Dinner at a Wisconsin Supper Club

We celebrated our wedding anniversary this past Sunday and tradition called for dinner out.  Since we were at the cabin, I thought it might be time to try a new Supper Club.

For the uninitiated, the "Supper Club" is an upper-Midwest tradition centered on Wisconsin.  If you are a serious student of American culture, you will want to add this to your fact-file.  Here is an article in the New York Times, a book and even a movie on the subject.

There are certain standard menu items on a supper-club menu.  Steak, of course, but always AYCE Walleye on Fridays and prime rib on Saturday.  We were looking for something a little more special and found it here.



The Chippewa Inn can be found fifteen miles east of Hayward.  The location is easy to remember, it's at the corner of A and B, and offers a Bavarian page besides the usual fare.


Am I sure this is a supper club?  O yes, you can tell by the fish and other animals hanging in the bar watching you sip your cocktail.  (I couldn't get the bearskin into the same frame - sorry!)


Keeping with the Bavarian tradition, you will find a couple of dollhouses and a case of Hummel figurines in the back room.



How was the food?  Very good.  Here is the Bavarian Pork Shank (Eisbein, if you are German) and the prime rib.

More Small Critters - Gordon, Wisconsin

I suppose that when most fishermen think back to their visits to Pagac's Pines Resort near Gordon in the '50s and '60s, they recall the battle with a Northern Pike or a stringer of Bass and the pleasant outings on the lake.  But I wonder if those thoughts might have pushed other, less pleasant memories to the back of their minds?

The evenings can be remarkably pleasant on the Gordon Flowage - provided you are behind adequate screens!  Mosquitoes, gnats, and tiny creatures so small that they are known locally as "no-see-ums" abound beginning at dusk.

I was taking a picture to illustrate a Facebook Post that Linda wrote on Monday:

Cabin Life Today.......

It's so much fun sitting on our porch having dinner. Our entertainment has been a hummingbird that likes to sit on the wind direction indicator, a song sparrow singing his little heart out, king birds catching their dinner mid-flight, the squeaky gate song of the blue jay, squirrels chattering as they chase each other thru the trees, a chipmunk sneaking up to the cabin and fish jumping in the lake.

It's totally calm so the lake is like a mirror, reflecting the trees of the island. The sky is totally overcast thru which the sun is a huge bright orange orb slowly descending. Warm temps and the windows are open to all the sounds. We wished a couple deer would saunter past but our deer are too shy for that. Very relaxing.

Nice!

I finally settle on this picture.


But along the way, I noticed this fluffy cotton that had piled up on the windowsill.


Wait a minute - that's not cotton.  It is a big pile of small bugs!


They weren't here last night.  Let's take a closer look.


How big are they?  Well, about the size of a dragonfly's eye. 


This dragonfly seemed too overfed to try eating any of these.  Besides, they prefer to harvest the bugs while on the wing.  These were all dead and not going anywhere.

I was perplexed about what the little critters were when suddenly this fellow stopped by to look, also.


What is that?  And what it is carrying on its back?  Babies?  Some kind of parasite?


How could I identify these things?  If I lived in Washington D.C., I could take them down to the Smithsonian.  Or in Manhattan, I could go to the NYC Public Library and ask.  In California, someone is probably building an "app" for that.

Since I am in the Northwoods, I just went next door to Tom and Barb.  "Mayflies," said Tom.  "A Pine Borer," said Barb.

Among the thousands of varieties of mayfly, some are very small.  The double white tail is the key to identification.  There is a remarkable YouTube video that show one variety laying eggs that hatch a few seconds later.

And that Pine Borer?   Apparently they like fresh logs more than seasoned.  So maybe they won't eat the cabin.

Click on the Pagac's Pines link below to see other Northwoods critters from the neighborhood.

By late afternoon, a gentle breeze had blown away all evidence of the Mayflies.

It's Chilly in the Northwoods

The clock has just passed midnight making it officially May 31.  And the temperature outside along the Gordon / St. Croix Flowage is a brisk 34 degrees!

It was 85 degrees when I drove up two days ago.  The National Weather Service has issued a Freeze Warning:

Twenty six?  Yikes!  I had come up to plant the tomatoes, peppers, okra and a few other vegetables.  I only got part of the job done before the cooling trend showed up.  I'll wait another day.  Meanwhile, here is a picture of the garden.


I hope that the tarps are adequate.

Things could be worse - much worse.  Here is a newspaper clipping from 1948 on display up at the Gordon Historical Society.

Leaving Cairo - 2015

For all the frustrations we encounter while we spend  a winter here, there is plenty of reward.  The greetings of close friends will always be remembered, but so will the greetings of the bakers, shopkeepers, and a  multitude of other casual acquaintances.

The memories in our minds seem never to be of dusty streets, honking horns and the like.  Instead we remember lunch along the Nile.



Or patterns of light on the pyramids.


Or that outing in the desert near Fayoum.


There are plenty of quiet spots even in the city


It doesn't take long to reach the countryside and there is always time to stop for tea along the way or a donkey to hug.


And time never permits me to share nearly as many stories as I would like.  So to find out what this picture is all about, you'll just have to wait until we get home and can explain it in person.

Paying the Bills

It's time to settle accounts as we prepare to leave for home again.  The big item is the accumulated fees for our homeowner's association.  We pay 100 Egyptian pounds every month ($13 U.S.)  This pays for the water, the electricity in the common space and the services of our bawab.  This is a pretty decent deal.  I have heard that other retired people in Florida and Arizona pay lots more - and they don't even have a bawab!  (There is an interesting article on bawab management here.  I usually just refer to this NYT article on bawabs for the uninitiated.)

This past year, we had to pay a number of special assessments, however.  There were problems with the elevator and the water pump.  My neighbor across the hall who happens to handle the money for the association was sorry to have to bring me the bad news when we arrived in January.  These repairs came to 675 E.G.P. (90$ U.S.)  300 of that was to cover a negotiated settlement for water that had not been billed to the building for several previous years.  The good news was that the association was now in possession of a backup water pump should we have another failure.

Here are pictures of the ground floor elevator door in the lobby (it had to be replaced) and the "mechanical room"  under the stairway with the pump.  The pump installation is a little rough by western standards but it works well almost all of the time.


We also pay for garbage/trash collection and our electricity.  The garbage collection fee is 10 E.G.P. ($1.33 U.S.) per month.  They come by three times a week.  We seem to maintain a closer relationship with the trash collection folks than most people here.  They get cookies during our stay and most of whatever might be left in the refrigerator at the end.

Electricity is the big item.  The accumulated bills for the past twelve months total 240 E.G.P. - about $31.  Our monthly minimum when we are not here is 4.15 EGP or 55 cents.  I can live with that.

Talaat Harb - Now and Then

Our visit to Talaat Harb square on Saturday was our second visit during this stay.  We had been pleasantly surprised with a major renovation effort taking place and wanted to return and check on progress.

Talaat Harb is probably Cairo's second most famous public space after Tahrir Square.  Tahrir has undergone a remarkable facelift over the past year.  I will return to that subject in a later post.  But Talaat Harb is being restored to something approaching the grandeur of its "heyday" in the middle of the past century.  The restoration is all but complete on a few corners, still in progress on others.


Work on the interior of Groppi's famous pastry and chocolate shop is underway, and the famous nearby Cafe Riche appears to be getting a facelift as well. Cafe Riche opened in the early 1900's and became an intellectual hub where writers like Naguib Mahfouz could be found.


Wouldn't it be nice to see some pictures from "back in the day" and compare one to the present?  Fortunately, Cafe Riche has some old, faded black and white pictures posted in a window.  A couple are looking at them at the right edge of the picture above.

With just a bit of Photoshop magic, and some editing, I think we can pull out a decent image for comparison with the present:



A look at this picture from several years ago will show the need for a good cleaning and restoration.


If you have a very sharp eye, you will notice that something looks different about that statue in the center in comparison to the old snapshot shown above.  You are correct.  This was once Soliman Pasha's spot.  Talaat Harb was an Egyptian economist whose fame was available at a convenient time landing him a spot in the center of this street of banks and other modernizations from the World War II era.  More on that story can be found here.  The statue, of course, has considerable symbolism and was cast by our favorite coffee mug-maker, Fathi Mahmoud.

What Are They Reading in Cairo?

I don't know, but it seemed like the best way to find out was to go downtown to Talat Harb Square and check out the booksellers.  Talat Harb is a brief stroll from Tahrir Square and a case could probably be made for why it was once the intellectual capital of the city.  We found this selection of books set up near Groppi on the square.  Linda is checking out the Arabic language version of Hillary Clinton's Hard Choices.



There is probably no better choice than the Groppi corner to conduct "man on the street" interviews on the topic of the day. The question was, "If you want to know if something is forbidden or allowed in Islam, which authority would you ask and believe? The Salafists or Al Azhar?"  We thought this was a very divisive question that should not be asked.  There are enough problems in Egypt without creating more. I don't know which station to watch to view the results.  Perhaps it is just a YouTube venture.


There are other books available in the neighborhood and I don't know how I got past this antique book shop without going in.  The minaret book is a pricy thing on Amazon (about $80) and I might have been able to drive a better bargain here with Cairo's flexible price system.  I'll have to check for it again next year.





Walking around the square, the fragrance coming from the bakery was overwhelming.  We stopped in to buy some bread items that made the perfect accompaniment this morning while editing photos and posting them to the blog. An "inside bakery" is not common in our neighborhood so it was worth buying bread just to see the inside. Where we live the bakery items are displayed on tables outside the building. To help protect from the ever-present dust/sand, all items are covered by plastic but not all bakeries provide this amenity.

The Days Are Fleeting

It's almost time to return from Cairo.  Somewhere at home, a stack of paper awaits my attention for preparing our tax return.  (Several people here can't believe that a retired person should have to pay taxes!  I can scarcely believe it myself.)

We know it is almost time to leave when we begin to see the new crop of garlic on the streets - and the ripe watermelons begin to show up.  As we understand it, the price of garlic soars to around 25 EGP for a kilogram (86 cents per pound) just before the new year's crop is harvested.  Early in March, the new crop appears - by donkey cart, by truck - you have never seen so much garlic.  Prices respond as you would expect and soon  garlic can be had for 2.5 EGP/kilo (15 cents per pound.) When we exclaimed "A kilo of garlic?!!" our friend said, "Egyptians use a lot of garlic and they buy a lot to last until next year." We would bring home suitcases of garlic to distribute to friends and family but it's expressly forbidden at customs.








But this is also the beginning of melon season.  These small softball sized melons are wonderfully sweet.


And again, this year, we didn't find this friendly watermelon salesman on the left.  But there are plenty of melons available.



They are sweet and juicy again this year.  But, note the price increase 4 EGP per kilo to 5 EGP over the past two years.  That makes it 30 cents per pound this year.




And the flowers!  If anything says spring, it is the color beginning to cover many a garden wall.





Alas, we have but three days left and lots of people to say goodbye to.  I am getting close to my last blog post and may have to carry on with some after I return.