Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!

I took a couple of days off and we've been in Boscobel since last Tuesday,can't believe that the week is gone already. Fantastic 50 degree weather with blue skies, air crisp and fresh, traffic, crowds, cars and noise banished for this while.


We finally moved a lot of the extra stuff from my CHI apt up to the house so I can downsize to a studio in the city. Best of all, aside from the time for us to just be together at home, the real luxury at last of time to burn just mucking about the house. There's always something to be discovered, to fix, to improve, to imagine building, crafting, creating- this old house indeed is us.
David cooked Thanksgiving Dinner this year, enjoy this photo of a delicious bird that barely does it justice, gobble gobble!


...Enough words for now, the "News from Lake Wobegon" is on the radio and the leftovers and a regional nut brown ale "Fat Squirrel" from New Glarus Brewery are calling my name..:)
Almost forgot, here in the frozen (not yet!) hinterlands of Wisconsin, the northernmost hibiscus, given to us by our next door neighbors Nancy and Ben as a housewarming gift, chose to grace us with two beautiful salmon colored flowers jsut in time for Turkey Day


Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!

Was jsut fiddling with you tube to get some feedback for Lulu's brother Dan. Posted a test vid (lousy quality vid of a long time ago KW Author's Coop interview) and got it working in abt 15 minutes, so now want to see if I can embed the link here. Here goes:

If this works I'll narrate some short Boscobel clips soon!

The house has been keeping us busy, busy, sorry about the vast empty month. Am off to work here in a bit but wanted to say hello to everyone and post a couple of my most recent photos. The Wisconsin landscape is changing into its winter garb, which I find stunning to look at (not to mention that we've already hit 19 degrees one early morning, and its not yet November!).

Here are two shots from my workroom /studio upstairs, looking west out the rear of the house. The creek is just beyond our neighbor's bungalow, which used to be the city hospital!

The concrete stoop at the back of the house, which was cracked to begin with, gave way last week and David surfed it all the way down. This is a shot of the replacement stairs he built. Nothing that this man can't do! You can also see our woodpile- this is about 4-5 weeks supply, all red elm, oak and walnut.


Down the hill there is a footpath that local kids take to school. This is a place where taking a shortcut across a neighbors yard is as common as it was 40 years ago in the rest of the country- fences are rare here unless there's a dog to be kept at home. I'm planning to put a meditation garden at the base of the 3 big pines that mark the back edge of the lot. One trunk is visible here

We travelled back to the apple orchards at Gay's Mills last weekend to restock on McIntoshes, HoneyCrisps and tasty Amish chocolate maple walnut squares. The orchards look vastly different from the last time we were there (see the bumper crop pics in an earlier post), but the fall colors captivate the eye just as much as the harvest windfall did last month.

the seasonal changes here are dramatic, cinematic even. You never lose awareness of the life of the land and creatures all around you, squirrels, rabbit, deer, chipmunks, turkey, quail, bluejays, robins and those everpresent invaders from across the Big Pond, the English starlings. The songbirds here are fatter than I have ever seen anywhere, perhaps they know something about the coming winter we humans have not yet understood...


I haven't shared many of these, but this is also an area of working farms, dairy, corn, soy and other crops. The homesteads are storybook picturesque in this region. Here however, they're not populated by gentlemen farmers but by generations of farm families, the land and buildings hard won over years of intense labor and good business sense- or lost for a lack thereof.

One crop that's a regional secret is the uncommon corn cob tree, we have one in the yard as you can see by this final photo. This ornamental looks best with a winter red tailed squirrel perched atop the cob, a golden kernel in each rosy little fist. The squirrel's a lucky character,if not for that bushy tail there by another name would go a rat. Shrink the squirrel, add racing strips and viola, you have the chipmunk, a clever fellow not above tormenting the local tomcat by skittering about on a low fence every morning directly across from the fern garden where tom lays in the sun to warm up.

Ah, Wisconsin... Talk to you again soon pals.

We got the house!! Last two weeks have been a whirlwind. We closed on Olive's birthday, David's folks came to visit and we've been running around town meeting people ever since. The house is massive and more than home already- can't explain why but this house in this place resonates deep inside. The hunt is over.
On the practical side, for the first time ever I have more kitchen cabinets than I can fill, enough rooms to get lost in, a community where people still don't lock their doors and where the bar, hardware store, grocery and movie theater ($3.00!!) are a walk away. The Clawfoot tub and fireplace ain't bad either :)
Of course its not all beer and skittles: the refrigerator died immediately, David had to replumb a grease thickened kitchen drain from the sink to the basement and the riding mower "nothing runs like a Deere" didn't at first.
Nevertheless, we are home, and its a beautiful place:
The Wisconsin River flats, convergence with the Mississippi is west of us.
Bumper crop of apples this year, notice that the tree limbs are actually breaking from the weight of the fruit!

Cold nights (38 degrees a week ago)have starting pushing out the fall colors, with crimson sumac the brightest by far at present. Back roads are covered in walnuts.
That's all for now folks, cya in Wisconsin!

TGIF, even with rain predicted for the entire weekend, there's nothing like a day off! Although one learns not to expect too much wisdom to be revealed in random messages from the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA), this train door says it all!
Speaking of timing, coffe cup's empty, its time to go get refilled, grab my coat, forget the hat, hit the bus in seconds flat. Image here is of an El station adjacent to my downtown stop, Harold Washington Library. I'll try to eventually get some pics of the bldg posted,it's an amazing bit of architecture. Carpe weekend, any good plans?

Wildflowers of the Northeastern and Northcentral US

Workday, argh, must type quickly, onto the 135 Clarendon LaSalle express bus in 45 minutes!
Discovered this wildflower site this morning while verifying that the fantastic red flower I took pictures of during a Wisconsin fishing trip (image below) was actually Indian Paintbrush; it wasn't :) Its Red Lobelia or Cardinal Flower, and the picture doesn't do it justice. The red is so intense its like a flame searing thru the woodland shade. Nice that we can now capture it via camera instead of picking it; apparently like so many other beautiful wild things, it was loved almost to death and now is somewhat rare. I've only ever seen it in places that required a canoe to access.

Also learned from the wildflowers site that the Robin is the Wisconsin state bird; now that's a bit freaky, guess I really am heading home. Yay! Okey doke, gotta bolt to my cube, carpe diem!

Out fishing yesterday on the DesPlaines River, one of the nicer spots to get back to nature in ChicagoLand. Lake Country Forest Preserves have done a great job of restoring this urban watershed's natural ecology. Civilization, by default is still close by but as far as urban wilds go, this is as good as it gets.

Funny thing is when we first snuck out of Chicago looking for fishing spots that didn't involve piers full of people jostling for a square foot on Lake Michigan and leaving behind piles of trash(bait containers, line, pop bottles,diapers (!) Shame on those yahoos for being too stupid selfish or plain ignorant to realize they are crapping in their own mouths, too bad that's not literally what happens when they litter! Its a wonder we haven't been in a knock down drag out because neither one of us shies away from pointing out the mess to the morons responsible and asking them to clean it up- actually, we should all do that; if more did, more would learn...Or at least we can hope so. Sigh), this watershed looked wild and wonderful. And in fact it is, once you canoe away from the highway boat landing the waters clear and noise subsides, except for the lowing of the freight trains southbound.

But now, after having spent many weekends in the remote Wisconsin hills, DesPlains yesterday, at first, seemed positively noisy and dirty, until we got a mile upriver. Even then, the rumble of trucks on the highway never quite went away. (Photos above are DesPlaines watershed and a big Channel Catfish who jumped on an artificial lure!)

The point of this long digression being that we are so far removed from real wilderness and inured to the constant noise and dirt of human "civilization", that we are on (maybe over) the verge of realizing how far far far away we are from nature, and how benumbed our senses, and sense of wild places, have become.


It's both alarming and sad. How difficult will it become to teach our children and remind each other to be stewards of this amazing planet if we are aware only of the shadows of the daylight gleaming beind us?
Wisconsin Sunset, Grant County

Enough with the mouth. Since no one back East has come yet to visit me in the Heartland (hint, hint), here are some photos of Chicagoland to pique your interest:



The sailboat's heading out onto Lake Michigan (aka, Gitcheegoome. Really)

The trail is part of the 16+ mile park that runs the entire length of the city proper along the lakefront

Looking toward Milennium Park and the loop.

My first 4th of July in Chicago, 2005 (date on the pic is wrong!)

Visit Laura's blog!

I'm adding a link here to Laura's blog, it's looking great.

Ran a spellcheck on this blog yesterday- wow.... Our dependence on electronic editors may be having more impact on our skill sets than we've anticipated. Thinking back to manual typewriters and whiteout, both now seem positively medieval, but they did encourage us to spell carefully!.

Read a piece in the Chicago commuter rag Redeye about a trend among <= 20-somethings that dismisses this weakness in their communications: they r abbrev everthing,as is done in IM convos, kwim (know what I mean?) It's def a trend u can c...sigh.

I was thinking this could be interpreted as yet another sign of the general decline in discourse and in communication skills. But then, triggered no doubt by the word "sign", I started wondering if it might also be symptomatic of a creeping evolution of English language words into pictograms, or as Pound and Fenellosa had it, "ideograms", "The English Written Character as a Medium for Poetry"?

Ok, ok, so I'm optimistic, but if definitely can become def, DF or its scripted equivalent might not be that far over the horizon. Anyone familiar with the development of Chinese or Japanese written characters, feel free to jump in here :)

India's New Manufacturing Economy
Worth a read article in the NY Times about the new manufacturing economy in India. A lot of my co-workers are from India and they are all exemplary individuals- well educated, articulate and versed in public discourse; their perspectives on the vast cultural, physical and technological shifts that are transforming- or not, in some places-- their country make for compelling lunchtime conversations. Imagine the last 200 years of "progress" the US has been through occurring in a <= 20 year timeframe and you can begin to visualize the imp/explosive changes overtaking that continent.

So here we are, the Friday before Labor Day and the city crowds are crazed to get home and get on with vacation. Vacation as work, impatient drivers, pushy commuters, loud cell phone conversations on the El and the unendurably chirpy voice of a proselytizing Christer. Nothing against those who believe, but the ostentatious display of faith in public places is not WJWD. Eh.

Diversity in the mix too, on the next train young black man was conducting a rap volume cell phone conversion abt bitches and weed, while the woman sitting directly across the aisle wielded a crossword puzzle like a weapon. Way more concentration than I possess.

Could it be that the electronic volume of public spaces is the new normal and this discontent reflexive of my own aging standards? Nah. Screw it, any animal that has to make noise all the time gets eaten eventually, not to mention something that used to be referred to as the social contract, pardon me asswipe!!

Ah yes, but I do love Chicago. Tho not as much as driftless Wisconsin, nor ever as much as the dunes and marshlands of the Cape. See illustration stage left. Time for dinner ya'll.

Quick hello from the Windy City to everyone back east and down south. A lot of the Caper crowd just shared an excellent vacation week at the Cape (Viva Champagne Isle!). With that good time fresh in mind and at Lulu's instigation, I've decided to reincarnate my old FIU blog. Time now to head out to the digital coalmine - TGIF--. Talk to everyone soon, feel free to post and tell me what you think.I love this photo from Champagne Isle, it reminds me of Seurat's "Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte". Life is art :)