Campus, which was both a lot of fun, since there were many good people to talk with, and a bit sad at the same time, since this colleague will be sorely missed. But that is the nature of jobs, and so we enjoy having people around while we can.

4. This lesson got reinforced today when we went to a memorial service for a former colleague from Home Campus, one who had retired back in 1999. It was a long service but it went well and there were a number of old colleagues I hadn’t seen in a while. I genuinely do not like going to these sorts of things, but I’m always glad I went. You pay your respects.

5. I’m slowly making headway on designing my new class for next spring. I taught a version of it a decade ago for a different university and I’m trying to incorporate parts of that, and it will also overlap with the last third or so of my Western Civ II class, so I’m trying to incorporate parts of that as well, and the goal is to do this without it coming out as a Frankenstein’s Monster of mismatched bits and bobs. We’ll get there.

6. Yes, I’ve been paying attention to the news. Let me see if I’ve got some of the recent low points: We’re merging our military with the IDF and likely turning over control of it to the Israeli government, because that’s a surefire long-term winner of a strategy. Convicted Felon Donald J. Trump got called out over his election lies by a reporter (a woman, which he can’t handle in the best of times), got pissy with her, and then lurched off camera in a toddler-level snit which he has tried to sell as strength but which anyone with more than six working brain cells knows is just what happens when a weak and cowardly bullshit artist gets cornered by something he can’t handwave away. California is taking its time counting all the ballots in its recent primaries by hand to avoid having the results tampered with by Elon Musk and the American right is melting down over the entire idea of having a free and fair election that they might not win – keep this in mind for November, by the way. Two economists published a thoroughly researched paper that predicts AI will – not might, will – destroy the global economy unless strong countermeasures are taken immediately. Convicted Felon Donald J. Trump’s henchmen recently began removing scientific apparatus from the Atlantic Ocean because it measures how badly the AMOC is deteriorating, which directly contradicts their hallucinatory fantasies about there not being any climate crisis – this despite Congress twice prohibiting any such removals. The DOJ argued in court that Convicted Felon Donald J. Trump could have the Statue of Liberty bulldozed tomorrow and there wouldn’t be anything anyone could do about it, because this is somehow different from an unrestricted dictatorship. The World Cup is collapsing in real time due to the vicious and nonsensical Nativist restrictions on players, fans, and officials entering the US. There was a fourth presidential assassination attempt (so-called) that already nobody remembers or cares about. The CEO of Exxon is predicting that US oil stockpiles will fall below viability in July, causing fuel and food prices to skyrocket. Couple this with the approaching Super El Niño and we could see mass hunger and social disruption around the world, since the last time we got one of those back in the late 1800s millions of people starved to death. That’s just what I can remember off the top of my head without bothering to look anything up. Are we great yet?

7. We fired up the pizza oven last night and had our first homemade pizzas of the season, because life is short and there are enough people out there trying to make everything worse so you might as well try to enjoy things while you can. It was good pizza.

8. We’re heading into our first heat wave of the season, and this is why I don’t like summer. People think summers are good but that’s only because they remember the break between school years when they had months of unstructured time and no real responsibilities. Summer itself is hot, sticky, uncomfortable, and overlong. It’s June 8 – only five more months until civilized weather!

9. Today also marks eight years since Anthony Bourdain died. I never met the man but even so I miss him. He was an interested and interesting person who understood that people are people and the best way to get to know them was through food. The world is a poorer place with him gone.

10. We are finally making progress on replacing the Door To Nowhere, which sits at the end of the upstairs hallway and provides instant access to the driveway though the first step is a long one. The wooden storm door is hanging on through sheer inertia and the interior door is mostly single-pane unsealed glass. We’ve been threatening to replace these doors since before the pandemic. Last fall our friend Adam – an actual carpenter – came by and measured everything that needed to be measured. And this weekend I went over to the Mega Hardware Store and told the door guy what Adam told me. And then the door guy asked me about a hundred questions, none of which I knew the answer to, so it took a couple of hours to get everything straightened out (who knew doors had so many options?) and then I sent everything to Adam and he said, “Yep, that’s the right size.” So sometime in July we will have doors, and then sometime after that we will get them installed. Honestly, if we get this resolved before the snow flies I’ll be good.