~Zach Hively
Fool's Gold

We all need worthy goals. A full life requires challenges to keep ourselves engaged with the world and growing as complex, occasionally interesting human beings. I myself, having already achieved everything else I haven’t given up on, am now questing for the perfect nap.
 
This idea arrived to me on four heavy-duty wheels. I was sitting at a restaurant, minding my own eggs, when another guest pushed a fully off-road-capable stroller across the patio, running right over chairs and a server’s foot without so much as a whimper from the stroller’s shock absorbers. I peeked inside while the stroller-pusher ordered her midday bloody mary, and there lay, sleeping peacefully, the most contented wiener dog I have seen this week.
 
And I thought: “Zach, you deserve this.”
 
Sadly, though—and despite my very best efforts—I didn’t get to try out the all-terrain stroller for myself. But I had found my new mission, with nothing in my way to stop me.
 
Nothing, that is, but everything.
 
Adulthood, or any reasonable facsimile thereof, sucks all the time and fun out of any given activity. Take this column. I set an alarm to wake up before 6 am to get it done three days after deadline. But because I am an adult who doesn’t have time for naps, I was sufficiently tired to sleep through three alarms and an insistent dog nose.
 
Unfortunately, those post-alarm hours don’t count as a nap. They were too adjacent to normal nighttime sleepytime time. Nor were they rejuvenating, like, at all. They put me behind schedule before I even woke up, which means once again I still won’t get a nap today. 
 
Everything changed when I hit adulthood sometime in the last two or so decades, and in ways no one warned me about. Playing catch after sundown? It actually is too dark to see the ball. It literally disappears. Turning down the volume on the car radio really does help me find the right address. Yes, I really do use a car radio instead of a Spotify. And on the rare occasions I take to the couch for a midday sleep snack, one of two things happens: I try to take the nap but the nap won’t take me; or, I sleep so hard I wake up put together all wrong. 
 
This latter result occurred over the weekend when I was busy not writing this column. I woke up in my own home, in the daylight, and didn’t know where I was or, in any meaningful way, who I was. My eyeballs had declared free agency during the adult-napping attempt, and each one rolled in directions unsynchronized with the other. I sat up and got kicked with a feeling of nausea in line with taking up residence in an alien body. And the very first cogent thought to mold itself in my brain was: “I really need to do last year’s taxes.”
 
See? Absolutely not myself. I took the dogs for a long walk to return into my own familiar being, and it didn’t work. The nap wrecked me for two days. Nearly as bad as drinking, which now wrecks me for three. And I never could shake the feeling that I really ought to consider finishing last year’s taxes before this year’s are due—or is it the year before’s? I don’t have time to practice napping, let alone stay on top of the bureaucratic hassles of adulthood—hassles I did NOT sign up for—because every well-meaning day goes like this:
 
- I wake up, let the dogs out, make some coffee, take the dogs for a walk so one of them doesn’t chew his own foot off with excess energy, come home, make breakfast, read a baseball blog, stack dishes in the sink, swear I will wash them later, and get to work around 9 or sometimes 11:30.
 
- I stop working to drive to some appointment or other, because how does ANYONE work when all the things one has to take care of during the week are only available during working hours? and then return home to lunch and thoughts of a nap—but no, there’s still work to be done, and only two hours remain until my self-imposed clock-out time, which I stick to in order to maintain a healthy work/life balance.
 
- I overshoot my self-imposed clock-out time because people just keep emailing me and it never stops. I could still take a nap, but by this point it would just be an early bedtime, and as nice as that sounds the dogs need walked one more time so one of them doesn’t chew my arm off in my sleep, and what do you know it’s midnight, and once again I haven’t even done the dishes, let alone my taxes or looking into hiring someone to push me around in my king-sized dog stroller.
 
But one night, somehow not too tired to dream, I dreamed I took a nap. And it was perfect.

​Four days ago, we had a few intense thunderstorms and quite heavy rain, part of New Mexico’s yearly monsoon. As welcome as the moisture is, it killed my internet connection… And the company which provides this service, Windstream, can’t send a repair person before August 25. Unacceptable? You bet! Luckily a neighbor lets me use his connection.

Here is the recipe:
When I was little, and I mean REALLY little, potato salad was my all-time favorite meal. This was a few years after the war in Germany, when food was simple and anything but extravagant. Potato salad and hot-dogs, or better Wieners, would be served on special occasions, when my father’s siblings and my cousins and my family would gather at my grandparents’ house. It was somewhat like a pot-luck, and my father’s twin sister’s potato salad always tasted the best. When I was a bit older, I asked her about the secret ingredient, which was -- freshly grated horseradish! It’s not easy to find fresh horseradish, and the kind in a jar always has mayonnaise in it, so I use wasabi paste as an alternative when I make regular potato salad. It might work with this version, too, but I haven’t tried it.

~ Hilda Joy
​Our very American Fourth of July culinary celebration can be enhanced by reaching across our Southern border to our Mexican neighbors and borrowing one of their well-known street foods, Eliote, but adapting it to please several people.  After all, we corn-consuming Americans owe Mexico thanks for its agricultural gift of maize.  The word ‘Elote’ derives from ‘Elote,’ a Nahuatl word meaning ‘corn on the cob’ or ‘tender cob.’

Having grown up in Chicago with its large Mexican population, I learned to appreciate Mexican food at an early age.  The first Mexican food I ate as a child was a tamale sold by a street vendor in our neighborhood.  This inauthentic treat, wrapped in paper rather than in a corn husk, acquainted me with masa and a spicy filling and gave me a life-long taste for Mexican food.  I did not know about Elote until much later in life when I was strolling along one of Chicago’s beautiful Lake Michigan beachfronts and getting hungry.  I bought a cob of Elote and fell in love with it and am still smitten by it.

You might not find an Elitero from whom you can buy a single cob on the street, but you can easily grill this dish in a quantity to feed your family and/or friends.
EnJOY

​Jessica Rath

This is for all of you (us) who don’t like to spend a lot of time slicing and dicing. All ingredients go into ONE pot, so there isn’t much to clean up, either. Nonetheless, the taste is exceptional – good enough for a special occasion!

We’ve been travelling a lot this summer. After 2 years of Covid, putting off several trips and visits to friends and family, we decided it was time. I wrote about our trip through Arkansas where we stopped at the Crater of Diamonds State Park, and then went to the Jim Coleman Quartz Crystal Mine.

This last trip was to Seattle via Wyoming. Not a direct route, you may have noticed. One of the states we regularly go through on the way to Seattle is Utah and when I Googled rock/fossil collecting in Utah, it came up with this place in Wyoming. To be fair, it’s just over the border, less than an hour from Park City, Utah.

It turns out the ‘Fish Fossil Capital of the World’ is in Kemmerer, Wyoming. There is a park there devoted to it, and also, there are several privately owned quarries that allow the public to look for fish fossils. I spent the day, literally 8 hours, bent over, splitting open slabs of rocks that they provided. They also provided the tools. I went to American Fossil, check them out HERE.  
​
I found some great fish fossils, had a blast, was thoroughly exhausted at the end. They were very friendly and helpful, and I plan on going back again

Zach Hively
Fool's Gold

I have decided to become the human version of P.F. Flyers: I want to run faster, jump higher, or at least endure nominal physical exertion without hurting my back.

I have also decided to embrace who I really am, which is a man deeply averse to exercise. I have tried it all: running never gave me that mythical high. Swimming never enhanced my hearing with swimmer’s ear. And tennis? Well, I quite like my elbows just the way they are.

Yet for all the distaste and disdain I have for exercise, I LOVE being active. Who doesn’t love activities? This is a word we use to coerce children and child-like adults into keeping themselves occupied for at least five minutes a stretch. “Let’s do an activity!” could lead to ANYTHING. Building the Tower of Giza or the Pyramid of Pisa out of clothespins and pasta is an Activity. Digging for the Lost Ark is an Activity. Picking up the trash that blows in from the neighbor’s yard like money-seeking relatives in the night? Most definitely an Activity.

In fact, the only thing better than an Activity is a NEW Activity. This is really quite Zen, if you don’t think about it too hard: it’s the doing that matters with Activities, much more than the finishing, and if a new Activity gives your caretaker ten more minutes of effing peace and quiet, you best believe there will always be a new Activity.

Of course, I don’t get such inventive variety with my Activities these days, because I spend all my time walking the dog.

Both my faithful readers will remember that I recently adopted Ryzhik, who requires approximately seventeen consecutive hours of exercise each day. This contrasts with my other dog, Hawkeye, who like me prefers Activities to exercise. We are really quite alike, Hawkeye and I, and the similarities go far beyond our matching rugged handsomeness. I like throwing balls, and Hawkeye likes fetching them. I also like throwing sticks, which Hawkeye also likes fetching. We both enjoy the pure being-ness of being outside, and we both will turn around and head home rather than talk to strangers out there in the world. We will also congratulate each other on a ten-minute-constitutional well done, then settle in on the couch to re-binge a season of Daredevil.

So Ryzhik has forced a bit of adjustment in our lives. It now takes three, four days to binge a full season. And walking is now a regular form of exercise, especially if I don’t want someone pulling all the coats off all the hooks in all the rooms of the house, sometimes with the hooks still attached.

Ryzhik is that freakish beast who revels in exercise but can’t stand Activities. For a block of time each day, we leave Hawkeye at home for some of that well-warranted effing peace and quiet, and we go out for a destruction-prevention walk. Rather, I walk—and Ryzhik leaps up cliffs, and digs up rabbit dens, and disappears to join the circus, and returns with exotic animal skulls in his maw. He truly is a P.F. Flyer, and the reason I want to become one too is the dread that someday I will have to carry all 75 pounds of him home.

Fortunately, I have a brother-in-law. Let’s call him “Scott” because that is his name. Scott is the sort of man who was born capable of lifting refrigerators. For a long time now, he has been rucking—which is the fine art of powerwalking with the equivalent mass of a Ryzhik in a backpack.

“Teach me,” I said, because even after whole decades of Activities I am more likely to empty a fridge than move it.

So Scott got me started—and we started smart. I selected a moderately petite rock, and Scott had me wrap it in duct tape so it wouldn’t chew up my pack. I strapped the pack to my back and took the first steps of turning Ryzhik’s walks into an Activity—hey, let’s go carry rocks for an hour! It’ll be fun!

And it was, both times. I could practically feel myself getting stronger and less resistant. It’s amazing the difference that five, six whole pounds made in my worldview. Until those pounds made me take up new Activities like “should I take two or three ibuprofen this morning,” “where’s the ice pack,” and “Epsom salt baths.” Much less P.F. Flyer, much more penny loafer. Which is okay, too, because from now on, I’ll make the dog carry the rocks—in preparation for the day he needs to carry me home.