Cherubs on the staircase at the Library of Congress

There is some really, really cool architecture in Washington D.C. I wish I knew somebody who not only lived there but also knew the stories behind all the great buildings you can still see there.

Party Animals

Seen outside a pub in Washington D.C.

On the front lawn of Georgetown University

The graduating class of 2007 prepares to pick up their sheepskins.

As he steps up to the plate ...

Sean climbs the stairs to approach the stage where he'll receive his bachelor's of arts degree from Georgetown University.

Think he's at all happy about the prospect?

Appropriately choked up over the occasion, mother congratulates her oldest son.

Sean and Tim talk over the day's events

After the ceremony, we all met at a local restaurant for a celebratory meal and happy conversation.

Devoured!

It's only the second week in May and this creeper has all but taken over the porch of this Madison home! It's coming for your house next!

More detail from the mural on the old Mifflin Street Co-Op

I'm not usually too picky about things like this, but that kid's got at least six fingers on his or her left hand. Then again, maybe those aren't his hands. I thought maybe he was parting the canvas with his hands to peer into the beyond, but maybe not. Maybe he's got the worst case of cauliflower ears ever.

He built a crooked house ...

It's not as apparent in this photo (unless you click to expand it to full size) as it was from glancing at the house from across the street: This old house hasn't got many plumb lines left in it. I'd love to see the inside. I'll bet there isn't a single room with a square corner in it.

The Green Man says 'Hello!'

Detail from the mural on the wall of the former Mifflin St Co-op. In a row of sprouting seedlings, this one's got a face and reaches out to catch ... the sun? An unsuspecting victim? Could be a triffid, you can't tell.

RIP Mifflin St Co-Op

Detail from the mural painted on the wall of the building that used to be home to the Mifflin Street Co-Op.

Hey! I suffer from that, too!

Mural on the wall of Mother Fools coffee house

In commemoration of Mother's Day?

I wanted to snap a photo of it before it got covered up in that tangled block letter crap that passes for grafitti.

I love lilacs.

I was lucky enough to buy a house with a yard full of lilacs.

Not only that, but Barb, my neighbor to the north has lilacs planted all along the lot line. Jim, my neighbor to the south, has a couple smaller lilacs.

Right now, walking into my back yard is like walking into the perfume aisle at Penny's.

This is what happens when I don't mow as often as I should

Why is it so many home owners don't like dandelions? What's not to like about them? They have a beautiful, brilliant flower, they grow everywhere without a lot of fuss, and when they go to seed you get to make a wish. Say no to ChemLawn. Leave the dandilions alone.

The Lamp House

Walking along Mifflin Street during a sunny noon-time lunch hour, I caught a glimpse between two apartment buildings of this Prairie-style house designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. Poking around, I managed to find the alleyway that lead to the front of the house. It stands in a small lot in the middle of the block, sort of stashed away in a blind spot where it goes unnoticed from the street most of the time.

I've read about it a couple times in the paper, first when it changed hands, and again when its new owner was looking for renters.

"Despite the deferred maintenance, the house has the unmistakable flow and timelessness that characterizes Frank Lloyd Wright buildings. The Lamp House was ahead of its time with its open floor plan. Some of Wright's signature features are present: the flat roof, strong horizontal lines, a central fireplace in the living room with an inglenook off to one side, and Cherokee red trim on the exterior. Sunlight floods the house through the many leaded-glass windows." -- Chris Martell, Wisconsin State Journal

Going Up

Sited at the top of the ridge along West Wash, Capital West is taking a place of prominence on Madison's skyline.

I'm a sucker for construction sites, so I strolled up there to take a closer look at how construction has come along this week.

They've filled in that great big hole on the south side of the building with three levels of ... something. Underground parking? Retail space? Storage? I'd hate to live in an apartment down there, unless they're planning to level the hilltop to let a little more light in.

Exposed rebars at the Capital West construction site appear to roll like a surf. Almost seems a shame to cover them over with concrete.

Pavers

While taking some photos of houses in Madison, I looked down at the uneven ground I was tripping over and saw these bricks making up a back stoop. There was something written on the bricks underfoot, so I snapped this photo, pretty much as an afterthought, to look at later.

"Purington Block" the one on the left says, and "Marion Paver" on the right.

Google "Purington Block" and you'll find out more than you ever wanted to know about the history of Purington bricks, of Galesburg, Illinois. These guys made enough brick to pave streets from here to Panama City. Okay, not in a straight line, but they did pave streets here and in Panama City.

I remember walking up a Madison back alley that was still paved in bricks, but now I can't remember where it was.

Okay, random thought generator's gone into overdrive ... obviously time to stop.

This may be the weirdest pop machine in Madison. Naturally, it's on State Street. It's about the size of a filing cabinet. It's about the same color, too. I could've gotten a better picture of it if I'd felt safe getting closer, but this is obviously an extra-terrestrial device for stealing the life essence from earthlings, feebly disguised as a pop machine. A shot from the curb will have to do from this intrepid reporter.

Tree Hugger

Big Cheese

Coffee Cake

Early Bird

I was tempted to buy these, maybe for a fun lunch set, but I resolved never again to eat off plastic. Too bad.

Wondering Where The Lions Are

Man, he looks sad, doesn't he?

State Street Hodge Podge

Can you find yours truly? Look between Fontana's and the art museum.

Leafing Out

I love this first hint of spring, when the leaves unfurl.

When we moved into Our Humble O-Bode, the previous owner had stacked firewood alongside the deck in the back yard, where an opportunistic maple sapling had taken root. Over the summer it grew to be almost six feet tall.

There are precious few trees growing in our yard: A flowering crab, a few lilacs, a hawthorn. All decorative. No shade trees to speak of. The maple's base is practically under the deck. Its trunk grows up around the rail of the deck in a wicked dog-leg. I hate to discourage anything as determined as that.

I planned to dig it out and transplant it last fall, but getting under the deck to excavate a root ball turned out to be impossible, and I resigned myself to cutting it down. But not right away. In the spring, I told myself.

I couldn't cut it down this spring.

It's not bothering anybody. It's not undermining the foundations of the deck, or muscling aside the woodwork. When it does, I figure I can prune it back. If it ever overwhelms the deck or encroaches on the house, then I'll have to get out the axe, but it's not a problem now, and maybe in a year or two it'll be big enough to give us a little shade over the deck for a couple summers. So I let it grow.

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.

The Max Wahl apartment building is 75 years old this year. Old Max had a flair for a grand entrance, didn't he?

The cryptic notice "This Entrance" has been amended by some wag to read "This is France," which makes about as much sense as the original, now that I think about it.

After a magnificent dinner at Peppino's starting with crab cakes and ending in orange and pumpkin cake with coffee, I finally noticed the sprig of rosemary growing from a pot in the window. How did I miss that? As I got up from the table I pulled a single leaf and held it to my nose to savor the rich aroma. Wonderful.

Spring slattern of seasons
you have soggy legs
and a muddy petticoat
drowsy
is your hair your
eyes are sticky with
dream and you have a sloppy body from
being brought to bed of crocuses
when you sing in your whiskey voice
the grass rises on the head of the earth
and all the trees are put on edge

- e.e. cummings

On, Wisconsin! Come snow, or sleet, or gloom of winter storm ...

I'm sure by this time the whole 'snow in April' theme has been done to death by dozens of Wisconsin bloggers, but I took the pictures and I've been slogging through the stuff all day, so I'm going to post, dammit!

I'll do this guy next, just to get the statues out of the way.

I can never remember who this guy was, other than he died in the battle of Chickamunga, and he was Norwegian. My memory, scrabbling around for something to call him, comes up with Sven Chickamunga.

He's looked better.

The wind-driven snow flocked all the trees in capital square so they stood out from the background as if they were lit from within. This stand of trees along Pinckney were very nearly incandescent, even in the early morning gloom.

Some courageous soul dared to walk the narrow, snow-covered granite curb running the length of the sidewalk leading up to the capital and an hour of the day that I can hardly walk a straight line on level pavement. Bravo!

Grace Episcopal is a commanding presense on the square even on an overcast day, when it's cloaked in a muting blanket of snow.

Flocked bikes locked up to a rack at the top of State Street.

The top of State Street has always seemed like a cozy place to me, and especially so on this frozen morning when my destination is Michelangelo's coffee shop (the awning marked "coffe" to the right) for a piping hot beverage.

We're all hoping that, by this time tomorrow, the snow will be gone, and we can eat our acorns without having to dig through the white crap to find them.

Sneg.

That's the Russian word for "snow" and I like it a lot right now because it sounds sort of snot-like and messy.

I've of two minds on snow.

On the one hand, I like snow so much that I moved back here, the state where I grew up, because I missed the variations of the seasons, and snow was one of those variations. They have snow in other latitudes, but not like we have it here (except in northern Japan; they have a pretty darned good winter season there).

I love the silent snow fall at night, the thrilling mid-day flurry, the fearsome attack of a stinging gale-driven snow. I love the way wind makes it pillow up. I love heavy, wet snow that throws bare tree branches into sharp relief as it sticks to the wind-swept side.

When the temps stay well below zero, the snow remains a flowing, fluffy blanket, but after just a day of warmer temps, even in the lower thirties, it crusts over so that an adventuresome boy can walk across its frozen surface or, if the mood strikes, and it certainly will, he can stomp holes in it.

Just a foot of snow fall will lead adults to heap it up at the ends of driveways high enough for kids to dig labrynthine fortresses in it.

Snow's real purty, and it's lots of fun.

On the other hand ... this is freaking April! Enough already! I'm ready to stroll down the street in my shirt sleeves on my lunch break. No such luck today. One look at the slush-covered sidewalk and the runnels of melting snow in the streets and I went back to my cubicle to read.

Enough, thank you. Time for spring.

Oh, Ye Gods!

Look at the date. Look at the date! Does that say April? Of course it does! So what's with all this white crap?

The first guy who makes a "global warming" joke to me gets a roundhouse kick right in the nose.

Your car may be a piece of junk if:

- any part of it is held in place with bungee cords, baling wire, twine, duct tape, masking tape or any kind of tape

- any part of it is missing that would be obvious even to people who had never seen a car before

- it has been folded, spindled or mutilated (bonus points if the wheel scrapes against a bent fender)