The trees at sunrise.

And here's Meade's view of the sunrise....

The heron at dawn.

We see this heron every morning — lately — at a place I call the AVP (alternative vantage point). Now, we feel he knows us and waits for us. Before, he'd been standing rooted to one spot quite near the shore, undisturbed by our approach. There was an aura of mutual respect and trust. But this morning, as we walked up to where we would first see him, he flew up and crossed right in front of us. It was glorious! Then he landed right over there, where you see him in the photo, and he remained rooted there, posing for all our pictures.

Here's Meade's video:

Just the 2 of us.

"Fiedler... would have been delighted by the ability of some of our best writers to dance knowingly around the volcano..."

"... the 'chuckles and whispers and much munching about the neck and shoulders' in Lorrie Moore’s 'Anagrams,' for example, or the 'tumblings and flexings and shudders' in John Barth’s 'The End of the Road,' or the 'stiffened giblets' in Tom Wolfe’s 'Hooking Up,' or the 'freaky rubs and naughty pinches' in Chuck Berry’s extraordinary autobiography."

Writes Dwight Garner, in "A Field Guide to the Dark, Sexy Swamp of American Literature With its bracing studies of fiction’s secrets, this 66-year-old work of literary criticism still surprises and delights" (NYT). The reissued book is "Love and Death in the American Novel" by Leslie A. Fiedler.

It's hard to write about sex! Apparently, the word "and" is helpful. Only the Tom Wolfe quote lacks an "and."

"Stiffened giblets." Wow, that's so offputting. Let's see, I've got "Hooking Up" here on Kindle. 

Ha ha, I've got the passage highlighted:

If anything, “sexual revolution” was rather a prim term for the lurid carnival actually taking place in the mightiest country on earth in the year 2000. Every magazine stand was a riot of bare flesh, rouged areolae, moistened crevices, and stiffened giblets: boys with girls, girls with girls, boys with boys, bare-breasted female bodybuilders, so-called boys with breasts, riding backseat behind steroid-gorged bodybuilding bikers, naked except for cache-sexes and Panzer helmets, on huge chromed Honda or Harley-Davidson motorcycles. 

That's on page 5. Replete with "and." You need these pairs and lists for sex.

I see Wolfe uses "stiffened giblets" again — with 2 "ands" — on page 142:

"You just have a sense of... brotherhood."

Said Robert Gasser, a Brewers pitcher:

To begin the season - Logan Henderson, Robert Gasser, and Shane Drohan shared an Airbnb at Triple-A.

In October, they started 3 straight games in the NLCS to help the Brewers win their first pennant in 44 years.

Before his NLCS start, Gasser talked about the tight-knit staff 👇 pic.twitter.com/t5DVbsHBCD

— Hunter Baumgardt (@hunterbonair) October 17, 2026

Texting that to Meade, I wrote "'brotherhood'/crystal blue persuasion/'There'll be peace and good — brotherhood.'"

He sent me this video of the song, and I said "I blogged that video in 2015." It was here: "The new Hillary catchphrase: 'Love trumps hate.'"

And I blogged about the song in 2006, describing what I'd just put in a podcast ("Audible Althouse #64," no longer on line):

The blue heron flies at dawn.

Video by Meade.

Post title inspired by vaguely familiar Hollywood spyspeak... or perhaps by that Jack Benny movie that only I remember.

"Will you meet me in the middle? Will you meet me in the air?"

Sunrise got rained out, so we set out in midday.

The leaves were changing, the drummers drumming:

Meade lured me into repeating my theory about a baseball word:

Today's sunrise, from 3 vantage points.

Video by Meade:

Catching the sun.

Just now:

Earlier, in the dark:

Everybody is a star.

Ducks in this morning's sunrise, by Meade:

The song — "Everybody Is a Star" — came up in conversation just now. The tag suggestions for the first post of the day included George Prescott Bush, and I was wondering whatever happened to him. Remember when he was the anointed one? As Grok put it: "Bilingual son of a Mexican-born mother, Navy Reserve tour in Afghanistan, Rice and UT Law, telegenic, already campaigning for family members as a teenager. Consultants in the 2000s literally nicknamed him '47.'" He was like Schlossberg. Maybe people don't like an heir apparent. We prefer somebody who came out of nowhere. 

Sunrise, Monday morning.

Video by Meade, just now.

Sunrise.

That's my only photo. I saw a flash of lightning and chose to head back home. But Meade made a target of himself out on the dock, and he kept going all the way to the primary vantage point. There, he took this:

And he made an awfully nice video:

Recent birds.

Caught by Meade. On Monday, a great blue heron made good use of its long skinny legs:

 

Yesterday, there was a turkey vulture on the path:

Waking up to September.

The ever-vigilant deer.

That's Meade's video in the morning twilight yesterday. I was walking up ahead of him and moving slowly and quietly. Because I thought they were tolerating me, I stopped. I thought maybe they would approach me, which was dumb, because it wouldn't be good for them or for me. Habituation is bad for them, and as for me, I don't want their ticks (or hooves). But it was my stopping that caused them to panic and spring off. I thought stopping was completely nonthreatening, but I thought about it from their point of view afterwards. I should have continued moving slowly and quietly, keeping in my lane on the path. To stop was to show interest in them, and that crossed the line. Too much! 

Sunrise.

"In the exhilarating case of Madison, it’s important to pursue the frenzy, merge with the frenzy, ingest the frenzy."

"The frenzy beckons along State Street, the central nervous system of the city and the 50,000-strong university, with main quadrangle Bascom Hill at the end opposite the state Capitol. The frenzy churns up and down the streets and boulevards leading up to kickoffs, the multistory bars packed with people and red. It’s present in bits in the breakfast line at the famed Mickie’s Dairy Bar, or the doughnut line at Greenbush, or at State Street Brats, or the Memorial Union Terrace of the main student union. It’s bubbling at the Dane County Farmers’ Market, and it’s roaring at the frat houses near Camp Randall Stadium, where the inspiring sights might include a beer bong on the second floor delivering the nectar to a drinker on the ground. It reaches its peak, though, at the end of the third quarter.... If one seeks bouts of quiet, as unfitting as they can seem, there’s a daydream of a lake (Mendota), the Lakeshore Path, the city’s welcoming capacity for cyclists or the privilege of a lakefront room at the Edgewater Hotel...."

The Washington Post puts Madison first, in "The 10 best college football towns in America" (gift link).

Here's the daydream this morning, video'd by Meade:

 

"There's a little bit of a quicksand feeling."

Althouse enters Lake Mendota for the first time after all these years.

Meade, who's great at instigating variations on old rituals, made the video.

Kayak sunrise.

Video by Meade.