I’m back from my trip north, and I can honestly say that while I missed CO nation and following this site every day, it’s also been nice to get away, and walk in some woods, and hang out with family for a while, ignoring all of the Hamas-holes and other political weasels infesting our national life.
In the middle of the visit, the two cousins and I took a meandering trip from central Illinois up into Wisconsin. We drove north and west on small country roads, through fields of dry corn and soybeans being harvested, and patches of woods that were at peak color. We ended up following the Rock River for a while, near Dixon (hometown of Ronald Reagan, peace be upon him), and hiking through some wooded hillsides surrounding a huge concrete statue of Black Hawk, or at least an idealized Indian figure named after him.
[Insert your own joke featuring a non-idealized, non-Indian figure like Liz Warren here.] [#wemustneverstopmockingher]
Just south of the Wisconsin border we spent an afternoon in the hometown of my favorite under-rated president, US Grant. We toured an interesting little museum there, and had a great time in that picturesque little town. From there, we followed the Mississippi River up into Wisconsin.
We stayed one night in Prairie du Chien (which sounds a lot better than “Dog Prairie”), then crossed the Mississippi into Iowa the next morning and stopped at Effigy Mounds National Monument, a forested area covering almost four square miles of high ground overlooking the river. We hiked up into some woods where the leaves were so yellow they almost hurt your eyes, and enjoyed some great views.
From there we drove to Pike’s Peak, Iowa, which provided more great views of the valley where the Wisconsin River flows into the Mississippi. Which reminds me…
Regular readers may remember my travelogue of our trip on Route 66 from Chicago to LA several years ago, during which one of the linguistic themes that arose involved various “devils.” A crazily crooked bridge in Missouri was called “Devil’s Elbow;” a funky museum of barbed wire (the “devil’s rope”) in Texas; dirt devils swirling across the floor of a desert valley in Arizona; more pot smell (“the devil’s lettuce”) than you’d expect in Oklahoma, and so on.
Well one theme that popped up during this trip – arising from how many small towns have very familiar names – was “not that one.”
For example, in Illinois we drove through or by Oregon (not that one), and Compton (definitely not that one). In Iowa we were very close to Harper’s Ferry (not that one), and we saw Pike’s Peak (not that one). In Wisconsin we passed by Sparta (not that one) and Oregon again (still not that one), and at the beautiful capitol building in Madison, we saw a cool statue of a bad-ass Norwegian guy named Hans Christian (not that one) Heg, who came to Wisconsin in the 19th century, and died fighting slaveholding Democrats at Chickamauga on September 16th, 1863.
As always, traveling brought many small delights. I saw a perfectly named liquor store in Prairie du Chien – where, if you over-indulged you could end up… dad joke landing in 3…2…1… sick as a chien (sorry). It was called, “Pour Decisions,” and my compliments to the owner.
In an old building in La Crosse, a restaurant’s neon sign had the words “lousy service” – also in neon – below it. So don’t complain that all advertising is false advertising.
During our drive along a river road up through Wisconsin we stopped at four different sites marking battles in the Black Hawk War, a typically poignant tale of tragic events that seem like they could have happened a thousand years ago, rather than unfolding over just five months in 1832. One site’s marker reported 10 dead on both sides in one encounter, and I couldn’t help but think that that is just a typical couple of weekdays in Chicago.
We were lucky enough to hike along five different rivers: the Illinois, Vermillion, Rock, Apple and Mississippi. (The Mississippi is the biggest – surprise! – but I think the prettiest might be the Rock.) And even though I love Florida, there’s something about Fall in the north that always gets to me. After we came out of the woods at Effigy Mounds, the wind momentarily picked up, and all around us yellow and orange leaves filled the air like a heavy snow, and I was right back in childhood.
All of the sensations are so familiar. A brisk chill in the air and the occasional sounds of birdsong and smells of woodsmoke nearby. Walking along a sun-dappled path, the tannic acid scent of a carpet of fallen leaves crunching underfoot, and I’m thinking of trick-or-treating in a plastic Captain America mask (the rubber band holding it on my head snaps off by the fourth or fifth house!), and half-forgotten hayrack rides that ended in drinking hot apple cider and roasting marshmallows.
And all of it the sweeter because of the knowledge that it won’t last long.
When I first read Shakespeare’s Sonnet 73 later in life, the first four lines immediately rang true, despite the archaic verbiage: “That time of year thou mayst in me behold/When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang/ Upon those boughs which shake against the cold/ Bare ruin’d choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.”
I first read that when I was relatively young, and aging was a theoretical concept for me. Now that I’ve entered my 60s – I can’t believe it either! – the final couplet hits like a hammer blow: “This thou perceivest, which makes thy love more strong/ To love that well which thou must leave ere long.”
Yes!
And ouch!
And then I got back home, and started catching up on events in our country and in the Middle East, and I couldn’t help but think of Shakespeare again, and the lines from The Tempest: “Hell is empty, and all the devils are here.”
Of course the jihadis are screaming about their precious human shields – er… children, and about Israeli “war crimes.” (Because I guess no one has explained to them that accidentally killing civilians who are used as human shields in front of legitimate military targets is NOT a war crime, while using civilians as human shields to protect military targets IS a war crime?)
And of course Hamas sympathizers around the world and in our own cities and campuses are lying their heads off and chanting from the genocide hymnbook. (“From the river to the sea, we will make the land Jew-free!”)
And of course the MSM “journalists” are covering themselves with shame, as per usual. They’re calling terrorist cowards “fighters” or “resistance,” and churning out as much false moral equivalence as they can. Poor KJP – she favors the fairer sex, so don’t pay attention to what a dullard she is – even had to backtrack after she responded to a question about the festering anti-Semitism being revealed in the West and America with an oblivious, “Yes, we’re as worried about rampant Islamophobia as you are!”
The false story about the “Israeli” “attack” on a “hospital” was pitch perfect, and we need to make sure to bring up that novelty exploding cigar of a narrative every time our lying media and lefties (but I repeat myself) get hysterical about Israel fighting back against Hamas.
For several days, empty/talking heads all over the world repeated the breathless morality tale of how the evil Jews “intentionally” rocketed the hospital, leaving a mountain of “500” “dead” “Palestinians” – who by some miracle were all women and children. Many commentators even used the fact that the rocket “killed” “so many” as evidence that it had to be from the Jews, because only their rockets could cause that much damage.
(I’d go on, but I have now used up my weekly quota of scare quotes.)
Then it quickly came out – documented six ways to Sunday – that the rocket was fired by Hamas, that it didn’t hit the hospital but a parking lot next to the hospital, and that it killed only around 10-50. (And I’m willing to bet that at least some of those casualties – while they likely have the genitalia of small infants – were actually big, brave Hamas terrorists.)
Other than that, they got the story exactly right!
Ugh.
Given all that, and even though Biden served up his usual mush of stuttering, slurring equivocation, he at least mumbled a few of the right talking points, and we’ve got some carriers in the Gulf. Which is about the most we can expect, given what a low-down, chien-faced pony soldier (HA!) our Cadaver-in-Chief is.
It’s good to be back, and I’ve missed you, CO nation. And I trust that in my absence none of you have forgotten…
Hamas delenda est!
Martin Simpson 