Fisher Building, Chicago

The terra cotta entrance arch to this building was almost completely obscured by the iron trusses supporting an el train.

A Wise Old Owl in Chicago

These gargoyles look down from each corner of the public library. They're as big as helicopters and appear almost as suddenly when you round a corner and find them glowering down at you.

Chicago Public Library on a rainy day

Chicago's got a library that makes me want to live there. In Chicago, not the library, although there appeared to be a few people living in there, come to that; Madison's not the only place where hobos sleep in the carrels.

Scenes from the Ancestral Manse VII: Home-Grown Art

My brother, the artist. He fired the famous Frank & Beans wall hanging at my mother's window, and he penned this gorgeous India-ink rendering of a heavily-veined leaf.

What does he draw these days, I wonder?

Scenes from the Ancestral Manse VI: Vinegar Man

I don't think it was just me. I think the leering eyes and psychotic grin of this guy would frequent the nightmares of any little kid who saw them.

Scenes from the Ancestral Manse V: Mom's Window

Mom has turned the window over the kitchen sink into a sort of altar with knick-knacks commemorating places she's been and people she knows.

Everyone who stops by enters the house through the breezeway, so they have to pass through the kitchen, and they all seem to stop at the altar to view the knick-knacks, trying to spot the new additions, or guess if any have gone or been demoted to another part of the house.

When a new knick-knack appears, visitors point and comment, try to guess what it is, or pick it up and marvel at it if they already know.

I don't think she'll mind too much if we take a closer look:

One of my distant relatives on my mother's side was a cobbler, and the little wooden form that looks like a shoe is one of the tools he used in his shop.

Our immediate family once owned a small-town newspaper and, when we bought it, we came into posession of a staggering amount of type. Most of it was the tiny lead type used in setting newsprint, but we also ended up with a few boxes of very large type cut from wood. Mom saved a few pieces and spelled her name.

I have no idea where the chicken or the rose came from or what they're about.



Say hello to Vinegar Man. Both he and the tiny wash tub both belonged to my mother's mother at one time. I think. I'm sure Vinegar Man did because his bug eyes and psycho smile scared the bejeezus out of me when I was little and made quite an impression on me. He usually sat on grandma's countertop, or maybe on her windowsill.

If my memory's not playing tricks on me and the little wash basket was grandma's too, I think it sat on the edge of the sink and she used it to hold brillo pads or soap bars or something like that. It also gave me the willies because it's got a bunch of eye-like things that stared down at me.

Grandma used to scare me all the time with eyes, now that I think about it. For my birthday she gave me one of those clocks with eyes that flicked back and forth as it went tick-tock. The damn thing gave me nightmares after just one or two days hanging over my bed, and had to be returned.

I still don't like to look at the wash basket, but Vinegar Man's like an old friend.

Scenes from the Ancestral Manse IV: Grandma Lana's Dresser

Many moons ago, my mother dragged this dresser into the front entrance of the apartment we rented in Marquette. She slapped gallons of gelatinous "Zip-Strip" on it, peeling away layer after layer of paint and varnish, until she found this: A hand-carved pattern that she hadn't even been aware of. After cleaning it up the rest of the piece, she re-varnished it and it's been in the front room of our house ever since.

I've long assumed that this chest was just something she picked up at a garage sale, but I found out during our visit that it belonged to her grandmother Lana.

Scenes from the Ancestral Manse III: Grandma's Platter

The signs of the zodiac were set into the inner brass ring of this platter. It previously hung on the wall over the big red wing chair in the front room of my grandmother's house, but now it greets visitors to the O-family Ancestral Manse.

(Our family's ancestral hearth would more properly be in Door County, but as my mother now lives in central Wisconsin and it's closer and easier to get to I look there for Old Home.)

Scenes from the Ancestral Manse II: Great-Granpa Melchoir's Fiddle

I've never heard this fiddle played; I don't think it could be. Several strings appear to be missing, but at one time one of my great-granpas was known far and wide as a fiddle player who could be counted upon to deliver memorable music at a wedding dance.

In those days musicians took their pay in kind. After one performance great-granpa made his way to the house where he was supposed to be put up for the night. Finding nobody awake he let himself in and, rather than disturb the occupants he removed his shoes and tiptoed upstairs through the dark, feeling his way along the hall until he found an unoccupied room upstairs.

The floor felt odd beneath his stocking feet but he was too tired and pleasantly drunk to care. Flopping into bed he slept soundly until the next morning when he made his way down the hall toward the kitchen ... to find his footprints now firmly set in the fresh lacquer on the floor.

To add another complication to the poor man's situation, a quick look around made him realize he was in the wrong house.

He slipped out the back door and down the road undetected, and so far as I know the people in the house never found out who slept in their extra bed or left his tracks in their hallway.

Scenes from the Ancestral Manse I: Dad's Accordion

For years I assumed this old Horner accordion, which previously sat on display in my grandmother's home, was nothing more than a decorative item until one day when my Dad picked it up and cranked out three or four old-time tavern polkas and waltzes. Before that, I hadn't been aware that he had a musical bone in his body. People surprise you when you least expect it, doubly so your parents.

Lucky Star

Grafitti sprayed over the memorial to Elizabeth Link.

Elizabeth Link and her husband, Karl, were both very active pacifists, if that isn't an oxymoron, during the height of the Cold War.

Karl was faculty advisor at the UW for the student group American Youth for Democracy, and Elizabeth worked for Women's International League for Peace.

The park is on State Street, about halfway between the capitol and the university.

Sticker Schlock

I went to see the movie The War Tapes in a theater with a temporary stage that suggested it was also a part-time venue for garage bands.

On the way out I noticed these two stickers slapped on the exposed concrete ceiling, much too far out of reach to be worth the trouble to remove.

All I could find on Things Fall Apart was that they say their music falls in the genres of Middle Eastern, Top 40 and Traditional Folk. I imagine the Beatles during their sitar phase.

The Selfish Gene plays "original music that combines a mixture of rock, folk & psychedelia to share stories of the individual, society and universe." Hippies. Far out.

Window of J.Taylor's on Carroll St

Taylor's window has been a jumble these past couple weeks.

Okay, it's always been a jumble, but lately more so than before.

Mr. Taylor has recently posted signs promising that the store is undergoing a re-design and will open next week.

Friday On State Street

Looking up State Street from the corner of the Overture Center.

I'm standing on the 200 block, as the sign indicates, but that's the 100 block we're looking at.

On the right, under the red awning, a store that used to sell games such as Magic but is now nothing more than a front for a pair of cash machines.

Further up this side of the street, a clothing store in the old coal company building, two or three restaurant/bars that seem to be quite popular come lunch time, and at the far end stands Teddywedger's in what is claimed to be the oldest building still standing on Capital Square.

Dem Bones

This guy's been sitting in the front window of the Children's Museum on State Street for months now. The top hat's a nice touch, don't you think?

Nottingham

Taking a walk along Langdon Street this noon I took a few snapshots of the student housing along the lake shore.

Most of it was depressingly boring, or looked as though it might once have been grand but had long since gone to seed.

This one appears to have aged rather well despite the apparent neglect of its inhabitants and/or owners.

Pah-Yook!

An example of the depressingly boring.

Their House Is A Museum

This one looks like a house straight out of a Charles Addams cartoon ... I expected to see Gomez and Morticia upending a cauldron of boiling oil from the parapet.

There's so much a guy with a truckload of money could do with a house like this. If only ...

Winner: Purplest

Quite an eye-catching paint job, no? Must've gotten a discount on a bulk purchase.

It was named "Rivendell."

Sign posted at the front of the Emma Goldman Co-Op reads, "If I can't dance, I don't want to be part of your revolution."