The Cook County coroner's office announced today that they would be opening an inquest into the passing of Brown Fish on Thursday night.
"We're not ready to declare that there was any malfeasance in this situation," the report stated. "But certain factors have been brought to our attention which indicate that an investigation is certainly in order."
Although no details were released, sources familiar with the investigation have suggested that the addition of a metallic Sears Tower replica souvenir to the environment is perhaps the most suspicious element of the case.
Friday, October 27, 2006
Obituary
It is with great sadness that I report to you the passing of the Brown Fish.
Not only can it be said that he was the most brown of all the fish, but also the least orange.
A private ceremony was held in stall #2 of the men's room on the Grand Foyer of the Civic Opera House, Chicago.
He will be missed.
Friday, September 15, 2006
Sentence of the day
"Such sanctioned irregularities, which for obvious reasons the Government would hardly think to parade at the time, and which consequently, and as affecting the least influential class of mankind, have all but dropped into oblivion, lend colour to something for the truth whereof I do not vouch, and hence have some scruple in stating; something I remember having seen in print, though the book I cannot recall; but the same thing was personally communicated to me now more than forty years ago by an old pensioner in a cocked hat, with whom I had a most interesting talk on the terrace at Greenwich, a Baltimore negro, a Trafalgar man."
- from Billy Budd, Foretopman, by Herman Melville
(p. 219 of the Bantam Classic re-print, 1963)
- from Billy Budd, Foretopman, by Herman Melville
(p. 219 of the Bantam Classic re-print, 1963)
Thursday, August 31, 2006
Fly fishing in Wisconsin
I caught a very early train out of Chicago (12:28), and planned to be on the road to Wisconsin by 2:00. I was on the road by 2:00, but only as far as Aurora, where was located "Skin of a Different Color", a reputable and highly-recommended tattoo parlour. I had a consultation with Jen, the artist of choice, but she was in the midst of a back, and I had to wait about two hours for her to work on me.
In the interim, I went over to the market and picked up manly things I thought a man should eat while being manly. Pemmican jerky. Trail mix, liberally infused with dried fruit. Bottled water. An extra-large bag of peanut M&Ms.
By the time I got back over to see Jen, it had started to rain. I was driving my old blue Saturn sedan (leaving the big red Vue with Laura and the boys). It should be mentioned that the blue Saturn sedan has been sitting in the garage for more than a year, and could have benefitted from small adjustments. Like, say, windshield wiper blades.
I went back inside, and while waiting for Jen, watched "Evil Dead 2", which was on a continual loop on the foyer TV. I chose not to sit on any of the furniture. Jen finally was ready, and after spending 20 minutes covering everything in the room with plastic, applied the tattoo. Very nicely. Finally, at 5:20, I hit the road. And Friday-afternoon-get-out-of-town traffic.
Shit.
It took about 25 minutes to get across Aurora. Another half hour to get to 39 north.Then, there was a big wreck right at the Wisconsin state line.Meanwhile, it was raining harder and harder, and it was really a toss up as to whether I could see better with the wipers off or on.
I hit Madison after dark, and then had two hours more to go, into the countryside.I finally got to the general area, and could see nothing. I found the campground, but was not allowed to check in after dark. I tried driving around to scout the streams, but could not see jack.
(All the while, I was listening to the Madison NPR station, which had a special show running about the Wisconsin Irish Fest, which is - you'll find it hard to believe - the biggest festival celebrating Irish culture in the world. Anywhere. Including Ireland on St Patrick's Day. Malachy McCourt (Frank's brother) was on the live show, talking about his own experiences and books. Funny as hell.)
Finally, after trying to find a secluded spot to car-camp and being freaked out by another car stopping not far away, I caved and went to the seedy motel in Richland Center. I rang the bell of the office (it was about 11:40), and after some five minutes was greeted by a hairy Russian in boxers and an undershirt. I don't know if he spoke English. I slept in my sleeping bag on top of the made bed in room #10.
I stayed up reviewing my books and notes and maps, and decided I would start the morning on Otter Creek (the furthest east of the streams I wanted to scout), and work my way west, finishing up near Fennimore. At about 5:30 I headed south, intending to be on the water by 6:30.
By 6:00, I had gotten within spitting distance of Otter Creek, only to find the only bridge between here and there (Route 130, south) was out.I had to turn around, and complete a circuitous detour which took me halfway to Madison and back (and had me stymied for about four minutes in the middle of a dirt track, all forward progress blocked by a very large and pissed-off looking wild turkey), I got to the Otter (intersection of County Roads II and Q) at 7:30.
I put on my hip boots (not full waders), strung up my rod, and was attempting to tie on the Pass Lake when my eyeglasses (the only pair I brought, for the purpose of following a very tiny fly across bubbling riffles at 25 feet in dubious light) snapped in half, across the bridge of my nose. Rendering them completely useless. All the while, be it the rain, Vladimir's Roadhouse, the detour, the intransigent turkey . . I had maintained a mental equillibrium, remembering that I was on vacation, fishing, enjoying my solitude, and that I could roll with any misadventure that came my way.
When my glasses broke, I -- very briefly -- lost it, and rather enjoyed hearing my "motherFUCKER!" echo back to me from across the valley, as I watched a murder of crows I had startled take flight.
I finished stringing my rod, waded down to the water, and just watched. Watched the shadows for shadows. Any black darting indication that there was some kind of life. Otter Creek was small - only 10 feet across, and with an almost imperceptable flow, overgrown on both sides by weeds, tall grasses, and wildflowers, making casting difficult.
I waded about a mile or so downstream. At one bend in the creek, on three successive casts, I reeled in a small creek chub, which - while a stupid fish, striking anything it sees - is a good indication of good water conditions for trout. It was thrilling to catch something - even if it was just a 'shiner' - on a fly I had tied. On the Wisconsin Fly Fishing Forum (http://www.wisflyfishing.com/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?board=general), I had gotten several private messages from someone by the moniker "Zoanr", who had fished the same creeks I was scouting, just the previous weekend. He had reported much luck of many large brookies in Otter Creek. But that had been first thing in the morning, before the fog had burned off. By the time I was to the place I needed to have been at 7:00 AM, it was 9:30 and the sun was high.
I waded back upstream to my car.I considered, and decided I'd go far west, to Fennimore, and hit the three big creeks there - the Big Green, Fennimore Creek, and the Blue River.
They were shit.
Narrow, nonexistent current, green with summer weeds and algae.I was discouraged. I looked again at the notes I had printed out from Zoanr, and he had mentioned having great success in the West Fork of the Kickapoo, just outside the town of Avalanche. (The town of Avalanche consists of the Avalanche General Store. There may be a house or two, but if so, they're in the woods. I didn't see any.)
I crossed the Kickapoo on my way into Avalanche. "This," I said to myself, "looks like a trout stream." I went into the general store, booked my night at the Outdoor Club's campground ($10, "just a ways south on Route S, just camp wherever you like"), bought a couple of locally-tied flies (they were sold out of Pass Lakes), and drove downstream.
I got to the bridge, and looked at the pool. It was absolutely beautiful.
Stunning.
Gorgeous.
Fed by a very healthy run, the water was flowing, but at this point (where a small feeder creek joined), it was wide, and deep, and cool, with back eddies and overcover -- if there were not large trout there, I would eat my beloved new hat.
It was late afternoon by this time, and a warm day, so I knew no trout would be feeding. I decided to risk losing the spot to someone else, got back in my car, and drove north on Route S, back to the store, where I got a bag of ice for the cooler (confident that I'd catch Charlie's Sunday dinner, as I had promised) and a couple more flies.
I turned around and went back down to the pool, parking carefully and taking my time putting on my full waders.I strung up my rod, made sure I had the flies with me, and walked down the hill to the pool. I waded in, surprised at the depth. I practiced casting from a couple of different spots, not to catch anything, but just to judge the best spot to be at sunset, to cover most of the pool effectively (able to reach any rising trout I saw in any direction) with ample space to back-cast without hanging up in the canopy of limbs.
Having found the perfect spot, I decided to wade downstream to see more of the river, while I waited for the sun to get off the water. I found a stunning succession of riffle-run-pool, riffle-run-pool, all of them improved by the local Trout Unlimited chapter, with downed trees to provide lunker structures, gravely runs for the spawing redds, deep pools . . it was just gorgeous.
(I later went back to the "Trout Streams of Wisconsin and Minnesota" book I had bought to see why I had not marked the Kickapoo as a destination. Besides being further north than I had originally intended to go, there was just a scant paragraph about it, which I had not bothered to read, figuring it had nothing good to say. The gist of the paragraph is, "this is universally acknowledged to be the best trout stream in the midwest, and one of the best in the country, and anything we could say would just be gilding the lily." Huh.)
A couple of pools down, I saw some darting shadows underneath a tree branch (the angle of the sun was just right to pierce this particular pool), and I actually put a few beautiful casts right under the branch, even mending the line to allow a drag-free drift to the pool.
After a few casts, I saw the fly disappear in a bubble, and - lo and behold - I caught a very small, but colorful, brown trout. I kept it in the water long enough to whip out my disposable camera and snap a quick shot, and then carefully released it. I waited a while longer, just crouching in the stream, listening to the water running past. At one point, a deer came down to drink. It stared at me, I stared back, and then it ran back up into the trees.
When the sun got low enough, I waded back upstream to the Pool. Approaching it from the riffle beneath, I could see the concentric circles where the trout were already starting to rise.
There was a hatch of very small, black-bodied, light-winged insects, a facsimilie of which I had just purchased at the general store. I tied it on, and started to wade across the pool to my spot. I was coming at it from an oblique angle from where I first scouted it; before I had come from the bank, now I was approaching from dead downstream.
The shortest distance between two points is a straight line, so I headed there, so as to give the fish time to settle again as the light grew perfect. The water was up to mid-chest, which is where it had been on the other side of the pool. Not uncomfortably high, but slightly deeper than I would be comfortable fishing in.
I approached the Spot, halfway across the pool, and
-PLUNK-.
All that was left was my hat, floating on the surface. I had stepped off the edge of an underwater bank, going from 4 feet deep to well over six feet. I completely submerged, and my waders started filling with water.
Although I knew this is how most fishermen drowned -- fishing alone, stepping into a deep pool and their waders filling, pulling them to the bottom -- I didn't panic, and managed to kick my toe back to where I had just stepped off, shifting my balance to get back up on the ledge.
The water was very, very cold.
I climbed out and directly up the hill to where the car was parked. I could feel water in my waders, pooled up to knee level. I placed my rod on the car, the leader and tippett irreparably knotted by my thrashing about. It was a struggle to peel the wet waders off, as the surface tension of the water created a suction to my body.
I stripped down on the roadside there, remembering to pull out my cellphone (with water running out of it) and my disposable camera (with water running out of it). I remember my most desperate thought, as I went under the water, was that my new tattoo was going to get wet and possibly infected.
I stripped down to the buff there on the side of the road (unsuccessfully using my car as a shield - I got a 'beep beep' from a passing motorcyclist), frantically drying my tattoo, rinsing it with bottled water. I had one set of dry clothes, but my waders were soaking, inside and out, and my line was knotted so badly I would have had to cut it off at the leader and start over.
I ceremoniously broke down my rod, put away my gear, and -- before getting in my car -- looked down at the pool, lit by the golden horizontal rays of the setting sun, and watched all of the expanding circles and bloops of the fat fish eating the little flies.
I drove home that night, eating M&Ms on the way.
In the interim, I went over to the market and picked up manly things I thought a man should eat while being manly. Pemmican jerky. Trail mix, liberally infused with dried fruit. Bottled water. An extra-large bag of peanut M&Ms.
By the time I got back over to see Jen, it had started to rain. I was driving my old blue Saturn sedan (leaving the big red Vue with Laura and the boys). It should be mentioned that the blue Saturn sedan has been sitting in the garage for more than a year, and could have benefitted from small adjustments. Like, say, windshield wiper blades.
I went back inside, and while waiting for Jen, watched "Evil Dead 2", which was on a continual loop on the foyer TV. I chose not to sit on any of the furniture. Jen finally was ready, and after spending 20 minutes covering everything in the room with plastic, applied the tattoo. Very nicely. Finally, at 5:20, I hit the road. And Friday-afternoon-get-out-of-town traffic.
Shit.
It took about 25 minutes to get across Aurora. Another half hour to get to 39 north.Then, there was a big wreck right at the Wisconsin state line.Meanwhile, it was raining harder and harder, and it was really a toss up as to whether I could see better with the wipers off or on.
I hit Madison after dark, and then had two hours more to go, into the countryside.I finally got to the general area, and could see nothing. I found the campground, but was not allowed to check in after dark. I tried driving around to scout the streams, but could not see jack.
(All the while, I was listening to the Madison NPR station, which had a special show running about the Wisconsin Irish Fest, which is - you'll find it hard to believe - the biggest festival celebrating Irish culture in the world. Anywhere. Including Ireland on St Patrick's Day. Malachy McCourt (Frank's brother) was on the live show, talking about his own experiences and books. Funny as hell.)
Finally, after trying to find a secluded spot to car-camp and being freaked out by another car stopping not far away, I caved and went to the seedy motel in Richland Center. I rang the bell of the office (it was about 11:40), and after some five minutes was greeted by a hairy Russian in boxers and an undershirt. I don't know if he spoke English. I slept in my sleeping bag on top of the made bed in room #10.
I stayed up reviewing my books and notes and maps, and decided I would start the morning on Otter Creek (the furthest east of the streams I wanted to scout), and work my way west, finishing up near Fennimore. At about 5:30 I headed south, intending to be on the water by 6:30.
By 6:00, I had gotten within spitting distance of Otter Creek, only to find the only bridge between here and there (Route 130, south) was out.I had to turn around, and complete a circuitous detour which took me halfway to Madison and back (and had me stymied for about four minutes in the middle of a dirt track, all forward progress blocked by a very large and pissed-off looking wild turkey), I got to the Otter (intersection of County Roads II and Q) at 7:30.
I put on my hip boots (not full waders), strung up my rod, and was attempting to tie on the Pass Lake when my eyeglasses (the only pair I brought, for the purpose of following a very tiny fly across bubbling riffles at 25 feet in dubious light) snapped in half, across the bridge of my nose. Rendering them completely useless. All the while, be it the rain, Vladimir's Roadhouse, the detour, the intransigent turkey . . I had maintained a mental equillibrium, remembering that I was on vacation, fishing, enjoying my solitude, and that I could roll with any misadventure that came my way.
When my glasses broke, I -- very briefly -- lost it, and rather enjoyed hearing my "motherFUCKER!" echo back to me from across the valley, as I watched a murder of crows I had startled take flight.
I finished stringing my rod, waded down to the water, and just watched. Watched the shadows for shadows. Any black darting indication that there was some kind of life. Otter Creek was small - only 10 feet across, and with an almost imperceptable flow, overgrown on both sides by weeds, tall grasses, and wildflowers, making casting difficult.
I waded about a mile or so downstream. At one bend in the creek, on three successive casts, I reeled in a small creek chub, which - while a stupid fish, striking anything it sees - is a good indication of good water conditions for trout. It was thrilling to catch something - even if it was just a 'shiner' - on a fly I had tied. On the Wisconsin Fly Fishing Forum (http://www.wisflyfishing.com/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?board=general), I had gotten several private messages from someone by the moniker "Zoanr", who had fished the same creeks I was scouting, just the previous weekend. He had reported much luck of many large brookies in Otter Creek. But that had been first thing in the morning, before the fog had burned off. By the time I was to the place I needed to have been at 7:00 AM, it was 9:30 and the sun was high.
I waded back upstream to my car.I considered, and decided I'd go far west, to Fennimore, and hit the three big creeks there - the Big Green, Fennimore Creek, and the Blue River.
They were shit.
Narrow, nonexistent current, green with summer weeds and algae.I was discouraged. I looked again at the notes I had printed out from Zoanr, and he had mentioned having great success in the West Fork of the Kickapoo, just outside the town of Avalanche. (The town of Avalanche consists of the Avalanche General Store. There may be a house or two, but if so, they're in the woods. I didn't see any.)
I crossed the Kickapoo on my way into Avalanche. "This," I said to myself, "looks like a trout stream." I went into the general store, booked my night at the Outdoor Club's campground ($10, "just a ways south on Route S, just camp wherever you like"), bought a couple of locally-tied flies (they were sold out of Pass Lakes), and drove downstream.
I got to the bridge, and looked at the pool. It was absolutely beautiful.
Stunning.
Gorgeous.
Fed by a very healthy run, the water was flowing, but at this point (where a small feeder creek joined), it was wide, and deep, and cool, with back eddies and overcover -- if there were not large trout there, I would eat my beloved new hat.
It was late afternoon by this time, and a warm day, so I knew no trout would be feeding. I decided to risk losing the spot to someone else, got back in my car, and drove north on Route S, back to the store, where I got a bag of ice for the cooler (confident that I'd catch Charlie's Sunday dinner, as I had promised) and a couple more flies.
I turned around and went back down to the pool, parking carefully and taking my time putting on my full waders.I strung up my rod, made sure I had the flies with me, and walked down the hill to the pool. I waded in, surprised at the depth. I practiced casting from a couple of different spots, not to catch anything, but just to judge the best spot to be at sunset, to cover most of the pool effectively (able to reach any rising trout I saw in any direction) with ample space to back-cast without hanging up in the canopy of limbs.
Having found the perfect spot, I decided to wade downstream to see more of the river, while I waited for the sun to get off the water. I found a stunning succession of riffle-run-pool, riffle-run-pool, all of them improved by the local Trout Unlimited chapter, with downed trees to provide lunker structures, gravely runs for the spawing redds, deep pools . . it was just gorgeous.
(I later went back to the "Trout Streams of Wisconsin and Minnesota" book I had bought to see why I had not marked the Kickapoo as a destination. Besides being further north than I had originally intended to go, there was just a scant paragraph about it, which I had not bothered to read, figuring it had nothing good to say. The gist of the paragraph is, "this is universally acknowledged to be the best trout stream in the midwest, and one of the best in the country, and anything we could say would just be gilding the lily." Huh.)
A couple of pools down, I saw some darting shadows underneath a tree branch (the angle of the sun was just right to pierce this particular pool), and I actually put a few beautiful casts right under the branch, even mending the line to allow a drag-free drift to the pool.
After a few casts, I saw the fly disappear in a bubble, and - lo and behold - I caught a very small, but colorful, brown trout. I kept it in the water long enough to whip out my disposable camera and snap a quick shot, and then carefully released it. I waited a while longer, just crouching in the stream, listening to the water running past. At one point, a deer came down to drink. It stared at me, I stared back, and then it ran back up into the trees.
When the sun got low enough, I waded back upstream to the Pool. Approaching it from the riffle beneath, I could see the concentric circles where the trout were already starting to rise.
There was a hatch of very small, black-bodied, light-winged insects, a facsimilie of which I had just purchased at the general store. I tied it on, and started to wade across the pool to my spot. I was coming at it from an oblique angle from where I first scouted it; before I had come from the bank, now I was approaching from dead downstream.
The shortest distance between two points is a straight line, so I headed there, so as to give the fish time to settle again as the light grew perfect. The water was up to mid-chest, which is where it had been on the other side of the pool. Not uncomfortably high, but slightly deeper than I would be comfortable fishing in.
I approached the Spot, halfway across the pool, and
-PLUNK-.
All that was left was my hat, floating on the surface. I had stepped off the edge of an underwater bank, going from 4 feet deep to well over six feet. I completely submerged, and my waders started filling with water.
Although I knew this is how most fishermen drowned -- fishing alone, stepping into a deep pool and their waders filling, pulling them to the bottom -- I didn't panic, and managed to kick my toe back to where I had just stepped off, shifting my balance to get back up on the ledge.
The water was very, very cold.
I climbed out and directly up the hill to where the car was parked. I could feel water in my waders, pooled up to knee level. I placed my rod on the car, the leader and tippett irreparably knotted by my thrashing about. It was a struggle to peel the wet waders off, as the surface tension of the water created a suction to my body.
I stripped down on the roadside there, remembering to pull out my cellphone (with water running out of it) and my disposable camera (with water running out of it). I remember my most desperate thought, as I went under the water, was that my new tattoo was going to get wet and possibly infected.
I stripped down to the buff there on the side of the road (unsuccessfully using my car as a shield - I got a 'beep beep' from a passing motorcyclist), frantically drying my tattoo, rinsing it with bottled water. I had one set of dry clothes, but my waders were soaking, inside and out, and my line was knotted so badly I would have had to cut it off at the leader and start over.
I ceremoniously broke down my rod, put away my gear, and -- before getting in my car -- looked down at the pool, lit by the golden horizontal rays of the setting sun, and watched all of the expanding circles and bloops of the fat fish eating the little flies.
I drove home that night, eating M&Ms on the way.
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