Hinterland





The travel log for most people arriving in La Crosse at the end of September would include finding a standing spot along the Oktoberfest parade route with 100,000 others. I'm always reminded though of the quiet beauty of heading in the opposite direction on this day, in the morning if possible, up along the well-paved winding Bliss Road, past the Alpine Bar and the Grandad's Bluff lookout to Cty. FA to the weather station where the HPT mountain biking trails are located.

Spoiler Alert: No Hessian Behind that B-day Cake




Recently reading about the nearly 1,200 Hessian soldiers (from the Federal State Hesse in midwest Germany) who were either captured or killed as a result of Washington's famous Delaware River crossing at Trenton, New Jersey, Christmas 1776,

naturally I wanted to know more about the origins of German Chocolate Cake as Jan pulled out an ingredients box last night to make her favorite for her b-day.  I expected to find out some obscure tale of Black Forest peasants smuggling chocolate from Bavaria to make sweet pecan cakes,

but it turns out Germany has nothing to do it.  The cake, instead, is merely named after a 19th century American chocolate maker who invented a type of chocolate with a little more sugar in it than normal.  Samuel German (1802-1888) was born in Devonshire England, but eventually made his way to Dorchester Mass, and came to work for Bakers, the oldest – and for many years previous to Hershey's dominance, the greatest – chocolate company in America.

By 1852 German had perfected "a new chocolate that was called German's Sweet Chocolate.  This recipe, which had a higher content of sugar than Baker's Premium No. 1, was to be 'palatable, nutritious and healthful, and is a great favorite with children.'" Walter Baker bought the recipe for $1,000 yet it wasn't for a century afterward that a new recipe for German Chocolate Cake appeared as the "Recipe of the Day" in the June 3, 1957 edition of the Dallas Morning Star, which would come to call for only 4 oz of the sweet chocolate and an ingredients list for the now famous coconut-pecan frosting.  The closest the recipe comes to Germany is obscure. The old Baker's 1871 trademark picture of La Belle Chocolatiere,

is the reproduction of a pastel painting of a real chocolate server by the famous artist Jean Etienne Liotard, an 18th century Austrian court painter. The painting eventually made it onto the walls of an art museum in Dresden Germany where the head of Baker's saw it on a visit to Europe and decided that was the new company brand.

I think Jan preferred the mystical story of Black Forest peasants.

The End of the New York Campaign





By December of 1776, George Washington would look back at the New York Campaign mostly with loss, fear, and confusion.  The Revolution began in Boston with a half-victory at Bunker Hill which resulted in the British military evacuating that city and licking its wounds at Halifax Nova Scotia.  Washington was deemed a premature hero,

Boston was free of the Redcoats, and claims for official independence might be called for soon.  New York, however, was not going to be anything like Lexington, Concord or Boston.  British and Hessian troops would not only defeat the American Rebels handily at the largest battle in the entire war at Long Island,

then take Fort Washington, located on the Hudson River,

but would give no quarter to a mostly scared and retreating Patriot army.  Washington, by some cunning and much luck, would retreat undetected off the Manhattan Island in the night to New Jersey with a core of his army. From that point forward he was determined to fight a different kind of war, one of evasion and limited skirmishes, realizing that his own sick, hobbled, and ill-equipped army – many either abandoning after NY, or leaving on scheduled release – could not fight an Imperial Force that included over 30,000 troops, including 10,000 rented Hessian soldiers, and the most powerful Navy in the world at that time.

As the British began their pursuit of the Continental Army into the interior of the colonies at New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island, the American people were in such a state of despair that the winter was deemed the 'black period' of the Revolutionary War – Philadelphians loyal to the Cause began to flee the city; other families, up until that point undecided as to their loyalty, swayed their allegiance toward the King.  Army recruitment not only deteriorated, but regiments were split-up to such a degree that Washington, the key target of the British, had fewer troops in his own possession than either of his two other primary generals, Gates and Lee, both located north of New Jersey.  Neither general Gates or General Lee approved of Washington's performance and Lee would purposefully disobey marching orders; questions arose as to the meaning of the Cause exactly. What kind of repercussions might there be from a revengeful British victory?  The Continental Congress, 

the civilian power base of all maneuvers, consisted of some of the most brilliant men in America – Hancock, Sam Adams, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson – but they were not in a very good position to make quick decisions and were hard pressed to communicate with General Washington.  Most everything looked to be lost in December 1776 as hope seemed to fall fatefully in unison with winter.  

It was at this moment in history that a recently enlisted officer by the name of Thomas Paine wrote a piece under the pen name Common Sense titled "The American Crisis."  

Much like the effect of the Declaration of Indpendence in the July before, this was a piece of writing that served to reinforce purpose not only to the troops, but to the entirety of the loosely connected American nation.  The pamphlet, which began with the now famous lines, "These are times that try men's souls; The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.  Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered..." was a drumbeat of revival.  It rolled off the presses rapidly (Paine would not take money for its sales) and was read by virtually everybody who could read, including British soldiers, who, as expected, would come to loathe the newfound enthusiasm for the American Cause.  Soon to come, Washington found new recruits of farmers and villagers from across the colonies, received new and exclusive powers from the Continental Congress, and found his grizzled Army on Christmas night 1776 crossing the Deleware in search of a sneak attack against unsuspecting British and Hessian troops at Trenton...

Feel the City Breakin and Everybody Skakin




Two big take-aways from a three-hour small bus tour of Brooklyn.  One is pretty obvious from the

title of the tour – pizza is a big deal in Brooklyn. Big names visit little pizza joints around the fifth borough to eat the stuff. It's a way of life.  The pics below, at Spumoni Gardens, is of the cast of Sopranos from the HBO show that took place across the East River and up the Hudson in New Jersey. On the tour you come find out

there are family-bound generational pizza wars that would make for excellent reality TV melodrama at  places like Grimaldis, (below) located right at the bottom of the Brooklyn Bridge.

You find out there are two styles of pizza you had better not forget, Sicilian and Neopolitan (thick and thin essentially. Thin in pic below.  In our final family-wide pizza critique, I think we split 2 1/2 to 2 1/2 on our favorite style with Carly choosing both sides depending on the moment you asked her.)

The second take-away, though, might be even more important to Brooklynites as we found out from two of our tour guides: Brooklyn was the filming spot for Saturday Night Fever, the 1977

cinematic music phenomenon that thrust John Travolta onto the big screen from his smaller previous role in Welcome Back Kotter, and still has a cult following among the residents.  The premise behind the pizza tour wasn't just to feed us, but to show us clips from movies that have taken place in Brooklyn, then drive by the shots.

It turns out the Bensonhurst neighborhood was where Tony grew up and worked.  In the opening credits of the movie he is walking along the sidewalk to the Bee Gees song "Stayin Alive."  He eventually gets a piece of pizza at Lenny's.  Our pizza guide told us she was soon to take a pilgrimage to Melbourne Australia where

there is a Bee Gees Hall of Fame.  Our other tour guide, a self-proclaimed disco diva from the 70's, told us later the hall of fame must be new, because when she was in Australia it hadn't been constructed yet.  I'd pick the movie over the pizza – or Brooklyn for that matter – any day.

Little Ms. Liberty




NYC newcomers like me are no doubt often struck by the sheer art of Manhattan.  The city is filled with function and people, but at certain angles, especially under a certain afternoon light, you get to see up close architectural details from old building plans of the past when folks actually spent time on the so called un-useful exterior of buildings.  Zoom your perspective out, the Manhattan skyline from, say, the Hudson Bay on the way back from Liberty Island, is glimmering in greens and blues in cool random patterns.

A little bit like an acrylic painting, there are also all kinds of detectable rough lines when you look up close at parts of every skyscraper, but from a distance Manhattan's sleek.  On our trip to the Statue of Liberty I was more struck, I have to admit, by the art of it than the symbolic meaning of the statue.  I didn't expect Ms. Liberty to be quite as high (305 feet from ground to torch), quite as green, and not surrounded by such a pristine patch of park grass or on top of such an interesting 'star' fort (the largest mass of concrete then ever laid).

Historically, we know Ms. Liberty is supposed to represent an invitation to and a beacon of the new world, promising liberty, self-expression and hope, but up against a bright blue sky as you stand underneath, you are in awe of the colors and the reach of the torch toward the clouds. Artistically, it's a perfect compliment to the city across the bay, which also has been built not just for the sake of function, but as a symbol of the possibility to seek limitless success. Add to it that Ms. Liberty is in fact a 'Ms.' and not a 'Mr.' and there's also a strong sense of gender equality associated with the statue, something that our family is built to look up to.