Wisconsin Journal

Number 28

4 June 1998



The end of April saw a visit from our friend Laura from Portland.

She had some business in Chicago, and took a detour up to Madison

for a couple of days.



We took her on one of our prowls on Wednesday. We tried a different

route up to Baraboo--turning off the highway at Sauk City, then

heading north throught the adjacent town, Prarie du Sac. The two

are collectively referred to as Sauk Prarie, but they really are

different cities, as evidenced by their separate water towers.

(One advantage of the relatively flat midwest is that you can always

figure out what side of the highway a town is on by looking for

its water tower. In Wisconin, at least, the towers always have the

town name.) We zigzagged back to the town of Lodi, which had a

row of brick and stone buildings downtown with dates like 1878 and

1885. A creek runs through the middle of town, and there is a small

walkway by it dedicated to Susie the Duck. You can buy corn out of

a vending machine there for 5 cents to feed Susie's descendents.

(The original Suzie nested on the banks of the creek about 50 years

ago.)



>From Lodi we caught a free ferry across the Wisconsin river at Merrimac

and intended to drive through Devil's Lake State Park from the south.

However, that route was closed for construction, so we drove around

and came into the park from the north. Laura noticed a sign about

no malt beverage or alcohol allowed in the park between 1 April and

22 May, which I think corresponds to fishing season. I guess the

Department of Natural Resources doesn't want the fishermen to get

the fish drunk and then take advantage of them.



Devil's Lake is nestled between two steep, rocky bluffs. Giant boulders

have tumbled down from the cliffs, and line the east and west shores.

The rock has a red cast (quartzite, I think), and in places you

can see the ripples of ancient lake bottom in it. The lake has no inlets

or outlets---it's fed by a spring and loses water through evaporation.

We ended up taking a hike along the west side that threaded its way

between the boulders. Rather than retrace our route back, we followed

a trail along the top of the bluff. Lots of steps up and lots of

steps down, but we had great views from the top. The neatest thing was

looking *down* on hawks soaring over the lake.



We continued into Baraboo for lunch at our favorite restaurant there,

which was started by someone from Marin county and features Mexican

and Carribean dishes. After a quick stroll around the square, we

drove through the Dells, so Laura could see the kitsch capital

of Wisconsin. Before heading home, we stopped at Kaye's favorite

Indian trading post, Parson's, and both families ended up a little

poorer.



Dinner that night was grilled brats and Blushing Rose wine from

Wollersheim Winery right here in Wisconsin. The next day Kaye took

Laura to look around Madison itself, and then she caught a bus

back to Chicago on Friday morning. Kaye headed off soon after to

a basketry workshop in Waukesha, which is between Milwuakee and

Oconomowoc. (How many cities do you know with five O's in their

names? The pronounciation is roughly uh-CON-uh-muh-walk, though

locals call it "Coney".)



While Kaye was away, I decided to take the kids to Discovery World,

which is a hands-on museum devoted to science, technology and

business. It's in the same building as the Milwaukee Public

Museum, where I've been before. However, because of some road

construction and closed exits, I managed to get several miles

up the coast of Lake Michigan before I was able to turn around and

make it back into downtown.



We spent quite a while looking at gears and hydraulic mechanisms.

Sarah got a visceral sense of gear ratios with one transmission

that gave her a mechanical advantage over Luke and me put together.

Sarah's favorite part was a surveillence camera mounted outside

the building that you can pan and zoom from inside. She spent about

15 minutes seeing if she could spot pedestrians who were picking

their noses. There was also some morphing software running where you

could make a digital photo of your face, then squish it all up,

and then play back the process as a movie. The next floor up

there was a small production line where you could die cut an

aluminum disc, roll it flat, drill it, and stamp it with designs,

to make a pendant. There is also an IMAX theater in the building,

and we saw the new film about one of the expeditions that ascended

Mt. Everest in the summer of 96. There was a short IMAX movie first

taken by a helicopter and a Harley Davidson sidecar swooping and

zipping through Milwaukee. It let me see by how far I'd missed downtown

by on the in.



We took a break from museuming to walk over to "Old World Third Street,"

which is near the river, and has lots of restaurants along it.

We ate in Mader's, a German restaurant that has been around since

1902. The food was much better, I thought, then the German restaurant

we tried here in Madison. The kids were interested in the photos

along one wall of famous people who had eaten there: Laurel and Hardy,

The Three Stooges, Van Halen, Ford, Reagen. The only distraction was

an opera playing over the sound system (Wagner?) that had one phrase

that occurs over and over and over again. Sarah got good at anticipating

it and having her eyes pre-rolled when it came up.



A couple weeks after Kaye returned, the family went to the Syttende

Mai celebration in Stoughton, which celebrates the signing of Norway's

constitution, and hence its independence. (Syttende Mai = May 17th in

Norwegian.) Lots of stores had examples of rosemaling in their windows.

Rosemaling is a style of floral painting on wooden bowls, platters,

chairs, et cetera, which almost died out in this country. Stoughton

was a center of resurgence for it, during the Depression. There was

a craft fair and some dancing demonstrations, along with some

food booths. We got to see the children's parade featuring

floats (mainly flat bed trucks) for both the Lutheran and Catholic

schools, the youth hockey league (on roller blades), the unicycle

club, a gynastics troup, the winners of the best troll mask contest,

a marching band, a stage band from the local high school,

and another truck with all the past Kings and Queens of the festival.

Their waves generally consisted of about a three-inch side-to-side

motion, confirming my impression that Norwegians don't like to move

much in public. My favorite was the "couch potato" float, for the

Stoughton Youth Center, featuring teens slouching in easy chairs and

sofas, with a TV in one corner. We finished up in the basement

of the library, eating big slices of homemade pie. Had my first

rhubarb of the season.



A couple other bits of Madison:



The Mifflin Street Block party, which got its start as a counterculture

celebration over 20 years ago, has apparently become a shell of

its former self. It degenerated into a small riot two years ago,

prompting the city to place 80 police there a year ago. This year there

were fewer police, but no live bands were allowed.



When Kaye and I were downtown for lunch, she took me through the

State Office Building, which she and Laura had seen the week before.

It's a lovely Art Deco building, with wonderful brass lighting poles

outside.



Also on the recommendation of Kaye and Laura, I went to see "Master Class,"

a play based on a series of master classes that soprano Maria Callas

taught at Julliard, some years after she left the stage. It was the

best thing I saw in Madison this year. It's not an easy play to cast,

as you need two operatic sopranos and an exceptionally handsome tenor

to play the students in the classes. The person in the Callas role

doesn't have to sing but a few bars, but has to carry a Greek accent

through the whole play, and relate in Callas's imperious persona

to the audience, as if they were the observers of the master classes.



--Dave