Autumn leaves seen on my walk through the neighborhood this evening.

Opheum marquee poetry:

An autumn day in the country

A visit to Pleasant Hill Market Garden, a CSA farm just outside Stoughton, to pick up some pumpkins for pies and jack-o-lanterns.

Cirrus clouds hanging high over the farm fields.

Now there's something you don't see every day

A super-sized papier-mache mascot for the anti-tax rally last week on cap square.
I wonder if they plugged one parking meter or two?

The battleship Wisconsin, reduced to a size that's easy to display, at the Veteran's Museum on Mifflin Street in cap square. She plied the high seas with The Great White Fleet in the age of the dreadnaughts. That's the helmsman's wheel from the real thing off in the background.

A dive-bomber's-eye-view. The modeler put a lot of love into this one. Sadly, the artist's name isn't posted beside the model.

This version of Wisconsin, built to slightly larger specs, was launched on the anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack. She's a sister to the Might Mo.

Again, the modeling is exquisite. Rigging the antennae alone must have required hands as steady as stone.
Again from above. When all the guns were blazing to hold off an attack, it must have looked, sounded and smelled like the crack of doom vomiting hellfire at the sky.


Wisconsin's fantail. How many sailors did it take to swab that clean?


The full-sized Wisconsin is still afloat and maintained as a museum in Norfolk, Virginia.

The Philosophy of Beer Drinking, in t-shirt form (part II):

Because the beer fest was inside the tent (instead of around the outsides of the tents, as it was at the Great Taste of the Midwest), I had some trouble getting a clear shot in the low light.

This happy sampler's t-shirt reads, "fizzy yellow beer is for wussies."

This guy was in a hurry to meet somebody at the other end of the tent and I couldn't catch his attention to make him stop a moment, so I had to take several snapshots on the fly. The final word of this "Scottish proverb" is thirst.

Quivey's Grove beer fest ... the carefully posed photo:

And what we really looked like:
(blurred vision and all)

I tried to take a couple photos of our beer-guzzling group by holding the camera at arm's length and snapping away. A fellow taster, passing by, offered to take a proper shot of us. He did a great job (and thanks very much), but I can't help feeling that the bottom photo better captured the mood, the action and the fuzzy-headedness of the event.

The beer fest at Quivey's Grove is one big tent (as opposed to three big ones and several smaller ones at the Great Taste of the Midwest). The brewers set up on tables around the outer edge of the tent so you can circle it once around the inside to make sure you try everything, a pretty clever way to keep things simple for twenty-five hundred soon-to-be-drunken ticket holders.

I made it all the way around the tent this year and tried at least one beer from every vendor. I think Jim and Gabe may have tried every beer, but I haven't had a chance to confirm that. It's too early in the morning to risk waking them from what I'm sure is much-needed sleep.

Still My Favorite

Autumn is my favorite season. Spring is pretty good, too, especially after a harsh winter, but it's a long time until the excitement of the first green shoots pushing their way up through the frozen ground to seek the warmth of sunlight. The trees are a burst of sunset colors themselves right now, and the primal satisfaction of kicking through fallen leaves has stuck with me.

A Curmudgeonly Question:

Suzanne Vega has a voice as cool and soothing as a Tom Collins on a dog day in August, so why does the sound guy turn up the volume on the band's instruments until it's nearly impossible to hear her?

Undoubtedly her finest moment on stage at the Barrymore tonight was when her band faded from the stage, leaving her alone with a six-string to sing Gypsy. I liked all the songs she did tonight (except for the DNA remix of Tom's Diner; I've never gotten used to that), but I found myself most liking the songs that featured her voice more than her band.

Bike the Barns 2007

I volunteered to wash dishes at the Vermont Valley farm, the lunch stop on this year's Bike the Barns bicycle benefit. 350 cyclist signed up to ride 30 kilometers across the countryside west of Madison in support of CSAs, or community-supported agriculture ("local farmers" in other words). It's been a long, long time since I've washed that many dishes.

I pass this East Wilson Street building every morning on the way to work,
and every day I've wondered why there's a sign that says "toast" on the door.

I tried googling it, but all I could find were restaurants.

So I simply barged in yesterday and asked the guy behind the desk inside.
He said the sign is the logo of Square Toast, a computer system sales company.
When I apologized for interrupting with my stupid question,
they said they get quite a few people dropping in to ask.

And now we know.

The Marina's one of the newest condos in downtown Madison.
Hugely swank, just off the shore of Lake Monona,
an apartment there sells for gazillions.

I admit, it's got some Jetson-esque qualities I like...

... but overall, it's a box, and I don't like boxes.
I like the corrugated siding even less.

Once again, it's that tree:

Oddly, this is the only tree on our street to so gloriously burst into autumn colors.
Odd, because there are a lot of maples in our neighborhood.

The cathedral rectory of St. Raphael's has stood empty for as long as I've lived here
... since July '05, anyway.

The design is clearly meant to evoke a cathedral's wide apse flanked by narrow galleries.

The brassy screen across the front keeps the entrance shady and cool
without blocking out light.

I don't know what this architectural style is called,
but the American 1960's was lousy with clerestory windows and these plain, clean lines,
particularly public buildings and institutions like this.

Slender columns soar over the entrance.

A heap of rubble at the back door betrays
the rectory's either undergoing renovation
or not long for this world.

This crowd of about 100 students
marched up State Street to the steps of the capital
during the noon hour to protest the treatment of the Jena 6.

The Suhr Building's distinctive prow marks it as one of the city's "flatirons"
a term that gets overused. I like "wedgie" myself.

As unusual as its shape may be,
the old wedgies are getting lost in the growing skyline of our fair city.

Even with its sandstone flanks glowingly lit by the noonday sun,
the Suhr tends to shrink under the towering Tenney building.

But on her own, she still stands out as obviously very special.

As usual, it's the details that make all the difference.
This little sprout is shooting up from the cornice,
barely visible in the photo above.

It's that tree again ...

Click on the keyword "autum" below
to see the tree go from mostly green
to red & gold

When you think of Wisconsin cheese ...

... you should think of this house. Adolph Marschall built this house in 1912 for his family after he got his business, the Marschall Dairy Laboratory, up and running just six years before. Marschall was a Danish chemist whose business extracted and purified rennet, the stuff that curdles milk. An awful lot of rennet, as it turned out. He must have been pretty comfortably well-off by the time he commissioned Claude & Starck to design this Prairie-style mansion on Pinckney Street. I love the staggered roof out front and the set-back entrance to the right, behind the porch. The condition of the place is just a bit rough around the edges but still, considering the condition of other Madison landmarks, not bad at all. I'd move in tomorrow, if I had a million dollars. *sigh*

Java delivery bike

Stenciled on the sidewalk
along Jenifer Street