Hidden in Wisconsin Hills • Sign Painting Lessons • Beatles on Piano • Thinking about Chopsticks

Wandering wanderers in Wisconsin. Hidden in the Southwestern corner of Wisconsin, far from any major city, you will find the region (confusingly) known as the “Driftless”. You could say that Viroqua is the capital of the Driftless, but the region is more authentically defined by its distributed hamlets, farms, ancient hills, and cold, trout-filled streams. 

Completely outside of any conventional tourist itinerary, this region is one of the best unknown spots in the upper midwest for American cuisine. The concentration of organic farms and independent sensibilities make the Driftless a small, but excellent place for food culture.

Look deeper still and you will find the remnants of a bygone musical culture. The always diligent Numero Group has excavated local studio recordings in the form of the wonderfully named Driftless Dreamers, a 2LP series. This particular track is a perfect 2-minute mix of syncopation, melody, and restless spirits. Hard to believe that it's been sitting neglected in some forgotten studio for so long. 

Addiction and tapering. Since campers cannot bring phones, laptops, or other devices, we recommend that you slowly reduce screen time starting a few days before camp. Campers thrive in a device-free setting. Campers who bring devices and do not turn them into the office upon arrival, risk being dismissed from camp. The sleepaway camp my kids will be attending sent this message to families attending summer sessions. 

Finding inspiration in an age of passivity. Visual culture and inspiration are at risk. The algorithms and the AIs are very good at finding the consensus and the median, but this swiftly becomes an echo-chamber of samey-ness. Fortunately, this is not a particularly difficult problem to solve, but it does require some initiative. I like wandering the corridors of the weird, old world — small town antique stores, public libraries, archives, and, of course, museums. Any place where visual culture hasn’t gone through the meat-grinder of the internet. These images are from a 1950s sign painting manual, a discipline now almost entirely lost, discovered by a hand lettering enthusiast, who is rightly wary of certain platforms and their tendency towards “a copy of a copy of a copy.” If you have any thoughts on this matter, I’d love to hear them. 

Gabriels, If You Only Knew. Gives me the chills. Good chills. 

Baby’s in Black. I like listening to this song when driving to the lake at dawn. Mr Mehldau is one of the great interpreters of the Beatles catalogue. This song takes an early Lennon-McCartney track (1964) and Mehldau re-weaves the melody into something completely new. Listening requires some attention, but it rewards focus.

A song about climate change that does not suck. Primitive blues and fiddle by Jon Baptiste. Our environments self-inflicted decay and our unwillingness to act is a tough subject for a song. Baptiste finds the right balance — not preachy nor too on the nose. Primitive blues is the perfect genre for the topic. Dandelion and pickled vegetables.

Chopsticks are the better option. It occurs to me that, from an environmental and reusable perspective, wooden chopsticks are significantly better utensils. Wood is renewable and chopsticks use less materials than conventional American cutlery.

→ Michael Neault • Chicago • written on the couch, before the kids woke up