A hardwood Daruma doll caught the evening light through the window of the front door.

First of all, how long have the 80's been "retro?" The 80's were just ... ah ... okay, they started twenty-seven years ago. But retro? Really? I mean, I know those eyes. That's Morten Harket looking up from a cartoon page in the video Take On Me by Norwegian boy band a-ha. I wasn't into them but I watched a lot of MTV and that one got a hell of a lot of air time.

Retro. Huh. Dammit. That's what happens when I'm not paying attention, I guess.

There's just too much violins on State Street these days ...

... Oh! Never mind

Handy

Scribed into the concrete on Carroll Street beside the Anchor bank parking lot.

I must have walked past these hands hundreds of times and never saw them before because the sun has to hit the pavement at just the right angle.

I think the Roman numerals are supposed to be the date: 9 - 29 - 8 1

I can't read the name below. Maybe "Nate?"

Knitty Gritty Mil-City?

It's some kind of knitted golden fabric, zip-tied to a ginko tree on MLK Boulevard. Does anybody know what this is about?

[ADDED 5-27-08: It turns out to be the calling card of whoever owns this MySpace Page. ]

From the corner of Broom and Main, the new Dane County Courthouse looks ... kinda scary. Almost like it's going to eat the houses across the street.

The skeletal remains of Sacred Heart Hospital as they sat baking in the August sun.

Developers picked it clean, intending to use the carcass as a frame on which to build another downtown condominium, but plans hit a bump and the design had to be jiggered a bit, so it sat like this for quite a few months.

There's a hole in front of it big enough hide a herd of elephants. It's a good thing we didn't get a lot of rain last fall.


Construction's coming right along now that they've got all the details ironed out.

If I've got my head around the concept, this is going to be the glass-faced tower of condos at 309 West Washington.

First the robins, then the kids

Robins aren't the most reliable measure of the coming of spring, you can take that as gold. I've seen robins scratching through six inches of snow, looking in vain for a stray bug or worm. They come back way too early.

But grade-school kids picnicking on the lawn of the capital — now, that's a sure-fire indication that spring has finally come. Gladdened the cockles of my heart to see them out there today.

The Vein in Dane

Some kind of creeper &mdash I'll have to check it again after it's leafed out to see if I can figure out what kind — has been encouraged to climb the spiral ramp to the parking lot at the Monona Terrace. With all its leaves temporarily shed, it looks like nothing so much as a network of veins or nerves stretching across the bare concrete. And made the foundations of the Terrace look creepily alive.