Negative capability

Driving across cold bleak Iowa yesterday afternoon, I stopped for lunch in Iowa City and found my way to the Red Avocado, a place recommended by friends Don and Martina. It's completely organic and vegan, so I was curious to see what could be done without animal products of any kind. The restaurant is on the ground floor of a house on the east side of town. Upstairs is a rambling, disorganized used bookstore, Defunct Books. It makes for a pleasant convenience.

I had a veggie burger with potatos. Nice flavorings, though it could have been a little more spiced. Good wholesome bread. Dessert was a pesticide-free apple crisp (made with Iowa apples, of course), served with caramel-flavored ice. Yum.

(I won't be dining with Don and Martina on my current visit to Kansas City - they are currently in Singapore, where Don has an intersession teaching gig.)

I have fond some fond memories of Iowa City. Back in the mid 1990s, I went to a very good Queer Studies conference there. There were excellent sessions on literature and theory, and a really fun dance was held for the conference at the student union. I.C. is a pleasant college town. I can understand why many writers write well there.
http://www.uiowa.edu/~iww/

"I give you Chicago. It is not London and Harvard. It is not Paris and buttermilk. It is American in every chitling and sparerib. It is alive from snout to tail."

H.L. Mencken

Back from an extended weekend in Chicago, cultural and edible. Out to dinner Friday night with Gerald to the fashionable West Loop restaurant "The Publican," a new beer and pork place that features the whole hog. We enjoyed our pork bellies and our country style ribs, and an excellent charcuterie plate which had one of the most diverse assortments of meat products I've ever seen. I recommend the place to carnivores and omnivores and localvores. (But not Jonathan Safran Foers!)

http://thepublicanrestaurant.com/#


(photograph by Bob Briskey)

Earlier in the day I'd been out at the recently opened Modern Wing of the Art Institute - designed by Renzo Piano, the architect with the most improbable name. The exterior of the building presents a comfortable homage to Chicago modernism and Mies van der Rohe. (Maybe a little too comfortable.) But I especially like the new pedestrial bridge that links the new Modern Wing to Millenium Park.
Inside the grand entrance is a welcoming space which aptly serves its function of linking old and new galleries of the museum, while satisfying the eye with a high roof and a sparklingly clean aesthetic. But some of the actual art spaces are rather poky and bland, and have the unfortunate effect of making the brilliantly shocking pieces of art inside them seem predictable and - well - "institutional."



I do like the presentation of Henry Moore's "Reclining Figure" - it gets most of a larger room to itself (herself?). For some reason, though, looking at it always makes me hungry.

My day in the Keewenaw (the U.P. of the U.P.) included a stop at the lovely Vertin Gallery, a very impressive restoration in the heart of downtown Calumet. My friend and former student Meeghan is exhibiting a number of her "big black crow" paintings there. Interestingly, Calumet has become something of an artists' mecca in recent years. (In the 2000 census Calumet's population was just 879, but 100 years ago it was a big copper mining boomtown and was the largest community in northern Michigan.) Painting above the bar at the Michigan House Cafe and Brewery in Calumet. I stopped in for a nice burger and fries. The building dates from 1905, when it was constructed as a "showcase bar" for the local Bosch Brewing Company. German immigrant artists from Milwaukee came up north to decorate the tavern. It was a wonderful day out and about. Capping the day, on the way back to Iron Harbor I stopped at picturesque Canyon Falls, on the Sturgeon River near L'Anse.

I went over to Lawrence to see an exhibit of paintings by the famed Beat author William Burroughs (1914-1997). Not too many people realize that the author of "Naked Lunch" lived in Kansas from 1981 onwards - he said that he liked the quiet pace of a college town. (However, Burroughs is buried in his home town of St. Louis, the family plot in the famous Bellefontaine Cemetary.)

In his later years, Burroughs became very interested in visual arts, particularly painting. He perfected a unusual technique of using spray paint: he would place one or more cans in front of a canvas, and then shoot at them using a rifle. Interesting variation upon de Kooning's style!

(I'm not sure if it was the same gun that was used in his fatal shooting of his wife. Probably not; that was back in 1951 in Mexico City, during an unfortunate "game" of William Tell.)

The art exhibit was at the Bourgeois Pig, a cozy den that would be perfectly at home in Copenhagen. I'm so glad that they've prohibited indoor smoking there - it used to be the kind of place where the nicotene had seeped into every square inch of the wood. Now the smokers are banished to the outdoor patio.

Oh, Lawrence, such a pleasant place. It's always been the most Massachusetts you can be while still being in Kansas. Appropriately, Lawrence is such a "Blue" portion of Kansas, it's out of sync with the rest of "Red" Kansas. I see that Douglas County voted 64% for Barack Obama in the 2008 Presidential Election.

For lunch I walked over to Local Burger, which is exactly Michael Pollan's kind of place. (It's on Vermont Ave., of course.) It's gotten write-ups all over the world as a burger joint that a Liberal can eat at without guilt. I enjoyed my tasty "omniburger" - half soy/barley mix, half locally raise organic grain-fed free-range therapy-included beef. Served with tasty "progressive potatoes"!

http://www.localburger.com/

And of course a visit to Lawrence would not be complete without a stop at the Free State Brewery. My Homestead IPA was predictably hoppy and well-blended. Good news: the bartender told me that they are ready to start up their bottling operation this fall. Soon I will be able to purchase a six-pack of good Kansas ale and share it with friends back in Michigan.

Oh I was looking forward to this! We don't have an Indian restaurant in Iron Harbor, helas! But last night I went out with my brother and sister-in-law to the Taj Mahal in Old Town Fort Collins. That's chicken tandoori, mushroom curry, and (my favorite) vegetable korma, served with garlic naan.
My airplane/airport book yesterday. A dual biography of Grand Duke Michael and his wife Natasha - he was the younger brother of Tsar Nicholas II, and was legally Tsar for a day, March 3, 1917. Their marriage was an enormous scandal - Natasha was a divorced woman of much lower legal status, and she was never accepted by other members of the royal family. In particular, the Dowager Empress Marie was adamantly opposited to the match - she was apparently the Queen Mary of her generation. The authors, Rosemary and Donald Crawford, do an excellent job of bringing out the tragic romance behind their union - the tumultuous circumstances of the Russian Revolution separated them, and Michael was murdered by his Bolshevik prison guards in the early summer of 1918. Natasha was also arrested by the Cheka, but she managed to escape to the west. Forced into a vagobond exile in London and Paris, she was depressed as only Russians can be depressed, never forgetting her halycon love, and struggling to pay her bills. She died forgotten and alone in a pauper's hospital in Paris in 1952. I like these royal biographies - evidence of the mutability of human existence, good reminders not to take happiness for granted. Nice summer reading.