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:
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.
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.
