WisconsinNative

Susan Smith: Enjoy those leftovers!

2009-01-04T12:14:00.003-06:00

Originally published Nov. 28, 2008

By Susan Lampert Smith

Well, Thanksgiving 2008 is now in the refrigerator, in the form of leftovers, sandwiches and soups.

The picture above shows my husband, Matt, (aka the Turkey Guy), with Dale Marsden (aka the Honey Guy) at the Dane County Farmer's Market before Thanksgiving.

All our 200 turkeys made it to their destinations this year, some flying on airplanes, others taking the scenic route over the river and through the woods to grandmother's house. We figure we fed at least 2,000 people with our turkeys this season, and are thankful to our customers and to the turkeys themselves for giving themselves so deliciously to our feasts.

I've got a few scratches from the great turkey roundup of 2008. (Think "Apocalypse Now," with snow and turkeys flying at your forehead.) But it makes the Red Turkey Mole we'll be taking to Lambeau Field on Sunday all the tastier.

Hope your holiday was tasty and that it gives you the strength to get up and shop today. The economy needs you!

Susan Smith: Last Bash at Union South

2009-01-04T12:11:00.004-06:00

Originally published Nov. 20, 2008

By Susan Lampert Smith

Saturday's game against Cal Poly will mark the very last Badger Bash at Union South.

For more than 30 years, the Wisconsin Marching Band has charged up the fans during a pregame rally amid the bratwurst smoke of Wisconsin's other union.

The anonymous pile of gray concrete will come a tumbling down early next year, to make room for a new and improved student union serving the south end of campus. Not many will mourn its passing, but I will. Sure, it could never compete with the older Memorial Union, which has the Terrace, Lake Mendota, classic architecture, a Rathskellar and a venerable theater.

Union South has a bowling alley. And, did I mention, concrete?

Still, it holds a warmish spot in my heart, because I worked there as a student in the late 1970s, and met my husband and several of my lifelong friends while serving beer to the drunken Badger faithful.

Back then, we served so much beer on game days that we had a line of half-barrels, taps continually open, and just passed cups hand-to-hand beneath the taps until they were full. I remember standing, at times, in a beer lake that lapped at my ankles. Back then, both Unions held a February German Mardi Gras called Fasching. It mostly involved beer. A bus ran between the two Unions with a barrel on board, so no one would ever be far from beer. At Union South, Fasching included tossing cups of beer into the open atrium. Try that now, and you'd probably be arrested.

Union South was also the site of the worst grade I ever earned at the UW: A "C" in bowling. I still can't bowl worth a damn. Still, there were plenty of student memories made at Union South.
So stop by Saturday, and raise a last toast to the "other" Union.

Susan Smith: Gentlemen, Start Your Pumpkins!

2009-01-04T12:07:00.004-06:00

Originally published Sept. 30, 2008

By Susan Lampert Smith

It's that time of year when giant pumpkins race across Lake Mendota, all for the glory of winning the Cucurbita Regatta, an invention of UW-Madison horticulture professors Irwin Goldman and Jim Nienhuis.

The first event, held in 2005, was such a smashing success that a pier behind Memorial Union fell apart under the weight of the spectators. dropping them into the drink.

Most years, it's only the horticulture students, racing inside hollowed out Atlantic Giant pumpkins, who stay a chance of an icy dunk.

The pumpkins float atop tractor tire inner tubes. This year the race starts at noon Saturday Oct. 4, behind Memorial Union.

Susan Smith: I'm Majoring in Beer!

2009-01-04T12:04:00.002-06:00

Originally published Sept. 21, 2008

By Susan Lampert Smith

It makes so much sense I can't believe it took 160 years. But, finally, the University of Wisconsin-Madison will have a course in beermaking. Thanks to a gift from MillerCoors, the UW is launching its first ever beer-making class, as part of the department of bacteriology.

MillerCoors donated a pilot-sized brewery to the UW this past week, which will be used in a new class on "fermentation science."

The equipment is worth more than $100,000, and this past summer, bacteriology faculty associate Jon Roll and a lucky student named (only in Wisconsin) Brandy Day, got to go to Milwaukee and learn from MillerCoors' master brewmaker.

The gift is, in the university's words " the beginning of an ongoing relationship between members of the university'smicrobiology community and experts at the MillerCoors Milwaukee brewery."
Of course, UW students and beer have had a relationship much, much older.

For all the worry about binge drinking on campus, maybe teaching the science of good beer will lead to a more, um, sober appreciation of its attributes.

Susan Smith: A Birthday for Big Mac, another burger for Don

2009-01-04T12:01:00.002-06:00

Originally published Sept. 14, 2008

By Susan Lampert Smith

Is there something about junk food that brings out the obsessiveness? I only ask because, right in time for the 40th birthday of the Big Mac, word comes from our friends at the Fond du Lac Reporter that local resident Don Gorske has now eaten more than 23,000 Big Macs since he started gobbling them one a day in May 1972.

Now, I got a little sick of Don, or maybe sick from thinking about what his insides must look like, because my media pals would write about him at nearly every burger milestone. Frankly, I was waiting for his obituary, which would like show clogging of the ateries as a cause.

But now, finally, comes the reason he has not only eaten a burger a day, but also saved every burger receipt in a box. Gorske told the newspaper he has obsessive complusive disorder, and that his addiction springs as much from a love of counting things as a desire for greasy burger. He keeps all his receipts, too. Apparently, those numbers on the sign that track how many burgers McDonald's has served inspired him to count his own consumption.

Now, I could make fun of this except for this: Two-all-beef-patties-special-sauce-lettuce-cheese-pickles-onions-on-a-sesame-seed-bun.

What's that? It's a McDonald's Big Mac jingle from the 1970s, and it's still stuck in my head. Back then, if you went to a McDonald's, and could recite the ingredient jingle, you got a free Big Mac. I did it. And it was so long ago that there wasn't even a McDonald's in Fort Atkinson -- Imagine, a town too small for McDonald's! -- so we had to travel to Whitewater to sing the song and get the free burger. The weird thing is that I haven't had more than a few Big Macs in my life, and none in the last decade, yet the jingle will likely be with me until death.

So look down on Don Gorske and his burger madness, if you like, but remember that there's probably a crazed Hamburglar hiding out in every one of us.

Susan Smith: U-Rah-Rah Wisconsin Life Sciences Communications

2009-01-04T11:59:00.002-06:00

Originally published Sept. 6, 2008

By Susan Lampert Smith

On a great day for Badger football, let's pause to give thanks to the department that educates so many of our athletes. Yes, I'm talking about my home department, formerly known as Ag Journalism and now, Life Sciences Communications.

If you were at the game, you saw many of our students. In the writing class I teach, I've had quarterback Allan Evridge, fullback and co-captain Chris Pressley, co-captain and All-Big Ten lineman Kraig Urbik, as well as cornerback Alan Langford, and a host of others. I've had a lot of band members, too, including current trumpet rank leader Sara Schoenborn.

But why so many athletes? One theory is that it started when professor (and popular Wisconsin Public Radio host) Larry Meiller was on the athletic board, and the coaches started sending their players to him for guidance. Over the years, I've had students who are now in the NBA and NFL, as well as many more working for agricultural businesses around the country.

Life Sciences Communications is also celebrating its 100th anniversary this weekend. It began in Hiram Smith Hall as the department of agricultural journalism, but changes its name in recent years to reflect the growing influence of the life sciences (such as genetics and biochemistry) in the college. This year, the department moved from its long-time home on Henry Mall to the newly renovated HIram Smith (which still retains vestiges of its years as the cheesemaking school).

Some prominent Life Sciences Communications graduates include Abdul Khan, assistant director general for communication at UNESCO, and Dennis Dimick, executive editor of National Geographic. And, of course, your humble blogger.

Susan Smith: Stephen Colbert on the Union Terrace! (Kind of)

2009-01-04T11:56:00.003-06:00

Originally published Aug. 10, 2008

By Susan Lampert Smith

Everyone shows up on the Memorial Union Terrace on a fine Friday afternoon.

It was a little too early for Mayor Dave Cieslewicz's weekly field trip, but comedian and political commentator Stephen Colbert made an appearance.

OK, just by phone. But still it was cool.

Your Wisconsin Native columnist was lunching with Newsweek senior editor (and frequent "Countdown with Keith Olbermann" guest) Jonathan Alter, his wife, Emily Lazar, and their two younger kids. They were in town because their son is looking at Wisconsin as a college choice.
And, of course, yours truly is an expert on all things UW, from the Statue of Liberty on the ice days of the 1970s up to and including the Halloween celebration and the current price for UW football tickets on eBay.

Anyway, Emily is, as her husband says, "a fake journalist,'' and her boss, Stephen Colbert gave her a ring because he wanted husband Jon Alter to give him a phone number for Rahm Emaunel.
Turns out that Colbert wanted to warn the Chicago congressman and Dem party mover that he'll be tweaking the Dems and their convention on Monday's show.

The word will be "Catharsis." You heard it here first. See, you don't ever have to leave the terrace. The world will come to you!

Susan Smith: Cool Wisconsin Tattoo

2009-01-04T11:54:00.003-06:00

Originally published Aug. 2, 2008

By Susan Lampert Smith

Can you top this as a Wisconsin tattoo?

We found it on the calf of Jessie Harlequinn, a Madison fiber artist. It shows the state as a fabric patch, its borders “stitched” to her leg. The star shows Madison, where she lives now, and the heart represents her hometown of Milwaukee.

“It’s a heart because home is where my heart is.”

In addition to her art work, Harlequinn is training this summer to try out for the Mad Rollin Dolls roller derby league.

Susan Smith: Save Brett Brigade Rolls Into Madison

2009-01-04T11:50:00.002-06:00

Originally published July 22, 2008

By Susan Lampert Smith

It’s not the Wells Fargo Wagon coming into town, more the Brett Favre-Go! Wagon.
And, suspiciously, it had Illinois plates.

Ignore that detail, says Tony Mars, founder of SaveBrett.Net. He and his buddy Adam Chartier grew up Packer fans in the twin cities of Marinette and Menominee. And they bleed Green and Gold.

Mars graduated from UW-Madison, but has moved his tech business to Chicago, hence the Land of Lincoln plates.

The two Packer fans started their Save Brett tour in Escanaba, Mich, on July 15, and made it as far as Madison six days later, having collected 4,500 “Save Brett” signatures.

Mars and his entourage wore number 4 jerseys as they collected signatures on the Capitol Square. Mars says Packer fans shouldn’t be deterred by Favre’s on-again, off-again desire to play.

“He’s a regular guy, he doesn’t have 10 people to comb his hair before his press conference,’’ Mars said. “What we get is his honesty. When he’s burnt out at the end of the season, and says he doesn’t want to play, we get that. We get his honesty. It’s his greatest fault.”

The “Save Brett Tour Bus” plans to finish up hitting Milwaukee, and Chicago, where Mars assures us there are plenty of Packer fans.

Letting Favre leave Green Bay could put a curse on the Packers practically forever.

“If Babe Ruth had wanted to come back to the Yankees after he retired, do you think they would have told him he had to sit on the bench?’’ Mars said, direly recalling the “Curse of the Bambino,’’ the pennant-less decades that befell Boston after the Red Sox traded Ruth to the Yankees.

Susan Smith: Princeton Flea Market -- "ho-made" treats and the kitchen sink

2009-01-04T11:48:00.001-06:00

Originally published July 19, 2008

By Susan Lampert Smith

PRINCETON – The only way to truly attack a day at the Princeton Flea Market is on a full stomach.

And what better breakfast than a “breakfast egg roll,’’ a deep fried concoction stuffed with eggs, cheese, sausage and hash browns? I’m pretty sure they don’t have them in China, but they do at the “Ho-Made Egg Roll” trailer located at the corner of Fulton and Wisconsin, on the edge of Princeton’s venerable flea market.

I hadn’t been to the market in years, but last semester, I got a jones to go again after I had Brittany Bowling as a student in my writing class at the UW-Madison Department of Life Sciences Communications. Brittany is a Princeton native, and we got to talking about the market, a Green Lake County tradition for more than 30 years.

Brittany alerted me to the “Ho-Made” egg rolls, and since my kids and I have a running joke about all the items made by alleged “ho” s, (Ho-made pizza, ho-made bread, etc.) I just had to see them for myself. Hey, somebody’s got to keep those hos off the street.

Thus fortified, we attacked the market, located in Princeton’s vintage “City Park,’’ which has an old metal archway and a central pavilion. The teens ditched me, headed for jewelry, both old and new, and dresses from India.

I, as usual, was taken in by the used books. I had a nice half hour browsing, but only bought one: a 30-year old hospital auxiliary cookbook from the late ‘70s, when foods such as molded seafood salad and “peas orientale” with French-fried onion rings were all the rage. It was worth $3 to get the recipe for a liqueur made from Italian prune plums.

The Princeton market’s 180 vendors offer everything from kohlrabi to cone flower plants.

There’s even a kitchen sink, or two.

Frank Gwidt of Wautoma was selling old galvanized wash tubs, along with jams made by the Amish, antiques, and a rake-like device he described as a “horse do-do picker upper.”
He also had some of the market’s most unusual home made crafts: old pitchforks, their handles covered by birch bark, topped with cute bird houses. I whipped out my camera, and Frank asked whether I was planning to copy them at home.

Don’t worry, I told him. I’d have to be imprisoned in Taycheedah and struck by lightning to have the time or talent to make such a thing.

When we tired of pawing through the old stuff – “Hey, look, Bicentennial Log Cabin (fake) maple syrup bottles!” – we headed to downtown Princeton for some more upscale shopping.

If the flea market is low brow, the stores along the main drag make up for it by catering to the lake house crowd from Green Lake and other nearby resorts. At Henry’s, you can buy greeting cards featuring New Yorker cartoons and Lillet, the French aperitif.

Next door at Twister, there are fancy sandals and fancier kitchen wares. At the store’s center, if you’ve worn off the ho-made egg rolls, you can pick up Viennese pastries, Madelines, cardamom tea cookies, and other lovely bakery made by the European Renard’s Bake Shop.

Princeton’s littlest store, the shoe-box sized pottery shop called “A Hairy Potter,’’ has a funny name and little bowls for just $3 each. Perfect for keeping your new old jewelry from the flea market.

Susan Smith: Worst Puppy Ever

2009-01-04T11:44:00.001-06:00

Originally published July 8, 2008

By Susan Lampert Smith

I am pretty confident I have the worst puppy ever. Sure, they can wreak all sorts of havoc . But how many dogs do you know that have totaled an extended cab F150 Ford Pickup?

I should have known better, letting the nearly grown kids talk me into a black and tan hound puppy?

I had sworn off hounds forever. Oh, sure, they’re cute, and smart. Years ago, we had beagles. They were totally entertaining, and completely bad.

They killed the neighbors’ chickens, chasing them around the pen like a doggie version of a video game. They pulled the other neighbors’ steaks right off the grill and ran with them. Didn’t we tie them up? Sure, we tied them to a picnic table. They dragged it across the yard, bursting the blood vessels in their eyes in their determination to escape.

They ate an entire tub of Crisco, and threw it up all over the house. They would run for days, and either come home or wind up in dog jail. And they met bad ends: one dead on the highway, the other one shot.

And for years after that, we had a series of good dogs. Shepard and lab mixes, mostly, who were content to hang around the farm, being happy just to be with you.

And then, my beloved senior dog died, and the kids convinced me to “just go look” at puppies. We found Buster at a family-run animal rescue near Richland Center, a place like Dr. Doolittle, with hens and geese, and horses and mules. He had big brown eyes, and giant paws.

“Congratulations,’’ said Doc Williams, our veterinarian. “You’ve got six pounds of puppy and one pound of worms.”

As soon as the worms were cured, the sweet sleepy puppy turned into a holy terror. He shredded shoes, he paraded through the hours with the toilet brush, he personally beheaded the entire spring’s crop of tulips. And he won’t stay home on the porch with the senior dogs.

When he was 8 weeks old, we returned to find him in a cage on the front porch, with a note that read “Is this your puppy?”

So, when my husband leaves, he takes Buster along for a ride in the truck. The other day, they were delivering strawberries to the local grocery store. Buster apparently didn’t like being left in the truck cab anymore than he likes being stuck at home. When Matt came outside with the cart to load the flats of berries, he saw the truck beginning to roll. Buster apparently thrashed around enough to knock the shifter out of gear. Matt ran to the truck to open the door, and Buster jumped up on the window, smashing down the door lock.

The truck began to accelerate down the hill behind the store. My husband ran faster, but lost his balance. Thankfully, he was not run over as the truck careened down the hill, across the street and smashed into a big box elder tree.

The truck is totaled. Buster seems fine after his wild ride.

If you can top that bad puppy story, I’ll give you a bag of puppy chow. (And Buster, too.)

Susan Smith: Black Rooster Must Die

2009-01-04T11:42:00.002-06:00

Originally published July 8, 2008

By Susan Lampert Smith

The black rooster is the devil. He waits until your back is turned, bending over to scoop up the feed from the barrels, then he attacks. Today he drew blood, jabbing me in the foot because I was stupidly wearing flip flops in the chicken yard.

The creepy thing is that once he engages, he won’t quit. I threw the lid of the feed bin at him, then the compost bucket (chickens love their vegetables) but he just kept coming. I ran out of the yard without the eggs, slamming the fence door with Black Rooster just inches away. He glared malevolently through the fence..

Not all roosters are mean. For years, the king of our chicken yard was a Buff Orphington rooster named Big Red. He was helped on his patrols by Dewey, the second in command. The butterscotch-colored Buffs are probably the nicest chickens in the world. The hens make sweet cooing and clucking sounds when you lift then up for their eggs. And they make great mother hens.

Big Red lived to be about seven, dying of old age. And Dewey lasted only a few weeks after that (proving he really was a number two), pulled through the fence by a coon.

After that, we had Elvis, a noisy, pretty red Leghorn. He had a moment of fame in 2007, starring in a wedding at L’Etoile, Madison’s premier restaurant. The chef, Tory Miller, is Korean American, and there’s a Korean tradition about having a rooster and hen present at the wedding. (Sorry, the hens look alike and thus don’t have names.) Elvis and his anonymous hen spent the wedding night at the Mansion Hill Inn. Wonder how the other guests felt about his 4 a.m. aria?

Sadly, Elvis died in the great possum attack of February 2008.

We got Black Rooster that spring in a mixed batch from the neighbors. He’s small, and not at all pretty. Judging by the photos in the Murray McMurray catalog, he might be a an Ancona, an old Italian breed. Says the catalog, their “active temperament make them a good bird to raise where hawks, owls, and animal predators are a problem . . .they are very quick and alert.”

So he’d probably last longer than the better tempered birds against the possums. But pecking the ankles attached to the hand that feeds you is not an adaptive trait.

Black Rooster will get to test his mettle against another Italian American, Rosella. She’s a grandmotherly farm lady who works for us, and she’s not afraid of Black Rooster. “I’ll fix his wagon,’’ she promised.

Postscript: She did. Black Rooster is now in Rosella’s freezer, awaiting his next appearance on the platter.

Susan Smith: Madison’s Maurie’s makes best caramel apples this side of heaven

2009-01-04T11:34:00.002-06:00

Originally published Nov. 2, 2008

By Susan Lampert Smith

One pre-Badger game tradition has nothing to do with the three Bs: bratwurst, beer and the band.

This one is all about the apples. And, for those in the know, there’s nothing better.

Each autumn, Maurie’s Fine Chocolates on Monroe Street, about two blocks from Camp Randall Stadium, puts away the chocolate-making equipment for a day or two to conjure up the best caramel apples this side of heaven. Store owner Cher Diamond only makes them a few times a year, so those who love them call ahead to reserve their apples or get there early.

The day of the Penn State game, Mike and Deb Bilzing, of Madison, got to the shop about six hours before kickoff to claim four apples. “We covet these apples,’’ Deb Bilzing says. “My husband is obsessed with them. We have friends who drive all the way from Green Bay to get them.”

What makes them so good? The apples are really good, as big as grapefruit and with a winey flavor that cuts the sweetness of the caramel. Owner Cher Diamond only uses Washington State Golden Delicious apples.

“They have the perfect flavor profile, texture and palette to match with the caramel,’’ she says.

The nuts are freshly roasted, lightly salted pecans. But mostly, it’s the caramel, which Diamond cooks in a big copper kettle according to a recipe given to her by her father, the store’s namesake. The recipe goes back to 1935, when he made them in his shop in central Illinois. But forget about the details.

“It’s a secret,’’ she says of the recipe. “If I told you, it wouldn’t be a secret anymore. A secret is something known to one person.”

OK, but it’s no secret that making them is a lot of work. Plus, the bubbling caramel creates humidity in the kitchen, which is bad for chocolate making. Diamond made the apples for two home games in October. She might make them again for the Minnesota game on Nov. 15, but only if she can get the right apples. There’s no way she’d substitute a Granny Smith apple, which she says is too hard and tart.

These caramel apples ain’t cheap. They’re $8 for plain caramel and $10 for the ones dipped in nuts and chocolate. But Diamond says you pay for quality.

“There’s over a half a pound of caramel, nuts and chocolate on an apple,’’ she says.

They’re so big, you could share one apple between two people. Maybe.

“Sure, you could share,’’ advises Mike Bilzing. “But you won’t want to.”

IF YOU GO

Maurie’s Fine Chocolates is at 1637 Monroe St. in Madison. Phone: (608) 255-9092

PHOTO INFORMATION: Just ask Rachelle: Maurie’s game-day caramel apples are just the right combination of a Golden Delicious apple coated in rich caramel and fresh-roasted pecans./PHOTO by Brent Nicastro

Susan Smith: Historic Wonewoc camp provides inspiration for new novel

2009-01-04T11:28:00.003-06:00

Originally published Oct. 19, 2008

By Susan Lampert Smith

Who knew Wisconsin was so in tune with the spirits of the dead?

Spring Green author Sara Rath dug into Wisconsin’s long history with spiritualists for her latest novel, “Night Sisters.’’

The book opens and closes at fictional Wocanaga Spiritualist Camp, which Rath says is modeled on a real Western Wisconsin camp. The camp, known to locals as “Spook Hill,’’ is on a steep bluff high above Wonewoc in Juneau County and has been a gathering place for mediums and those who hope to communicate with the dead for more than a century.

Its aging cabins and dance hall evoke the 19th century, when spiritualists ran the Morris Pratt Institute in Whitewater and the Ceresco utopian community at Ripon. Rath also did research for the book by taking a class in mediumship at the Lily Dale Assembly, a New York spiritualist camp that traces its history to 1879.

“There’s an aura about these places,’’ Rath says, “maybe because they’re a relic of that era, and so unpretentious.”

“Night Sisters,’’ is Rath’s second novel, after many years as a poet and a writer of non-fiction books. It weaves a story beginning in a central Wisconsin town in the 1960s, to events that occur in a fictional Madison of today.

The book has touches of Wisconsin only a native would notice: the neighbor’s bowling ball rosary, the Packers ticket raffle and the old boyfriend who turns into a Harley rider as part of his mid-life passage.

The book’s protagonist, Nell, sounds a lot like Rath: She’s a Wisconsin writer assigned to do a story about spiritualism, and got hooked. Rath says that was her first thought when she visited Lily Dale, but the spiritualists encouraged her to participate, rather than sit back and watch.

In fact, much of the book has a basis in Rath’s real life. She grew up in Manawa, which sounds a lot like the fictional Little Wolf, lived for a time in Madison’s University Heights neighborhood, and even has a ring engraved with The Lord’s Prayer, an object important to the plot.

Rath says fiction writing evolves weaving the true with the false, a skill she teaches in her writing seminars.

“I teach them how to lie effectively, how to make up beautiful lies,’’ she says.

But although Rath didn’t reach the point of channeling dead spirits while at Lily Dale, she isn’t as skeptical about spiritualism as she was when she started out.

“I have great respect,’’ she says. “I do think there are mediums who have great skills.”

As she’s been traveling around the state promoting her book, Rath says she’s surprised at the number of people who confide they’ve been to Spook Hill, to hear their futures, and messages from spirits of the past.

“Wisconsin is a very practical place; we don’t get emotional about much besides the Packers,” Rath says. “Maybe places like Wonewoc tap into the dreamer in all of us.’’

IF YOU GO

The Wonewoc Spiritualist Camp, just off Hwy. 33 in Juneau County, will celebrate its 108th season in 2009, officially running from June 1 to Aug. 29. For details, see the web site – http://www.campwonewoc.com/.

PHOTO INFORMATION: The Wonewoc Spiritualist Camp traces its history to 1874 and annually attracts people seeking answers, serenity and peace. This photo shows a church gathering in 1963./PHOTO courtesy of Western Wisconsin Camp Association

Susan Smith: Paging Dr. Toga, Toga, Toga for UW Homecoming reunion

2009-01-04T11:22:00.002-06:00

Originally published Oct. 12, 2008

By Susan Lampert Smith

Chicago area radiologist Dr. Barry Lessin dresses in scrubs, not bed sheets, when he sees patients at Elmhurst Memorial Healthcare.

But to his UW-Madison classmates, he’ll always be “Dr. Toga.”

He’s coming back to campus the last week of October for Homecoming, which also coincides with the 25th reunion of his medical school class and is 30 years after the inaugural campus toga party.

Inspired by the summer hit movie “National Lampoon’s Animal House,’’ students held dozens of toga parties on campuses in the fall of 1978. But none was larger than the one in Lot 60 along the southern shore of Lake Mendota.

And Lessin had a lot to do with that.

Lessin, a Milwaukee native, was an undergraduate at UW-Madison in the fall of 1978, and helped the prank-pulling Pail and Shovel party win election. The year marked a generational divide on the campus, which was scarred after years of anti-Vietnam War protests. Pail and Shovel launched an era when students were more party animals than political animals.

Pail and Shovel pledged to turn student fees into pennies, and give every student a pail and a shovel to help themselves.

Once elected, they spent money as fast as they could, on such things as a giant Statue of Liberty head embedded in the ice of Lake Mendota (an homage to the final scene of “Planet of the Apes”), a Little Feat concert and hundreds and hundreds of pink plastic flamingos, which greeted students on the first day of classes in 1979.

But one of the first stunts was the Toga Party. Lessin said he and his Sigma Alpha Mu brothers approached the zany student leaders, who gleefully approved it. Dean of Students Paul Ginsberg wasn’t so sure.

“I went to the Dean of Students, and asked, ‘Why not?’ ’’ Lessin recalled. “They were so fearful and distrusting of students then.”

But the dean eventually agreed, and even came to the party. And so did an estimated 10,000 to 13,000 students, all dressed in their bed sheets.

“It was huge,’’ Lessin said. “No one expected a crowd like that.”

In the coming months, Lessin would emcee the Pail and Shovel stages at the big Halloween party, at the Mifflinland on the Mall party (a year the Mifflin Street Block Party moved temporarily to campus) and at subsequent toga parties. At the last toga party, in 1983, he had returned from his radiology residency in Hawaii with yards of tropical fabric for togas.

“I was billed as ‘Dr. Toga from Hawaii,’ “ said Lessin, who still uses “Dr.Toga” in his email address.

For Homecoming, Lessin has hired Count Bop and the Headliners to entertain his medical school class of 1983; the band is a revival of a popular 1970s band, Dr. Bop and the Headliners.

He says his class has always been “smart, fun and full of life.” But with the 25th reunion and the 30th birthday of the toga party, he has to admit they aren’t wild and crazy youngsters anymore.

“We used to laugh at the old alumni coming back to campus,’’ he says. “Now, we are them. Or, they are us!”

PHOTO INFORMATION: More than 10,000 students and others gathered in Lot 60 at UW-Madison for a Toga Party in 1978./PHOTO courtesy UW-Madison Archives

Susan Smith: North Woods ricing ‘not for the weak of heart’

2009-01-04T11:18:00.002-06:00

Originally published Sept. 28, 2008

By Susan Lampert Smith

HAYWARD – For those of us who buy wild rice in the store, Chris Smith has nothing but pity.

Pity, and a few choice words.

“It’s hybrid crap,’’ she said. “It’s not even real wild rice. It’s wild rice crossed with brown rice, then treated to look wild.”

Wild rice, called Mahnoomin by the Ojibwe, and celebrated this month during the Wild Rice Moon, is another thing entirely.

“It’s a treat, and a good staple,’’ she said. A true grass, not a cereal crop, it grows in lakes across northern Minnesota and Wisconsin, both of which have regulated wild rice gathering seasons.

To get the real thing, you have to do what hundreds of Wisconsinites do every September -- take to the shallow waters of the Northern lakes and rivers.

The 2008 wild rice season is winding up, and it has been a decent one.

“It’s not a real top-notch year, but it’s better than last year, which was the fifth year of a five-year drought,’’ Smith said.

Smith and Paul Vallem run The Rice Shack on Highway 63 just north of Hayward, where the region’s ricers bring their prize to be parched and threshed.

Vallem and Smith grew up ricing, and inherited the Rice Shack business from their fathers, along with a love of this special season in the north.

“Most of the people we deal with grew up ricing and learned it from their parents,’’ she said. “It’s not just the Native Americans who go ricing, it’s anyone.”

Sam Thayer, who runs The Forager’s Harvest in Ogema, teaches beginners to rice, but he said it is not for everyone. “If people aren’t used to physical labor, it can be very hard for them,’’ he said.

Anyone can buy a ricing license from the state Department of Natural Resources for $8.25. Thayer estimates the DNR sells about 500 licenses a year, and the tribes issue another 300 to their members.

It takes a canoe and two people: one to stand and pole the canoe through the rice, and the other to sit in front with two sticks called knockers, and whack the ripe grains, which fall into the bottom of the canoe.

Ricing takes some skill – most beginners will wind up in the water – and some fortitude.

“This is not for the weak of heart,’’ Smith said. “If you don’t like bugs and spiders and worms, don’t pick rice.”

To remove the bugs, hulls and moisture that will spoil the rice, the Rice Shack crew first parches or dries the rice in a 50-gallon cement mixer that rotates over heat, then threshes it in a second machine. The Rice Shack charges $1.75 a pound for its services, and will trade for rice. But most people keep their hard-won treasure.

“You have to pick twice as much as you want, because you only get half the weight back after it’s threshed,’’ Smith said. For her, about 40 pounds will last until next year’s rice season.

PHOTO INFORMATION: Chris Smith (front) and Paul Vallem check wild rice after threshing. If they find more than one husk in a handful of rice, they continue threshing for another minute and check again./PHOTO by Dennis Harnden

Susan Smith: Pioneer Store remains the heart of Ellison

2009-01-04T11:10:00.004-06:00

Originally published Sept. 14, 2008

By Susan Lampert Smith

ELLISON BAY -- Ah, we’re such tourists.

We go away for a year, or a decade, and we expect nothing about our favorite place should change.

I want the Wampum Shop in Mercer to still have the same rubber tomahawk my parents wouldn’t buy for me when I was a kid. (A decision that likely saved my brother’s scalp).

I expect whitefish livers on the menu at Greunke’s in Bayfield. (Even though I’d never order them.)

So it was with horror that I, and many other tourists, learned about the July 2006 destruction of the Pioneer Store in Ellison Bay. The store blew up in an early morning gas explosion. The blast knocked store owner Carol Newman out of her bed upstairs, and she had to escape by climbing out a window.

It seems a building project had cut an underground gas line, and gas leaked until it exploded in the middle of the night, killing two people staying in a nearby cabin.

It also cost a community a beloved landmark. The store had served the far Northern Door since 1900, as a post office and a store.

As local writer Myles Dannhausen Jr. wrote: “Many feared a part of Door County’s soul was lost forever . . . so entwined was it in Ellison Bay lore that many speculated the town would die without it, as if the town’s heart had been cut out.”

Newman, a part of Door County life for more than half a century, and her husband Lester didn’t let that happen. The new store reopened about a year after the blast.

On the outside, it greatly resembles the dearly departed Pioneer Store. Inside, it’s too new to be the same. I miss the narrow aisles, the rolling floor boards and banana bunches hanging from the post near the wood stove.

Newman says what regular customers miss most is the old stool on the customer side of the counter. “Everyone sat on it,’’ she recalled, “the customers, the salesmen when they were making a call. I even would sit on it at night when I did the books.”

She’s still got the base of the stool; the seat, which blew across the street, disappeared during the clean up.

Everyone in town, it seems, helped decorate the new place. They’ve donated antique tins, dishes and appliances for shelves above the new counter.

It doesn’t look exactly the same, but it still has the same feeling. “It still has the charm of the old store because the customers are all happy and chatting with each other when they stand in line,’’ she said.

And there’s a secret behind that. Newman says, “It’s because we keep the air conditioning up high, so people are happy instead of irritable and hot.”

But I think it’s because we’re happy an old, beloved tradition – for tourists and townies alike – has survived against all odds.

PHOTO INFORMATION: On the outside, the Pioneer Store looks much like the original, destroyed by an explosion in 2006./PHOTO by Susan Lampert Smith

Susan Smith: Start school year right with trip to Appleton’s Jansport outlet

2009-01-04T11:05:00.003-06:00

Originally published Sept. 7, 2008

By Susan Lampert Smith

APPLETON – Think you’re cool because your kid goes to the big UW?

Well, I’m a “Yale mom,” not to mention a Stanford booster.

And my collegiate pride cost far, far less than the tuition you’re paying.

Yes, it’s time for back to school, which means our annual pilgrimage to find slightly wacky collegiate wear at the Jansport Outlet Store, located on the company grounds a few miles west of the Fox River Mall in Appleton.

This is a real outlet store – a place with real deals on high quality merchandise – unlike those fake-o outlets that line the highway, offering just a few bucks off the full price. I discovered the store, at N850 County Road CB, when I went to the company’s Appleton office to write about a mountain climbing expedition for women with breast cancer.

At Jansport’s Appleton outlet, you’ll find thick collegiate sweat shirts, two for $15, as well as $1 bins of misprinted T-shirts. They don’t make the stuff in Appleton, but the appliqué and embroidery is done here. And the outlet is the place where they get rid of the ones that represent a bad day at the embroidery machine.

Our family tradition, part of our annual trips to Door County and Lambeau Field, is to find the strangest schools to support, as well as the best misspellings.

Yes, Jansport has Wisconsin wear and our beloved Bucky Badger on sale, but why wear what everyone else is wearing? Besides, the Victor Valley Rams need your support more than the Ohio State Buckeyes.

You can adopt the Horned Frogs of Texas Christian University, the Lynchburg College Hornets and the Shippensburg University Ships.

My personal favorite weird mascot sweat from the Jansport store is the Wichita State Shocker, a crazed looking dude with dreadlocks made of shocks of wheat. The family used to fight over who got to wear that sweatshirt.

There is a weird side effect, however. When you wear your Kamehameha School zip-up, people will stop you on the street to talk about the greatness of Princess Bernice Pauahi Bishop, the school founder and last royal descendant of Kamehameha the Great. It does no good to explain that you’ve never been to Maui, and couldn’t get into the school, anyway, as you’re not native Hawaiian.

Likewise, my husband used to wear a Palomar College sweatshirt at his stand at the Dane County Farmers Market, and encountered a surprising number of people who wanted to reminisce about the good old days in San Marcos, Calif.

The misspellings can be fun. My son has a brown sweat shirt advertising the UCLA “B’s.”

But we’re still searching for our holy grail: A nice collegiate shirt that reads Hervard or Yael.

It gives us a reason to keep on digging.

PHOTO INFORMATION: Dustin Roosa of Mount Horeb models a UCLA “B” sweatshirt, a great find at the Appleton Jansport outlet.

Susan Smith: Madison’s derby Dolls more than just “hurt in a skirt”

2009-01-04T11:00:00.004-06:00

Originally published Aug. 17, 2008

By Susan Lampert Smith

A funny thing happened in the four years since I’ve been to a roller derby bout.

It’s become a real sport.

Oh, yeah, the women – who fill roles as substitute teacher, mom, or IT tech in daylight – still sport funny stage names and the costumes. The summer travel league team, the Dairyland Dolls, dresses in their blue and white gingham dresses. Think Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, if you left her out in the rain until her dress shrunk to the approximate size of a teddy, the better to show off her panties – and her massive pair of quadriceps.

The Dairyland Dolls play up their bad farm girl image with a mascot in a Holstein costume, and a cheer that goes:

“Don’t gimme no pop, no pop
“Don’t gimme no tea, tea.
“Just gimme that milk, moo, moo, moo, moo
“Wisconsin milk, moo, moo, moo, moo.”

But once they hit the rink – their next home bout is Aug. 30 against the Burning River Girls from Cleveland – it’s clear the sport has come a long way.

In July, they made progress in the rankings, by narrowly beating the Charm City Roller – a Baltimore team dressed unwholesomely in black, at their home rink, Madison’s Fast Forward.

The team’s star jammer, a tiny girl in braids named Mouse, cut through the Baltimore bruisers like a mouse through Swiss cheese. (Sorry, couldn’t resist.) As she came around the oval, scoring a point for every opposing member she passed, her arms churned (sorry again) like those of an Olympic speed skater. There were referees’ whistles and fouls, but none of the professional-wrestling style antics that marked the team’s birth five years ago.

“This is definitely the future of derby,’’ said Tammy Faye Undertakker, the dolls’ spokeswoman. “Anymore, teams that are just show and fake fighting aren’t respected.”

The Baltimore bout was serious business, as Baltimore came in ranked 13 nationally, and the local team 17th. The top 12 teams in the East will qualify for the Women’s Flat Track Derby Association’s Eastern Regionals, which will be held Oct. 10-12 at the Alliant Energy Center in Madison. The top four teams will advance to Portland, Oregon, for the national championships in November.

Derby in Dairyland has come a long way since the Dolls first season in 2004. The four Madison area teams that play locally -- the Vaudeville Vixens, the Reservoir Dolls, the Unholy Rollers and the Quad Squad – have been joined by the Appleton-area Fox Valley Foxs and the Milwaukee-based Brew City Bruisers.

And Crackerjack, a Doll who currently serves as president of the WFTDA, expects the sport to grow some more after the release next year of the Ellen Page (of “Juno” fame) and Drew Barrymore movie, “Whip it,’’ about a Texas girl who gives up beauty pageants for the track. Texas was the home of the roller derby revival early this century (it all but died out in the 1970s), so it’s appropriate the film is set there.

Standard rules and athletic training have made it more of a sport and less of a show.

“The hits are harder, but cleaner,’’ said Crackerjack, a Dolls founder. “Before, the rules weren’t clear, so it was street justice.”

And the girls, many of whom never played an organized sport before, are in better shape than ever.

Witness the “baby dolls,’’ a group of about 25 women hoping to make the local teams this fall. Their summer regimen consists of two or three days doing core strength work at the Monkey Bar gym, and three nights of training at the track.

“We play tag and learn how to properly fall,” said “Baby Doll” Robin Giles, who was limping around Fast Forward on a crutch, the result of wrenching her knee during a practice.

Still, for every bout, there’s an ambulance and a paramedic team on hand, giving truth to roller derby’s motto, “Hurt in a skirt.”

For schedules and info, see http://www.madrollindolls.com/

PHOTO INFORMATION: A Dairyland Doll named Mouse passes on the outside during a recent derby match in Madison vs. Baltimore’s Charm City Roller team./PHOTO by Neil Stechschulte

Susan Smith: Door County’s curvy Hwy. 42 designed for beauty, not speed

2009-01-04T10:56:00.002-06:00

Originally published Aug. 3, 2008

By Susan Lampert Smith

NORTHPORT – In a state known for its paved and curvy rural roads, it might be dicey to pick one stretch as the curviest road in Wisconsin.

After all, motorcyclists and sports car hobbyists from all over the flatter parts of the Midwest flock to Wisconsin for its scenic rural drives.

For the fact we’re not completely flat, like much of Illinois, you can thank the glaciers that either missed areas – the hilly Coulee Country near La Crosse comes to mind – or shaped it into eccentric gum drop mounds and deep kettles, like those found in the Kettle Moraine of southeastern Wisconsin.

For the fact so many of our rural roads are paved, unlike the gravel rural roads of other states, you can thank our history as the Dairy State. Milk trucks had to get to farms 365 days a year.

So, yes, we have many curvy roads. But for my money, nothing beats the last couple of miles of Highway 42, as it winds out to the very tip of Door County.

Between Gill’s Rock and Northport, where the car ferry leaves for Washington Island, the highway zigs and zags between the beech and maple trees.

There are plenty of beautiful photos of this stretch, with the trees blazing orange and yellow in the fall, and with the black road coiling through the icy white woods in the winter.

I’ve driven it many times, but I don’t always appreciate its beauty as I’m rushing to catch the last ferry.

During a recent trip, I counted 15 curves in the one and half miles between Timberline Road and Porte de Mortes Drive. And why? It’s not like you’re snaking along the edge of a winding river or skirting the edge of bluffs.

Bill Prue, at the state Department of Transportation office in Green Bay, said he didn’t know the reason, but he has heard the theory it’s designed to slow down tourists so they don’t drive straight into Lake Michigan. “It does look nice,’’ Prue says. “Oftentimes when I’m up there, I’ll see people stopped on one of those knobs taking pictures.”

At the town of Liberty Grove, at the very tip of the county, town road commissioner Walter Kalms says his grandfather complained that “whoever laid out that road had something wrong with his head.”

But Kalms, and deputy clerk Janet Johnson, actually do know the reason: The road was designed by an artist, not an engineer.

Johnson says famed landscape architect Jens Jensen had a hand in laying out the end of Highway 42 to enhance its scenic beauty. Jensen, a Danish immigrant, designed parks in Chicago and Madison before coming to Door County in the 1930s to create, The Clearing, a school to train landscape architects.

Jensen, who had a near-mystical belief in the civilizing power of nature, would probably scoff at my hurry to get to the island so I could start relaxing.

Next time, I’ll appreciate the curves that were put there just so I’d slow down and see the beauty of Wisconsin.

PHOTO INFORMATION: Tourists often stop along the knobs on Highway 42, capturing photos of the road as it winds through the beech and maple trees./PHOTO by Neil Stechschulte

Susan Smith: Capitol Square restaurant serves an Old Fashioned good time

2009-01-04T10:53:00.003-06:00

Originally published July 27, 2008

By Susan Lampert Smith

MADISON – Doug Griffin can’t recall his first brandy old fashioned.

“No. No, I guess I can’t,’’ he said. “I have enjoyed them very much over the years.”

He won’t forget the 100,000th. Not his personal 100 grand of brandy, mind you. No this was the 100,000th served by the namesake restaurant, The Old Fashioned, which opened in 2005 on the East Side of Madison’s Capitol Square,

Griffin and Kevin Kiley, his pal from their days at Green Bay’s Notre Dame High School, and half the town, it seemed, crammed into the noisy bar on a hot July night, urged on by $1.50 Korbel brandy old fashioneds.

General manger Jen De Bolt and her staff glistened with perspiration as they muddled sugar and bitters, splashed in the brandy and soda, and speared cherries and oranges like they were on an assembly line. As the brandy went down the hatch, the noise level in the bar soared, a natural consequence of mixing Cheeseheads with brandy.

The bar wound up serving 761 old fashioneds during the three-hour special and another 145 afterward. Not so unusual, really.

“We sell the most Korbel brandy of any restaurant in the state,’’ said De Bolt. So much that the president of Korbel paid the bar a personal visit back in January. (There were $1 old fashioneds that night to celebrate, but since there was a blizzard raging, they only sold about 300.)

The Old Fashioned restaurant is a tribute to all things Wisconsin. From the old Blatz beer signs on the wall to the Green Bay Packers souvenir bourbon decanters behind the bar, to the menu, where you’ll find the wares of Wisconsin’s small food companies.

You can dine on natural casing hot dogs from Salmon’s Meat Market in Kewaunee, or on crusty hard rolls from Sheboygan’s Highway bakery. Appetizer choices range from smoked chubs from Charlie’s Smokehouse near the tip of Door County, to landjaeger sausage from New Glarus to cheese from the Fayette Creamery in Darlington. For color, add some Bea’s picked beets, and wash it down with the neon colored sodas from Seymour.

For co-owner Tami Lax, the menu is a way of preserving the foods she grew up eating in Green Bay. When she moved to Madison, she’d return from a visit home with a cooler packed with bacon, braunschweiger, and cheese. If she loved these things, she figured, so would others. And she’d be keeping the distinct flavors of Wisconsin alive.

“Some of these things are going extinct because our tastes are becoming more narrow,’’ she said. “You save them by eating them. We can keep Seymour Bottling in business by buying hundreds of cases of their sodas.”

And, thanks to dedicated customers such as Griffin, who says he “got here early and parked my keister on a stool” to wait for the special, they’re doing their part for brandy, too.

PHOTO INFORMATION: While people elsewhere might mix an old fashioned with whiskey, every good Wisconsinite knows it’s really made with brandy./PHOTO by Brent Nicastro

Susan Smith: Only in Madison -- Grad student is human mosquito magnet

2009-01-04T10:44:00.003-06:00

Originally published July 20, 2008

By Susan Lampert Smith

Elsewhere in Wisconsin, people tend to tend to roll their eyes at the mere mention of Madison.

You’ll hear it is full of liberals and politicians and nothing like the rest of this solid Midwestern state. But in at least one way, Madison is classically Wisconsin: Its chain of lakes, marshes and woods have, this summer, produced a truly amazing crop of mosquitoes. One Madison surveillance trap sucked in 20,000 mosquitoes in a day.

But, yes, there’s a Madison twist here, too. Because on nice summer evenings, when the rest of humanity wisely flees indoors, swatting at the swarm, somewhere in Madison, Patrick Irwin is baring parts of his linebacker-sized body for science.

The UW-Madison graduate student knows, scientifically speaking, he’s a piece of meat. But he does have his limits.

“I told my adviser that I’ll be the bait, but I won’t shave my legs,’’ said Irwin, a doctoral candidate in Entomology. (His advisor, Entomology Professor Susan Paskewicz, a nationally known mosquito expert, is doing research in Uganda, where mosquito-borne diseases cause death and suffering to millions.)

Part of Irwin’s research involves “human landing studies.” This means during prime biting times, Irwin stations himself in a likely spot, such as a subdivision in the UW Arboretum near Lake Wingra, to count how many mosquitoes land on one lower leg in a 10-minute span.

His record? About 120 in 10 minutes. He sucks them up in a bug vacuum to be taken back to the lab, and counted by genus and species. Right now, he’s testing to see whether those carbon-dioxide-emitting bug traps, sold under names such as Mosquito Magnet, really work.

“We know that they catch a lot of mosquitoes, but what we’re interested in is whether (the traps) reduce biting pressure on humans,’’ he said. Maybe they just attract your neighbors’ mosquitoes or maybe they trap mosquitoes that don’t bite people.

The evidence is still coming in, but let’s put it this way: Irwin hasn’t spent any of his own money on the devices.

For his master’s degree in public health, Irwin surveyed Madison’s storm sewer system, swamps and drainage ditches to find the breeding places for the mosquitoes that carry West Nile virus. And, since he learned the vast majority of Madison’s mosquitoes breed in about a dozen or so “hot spots,” mostly in drainage ditches, he’s come up with a idea for killing mosquitoes without chemicals.

He recently got permission from the Department of Natural Resources to seed the drainage ditches with fathead minnows.

“They’re a native species,’’ Irwin explains, “And fathead minnows really love to eat mosquito larvae.”

If it works, it might be one fatheaded idea from Madison the rest of the state can embrace.

PHOTO INFORMATION: Patrick Irwin, a UW-Madison graduate student, settles into a spot at the UW Arboretum for “human landing studies” of this year’s amazing mosquito crop./PHOTO by Brent Nicastro

"Cold Cow" wins Grand Prize in WisconsinNative.com photo contest

2008-12-31T13:21:00.009-06:00

A photograph showing the "stark contrast of beast against Mother Nature on a cold and snowy Wisconsin winter day" has been awarded the Grand Prize in the first WisconsinNative.com photo contest.

"Cold Cow," by Terry Mayer of Genoa City, was taken on January 21, 2008, near Darien, with the frigid cold illustrated by the scene of a Black Angus cow standing in the field while the snow falls around him and freezes to his face.

Mayer's photo was the first-place winner in the Rural Scene category and then chosen as Grand Prize winner among the top photos in each of nine categories.

For his work, Mayer won $1,000.

Mayer shared this story about the winning photo: "It was a very snowy day and I was out driving around looking for a photo that would show the snow and cold. I came across cows in a field during the snow storm, but it wasn't right, for some reason I didn't feel the photo. So I pressed on with the idea in my head of cows in the snow just looking for the right one. I crept along in the my car going 10 mph on the country roads that are the last to get plowed, so I should have turned around, but I really wanted the photo that was in my head. Towards the end of the day as it was starting to get dark I saw this cow on the side of the road in a farmers field. I just grabbed my camera forgetting about my coat and gloves. The black cow caught my eye first then I saw the frost and snow around his face, his eyes were so cold looking and he just stood and stared at me. I left the shutter open a little longer to get the streaks of flakes but left the 2.8 aperture wide open to get the shallow depth of field and concentrate on the face and the nice detail and contrast. It was so cold I couldn't see the screen on the camera so it wasn't until the next day I downloaded the card and saw the image."

Terry Mayer took the winning shot using a Nikon D2hs with an 80-200-mm Nikon lens, an ISO speed of 1000, with no flash in natural light that was overcast and dark.

Said Judge Meg Theno, senior photo editor of the Chicago Tribune: "The stark contrast of beast against Mother Nature on a cold and snowy Wisconsin winter day created a photograph with high intrigue and strong dramatic appeal. The interplay between black and white, the textural detail and the dynamic cropping all contributed to the success of this artful and abstract image."
Overall, Theno said she was impressed with the quality of work submitted in the photo contest and the variety of Wisconsin scenes represented in the work.

Here are winners in other categories:

Great Outdoors -- "John Nolen Sunbeams," was taken just after sunrise on October 7, 2007 by Vicki France of Mt. Horeb. Vicki explains how she caught the photo: "Every single day I drive to work hoping for the weather to do something dramatic and for a photo composition to appear. On this early day in October the fog was lifting and the sun was working its way through and I was just one mile from work and thinking to myself...what a shame to lose out on such a beautiful dramatic morning. Then I decided to swing into Olin Park and drive the short loop (who cares if I'm late for work ...I wanted a picture) and when I stepped out of the car I saw this enchanted world opening up before me and my heart began to sing. I half expected fairies to come out of the woods and be dancing and singing. I knew I had to capture the moment and the place quickly before the light changed. This photo was a pivotal point my photography in that I have been on a mission to capture "Enchanted Worlds" ever since."

Vicki France took the winning shot using a Canon EOS DIGITAL REBEL 20D with an aperture of F/7.1, exposure time of 1/160 of a second and an ISO speed of 800.

Said Judge Meg Theno, senior photo editor of the Chicago Tribune: "This image, a spectacular mixture of rich color and light, creates a mood that is almost dreamlike. There were a number of wonderful photos in this category, but this image stood apart because of its beauty and technical excellence."

Urban Scene -- "I find few subjects as frustrating, fickle, frightening, and rewarding as lightning," said the winning photographer in the Urban Scene category of the WisconsinNative.com photo contest.

"May 25, 2008," by Phil Ejercito of Madison, is a dazzling shot of lightning flashes over the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art. Phil said he had been craving a good storm, "It had been since August of the year before that I'd gone out to shoot a storm, so when this late-night storm blew through in late May, I was raring to go. I remember this storm being very electrically active, but unfortunately very fast-moving and dropping heavy precipitation, two factors that would make me less inclined to go shoot. Still, though, watching the storm on radar, I waited until the heaviest precipitation had passed by, noted the direction of travel of the storm, and lined that up in my head as to where I could shoot and what I could frame with, then ran out the door over to State Street. There was still some light rain, and thankfully plenty of electrical activity in the skies, but the biggest challenge was the 50 mph wind gusts. I got everything set up, braced against the tripod, shot, shot, shot some more, until I knew when I opened the shutter for this particular photo, that this was the one. I packed up and scurried home, grateful to have gone out to shoot lightning and come home alive once again."

Phil Ejercito took the winning shot using a Canon EOS 20D, with an aperture of F/5.6, an exposure time of 2 seconds and an ISO speed of 100.

Said Judge Meg Theno, senior photo editor of the CA unique restaurant with sixty years of history is the winner in the Wisconsin Attractions category of the WisconsinNative.com photo contest.

Wisconsin Attractions -- The photo, "Ardy," by Joel Witmeyer of Menasha, was taken on April 4, 2008. It shows Ardy and Ed's Drive-In glowing in the morning sun. This Oshkosh landmark is an authentic 1950's style drive-in, complete with roller skating car hops and draft root beer. The photo consists of 5 exposures blended together with automatic bracketing at -2, 0, +2 and 2 manual exposures.

Joel Witmeyer took the winning shot using a Canon 20d with a Tamron SP AF17-50mm lens, at F/2.8.

Said Judge Meg Theno, senior photo editor of the Chicago Tribune: "Is it the birth of the drive-in diner or the death of it? Either way, this is a great character image of a true Wisconsin attraction. The great sky and the soft light wrapping itself around the corner of the diner accentuate both the mood and straightforward composition."hicago Tribune: "Great timing, technique and strong composition coupled with a bit of luck came together to create a wild and powerfully surreal urban spring storm photo."

Wisconsin Pets -- Phil the cat earned plenty of treats for being such a cooperative subject and Phil the photographer earned top place for the shot, "July 31, 2008," the winner in the Wisconsin Pets category of the WisconsinNative.com photo contest.

Phil Ejercito of Madison, cat-sitting for a friend who was in between leases, couldn't resist getting a photo of the cat waking up from a sink nap. He explains the story behind the picture, "Let's get this out of the way: my name is Phil, and this cat's name is Phil. It's really bizzare to meet a pet that shares your name. I ended up cat-sitting Phil and needless to say, my cat Tela was not pleased with this new addition to the household. I always keep Tela out of the bathroom, so it made sense that Phil would seek refuge there. Of course, it's absolutely impossible to walk by a cute cat napping in a bathroom sink without wanting to take a picture. I wanted him yawning and stretching, so I put on a 10mm lens stopped down to f/8 so I could get right up in his face and not have to wait for auto-focus to lock. Trying to keep things at a reasonable shutter speed and ISO, I slapped a window green gel on my flash to match the bathroom's fluorescent lighting, put a diffuser made out of a rubbing alcohol bottle on the flash, waited for a good stretch and yawn, then shot."

Phil Ejercito took the winning shot using a Canon EOS 20D with an exposure time of 1/30 of a second and an ISO speed of 400.

Said Judge Meg Theno, senior photo editor of the Chicago Tribune: "This category had several humorous pet photos, but this one came out on top because in addition to having great personality, it was well composed, well lit and, most opportunely, well-timed."

Recreational Sports -- The winning photographer in the Recreational Sports category of the WisconsinNative.com photo contest had to deal with more than tough lighting conditions to get the shot, there were also bullets flying.

"Roundup" was taken on May 24, 2008 by Todd F. Bischoff of Sun Prairie on a camping trip just outside of Crivitz. Todd explains the backdrop of the photo, "Every year a good group of my friends head north to camp, fish, shoot, and generally have fun. We have dubbed the event the "Redneck Round-up." This photo was taken during our sharpshooting competition where we all shoot at clay pigeons and various other objects at the end of the shooting range. Lighting is always a challenge during mid-day due to harsh shadows and bright highlights, and not getting a hole in myself was an added challenge for this photo. There were 2-3 people firing anything from a .22 to a .306 to a .44 Magnum at any given time. So I had to be alert and mindful of everything going on. And of course, I wanted to shoot as well, so when I was taking photos, I had a gun in hand."

Todd F. Bischoff took the winning shot using a Canon 20D with a Canon EF 24mm f/2.8 lens, and an exposure of 1/200 of a second at f/9.

Said Judge Meg Theno, senior photo editor of the Chicago Tribune: "This photograph has a marvelous documentary quality to it and draws the observer into the image through the use of multiple layers -- a distinct foreground, a middle scene and a background -- each with something unique to explore and ponder. The use of black and white contributes to this, keeping the focus on the subjects and turning this image into a curious three-dimensional tableau."

Hometown Happenings -- A photo taken at the 36th annual Iola Old Car Show is the winner in the Hometown Happenings category of the WisconsinNative.com photo contest.

"1947 Dodge Truck" was taken July 15, 2008 by Joel Witmeyer of Menasha at one of the midwest's largest old car shows. Joel said that the clouds were perfect for the background on that morning, making an amazing reflection on the 1947 Dodge Truck. If you look closely you can see an image of the photographer reflected as well.

Joel Witmeyer was using a Canon 20D with a Tamron SP AF17-50mm lens with an aperture of F/2.8 when he took "1947 Dodge Truck." The shot actually consisted of 3 exposures blended together with automatic bracketing at -2, 0, and +2 with exposure compensation.

Said Judge Meg Theno, senior photo editor at the Chicago Tribune: "This beautiful image is a great example of a photographer enjoying the journey as much as the destination. Great use of color, composition, found design and light -- they all contribute to the success of this photo."

College/Pro Sports -- They say that when you run the sausage race, everyone's a weiner, and it's certainly true of our winner in the College/Pro Sports category of the WisconsinNative.com photo contest.

"Hit the Showers (Post Race)" was taken on the afternoon of June 19th, 2008 by Neil Stechschulte of Sun Prairie when the Milwaukee Brewers played the Toronto Blue Jays. Neil remembers, "I was lucky enough to be taking the day off of work to go to the Brewers game with my Dad, which I hadn't done in years. Our seats were in left field, so the Weiner Race participants came right towards us when they were done. It just wouldn't be a home Brewers game without this event. (Now if they would only let Bernie Brewer slide into his mug of beer again.) For the record, the Bratwurst (#1) finished first, and the Brewers held on to win 8-7 over the Toronto Blue Jays."

Neil Stechschulte took the winning shot using a Canon EOS Digital Rebel XTi with a Canon EF 75-300mm lens, an aperture of F/5, and an ISO Speed of 400. There was no flash and the weather was partly sunny with mixed clouds when "Hit the Showers (Post Race)" was taken.

Said Judge Meg Theno, senior photo editor of the Chicago Tribune: "You can’t go wrong with the Racing Sausages at Miller Park – they always make good entertainment and often make a fun photo, like this one. The added bonus is the element of fans. They provide a bit of scale and create an interesting composition."

High School Sports -- A photo of an unsuccessful pick-off play at first base is the first-place winner in the High School Sports category of the WisconsinNative.com photo contest.

"Close Play at First" was taken July 14 by Dan Herrmann of Franklin and shows the dirt flying as a player dives back to first, beating the pitcher’s pick-off throw. The runner at first base was taking a large lead off in trying to steal second when the pitcher threw to the Oak Creek first baseman who in turn tried to put the tag on the West Allis player. The photo was taken at Oak Creek where the home team was playing West Allis in critical baseball game in an effort to clinch the conference title.

Dan Herrmann said he was practicing on taking some action sports pictures when the picture was taken. He shot the photo using a Canon Rebel XT with a 70 to 200mm F4 lens. "Close Play at First" was shot at ISO 400 at F5.6 with a shutter speed at 1/1000.

Said Judge Meg Theno, senior photo editor of the Chicago Tribune: "Good job by the photographer getting the peak action moment at first base, including the nice splash of sand."

Go Green Travel Wisconsin: Cedar Grove Cheese

2008-12-31T13:18:00.002-06:00

At Christmas time, Wisconsinites love their cheese and cheese gifts -- and a great place to look for your "green and gold" cheese is at Cedar Grove Cheese near Plain in Sauk County.

The cheesmaker traces its roots to 1878 and makes specialty and organic cheeses, plus makes fresh curds daily. Tours are offered Monday through Saturday, every half hour from 8:30 a.m.. to 1:30 p.m. (The price is $3 for adults; groups of six or more should call ahead.)
Included on the tour is the factory's innovative "Living Machine" water treatment system, which uses a natural and efficient process to treat wastewater.

Fellow blogger, Jeanne Carpenter, has introduced her Cheese Underground readers to Incubator Cheesemaker Bob Wills at Cedar Grove.

Says Jeanne: "Bob is a Master Cheesemaker who graciously opens his plant to about a half dozen other Wisconsin cheesemakers who use it during downtime to make their own award-winning cheeses, and he also crafts cheeses for several cooperatives and farmsteads. In fact, Bob is renowned in the Wisconsin cheesemaker world for mentoring dozens of up and comers, and has launched many an award-winner."
Cedar Grove Cheese
Travel Green Wisconsin Green Guide Score – 61
Green highlights and innovative practices-- Involved with Food Alliance, a project that helps farmers implement sustainable practices.-- Uses a Living Machine™, which uses a natural and efficient process to treat wastewater.-- Uses an efficient refrigeration system for whey cooling & cheese storage.-- Promotes organic, local, grass-based (grazed) dairy products, cheese and whey (is a supplier of organic whey powder)
Web site -- http://www.cedargrovecheese.com/
Contact informationVoice: (608) 546-5284 or toll-free (800) 200-6020Email: info@cedargrovecheese.comAddress: E5904 Mill Rd, Plain, WI 53577

Go Green Travel Wisconsin: Apostle Islands National Lakeshore

2008-12-31T13:06:00.004-06:00

One of Wisconsin’s true gems, the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore is a year-round wonderland and a model for green travel and sustainability efforts.

Here is an excerpt from a description provided to the Travel Green Wisconsin program:
“Along windswept beaches and cliffs, visitors experience where water meets land and sky, culture meets culture, and past meets present. The 21 islands and 12 miles of mainland host a unique blend of cultural and natural resources. Lighthouses shine over Lake Superior and the new wilderness areas. Apostle Islands National Lakeshore has more lighthouses than any other National Park Service area with 8 historic towers on 6 islands. … The Bayfield Visitor Center is a good place to begin your National Lakeshore visit, whether by car, afoot, or by private boat. At the visitor center you can view audiovisual programs and study exhibits about the park's history, natural history, and recreation opportunities.”

Even in winter, the lakeshore provides unique and isolated getaways. The most popular destination in winter is to visit sea caves along the mainland shore near the western boundary. About a mile across a lake-ice trail, visitors will find dozens of caves, each filled with icicles and intricate ice formations.

For details, check out the National Park Service web site on the Sea Caves. For the most current information on access to the sea caves, call the main Park Service number at (715) 779-3397 and choose Extension 3.

Another popular winter activity is to escape to Madeline Island, across from Bayfield, to enjoy snowshoe hiking in the 2,400-acre Big Bay State Park,which gets nearly 80 inches of snow in a typical year.

A good place to start any visit is at the Park Service Bayfield Visitors Center. During winter, the center is open Monday through Friday, 8:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.

Apostle Islands National Lakeshore

Travel Green Wisconsin Green Guide Score – 84

Green highlights and innovative practices

-- Uses recycled lumber on boardwalks and stairs.

-- All island water systems use solar electricity.

-- Historic Raspberry Island light station has been rehabilitated and powered by solar or propane.

-- All boat and snowmobile engines have been replaced with cleaner 4-stroke engines.

-- Implemented slope stabilization projects that include the use of bioengineering techniques to stabilize eroding bluffs.

Web site -- www.nps.gov/apis

Contact information:Voice: 715-779-3397Email: apis_superintendent@nps.gov
Address -- 415 Washington Ave., Bayfield, WI 54814

The above photo, Sea Caves at Sunset on Devils Island, is by Phillip L. Billings.

Dennis McCann: Searching by the dock of the bay

2008-12-23T12:30:00.004-06:00

Originally published Dec. 10, 2008

Half of the time you could ask me what I was doing at this time yesterday and I’d have to think long and hard to answer. The old cranial database is getting increasingly leaky.

But ask me what I was doing 41 years ago today and watch with wonder as I come up with the answer. I was riding around Lake Monona in Madison that foggy evening in my friend Tom Hart’s car, helping searchers look for the remains of Otis Redding’s sunken plane.

Well, that’s too generous by half. We were riding around looking for the searchers, not that there was much of anything we could have done to help beyond general rubbernecking and head shaking, and there’s never a shortage of that kind of “help”. The real truth is we didn’t find the searchers anyway, so the recovery of the twin-engine plane that carried Redding, the hot young soul singer, and his band, the Bar-Kays, was eventually accomplished without our teenage contributions. But it left us with a we-were-there moment for the ages, even if we weren’t really.

Redding, his manager, pilot and four members of the Bar-Kays, all en route to Madison for two shows at The Factory, a downtown club, died in the crash. One band member survived the crash; another who had flown by commercial plane was not involved. The event has become another somber moment in Wisconsin music history, right up there with Stevie Ray Vaughn’s death in a1990 helicopter crash at Alpine Valley near East Troy.

What’s most amazing, looking back, is how young Redding was at the time of his death – just 26 - and how big a musical figure he became after it. His biggest-selling pop song, “(Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay,” recorded just three days earlier, reached number one on both pop and R&B charts, and his label had a string of other posthumous hits. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1989.

Naturally, I don’t remember what I was doing the night he was inducted. But on the sad note of this anniversary let’s at least enjoy this You Tube video of Otis and “The Happy Song (Dum, Dum).”

Dennis McCann: John Heisman's own trophy is a simple cemetery stone

2008-12-23T12:27:00.002-06:00

Originally published Dec. 8, 2008

There may be more bowls in college football than in a bowery soup kitchen, but we now know who will be playing who, where and when during the Christmas and New Year’s college football orgy. Thankfully, the Rose Bowl will again feature the Big Ten vs. the Pac-10, the way God meant it to be, instead of some untraditional interloper like Texas, and Wisconsin will head to Florida once again to take on the second oldest coach in college football in Bobby Bowden’s Florida State. The only unanswered question in college football, then, is who will win the Heisman Trophy.

And, might this year’s winner finally be the one to make it to quiet Forest Home Cemetery in Rhinelander, where the remains of John Heisman himself, the man who gave his name to the iconic trophy, have been buried for more than 70 years? Yes, the man so closely associated with the New York Athletic Club and the nascent days of a game he likely would not recognize today rests in a northern Wisconsin cemetery under a simple flush-to-the-ground marker, so unostentatious I had to have help to find it when I stopped earlier this fall.

“I wonder how many people,” said Marv Schumacher as he led me to the grave, “know he’s got a simple gravestone in Rhinelander, Wis? This famous man and just a ground-level stone.”

Some do know, of course, because Heisman’s Rhinelander burial comes up some years about award time, and it got a lot of attention the year Wisconsin running back Ron “The Great” Dane won the trophy. It’s “kind of a novelty” story, said Dick Winquist, who was sexton at the cemetery for 32 years and knows the story about as well as anyone. Each year a few football fans in the know seek out the grave to show their kids or take photos, he said.

“My dad was there for 20 years before me and he used to say that’s our one claim to fame,” he said.

It’s not a bad claim. Heisman, who was born two weeks before the first American football game was played between Princeton and Rutgers in 1869, is widely viewed as a pioneering coach in college football. As the New York Times wrote two years ago, “Without John Heisman there might not be a forward pass in football, and without a forward pass the game would probably have died from disinterest or been abolished because of its fatal brutality.” In addition to pushing to have the forward pass made legal, Heisman pushed to have the game divided into four quarters and created the center snap. He introduced the “hike” vocal signal and was a creative play designer.

Heisman was said to have introduced the ball to his players and, after a pause, add, “Better to have died as a small boy than to fumble this football.”

Heisman was in New York at the time of is death but was buried in Rhinelander, the hometown of his second wife, Edith. Winquist said to his knowledge no trophy winner has ever come to visit.

One curious story occurred in the 1980s when a visitor who was never identified glued a jar to the stone. In the jar, for some inexplicable reason, were four tickets to a Minnesota Gophers football game. Winquist still has them. Heisman, after all, is his claim to fame.

Dennis McCann: A toast to the end of the days of no toasts

2008-12-23T12:24:00.003-06:00

Originally published Dec. 4, 2008

When we talk about the late-year holidays Thanksgiving and Christmas come first to mind, and maybe some would throw in Pearl Harbor Day. But hey, speaking of getting bombed, there is another holiday, which, until I saw an ad in one newspaper this week, had somehow escaped me entirely.

It turns out that Dec. 5 is celebrated by some as Repeal Day (http://www.repealday.org/), the anniversary of the official end of that failed experiment known as Prohibition. It was on Dec. 5, 1933, that Utah ratified the 21st amendment, giving the country a three quarters majority of states in favor of restoring America’s right to drink.

And on that night, did America ever drink. Of course, it had a 13-year thirst going, not counting all the illegal hooch and homemade gin that had been produced in back-hills stills and home bathtubs. There were lots of places in Wisconsin where Prohibition had been but a speed bump on the way to a good hangover – are you listening, Hurley? – but even so it was good news that the state’s iconic brewing industry could once again operate above ground. By some accounts that meant thousands of brewery workers were affected by the repeal.

For obvious reasons Prohibition was tough on what was one of the state’s largest industries. Between 1920, when the 18th amendment to the Constitution turned the land legally dry, and the 1933 repeal, it was illegal to manufacture or sell any beverage with more than 0.5 percent alcohol. For true beer lovers that amounts to a thin drink that might as well be called Why Bother Lager. And for a city like Milwaukee, known worldwide for such names and products as Schlitz, Pabst, Blatz, Miller and more, Prohibition meant more unemployment as much as it did less enjoyment.

It was the same statewide at smaller breweries, as many as 400 in all. Some, like Gray’s Brewing Co. in my hometown of Janesville, turned to making soda pop; I grew up drinking Gray’s soda and didn’t make the connection to beer until much later. Gray’s only recently turned to making craft beers again, and they do a nice job of it. Still, the ban on brewing lasted long enough that for many brewers it was too late to go back into business when Prohibition ended. Fewer than half of the pre-1920s breweries resumed production, and even that number dwindled through the years until the trend toward micro brewing brought a resurgence in small breweries in the past decade or so.

So, I guess the point is that it’s time for your last-minute Repeal Day shopping. As backers of the holiday point out, “There are no outfits to buy, costumes to rent, rivers to dye green. Simply celebrate the day by stopping by your local bar, tavern, saloon, winery, distillery or brew house and having a drink…Just do it because you can.”

Heck, the constitution demands it. As my people would say, Slainte!

Dennis McCann: In which I tell the iPod people to go take a hike

2008-12-23T12:21:00.002-06:00

Originally published Dec. 2, 2008

If we needed any further evidence the world is going to hell in a handcart – and we don’t, of course, but it keeps on coming – check out the story in many weekend newspapers about the decline in visits to America’s national forests. (And yes, I know that makes me sound like an old fogey.)

Oh, that’s right, nobody reads newspapers anymore. (So does that.) To summarize then, top officials at the US Forest Service were quoted in the Associated Press story as saying that over the past few years visits to national forests are off 13%, which is sad enough. What’s more depressing are the reasons cited – high gas prices (at least that one is understandable), the popularity of video games and the Internet, an increasingly urban and aging population less likely to camp out, more fees for trail use, “a proliferation of noisy off-road vehicles” and the declining budget for forest recreation.

The Forest Service’s interest here is a bit self-serving, of course. By raising the issue of fewer recreation dollars they are hoping to raise support for more spending on national forests, not a bad thing by the way given how else the government spends our hard-earned dollars. But the story raised other important issues for the future: if the number of park users is declining now, what will happen to national forests in the future? In an effort to attract users will forests amend their mission? Or, as one forest researcher put it, “Is it going to be a future of hiking, or is it fancy cafes and city kinds of things? That’s what we’re trying to evaluate right now. And the information is mixed, frankly.”

Wisconsin has a stake here because of our two wonderful national forests, Chequamegon National Forest in northwestern Wisconsin and Nicolet National Forest in the northeastern corner. But the question likely applies as well to the state park system in many ways, as popular and stuffed with campers as the most popular parks are each summer weekend.

Some years ago on a circle tour of Lake Superior, my wife and I stopped in Michigan’s Tahquamenon State Park to see its iconic waterfall, and was surprised to hear a woman in the parking lot tell her waterfall-weary husband he could wait in the brew pub if he didn’t want to walk the short trail to the fall’s rim. Brew pub? Yup. It was as if Smokey the Bear had bred with the Hamm’s bear, and while I do admit to having enjoyed a tasty glass of beer after visiting the falls I would not want to see many parks citified that way.

Without going off all John Muir on you, the world needs places where city folks can go and not feel civilized. That doesn’t mean everyone should be compelled to take part in rustic camping or arduous backcountry hiking or rafting down dangerous rivers without a helmet. Leave that for the crazies, and just go take a walk in the woods. Maybe it’s better to say we all just need quiet places. In the latest issue of Wisconsin Natural Resources magazine, the publication of the state Department of Natural Resources, writer Roger Drayna told of his favorite places, not necessarily famous national parks but personal spaces – the woods beyond Pattison Falls near Superior, a certain flowage he loves or a rustic cabin in a Norway pine grove near the Michigan border. He also cited a favorite place of my own, the spot between Hurley and Ashland were the highway falls away and the first glimpse of Lake Superior’s shining Chequamegon Bay is revealed beyond the still impressive forest.

“It is one of the few places,” Drayna said, “I can sense wilderness without even raising a sweat.”
It isn’t hard to find such spots. Start with Wisconsin’s two national forests. It is a month too early for New Year’s resolutions but why not resolve here and now to get to one or both in 2009, in winter or summer. See St. Peter’s Dome in the Chequamegon National Forest near Mellen, which requires a bit of an uphill hike but rewards the effort with unparalleled views of Lake Superior. Or, for the less active, make it Morgan Falls in the same area, a 70-foot waterfall that promises to cool the hiker on a warm summer day. And those are just two possibilities out of many.

Sheesh. Wild spaces are facing competition from the Internet and video games. Here’s one more piece of advice and I’ll stop preaching. For Christmas, skip Circuit City and get your loved one a Wisconsin State Park season pass. It’s the people’s country club. Go enjoy it.

(Above, the view from St. Peter’s Dome, Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources photo by Linda Parker.)

Dennis McCann: Good thing he didn't say "Retreat, Wisconsin"

2008-12-23T12:18:00.002-06:00

Originally published Nov. 28, 2008

I have admitted in the past a tendency to go off Cliff Clavin-like by trying to impress people with knowledge that leaves them, well, unimpressed. I mean, I can bring a dinner party to its knees by raising arcane points about Wisconsin history or quizzing others with questions like “Which of the following Wisconsin counties – Adams, Washington, Lincoln or Grant – was NOT named for an American president?* Toss that one into a conversation and the next question is hey, where is everybody going?

Still, it would be wrong to let this week pass on into the Christmas season without acknowledging its place in Wisconsin lore. It was this week in 1863 when Wisconsin won a slogan for the ages, and now the next time you hear “On, Wisconsin” you can impress your friends and neighbors with the story, as well.

“On, Wisconsin” was first uttered on a Civil War battlefield by a young – in fact, still a teenager – Union officer named Arthur McArthur Jr. During the battle for Missionary Ridge outside of Chattanooga, McArthur watched the Wisconsin flag bearer fall and immediately stepped into his place, hoisting the flag and urging his soldiers forward by yelling “On, Wisconsin. On, Wisconsin.”

Stirred by his call and his bravery, McArthur’s man rallied, which was a good thing for McArthur. Gen. Grant, watching the attack through field glasses, was said to have told an aide to promote McArthur if the attack succeeded – but to court martial him if it failed.

Of course, it did not fail, or University of Wisconsin athletic teams would have had a sorry excuse for a fight song. McArthur, who became known as “The Boy Colonel,” later was awarded the Medal of Honor for his exploits that day, and many years after that his son, Gen. Douglas MacArthur (the spelling changed somewhere along the way), also received a Medal of Honor for his service.

Anyway, that’s the story. I think it’s nice to have a state slogan born from heroism rather than one crafted by some marketing group, so on the 145th anniversary of its first use let’s all raise our voice in another “On, Wisconsin.”

* Oh, it’s Grant, which was named not for the general but, according to Robert Gard and L.G. Sorden’s “Romance of Wisconsin Place Names,” for “a famous trapper and Indian trader” who lived in a cabin along a river in the Wisconsin territory. Grant’s cooking utensil was a brass kettle that he wore under his cap on his head. One day, the account goes, he encountered a war party of Winnebago Indians. One brave struck Grant on his head with a tomahawk, “producing no other effect than a sharp ring from the kettle.”

Can’t wait to tell that one at the next party, can you?

Dennis McCann: Bucking the whitetail trend

2008-12-23T12:14:00.002-06:00

Originally published Nov. 23, 2008

I went into town this morning for coffee and the Sunday papers and, while waiting for the barista to foam my latte just right, chatted with Dr. Bob, my neighbor from down the trail (and not to be confused with Artist Bob, Pool Bob, Park Bob or any of the other Bobs who haunt the place). Like me, Dr. Bob was wearing red but when he asked whether that meant I had walked into town I shook my head and said no. I might be wearing brighter red than Bucky Badger’s game-day briefs but during this one week each year I leave woodsy Wisconsin to others.

My Wisconsin Native bona fides are as respectable as those of anyone you’ll find but I must admit to having been born without the hunting gene. I don’t mind, and the hunting lands are probably safer places without me and a loaded gun taking up space. So most years I spend the nine- day deer season (also known as Exotic Dancer Full Employment Week) in cities with sidewalks and manicured lawns where any deer that do appear are viewed as pests and not targets. This year, though, circumstances required my presence in Bayfield so I found myself Friday on the road north with much of the Grand Army of the Whitetail, where I couldn’t help but make a few observations.

No one goes hunting in a Prius. Roads leading to the hunting grounds were filled with pick-em-up trucks, usually carrying a four-wheeler in the back and sometimes also pulling old trailers not much bigger than fishing shacks that would serve instead as hunting shacks. In case anyone could miss the obvious, a few trailers had antlers tacked to the back. On the radio a DNR spokesman was explaining how, for a mere $24 hunting license, a man could provide lots of venison for his family in these hard economic times, but he didn’t say anything about the $30,000 truck, the $5,000 four-wheeler and the $5 blaze orange stocking cap he’ll also need.

Not to mention the 30-can twelve-pack of Bud.

Hunters are not necessarily vain, but they do favor vanity plates. I saw a truck license that read HNDGUNR, and knew instantly the driver was a hunter. Same with R U HUNTN, and while the owner of the truck with the license plate FARVE might have spelling issues (though it did finally look right) I was reasonably certain he, too, was a deer hunter.

The car with STYLIST? Not so much.

Outside of Brantwood I noticed a sign for Venison Road, but there was not a tree stand in sight. I’m no Daniel Boone but shouldn’t that be a clue? (And speaking of clues, riddle me this: What’s up with blaze orange camouflage? Now you see me, now you don’t? Isn’t that right up there with jumbo shrimp on the oxymoron chart?)

What was most obvious was how important the gun deer season is to the northern economy, and there the Grand Army was doing its part. Cafes were packed, stores were busy and in several towns charities had set up brat stands to take advantage of the hungry horde. One of those was in Phillips, and I might have stopped myself if I hadn’t been struck dumb by the sight of a fisherman sitting way out in the middle of the lake, staring into a hole in the ice. I just shook my head. A week earlier he’d have needed a boat to do that.

It reminded me of a story. God was at the gates of heaven sorting out the newcomers by IQ. One man said his IQ was 130, so God said “Welcome, why don’t you take a seat with the rocket scientists over there.” The next new arrival said his IQ was 110, so God directed him to go sit with the teachers and reporters.

The next guy said his IQ was 60. God said, “Welcome. How’s the ice fishing been?”

I guess I lack the ice fishing gene as well.

Photo by Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources.

Dennis McCann: Please, honey, let me be a man of Stihl

2008-12-23T12:11:00.002-06:00

Originally published Nov. 19, 2008

While I have always thought of myself as a knowledgeable and wordly guy, I’ve long been secretly embarrassed at being undereducated. Credit-wise, I mean, and we can probably forget the “secretly” part now that I’ve shared my shame on the world wide Internet. While many of my friends and former colleagues have advanced degrees or law degrees or medical degrees of every sort, I left the University of Wisconsin-Madison with exactly 120 degrees on the head, not one more than the bare minimum for entering the workaday world with a college degree. And while I often thought I should do something about that I never found the right opportunity.

Well, pull my cord and call me Chipper because now I have. I was going into Hayward the other day and passed by the campus of the Wisconsin School of Chainsaw Carving – “the only state licensed chainsaw carving school in the United States.”

Is this a great country, or what? Who knew there was a school offering “in-depth chainsaw carving training to the career oriented student.” As adrift as I am employment-wise these days, a new career turning tree stumps into fierce little black bears sounds pretty good.

It turns out the school has been around for a few years. The school (http://www.chainsawcarvingschool.com/) was started by a former taxidermist-turned-chainsaw artist and offers weeklong classes several times a year. Instead of a couple of No. 2 pencils and a box of crayons students are required to show up with a chainsaw or two, steel-toed boots, chainsaw protective shirt, leg chaps, gloves, goggles and helmet – not to mention your own gas and oil and $1,850 for tuition – but nobody said education comes cheap. If I can only convince my wife to let me have an actual chainsaw I can get to work on the prerequisite 20 carved mushrooms, a photo of which must be included with each application.

That could take a lot of convincing, though. Whenever I bring up my need for a chainsaw – and I am one who lives in the woods, by the way – I always end up feeling like poor little Ralphie in “A Christmas Story.” As Ralphie’s mother feared he would shoot his eye out with a Red Ryder BB gun, my wife contends I would cut my leg, or worse, off with a chainsaw. When I say “not bloody likely,” she only hears the “likely bloody.” And she doesn’t care if I’m the laughingstock of the local tavern.

But man, look at that course schedule. After the safety instruction (See, honey?) the class gets right to work on an eagle bust design and layout, then carving an eagle out of soft material and by the end of Day 1 each student has chainsaw carved an actual eagle. By Day 2 it’s on to carving the eagle’s eye, lip, beak and feathers and, in the afternoon, chainsaw carving a standing bear.

And who would dare play hooky on Day 3 when we get to make a death mask of either a carved or frozen bear.

The day I stopped to take a photo of one of the carved bears along the highway – that’s a salmon it’s holding up, of course – I could see a group of carvers in one of the outdoor carving booths and hear the manly whine of saws turning chunks of wood into high art. It was music to my ears. I tell you, I love the sound of a Husqvarna in the morning.

Dennis McCann: The myth, the legend, the Hodag -- is alive!

2008-12-23T12:08:00.002-06:00

Originally published Nov. 14, 2008

I was in Rhinelander the other day and so naturally stopped to capture a photo of the Hodag outside the Chamber of Commerce headquarters. Sure, capturing a photo of a Hodag is not nearly so good as capturing one live but lacking a Hodag license I was left to shoot only photos.

The Hodag is to Rhinelander as the showgirl is to Vegas. The elusive creature, first captured and presented to the world by noted Northwoods huckster Eugene Shepard in 1896, is Rhinelander’s pride and joy, its school mascot, even its alter ego. (Now that I think of it I'm not sure any Nevada high school uses showgirls as mascots but then we are talking Vegas, after all, so maybe.) The Hodag was a ferocious beast that was said to grow out of the ashes of a cremated lumber ox (lumber oxen had to be cremated, of course, to rid their souls of the profanity directed their way by impatient lumberjacks). Hodags were reported to be large, mean, horned, fanged, green-eyed and smelled like a combination of buzzard meat and skunk perfume.

So naturally it was a big hit with the locals when Shepard, at the behest of Oneida County fair officials, “captured” a live Hodag and put it on display. The creature was put in a dark cage in dim light and long lines of (also dim) fair-goers paid good money to see it and hear Shepard describe the capture. The Hodag proved so popular that Shepard took it on the road later, and out-of-towners would show up at his house hoping for a glimpse, apparently never noticing his sons making Hodag-like grunts and growls in the shadows. Some people just need to be tricked.

I knew all of that, and thought of it as ancient history. What I didn’t know until I returned home was that some today believe the Hodag lives (see “some people just need to be tricked,” above) and have put up a Web site (http://www.hodagsightings.com/) to perpetuate the myth, er, story. The site is “dedicated to the search for the wily Hodag,” and includes monthly updates of sightings (some in most watchable video), including a man who had a recent run-in with one. "In the ditch," he said, "I heard grunting. It sounded like somebody who easts potatoes trying to get into an old pair of Levi's. But it wasn't, it was another Hodag that I thought was giving birth..." There are also kid activities, contests and Hodag “facts,” which the site’s operators are at least honest enough to put in quotes.

Some facts: “Brett Favre can throw a football over 50 yards. A Hodag can throw Brett even further.”

“Hodags are the masters of no less than five (5) languages, most of them fake.”

“The elusive Rhinelander Hodag is fond of WI deer season due to its lack of a suitably drunk harmonica-loving crowd throughout the rest of the year.”

“Hodags are the most deadly creatures in the world, except for Chuck Norris.”

And, finally, “Hodags do not like politicians, lawyers or assessors and use their horns on these unwanted persons the most.”

Well, at least they're not all bad.

Dennis McCann: Celebrating the plowboys with sax tunes and pickles

2008-12-23T12:06:00.001-06:00

Originally published Nov. 11, 2008

Everybody talks about the weather but, well, everybody talks about it.

I had to laugh yesterday when I read the latest forecast from the National Weather Service, which has concluded that this winter will “almost certainly” be less snowy than last year’s. First off, any forecast with an “almost certainly” in it comes with a built-in excuse. And since last year’s 101.4 inches of snow set a record for Madison and Milwaukee’s 99.1 inches was similarly twice the yearly average, even I could have predicted this year will “probably” be less snowy.

More weather talk. In the same paper I saw that Gov. Jim Doyle has declared Wednesday as “Snowplow Driver Appreciation Day,” which as holidays go at least has the virtue of not eliminating mail delivery and closing the courthouse. Sorry, though. I’m not attending the snowplow driver appreciation parade, not after remembering how the streets in Madison were allowed to rut early and rut often last year. Don’t take it personally, plowboys. I didn’t celebrate Saxophone Day on Nov. 6 and won’t be joining the International Pickle Day (it’s true, and you can look it up) festivities on Nov. 14, either. Here’s the deal: keep the streets clean this year and I’ll appreciate you in the spring.

Besides, we’re all weather wimps these days. I’ve been reading a collection of history columns about early Bayfield written in the 1950s by a local newspaperwoman named Eleanor Knight, who devoted one chapter to the diaries of one Mrs. Andrew Tate. You want real winter? Here are some excerpts from Mrs. Tate’s winter of 1876.

March 16 – “A terrible northeaster. Snow blowing and drifting…kitchen and dining room windows entirely hidden by a huge drift. Did my work by candle light.”

March 18 – “Never saw such immense drifts as are everywhere in town.”

April 20 – “Ice very poor. A team was drowned this afternoon.”

May 7 – “Found upon waking this morning a cheerless northeast rainstorm…the ‘Mary Groch’ left the dock to assist the ‘Mary Ann’ which was being carried away with the ice.”

May 16 – “A gloomy, cheerless day. Bay full of heavy lake ice.”

May 18 – “Tug attempted to go to Ashland. Was prevented by ice.” Two days later, “The ‘Groch’ came in. Reported seven boats between here and Duluth locked in the ice.”

May 28- “…this afternoon as we came from Sabbath School the wind changed and the thermometer fell 26 degrees in 15 minutes.”

You get the idea. On June 2 – yes, June! - a tug attempted to go to Ashland but was turned back by ice. More ice formed around the dock on June 4, and three days later Mrs. Tate wrote, “It is so discouraging…Gardens are suffering from the cold. Bay FULL of icebergs and more coming. Almost sick with a headache.” Eventually that summer did come, but by October Mrs. Tate was again lamenting foul weather, and a year later when a cold winter again refused to yield, even in May, poor Mrs. Tate said, “No wonder people commit suicide in London on account of gloomy weather.”

Elsewhere in the book was a description of the year of the Big Snow, when snow began falling on a Wednesday and didn’t allow crews to start clearing the streets until Sunday. Mayor Wachsmuth dispatched the big snow scraper, the account said. “Two teams in trio and four in pairs, a total of fourteen horses, were required to drag the plow. The same performance was repeated Saturday.”

So, that’s real winter. I wonder if anyone ever held an appreciation day for those poor horses.

Dennis McCann: Remembering the gales of November

2008-12-23T12:04:00.002-06:00

Originally published Nov. 7, 2008

The weak morning light coming across Lake Superior this morning revealed a November day that looked exactly as it should. It was dark and gloomy, the gray-white sky was spitting rain and the lake’s surface rocked and rolled, but only enough to permit the day to be thought stormy. The Gales of November, if they are coming, will have to wait.

But this would have been the day, if the Gales had a sense of history. Today is the anniversary of the first day of one of the worst storms ever to hit Lake Superior and, its great cousin, Lake Huron. On Nov. 7, 1913, a fierce storm roared up that would not go quiet until Nov. 11, four long days in which perhaps hundreds of sailors died, some 20 ships sank or ran aground and millions of dollars in shipping losses were recorded.

November has famously produced stormy weather on the Great Lakes – the anniversary of the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, on Nov. 10, 1975, is just days away as well, and more on that in a moment – but the storm of 1913 was one for the record books. Some call it the “Freshwater Fury,” and a report on the storm by the Lake Carriers Association later concluded, “No lake master (ship’s captain) can recall in all his experience a storm of such unprecedented violence with such rapid changes in the direction of the wind and its gusts of such fearful speed.”

During those four ferocious days ships were sunk or left battered against islands or other shores. When the storm finally abated on Nov. 11 the only job left was to count the sunken vessels, estimate the number of casualties and assess the material losses. Newspapers of that day were filled with bulletins: “The storm today was sweeping up the St. Lawrence, leaving wrecks of vessels, docks and boathouses in the lake region,” said one report, while another noted, “An unknown 600 foot steel freighter turned turtle several miles north of Port Huron and her entire crew is believed lost.”

“Persons aboard the unknown vessel which yesterday was reported on the rocks near Gull Rock lighthouse on Manitou Island, Lake Superior, pounding badly and in danger of breaking up, are believed to be doomed to death.” Several of the crew were reported to be lashed to the rigging, likely already dead.

But no one would write a famous dirge about that storm, so the sinking of the S.S. Edmund Fitzgerald will forever reign as the best known, and yet some say most mysterious, shipwreck tale on the Great Lakes. Named for the head of a Milwaukee insurance company, the Fitz departed from Superior, Wisconsin, on her last trip on Nov. 9 that year with a cargo of 26,116 tons of taconite pellets bound for Detroit. But the lake had other plans, and the Fitz and her escort, the Arthur Anderson, met heavy weather on Nov. 10 off Whitefish Bay, Michigan. For reasons that are still studied and debated, Capt. Ernest McSorley indicated by radio that his ship was taking on water. She had lost her radar and severe damage had occurred in what McSorley described as the worst storm he had ever seen. And the last. He and his crew of 28 all went down with the ship. The Gales of November conference of maritime scholars and fans remembers the event and reports the latest findings of ongoing research each year in Duluth.

The Fitzgerald’s 200-pound bronze bell was later recovered from the wreckage and is now on display as a memorial to the crew at the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum in Paradise, Mich. If you are like me you have to like the irony of shipwrecks being remembered in Paradise. I was there a few years ago on one of the anniversaries of the sinking, and would suggest the museum (http://www.shipwreckmuseum.com/) is well worth seeing if the lake and its notorious past are of interest.

Just good luck getting that darn song out of your head if you go.

Dennis McCann: Sometimes history towers just overhead

2008-12-23T12:01:00.002-06:00

Originally published Nov. 4, 2008

One of the more memorable stories I covered in my newspaper days was a forest fire in northern Wisconsin. Well, not really a fire, given that the flames were out before I could get from south to north with pad and pen in hand, so in order to salvage the assignment I decided to interview a forest fire observer, which was a perfect plan until it occurred to me I would have to climb his tower to see him.

It was beyond nervous-making. When I arrived at the tower I realized it would be a 100-foot climb, hand over hand up a 10-story ladder with no safety wrap-around. Lord, it was frightening. The first time I cleared the treetops and felt the wind in my face I chickened out and went right back down to terra firma and hollered up, asking my interviewee what time he would be done. But he would have none of that. He finally talked me up, reminding me over and over to look straight out, not up or down, and keep climbing. Somehow, I made it, and after about 15 minutes my knees stopped shaking enough to enjoy the experience. Of course, then I had to get back over the hold in the floor of his shack, get back on the ladder and return to earth. It’s hard to say whether up or down was worse, but I lived to tell the tale.

Maybe that’s why I notice when fire towers made news. And when the latest newsletter of the Wisconsin Historical Society arrived the other day there was a tower in the news – the Mountain Fire Lookout Tower in Oconto County has just been added to the National Register of Historic Places. In my case that was historic in a personal way. I climbed that one, too, on another story some years back, and if you would be so inclined you can, too. The Mountain Fire Lookout Tower, located a few miles outside of the little community of Mountain, has been rehabilitated as an interpretive site and open to the public.

The Mountain Fire Lookout Tower, one of two remaining towers of the 19 that once served the Nicolet National Forest, is not as scary a climb as the one I described above. For starters, there are stairs from bottom to top, so there are handrails for comfort and security, but be forewarned that anyone who is altitude-averse won’t have an easy climb of it. The reward, though, is standing about 10 stories over a magnificent forest and looking out for miles of northern Wisconsin landscape. Surely that’s worth a little knee-knocking.

The Mountain fire tower was used from 1935 until the last fire was called in on April 25, 1970. Fire watching now is mostly an aerial pursuit, but it’s good a few original towers are being preserved to remind us of what those days were like. The tower was originally located a few miles from where it stands today; it was moved by a crew of Civilian Conservation Corps workers in 1935. Corps enrollees also fought fires, manned the tower and did other construction projects in the forest, which adds yet another layer to its historic importance.

Wait, though. Did I say manned? In fairness it should be noted that not every fire observer who manned a tower was in fact a man. Two years ago I wrote yet another newspaper story about the Fifield Fire Tower, in the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest (that’s the one pictured above), which was also being added to the National Register. As part of the research for the nomination park officials collected the remembrances of former fire observers, including brother and sister Manny Stein and Betty Murnik, who served at three locations during their years of service, including the tower near Fifield. I couldn’t help remember my own shaky climb when I read Betty’s account of one fall day:

“It was cold – there as no way of heating up there – some of those windows opened, so when it got cold and the wind was blowing, it came in. And the geese – there was rain mixed with snow one day, and the geese were flying between me and the ground. “

I liked Manny’s description of working during lightning storms, too, sitting on a stool with glass insulators on the bottom: “There would be a big bang – just like a canon going off. Then when it hit, you’d think, ‘What am I doing in this job? I don’t need to be in this job.

“Oh my, that was scary.”

I can only imagine. These days I’m happy keeping the geese overhead.

Dennis McCann: And in the category of Best State Park with a view of a crooked river...

2008-12-23T11:57:00.003-06:00

Originally published Oct. 27, 2008

Maybe I had my eye on the wrong election, because this one slipped right by me like a ghost in the night. I didn’t even know it was time to vote before the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources announced state park users’ ratings of their favorites parks as part of the Gold Seal Awards program, conducted in cooperation with the Friends of Wisconsin State Parks.

The awards were presented in a variety of categories, including Best Groomed Ski Trail (Kettle Moraine State Forest, Lapham Peak Unit), Best Picnic Area (Devil’s Lake State Park), Best View of a Waterfall (Copper Falls State Park), Best Mountain Bike Trail (Blue Mound State Park), and so on. In something of a surprise, given that it is one of the state’s smallest state parks, New Glarus Woods State Park won awards for Best View of Moonrise, Best Playground and Best Prairie. Also likely for best ballot stuffing by park advocates, but that was not part of the announcement.

I don’t have a problem with most of those. Copper Falls is one of the most beautiful state parks, with trails that offer dramatic waterfall viewing, and while I can remember but one picnic at Devil’s Lake State Park it was a very good time. I’ve never seen the moon rise at New Glarus State Park but trust that it is quite lovely.

But, as one who has visited all but a small handful of state parks, many of them on multiple occasions, I could offer a few other award-caliber recommendations of my own. And why not? I’m a friend of state parks, too. So as they used to say on the Academy Awards show, may I have the envelopes, please?

Best park beach that will make you think you are in Jamaica: Big Bay State Park, Madeline Island. OK, not today, because we had snow on the shore of Lake Superior this morning, but on a warm summer day you can walk great distances on the barrier beach at Big Bay and swear you are in the Caribbean instead of on a northern great lake. Take a swim, paddle a kayak or just sit on the sand and ponder the meaning of life.

Best park with a view of history: Wyalusing State Park, on the Mississippi River. Stand on the bluff overlooking the meeting of our own Wisconsin River and the Mighty Mississippi and imagine what it must have been like when Marquette and Joliet paddled their canoe past that very spot on their first exploration of that part of the new land. It’s a humbling experience. But don’t stop there. In a bi-partisan recognition that not everything cool is in Wisconsin, cross the bridge at Prairie du Chien and, on the Iowa side, go a few miles south of McGregor to Pike’s Peak State Park (named for the same Zebulon Pike whose better known peak is in the west) and take in the same view from the opposite side. Look up river, look down river, look back through hundreds of years.

Best State Park Most Wisconsinites Don’t Know: Interstate State Park, which despite its name is not a super highway. In fact, Interstate was Wisconsin’s first state park, established near St. Croix Falls more than a century ago, but there is more there than just that distinction. The rock formations there are as old as any you’ll come across, which makes hiking the pot-holed trails along the St. Croix River a true pleasure. Time and the elements have carved rock formations like the Old Man of the Dalles, Elephant’s Head, the Maltese Cross and others, many visible from land as well as from boat tours on the river. Minnesota’s own Interstate State Park is just across the river, so you can get a two-fer if you plan properly.

Best State Park with a view of the World’s Crookedest River: Wildcat Mountain State Park in Ontario. Of course it is not really a mountain, but this park’s elevations offer unsurpassed views of the Kickapoo River and the driftless area of southwestern Wisconsin. As a bonus, the drives in that area pass through some wonderfully laid back places, including a large Amish community at Cashton and a host of small towns content to be just that.

At any rate, that’s my ballot. I hope next year to get it in before they announce the results.

For a full look at this year’s winners, see http://www.dnr.wi.gov/news/DNRNews_Article_Lookup.asp?id=533. Photo of Big Bay State Park by Dave Miess used courtesy of Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources.

Dennis McCann: Pausing in Cable for a bit of (natural) history

2008-12-23T11:51:00.003-06:00

Originally published Oct. 17, 2008

Hell-bent is never the right way to drive so on my way home from a bit of book research recently I stopped in Cable to check on, appropriately enough, Forest Lodge Library, one of my favorites in all of Wisconsin. Added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2002, it looks like a library should in the north woods. It is a hand-hewn log building that dates to 1925, with a fieldstone fireplace, wood floors and shelves stuffed with books, a gift to the community by onetime summer resident Mary Livingston Griggs. Wabeno, in Forest County, also has a wonderful log library, and long may they serve readers in their quaint, old-fashioned way.

What drew my attention, though, was the gleaming new building adjacent to the library, the newly opened Cable Natural History Museum, a larger, greener and more up to date structure than the museum’s original quarters. The first museum, built in 1967, was essentially an add-on to the log library and was connected by a glass walkway, and while it served the small community’s needs fine for many years it eventually became too small and insufficient for program and exhibit needs, which led to the construction of the $1.8 million facility that opened late this summer, which was coincidentally the museum’s 40th birthday.

As birthday presents go, it is a beauty, and naturalist Cully Shelton was more than happy to show it of. The new one-story museum was designed to appear to rise up out of the earth and has a green roof that is meant to look like a tree canopy. It has more exhibit space, expanded classrooms and offices, a gift and book shop and employs the latest in energy-efficient components. I spent a while taking in the inaugural exhibit, “Paradise Lost? Climate Change in the Northwoods,” which features the work of several dozen artists who reflect on what a changing environment could mean for northern ecosystems. I was happy to see the work of a number of friends in the exhibit, including poems by John Bates and weavings by Mary Burns, photos by Jeff Richter and a nice piece of acrylic on wood by Howard Paap.

The museum (http://www.cablemuseum.org/), on the curve in downtown Cable, is open year-round from Tuesday-Saturday and is an especially good stop for families with kids because of wildlife displays, workshops and summer programs. And note that a few miles away is the very nice Forest Lodge Nature Trail, maintained by the museum and open to the public. I found the trail by accident many years ago and would have gone back to hike it again if time had permitted, but it did not. I headed for home, not hell-bent, of course, and not even in a hurry. If you should get to Cable, check out the old and the new. There’s something almost time-bending about checking your e-mail from a log cabin library.

Dennis McCann: All the moose fit to print -- and photograph

2008-12-23T11:46:00.002-06:00

Originally published Oct. 13, 2008

I know that I can go to the guess-what-I-just-saw well only so often, even living in what seems to be this north woods wildlife park, and under normal circumstances I’d let last week’s bobcat sighting speak for itself. But I can’t help myself, because that same post referred to the unusual sighting of a young bull moose in Ashland – and, even as I write this, that very same moose is bedded down on a rainy hillside JUST DOWN THE ROAD FROM MY HOUSE.

Sorry to shout like that, but a moose on the loose would goose anyone’s excitement meter.

As I noted last week, moose sightings are pretty rare in Wisconsin, though a few are reported every year. This was my first, and to find it within walking distance of our house was a thrill. I was coming back from running a few errands when a man walking in the light rain on our road hailed me and asked if I had seen the moose. Moose? I believe I answered. Yes, he said, just down here, so off we went to see if it was still there. And sure enough, there on the rainy hillside was the moose, lying down in the brush but with its big head and shoulders and antlers easily in view.

As was the case with my bobcat encounter I did not have a camera (maybe I need to revisit that policy) so I went home and got my wife and for the next 45 minutes or so watched the moose walk a bit and then hunker down again. She got a few photos, despite questioning the advisability of approaching a maybe 1,000-pound bull moose who might not be in the best frame of mind, given that it is the rut. But the moose cooperated just enough to get digital evidence of his presence here so no one can say we made it up.

When I say it is the very same moose spotted in Ashland last week I am, of course, only speculating. But it is clearly a young bull, given the antler growth, and there aren’t many of them around so it is at least a very good supposition. The question, though, is without a young moose cow to give him company on these cool fall nights, will be take home a favorable impression of his first Bayfield visit? I hope so, and hope that his journey to wherever comes next is a safe one.

This morning we had, as we usually do this time of year, an eagle in the tall white pine on the lake side of our house and, as I left to show my wife the moose, a pileated woodpecker landed on a tree in front. I won’t burden you with separate reports on those, though. Besides, it will take something pretty special to top young Bullwinkle.

Dennis McCann: Cue the Fat Lady -- It's curtain time again in Mineral Point

2008-12-23T11:43:00.003-06:00

Originally published Oct. 12, 2008

Perhaps instead of “fat lady” I should have used “anorexically deficient” or some other silly euphemism but the fact is we are talking opera here, or at least opera houses, and double-sized divas come with that territory.

This matter, of course, grows out of recent word that major donations will allow for first-class restoration of the Mineral Point Opera House, which those of us who enjoy a little history with our modern entertainment can only applaud as right on key.

Mineral Point’s Opera House is just one of that much preserved city’s many historic buildings, but it’s among the most important. It is actually part of the city’s Municipal Building, said to be one of the last multi-purpose buildings in Wisconsin, and occupies a prominent place on the city’s hilly Main Street. Built in 1915 by Madison architects Claud and Stark (who also designed Madison’s iconic Orpheum Theatre), the Mineral Point Municipal Theatre and Opera House, as it was originally known, attracted some of the country’s best known touring vaudeville and performing arts stars.

The theater was part of a Wisconsin circuit that included the beautiful Pabst in Milwaukee, the Grand Opera House in Oshkosh, the Al Ringling in Baraboo and the recently restored Mabel Tainter Memorial Theatre in Menomonie, a true jewel box of a space.

When I caught a high school band performance in the Mineral Point Theatre more than a decade ago (our nephew’s trumpet was without doubt the show’s high point) its glory days were obviously in the past, but it was still a treat to sit in a grand old theater and imagine those earlier times. Too many communities can only claim memories of such facilities that have long since fallen to the wrecking ball, fire or neglect. But Mineral Point, along with a handful of other state communities, held onto its theater, using it for movies, live performances, meetings and other purposes.

So the news of impending restoration is most welcome. The Jeffris Family Foundation of Janesville awarded a major grant toward a $2.25 million restoration of the opera house “to its original magnificence,” according to the announcement. The first phase of the grant is $500,000, matching similar grants from both the city of Mineral Point and an anonymous donor that will allow work to begin immediately. Second and third phases will follow as additional funds are raised.

With Shake Rag Alley, the Pendarvis state historic site and a community filled with restored lead mine-era buildings and dozens of artist studios and galleries - not to mention restaurants that serve authentic pasties - Mineral Point is already a steady tourist draw. But backers of the opera house restoration say the historic space would enhance what is already attractive about the community while offering additional space for new classes, artistic endeavors and other visitor-friendly efforts. The building will be used for community performances, film festivals, touring acts and a repertory theater. Restoration, expected to begin in April, could be completed by fall 2010.

If the restoration follows the style of other Jeffris-backed projects, including Mineral Point’s Orchard Lawn, the historic Joseph Gundry House, St. Autustine Church in New Diggings and Villa Louis in Prairie du Chien, Mineral Point will have a beautiful piece of its past given new shine. I’d say that’s something to sing about.

Dennis McCann: When the fires of hell burned through Wisconsin

2008-12-23T11:40:00.002-06:00

Originally published Oct. 7, 2008

Wednesday, Oct. 8, will be remembered in Chicago – if it is indeed remembered at all in the meltdown of not just one but two professional baseball teams – as the anniversary of the Great Chicago Fire, a conflagration of such a scale the whole world learned of the flames that leveled much of the city.

But we in Wisconsin know that Oct. 8 is also the anniversary of an even greater tragedy, the firestorm at little Peshtigo in Marinette County, an event that even today is considered by many the worst fire in American history. Forget the legend of Mrs. O’Leary’s cow. The disaster in Dairyland, whether the whole world knows or not, was far worse.

It’s hard to imagine today what it must have been like that autumn in 1871, when stubborn drought that began in June reduced the northern timberland by October to thousands of acres of kindling and slash awaiting only a match. Today we would have "no burn" orders in place, but oddly enough those dry conditions in 1871 actually persuaded many residents to light small fires in an effort to clear stumpy cutover land for farm use. Such debris fires were left to burn unchecked, so residents became used to the sight of red glowing on distant hillsides, apparently not understanding they were a deadly danger that would not be extinguished. When, on Oct. 8, strong, hot winds blew through there was concern at first but not yet panic – at least not until fires began to burn together and grow larger, picking up speed and force as winds increased.

By then it was too late. The fire – some later called it a tornado of fire, a holocaust of flame – raced through the north woods. Fire wheels jumped from tree top to tree top, smoke rose in mass clouds that denied vision and entire forests were claimed by flames in minutes. The sound was said to have resembled artillery fire. Houses and farm buildings disappeared, and people with them. Panic resulted, of course, and fleeing farmers and their families often found themselves trapped by balls of flame that rolled over them and burned them on the spot. Many others, people and cattle, took refuge in the river, the only place fire could not burn. By the time the fires had burned out, more than one million acres had burned across northern Wisconsin and Michigan, an estimated 1,500 people had died and even some survivors were left to view themselves as victims of the Peshtigo fire.

A few months ago I stopped at the Peshtigo Fire Museum, next to a cemetery where some victims were buried. The dead include an estimated 350 people in a mass grave, many who had been burned to completely they were never identified. (The attached photo shows a marker at the mass grave that was put up in 1981 as a remembrance.) But as sobering is it is, the mass grave does not reveal the horrors of that day as do the personal stories told on interpretive markers sprinkled through the cemetery.

Take the sad story of Terrance Kelly, his wife and four children who lived in an area called the Upper Sugar Bush. When fire came, the family was separated in the smoke and wind. Terrance had a child in his arms, his wife held another and the other two clung to each other. The next day, Terrance and his child were found dead nearly a mile from the farm, while all the others lived. The farm was gone. Terrance and Terresa, age 2 years and 2 months, are buried together.
Could the rest of the family truly be called survivors? Or could the 19-year-old Mellen man who walked his two younger siblings into the icy river to escape the hellacious flames, ducking their heads repeatedly to escape the fierce heat? Yes, he lived, but when he brought his siblings to shore both had died of hypothermia. And what to make of Charles Lemke, who attempted to take his family from the Lower Sugar Bush to his brother-in-law's house a mile away. Perhaps because he hooked the wagon so fast he needed to get down from his seat at one point and fix a hitch, just as a wave of fire washed over his family. Lemke was badly injured but managed to save himself in a small creek. But saved for what - to remember?

The stories go on, each as tragic as the last. One family grave is marked with a stone that reads simply, “All Lost In the Calamity.”

It is not an anniversary to be celebrated, but it is a hard one to forget. If you get to northeastern Wisconsin the museum, and cemetery, are highly recommended.

Dennis McCann: Bayfield is an apple city to its very core

2008-12-23T11:37:00.003-06:00

Originally published Oct. 3, 2008

Autumn’s vibrant colors are everywhere in evidence in northern Wisconsin, the oranges and gold especially vivid when viewed against the brilliant blue of October skies. But the only color that matters this weekend is red, the color of apples. It is Apple Festival weekend in Bayfield, the biggest and busiest weekend of the year, and apple red rules.

Apple Festival is the one weekend a year when tiny Bayfield, pop. 650 or so depending on who is at home or away visiting the kids, becomes something else entirely. What that something else is can be different things for different people. For some of us, the change from quiet little tourist town to a bustling destination for tens of thousands of weekend visitors can be disconcerting. I had to park blocks from the coffee shop this morning, not just across the street as usual, and then wait in line for 20 minutes for the overburdened barista – yes, even Bayfield has baristas, with tattoos and piercings to boot – to produce my latte. Oh, how I suffer for my art.

But such is the social contract when you live in a tourist town that any personal caffeine crisis must take back seat to the business people who depend on Apple Festival crowds to make their season, one that seems to get shorter every year. The tourist season now begins on the 4th of July, burns white hot through August and into September weekends and finally explodes this first weekend of October. After that, park anywhere you wish. The coffee shop and restaurants, the gift shops, the charter sailboats and fishing boats and cruise boats must make their nut this weekend, because after Monday morning’s hangover the free-spending crowds will be distant memories.

And for all the congestion and lines and annoyances (many in the visiting horde are from Minnesota’s Twin Cities, if you know what I mean) Apple Festival is a great deal of fun, a celebration of red so intense that in a bluff-top cemetery in Appleton old Joe McCarthy must be spinning in his grave. Last night I volunteered at the important apple pie baking contest and pie social, an event my wife and our neighbor co-chaired for the first time. Talk about pressure – mess up the traditional apple pie contest in the apple capital of Wisconsin (sorry, Gays Mills, but you know it’s true) and who knows what shame and besmirchment would be visited on our household. Happily, the contest went off without any real glitches; the dozen volunteer judges sampled pies in a variety of categories from All-American Apple to Commercial to Creative, named the winners and awarded the prizes, all while a packed pavilion of pie-lusting people watched and waited their chance to ravage and sample the entries. Somewhere, Betty Crocker smiled her approval.

Now it is on to the party, a blowout that would likely amaze the growers who started a little fall festival for the community more than 40 years ago. There will be food (pork chops on a stick with apple mustard – hmmmm) and music, a special Apple Ale from the South Shore Brewery in Ashland and more crowds so large that they will have to park in fields at the edge of town and ride buses to the packed downtown streets. There will be a lighted boat cruise, and the popular pipe and drum corps from Thunder Bay will be on hand as always for their wake-up concert at the marina. There is even a creaky little carnival with rides and games for the gullible. And on Sunday the big Apple Festival parade will march down Rittenhouse Avenue, with apple-themed floats and apple-flavored displays and lots of high school bands whose members will rush from the finishing point back to the start at the top of the hill for a mass band that always signals the end of the parade and, by extension, of the season. And we will stand on the hill and cheer the Bayfield band the loudest. Tradition demands no less.

So fine, the city is crowded and maybe a little inconvenient but it is one weekend a year and the economy needs it to be successful. And it will be delicious fun. Better red than dead, I say.

Dennis McCann: Without sports, who would cheer for the Flivvers?

2008-12-23T11:34:00.002-06:00

Originally published Sept. 25, 2008

I passed through Colby, in the heart of Wisconsin dairy country, this week and lamented once again that the town’s leaders have somehow failed to change the name of the high school athletic teams to the Colby Curds. Maybe some would find that cheesy, but I am a big fan of naming athletic teams to honor past achievements or other bits of local history, and how the city that invented Colby cheese chose the Hornets – Hornets? – over Curds is beyond me.

That’s one of the nice things about living in the far north, where a number of schools’ athletic teams wear names that tell something about the community’s past. Where I live in Bayfield, for example, the school teams are named the Trollers, reflecting the city’s rich commercial fishing heritage. Down the road in Washburn, the teams are called the Castle Guards, a name that arose because the city’s original high school was said to resemble a turreted castle. And a bit further to the south, the Ashland Oredockers took their name from the four giant ore docks that extended from the mainland into Lake Superior in order to load ore carriers. Only one of those remains now, and it is slated for removal, but the local teams will help recall the glory of those days for years to come.

They aren’t the only schools with cool names, though. Mellen has the Granite Diggers, and Hurley has its famous Midgets. Unfortunately, that means the girls’ teams have to be the Hurley Midgettes, which makes a new word out of whole cloth simply to spin off of the boys’ teams name. That seems unfair to the girls. Given Hurley’s sordid past I could have offered something more fitting but then I’m not sure the town parents would have approved of the Madams. As it happens, Butternut also has the Mighty Midgets, though those teams are named not for diminutive athletes but for onetime hometown hero Charles “Midget” Fischer, a professional wrassler of some renown a few decades back.

Our friends across the Wisconsin border in the Upper Peninsula have more great team names. Bessemer has the Speed Boys (and, unfortunately, Speed Girls), while the Watersmeet Nimrods were thought to have such a wonderful name it was used in a national campaign by ESPN a few years ago. (Remember “Without sports, who would cheer for the Nimrods?”)

Of course, using bits of local history to choose team names doesn’t always mean they will roll off the tongue. Gwinn, Mich., which once was a model town for an iron ore mining company, still calls its teams the Model Towners, which seems to defy easy rhyming in cheers but you never know. ("Go Towners, Don't be Downers?") But my new favorite school team name comes from Kingsford, Mich., just across the Wisconsin border, where the Kingsford Flivvers uphold local pride every time they take the field.

Flivvers? Yup, because Kingsford once was a Ford Motor Company town and the nickname for the Model T reflects that fact. I only learned that while playing golf with the father of two Flivvers this week, and he seemed delighted with the name. (In an unrelated but still interesting note, Kingsford Charcoal began when the Ford plant there, which made wood sides and other components for Ford cars, was looking for a way to use every scrap of waste wood. They turned the scraps into Ford Charcoal Briquettes, which later became the familiar Kingsford brand we still use today.)

Anyway, the Fighting Flivvers make for great headlines, and the other team names work as well. “Trollers Net First Place,” for example, or “Speed Boys Race Past Hurley,” or even “Nimrods Top the Saints.”

I’d love to see a headline that reads “Curds Squeak By Tigers.” It’s just a pity it will never happen.

Dennis McCann: Seven things you might not know about Corny

2008-12-23T11:31:00.003-06:00

Originally published Sept. 21, 2008

There is a historical marker on a rock in Cornucopia that boasts: “On this site in 1897, nothing happened.” Given that the town wasn’t founded until a few years after that it is entirely possible that nothing happened in 1897, or more likely that whatever did happen was simply unnoticed because no one was there to serve witness.

But I’ve recently spent a bit of time in Corny, as she is familiarly known, on a writing project and have come to learn more about things that did happen in this horn-of-plenty place on Lake Superior’s edge than the rare days when nothing took place. Here are a few things about Cornucopia you might not know, or if you already do then you, too, can call her Corny.

North-south streets in Cornucopia were named for the Great Lakes (a decision which, just speculating, might explain why the village never grew very big), while east-west streets were named for trees. For example, the main business strip is on Superior Street and the Russian church is at the corner of Erie and Ash.

Russian church? That’s right, St. Mary’s Russian Orthodox Church, with its distinctive three-bar Russian Orthodox cross, octagonal belfry and small dome, was built in 1910 to serve the worship needs of Russian immigrants who came to the far north to work the lumber camps and, later, farm the cutover land. The Russian community has shrunk through the years but the little white church – I’ve already told you where it is – is still used for services.

Cornucopia was born as a lumber town and great quantities of logs, lumber and Hemlock bark – favored by tanneries – were shipped from its harbor. But after the forests played out the community turned to its other natural asset, Lake Superior, and became a major fishing center. Whitefish and Lake Trout were abundant, but the herring fishery eventually produced the biggest yield and profits. During the peak of the herring run school children would skip classes and housewives would abandon their kitchens to help in the herring sheds that lined the water. On a single day in 1941, 14 boats brought on 141,685 pounds, prompting a newspaper to declare: “Herring Run Smashes Records.”

Even a horn of plenty can be fished out, though, and today only one commercial fishing company can be found in Cornucopia. Still, the carcasses of old fishing boats sit on the water’s edge in the community park, posing for tourist photographs, and one boat, the Liberty (shown above), is currently undergoing restoration. Master boat builder Thomas Jones Sr. built the Liberty in Cornucopia in 1934, when the industry was going great guns.

Cornucopia is most famously known as “Wisconsin’s Northernmost Post Office,” as a large sign above the post office entrance declares. If Cornucopia had a barber shop it would also be known as Wisconsin’s Northernmost Barber Shop but it doesn’t, so that claim goes to Oly’s barber shop in Bayfield, where northernmost barber shop T-shirts are available.

Sadly, the Cornucopia Yacht Club is no more. But when it was started in 1972 by a local resident named Roger O’Malley it was like few other yacht clubs. For one thing, candidates for membership were not required to own a boat. A question on the membership application asked,

“If you had a boat, what would you name it?” President Gerald Ford was said to have been a member – it isn’t known what he would have named his boat if he had one, though “The Betty” is a good bet – but the club ended in 1991.

Cornucopia is blessed with one of the great community names in Wisconsin, but even that wasn’t good enough for its residents in 1940 when, apparently hoping to boost Christmas tourism, they voted to re-name their village North Pole, Wis. Postal officials, obviously lacking a sense of humor, declined the change.

And that, my friends, is not a Corny joke.

Dennis McCann: For better or worse -- or for a whole lot of beer

2008-12-23T11:28:00.002-06:00

Originally published Sept. 16, 2008

So I asked my wife if she wanted to take part in this weekend’s Wife Carrying competition in Minocqua. She must have thought I said wife burying, the way she said no so fast, but in either case we’re sitting this one out. Too bad, too. I would have enjoyed winning her weight in beer.

This relative newcomer to the Wisconsin event line-up is intriguing, though, equal parts silliness and serious sport, at least half of which I’m well trained in.

The Wisconsin Wife Carrying Championship requires a man to carry his wife – real or borrowed – over a 278-yard course that includes sand, water and log hurdles. In 2007, six couples competed in the inaugural wife carrying contest, competing for a first prize of the wife’s weight in beer and five times the wife’s weight in cash.

According to the Minocqua Chamber of Commerce Web site last year’s winning team, Matt and Samantha Denton of Lake Geneva, received $545 for their victory and – unless my math fails me, always a possibility – 109 pounds of beer. Unless she showed great restraint with that, Samantha will weigh more than 109 pounds this year, but that’s her husband’s problem.

You would guess a contest as goofy as this one would have been thought up in a bar, like most seemed-like-a-good-idea-at-the-time propositions. But no, it turns out the competition was born in Finland some years back – and the event has historical roots that go back to the 1800s when a certain brigand was said to have accepted in his troops only men who had proved their worth on a challenging track. It was also the custom at the time to steal women from neighboring villages, so it was only logical the activities should be combined.

According to a Web site for the world championships in Finland (Dennis Rodman took part in the 2005 contest, though it didn’t say if he was the carrier or the wife) wife carrying today “is composed of humor and hard sport on a fifty-fifty basis.

“The wife carrying is an attitude towards life. The wives and the wife carriers are not afraid of challenges or burdens. They push their way persistently forward, holding tightly, generally with a twinkle in the eyes.”

The event is a benefit for a local ski area. If you are thinking of taking part (rules and registration are at http://www.skimwp.org/) you should know that there are four customary styles to carry the wife: the traditional piggyback, the wife dangling upside down on the carrier’s back, thrown over the shoulder and crosswise on the carrier’s shoulders. Whatever style you choose, be prepared for the ride of your life.

“You can sense the excitement in the air during the wife carrying competition,” the world championship site said. “The core of the race is made of a woman, a man and their relationship. The wife carrying and eroticism have a lot in common. Intuitive understanding of the signals sent by the partner and becoming one with the partner are essential in both of them – sometimes also whipping.”

How kinky! No wonder a bunch of birch switches are recommended equipment.

Anyway, there you have it. The event begins Saturday at 11 a.m. in Minocqua’s Torpy Park, and if you lack a wife or even a wife-substitute there will be other events as well, including the less strenuous wife ferrying and pike carrying.

Also note that one week later, on Sept. 27, Minocqua will host its annual Rump Roast Run. Insert wife joke here at your own peril.

Dennis McCann: Stopping in Star Lake to visit the sisters

2008-12-23T11:24:00.002-06:00

Originally published Sept. 12, 2008

What does it say about someone - or in this case two someones – that when their time is done their friends get together and preserve a minnow shack in their honor.

It says they performed a service, an essential service given the northern need for bait, and did it well.

I passed through little Star Lake in the Vilas County lake country the other day and, as always, stopped to see the minnow shack at the water’s edge, the onetime - and longtime - business place of Edith and Hazel Fredrickson. For most of the last century Edith and Hazel were beloved fixtures in Star Lake, selling minnows and fishing supplies, candy and ice, renting boats and sharing stories of old Star Lake with those who came to see them.

Star Lake gave them lots of stories to tell, of the heyday of lumbering when their Norwegian immigrant father, Fred Fredrickson, walked from Minocqua to Star Lake looking for work and stayed to marry and raise a family, of the railroads that brought life and prosperity until they went away, of the recreation era that followed. The sisters – “the girls,” as many knew them – lived in a turn-of-the-century house and operated their minnow shack decade after decade.

Edith lived to 95, while Hazel made it to two days short of 99 before she died in 2000.

Friends who knew and loved the sisters have maintained their old site. "Like a historical landmark kind of thing," one friend told me some years ago. "They were definitely a big part of Star Lake. No one came here without stopping to see the sisters. They were such a big part of Star Lake I didn't want them to be forgotten."

The shack is faded, as are the letters offering “Boats for rent, worms, tackle, knitted handwork.”

It’s not often you’ll find a bait shop with knitted handwork. But the shack serves as both memory and monument, standing along the lake’s edge just a few paces from a memorial in the sisters’ honor. Next to an old fishing boat filled with flowers a bronze marker reads:

“Dear Edith and Hazel,“Now your little green minnow stand sits quietly by the shore.You were a friend to all who entered your door.Always warm greeting with smiling faceYou gave us good reason to slow our pace.Your simple way of life with no place for want or desireIs the greatest legacy you’ve left for us all to desire.It’s hard to accept your era has come to an end.Grand ladies you were so much more than friends.We each cherish our own memories and hold them close to our hearts.Thank you, your friends."

Funny thing. The sisters have been gone for some years now, and still people stop to visit their shack. That's a legacy, all right.

Dennis McCann: And out of the sky comes ... a Manitowoc festival!

2008-12-23T11:16:00.006-06:00

Originally published Sept. 3, 2008

Last week I was a guest on Wisconsin Public Radio for a program about fall travel, so I armed myself with all the usual suspects – your Coloramas, your Oktoberfests and Octoberfests (never mind that most are in September) and all manner of Harvest Fests featuring apples, pumpkins, cranberries and more. Throw in beer and cheese festivals and you have the perfect Wisconsin balanced meal.

They can be fun, but even so let’s give it up for Manitowoc for coming up with something entirely different, a new fall festival dedicated to Sputnik, the 1950s-era Soviet space rocket that lit up the Cold War.

And which left a historic hole in a downtown Manitowoc street one surprising night in 1962.

Manitowoc isn’t the only Wisconsin community to develop a celebration over things seen in the sky. Belleville, outside of Madison, and Elmwood in western Wisconsin both celebrate UFO festivals, showing that even unexplainable and improvable sightings are reason enough to tap a keg and throw a party.

But at its first Sputnikfest (http://www.sputnikfest.com/) this weekend Manitowoc will be celebrating an event that can both be explained and proven, and which has secured the city its asterisk moment in the great space age.

It was on Sept. 6, 1962, when two city police officers, Ronald Rusboldt and Marvin Bauch, discovered a glowing chunk of debris embedded in the middle of North 8th Street. Logically, they first assumed the glowing scrap of metal had come from a local foundry, but it was eventually established that it was instead a chunk of Sputnik IV, which had been launched by the Russians in 1960 but which, by 1962, had developed fatal mechanical problems and had plunged back to earth.

The 20-pound chunk of Sputnik that was found in Manitowoc was big news for the city, as you would expect, and a historic moment to be preserved. While the original fragment was eventually returned to the Soviets, two replica fragments were given to the city and the crash site on 8th Street was given a brass marker. One of the replicas is at the Manitowoc Visitor Information Center and the other at the Rahr-West Museum, adjacent to the spot where the Sputnik chunk was found.

This weekend’s festival will take place in the vicinity of that spot, and feature not only Manitowoc’s historic moment but the Space Age and Cold War as well. There will be the usual food and drink and entertainment, but also a sci-fi film festival, Miss Space Debris contest, re-enactment plays and even a specially brewed Sputnikale.

There won’t be – and good for them – a single mention of Oktoberfest.

Dennis McCann: Signs of the times -- and the times are weird

2008-12-23T11:08:00.003-06:00

Originally published Aug. 24, 2008

A bit of social business took me again to Madeline Island this weekend so in the grand island tradition I missed the ferry that was to return me to the mainland in order to spend quality time at Tom's Burned Down Cafe, one of the seven wonders of the Up North world.

That might sound a little much but it's true. There is not a first-time visitor to the island who doesn't see the Burned Down Cafe in all its weathered bohemian glory and not wonder, what the hell is that?

It's a good question, because Tom's just might be the oddest bar in all of Wisconsin - and yes, that is saying a lot. It's a survivor, for starters, born from the ashes of a onetime island bar called Leona's (that's the Burned Down part). Tom Nelson brought what he could salvage into downtown LaPointe, set a wood floor atop an old car, added the box of a truck for storage, built a bar (the granite bar tops were once urinal walls at a Bayfield TB sanitorium), coolers, a stage for bands, seats, even umbrellas and a few heaters because among the things he didn't add to the place were walls. He posted a sign - "Sorry, We're Open" - and lo these many years later, despite some misguided government efforts to apply zoning to a structure that defies the very concept, Tom's is going strong, a magnet for summer hippies, island pirates, boat bums, head-scratching tourists and assorted dogs. Think Key West without all the hurricanes.

Remember what I said about inspiring wonder? My friend Jim saw it recently and wondered where the heck the health inspector was, which was surely a case of a city guy applying his elitist standards to a true island institution. It is, admittedly, a bit lenient with the dress code. No shirt, no shoes? No problem, ladies. Have a seat at the bar and what'll you have?

Red-staters might want to keep their politics hidden. Tom's, I'm proud to say, is where I got my "Re-Elect Cheney-Satan '08" bumper sticker.

At any rate, somewhere along the way Tom's Burned Down started adding wacky signs with wacky sayings, signs that in their own way offer guidance through a mixed-up world. Here is some of the wisdom I stole from Tom's the other night, which is only fair given that he stole half of these from others in the first place:

1. Red meat is not bad for you. Fuzzy greenish-blue meat is bad for you.

2. Democracy is the art of running the circus from the monkey cage.

3. How old should a highway be before you tell it it's adopted?

4. It's not pre-marital sex if you're not planning to get married.

5. Just who thought it was a funny idea to put an S in lisp?

6. Anyone who generalizes is stupid.

7. 42.7 percent of all statistics are made up on the spot.

And my favorite: A good friend will come and bail you out of jail...but a true friend will be sitting next to you saying, damn that was fun.

Susan Smith: Fort Atkinson’s Brat Man -- have grill will travel

2008-12-15T20:21:00.005-06:00

Originally published July 10, 2008

By Susan Lampert Smith

FORT ATKINSON – Dale Romens has a job other Wisconsin guys dream about.

Last year, right after Christmas, he and the lovely “Miss Alice” headed south from his Fort Atkinson home, bound for what sounds like a tough work schedule.

First, they motored into Tampa for the Outback Bowl, where the Wisconsin Badgers took on the Volunteers of Tennessee. No time to dwell on Wisconsin’s narrow loss, because they were expected next at the Orange Bowl in Miami.

After that, it’s kind of a blur. There were bass fishing contests, some NASCAR races, the San Antonio Cowboy Breakfast and the premiere of the “Speed Racer” movie in Los Angeles. Somehow, he managed to make it back East to the Baltimore Orioles Opening Day.

It was May before he finally made it home to Fort Atkinson and his wife, Sue. Doesn’t this party boy lifestyle make her a bit ornery?

“No,’’ he said, “Bratwurst pays the bills.”

Wherever there’s a party, Romens shows up with the brats. A half ton of them. And the grill. The really, really “Big Taste Grill,’’ billed as the “World’s Largest Grill. Period.” It can grill 750 bratwurst at a time, or 2,500 an hour.

“Miss Alice” is the truck that pulls the 53,000-pound grill, named for the Queen of Bratwurst herself, Alice Stayer of Johnsonville bratwurst fame.

Back in 1945, Alice and Ralph Stayer bought a little meat market in the Sheboygan County community of Johnsonville. The idea for their famous bratwurst was born at a festival, when Ralph, known as RF, noticed people were tossing half-eaten sausages in the trash. He knew he could create a tastier sausage, and the rest, they say, is sausage history.

One upon a time, bratwurst were an ethic food, known to the Germans and those who lived near them. Now, says Romens, they’re popular everywhere. In fact, one of his favorite events is the cowboy breakfast in San Antonio, where the hearty Texans downed 12,000 before the sun was high in the sky.

His biggest event, bratwurst-wise, is the one closest to home. Madison’s World’s Biggest Bratfest broke its own record this year, with 191,712 sausages consumed, many of them cooked on the world’s biggest traveling grill.

But there was no time to rest, as Romens began packing up the grill on Memorial Day for a trip west, which began in St. Louis. After that, he’s got a western swing that will take him to Fleet Week in San Francisco, the Great Reno Balloon Race, and up into Canada, with stops in Calgary and Vancouver.

He’s been driving truck “for 40 years without hitting anybody.” The last eight he’s been driving “Miss Alice” for Johnsonville, which he says is definitely his most fun job.

After all those miles, and all those sausages, is he sick of bratwurst?

No way.

“I still eat them,’’ Romens said. “Not everyday. But I eat them.”

PHOTO INFORMATION: Dale Romens spreads the joy of Wisconsin bratwurst at events throughout the country, like this recent promotional event at the Bass Pro Shop in St. Charles, Mo./PHOTO by Roy Sykes

Dennis McCann: The Fort Turns Fifty

2008-12-15T19:57:00.004-06:00

Originally published Aug. 21, 2008

Earlier this year a friend turned 50 and to mark the achievement threw a party that lasted, well, hours. This year the Madeline Island Museum also turned 50 and it’s spent a good part of the summer season celebrating its milestone. Given that it has spent those 50 years collecting and preserving hundreds of years of island history, from its early roll in the fur trade to Native American life and later a summer haven for visitors, the season-long celebration can hardly be called excessive.

Even accounting for my natural bias in favor of Madeline (which, casual reader, is the island off of Wisconsin’s northern tip in Lake Superior, not that other island off the end of Door County) this museum is my favorite of all of the state’s designated historic sites. Pendarvis in Mineral Point is wonderful, an Villa Louis in Prairie du Chien, especially since its grand restoration, is a must-see as well, but the island museum is something special, not least because it requires a ferry ride across Chequamegon Bay to get there.

Also known as The Fort for the log stockade that rings its oldest structures, the museum was the creation of Bella and Leo Capser, St. Paul natives who spent summers on Madeline for many years. Leo, in fact, spent his first summer on the island in 1903 and over the years became so smitten with the island and its history that he decided a museum was in order.

There is more to building a museum than merely writing a check, though. Beginning in 1955, with the help of other islanders and visitors, Leo secured four historic structures, the former La Pointe town jail, an old log barn, a log structure known as the Old Sailor’s Home and, perhaps most historic, a portion of an 1834 building used by John Jacob Astor’s American Fur Co. The structures were joined together in a prominent space near the ferry landing and converted to museum space.

Relics and artifacts cover every aspect of island history, from the days of voyageurs and missionaries in black robes through the years of commercial fishing and lumbering and into modern times. The Madeline Island Museum opened its doors in 1958 and 10 years later was deeded to the Wisconsin Historical Society as a state historic site. Even then the Capsers continued their involvement and eventually left an endowment that allowed in 1991 construction of a modern addition to house offices, more exhibit space and other facilities. Outside, within the sharp-pointed stockade walls, there is room for additional artifacts – a historic outhouse is popular with young visitors, of course – and can be used for encampments and other programs, while the green in front of the museum is used each July 4 for song and speeches after the popular island parade. I think I have missed that event just once in the last 25 years or so, and don’t plan to miss it again.

The museum has mounted a special exhibit on its own history and development this summer. In addition to several special programs that have already taken place there will be a special event on Sept. 28 honoring the anniversary of the Signing of the Treaty of 1854. The museum is open through Oct. 4. For a ferry schedule (the island is about a 20-minute ride) visit http://www.madferry.com/ and for more on the museum go to www.wisconsinhistory.org/madelineisland.

Dennis McCann: Next time you're in Disco, Wis., say hello to the duck for me

2008-12-15T19:43:00.001-06:00

Originally published Aug. 18, 2008

Last summer in Bayfield, where I now make my home, I saw a girl walking down the street in a t-shirt that read "I Don't Care About Your Blog." I didn't take it personally, despite having just started writing a Midwest travel blog for the newspaper where I was then employed, but merely wrote it off as the smug insolence of youth, a condition that is sadly universal but, on the bright side, often only temporary.

I can only trust that a year later, as I begin this new blog on WisconsinNative.com, that age has softened her heart and that she will be at least a little curious to see where this new venture takes us as we move ahead.

Hey, I know I am, and I'm the guy that's supposed to be driving this blog. But I've long argued life is less about the destination than the journey so let's get moving and we'll worry about the direction later.

Most first-time meetings begin with introductions so this is as good a time as any to share my Badger bona fides. I am, as it happens, a Wisconsin native of the first order, born to parents who were themselves Wisconsin born, raised in Janesville, schooled in Madison and, except for a brief, misguided stint at an Illinois newspaper (it meant living in Schaumburg, which explains the "brief" part) I have lived and worked in this state my entire life.

And when I say that I mean the whole state. In 1983, when I was hired as farm writer and state rover or the Milwaukee Journal, I began traveling Wisconsin for work as well as pleasure and by the time I retired from the now Milwaukee Journal Sentinel last November it was, as I wrote at the time, "almost 25 years, hundreds of thousands of miles, countless hotel nights, six company cars and two roadkill deer later."

I'm sorry about the deer, but the rest was a gas. On any given day my "office" could be a forest trail or a Rustic Road or, when I could press my expense account to its limits, a room on an island lodge or a Mississippi River boat. I wrote from every county in Wisconsin and most of its cities, and while it is still possible for me to get lost on back roads it's a lot harder than it used to be. I tried log rolling in Hayward, rode with stunt pilots in Fond du Lac and hung on for dear life while a runaway harness horse on the other end of my reins raced around a track in Richland Center.

In 1997 I was privileged to write a book of historical essays about Wisconsin for the state's sesquicentennial, and from that point until I accepted my newspaper's buyout offer in November I was on the road year-round as a twice-a-week travel columnist, all of which is intended to suggest that if I should someday tell you there is a small community in Wisconsin called Disco and I once walked in to the little store there to ask about the famous duck, well, you know that it's so.

Just as you can probably guess that the store clerk thought I was nuts.

But all of that was then and blogs are now. Because we haven't opened the map yet it's hard to say for sure where we're going but expect to meet people and go places and learn new things, even things you didn't think you needed to know. There will be cosmic issues at times, and comic issues, too. I take an expansive view of the state's borders so while Wisconsin is our turf it's likely we will occasionally stray to places like Galena or Duluth or even the Upper Peninsula, which is rightfully part of Wisconsin anyway and where so many Yoopers are also Green Bay Packers fans that the border is only a technicality. Because I live on the shore of Lake Superior much of the year it's certain these musings will have a northern accent. And because blog is just golf spelled backward, or close enough, and because the cursed game has a hold on me like no other expect to find a mention or two of that as well.

We shall see, is my point. And if the girl in the "I Don't Care..." shirt hasn't come around by now, I hope that moths have their way with her wardrobe.