New Glarus has some awesome beers. Both fortunately and unfortunately, they decided to confine their sales to Wisconsin. Fortunately, since they decided to concentrate on quality instead of quantity. Unfortunately, since I live in Illinois, 100+ miles south of the state line.
While I haven’t toured the brewery (smacks forehead), I have been to New Glarus a few times, and loved it. The Sportsman Bar and Grill has some excellent pub grub; one of my favorites there is the Schubling, a Swiss-style sausage that (to me at least) seems like a cross between bratwurst and kielbasa.
And now every single inch of me itches. My chest, arms, and belly where the grafts are growing down; my legs where they peeled off skin for said grafts; and my whole back half from lying on it for two weeks.
Also, I seem to have developed a mild phobia of hot beverages, which threatens to severely impact my favorite daily routines.
Because we can go a week without getting in the car? Because McMaster-Carr delivers my work materials same day? Because we live 5 minutes walk to one of the best high schools in the state? Because there’s probably 50 restaurants within a 15 minute walk? Because one of the worlds greatests concentrations of arts is a 20 minute subway ride away?
Different strokes etc. My son would agree with you, he’s a mountain man. But trying to plan for a career in an outdoors focused place is not easy. Only so many climbing guides and ski patrollers are needed.
True, careers are an unfortunate burden of the serving classes. I can’t afford my little green valley without traveling a few miles into the northeast megalopolis every weekday.
But at least I have snakes, raccoons, possums and deer in the yard, and some fishes and eels in the stream… I only work in the human hive, I don’t live there.
If we’re keeping score, we have snakes, possums & raccoons too, plus red tails and falcons, and I live 1 mile from a spectacular fishery, NY Harbor. It’s currently teeming with striped bass up to 40 lbs or so. I’m hoping to get out after them and blackfish in my kayak tomorrow.
My spouse’s water research lab has done a lot of work in New York. I would not eat a lot of fish from that fishery, personally. Too much mercury and hydraulic fluid in there for me.
(But as you say, if we’re keeping score, my stream’s worse, because there aren’t any good sport fish in it at all ).
Thing is, all of the gamefish are migratory, and only here for days to a few months. These stripers are on their way from New England down the coast. That said, yeah, the pollution is a bummer, and the big one is PCB’s from GE’s dumping them hundreds of miles upriver. Even if you don’t eat them it’s fun. I had a 10.5 lb bluefish towing me to Brooklyn and giving me arm cramps a few weeks ago.
A good man passed away this morning, from cystic fibrosis, at 33. While I never had the chance to meet him face to face, we were related by marriage and interacted online from time to time. His family, who include some of my loved ones, are grieving, and I feel their pain more than I feel I have a right to.
He was clearly one of those rare people who leaves the world a better place for having been in it. RIP Samuel.
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Also, quick PSA: A lung transplant a few years ago gave Sam the chance to become a father and experience the first few years of his daughters’ life. Please consider becoming an organ donor.
Note that British football hooligans have had strong links with fascism in the past. I don’t think it was a coincidence that it happened at Brighton and Hove Albion, which is a very LGBT friendly area.
I see nothing to hope for. I see no way to realistically exit the mess I’m in or any hope at any way of having financial independence. Most of all I see no hope of making a niche for myself where I feel part of something rather than ‘the thing that forced itself here that we just put up with.’
Right now the only thing keeping me from blowing my brains out is living long enough to maybe show my niece that she can do better and that she won’t have just my parents as her biggest influince. I love my family, but given how horrified my folks are of same sex, interracial, or anything that isn’t far FAR right? Then again I’m the guy living with his family so no matter how much help i am it always feels like I’m leeching, which effectivly ruins any credibility i have.
I’m tired of just going either out of habit or out of some ‘maybe’ that deep down I know is ‘stop deluding yourself.’ However i can’t just ‘quit.’
Does the road wind up-hill all the way?
Yes, to the very end.
Will the day’s journey take the whole long day?
From morn to night, my friend.
But is there for the night a resting-place?
A roof for when the slow dark hours begin.
May not the darkness hide it from my face?
You cannot miss that inn.
Shall I meet other wayfarers at night?
Those who have gone before.
Then must I knock, or call when just in sight?
They will not keep you standing at that door.
Shall I find comfort, travel-sore and weak?
Of labour you shall find the sum.
Will there be beds for me and all who seek?
Yea, beds for all who come.
Stick to that thought. Also, if it’s any help: been there. It doesn’t even need to be your niece (nor mine, in my case).
But there are people out there you will have positive, lasting influence on.
