memorial day

So on sunday I went for a run, and as I was feeling a cramp I decided to walk and inspect the small graveyard that was on the side of the road. I like graveyards, something about them is so interesting and soothing to me, soothing might be an odd word but I never feel stressed when I walk around a cemetary, maybe I'm a touch ghoulish. So anyway a few things were striking to me, first that these good minnesota methodists were pretty long-lived, most seemed to die in late seventies at least, and saw a lot that were high eighties and nineties. Most be something in the air. The other thing was the large percentage of monuments that mentioned military service and veteran status. Only one of the men had died during war years, but it was very interesting to me that among the few things people mentioned on a tombstone; birth, death, parent, marriage date, that almost all the graves that had veteran markers put in for memorial day also had something on the monument itself about their service, generally just war, what branch of service, and what rank they held. It got me to thinking that the people who went overseas to fight for the US sacrificed quite a lot and saw things that I don't think anyone can really imagine without having been there themselves. It really defined and shaped their lives, something that they were proud of and definitely worthy of respect and thanks. Anyway, it was a pretty alright cemetary.

On M. day ten of us drove up the creek a ways with some canoes and canoed our way back down. This was very entertaining to me. There is a fellow named Said here who grew up in East Africa, Sudan for a time I think and elsewhere, anyway he had never been in a canoe before. The way things fell out was that he was paddling in the rear of the canoe I was in. The creek was fairly narrow and was quite entertaining as initially we proceded to hit each bank after the other for a time as Said got the hang of it. We also were grounded on numerous sand bars on the trip, at which one of us would get out and in water that might be touching the middle of our calves push the canoe through. We were on it about 2 hrs. Was fun just spending a sunny warm day alternately floating on and pushing a canoe down the ol' creek.

In nature news, or rather unnatural news, I forgot to mention that about a week and half ago I was at a place here they call the gates of hell because of the innumerable saplings there that are hard to walk through, poke you in the face, and are filled with bugs and saw something out of the blair witch movie. I looked up and saw a muskrat (could only tell because of the tail) that was completely eviscerated and hanging from a tree by its foot that was caught in the notch of a branch and the trunk. Was quite scary. Either a raptor dropped it as it flew overhead or somebody put it there. I'm still a little freaked out about it.

Recently I've been reading the early correspondence of hunter s thompson. Its pretty entertaining reading and i've gotten as far as his time in the air force and early experiences in new york city. His application letters to newspapers are also very funny to me, in one of them he pretends to be a drug dealer on madison ave that was beaten by a policeman because the policeman didn't see the article that the city wasn't arresting drug dealers there anymore. In another he writes to the san juan paper and tells them all that is wrong with american journalism and why he is the antidote. The letter in response to this was hilarious and hunter took it less than kindly. Oh well, good book, makes me want to read some of his "real" work some time.

In summer ulty tourney news: I plan on attending the one day thing in madison. Hopefully will be much fun. however, I think I will have to miss Poultry days as the expense and distance is rather large in light of the fact that I will be attending Mars over 4th of july weekend. Oh yeah! and then definitely the tourney in blaine, assuming the jobbers come, and possibly sandblast. All in all, hopefully a fun summer of coed ultimate, just what i wanted.

Things that tickle in the woods

So avid readers of this space may have noticed that I have been somewhat tardy in posting and responding to direct attempts at communication. This was due to my excursion sunday night to upstate MN where I worked in the Chippewa National Forest. It was really quite splendid hanging out in the pine forest all day and doing a seedling census. Was all mindless manual labour for the most part but I enjoyed it very much. I even managed to have one or two interesting things happen to me up there. I was running after our first full day of work, during which we had spotted two bald eagles flying, and I noticed ahead in the woods that two eagles crossed paths as they took off into the air. I ran in that direction and watched an eagle soar above me for a time and then I heard a noise. Turning around I saw the following; a bald eagle fly by at eye level about 10 yards away from me. Followed by an even larger bird, which I believe was a golden eagle, followed by a bald eagle, follwed by another golden eagle, followed by a third bald eagle. It was amazing watching birds that large fly that close. The final tally of eagles seen so far for those keeping track at home is bald eagles 9, golden eagles(?) 2. I even saw a large feather close by although I can't be positive that it belonged to either eagle species.
So while the work was enjoyable and the avian wildlife was stunning, there was a small winkle in this idyllic locale in the north woods. Ticks, mainly wood ticks, but the occasional deer tick that is the transmitter of lyme disease. I found much fewer on me then some other people did, and took a lot of precautions, but its amazing how you can find them on your clothes even after being out of the woods for an hour. So I did a lot of tick checks when I wasn't looking at the sky or saplings. Its funny, after a while you think that every little prickle of the skin might be a tick, so you check, and then you realize it was just a ghost tick. Well hopefully I don't come down with lyme disease, though I think I'll be ok, i never saw a deer tick on me and was pretty careful about checking routinely through the day.
So the last thing in the woods doesn't really tickle, but on wednesday it rained all day. It alternated between a steady drizzle and some serious water fall and we worked about 7 hours outside in it. I had my full set of raingear but by the end I was basically wet through and through anyway. It felt like I was swimming in my rainjacket. Actually it was odd, I didn't feel wet persay so much as incredibly damp, there's a fine distinction there apparently, or at least for me.
In gastronomical news there have been some recent developments. I found and consumed some morel mushrooms while at Chippewa. They were good, I don't think that they were earth shatteringly good, but then again the two times I had them I slightly undercooked the first one, and someone else overcooked the second. Unfortunately, this fell one short of a goldilockian experience, and the just right morel remains untried and my fungal fascination, unfulfilled. This morning I attempted to make some buttermilk pancakes, and while I executed the recipe expertly in the past with a hangover and at the slight expense of two fuses, this morning they wound up rather insipid. I made the amateur error of forgetting the salt until I had already combined the dry and the wet. When I added the salt to that and stirred it in, I crossed the divide between a mixed and an over mixed batter. Properly seasoned but texturely, a disappointment, however I now have flatjacks that I'll be able to be consume all weekend which I suppose is good.
So of the numerous people that are living here now there is one who shares a slight but interesting quirk in his surname with myself. That's right, Joe Little has met Sean Small. We only need a martin short, tommy midget, or a dorris diminutive and then the triad of weeness will be complete.

Nero investigates a hangin'

So I happened to chance across a copy of The Golden Spiders a book by a fellow named Rex Stout that is part of a series of books that chronicle the cases of Nero Wolfe Private Eye. Except Mr. Wolfe is exceptionally private and will very rarely leave his own home where he has quite the orchird collection. The books are written from a Mr. Archie Goodwin's perspective who is NW's helper if you will as he does all the legwork in actually collecting evidence and talking to people. He's sort of a young humphrey bogart type, equally good with the ladies, a line, or a punch to the jaw. My old roomie george introduced me to these books. They are to anyone who likes detective novels, and maybe even to those who don't, quite good, funny and worth reading. I often find myself reading passages from the books wishing that I could write as mr stout does. Anyway in my opinion they are well worth your time to check out. The first one is called fer-de-lance.

I had a little scare last week. I was lifting the garage door on the main workshop here and I saw a pair of pants with boots on the end dangling from the ceiling about 1.5 feet above the ground. My first thought was, "Oh my god Jim (the fellow who works in there) has hung himself!!" However, I continued to lift the door I found, much to my happy surprise, that it just was hanging waders, rather than a hanging corpse. Waders apparently help fisherman by allowing them to immerse themselves, or wade, into the water and cast from there, rather than from on a perfectly sound and dry shore. Anyway caused a little bit of a fright but I'm ok now.

On the internet I recently found the website for a show called comedy college that has 30 min shows about old comics. The show on bob newhart was quite good, I also liked the mel brooks and carl reiner show, and finally the songs of Tom Lehrer a comic for 2 years and a math professor for 40 (I'm really hoping that Jayadev follows that career path), who came up with the following. So let's act with agility / while we still have facility / for we'll soon reach senility / and lose the ability, good advice perhaps not so great pickup line.

Finally I heard on NPR today that the US army has something called the Adam Smith operation going on in iraq. The idea is to teach basic business skills to help the iraqi economy along, and to start a pin factory.

unleashed colour

So I went and saw Unleashed recently. It dealt with the classic themes of family, identity, and the saving power of music. It also had a well-developed subplot about the heroe's day jobs as an enforcer for the criminal element and member of the underground fight scene. This did not however, distract too much from the larger themes that the movie explored. It also had some great comic relief when the hero tried on a succession of ridiculous hats. They did a great job casting the lead actor as I don't think many other actors, have the necessary range to excel in the dramatic moments with a dexterity equal only to their actual physical dexterity. All in all I give it a B, and a 3.5 in my personal rating system. My rating system is the number of years that will elapse before I anticipate a willingness to watch it again, you could also call it a rewatchability index I suppose. To give a sense of scale, anchorman has a 1, unforgiven has a .5, and Ecks versus Sever has an infinite value.

So now that all the leaves have come out and assumed their more or less greenish hue that they will have until they fall in autumn I would like to point out something I observed while living here this spring. Its the great variety of colour that you get in the spring with the trees budding that while being unequal to the striking contrasts and range of fall is pleasing in its own right. Here you have an intersection of deciduous and coniferous trees, and the coniferous are all generally a dark green. The paper birch come in very early with a brilliant green, while the oak are sort of a duller more sedated green. The maple on the other hand are earl- on reddish in their colour, and there is another tree here, which regrettably and to my temporary shame I do not know the name of, that is a very striking pink. It makes for a colorful back drop, that was especially striking one morning when I went running close to sunup and was struck by the interplay of the light on a stand of mixed-species.

I wish to extend my congratulations here to mr. kevin cho on what I understand is a recent promotion, and to mr. akira yamaguchi on dating someone I know only as AE. While I may know this person they are not immediately coming to mind. The only AE I can presently think of is amelia earhardt, but I'm confident that the logisitical and temporal challenges of dating her are beyond even Akira's resources.

There are now some other people living here now that have arrived in the past 3-4 days, this is a net postive development as I have been be able to talk to more people but will eventually come at the expense of having to wear clothes in the morning on my way to the shower.

Finally, was watching some highlights of the daily show and they uttered the word chanteuse, which means a female singer of popular songs, and was used in reference to the cheerleaders' sexual suggestiveness act (not actual bill name) in texas. Just another reason to watch that show, you learn some really cool words. As a brief aside when I looked up chanteuse a I came across chantepleure which apparently means to sing in this world and weep in the next, or alternating joy and sorrow. Incidentally I suppose I should mention that I also subscribe to a word-a-day email thing that sends me other cool words. As it turns out I'm a bit of a vocab geek, though sadly one without the ability to come up with a better word than geek, or to pronounce anything correctly for that matter. My old roomie george had a rule in fact. In the event that there were two theories on how to pronounce a word, he would ask me to say it and then go with the alternate pronunciation. I believe this had a success rate of about 80-90%.

Mail call and my resolution of the terrible omens I saw

So yesterday I received a postcard from LH up in Belfast Maine. I must say that Belfast looks very much like the country from which it acquired its name, or at least its tourism board may want you to think that. From what I could see in 4 color pictures, Belfast has a comely green knoll that overlooks the sail-boat-filled waters of the Atlantic and abuts its historic red brick commercial district. Man they should pay me for this stuff. I always feel good when I get tangible evidence that someone thinks I'm at least worth the price of postage, I suppose I'm somewhat shallow in that regard, or at least the little things in life make me happy. If anyone else would like to send me any letters or physical objects my address is Cedar Creek Natural History Area 2660 fawn lake dr. bethel MN 55005, and there's no reason that physical objects shouldn't include your lovely selves. Stop by any time over the summer, and please note to those of you who might take a road trip from Chicago to see the Corn Palace in beautiful Mitchell, SD; that bethel would only be about a 2.5 hr side trip so the least you could do is come on by. (Note: I used a semi-colon above, because I got winded rereading that last sentence and it makes me look oh so sophisticated to the ignorant, and only at the expense of looking like an idiot to those who know when and how to use the ; . I guess I'll take that trade)

In behavioral science news I've noticed an interesting phenonmenon. I haven't seen a lot of women in the past four weeks. Sure I go to town occasionally and see them strolling about and such, but generally day in and day out I work and interact only with those who in no way could be mistaken for members of the fairer sex. Normally I am, as I suppose most men are, somewhat furtive in my appreciation of the opposite sex when I come upon them in my daily affairs. Now not so much, I tend to stare much more openly at strange women. Also as a corrolary to this effect, is the fact that of every woman I see motoring along the road at 50-60 mphs while I'm running, I think about 2/3 are attractive from what I can make out through the windshield of their pickup truck. Now not to be cruel, but this percentage just can't be right unless I've stumbled into some fairy tale land where all the women who drive pickup trucks are beautiful. My money though is on, as always, me being wrong.

Lately I've been listening and watching a fair amount of publicly supported media. Yesterday I happened to find at the far end of the dial a public radio station that plays music all day without annoying commercials, and the music is for the most part pretty good, although at times, seemingly random. For instance, when my alarm went off this morning the radio station was playing a song in french, which at 600 am sounded great. three hours later they played a cajun/acadian? song about getting dressed. It sounded like it was also in french but I really couldn't tell except I heard the word for pants, culotte. Later in the day a band called British Sea Power got air time. Its all very confusing to me. But in general, npr and public radio, good stuff. No way I'm giving them money though, or at least my money.

I think that Eric supplied me with the key piece of the puzzle to my omens, for those who don't read the commentary, he mentioned that snakes also are symbolic of knowledge. My new interpretation is that the death of knowledge, or the end of learning leads to war or conflict. I don't know what to do now, my life has changed. I suddenly feel good that we have someone with a postgraduate degree in the white house. Ok, that was a cheap shot. In anti-me news it turns out I'm poor, don't floss as much as I should, am in worse shape then our 50+ year commander-in-chief, and could not ever get elected president.

Finally, I recently received an email that indicates I am now known as "dearest" joe little in some social circles. I don't know how to take that exactly, but its certainly not the first in a long list of epithets. I'm sure many of you are already aware of this but I went to high school with another joe little who was slightly different from me. This led to me being known as little JL, smart JL, clean JL, and so on and so forth. I also had the nickname Thunder in high school for no reason whatsoever except my best friend started calling me that. All this is to say that I'm very flattered by the new version and I hope to see all of you who hold me in such regard very soon.

Omens? and strawberry wine

So my trip to the farmer's market was interesting. I rode one of the bike's available to me here and suffered, hyperbolically speaking, a profound case of saddle soreness not 5 min. out, The fit of the bike was a touch off and I'm quite generous when I say that the seat was inadequately conformed to my person. En route I passed one farm on the way that inspired me to pen some verse, which I will not however post in this space because my poetry is laughably bad, as opposed to my blog writing. *awkward pause* Anyway so I arrived at 3289 285th street 40 minutes after setting out , and there are chickens walking around as opposed to being frozen and stacked in orderly packages. My suspicions were soon confirmed when I bumped into Dave, who was in the opening acts of revving up a chainsaw when he spied me. (note: I metaphorically rather than literally bumped into him, as a general rule I don't go "bumping into" men who are or about to be engaged in the operation of a chainsaw) He informed me that I was not at a farmer's market but rather a tree farm, (it seemed obvious upon looking around after the fact). Apparently his wife beverly helps run the market and the address I had was her contact info rather than the address of the market. Apparently she was at the moment helping out at a yard sale one farm back the way I came. I returned to that farm met her, informed her that I was in fact the nice young man who had called and left a message. Anyway I picked up a small iron skillet (yes!) and a metal rack to cool cookies and support roasts and was informed when I was about to leave that they were on the house. The farmer's market apparently was open, but in cambridge 10 miles north, a distance I dare not attempt on my cycle o'lessthancomfortable. Beverly apparently worked at cedar creek for 26 years so we chatted about that. And Dave her husband was interesting, were-dog and some others have often commented on my soft small hands, Dave was at the other end of the spectrum, I don't know if I've ever met someone that broad-shouldered, and obviously strong at his age of 60+.
On the way back I found the wind in my face. The good news is I never felt a drop of rain, the uncertain news came in the form of two omens. I was riding along and across from the local cemetary I noticed that there was a dead garter snake on the side of the road. I continue to pedal and not 40 feet away from the snake there is a dead dove on the side of the road. So here I am across from a cemetary and I've come upon a dead snake and bird in the space of 3 seconds. I think this is some sort of prophecy or omen, however I am not well versed in the methodology and science of Omen interpretation. So what do you all think it means? Please, I long to hear the informed, uninformed, or misinformed commentary and thought of my audience, as small as that may be ( the audience is small, not the thought. I don't want to accidentally offend anyone here).
Upon my return I made peanut-butter cookies and added about 4x the flour that the recipe required (this unlike most of my cooking/baking recipe diversions was a non-accidental change in the recipe). They turned out great. I then was picked up and taken to a party that steve, known here before as head-fire guy who went to U of Maine for grad school and knows Hash, Tom, Sally, Dan M., and others, was having. They had homemade strawberry wine. It was good, about one below top-shelf good, on a seven-shelved-bookshelf-thing, as was the homemade grape a 4.5/7, although the homemade peach as Steve rather pointedly admitted was a touch flat. I went and saw their wine making operation downstairs, very impressive with all the colorful glass bottles and the enormous 20-30 gallon(?) glass bottle/cauldron/flask? in the middle of the room.
On mother's day while I was contemplating salad, it suddenly dawned on me that I had all the necessary ingredients for a waldorf salad. So I made one and roasted some pork in the Golden Hind fashion (to those who don't know/remember the pork butt was covered with mustard and seasonings before being roasted).
In order to make the waldorf I had to make my own mayonnaise for the second time in my life. I highly recommend this to anyone who hasn't done it as you get to combine those age old enemies, the montisqueus and capulets of the liquid realm (please pardon my probable misspellings ), water and oil. Perhaps this was the meaning of the omens. Two things so unalike in life the peaceful soaring dove and the ground loving sin inducing serpent would be brought together as equals in death, although my mayonnaise didn't die. Well on that happy thought I leave you gentle reader. And please feel free to comment, joke, pontificate, on the omens or on anything either here or to me via email. The major downside to blogging is that its a one-way street and I so long to here the stories of middlebury, beer-die, grad school, work, or the bosses new best-selling book.

God music, fresh food, and bird stuff

So I'm currently listening to Lystra's Silence new CD Deep Calls to Deep. LS is BK's brother's band and is a christian rock band out west. For the most part I like it, I'm no music critic, what with the tone deafness and all, so I'll leave it at that. I'm at this very moment deciding whether or not to try to get to a farmer's market by bike. Weather report seems to suggest I have a 50% chance of getting dumped on by the angry rain gods, I think I'll try it anyway.
So I saw two great avian behavorial dealys in the past week. In a field I was driving by there was a male turkey "presenting" to two females sadly they just kept on walking by ignoring his invitation to procreate. I couldn't help really but identify with him, how many times have I done the mating dance of the blue-footed booby only to sleep alone that same night? The other great dealy was in one of the rings at the bioCON plots. My boss Jared and I were taking light measurements on the individual plots and this Kildeer was trying to lead us away with the ole "follow me my wing is broken, no don't look over there where my undefended eggs are, I'm over here. Don't I look oh so tasty and my wing is broken I can't run or fly away. *Fluttering sound* Hah! hah! you fool, you came after me and I flew around in circles and you didn't get my eggs or me you're stupid, stupid stupid. Wait, don't go near my eggs, my wing is broken I'm oh so defenseless...ad infinitum"
Well I couldn't help but notice the lack of comment on my Oompa Loompa tournament idea, not to beat what appears to be a very dead horse, but I thought it was a good idea and yet no one what's to touch it for good or ill like its got a bad case of the plague. Oh well, I hope all arrived safe and sound at Middlebury and are at the moment engaged in happy combat with those crazy canadians. I wish I could have gone, but some things in the end just don't make sense. Yesterday afternoon I threw for the first time since I left Chicago. It felt really good. Oh well, the sky is lightening, not lightninging, I think I'm going to make a go at this, although I have no idea what a farmer would have this time of year to sell up here. Winter rye? Last year's tomatos, I'll let you know if I can find it, I drew the world's worst map, this trip could get interesting, but I hope not.

The "burb" and other things

So I promised a few posts ago a short post about the "burb" or the old 1984ish suburban that is my primary work vehicle around these parts. Well I lied about the short part but as to the burb I've decided to describe this old workhouse as it would effect your senses, should you come upon it.

1. Sight. It is a tan vehicle. In fact tan is the only color for this vehicle inside, outside, and the caked mud in and off it. It is also big. Big and Tan about sums up the grosser obvious elements. Now for the finer detail. The two doors on the driver side look as if a bison rammed them at half-speed. Large wide dents in the middle of each door, if you lock the driver door you must use the key on the outside to unlock it. The windshield has two cracks, one small, one larger and more spider-webby. The larger one was apparently caused when some spatially challenged employees decided to load a canoe into the suburban. Apparently they had it mostly in when they ran up against a clear impermeable membrane. I imagine the conversation went something as follows.
Mikey: Hey Guys hold up, its pressing against the glass.
Bill: Mikey says hole on, its pressing upon the mass.
Berthold: The monkey said, go on, its passing through the morass.
Henrik and Samuel: Ok, here goes. *Crack* Wait, why did we listen to a Monkey?

2.Taste: N/A

3.Touch: Hmm, well the brakes are a bit touchy, don't want to press too hard, and it has no heat, which wouldn't be so much of a problem except its been below freezing at night the last few nights and you can feel the wind on your face with the windows up.
4.Smell: Smells ok. A bit like the out-of-doors.
5. Noises. For starters there are some random odds and ends that are in the bed, plastic buckets, metal flags, and such that roll whenever you turn >60 degrees. This rolling is loud. Sounds as if you were too drop 3 metal pans on the floor together. It sort of scared me the first few times. Something on the bottom, (axle?) also sort of sings a high pitched note whenever you turn. The engine also makes a very sharp sounding we we we we we we sound when on. When you're actually driving there is a general loud roaring sound, coupled with being able to feel wind with the windows up I'm sure. And last but certainly not least. There is no cd, mp3, tape, 8track, or fm radio. There is AM radio. Which means I listen to a lot of conservative talk shows.


Conservative talk shows: Of the three stations I know on AM two are conservative talk, 1280 THE PATRIOT and 1500. I won't say much about them except this one story. A soon-to-be-father called into Mr. Sean Hannity's show as he was walking into the hospital where his wife was giving birth to his first son. He called for the express purpose of telling Sean that his son would NOT!!!! (no-hyberbole in amount of exlamations) be raised as a liberal. I think that no matter what your views, your last conversation before you become a father should not be on the future political orientation of your offspring, at least not on national radio. I know that may clash with a lot of my readers' opinions but I stand by it. In short I like listening to conservative talk radio in about 20-30 minute increments, I find it healthy and relaxing. Also, no matter your views on the man's politics, Rush Limbaugh has one of the greatest radio voices I've ever heard. To this nasal monotone, his voice is like a cooing-deep voiced (contradiction?) siren luring me onto the shoals of far right idealogy.

In other news, I'm not going to Get Ho Get Leid for reasons mentioned elsewhere. This pains me, although slightly less so after no one even commented on my suggestion for the team theme, Going as Oompa Loompas. Granted this would have been a little difficult, but some sort of overall clothing, with orange face paint and green wigs or dye could have pulled it off. And we'd have a ready made song framework to make up any cheer. They're going with some sort of sequined skirt theme, which is good, but not Oompa Loompa Good. Can I get some feedback on this? Why was the Oompa Loompa idea ignored? What do other people think of it? Oh well, perhaps another time. I'm still hoping to catch the spring league tourney in Schill Park, I think I can elevate that to definite if it occurs the same weekend as the $$$$Party$$$$, thats the 21-22 weekend to those who control such things.

What I've been making/eating. So tonight I had Grilled Venison for the first time in my life at the bosses. My bosses name is Jared, nice guy, great guy, he also knows of this so blog any discussion of him by me will have to be relegated to the more secure GhettoBooty listhost. Bambi was well prepared and quite good in both steak and sausage form. It should be noted that Jared shot it himself so it was really quite the home-cooked meal. I made snickerdoodle cookies recently as well. Long time enjoyers of my cookies will be happy to hear that when I made them smaller they tasted better, more evenly cooked and a touch crispy, than my other more normal Leviathan sized products. I've recently invested in dried milk, dried buttermilk, baking soda and baking powder so the baking shall continue. I also haven't given up on wild food. Plan to collect some dandelion, cattail root, and search for some morels this coming weekend.

Finally, a new section of my blog that I'll call "What has Joe been Saying recently?" Don't know how often I'll add to this section, but hopefully quite often. Anyway a recent oft-used choice of words has been. "Slobber the Gloss of (such and such a thing)" This is lifted from Othello where the Duke, after hearing of the Moor's marriage but needing to send him to battle at Cyprus, says, "you must therefore be content to slobber (in ye ole english slubber) the gloss of your new fortunes with this more stubborn and boisterous expedition." So it roughly means to darken the mood or spirit, or at least that's what I think it means.

I guess that's it, wish all who attend Wednesday night tomorrow a happy evening of revelry and remember that if someone should inquire as to who the Duke of New York is, the answer is in fact " You are, A Number One". And that goes for you readers of these humble pages as well.