Purging some thoughts before filling up with Friday Fish Fry

This trip through the Upper Midwest has given me ample doses of everything I sought this time around. New information from sources I know I'll engage with going forward. A chance to reconnect with people and stories I continue to research. Hours on the road to reflect upon what I'm trying to pull together for a big book on a subject no one seems to have searched for previously. Unexpected pleasures and pains in both unfamiliar surroundings and while tracking down some old favorites. Like so many of the trips I've taken this past year, this is what I've come to see as simply life on the road in America. Today is my chance to reflect and transcribe while visiting a town not far from where I grew up. This is a place where we would come for summertime waterskiing shows and the occasional movie or run to the Dairy Queen. Unlike so much of America, this town and the others around it have changed little from the 70s and 80s. Maybe it even goes back farther. But the ubiquity of coffeeshops with free WiFi and decent espresso even to be found in places like Tomahawk offer a chance to connect the dots with some of the places I've seen along the way.

As I often do, I've collected a mental list of places worth mentioning for others to keep an eye out for when they're similarly out there navigating the vast landscape of America. Whether I'm being a highly selective filter or just a traveler looking for an upside wherever my feet hit the ground, I'll mention a few. With one crushing bummer to show that all's not uniformly inspiring out there on the road.

• I was lucky to arrive on the outskirts of Omaha, Nebraska just as their minor league baseball team (the Omaha Storm Chasers - the Royals's AAA squad) took the field against the Nashville Sounds (the Brewers's AAA squad).  Just outside the ticket office, a Little League coach was handing out free extra tickets - I grabbed one with a smile. Hot dogs were on special inside the stadium for a buck. Then the Sounds lit up the Omaha starter for 6 runs in the top of the second inning (on their way to a 9-1 victory). Baseball purists might look down their nose at what showed up on the field that night. But I was blissfully entertained after a day on the road.
• For the second time - the prior being smack dab in the middle of winter - I made my way to the "Field of Dreams" movie site just outside Dyersville, Iowa. It was textbook example summer afternoon, with the outfield corn standing 9-feet-high (no drought conditions around a tourist attraction). Two pairs of Iowans asked me to take their pictures. Even if I'd had an anxious team looking to start practice, I couldn't have stayed longer. Just a run around the bases and a passel of pictures taken were more than special enough.
• After visiting the Fort McHenry museum in Baltimore earlier this month, I'd had my interest piqued thanks to a reference to the solitary battle in these parts. So I planned for a stop in Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin along the Mississippi River. The history part of town was a widely mixed bag, but there were many delights to be found. I even stayed at the Brisbois Motor Inn because of the epic kitsch quality of their signage around town. The motel was full of railroad workers and what I assumed to be a sizable number of drug mules. I didn't get even a little bit murdered. If you've got the time and itinerary to head through, also stop in at a coffeehouse on Blackhawk Avenue named Simply. It was all that and so much more.
• When unpacking the usual Madison cliches, there should always still be a nod delivered for the shared energy that comes from State Street on a summer evening. But my favorite stretch while in there for little more than a day was to get a falafel platter from a stellar food truck (Banzo) and head out back of Memorial Union and to share the Badger familial energy. I followed that up with a visit to the Wisconsin Historical Society's Library on campus, stumbling into their "Wisconsin After the War of 1812" exhibit. I didn't go to school in Madison. I am a different cut of college-aged rodent (Gopher blood courses through these veins). But a lucky, happy sojourn like mine yesterday made me realize yet again how nice that would have been.
• It's not all happy and inspired out there in America, obviously. The browned and sad fields of drought-stricken corn throughout Minnesota, Nebraska, Iowa and Wisconsin are just devastating to see. We'll be seeing the ripple effect of that sad sight in the grocery stores for the next few years.

There's more on my plate for the next few days before sticking a fork in this year's research travels. Up next I'm stoked for a Friday Fish Fry at the bar on picturesque Little Spirit Lake just two doors down from the house I lived in until I was 10-years-old. Because if you come to northern Sconnie without eating your weight in deep fried fish, you surely will be arrested. Not the cardiac kind, I hope. Here's hoping you get the walleye tonight, too.

On the road again - DC edition

I'm back on the research road - flying high above this quite large nation on my way to our Nation's capital. I'll spend a number of days on the ground there, pursuing a plethora of new angles. I arrive on a day I hope will not feature the Postal Service defaulting on the first of their sizable financial commitments. But that souffle may already be cooked, given that Congress hasn't acted on much of anything other than anti-abortion legislation as of late (unsuccessfully, it should be added). And what of the Ag Bill still hanging in limbo as the Nation struggles with a terrible drought? Not much happening there, either. What to do, you might ask, if there's so little goshdarn legislating being done in the required home of such activity? My schedule will be tight, but I am planning to mix it up with some frenzied museum time. Yes, I do indeed know how to party. For those keeping score at home, I have a wish list that includes the following:

• Fort McHenry in Baltimore is a place I know little about other than the basics - think War of 1812, the origins of "The Star Spangled Banner", and probably a fair amount of other stuff. It requires a trek. For those paying attention, however, I do dig being this sort of trekkie.
• Continuing along those Bicentennial themes, the National Portrait Gallery has a War of 1812 exhibit in place. I'd read a review a few months back that intrigued me. Prior to that, I only recall Stephen Colbert's hilarious pursuit of inclusion in the museum's holdings. Put this one at the top of my museum geek wish list for this visit.
• To finish the short list the nerd-poriums I'm hoping to bag, a secret plan to visit the Spy Museum has always stuck in the back of my neck like a poison-tipped dart. In a good way. So add that little divulged secret to the ledger.

I do have other plans. I'll keep y'all updated, if you'll be so good as to check back. But we're heading into Memphis - wow, now that's a sunrise worth tweeting about. As in what a bird should be doing - there's another word lost forever to modernity.

Snaps for Canada. And Cassadaga.

I've spent the past 8 days traveling through Ontario, Quebec and New York State. I'm happy to say that the harvest of stories from sources proved way beyond worth the trip. So I'm heading toward the airport to continue on for another week away from my family back home in Seattle. First, I'll offer this. It's easy when playing my hand so close to the vest to lapse into generalities. But to protect the value of what capturing for the book I'm writing, generalities will have to do for right now. Here's a fattie - I dig Canada. I know I've been rarely but indeed guilty of that tired American cliche` where we make fun of what we know of them - acting like an oafish bully joking about the obvious when confronted with that soft-spoken, unassuming bloke. Now I plan to embark upon an unofficial pro-Canada campaign. Speaking as a nonetheless proud American, I think much of the problem is we just don't know what's gone on or is going on up here. When I got back into Toronto last night after a few days in New York State, I felt sincere pleasure in the returning to a place I barely know. Yet. I merrily got up this morning after only a few hours sleep at the prospect of one last run along the downtown Waterfront. Beyond Toronto, the history I saw thanks to intended stops in Kingston, Ottawa and Montreal offered just a taste of how much is and always was bubbling up here.  Now that's not to say that I didn't get entirely jazzed by the many hundreds of miles of a side trip I took between the border crossing at Plattsburgh, NY through all the way to the Peace Bridge outside Buffalo. Along that route I drank deeply from the sights offered by the Adirondacks (not the best day for vistas, but Highways 28 and 30 rawk). I spent a night in Lake Placid - its just-shy-of-tacky pridefulness and the fact almost every worker appears to be in world-beating shape are just two footnotes to a larger awesomeness. However, if there was a quiz about what was my far-and-beyond favorite stop, I'd tag as this trip's tip top stop the area in and around the teeny town of Cassadaga in Chautauqua County (in far western New York bordering that little notchy part of Pennsylvania along Lake Erie). I spent just one night there, above the Whiskey Hill Saloon. Long story. Totally worth it, though. It's situated at the one stop light in town. There's rich history all over the area. And I went there with a reason. I'll hold back that card, because it's an especially good one which I can't wait to play someday. If you're a Spiritualist  on the way to catch up with a dead pet or Houdini seeking out the mediums in the area (or maybe you're a documentary filmmaker working on a sequel for HBO), stop in at Whiskey Hill Saloon - get the "garbage wings", ask about the "lodging" and tell the owner, Kim, that I sent you. 

And so onto New York City, with a briefcase full of notes and quotes and readiness to roll on, totes magotes. But not before telling Canada and Cassadaga the equivalent of "I love you, man."

Taking a measure of Toronto, before new road work.

I've spent the last few days in Toronto, cruising through a heavy schedule of interviews with sources both old and new. And the writing fills in most of what's left around that. So my time trolling this largest of all Canadian cities hasn't been as leisurely as I'd hoped. I still get out for runs in the morning - opting for along the waterfront of Lake Ontario and through the large-ish and beautiful-ish urban oasis that is High Park. My downtown exploration thus has been limited to the so-called "Mink Mile" along Bloor Street (high end designer stores anchored by the massive Holt Renfrew where employees seemingly wouldn't even look up from their folding if you were engulfed in flames). I went searching for the ghost of Harold Innis at the University of Toronto. I ventured out to what had been a small town (Richmond Hill) in search of a hidden homestead from the mid-19th Century. Not much to find there, now that the "town" has grown into a city of 188,000 hockey fans. Truth be told, my location specific jaunt up to Richmond Hill ended at a mixed-use sports complex from which I can only report that club soccer and league softball also suck to watch on this side of the border unless you're out on the field. I'll do one more day here - with neighborhood exploration plans and some creative thoughts about where the links to what I'm researching might lie. Tomorrow I head toward Ottawa and Montreal, with stops planned in both. More time on the road after that. Which I welcome. I'm a lover of cities and Toronto could supply a varied diet of urban delights for quite a while. But I'm trying to think about how to connect what I've seen here in terms of book-related content with stories from some pretty distant, yet still related, places. For that sort of thing, hours on the highway - or preferably the winding roads cut from the same cloth as those romanticized recently in the NYTimes - means time to process bigger thoughts. Plus no matter what I encounter along the road it can't suck nearly as much as Toronto's summertime highway construction. If there is a hell, the passage in and out is managed by the same people organizing the closure schedules for the highways around this otherwise mannerly city.

Shuffling my roadtrip playlist

For those who might be interested in my Spring Break roadtrip, I cranked through another biggish distance yesterday. I started in Pullman (for those unaware - right up next to the Idaho border) and then drove through the gorgeous undulating hills of that part of Washington on toward Walla Walla. I'll hold my fire when it comes to the DoubleWalla (anyone call it that? I surely want to). Aside from saying the old timey Fort there was the most unintentionally hilarious stop spread over the 900 miles of Washington and Oregon I've thus far covered. It surely goes without saying if you've already seen it, but the Columbia River features jaw dropping sights all along the way. Before darkness fell, the Columbia was my most interesting companion. Aside from Rachel Maddow. The audio version of her clever and well-researched book Drift (which she reads herself) gets my highest recommendation. Along with the atmospheric and multi-faceted new album I kept looping all of Monday - Kill For Love by Chromatics. So as I prep to leave Astoria (my successful targeted location last night and subject of this morning's research), here's hoping I find a suitable accompaniment to today's views along the Oregon Coast. But I'm happy to have batted a big 2 for 2 thus far when it comes to this roadtrip's soundtrack. May we all be so lucky, from time to time.

Pre-road trip nod toward Astoria

As a small part of my upcoming week on the winding roads of the Great Northwest, I'm planning a visit to Astoria, Oregon - the first United States community established on the Pacific Coast. There's tons of history there that's of interest to me. Plus the folks at the Clatsop County Historical Society have been downright folksy and fabulous via email in prep for what I'm expecting will be my too-short visit there. So I'd be remiss if I didn't nod in their general direction today - the 201st Anniversary of Fort Astoria's founding. John Jacob Astor - the town's namesake and original keeper of the checkbook - maybe sounds vaguely familiar. Don't sweat it. Post-Revolutionary War tycoons don't often get the Steve Jobs treatment. Astor was nonetheless fascinating, and a seemingly boundless trove of juicy trivia. Smuggling opium, pushing for exploration throughout vast tracts of North America, buying up tons of what became Manhattan, and so much more on his way to dying in the mid-19th Century with what would be worth of well over $100 Billion in today's money. Even the Astor's footnotes are interesting. Case in point - his great grandson (John Jacob Astor IV) was probably the most famous victim on the Titanic. That's a rather roundabout way to get back to Astoria. Rather fitting, though - given the wacky route I'm planning for next week.

Changing the game

Don't look now, but we've reached the start of another baseball season. At this very moment, the Brewers are getting shelled by the Cards. So some things have carried over from last year, no matter how much has changed in the world otherwise. I've spent the last few weeks focusing on what's just down the road for my book, Pelting Out. Some really good doors have opened, amazing connections within the narrative I'm researching have proven worth the effort to seek them out, and I've scheduled some exciting travel during the next few months. Up next for me is a road trip through parts of the Northwest I've never taken the time to see - expect loads of pictures of those sights (among many other things) to come. Soon thereafter in May and June, I'll be hitting the road again for more than two weeks in both Canada and the northeastern U.S. That's by no means the end of my field research. It merely gets me to where I wanted to be so that I can fill in the bigger pieces of this story. I'm not yet frosting this cake. But I at least have a good idea of what shape it will be. We'll see how it tastes after everything gets mixed in.

I hope it's obvious that I'm extremely excited about lies ahead. It's taken a great deal of will power to hold back some of the compelling stuff that I've found and all the new angles I've learned to use in looking at this very particular slice of life. From here on out, the content on this blog paired with what I offer in other places such as through my Twitter feed might appear to change somewhat. I think you'll see what I mean as it unfolds. Shorter, snappier observations will show up more regularly to start with, followed by more of the grand reveal as we head into the summer and onto fall. Consider yourself forewarned. And thanked - for checking in thus far.

Two Slice Santorum's Secret Ingredient

Of all the things I'm looking into, I've spent a considerable amount of time searching for connections between rural and urban America. The gap might be growing between the two. Still, I honestly don't see outright hostility across that divide. While doing research for this book, I spend time in both "places" - asking people questions that sometimes reflect upon separate states of mind. For those reading closely, you saw that I spent a few days last week in a mostly progressive and fascinating enclave within a sprawling urban landscape - I'm winking at you West Hollywood. A few weeks prior to that, I logged 1800 miles crisscrossing three states in the upper Midwest. I talk with liberals. I talk with conservatives. I've got an angle - we all do - and it comes from questions I have about a very particular snippet of America that I see having connections all across the map.

Now this will sound like a stretch, but I'm led at this moment to think about Rick Santorum and where he resides in the America I'm exploring. You've probably heard some form of his most recent punching bag quotes, loosely paraphrased as "Obama wants everyone to go to college - what a snob" and "JFK's claim that church and state should be separate made me throw up." There are so many others, all of which I can guarantee you based on real experience are percolating in the opposition research archives of countless young politicos, reporters and satirists waiting to make the next "Aha!" point to help their particular aim. The easy and gratifying money is to bet on what Santorum will next come out against (how about refrigerators - "America was a much better place when we just got huge chunks of ice delivered - daily"). My point isn't that his hyperbolic, dated character is on par with Bryce Dallas Howard (Hilly) from the movie version of "The Help". Although if he keeps this up, all of America may soon be leaving toilets on his lawn (read the book and/or see the movie if you miss the reference). No, I'm saying that what's being seen in Santorum's language is a matter of creating an American separation that just doesn't exist anywhere but in the mind of a few dispirited outliers. Maybe he'll do the one thing that no one else in America seems capable of doing - getting people to finally pull the lever for Bob Dole, er...Mitt Romney (although the strong possibility of Democrats crossing over during the open primary in Michigan to vote for Santorum makes too much disruptive and predictive sense to me). Still, wherever you reside in this America - urban or rural, current or past, happy or angry - this sort of separate but equal revisionism just doesn't reflect anything I've seen out there. Call me an optimist. Or a snob - I don't mind.

Sorry - just had to get that off my chest.

What I've learned thus far in LA - Celebrity Lookalike Edition

I'm in Los Angeles. West Hollywood, specifically. WeHo - as the locals have deemed their (relatively) young City. There's a confluence of issues and sources here that fascinate me - book research, I assure you. And my first day spent on the job here yesterday was incredibly insightful. The things I saw outside of my central pursuit were equally - maybe even more so - interesting. If you live in LA, I'm sure the daily absurdities wash over you like just so many hours spent in a car struggling to get from place to place. But for this visitor, I simply can't let things go unmentioned without being something of a tourist as I allow my eye to wander. I'll offer a few choice moments. Starting with something smack in the middle of my quick tour.

Few places seem busier than Whole Foods around dinner time in a city now entirely obsessed with the sorts of goods for sale there. The parking lot is total mayhem - a small piece of what I imagine Baghdad looked like just after the American invasion. But with much nicer cars. Once inside, it's readily apparent that everyone shops like they just stole a credit card from their parents. I had one of my few celebrity sightings of the day there - Mena Suvari, buying a somewhat reserved version of the grab bag of goofiness all the rest of us seem to need to survive. Outside of that entertaining but overlong errand to fill the fridge in my hotel, I had cultural pursuits that put wind in my sails. A great conversation with one of the booksellers at the cool indie store Book Soup in WeHo - I often ask how unwritten books (wink, wink) would be shelved in the mindset of this shop or that. Later I made a valiant attempt to get in for a show at The Groundlings - I should have bought a ticket online when I looked over the weekend. Everyone's curiously circling around that comedy troupe as the farm system for stardom. Vaguely recognizable faces mixed in with us rabble. Along with that of Cedric the Entertainer who waltzed inside with a happy looking group just before those of us in the rush tix line had our short wait ended in vain. No worries - thereafter I followed the LA Weekly's "best o' the day" suggestion and headed to Skylight Books in the Los Feliz neighborhood. My LA experience isn't that deep - I surely wouldn't have gotten there were it not for my iPhone. But I'm so glad I did. It was a tribute to a departed local legend - Scott Wannberg - by a cast of characters Charles Bukowski would have lovingly conjured up had they not collectively and individually beaten him to the punch.

After that soul-edifying and bookstore-validating showcase, I was in the process of killing some time before a late showing of "Shame" at the Los Feliz Theatre up the block (it's a movie I recommend, if you can somehow imagine drawing comfort from watching horrible things happen to questionable people - portrayed in full frontal artiness). A curious fellow started chatting me up. Or vice versa. He being of the meandering line of thinking and the appearance of someone who spends plenty of nights on the street. And me being of the killing time variety of the uninitiated. He'd been asked to come up to speak at Wannberg's tribute. Although he often trailed off into mumbles and finding his charm was something you had to work at, it was obvious this man had many stories to tell. After a series of back and forths, he complimented me. Well, that's what I'm calling it. Because it was so beautifully random and dated that I can't see it in any other way. He said I had the look of many men. The list - and this is for real - was as follows: Sting, John Glenn, Ken Berry, and Dean Jagger. Given that yesterday was the 50th anniversary of John Glenn's mission to be the first American in orbit - I'll take it as a karmic compliment while still hoping he meant the younger, Right Stuff-ier version. And when I Googled Dean Jagger, I also hoped for the younger. Much, much younger. Putting aside that obvious vanity, I was reminded later by searching that Ken Berry was a character actor I saw countless times in the 70s. It should be noted that in delivering the "compliment" this fellow said most people these days don't remember people from the decades he recalls best. I didn't thank him for that. Which I should have. I can actually see some of those hints and resemblances (sorry, Sting). We all have our celebrity lookalikes - some more au courant than others. For everything else I've seen here already and hope to see, that's the conversation that floats to the top of what I'm brewing up currently.

With that spilled out and my thinking freed up, the time comes for more exploring. I hope to offer up more here soon in this or an equally random vein, if you care to check back. But thanks for doing so.

The search for a narrative recipe that works

I'm back in Seattle and just dropped my mother-in-law off at SeaTac - the value of her help in taking care of our daughter and keeping the homefront under control in my absence is impossible to quantify. The cliche` about "it takes a village to raise a child" certainly applies when one of that child's parents needs to get out of Dodge for a mental stretch - I really couldn't do the work I'm doing without that sort of help. So now I'm back, digesting what I found along the way. I put 1800 miles on a rented Hyundai criss-crossing a wide swath of Iowa and Wisconsin (with just a toe tap into Illinois). For anyone who spends enough time on the road in pursuit of what often they alone hope to be a grand story, I'm sure the revelation is not surprising that the places in between the places on the itinerary really spin the web upon which to hang a narrative. Without being able to fill in too much detail, I must still say that this was a singularly valuable trip for me. I talked extensively about the science, politics, statistics, culture and back breaking work of agribusiness. Hours and hours of interviews remain for me to parse and digest. But the overall takeaway is obvious. Planning leads to insight. Insight - in turn, I hope - leads to good output. Output provides the foundation. And in the case of this project, the foundation is what you need to build something new. Seattle is a long ways from almost everywhere I visited over the past week+ - both physically and metaphorically speaking. I'm nonetheless grateful that I've now got at least some of that insight that I'll use to flavor the recipe I've got in mind for this book. In so many ways, the grind begins anew. Then mix, taste test, add the flavor, and taste test again. To mix the metaphor completely - that's how the good sausage gets made. Not that I know anything about making (aside from cooking) sausage. Mmmm...sausage (drool).

Here we go again - "Blame Canada!"

I was all set to write a brief little ditty about those sexy new PETA postage stamps ("Pamela Anderson AND Bob Barker? Consider my Holidaze shopping done, baby). Then I unfolded my clutch of daily dead tree to see a serious looking banner headline. "Canada Kept Salmon Threat Secret" For those just now checking in, I got hooked by that story breakthrough last month while looking at other viruses attacking specific agribusinesses with similarly devastating effects. The prospect of this salmon-targeting disease (named Infectious Salmon Anemia or "ISA") packed the added punch of possibly making the leap from farmed salmon populations to the much more valuable and previously safe-seeming wild salmon populations. Today's headline alludes to the fact that Canadian researchers have actually known about ISA being in wild salmon for a decade. One pesky research fellow found it present in tested fish back in 2002. The good news is that it may be a harmless natural variation of ISA that's always been out there. Where the story gets sexy is when the push to publish the findings maybe encountered the faint possibility that Canada's regulatory bureaucracy kept it hidden. This small tempest must nonetheless be swirling around the fishing taverns and coffeeshops today. Yarrr! For me, the takeaway jibes with my experience that emerging viral threats to an agribusiness leave those farmers feeling almost totally powerless. The teachable moment being that if researchers and bureaucrats dink around with that research because of some unseen benefit for keeping things silent...well, that's just a disservice to everyone.

Siri, is this Heaven?

I'm off to do some research on the ground in Iowa. Then Wisconsin. With just a touch of Minnesota dusted on my arrival and departure. I'm hoping to do more with Twitter this trip as way of quicker updates and commentary. You can follow me over yonder @ emaggie. This is all the more alluring as a distraction thanks to my brand new iPhone. Which arrived as a result of my old iPhone (a rotary) seemingly throwing itself under the bus at such a time as the new model's arrival. Coincidence? I think not. But whenever I ask Siri wassup with that, she just snickers.