Wisconsin Journal Number 2 5 September 1997 When we last left our intrepid hero, he was attempting to find his rental house with the assistance of 70,000 Green Bay Packers fans. That Friday (22 August) was the night of a pre-season game between the Packers and the NY Giants in UW's Camp Randall Stadium. I arrived in town around 5, and the game was around 7, and I noticed large numbers of green-and-yellow-clad people walking down the main street near us, along with cars flying Packers flags. Fortunately, we have garage space here, or I probably would have had to park a mile from the house (or pay $10 for parking). After getting a quick tour of the house, Kaye and I went out to take a walk and observe the crowd. Everybody had on some kind of Packer shirt or sweatshirt. Also a lot of cheesehead hats, along with green & yellow painted faces, bright yellow wigs and even one guy with a Packers cape. I was told that this generated more traffic than a UW football game, because for the college games, about 15-20,000 people walk from their homes to the game, whereas most of the crowd was from out of town. Kaye and I walked down to near the stadium, just to see the crowd in its full glory. Lots of cookouts on porches of houses along the way. There was even some group in our back alley who had a cookout before *and* after the game. We then turned around and explored the rest of Monroe street, which is the main drag one street over from where we live. We've never lived with shopping this nearby before. Within three blocks of our house we have a branch of the public library, a coffee stand, a small grocery, a cheese store/deli, a bakery, a Wisconsin products shop, a kitchen products store, a chocolate shop, a gallery, several restaurants and "Katy's American Indian Art." Those of you who know Kaye and her fondness for baskets realize how dangerous this last one is. It's almost directly behind us across the alley, and with that name, it all seems a little ominous. As we headed further down Monroe, there was a private college, called Edgewood, which also has a grade school and high school, then a few more blocks of stores, including a good Mexican restaurant, a bar, more gallerys, a place that offers art and music classes, and African crafts store and a frozen custard stand, which seems to be immensely popular. By then it was approaching seven, and all the restaurants were emptying out. We went back and got the kids, and ate at a place around the block called The Dardenelles, which features Mediterranean cuisine with a Turkish emphasis. A little spendy to eat at often, but it was very good food, with enough for a couple lunches left over. Later that evening at home, Sarah and I watched the last quarter of the football game on television, in which the Packers came from behind to win. We had the windows open, and we found that if there was a big play and the fans cheered loud on TV, we could hit the mute button and here the actual cheering from the stadium a second or two later. When the game ended, Sarah and I went out the the corner to watch the fans stream out and the ensuing traffic jams. Many lost and drunk people. Kind of funny being asked for directions when I'd only lived here for about six hours. Sarah knew a few streets nearby. Also funny to see a women claiming she was alright because she had walked a straight line for the last block (while being draped over the shoulders of two companions). The evening ended with Luke and Kaye on the front porch, getting a really good view of four moons of Jupiter through binoculars. The house is about 100 years old, with some parts recenly remodelled. It's a 15-20 minute walk to the Computer Sciences Dept. on campus, and a few blocks from a park and the city zoo. The house has kitchen, living room, dining room and parlor on the ground floor, three bedrooms on the second story and a recently redone loft on the third floor, which we use as a computer room. Kaye was quite put out to find that the house was not really ready to move into when she arrived. Many of the drawers were still partially filled with kids' toys and such, the cleaning had been a bit cursory, and tufts of black dog hair were in many places you would not care for them to be (like the freezer). Also, there was a list of notes from the landlord (a UW professor also off on sabbatical) with items like "the water softener may be out of salt--you probably need to get 120lbs. to add" and "we meant to get a rooter in so the washing machine doesn't back up throug the floor drain when it cycles." By the time I arrived, Kaye had already done quite a bit of organizing and cleaning. I've helped with moving furniture around, cleaning and handyman chores, like get the hot and cold water hoses switched around the right way on the washing machine. But Kaye has a good dose of pioneer blood in her, and is good at homesteading, and I think we'll find the house quite cozy as we live here for a while. A little bit about the state and the city. Wisconsin got its name from the main river that runs north to south through the state. The Chippewa Indians called it Mescousing ("Gathering Waters"), which the French rendered as Ouisconsin ("Yes, I'll have mustard with that"), whence Wisconsin. A little tidbit I learned from an article in an engineering magazine I read on the way out is that settlers have been tinkering with the Upper Wisconsin for well over a century. As early as 1830, lumbermen were digging channels to increase the spring flow, to float their log rafts down the river. By 1890 they were routinely flooding downstream communities every year. Madison is the captial of Wisconsin, located in the south central part of the state. It's a beautiful site for a town, situated around a series of lakes that percolate through the alluvial plain left by the last ice age (which is mostly over here, I understand). The main lakes, going north to south, are Mendota (the largest), Monona, Wingra (near us) and Waubesa. Mendota and Monona are quite close to each other, and bound a narrow strip of land, called the Isthmus, even though it connects the same land mass to itself. The Isthmus is only about 9 blocks wide at the narrowest point, and holds the main downtown. At the center of it, in the middle of a large concourse, is the state capitol building, with several museums around the square. The UW is to the west of downtown, hugging the south shore of Lake Mendota, which I can see from my office window. The lakes force the street grid to make periodic 45-degree shifts in alignment, which made it difficult to get our bearings at first. I managed to take a wrong turn the first day I walked in to work, and Luke left school the second day, walked several blocks and came out back in front of the school. Kaye is better at it than the rest of us, having gained the ability to build herself a mental map as she walks around from exploring old cities in Europe, which exhibit even less regularity. I'll write about our first outings when I next report. Oh, yes---watering the piano. It gets real dry here in the winter, so some people have humidifiers installed inside their pianos. The piano here has one, and it blinks a light when it's time to add water to it.