Holiday Cheer (with music and food)

One of the best things about the holidays is the music. During December Rick and I heard a terrific concert by Midwest Vocal Express at the Greendale High School auditorium. One of the members of MVE, an all-male a cappella chorus, works with Rick and invited us to attend. Not only did MVE sing great Christmas favorites, but the Milwaukee Handbell Ensemble and the Epix Quartet, a foursome from the Crosstown Harmony women's a cappella chorus, performed a few numbers as well.

The men of Midwest Vocal Express sported red and green ties - appropriate for Christmas.

Handbells are the perfect holiday musical instrument.

This quartet placed 25th in international Sweet Adeline
 (the women's equivalent of a barbershop quartet) competition.

The chorus must have heard my wish because they performed my favorite Christmas carol, Do You Hear What I Hear, as the final number. This brought back memories of singing in my high school chorus.

There were snowflakes both on the inside and the outside of the auditorium that day!

After the show, Rick and I went to Mazos for burgers. It's in a tiny storefront across the street from Leon's Frozen Custard. We were extremely pleased with the great value. For $20 (tip included) we both had burgers, fries, soup, and split a strawberry milkshake made with real strawberries!

We'll definitely return the next time we're on the south side of Milwaukee.

Drive-ins, Diners, and Dives on the Food Network has visited a few places in Wisconsin including Franks Diner in Kenosha. We met our friends, Greg and Laurie, there the weekend before New Year's for a late breakfast. 

That's Rick going in to find our friends.

The food was good, service was fast, and the staff was fun. Even though the line was practically out the door, customers did not have a problem waiting. Everyone was having a good time.

Diners like Franks have a sense of humor.

Customers need to obey the directives on the wall!

After breakfast we ventured to the Civil War Museum. The focus of the permanent exhibit is on the experience of soldiers from the Upper Midwest. Wisconsin sent more than 91,000 troops to fight in the Union Army. They fought in every major battle of the Civil War. Camp Randall (now the location of UW Madison's football stadium) was Wisconsin's major training facility. Confederate prisoners were also housed there. That's why 140 southern soldiers are buried so far north in Madison's Forest Hill Cemetery.

These were the lucky ones who returned to their families.

The Civil War lasted nearly four years to the day it began.
We are in the midst of the sesquicentennial commemoration
of that horrific war. 

Our day in Kenosha ended with a ride on the electric trolley - a loop nearly two miles long. Again we were entertained by a barbershop quartet singing Christmas carols. It was one of our warmer winter days and a splendid way to spend a Saturday afternoon with friends.

The holiday season is over but the memories remain. Happy New Year to my readers and to your families as well. May 2014 be a joyful, prosperous, and successful year!

Happy New Year 2013!

For the last weekend of 2012 we wandered out of state – to the flatland south of us to visit our friends Anna and Bill in Freeport. We met up at the Tinker Swiss Cottage Museum in Rockford. 

Look closely and you'll see Rick at the side of the cottage - playing with his phone, of course!

The backside of the cottage. Its basement is still above ground. Robert Tinker
had his office down there. 

As we learned more of the history of the cottage and its builder during our docent-led tour, I thought about a couple of Wisconsin similarities – the Schlitz Brewing Company and Villa Louis. 

Robert Tinker was a bookkeeper for the Manny Reaper Works (a big competitor to Cyrus McCormick at the time). McCormick sued John Manny over patent infringement – all the way to the Supreme Court – but Manny won. However, the trial took its toll and Manny died only two weeks after the verdict. Tinker eventually married Mary Manny, John’s widow. He connected his cottage to Mary’s home with a draw bridge over the creek that separated them. 

Now for the Schlitz similarity – Joseph Schlitz was the bookkeeper for August Krug’s tavern brewery. After Krug died, Schlitz married Krug’s widow and took over the brewing company naming it after himself. One difference was that Mary Manny Tinker ran the company making her a rarity among women of her day.

As for the similarity to Villa Louis, the Tinker Cottage has many of its original furnishings, artwork, and household items still on exhibit just as the Dousman family artifacts are at Villa Louis. Both homes were turned over to the cities in which they were located after family members lived there for many years. Both are now operated as museums.

The fireplace in the parlor - all decked out for the holidays.

This spiral staircase was fashioned from one continuous piece
of wood that was bent over a period of many months.

One of the serving pieces in the butler's pantry.

All of the china was painted with a variety of flowers.

After the Tinker Cottage, we stopped in at the Burpee Museum of Natural History, also in Rockford. The centerpiece of its paleontology collection is Jane, a juvenile tyrannosaurus rex.

Jane has more of her original bones than any other dinosaur on exhibit in any other U.S. museum.
She was uncovered in Montana.

This depiction is of a Neanderthal, a human's
closest extinct relative.

On New Year’s Day, we met our friends, Laurie and Greg who live in Illinois, for brunch at the Honeypie Café in the Bay View neighborhood of Milwaukee. Greg grew up in Bay View so it was a homecoming for him. The food was delicious and the conversation scintillating. It was a great way to begin the new year. 

Since we’re still in the first week of the new year, it’s probably okay to end this first post of 2013 by wishing all of my readers a Happy New Year! May your 2013 be filled with friends and adventures!

On the Grand River

Last week I was in Grand Rapids, Michigan for the annual conference of the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies (BALLE). BALLE is the national network that includes Dane Buy Local and one of my “jobs” is securing sponsorships here in the Madison area. I heard many passionate speakers who not only talked the talk about the importance of thinking local first when making purchasing, banking, and even investing decisions, but they have walked the walk over the years. 

A view of Grand Rapids from the Amway Grand Hotel where we stayed. 

An interesting part of the conference was a sustainable manufacturing tour. We visited the headquarters of Herman Miller and Haworth, two of the companies in what is now known at the “Furniture Capital” of office furniture manufacturing. Both companies put NOTHING in landfills these days – amazing stories of how they manage to repurpose, reuse, or recycle just about everything that is used in the furniture manufacturing process.

A green roof at Haworth that is planted with sedum. The roof keeps the building
underneath cooler in the summer and warmer in the winter. Excess water
runoff is directed to a rain garden. Employees tend the garden. 

Frank Lloyd Wright designed windows displayed at Haworth.
(It's always important to find a Wisconsin connection
no matter where I wander!)

I had some free time and managed to squeeze in a visit to the Gerald R. Ford Museum that was on the other side of the Grand River from our hotel. 

I learned that an attempt to restore the "rapids" in the Grand River has been in talks
for years, and now Grand Rapids Whitewater is working to do just that.
The organization hopes to restore 2 miles of the rapids and turn downtown
Grand Rapids into an outdoor hotspot for kayaks and fishing.

Looking for Wisconsin connections, I found this official
Green Bay Packers helmet in the exhibit that had been autographed
and presented to President Ford by team members.
 Where are the autographs? Maybe they've faded with time!

My colleagues, Lark and Leslie, and I checked out a local restaurant, the Electric Cheetah, for lunch one day. After a short stroll down the street, we ended up at Art of the Table, a unique specialty retail shop with gourmet foods, tabletop accessories, and home accents. The beer cooler at the back of the store was an original from the early days of the store. The store is located in Heritage Hill, one of the largest urban historic districts in the country. The district includes 1,300 homes that date from 1843 and represent Michigan’s finest collection of  19th and 20th century architecture.

The walls of the women's bathroom were "papered" with zig saw puzzles.

A return to Grand Rapids would be fun for Wisconsin Wanderers – lots to do and see in a city that’s right across the lake from Milwaukee!

Bottoms up!

Now that fall is officially here, I’m starting to think about where in Wisconsin to see some of the best color and maybe stop for a beer or two along the way. Southwest Wisconsin and the National Brewery Museum in Potosi immediately come to mind. The Museum is located in the beautifully restored Potosi Brewing Company and is a place to see an amazing amount of brewing memorabilia – labels, bottles, coasters, glasses, signs, and just about anything a brewery of the past used to advertise its product. The American Breweriana Association and the Potosi Brewery Foundation teamed up to create this museum.


Long before Wisconsin became known as “America’s Dairyland,” our state could have been called  “America’s Beer Keg.” During the 19^th century, nearly every town in Wisconsin had a brewery. That’s why this national museum has so many exhibits that focus on Wisconsin brands. Today, the big brewers have consolidated but the micro breweries with their craft beers are making a comeback – much to the relief of those of us who believe that life is too short to drink bad beer!

Bloomer is in northwest Wisconsin - not too far from where I grew up.

Due to its large number of German immigrants, Milwaukee had many breweries. 

Hillsboro has a large Czech community. My mother's ancestors
came from Czechoslovakia but I mostly remember my grandfather
drinking a glass of wine rather than beer on the holidays.

I remember Kingsbury as a brand my dad drank.

Lithia signs can also be seen at Milwaukee's Lakefront Brewery.

This brewery in Theresa (with the 'th' pronounced like the 'th' in 'with' and the
rest rhymes with 'dress-a') probably used water from the Rock River
in its beer recipe.

 

If you like a beer with great hops flavor, I recommend Potosi Brewery’s Snake Hollow IPA. It’s a sturdy ale with character and carries the original name of the Potosi Hollow.

And, if you go to check out the Museum and Restaurant, be sure to observe the speed limit in this town that has one street about three miles long. Rick got a ticket on the north edge of town!

Ten Chimneys

Last week my friend, Mona, and I spent two hours on a beautiful summer day touring Ten Chimneys. Ten Chimneys, a national historic landmark located in Genessee Depot, was the summer, and then retirement, home of Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne. The couple was widely considered the greatest husband-and-wife acting team in the history of American theater. 


Lunt hailed from Milwaukee and Fontanne from England. They met and first acted together in 1919 and married in 1922. By the mid 1920s, Lunt and Fontanne were the two most respected, most popular, most critically acclaimed, and highest-paid stage actors in the country. After 1928 and until their retirement in 1960, neither appeared separately on stage again. Lunt and Fontanne had a clause in their contract that provided they would never act in the summer, so they could instead come to Ten Chimneys to retreat, relax, and rejuvenate.


Ten Chimneys today looks as if Lunt and Fontanne would walk into any room at any moment to graciously greet their guests. Evidence of their extensive travels is everywhere. Lunt was especially meticulous about cataloging all the furnishings, art, and artifacts on the estate. How much time he could have saved if only personal computers had been available during his lifetime!


We saw the main house, cottage, and studio on the tour led by an extremely knowledgeable docent. Not only could she tell us about many of the furnishings inside the buildings, but she had stories about many of the famous people who were guests at Ten Chimneys over the years.

The main house has bedrooms named after friends
of Lunt and Fontanne. 

When Alfred Lunt's mother and sister lived in the
cottage he called it the "hen house." 

The studio includes a second-floor performance balcony.

The name, Ten Chimneys, derives from the total number of chimneys on the main buildings on the estate. However, similar to the Big Ten Conference, now with its twelve teams, there are actually eleven chimneys at Ten Chimneys. A building with a chimney was added after the Lunts established the formal name for the estate and decided that they didn't want to change the letterhead on their personal stationery!


Ten Chimneys Foundation bills the tour we were on as "the tour of a lifetime." It was definitely a life that I will never know but it's nice to know that we have such a wonderful place right here in Wisconsin.

Rainy Days

As much as we would like the sun to shine every day that we wander, that just doesn’t happen. So, on those rainy days, we check out museums. Having gained a deeper appreciation for Wisconsin’s history over the last several years, I've managed to get Rick to historical museums in many of Wisconsin’s communities.

Last week we were at the Indian Agency House in Portage. Our tour guide was a very engaging college student who gained her love for history from her parents.

I couldn't resist posting this image – a section of a large advertising banner that came from the back of a theater stage. It’s at the Malone Area Heritage Museum in Wisconsin’s Holy Land. We’ve been at the modern-day Calumet Brewing Company in Chilton – good beer, good food, and a fun atmosphere.

The Harley-Davidson Museum in Milwaukee is terrific. You can even design your own motorcycle.

If you want to check out more that moves, ride the electric train from Mukwonago to East Troy. Here’s a decorative element from one of the train cars.

A little rain won't dampen the spirits of us who love to wander Wisconsin!

Heaven in Wisconsin

Yes, it’s been hotter than hell these past few days. (Of course, I’m only speculating on how hot it might be in hell.) However, let’s think heaven for a bit. For my money, heaven is mid-July on the south shore of the greatest of the Great Lakes, no matter the temperature.

Superior is not only its name but the lake's descriptor as well. 

An inlet somewhere in the Chequamegon Bay area.

Madeline Island, the largest of the Apostle Islands, is accessible by ferry. Always a cool ride.

The Madeline Island Museum is always a fun destination, just a hop, skip, and a jump from the dock. 

Superior sailing.

Saxon Harbor is to the east of Chequamegon Bay.

A Superior sunset to end the day.