Wisconsin Journal Number 13 12 December 1997 Homecoming is alive and well at UW, though mainly the domain of the fraternities and sororities. I took Sarah to see the homecoming parade on Friday night before the homecoming game with Iowa. There was the marching band, of course, at least three old fire trucks, and a high school dance team from Milwaukee. But there were also "non-traditional" elements. Early in the parade was a troup of jugglers, along with a fire eater and a unicyclist with a bullwhip. ("Beat the Hawkeyes", I guess.) There were a couple dozen floats, several quite original. One featured a real hot tub, and another had a crew in togas pushing a turnstile. Not quite sure what the theme was for either. Most were more obvious, such as a roast Hawkeye turning on a barbeque spit, and a Hawkeye going down in (real) flames. Most of the floats were throwing candy, which Sarah thought was great, and she continued to collect pieces people had missed off the ground as we walked home. I guess all the fuss paid off, because the next day Wisconsin beat Iowa, who was nationally ranked at the time. We continue to go to shows a lot. We saw Deathtrap with the kids, and are taking them to see a new comedy called Triple Espresso tomorrow. Kaye and I also went to a Winter Solstice concert featuring Celtic music, which I quite enjoyed. Tomorrow morning we are going to see the broadcast of "Whaddya Know?" with Michael Feldman, which originates from Wisconsin Public Broadcasting. Wisconsin actually has two public radio networks, one mainly for music and the other mostly for news and talk. My only complaint is that they both go off the air at midnight. They also show home football games on public TV here. On one of our Wednesday trips Kaye and I visited Beloit College (in Beloit, Wisconsin) to see the Logan Museum of Anthropology. Beloit was founded in 1846, and was the first college in Wisconsin. It's located overlooking the Rock River, near the Illinois border, and was recently the question to an answer on Jeopardy. It was started by seven Yale graduates, and currently has 1100 students from 45 states and 36 foreign countries. The museum has a large collection of pottery (some pre-Columbian) and basketry (mostly North American Indian, but some from Central and South America, as well as Africa). It's a study collection, and part of it is housed in a second-story storage area and on interior shelves, which made it a bit hard to see. Nevertheless, there were some amazing basket specimens, both for size and workmanship. Upstairs there are a lot of masks and carvings from Southeast Asia and Polynesia. The "Logan" in the name was the owner of a private collection that formed the basis for the museum, and at least four other private collections were donated to it over the years. The anthropology department also adds items to it through their digs and collecting expeditions. We also visited a small art museum on campus, but it is nothing to write home about, so I won't. After lunch in Beloit, we drove home through Janesville, home of GM's largest truck plant. Just before we got there, Kaye noticed rows and rows of netted enclosures off to the right. At first I thought it might be to keep birds off some special crop, but its actual purpose is to keep birds in. We were seeing a pheasant farm. They run a little gift shop, and I found out from the lady there that it was no small operation. They sell 1 million chicks a year, 200,000 dressed birds and 150,000 mature birds, along with 20-30,000 partridge. We bought a smoked pheasant breast, and had to leave our name and address to do so: Pheasant is a game bird and we don't have a hunting permit, so we could be cited for possession of it unless we could prove that we had bought it from a legitimate dealer (even though it was pre-cooked and shrink-wrapped). Our favorite Wisconsonia on this trip were the "Need Guns?" billboards on the way into Beloit. That weekend Kaye took off for a basketry conference in Grand Rapids, and I took kids down to the state historical museum. There were two temporary exhibits I wanted to see. One was on the Atomic age, featuring movies, magizines, fall-out shelter plans, toys and so forth that dealt with atomic bombs and atomic power. (Did you know that Gilbert used to make a home nuclear physics experiment kit, complete with cloud chamber and three radioactive samples?) I learned that Mosinee, Wisconsin staged a "Day under Communism" back in 1949, to show people what life would be like if the USSR took over your town. I also noted that the house we are renting is served by "Escape Route #7" in the event of nuclear attack. The other exhibit was on the Arts and Craft movement in Wisconsin. A placard from the period listed the key attributes as Regionalism, Joy of Labour, Individualism and Design & Unity. Gustave Stickley was from Wisconsin, though I think he settled in Michigan. The exhibit featured both fine and decorative arts from the movement, and talked a lot about schools and studios in Wisconsin that promoted the style. I particularly liked the pieces by George Niedecker, who did furniture and interior design. I plan to go back with Kaye before it closes. After the museum, Luke headed off to his favorite card store, while Sarah and I prowled the used book stores around State Street, of which there are many. The Saturday before Thanksgiving Kaye and I went to an art sale at the Monona Terrace featuring local artists. We saw a lot of items we liked. We bought a wreath woven from willow splints of different shades, and a small watercolor. I also saw some etched glass I really liked, and these droll, porcelain figurines of cats with various whimsical features: carrying handle, fish on the end of tail, candy-cane tail. Kaye has since been to an art show at the Civic Center, and she and I went to a 14-woman art show at a local school, where we bought a wonderful stained-glass panel of a great blue heron (but only after driving over to a bird store to see another version of the panel by the same artist). Later that Saturday we drove down to Fort Atkinson to see the Hoard Historical Museum and the National Dairy Shrine. The museum is in the former home of Frank Hoard, second in a line of Hoards who were publishers of Hoard's Dairyman Weekly, which is given much credit for helping establish and modernize the dairy industry in Wisconsin. His father, who started the Dairyman, was William Dempster Hoard, Wisconsin's governor from 1888-90. Frank Hoard was also the inventor of the reaction/centrifuge bottle used in th Babcock Test for milkfat. (See New Glarus report.) The museum covers local Indian paleohistory, as well as recorded history, especially the Blackhawk War, in which I gather Abraham Lincoln took part. There was an extensive collection of Indian arrowheads and spearpoints, and an exhibit on different kinds of lace making. One of my favorite exhibits was of promotional material (calendars, bottle openers, fly swatters, etc.) given away over the years by local companies. There was also an exhibit of old tools. The big deal, however, was the Dairy Shrine next door. We started by seeing a slideshow and diorama in which I learned that there are about 10 million cows in the US, about one for every 24 people. (It's 10pm. Do you know where your cow is?) A typical cow produces 40 pounds of milk a day (about 5 gallons), but some champions have produced as much as 150 pounds. For every 100 pounds of milk produced, 38 are consumed as milk, 27 as cheese, 15 as butter and the rest go into other products, such as glue and imitation ivory. I also learned that every American who has distinguished him or herself in the arts, science or government almost certainly drank milk as a child. Downstairs in the shrine were exhibits on famous cows, cow breeds, artificial insemination (AI), old milking and dairy equipment and milk products. You probably know that Jersey, Guernsey and Holstein are common milk cows. What are the other three breeds of dairy cattle in the US? (See below.*) I learned about the Dairy Herd Improvement program initiated (in the 30s?) by the US Department of Agriculture. It involves tracking ancestry and production records of individual dairy cows, in order to try to improve productivity of dairy cattle overall. Items of dairy equipment that caught my eye included a strap-on milk stool, a foot-powered milking machine, and an anti-sucking halter for calves. Imagine being encouraged to wean your baby by a ring of spikes around his or her mouth. I also saw the blanket that belonged to the original Elsie the Cow. (Who says the dairy industry has no glamour.) The AI display was quite eye-opening. I can't decide if it's worse to be in the gathering end of the business, or the fertilization end. I saw a parachute used to drop fresh semen to farmers in remote areas, and also a red flag used in Puerto Rico to let the artificial inseminator know you have a cow in heat and he should stop at your farm during his rounds. As Kaye and I stood reminiscing about school milk bottles we had known, we overheard another group, two of whom had clearly grown up on dairy farms. They were comparing kinds of milk filters (used when transfering milk from the milking machine to storage cans). Each pointed out the kind of filter used on her family farm when growing up, and then came the following exchange: - "It always amazed me how much stuff the filter strained out." - "Yeah, but that was good clean dirt then, not like what shows up in milk today." I didn't get to look at everything carefully, because the museum was closing. If any of you visit us, I'd be glad to make a return trip. We took the long way home, through the town of Jefferson, which is the home of a Friskees catfood plant. (I guess cows have to go somewhere after they stop producing.) We noticed several deer lashed to cars. (It was the middle of deer season.) Deer have gradually given over to Christmas trees as the cargo of choice over the past couple weeks. Saw a grade school that has been converted to apartments. ("You could feed 300 people from this kitchen" or "We're down to a choice of the boys' locker room or the custodian's closet.") I've actually seen two other schools converted to apartments, but more commonly they seem to end up as antique malls. Much of the drive back to Madison was lined with sod farms. More excerpts from wedding announcements: "One of the highlights of the wedding was when Matt surprised his bride by playing 'Moonlight Sonata' before her father gave her away. He had secretly taken piano lessons for the occasion." "Peter proposed on his birthday in the woods at his family's cabin. In one of the hickory nuts they found on their walk, Peter had planted an engagement ring." [Come back here, you stinking squirrel!] "Dennis proposed at the site of their first meeting. He planted a note in a bottle on a moonlit lake." "They met when someone suggested that Chad help her buy a snowmobile. Their first date was snowmobiling, and when it was time to propose, Chad put roses on her snowmobile and tied an engagement ring to her key." Finally, a reader who used to live in Indiana points out that the Indiana Territory from which Wisconsin was ultimately split off itself was the remainder of the Northwest Territory after Ohio became a state. Moo, Dave * Ayrshire, Milky Shorthorn and Brown Swiss.