spent stalks and old leather

Soy and corn... however we feel about this Wisconsin farmland staple, it sure makes for pretty fall colors.





Old barns, old farmsteads. Think of it: there was once a family farm – maybe owned by the Larsons, and then there was another – call it that of the Lalors. And they flourished and they prospered and before you know it, all land around you belonged to the Larsons or the Lalors.

What do I know about it? No, nothing at all. Just this much: one Lalor family member lived in an old house until she was in her nineties... Here, she lived, so far as I know, alone, here:





(Though her nephew lived just across the road. A Lalor in the land of Larsons.)

She died some half dozen years ago, but the house still stands, as does the barn.





With everything inside as you would imagine it must have been at the time that they raised cattle and kept horses.
















That was a long long time ago. You can tell just fingering the bits and pieces of old leather...





These are the folks that are (more or less) Ed’s neighbors. Within a stone’s throw of his farmette (where the barn is still standing though just barely).

In the Lalor barn, there are old corn cobs left from when animals dumped them on the wooden planks. And shit. There’s badger shit. Or some such animal droppings.

Surely many Wisconsin animals have made homes of the old barns that offer nothing more beyond shelter for the truly needy.



Nearly evening. I drive past a prairie field of gold and purple. Interspersed with spent stalks of something once beautiful but now so very close to moribund.

by the wayside

You cannot do it all. And if you think you can do even just most of it, you’ll wake up in the middle of the night and your mind will start racing and scheming, and before you know it, the darkness outside will turn into a golden light, touching momentarily the tree by your bedroom window.

I will miss that tree at sunrise (when I eventually move out of the condo).





You have to let go of things. With a shrug of indifference. Can’t fret. So you didn’t make it to the market until nearly noon, so what. There’s plenty to choose from at the tail end of the market morning.





And that’s one fine box of strawberries. Lonely there, on the table, but still delicious.





On the other hand, you can’t neglect the important things. Remember how my bike dominates my outdoor commute for a good part of the year? (Even as each year, I define the “good part” less generously...) Well, I’ve not had the time to replace the flat and so the bike has been hunched in its disabled state for three months. And sure enough, when I finally attended to it early this morning, it showed me how badly damaged it really was. Flat tire, yes, that. Add to it a missing screw here, a dysfunctional derailleur there....

Unfortunately I find this out just at the time I am to meet my daughter and her friend for a bike ride. A dozen miles to Ed’s farmette, another thirteen looping back.

Neglected bike – I let you down and now you’re showing your hurt and bewilderment.

I’m sorry.

We tweak this and that and I’m off. The three big gears are frozen, but the little ones still work. That’s okay. You can’t do it all, you can’t do it all...



And it is a lovely ride. I’ll just(!) post five photos, but a convincing fivesome, I think. My world is a painting and I don't need a brush to prove it.

























I'll attend to the larger bike issues soon, really I will. Maybe.

traveling companions and pumpkins

I’m sitting here listening to Ed read about the moog synthesizer. I don’t really know what it is and arguably, I’m not better off knowing anything about it. But Ed’s voice can be soothing when he reads snippets of what he considers to be interesting information out there.

I think about how odd it must be to one looking in on this association that I have with my occasional traveling companion. The moog synthesizer story is one of several I am likely to hear that I would not have tuned into otherwise.

And, by the end of the moog run, I will know a lot about moog – and then, too, how there is something about the manufacture airplane components (the F-35 joint strike fighter – joint, Ed explains, because many countries have a piece of it), and how they have their headquarters in New York...

They bought one of our machines – he tells me. (Ed is a partner in a CNC milling machine business.)

I tell a friend today over coffee that I am happy. Creaky shoulder and unsold condo notwithstanding. Of course, this is before Ed tells the waiter at the restaurant where we go with my daughter and her friend -- ok, never mind, you really don’t want to know what he said.

Ed is Ed. Once you accept that, you can continue.

pizza and time

The wind cavorted with such power and speed that any loose item left outside was surely lifted and carried elsewhere. Not that I would notice. The day was chock full of work, then Gino eating and finally the kind of karaoke that feels good only after a long week of too little play.


On the way to my evening of small group socializing (last week I partied with one set, this week it’s the other’s turn) I came across a pizza eating contest. UW students, downing pizza at record speed.





I thought how my family considers me to be a speed eater, but even so, I would probably gag and come in last at a pizza eating contest. You can’t do things you love well if someone points a gun at you and demands perfection.

Which is why blogging should never happen three minutes before the clock strikes midnight. And when it does, you feel so sincerely sorry that you haven’t the energy to do better. But there you have it: press "publish" just seconds before the clock says you’re out of time and you are officially into the next day.

Each day has only twenty-four hours. You cannot change that, no matter how much you may wish it weren't so.

daughters and winecaps

A student comes to see me during office hours. We talk about many things, including her long term plans. I want to return to my family, in California -- she tells me.

Part of me thinks it could be the weather. Sacramento versus Madison after all. But the larger part of me knows better.

We are a mobile society. We expect our kids to move, chase the career opportunities, relocate with their spouse, relocate again.

A friend once said to me – I’d go and live where my daughter and her husband live, but there’s no guarantee that they’ll stay there.

And so my heart melts when a student tries so hard to beat the professional odds and slowly make her way home...

...because I know that when our kids do return, all’s right with the world again.


Hello, daughter one, on State Street, on a coffee break...






Hello, daughter two, on State Street, after work...





Home.


Ed came over with winecaps tonight. Homegrown, on woodchips. We sautéed them in butter and guess what? Two hours later, I am still alive to tell you about it.





Yes, when you’re in Wisconsin and you hear the clatter of hooves, you think – cows. Not elephants. My obstetrician once said that to me (before he abandoned his practice, sold all and went off to forever sail the seas of the Caribbean). I’ve never forgotten it.

After all, the goal was to grow winecaps. For the name alone.

At home.

golden

So here I am. Satisfied. Three classes taught today. Students were curious, engaged, humorous, sometimes gullible, sometimes not. They told funny stories. I spilled tea on my shirt and suffered the humiliation of finishing a class with a stain down my front. We all laughed.

It was a good day.

More, there’s more.

I went to the grocery store and salmon was on sale and the rain did not come even as the skies looked fearsome. So I walked home without incident. It should have been treacherous, but it wasn’t, even as the construction on University Avenue was dense and I could not find a spot to cross the street to get to the grocery store (the bus spit me out in the usual place, but the place to cross had gone under).

A construction worker led me through a safe passage. It will be better by tomorrow, I promise—he says. So sweet! That he should want to reassure idiots who choose to cross streets under construction... so sweet!

Daughters and Ed came to dinner and no one was late and everyone gushed about the salmon.

It’s frightening. Good days typically come in bunches. What if this bunch is nearly bunched up and done with?

Okay, I bit into an ice cream bar and it fell apart all over the couch. It was raspberry. I feel better. Streaks of gold are frightening.

September

Autumn in Madison: you can have an early appointment on one side of town – and realize that at 7:30, it is quite fall-like and chilly out there, and then, on the return, an hour later, you can toss away the jacket and take note of the fact that the forest you pass by in that brief ten minute drive is actually still quite green.





And then you can be outside after classes, on State Street, and now you’re even likely to shed your sweater because the yin yang sky is partly cloudy or partly sunny, depending on how you see it: split in two, yet in harmony with the other...





And so it’s warm, when it’s not cool, and the leaves are yellow, when they’re not green.





So that even on a predictably busy day, life can be very interesting.

Including my coffee break. No longer just a run down to the bookstore for the cheapest espresso in town. No, now I have reason to go to a place where I can sit down and make a whole longer ritual of it. Because chances are, a daughter (or the other) will be sitting across the table from me.





Such a good month this has been!

Even though, the flurry of high pitched activity notwithstanding, I still haven’t sold the condo.

Chicago to Madison

The thing about Chicago is that, if you forget about the downtown, it is a composite of small neighborhoods. Walk through any of them and you’ll have to remind yourself that you’re not in a small town in Wisconsin. Or anywhere else.





We didn’t spend much time walking this time (though we were in this neighborhood, returning to a brunch favorite around the corner from here).

Women on a mission: get stuff loaded into the car and head north.

And now, finally, we’re all settled: for a short while, my girls and I are all in Madison. And maybe it’s for a long long time and maybe it’s not, but I can only think about this month and the next and they are here and Sunday dinners are at my place and life is good.


I stop at the farmette to get air for the tires and air for my lungs. Ed is driving the John Deere even though the long grass is beastly wet.

At home, I think about turning on the heat. There’s a nip in the air.

big city

Chicago. What if I lived here now?





I don’t. I gave up on the place 31 years ago and now I have the luxury of looking at it as a benevolent aunt would: with acceptance saved for the rambunctious nephew or niece. You’re fine, honey, you’re fine. 


We eat well in the morning, and then we work. On sorting boxes, on lectures, and later -- on napping too. I tell my daughters that it has been months since I allowed myself the luxury of sleeping in the afternoon.

In the evening we take the El. Past Wrigley Field (where the Dave Matthews band is scheduled to perform)...






And we walk and speculate and scheme. There's lots to toss around out.

It grows dark. Deep whiff of night air. Someone burns wood in a fireplace and suddenly, there's no question anymore. We are onto the next season.

from somewhere out there

Oh, sometimes I wish I could just write!

Not yet. Maybe never.

In the meantime, I am caddying stuff. I left Madison with a daughter, picked up the second one and together, we will haul the remains of what is theirs in Chicago and bring it to Madison.

So I am in Chicago. Painted canvas of gorgeosity.





I ask them – so what’s a good drink to have here?





That.

And we eat food that is good and more importantly, different food, food that I don’t have to evaluate by the standards of the current markets because I haven’t a clue as to the markets in Chicago, except that I notice on the menu "rushing waters trout" and I think – shit, that’s Madison! (Or at least Wisconsin.)





I tell my girls that yesterday, at post-pizza kareoki my students belted out a song I really liked and it had a host of rah rah and ooh la las in it. Bad Romance? They ask. Sure, that’s it, realizing how large the expanse of years is between them and me.

We look at pictures from long ago. You look like her! You look like him!

I call Ed and he tells me that he saw photos I had taken on display in one place or another.

That made me happy.

on and off State Street

Long day of many classes. Then, an idle hour on State Street. Between class and the evening pizza event with my students.

Here’s the idling on State Street portion:







Here’s the setup for out pizza event:





All good.

Now comes the tired part. The hour when I try to write, but realize it's futile and quite likely, I'll soon fall asleep and wonder later just when it was that I gave in to nothingness.

seasons

Oh dear. It’s getting dangerously close to fall.






And I don’t really mind. Colors. Good weather. Apples.

Why is it that I haven’t biked at all this fall? (I know: I have a flat and I haven’t the time to replace it.)

Time escaping.

Did I use the time well?

Grade, given to me (by me) for life lived in the warm months this year: B.

Pretty good. Can I aim for B+ next year?

almost autumn

You mean this wont last forever? These deep blue skies, the rich colors, the feeling of warmth on my face as I head home – it's but a fleeting moment of pleasure, soon to be pushed aside because, well, there’s November, December, January... And of course February and March? A shame...

I drive out to Ed’s farmette in the late afternoon. I’d not been there lately and so I am, as usual, taken aback somewhat to see how much nature bullies the innocent and knocks down the meek and timid. Every spare inch of space appears to have something growing on it, and sometimes it is beautiful and oftentimes it is wild and unseemly, and I say to Ed – you need me here to keep it all under control. (Need I remind anyone that Ed does not acknowledge dependence. That, in his perception, we simply toddle along gracefully, never diminished by a need for anyone at all. I am of a different persuasion.)





I watch the butterflies cling to the last petals of spent flowers. It is such a beautiful thing to see them perched in this way. It’s as if you don’t have to be perfectly formed to feel the touch of something so deliciously perfect as a butterfly...






Yes, look, all flowers are forever delicious!





I pace this way, then that... it feels almost sad to be here now, at the tail end of summer. I look for the little pines that we planted – some are there, some seem to have been chomped down by... well, those who like to chomp on baby pines... Is it you, little guy? (Do you see him? He’s camera shy, but he’s there. See the beady eyes?)






Almost autumn. Do you feel it? It’s not a green landscape anymore.

goldenrod and red tape

In the now three decades that I have lived in Madison, the place that I have most often ran to, just to escape city noise and dust has been Indian Lake. With the family. Alone. With daughters. With others. With Ed. Many times, in all seasons.

And I am never disappointed.

True, this brilliant Sunday, every scrap of pasture was going to look bucolic and divine. But, but Indian Lake is especially superb in early fall!





Really.











And so my daughter and I did the usual long loop...











...and the sun was warm, and the scenery exceptional – in every direction...






...and as the day progressed, slowly I got used to the idea of being the owner of a car with red tape pretending to be a bumper guard. Ed spent the day detailing the machine and the door now opens from inside and out. Here you have it, our fleet of vehicles – the old Geo with the pink stripes, the even older Honda,  joined this week-end by the old Ford with the red tape.





It was a tiny bit fun registering the car today and watching the clerk cast a doubtful glance at the stated purchase price (so that I could pay my taxes on the transaction). Really, it’s not worth a penny more – I told her, handing over registration money that equaled one third the cost of the car. She’s used to that line. Most often, I imagine, people underreport. Not me. $600. Not a penny more.

prairie dreams

The days are still too loaded, packed to the brim. Add a slight detour and they spill over. I find myself neglecting details. Forgetting, for example, that I had intended to pick up the tomatoes from the market down the hill.

I forgot last Wednesday.

Contrite, I’m there now (Saturday), with Ed. Fifty pound for $15. The large tomatoes have a few blemishes, but we carve them, bag them, freeze them. In the winter, the soups are enriched by their late summer juices.





The day is gray. The rains have almost passed, but there is a feeling of impending drizzle. Still, we have signed up to join a handful of volunteers building the Ice Age trail. We hadn’t worked on the trails for many months and I’m thinking, as frequent hikers, we owe them some of our time. Besides, it’s very easy to give in to upper body lethargy. A few hours of working the pick wakes up all sorts of dormant muscle groups.

And if you need one more reason to join the dedicated trail builders, it is this: mid September is the very best time, I think, to be out in the prairies of the Midwest. People take out cameras and head for the forests when the leaves turn, but they neglect this, the most beautiful in my mind time out in the prairie.





Even on a cloudy day, the flowers and leaves are smudged with strokes of gold. The grasses are tall, lovely, laden on this day with drops of wetnesses.










We hike up the hill...












...toward the woods, full of hickory and oak, where the Ice Age trail is being extended...





We pick up the tools and get to work. Dig, grade, hack out the roots and stones.





The sun stays hidden until the very end. The air is slightly cool. It is a wonderful time to be outdoors.

Ed and I leave in the early afternoon. The sky is now dappled with clouds, the breezes are so sweet smelling that we are not surprised to see countless butterflies, bees and buzzing insects in search of the fresh and honest, as if they, too, had their market day to collect what they needed to get by.





We walk as if through an oil canvas, it is that beautiful... (allow me to just tinker gently with the photo...)






And of course, we finish the outing with ice cream. No, ice custard. I drive up to the window at Culvers apologetically. We’re in Ed’s old ’93 Geo and the driver side window has long stopped working.





...and perhaps I should mention, too, that the body of said Geo has rusted to the point where you can feel the breeze coming in from the underside. Ed tells me – I’ll stuff a rag and it’ll be fine, even in winter.

But he knows that the Geo is near its final months.  At some point the rust will be severe enough for the bottom to fall out. And so he, too, is looking for a replacement car.

He has better luck at finding what he likes. Which is why in the early evening we are out handing $600 over to a guy selling his old ’93 Escort. The car lived a good part of its life in the south. The rust is almost nonexistent. Ed thinks the engine looks good. I try not to notice that the bumper is taped on. With garishly red tape, presumably to match the red color of the car.

We haven’t decided which one of us will own or use this car. I no longer let myself remember that the seats on the Saab went up and down... I watch Ed search the Internet for tools to take the Escort door apart. So that it can open from the inside. Ah well. There is value in salvaging the old...


In the evening, my daughter and I attend to the final set up details at her apartment. It's dark by the time I am home again.


It is no surprise that supper, back at the condo, is a simple meal. Scrambled eggs, bagels, a salad. It is also no surprise that as the day draws to an end, my eyes refuse to stay open. I think about butterflies that now fill the prairie, but soon will be making the long trip south. To Mexico maybe. I post a photo of a Monarch -- remember? This guy, flitting around sweet smelling golden rod and wild asters...





...and give in to sleep.