Monday was cold and windy and I was sluggish and dull-witted, so I took the keys off the hook and ran a meaningless errand. And then I decided to look for the east side beavers. I didn’t find them, but did discover evidence of their work in a riverfront park:
A picture of this tree popped up on Reddit earlier in the month, and I wanted to see it before their work was done. And so I did.
It must be confusing to be an urban beaver. They can’t really dam anything. That tree will die for nothing, but it’s interesting to see the remarkable consistency to their work as they move around the trunk. And the grooves their teeth make. It illuminated a very dull winter day.
A winter I am throughly sick of.
Did you get up early to watch the gold-medal hockey game on Sunday? I did not, but I gather that for hockey fans, it was a barn-burner. Secretly I was hoping Canada would win, just because it would piss off you-know-who. But the U.S. prevailed, in overtime, so yay team. The rest of it you have probably already heard — Kash Patel pushing his way into the locker room, the women’s-team snub, all of it. Honestly, I’m putting myself in Patel’s shoes and imagining being a spectator at a game, my team wins, and somehow, I end up in the locker room. Where would I be? Where would any reasonable person be? Standing back along the wall, allowing the people who won the medal to celebrate amongst themselves. It’s their medal, not mine. Be happy for them? Certainly. Grab a bottle of champagne and start dousing others? Hell no.
It’s just manners.
Afterward, I texted with Kate, who graduated with one of the U.S. team members. Did you know him? I asked. Was he in any of your AP classes? She replied:
He never gave me the time of day and he was definitely not in my AP classes but I remember him calling Will a fag
I like the “definitely” there. He now plays for the Columbus Blue Jackets. I told him if she ever sees him again (un-bloody-likely), she should say, “Hey, I saw ‘Heated Rivalry.’ I don’t know much about hockey, but are there a lot of fags in the NHL?”
Finally, in this endless winter, I made the time to watch “Downfall,” also known as the movie that generated the Hitler-rants scene that’s been meme’d to death. It’s about the last 10 or 12 days of the war, as the top German command whiles away their days in the bunker. It’s very good, although unrelentingly grim as the Russians close in. Probably not a good choice for seasonal depression, but I’m glad I saw it. Bruno Ganz is amazing. Alan’s review: “The guy who played Goebbels bears a strange resemblance to Stephen Miller.”
It’s free on Amazon Prime.
OK, then. I have work commitments tomorrow, so I will be a beaver, too. Hope your Wednesday is fine.
Brandon said on February 25, 2026 at 1:44 am
That is a striking photo.
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Jeff Gill said on February 25, 2026 at 7:31 am
To Alan: and vice versa.
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alex said on February 25, 2026 at 9:15 am
I can’t see Stephen Miller’s name anymore without remembering his bald pate PhotoShopped to look like an ass crack.
https://x.com/mathew_poynter/status/1975930370207207771
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Mark P said on February 25, 2026 at 9:34 am
My nephew who lives in Dallas texted me last night that he just got his Canadian citizenship. He says he has no immediate plans to move to Canada, but it seemed like a good plan. I agree.
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Mark P said on February 25, 2026 at 10:31 am
And, did you see that Trump has touched the Medal of Honor and turned that into shit, too?
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Deborah said on February 25, 2026 at 10:55 am
It’s amazing how fast and efficient beavers can down a tree, there are lots of them along the Chama river in Abiquiu, making the farmers (and non-farmers) along there angry.
We leave for Chicago Friday, this last couple of months both whizzed and crept by. We did spend the last 10 days in California where it was cold and windy unfortunately, but we still managed to enjoy it. And of course it’s supposed to snow the day after we get back to Chicago. Oh well, it is still winter, but mild in New Mexico.
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FDChief said on February 25, 2026 at 3:35 pm
Just two thoughts from Felony Fats’ Big Lie-o-palooza;
1) The mere thought that the draft-dodging Thief Executive could be within the same grid square as the Medal of Honor makes the Army sergeant that lives in my head reach for a sturdy balk of dimension lumber wishing for an empty storeroom and ten minutes alone with his doughy pantsload ass for some good wall-to-wall counseling.
2) “The cheaper the crook, the gaudier the patter.”
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Jeff Borden said on February 25, 2026 at 3:38 pm
Ah, yes, FDChief. Sam Spade saw Lumpy coming even back then. Lord, how I would’ve loved to hear Bogart’s take on this orange sack of feces.
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Dexter Friend said on February 25, 2026 at 3:42 pm
I did go out of my mind celebrating a team victory I had no connection to but for fanaticism. The last undefeated NCAA men’s basketball team, the 1976 IU Hoosiers. I flew to Philadelphia, easily found a ticket ($14.75) .
I moved down from my way-up-there seat to an empty seat in the NBC row, just behind the scorer’s tables, 2 rows of the tables. I jumped over one table, crawled under the other, there was Knight, I put my hand on his shoulder, he sort of pushed me away and called me a “goddamn son-of-a-bitch”. Undaunted, I took a towel from the IU bench for a souvenir.
I have the towel, 50 years later, just a nondescript white towel with blue trim. I never washed it. Don’t believe any of this? Come get the towel, it is 2026, DNA testing could prove it lickety-split. I have written about this here before; I only do so again because it has been 50 years. And after Knight cursed me, I switched fan loyalty to the Wolverines immediately, and have seen many games since, a few at Crisler Arena (now Crisler Center) and dozens on TV.
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basset said on February 25, 2026 at 7:17 pm
I was at IU then but didn’t go to a single basketball game except for one the student newspaper sent me to. I did get onto the floor of Assembly Hall one time by myself, though: my youngest brother was a huge fan, and after he died a few of us slipped in on a weekday and scattered a spoonful of his ashes on the logo in the middle of the floor.
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basset said on February 25, 2026 at 7:33 pm
Citizenship… I have a path to British, or at least dual, Mama Basset having been a recently arrived immigrant but still a UK citizen when I entered this world many years ago.
Been thinking about it for years, not ready to give up on the USA quite yet though.
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basset said on February 25, 2026 at 7:36 pm
And today is the youngest Beatle’s birthday: George Harrison woulda been 83.
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Sherri said on February 25, 2026 at 7:41 pm
Sports teams get a lot of (well deserved) crap when they “let the process work out” instead of getting rid of a star player accused of sexual assault. But uber Christian speaker Mike Johnson values his slim majority, and so isn’t interested in calling for Tony Gonzales to resign, but wants to let the investigation play out. Gonzales, of Texas, is a married father of six who pressured one of his married staffers into having sex with him. She later lit herself on fire in her backyard.
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Jakash said on February 26, 2026 at 6:48 pm
Indeed, those are a couple of fabulous photos, NN. Wonderful to see, from a few yards away AND up close.
In Chicago, we have a local journalist / self-described flaneur (though Merriam-Webster defines that as “an idle man-about-town,” and he’s far from idle) who’s always noticing something worth posting about. He was a formidable presence on Twitter; now he’s on Bluesky and some naturalist sites. He posts all kinds of stuff about animals, music, the city in general — whatever he happens to be focused on at the moment.
Anyway, his name is Robert Loerzel and he was one of the “discoverers” and most frequent proponents of some beavers making their home by Montrose Harbor in the city. He posted LOTS of fine photos and a number of interesting videos.
Not that anybody cares, but he wrote about the beavers for Chicago Magazine, so I’m going to link to the article.
“‘In short, sir, you have seen a Beaver!’ @gregpyke46 tweeted. This would be the first of my many such encounters — 54 over the next three years, to be precise. I kept a detailed tally of my sightings. Isn’t that what any normal person would do?”
https://www.chicagomag.com/chicago-magazine/june-july-2025/requiem-for-the-montrose-beavers/
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Jeff Gill said on February 26, 2026 at 8:35 pm
I was walking around at street level, south of the MSI, trying to parse the lettering screen. This makes more sense of why the legibility isn’t the point than I’ve seen elsewhere, but architecturally, I am still not a fan. The tension, if you will, between the Beaux Arts quasi-Greek Revivalesque museum campus, Jackson Park, the lake, and the neo-Brutalist presidential center (I’m sure there’s a more precise term here) is certainly present and lively… and I didn’t realize there was a load-bearing issue which should have been immediately apparent to me.
https://www.yellopolitics.com/p/how-the-text-on-the-obama-library
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Deborah said on February 26, 2026 at 10:06 pm
I’m very excited to finally get to go to the Obama library. I’m expected to be blown away. I really like the work of the architect couple Tsien and Williams a lot. I will be back in NM in mid-May and won’t go back to Chicago until the end of August so I’ll have to wait until then to visit the library. I expect to go there many times.
I’ve met Michael Beirut of Pentagram and have heard him give many talks, he’s an excellent graphic designer. The work of Pentagram is usually quite good. I agree the words primarily serve as texture on the building but can be read if you take the time. The fact that they’re a bit hard to read is a feature not a bug. In the end if you take the time to read them, maybe you’ll pay more attention to what they say.
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Jeff Gill said on February 27, 2026 at 8:29 am
“You are America. Unconstrained by habit and convention. Unencumbered by what is, ready to seize what ought to be. For everywhere in this country, there are first steps to be taken, there is new ground to cover, there are more bridges to be crossed. America is not the project of any one person. The single most powerful word in our democracy is the word ‘We.’ ‘We the People.’ ‘We Shall Overcome.’ ‘Yes We Can.’ That word is owned by no one. It belongs to everyone. Oh, what a glorious task we are given to continually try to improve this great nation of ours.”
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