Wisconsin Journal

Number 6

9 October 1997



We've been to a couple of street fairs since arriving. One was the

Monroe street fair, which is the street one over from us. It was

fairly modest, and seemed mostly for the benefit of local merchants.

A lot of them had tables out on the sidewalk, selling off overstocks

and last years' Christmas items. There were a couple women on stilts,

and a couple of entertainment areas set up. When I was out looking

at it, there were bagpipers. Kaye saw a group of girls from a local

ballet school performing, who were having a bit of a hard time trying

to dance on an asphalt parking lot. At one point they were rolling on

the ground, and Kaye overheard one mother bemoan "Those were nine-dollar

tights!" It gave me a chance to check out some of the local stores

I hadn't been to yet. The most interesting shop was a converted

fire station that had a costume rental place upstairs. They looked to

specialize in theatrical costumes (period clothing, uniforms) rather

than party costumes. There weren't any food booths, but one store

was sampling venison kebabs.



A little over a week later we went to the Willy Street Fair, which

takes place on Williamson Street, between the two main lakes.

Quite different from the Monroe Street fair---Kaye heard someone

refer to it as the "hippy fair."  The Willy Street Fair is a bigger

production.  They actually block off the sidewalk and set up booths

along the street, and not all the booths are local stores. My favorite

part was the parade.  It wasn't a big parade, given that the fair

is only about four blocks long, but it was a sincere parade.  There

were two New Orleans style bands in it--one local, and one up from

Louisiana. There were two lady stilt walkers in (very long) harem

pants.  Next came the East High cheerleaders, who looked mortified

to be there. My favorite part was a "bubblemobile"--an ancient

Cadillac convertible outfitted with a baritone horn and two outrigger

Sousaphones, all blowing bubbles with helium.  A local juggling

club brought up the rear.



There were a lot of ethnic food carts there, too.  What people call

"carts" around here are actually small trailers.  I think most of

them spend the week around the library mall on campus, and then head

out to fairs and festivals around town on weekends.  There's a Mexican

food cart that parks in our alley overnight, behind the Mexican restaurant.

Kaye had fejioda (a bean and meat stew) with fried manioc flour from

a Brazilian cart. Luke and I had felafel, and Kaye and the kids had

drinks from the "Loose Juices" cart.  My favorite food booth was the

Aussie Roadkill Cafe, featuring the Big Piece of Butt sandwich. All

in all, an interesting way to spend a Sunday afternoon, and, yes, there

were hippies (and crystals and aromatherapy and tie dye shirts).



Around on the north side of Lake Monona are the Olbrich Botanical

gardens. There are several gardens laid out on the grounds--herb and

vegetable, roses, native plants, alpine plants--but the best part

is a large, two-story tropical green house. In addition to all kinds

of plants, there were a few species of birds and butterflies inside.

Signs warned us to look out for button quail chicks, which had hatched

recently, and turn out to be about the size of walnuts. I noticed a lot

of food plants: papaya, carambola (yellow fruit that is star-shaped

in cross section), vanilla vine, tamarind, oil palm, fig, caper

bush and pineapple. The fig has an interesting dependency on a particular

species of wasp for pollination. The fig flowers blossom on the inside

of what will become the fruit, with only a small hole in the bottom

that the wasp crawls into. Not a whole lot was in bloom (it's fall),

but the chenille bush was, covered with fuzzy, dusky pink tails hanging

down. Not sure how they weave them into robes and bedspreads.

On our way out of the gardens we noticed what at first glance were

two topiary bears sitting at a picnic table. On looking closer,

I think they are actually frames with moss inside and plants growing

in the moss.



One Saturday Kaye and I abandoned the kids and headed for the nearby

town of Cambridge. A couple of interesting things on the drive out.  I've

been learning about silage and silos.  The Lexus of silos is the

HarveStore, which is dark blue fiberglass over steel.  You can tell

how well a dairy farmer has been doing by how many HarveStores he

has, as opposed to concrete or galvanized steel silos.  However,

the latest technology is kind of a "silo on its side."  Farmers are

using big white tubes of plastic, and blowing the corn into them.

Apparently it ferments into okay silage. The other interesting structures

we saw were tobacco barns. I'd seen tobacco barns before around

Bergerac in France, but those were all built with louvres, to control

the airflow and the drying process. Wisconsin tobacco barns accomplish

the same thing by having every fourth slat only nailed at the top.

To get some ventilation, you pull out these slats and angle them

to the side. At first glance it looks like the barn is coming apart.



Cambridge was celebrating its 150th anniversary. (It's also the

sesquicentennial for the state.) There was an antique fair in the

town park, and we took the opportunity to familiarize ourselves

with local baskets.  Kaye remarked how the items for sale were

really quite different from what you see in Oregon, but that many things

she recognized from her childhood in Illinois.  Kaye had been

out to Cambridge before, and so knew that there was an exceptional

Indian arts store in town. Lots of Ho-Chunk baskets, and a good

selection of Cherokee, Tarahumara and Papago, but also some things I

had never seen before, like Panamanian Indian baskets.  Visited

a great variety store (bought some dress-up wigs for Sarah) and

stopped by the bakery, which was selling 10-cent donuts and coffee.



Madison is big on doing the right thing, which means we have mandatory

recycling. You have to put out your recyclables in specially labeled clear

plastic bags you buy at the supermarket. If you don't set them out just

right, they get left, along with a little scorecard telling you why your

trash is substandard: "milk jugs not flattened" "cardboard not tied with

twine" "bad karma on aluminum cans". They don't take scrap paper, though,

and it feels odd to throw it away. Some of the trashcans downtown

have flaps on all four sides, with some sides for recyclables and

some for trash. It looks like they all end up the same place, but there

are actually diagonal dividers inside keeping things separate. (This

last bit of information is courtesy of my daughter, who put her

head inside one to find out.) I also recently found out that the

two wastebaskets in my office are one for white paper and one for other

trash. I had been tossing garbage into them arbitrarily until then, and

probably have a dozen demerits next to my name on an ecological

scofflaw list somewhere.



Short takes:



--The kids and I have been visiting Lutheran churches, trying to find

a place to go this year.  Our second stop was Luther Memorial, at

the edge of campus. It has the proportions of a small cathederal,

and the pomp to go with it. Luke wasn't sure we were in a Lutheran

church.  They were just finishing some renovations, and had a display

on the history of the church building in the narthex.  The most

interesting picture was of shattered stained-glass windows, from the

bombing of the Math Research Center back in the 70's.



--Next to the computer lab in the basement of the Computer Science

building is a vending machine that dispenses diskettes.  Both PC and

Mac flavors.



--Kaye came home from a farmers market a couple weeks ago with a bag

of hickory nuts. They have the same basic conformation as walnuts, but

are smaller than filberts. Haven't found an efficient means to get

the nut meats out, though a guide at New Glarus (next report) says

he used to crack them against a flat iron held between his knees.



--Sarah has started taking guitar lessons. The first time Kaye took

her in and was going to pay for the lessons, they said she had

already paid. It turns out there is a Sara Maier (no 'h') taking

guitar lessons as well.



Had a surprise visit from friends Sharon and Steve and kids. Sharon

was one one of my instructors when I was an undergrad at University

of Oregon (assembler and data structures, if I recall), and we both

ended up teaching at Stony Brook. Steve was one of the first people

I met at grad school in Princeton, and we shared a house, along

with four other guys, my final year. They now live in Chicago, and

are both UWisc grads.  They stopped by at the end of a two-week vacation,

which was supposed to have been spent hiking in the Wyoming wilderness.

However, the first day out, they hiked to about 5pm, stopped to set

up camp, and Steve headed down to a lake for water.  He managed to

slip at the waters edge, and break his wrist. So, they quickly broke camp

and managed to get back to their car that night.  Took about 5 days

and a metal plate to finally get the wrist set right. They then took

their time driving back across the US, rather than their usual 2-day

dash.  Anyone want to buy a 14-day supply of freeze-dried meals?



About the same time I got a note from Laura and Bill, friends back in

Portland, about their practice hike in preparation for their annual

Labor Day camping trip.  The day started out with a bad omen, when

their hike was extended by a couple of miles because of a gate in the

road that wasn't on the map. Laura was ahead on the trail, found

the turn-off to the lake, and marked it with a pile of rocks.  Bill

missed the turn-off, and ended up another hour up the trail. After

a while, Laura headed back to the car, but discovered she didn't have

the keys.  So she made a note with twigs on the hood, and went back

up the trail. They met up around 6pm.



This is why I stay in motels.





I have been getting some other correspondence from my readers.



Dave Steere wondered about my claim to hear the roar from the stadium

after hearing it on TV, given that there are likely some delays in

the route the TV signal takes. I figure the sound takes about 3 seconds

to reach us from the stadium, but the TV feed is probably bouncing

off a satellite at least once on the way from the game to New York

to the local station to us. I'll have to wait for the next live broadcast

of a Badgers game to check the effect again.



A reader from France thinks the competition between Wisconsin and

California over cheese is a bit silly, given that they are all sorry

imitations of fromage.



I had mentioned that Taliesin was two words in Welsh. A Celtic scholar

(really) among the readership questioned that assertion, pointing out

that Taliesin was the name of a Welsh poet, and that Taliesin didn't

seem to split into two Welsh words. More investigation turned up

that it means something like "shining brow" in really old Welsh, but

why would Wright name his house "shining brow" or after a poet? I hope

a trip to Taliesin will resolve the question.