miss UW? you should.

My days have been variously touched on (caressed? punched at? both?) by this university since 1979. Initially I came as a lecturer. And as a spouse of a prof. I continued as a law student. And as a mother of an occasional class-taker. I came back as a law faculty member.

On Wisconsin, on Wisconsin!

For nearly thirty years I’ve made my way to campus, back and forth, back and forth, by bus, by car, on foot, motorcycle or bike, back and forth.

UW, blending into Madison. One, impossible to imagine without the other. As if there wasn't a boundary between the two.

Yes, sure, I’m feeling nostalgic with the onset of a Madison late fall/early winter. (And happy to be home and warm after a blustery ride back.)

Let me take Ocean with me on that 23 minute ride, forgetting about the usual lake path. Working my way from the hallways of school life to the gardens on Observatory, past a practicing band, finishing in the newly opened café (just today! Because I have a nose that's viciously long for new and sparkly cafés) within a stone’s throw of my condo.

First, the Law School. Fall colors, pouring into the library:





Onwards. Past Centennial gardens. Quiet. Monochromatic. But not dull.





Then, past a practice session of the marching band. Men, women, almost oblivious to the biting cold. Almost.








Finally, a quick pause at a new bakery and coffee shop ("Gallup"). Warm colors. Great coffee. Good ending to a cold ride.

credit

I’m not referring to credit cards. Go elsewhere if you want to read about those. I’m thinking of credit of the type where you say “you gotta give the guy credit…”

And I will.

A day of work and so much cold out there – lonely cold, the kind of cold you hate to feel while biking home just before the sky turns black. So let me turn away from the world out there…



Bascom Mall

…and say a word or two about the warmth within.

A student asked in class today – why aren’t you bringing your boyfriend (she means occasional traveling companion, but I do not expect others to be keyed into terminology that only makes sense to me) to the potluck this week-end?

Because Ed (who is at once a boy at heart and a friend, but really, best referred to as an occasional traveling companion) has a hearty appetite and an inclination to doze afterwards. I’m not sure inviting him to a torts small section event is a great idea…

I recount this exchange to Ed later.
You told them I’ll eat too much and sleep? I could almost hear him asking – did you tell them I once bought you a vacuum cleaner?

I smile.

Ed calls later this afternoon.
My business partner asked me how my new refrigerator is doing.
You must have mentioned that your old one broke down...
No, his wife read that on your blog.
Did you mind?
No. Only that you posted that I bought it for $399. You know I got a 10% discount, so it was actually less.

Who else would tolerate me posting about this? Open blogging, not anonymous, who else would not mind?

Ed occasionally comments here under a pseudonym known only to me (and possibly previous match.com readers who corresponded with him before my time, but how likely is it that they read Ocean…). But it’s rare.

I remember two years ago when I asked him what he thought of Ocean.
Too tame – he tells me.

Tame?? I am writing daily, under my own name, to an audience composed of family, friends, students, colleagues, bosses, you name it – a multiple audience of those who wish me well and those who’ll throw darts if only I provide a window, and he says I’m “tame?” (I believe “boring” was also used, but the email apology that followed took away the sting of that; it was the kind of apology you get only in the first months of your dating sequence.)

Fact is, if Ed minds, he’ll not tell me. He would not think of placing constraints on what I do or say. He deserves such huge credit for this and so here it is – to you, Ed. Credit.

gusty

If you want to step up physical activity in Wisconsin at the onset of winter, you have to be prepared to suffer. I mean, I assume you’re already doing as much as you find reasonable. And then something prompts you to want to turn it on a little more.

So you bike, even when w(eather)underground notes that it will blow hard at you, and spray snowshowers, and be hugely cold out there.

It was hugely cold out there. And did I mention the wind?

I stopped at the Union Terrace on the way to work. Just to look. No one there. What a surprise.



Wish I wouldn’t feel compelled to step up the physical activity. I welcome winter. In moderation.

love it

I met a person tonight who moved to Madison (to my condo building) just last year, after spending most of her adult life in D.C.

Miss D.C.? I ask her.
Well yes – the weather. But not the politics and the terror alerts, and not dumping the contents of my purse every time I go to a museum.

What I did not ask is this: so what do you love about this town? Because she did profess love for it – if only through her dislike of the alternative.


Here’s my Sunday in Madison – right there for you to consider. Love it or leave it?

In the morning, I drive over to Madison Sourdough bakery. I am not as nuts about sourdough as so many out there, but I am nuts about a good bread and the website said they had Parisian baguettes.





No Parisian baguettes. Dated website. But very excellent sourdough, if you like sourdough. But I am like the lover who cannot fake it. No love. Just like.


Next on the list? An orchard, to restock apples. Nice drive. Past longhorn cattle licking each other in total Midwestern cattle bliss.

My occasional traveling companion Ed asks - you can eat that? They’re in love.
And I answer – my dietary preferences are what lead them to be born in the first place. Were I in the wild, I’d fully expect the beasts out there to devour me. Such is the food chain of life.






But in fact I could not eat this particular piece of beef. Though I long for meat in the same way that I long for pastry. Deprivation plays dangerous games with one’s senses.

The orchard is closed this Sunday. We are appleless. Should we pick and leave money? What if they shoot at us for trespassing? Is it permissible? You need a permit to burn leaves on your property in Fitchburg. Do you need a permit to shoot intruders?

We leave without apples.

In the evening I go to a condo potluck. I bake dozens of gougeres, relying on the l’Etoile Restaurant way of baking gougeres. A recipe that I used in my years there. Is that permissible? Is it stealing to use knowledge procured elsewhere for your subsequent wellbeing?

We eat.

Good neighbors. Musical neighbors.





Back home now. Outside, it’s dark. Midwest dark. Post-daylight savings time dark. I check the thermostat to make sure it still is as warm as I set it to be. It is. On paper.

I put on Stacey Kent and listen: Let’s you and me go away to the ice hotel…

Is it true that only Europeans like Stacey Kent?

Hard frost coming for the first time this week. Gotta love it, right?

hard work

I’m looking forward to winter. There, I’ve said it. And I’m not the only one.

I wake up at five, but only for a moment. Enough to think – were I a Market farmer, I’d be done loading the truck and I’d be heading for Madison. And each Saturday and maybe Wednesdays too, the early drive would bring me to town, so that I can stand behind my table and hope that customers would understand just how good my vegetables (or cheeses or biscuits or fruits) are.









By November, I'd be ready to stop. On the second Saturday of the month, I would wake up and think – I’m done for the year. Let me pull the quilt under my chin and forget about the world for another hour or two.

So, I am ready for a break too. Because it’s a farmers' break and, along with them, I’ll be looking out for the cold and studying the frost and the effect of ice on the soil and water, even though I have nothing to lose or gain by it. Except maybe a few photos marking the change in the air.

The Westside Community Market felt different on this, its last morning. Farmers, bakers and cheesemakers, some selling out early. Some collecting gifts from their vendor friends.

















A crazy season of drought, of rain, of bugs – all of it. And for us, the buyers, of week after week of brilliant Saturday sunshine.

It’s such hard work. Dangerous.

Farmer stories, of injuries, of death even.

What I like is selling the plain, simple foods, that common people buy.

Oh, but they’re not plain. Plain is what’s there in the supermarket, in boxes, cans and behind cellophane wrappings. I know plain -- in a rare move, I went to Woodman's late last night. Necessity drives plain. But there's nothing pleasurable about it.

Hard work. Long as my hours are in some weeks, I don’t regard myself as a brutally hard working person now. Not compared to years where I mothered, and taught law, and cooked at home and at a restaurant.


I go with Ed to buy a new fridge for his sheep shed. The old one died. It’s an easy purchase – he’ll take the cheapest model on the floor.

The salesclerk has a mountain load of typing to do to process the sale.
It’s hard work for you to get this ($399) thing sold, Ed comments.
I’m new here, but I like it, the clerk says. I was a stay-at-home dad for seven years. You know, I was in the Marines, I was a farmer before that and nothing compared to the hard work of staying home with the kids.

We drive down Lacy Road, Ed and I. Out in the field, there's a farmer, working the tractor, back and forth, slowly, patiently. Birds swoop down and pull out what they can from the turned soil. November work. Winter quiet. A nice balance.

zero

It’s a rare day that I can’t produce at least one photo for Ocean.

Today is such a day. Working at home all day is terrible for Ocean and chilling for the soul.

My most challenging moment? Deliberating whether I should put up a link to a website that promotes, indirectly, alcohol consumption. I decided against it, even though it offers fascinating daily tidbits on various aspects of wine (and also beer, spirits, etc) production and sales.

My most amusing email? This, from Borders Bookstore. Let me paste here the subject line:

You've Earned $0.00 in Borders Bucks!

Followed by this text:

Just print this email and bring it to any Borders, Borders Express, or Waldenbooks and redeem your $0.00 in Borders Bucks any time before November 30, 2007.

I have only 28 days left. I should hurry.

orangina

Love the stuff. Soda with a splash of orange. Maybe it's the idea that orange can come in a splash. And that Italians are responsible for determining how much of the orange to splash in there.

Oftentimes, when Ed and I are in a coffee shop, he'll ask for an Orangina. The guy hates coffee. Or tea.


A day of work and only work. I look out my office window, hoping for…something.

I see her: a girl, (young woman really, but did you notice how, after a few years, you start referring to young women as “girls” again?), in orange, taking a break on Bascom Mall. Which in itself is very orange.

She’s eating an apple and talking on the phone, all at the same time.

All ensconsed in orange. Without the soda. Can't have it all.

tricks

Hike to a bakery. I’m not using a car this semester. Bakery not on bus route. My students promised a costume or two in exchange for treats.

Street signs of a spooky night ahead.





Purchase morning buns. They're a classic.





Oh dear. Rain on the hike back toward campus. My own costume (I’m dressed to look like a law student) is getting wet. Still, it is the way of weather on this day: unpredictable.

I enter the class with a minute to spare.

And how can I not smile?




































On days like this, I want to teach this torts class forever. For years and years. Just in this way. Where we eat morning buns and think about the impact of law on the life of another.

But, the class ends.

The skies clear.





And the roses bloom. It’s a tricky time of the year.

fall carpet

Get up early, work. Go to class, look out, see beautiful sky, ignore it. Go to second class. Look out, go out, take photo, move paper, eat, can hardly stay awake and it’s only 7:30.

It’s dangerous to take only one shot all day long.

I sit down to write a post, I download the one and only, I stare at it and I give it a nod. It’ll do. It speaks of fall and work and the changing tapestry of Bascom Mall. My day, through and through.

finding quiet

Late afternoon. After a full day. Charged, you might say.

Drive south, toward Paoli. Not too far. Get out, walk.


















Then, just a little more south, up Observatory Hill Road. Such views. A reflective moment. Time, space, considered from many angles.

Beautiful up here. Really beautiful.

hard to believe

…That it is the end of October.





… that this barn hasn’t toppled with the wind.





…that Ed, who is the owner of the barn, hasn’t toppled it so that it doesn’t topple on top of the sheep shed where he lives.


Meanwhile, at my favorite coffee shop, the old pumpkin laughs and laughs.

winter market?

One reason to prefer France over, say, Wisconsin, is that the outdoor markets in France are a year-round thing. You could argue that weather is on their side and you’d be right. It’s brisk out here even now, in the last weeks of our farmers markets. It would be cruel to expect anyone to stand outside on an average December day.

And yet, it’s a real slap for us, the buyers when the farmers go back home for the winter. It’s a reminder that life changes significantly when daylight savings time begins. The months ahead are to be endured. A bike ride to work will turn into an ordeal. Clenched teeth, fast, fast pedaling. The walk home from Whole Foods? Brutal.

Sadly, today was the next to the last week of the Westside Community Market. Time to stock up! – the signs tell us. Stock up and close the door behind you. Six months of waiting is about to begin.

Still, it was a pretty day and it all looked as if it will never end. Sure, the foods are different now than they were at the peak of the season. Make room for the roots. Some greens, some vine veggies, but mainly, it’s all about roots. And more roots.

Here, use this white turnip in a salad. Raw. Delicious. Sweeter than a radish.
Turnips? Sweet and delicious? Okay, next week it’ll be the turnip.




The vendors are hidden underneath caps and scarves that flutter like flags in gusty winds (reminder: this is it! See us now and see us next spring!), the same winds that bounce and knock at the flower pots.

How much?
$5 each.
Let me get some more cash…
No! Take them both for $5! We’re heading home.





Ahhh, it was good to be out there, stocking up, as it were. At least for the week ahead. I can’t think beyond that. And please don’t remind me that there is a winter indoor market downtown. I go there, I shop, listlessly. It’s not the same.

For today, though, we have this. Revel in it. These are the last moments. The last days of outdoor vending.

singing revisited

Law School is intense. Whatever else it is and is not, it definitely is a highwire thing.

But every now and then you can step down. And loosen your hair. And talk like you once talked in life, before becoming singularly concerned about sounding lawyerly.

And you can sing.

Last night, my last year’s small torts section had a reunion. Highlights? Well, I have to say I had never had fried mac and cheese before. But really, the highpoint was seeing them again. With hair down, so to speak. Filling me in on life since the first semester. And singing, at the Kid. [Yes, I admit it -- I'm in the first one. Looking very earnest. I have to think it's the lighting.]

it doesn’t take much

...to change the color of the sky. To go from piercing blue to something matte-like and gray. Skies that I associate more with the Baltic states in December than with chipper Madison in October.

From the roof of my building:





Reading about people being sick (here and in a different setting, here) recalls the toughest times for me – when a kid was sick, or when I myself was, well, seriously ill. I don’t know when else I have felt so helplessly out of control as at those times. Not being keen on sending messages to the heavens (for one thing, they don’t respond and I don’t like unanswered messages), I am resigned at times of great vulnerability to imploring the medics to do their best. And luckily, for so many of us, they come through. So that our kids pull out of pickles and we ourselves continue to toddle along.

I’m thinking about all this today and about how easy it is for some, but not for others right now. Just in my own orbit of friends and beloved ones. Always there is someone who is coasting, flying without a care, and another who is having a tough spin through the day. And how good others can be at giving a boost to a sagging spirit.


Late this afternoon, I came across these guys – residents of my condo – playing a lively little tune. It made me smile. They’re strumming something I would associate with a fiddle and a barn. So, I’m passing on the image to any reader who needs a perky pick-me-up at the moment.





Think music. My previous post suggests Greece. I'm thinking Zorba, taking the arm of Basil in a dance on the island of Crete. Come on, click on those words. For the hell of it.