Top Ten

this week’s top ten

Winter Wine Walk

Otsego Resort in Gaylord is pairing two of our favorite things this weekend: wine and the great outdoors. On Saturday, Jan. 21, from 12-4pm, they are hosting a Winter Wine Walk that offers attendees a guided stroll through cedar forests punctuated by three wine tasting stations with light snacks. It’s a perfect time to bundle up and enjoy the beauty of nature in winter, especially as you’ll get to experience a walk along creekland and quiet forests. Depending on snow levels, guests can hike or snowshoe, and the route takes you from the historical River Cabin on the resort property to a beaver dam and back. A roaring bonfire will warm you up at the dam before your return. Can’t make the Jan. 21 date? The Winter Wine Walk is also offered Feb. 4 and 18 and March 4 and 18. Guests must be 21 years or older. Tickets are $40 per person and available for purchase at mynorthtickets. com. More information is available at otsegoclub.com/events.

2 tastemaker The Good Bowl’s “Vu-Tang” Chili Crisp

On the hunt for that magic ingredient to take your cooking up a notch? The Good Bowl has your next go-to, and it puts the rest of our spice rack to shame. Enter: “Vu-Tang” Chili Crisp. Named for executive chef Tony Vu (and the ’90’s hip-hop Clan), this versatile chili oil contains upwards of 21 complex spices—headlined by Sichuan pepper—and finishes with the savory crunch of fried garlic and shallot pieces. It is traditionally used as a flavorful seasoning (a standalone dipping sauce this is not), and Chef Vu recommends Chili Crisp as an ingredient in stir-fries or broths, or as a garnish for an extra spicy bite. Pair it with the eatery’s scratch-made Sriracha, and your tongue might never recover! Stock up on The Good Bowl’s full line of shelf-stable sauces and marinades (priced from $9-$12), at their Traverse City storefront (328 E. Front Street), or place an order online at goodbowleatery. com. (231) 252-2662 4 • january 16, 2023 • Northern Express Weekly

Get Your (Chili) Jam On

Vote for your favorite chili at the 2nd Annual Snow Jam and Chili Challenge held on the Piazza at The Village at Grand Traverse Commons in Traverse City on Saturday, Jan. 21, beginning at 2pm. Ten northern Michigan businesses will compete for the Best Overall Chili and People’s Choice. There will also be live music by A/She/ DC, bonfires, frozen yard games, and more. Tickets: $25 (21 and over), $15 (ages 12-20), $5 (ages 11 and under). Visit thevillagetc.com/explore/events. Photo by Danielle Clark

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Hey, watch It! Murderville

What happens when you combine a police procedural, celebrities, and sketch comedy? You get Netflix’s Murderville. The six-episode series stars Will Arnett as Terry Seattle, a bumbling homicide detective with a penchant for dramatics. The chief of police, who is also Seattle’s longsuffering ex-wife, pairs him up with a different celebrity guest in each episode to solve a murder, from a magician’s assistant who is literally sawed in half to a tech mogul’s death by CD-ROM. Seattle’s partners are missing one vital tool: a script, which means they’re improvising their way through the show while the rest of the cast spurs them along. Each episode is guaranteed to make you laugh out loud given the celebrity lineup of Conan O’Brien, Marshawn Lynch, Kumail Nanjiani, Annie Murphy, Sharon Stone, and Ken Jeong. Pay attention to the clues along the way to see if you can guess the killer at the end! (And don’t miss the Christmas special with Jason Bateman and Maya Rudolph.) All episodes are now streaming on Netflix.

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6 Snowshoeing to Supper

’Tis the season for creative outdoor fun, and Boyne Mountain is jumping on the bandwagon. They’ve created a four-part dinner experience that offers scenic views, plenty of exercise, and a gourmet meal with their SkyBridge Snowshoe Supper on Saturday, Jan. 21. You’ll start with a ride on the Hemlock Chairlift before walking along the world’s longest timber-towered suspension bridge, aka SkyBridge Michigan. After warming up with a fireside hot toddy, you’ll strap on snowshoes for a guided hike, ending at onsite restaurant Stein Eriksen’s for a prime rib and shrimp dinner. Two “seatings” are available, the first starting at 4pm and landing you at dinner at 6pm, and the second kicking off at 6:30pm with an 8pm mealtime. Tickets are $120 per person and include all activities listed above. (A cash bar will be available at Stein Eriksen’s.) More details can be found at shop.boynemountain.com.

A New Ship for ISEA

Though we’re in the heart of winter, there’s a light at the end of the tunnel—and that’s the promise of summertime on the bay. In that spirit, Inland Seas Education Association (ISEA) is growing its fleet with a three-masted schooner—ISEA’s biggest yet—called Alliance. Coming in at a whopping 105 feet, Alliance can carry up to 54 passengers. The 28-year-old ship will be spending the winter in Virginia (lucky lady!) before sailing north in May, and ISEA will hold a grand celebration June 24 to welcome the newest addition to their fleet. Alliance will offer complementary programs to its original schooner cousin, Inland Sea, to help educate students of all ages and the public about Great Lakes conservation. While winter waters have most events and programs on hold, you can join ISEA for their Feb. 9 “cafe,” which will be focused on the ecological trends of the food web in Grand Traverse Bay. To learn more about Alliance and ISEA programming, visit schoolship.org.

Stuff We Love: Award-Winning Libations

The Traverse Wine Coast has been getting lots of love lately, and we’re no longer biased locals to say the hype is well deserved. The most recent jewel in the local winery crown comes from Wine & Spirits magazine, which gave five Leelanau Peninsula wines a score of 91, the highest scores for Michigan wines ever recorded by national or international wine critics. So, what should you be drinking? The 91-point scorers were Verterra Winery’s 2021 Dry Riesling and 2018 Dry Gewurztraminer; Brengman Brothers’ 2018 Dagudscht Blanc de Blanc sparkling; Mawby’s Grace; and Ciccone Vineyard and Winery’s 2020 Lee La Tage. Patrick Comiskey, a wine critic for Wine & Spirits, says our wine region is “making impressive strides in quality, worldliness, and energy, a provincial locus with global aspirations, freshly interpreting the wine world’s latest innovations and trends.” Bravo!

bottoms up Jolly Pumpkin Artisan Ales' İO Saison

If you want to experience the most creative, interesting, and all-around best beers that a brewery has to offer, you’ll often find those on the rotating seasonal release calendar. Such is the case, we think, with Jolly Pumpkin Artisan Ales, whose recent seasonal beers have all been home runs. We were big fans of Noel, Jolly Pumpkin’s robust and flavorful holiday ale, and of Madrugada Obscura, the dark-as-night sour stout they rolled out in December. But it’s January now, and we can’t get enough of the latest Jolly Pumpkin offering: the iO Saison. Named after the Jupiter moon, iO is brewed with rose hips, rose petals, and hibiscus flowers, which impart tart, floral flavors and a gorgeous rosy-red hue to the beer. Jolly Pumpkin calls it “a beautiful piece of art presented in a glass,” and we’re inclined to agree. Give it a taste before the January/February availability window lapses. Available at Jolly Pumpkin Restaurant and Brewery, 13512 Peninsula Dr. in Traverse City. traversecity.jollypumpkin.com, (231) 223-4333

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DYSFUNCTION AS THE NORM

spectator

By Stephen Tuttle

If you enjoy slow-motion train wrecks, you had to enjoy the Republicans in Congress trying to elect a Speaker of the House. After 15 ballots, they finally chose Kevin McCarthy, who sold most of his power, his soul, and what was left of his integrity to secure the job. This is the same Kevin McCarthy who, days after the Jan. 6 ugliness, said Donald Trump “bears responsibility” for the attack on the Capitol. When The New York Times reported he had told allies he was going to tell Trump he should resign, McCarthy vehemently denied it, saying it was “completely false.” But it was right there for all to hear in a recording provided to the Congressional committee investigating Jan. 6.

Just two weeks later, he was down at Mar-aLago kissing the former president’s ring. Meanwhile, a group of Republican members of Congress we’ll call the Not In Touch With Intelligent Thinking (NITWIT) wing of the party refused to vote for McCarthy on vote after vote after vote until they had wrung every conceivable concession from the wannabe Speaker. Rep. Matt Gaetz said he ultimately surrendered because he couldn’t “imagine” anything more to demand that hadn’t already been granted. The NITWIT faction still harbors the notion that Trump won an election two years ago that he clearly lost. The princess of this group isn’t in Congress but is a failed gubernatorial candidate in Arizona. Kari Lake, who now calls herself the “duly elected governor” of a state she lost—her opponent, Katie Hobbs, has already been sworn in as the actual governor—claims she has evidence 60 percent of Arizona polling places “stopped working” on election day and that 75 percent of those voting in person that day would have voted for her. She has asked the courts to simply declare her the governor despite having thus far presented zero evidence to back up her preposterous claims. This falls right into line with those still claiming the man who received fewer popular and electoral votes two years ago should be president. They continue, even now, to support Donald Trump’s nonsense— Trump is the president emeritus of the NITWITs—and are likely to try and govern the U.S. House based on their delusions.

All of which has led some pundits to describe the current GOP as the most dysfunctional political party ever. The claim is an insult to both our memory and the longstanding champions of internal dysfunction, the Democrats. We only have to go back to the middle of the last century to find evidence of a Democratic Party that cannot get along with itself. The American South had for the longest time been reliably Democratic. Then the U.S. Supreme Court handed down the Brown v. Board of Education decision eliminating the separate-but-equal philosophy that had justified racial segregation in the South. Southern Democrats, known as Dixiecrats, were not pleased with that decision. While one contingent of Democrats supported civil rights in general and public school integration specifically, Governors George Wallace in Alabama, Lester Maddox in Georgia, Orval Faubus in Arkansas, and Ross Barnett in Mississippi, all Democrats,

proclaimed they would never integrate their public schools. Maddox stood on the steps of a school wielding an ax handle. Federal troops had to be sent to Arkansas to protect a couple of Black kids just trying to go to school. That Democrat dysfunction didn’t get any better when the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act were both passed a decade later. Party switching became epidemic, and the formerly reliable Democratic South was quickly the reliable Republican South. If you thought those departures from an oft-racist South would have consolidated the remaining Democrats, you would have been wrong. The Vietnam War further split the party into hawks and doves, those supporting the war and those demanding we abandon that cause.

It started unified enough with the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, based on exaggerated claims of North Vietnamese aggression at sea, which justified our expanded involvement in Vietnam, including the use of ground troops. It was only opposed by two Democratic senators. But the anti-war wing of the party grew, creating a divide so deep and wide it led to a crescendo of dysfunction and violence at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. That was dysfunction writ very large. Fast forward to today. Republicans are deeply split between those who would like some rational discourse and accomplishment and the Trump-really-won NITWITs. Democrats are split between self-proclaimed Democratic Socialists and those who are, you know, just Democrats. Dysfunction is now the norm for both parties and for a Congress that refuses to put aside their differences and incompetence and actually legislate. The dysfunctional political parties have morphed into a dysfunctional Congress.

Dysfunction is now the norm for both parties and for a Congress that refuses to put aside their differences and incompetence and actually legislate.