Wisconsin Journal Number 15 31 December 1997 Kaye and I had hoped to take another Wednesday trip earlier this month, but it was snowing when we got up, so we decided to do an architectural tour on foot, instead. About a half mile from us are three houses from the Prarie School. The first we saw was by Louis Sullivan. It was built in 1909 for Harold Bradley, though paid for by his father-in-law, Charles Crane, who made his fortune on plumbing fixtures. The house has wonderful cantilevered balconies front and back, whose supports are covered in scrollwork. The house now belongs to a fraternity. A fire in the 70s ruined much of the second story, but the house was restored, including many leaded windows that had been damaged before the fire. We then headed up a hill to see the Edward Elliott house, designed by George Maher in 1910. You might miss the house as anything special just walking by, but there are nice hollyhock windows by the front door, and an interesting treatment with horizontal battens on the second floor. They used to be painted the same color as the trim, but now are the same color as the walls, so they don't stand out as much. We continued up to the top of the hill to see the "Airplane House" by Frank Lloyd Wright, so called because of its cross-shaped plan. It used to have views of three lakes, but I think recent development has blocked some of the scenery. From there we gingerly picked our way downhill on unshoveled sidewalks, and made our way home. For Sarah's 13th birthday we took her up to Wisconsin Dells, to stay at a motel with an indoor water park. We found a great little cafe in Baraboo for lunch on the way up, walked around downtown The Dells until we could get into our room, and then took turns taking Sarah swimming. She got to go three times in all, and didn't seem ready to call it quits. There were a couple tube slides, which I didn't really care for. (The skin has just about grown back on my elbow.) But there was a water slide that you could go down in single and double innertubes, and I thought that was a lot of fun. The place we stayed is called the Blackwolf Lodge, and is kind of like Salishan Lodge on steroids. The whole exterior is logs, and the lobby rises three stories, with moose- and deer-antler chandeliers and stuffed animals everywhere. In spite of the decor, we learned that it is sold out on weekends until next March. Kaye went off to a Christmas Bazaar at the Ho Chunk (Winnebago) casino, and came back with a nice basket (surprise). One wonders if Indian casinos will mean the demise of basketmaking. Kaye talked to several vendors there, who pointed out that every person registered with the tribe gets $2200 in proceeds from the casino every three months. With 3-4 eligible people in a household, you could probably live just on the payout. Furthermore, if you want more money, working in the casino is likely a better hourly wage than weaving baskets. Kaye has heard over and over from weavers and dealers that there are fewer and fewer Ho Chunk basketmakers, and those who still know the craft are making fewer baskets. At least that's the story I get from Kaye to justify why we should stock up now. (Kaye points out that preparing the materials can take more time then making the basket itself. Pieces of ash need to be soaked and pounded to separate the growth rings, which then need to be split, thinned and smoothed to make the laths they weave with. Besides all the time involved, it's getting harder to find a good piece of ash.) We drove back off the main road, where we got to see lots of marshes and duck blinds, some with siding and glass windows. We finished off the weekend with a late lunch at Ella's Deli, which is a Madison institution. About half the tables had something *in* them. Ours had a model train running through a farm scene, and you could get it running by pushing a button near the table. We took turns going on scouting expeditions to see what was under the glass tops of other tables: a history of Pez dispensers, baseball cards & figures, a monopoly game, a ranch scene, old soda bottles, yo-yos, a doll house, and penny candy. Some were interactive--a marble maze you could control by knobs under the table and a giant "Wooly Willy": iron filings you could move around with magnets. The ceiling was equally busy, with comic characters in 3-D running back and forth on wires, animated tools and a ball race, like at OMSI. The sandwiches and ice cream were actually pretty good, though Sarah took the opportunity to gross out the rest of the family by ordering a scoop of "Blue Moon" ice cream. It had the bright blue color of toilet-bowl cleaner, but actually tasted like Froot Loops cereal. It's gotten a little iffy taking the back roads out to small towns in the area, because of snow and ice, so we've started on activities in town that we put off while the weather was still good. The second Saturday of December found us at Whadya Know?, the public radio program hosted by Michael Feldman that is produced in Madison. The broadcasts used to originate from a hall on campus, but moved to the new Monona Terrace Convention Center when that opened, thus begetting the doughnut wars. MF had been serving free coffee and doughnuts to his audience before the shows at the old venue, and wanted to continue to do so at the Terrace. However, the company that has the exclusive food concession at the Terrace said he was cutting into their business (even though they don't actually have any counters open on Saturday morning). They offered to supply refreshments to him, at something like a dollar a donoughts. He demurred and launched an on-air battle to get them to back down. The final resolution was that the concession company provides him free coffee and donoughtss (from the bakery where he originally got them) and in turn he gives free plugs for the convention center on his show. (Somehow two "frees" seems like a "quid pro quo" to me, but I've eaten the donuts and am now an unindicted co-conspirator.) The stage looks like it was furnished from a thrift shop. There are two orange benches that possibly came out of a Ho-Jo's diner booth, along with a Formica table of similar ilk. There is a palm tree, a pink flamingo, an inflatable cow, a sign showing the miles from Madison to Wall Drug and a cut-up map of the US that they use to figure out what small town to feature that week. Michael Feldman reminds me of Justin Ratner (those of you who know him)--high brow, sweaters, smile that turns down at the corners. Jeff Eccles, the bass player, looks like a hippy elf. He has an emotive face, but didn't say anything during the show. Jim, the announcer, is a tall gentleman who looks to be in his 60s or 70s. He sits stage left, and reads his copy off a music stand. It sounds like he's reading copy even when he's improvising. The piano player (can't remember his name) is the handsomest of the bunch, with dark black hair, streaked with gray, combed straight back. He's pretty low-key, but is sometimes heard to mutter on the show. Not a lot to tell that you can't discern from just listening to the show. MF goes through question cards from the audience during the musical numbers to decide which he's going to take. Also, the show appears to work partially in "call-out" mode. Some of the callers from the West Coast indicated that they had just gotten up in time to receive a call from the show. However, other callers had clearly heard earlier parts of the show. I raised my hand to play the quiz, but MF called on a guy in front of me, probably because he was wearing suspenders. This and that: - Leaf pick-up is an interesting ritual in Madison. You pile your leaves by the curb. Then one morning the gathering crew comes by. The low man on the totem pole rakes the leaves into the street. Then a pickup with a "leaf plow" blade on front pushes the leaves up a special ramp that's been mounted on the back of a garbage truck. Once several piles have been pushed onto the ramp, it pivots up and dumps the leaves into the back of the truck. At least that's the standard method. Walking to school earlier in the month I was a bit alarmed when the pusher truck followed me up onto the sidewalk, but it turns out he was just manuevering to push a pile of leaves from a front lawn into the street. - The big news during finals week was a python that showed up in someone's dorm closet, hanging from the top shelf about eye level. It had disappeared from another room earlier in the semester. (Fish are supposed to be the only kind of pet allowed in the dorms.) - A lot of bicyclists with death wishes around campus. Not uncommon to see someone with no helmet, dressed in dark clothes, riding at night with no lights. I saw someone go one better recently, riding with his hands in his pockets to keep them warm (& dark clothes, no helmet and no lights). - A group on campus (possibly related to Ten Fat Tigers) has been loosing "cricket bombs" in campus buildings. Hundreds of crickets, of the type you would buy to feed a pet reptile, have been released in stairwells around campus. Not real clear what point the perpetrators are trying to make. - We've seen some elaborate Christmas light displays driving around. One house had lights on virtually everything in the front yard, including the basketball hoop. There is another house down by Edgewood College with every window and wall outlined in white lights. Our favorite, however, is a 200-yard hedge on University Avenue that changes through all the colors of the rainbow from one end to the other. It looks like it had about 30 shades of bulbs in it, though when we got closer we saw that some bushes are actually done in combinations of two or three different colors, to give the appearance of intermediate shades. - It's so hard to get Packers tickets that locals were flying down to to Tampa to get tickets. There were nearly as many Packer fans as Buccaneer fans at that game. - You can buy summer sausage in the shape of a football at the Madison airport. Next week: Adventures in Santa Fe