Memories: Forty years after the Sterling Hall bombing

The truth is simply this: I have no memories of the Sterling Hall bombing. I'd worked until late that night and I slept soundly. Although I lived only a few blocks away, the sound of the explosion did not awaken me, nor did the subsequent wail of police and emergency vehicle sirens. My most vivid memories of the Sterling Hall bombing were created more than two decades later.

August 24th, 2010 marks the 40th anniversary of the bombing Sterling Hall on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus. One man, researcher Robert Fassnacht, was killed in the blast. Four men were accused of carrying out the bombing. Three were tried and found guilty. One has never been apprehended.

But this event affected countless lives in a myriad ways. For some, the aftermath brought swift changes. For others, the consequences were more incremental, more subtle: ripples from a pebble tossed in a stream, "butterfly effects."

This week, representatives of the UW-Madison Oral History Program and Wisconsin Story Project have set up a StoryBooth in the Memorial Library to collect personal stories and recollections: Take a seat, pull the curtain, and let the camera record your story for posterity.

How vivid will these shared memories be? How accurate? I don't know the answers to these questions; but I do know that memory is often frangible. Told and retold, a story often takes on a new shape.

I've told the story I'm about to share with you only once. Today I realized how it had changed – at least for me – since it first appeared in print.

Seventeen years ago, in 1993, I wrote a story for The Badger Herald about Tom Bates, author of RADS ("A True Story of the End of the Sixties").

I remembered that the story had been published twice and that I had objected to one version because there had been a change to a sentence near the end that I felt altered the tone of the story. This afternoon, I went to the University Archives to look at the bound volumes of The Badger Herald. When I located both versions, my memory was confirmed: One important word had been changed.

But my memory had failed me with regard to another important aspect of the story. When I began to transcribe it, I was shocked by a seeming discrepancy in dates: The story was first published on April 26, 1993, in a special "New Student Issue" mailed students who would be entering the UW-Madison in Fall semester. This issue was not distributed on campus. The story was then published on May 4, 1993 in a regular edition of The Badger Herald. But the story being told takes place on a "dreary November day."

I remembered struggling with the story, but I had forgotten how long it took for me to cut it loose. Fearful and uncertain, I had written and rewritten the story many times. Editor Andrew Welcyczko coped with my tears and excuses and kept pushing and prodding until I finished the story and turned it in to be published.

It was a bleak story, told in a dull, flat, unemotional tone. It told the story of a man who had tried to reshape his past and failed. At the time, I worried that it was too harsh, perhaps unfair. In retrospect, I think I was fearful that with Bates I was looking in a mirror and seeing my own reflection because I had recently abandoned a chunk of my past and was trying to shape a new future for myself.

Perhaps that is why I objected so vehemently when "unhappy memories" became "regrettable memories" in the first version – and why I insisted it be changed in the second version. Given the gift of hindsight, I think perhaps Andrew's choice of modifier may have been more appropriate than mine – at least at the time.

I do not know if Bates ever read the story – and if he did, what he thought about it. After living in Wisconsin for several years while he wrote and researched RADS, Bates moved back to Portland, Oregon and spent his remaining years in journalism. He died on December 16, 1999 of pancreatic cancer.

Rereading the story today, I have no regrets about having written it. I do not see anyone but myself when I look in the mirror. Times have changed and so have I. If I think at all about "reshaping the past" it is because I'm tempted to insert some links in a story that was originally written on an IBM Selectric typewriter. And I wonder if Bates was accurate when he attributed that quote to Magritte. I used Google to search for the quote and the results were negative.

The story below is an unaltered version of the original: It may have some unintended typos, but it has no links. As I've often reminded newspaper readers over the years, I write the text: Someone else writes the headlines and subheads.

One final reminder: I retain the copyright to the text and it may not be reproduced without my explicit written permission.


"The Hiroshima of the new Left"

RADS author Tom Bates dives deep into an event Madison would rather forget…

An exclusive interview by Nadine Goff

Bates is sitting behind a small table on the second floor of the University Book Store. He's here to sign copies of RADS, his recently published book about the 1970 bombing of the Army Math Research center on the Madison campus of the University of Wisconsin.

It's almost 1:30 p.m. on a dreary November day, and right now he has no takers. Book store personnel eagerly report that there were a lot of people who stopped by earlier, during the lunch hour.

Sitting next to Bates is an unprepossessing woman who appears to be in her forties. Her name is Jane. She says she was a friend of Bates' when he attended graduate school in Madison. She says she's come to keep him company.

Strolling back and forth in the vicinity of Bates is a security guard. Not a usual feature in the general books department of the UBS.

HarperCollins publicist Ron Longe had expressed concerns about Bates' safety during a telephone conversation the previous week. Had the interviewer heard about any demonstrations? Would Bates be picketed during his visit to Madison?

No, it seems unlikely, were the replies. After all, the majority of the students currently enrolled in the UW-Madison hadn't even been born when the bombing occurred. Why should they demonstrate?

As it turned out, there were no demonstrations. There was one minor disruption. Dwight Armstrong, one of the men convicted of the 1970 bombing had come up to the second floor to confront Bates. He was hastily removed from the scene. The security guard apparently earned his keep.

Information about the disruption was not easy to obtain. No was who was present offered it. It had to be laboriously extracted.

Tom Bates seemed to have found this minor disruption unsettling: after all, Dwight had originally cooperated with Bates. He is cited in the RADS acknowledgments as one of the people whose "honesty made this book possible."

It's a bit after 1:30 p.m. The book-signing is over. The interview is next.

Jane has been telling Bates about her problems with elderly relatives. The overheard portions of her litany see, to bear witness to an unhappy life. Now, she is anxiously assuring Bates that she is happy with her life. She's not eager to depart, but when she does, it is with the hope that she and bates will see each other again before he leaves Madison.

A contemplative walk
Tome Bates rises from his chair and prepares to don his coat for the wintery walk to Sunprint, where the interview will take place. He is very tall. Most people who seem formidable in photographs and on television seem diminutive in the flesh. Not Bates.

Walking up State Street to Sunprint, Bates is wary, tentative. This may not be an easy or even successful interview.

The Madison print media has not been particularly kind to Bates of RADS. Is this the cause of his reticence? Perhaps. Or perhaps it is the natural reticence of a writer-reporter who suddenly finds himself the subject of some other journalist's scrutiny.

Winter coats doffed. Table selected for unhindered (and "in-overheard") conversation. Food and beverages atop the table. The interview begins in earnest. Slowly. Gradually becoming more relaxed and productive.

Why did Bates write RADS? Lots of reasons. Some more revealing than others.

"When you're an editor, you're always wishing you were on the other side of the desk," says Bates. He adds that editors often suspect writers and reporters are "having all the fun."

Bates was an editor at the Los Angeles Times. He left that job to write RADS.

Living in a bitter era
Earlier, in the late 60s and early 70s, Bates was a graduate student in history at the UW-Madison. His 1972 Ph.D. dissertation was on the political thought of Antonio Gramsci, who became, according to the dissertation, "the greatest Marxist of modern Italy."

Bates became an assistant professor at Ohio University. As the result of his arrest during a campus protest against the mining of Haiphong Harbor, he lost his teaching job.

"That period in my life always seemed like a waste land. I had spent 10 years trying to be a teacher and that was cut short."

Bates admits to being bitter. "[I] had to retrain myself as a journalist. I went through the 60s and 70s without making any money. Not until the 80s [did] I make any money as a journalist. During this time, Bates also had a wife and children to support.

By the time he decided to write RADS, Bates says he "already had fame and fortune." He was "a well-known and well-paid editor." But something may have been missing.

"The idea of [the] book offered the possibility of making something out of that experience." Bates is talking about the 60s and the 70s, not the 80s. "Waste not, want not," he adds.

Bates spent the summer of 1987 on a book proposal. In the fall of 1987 he rented a house in Cross Plains, Wis. for a year. He had received an advance for RADS that he thought would be enough to live on and support his family for the two years he thought he needed to spend researching and writing the book.

The book took almost five years. Bates says he was working on RADS until early August 1992, editing and revising.

Re-living the experience
The research for RADS was extensive. According to Bates, he has accumulated ten large cartons of research material. He interviewed approximately 500 people, tape recording about 100 of these interviews.

Bates says he reviewed thousands of pages of documents, including original police and FBI field reports. There were dozens of notebooks with news clippings to review, a lot of which had been organized by the Wisconsin Legislative Reference Bureau.

The UW-Madison Oral History Project was another important source of information, says Bate. The time limits restricting access to many of the interviews were just expiring at the time he was conducting his research. Not all are available, however. Paul Soglin's interview is restricted until 2039.

Bates says he also spent a lot of his advance on travel and long distance telephone calls as he gathered information and conducted interviews.

Among the many interviews Bates conducted were those with brothers Dwight and Karl Armstrong, two the men convicted for the 1970 bombing, and their sisters, Lorene and Mira. Speaking about the Armstrong family, Bates says, "They always wanted to tell their story – the boys in particular. [I] convinced them I could do a fair and compassionate job."

Hitting too close to home
Karl Armstrong has been quoted as saying he was "disgusted" by RADS. A high school acquaintance of Karl's claims Armstrong told him not to read RADS because "it was a piece of shit"

Bates says "[I] think people would come away [from reading RADS] with a more favorable impression of the Armstrong brothers."

Other people who were active in the Madison anti-Vietnam war movement have also been critical of RADS for a variety of reasons. Among them are Jim Rowen, who was instrumental in exposing the relationship between the theoretical research done at the Army Math Research Center and its "practical" application in the war in Vietnam and David Wagner, a found the of the underground newspaper Kaleidoscope.

Bates defends RADS: "Many books could be written on this subject and they're welcome to write them. I couldn’t write their books for them. I could only write my book as I saw it."

Bates quotes Magritte: "No one every really knows what happens." He adds, "I think he's right. There's always room for doubt."

"I did the best I could to get to the bottom of things. I'm sure there are areas where I didn't get to the bottom of things and we maybe never will. There is a lot of grist to chew on for a long time."

One criticism of RADS has been that it lacks footnotes. Bates responds:

"Almost every line of [the] book is based on primary sources, so I would need another book to write out the footnotes. I thought of it was a journalistic rather than an academic book. Footnotes were never mentioned by my editor."

How can Bates include dialogue about events he clearly did not witness?

"[I] can reconstruct dialogue because I have thousands of pages of uncensored interviews from [the] weeks following the bombing. And the, in many cases, I could re-interview [people]. Things that seem impossibly detailed are because of this."

It's time to conclude the interview. Bates has another appointment. We haven't gotten around to some of the more specific criticisms of RADS, particularly those that deal with Bates' interpretations of the causes of some things. Earlier in the interview, Bates has sad he "didn't do much theorizing," claiming he "left that to the academicians.


Else where, however, Bate has defended his explanation of how the physical abuse inflicted upon Dwight and Karl by their father may have lead them to become involved in the bombing of the Army Math Research Center. This depiction of a dysfunctional family is one of the aspects of RADS that has apparently been most distasteful to Dwight and Karl.

Closing in on the waste land
We're waiting outside Sunprint for Bates' taxicab to arrive. It's a gloomy afternoon. The interview has been productive, but demanding. Bother interviewer and interviewee have been cautious, each, no doubt, for different reasons.

"You're the only one in town who really interviewed me," says Bates. He thinks the resulting article will be a good one.

A frisson of fear. A determination to be alert and cautious. Is Bates trying to butter up his interviewer?

No, he's not. He tone is one of sadness, as he explains that, yes, he has talked to other newspaper reporters, but only after the fact. He says he has only been asked to react to criticism already in print. He really hasn't been given an opportunity to talk about much else until now.

What will he do now that RADS is finished?

"It doesn't matter what I do next," says Bates. He supposes he'll go back to his home in Oregon and get to know his teenage sons. Bates sounds a bit weary, a bit disappointed.

Perhaps it’s the gloomy weather. Perhaps it's the less than hospitable treatment he feels he has received in the Madison media. Perhaps it is the exhaustion that often accompanies authors as they criss-cross the nation on promotional tours.

Bates' notion of a waste land lingers. It is oppressive, contagious and laced with unhappy memories.


Originally published in The Badger Herald on May 4, 1993

Where can I buy my pink plastic flamingos (and will they look like the ones on Bascom Hill?)

Photograph of pink plastic flamingos on Bascom Hill in 1979 ©Michael Kienitz. It is used here with his permission.

So last night the Madison City Council voted 15-4 to make the Pink Plastic Flamingo the city's official bird – and of course now you want to buy not one, but two. That's right two; the original "official" pink flamingos, designed by Don Featherstone for Union Products, were always sold in pairs: one upright, the other with its head toward the ground.

But perhaps you only need to buy one. If you look closely at the iconic Michael Kientiz photograph of the September 4, 1979 assemblage of pink flamingos on Bascom Hill – the memorable event that led to the City Council's historic vote nearly three decades late, they all appear to have their heads toward the ground. Then if you compare a close-up photograph of one of the original 1,008 Bascom Hill flamingos now in the possession of the Wisconsin State Historical Society with the Wikipedia photos of what are allegedly the "original" Don Featherstone designs, you'll also note definite differences in the shape of the bird.

Union Products stopped producing the "original" birds in 2006, but reportedly sold the copyright and plastic molds of Featherstone's original plastic flamingos to HMC International, LLC a subsidiary of Faster-Form Corporation. A website called Get Flocked reports it is now selling the original Featherstone-designed flamingos.

I've posted some links to pink plastic flamingos available through Amazon.com (if you click through and purchase them, this blog earns a few pennies). Other sources include Plastic Flamingos (but these have yellow beaks) and A Flock of Pink Plastic Flamingos.

None of the pink plastic flamingos I've found online thus far seems to be an exact duplicate of the Bascom Hill flamingos. I tried to call the Wisconsin Historical Museum to see if a curator could look at their flamingo to determine its manufacturer, but I reached voice mail (maybe this is a furlough day). The Historical Society's Bascom Hill flamingo is reportedly part of the Odd Wisconsin exhibit, so you if you want to see it, visit the Museum at 30 N Carroll St on Capitol Square in Madison (but with all this furlough nonsense, plus the looming Labor Day weekend, I'd call first to make certain they're open).

Maybe you're not too fussy about the shape of the pink plastic flamingo you plan to plant in your yard – and that's fine. However, having spent far too long researching the subject today, I want to caution you to read customer comments (when available) about various models, because it's clear that not all pink plastic flamingos are well-designed or made to weather Wisconsin winters.

Finally, all things considered, I'd rather buy locally. However, I really do have something else to do today besides query every local lawn and garden store in town about the availability of the Madison's official bird. If you know where to buy them locally, please leave a comment; or e-mail me the information and I'll append to this post.

Meet my latest project: "Madison on the Cheap"

There's a reason I haven't been blogging here lately -- and you can see it in the sidebar. I've removed the link to the Library of Congress videos (which no one seemed to use) and replaced it with a Facebook Fan Box for Madison on the Cheap ("Your resource for freebies, discounts, and deals in Wisconsin's capital city").


Madison on the Cheap is a member of the rapidly growing network more than 40 city-specific “On the Cheap” blogs. Each blog is independently owned and operated: I own and operate this one. Here's a bit of background information:

Jennifer Maciejewski came up with the “Cities on the Cheap” concept in August 2008 when she started a blog to highlight metro-Atlanta’s freebies and deals: Atlanta on the Cheap. In early 2009, Maciejewski shared her idea on a networking site for professional writers and invited other writers to start “On the Cheap” blogs for their cities.

The journalists involved in the project have many years of experience, with bylines appearing in major newspapers and glossy national magazines. Many of the writers involved also have high-level marketing and public relations experience. This combination of skills and experience, coupled with an exceptionally timely concept, make “On the Cheap” blogs a sure bet for success.

I did a soft launch of the Madison on the Cheap blog on July 20, 2009 and have been posting and tweaking it since then. In order to have access to the kinds of tools that make a blog like Madison on the Cheap effective, I created it in WordPress. Learning to use this new blogging format, as well as learning the intricacies of self-hosting, has been time-consuming -- but well worth the effort.

You don't need to belong to Facebook to read (or subscribe to) Madison on the Cheap, but if you do belong to Facebook, I'd be very happy if you'd become a Facebook Fan. I need 100+ fans in order to claim a unique URL for my Facebook page, and right now I'm only about two-thirds of the way to meeting that goal.

There are plenty of things I want to blog about here, but right now I'm working on the publicity for the formal launch of Madison on the Cheap, so I don't have much time to write elsewhere. Perhaps I'll be able to spend more time here after Labor Day. In the meantime, please visit Madison on the Cheap regularly -- and if you have any tips about freebies, discounts, and deals in Madison, let me know).

Bascom Hill lore and traditions at the UW-Madison: Have you sat on Abe Lincoln's lap or rubbed his shoe?

The iconic statue of Abe Lincoln atop Bascom Hill on the UW-Madison campus turned 100 this June -- and I must have had something else to do, because I missed the birthday celebration.

I've never sat on Abe's lap or rubbed his shoe because when I was an undergraduate, living in Chadbourne Hall, there was another legend about Abe. Even now, I don't walk in front of him; but since Himself will probably insist I hike up Bascom Hill and take some photos of the centenarian statue, I may have to alter my behavior.

A few days ago, Cricket Harbeck, an art conservator from Milwaukee, completed some restoration work on the Ave Lincoln statue and the "Sifting and Winnowing" plaque affixed to Bascom Hall.

Below are two videos: One about the 100th anniversary of the statute and another about the restoration work. Enjoy.

Celebrating National Hot Dog Month outdoors in Madison

Salmons Hot Dog Topped with Caramelized Onion, Garlic, Whole-Grain Mustard and Gruyere Cheese on a Toasted Clasen's Hard Roll

I grew up eating Oscar Mayer wieners and A&W Coney Dogs, so I make no claim to being a hot dog connoisseur. Almost all I know about the famous Chicago Hot Dog comes from reading Paul Soglin's blog.

My friend Austin, who operates three late-night hot dog carts in the vicinity of the UW-Madison campus, has frequently offered me a freebie, but I'm not in the habit of eating really late at night. His hot dog carts are also an attraction at UW-Madison home football games at Camp Randall, but I haven't been to a Badger football game since the enigmatic and mysterious Steven Wonn took me to one back in the days before body passing was banned.

Hot dogs just haven't been on my radar or my culinary "to do" list for a long time; but for some unknown reason, a recent Dane101 post about the National Hot Dog Month celebration at The Old Fashioned, with its detailed descriptions of the daily offering, struck a chord. I was meeting a friend Downtown on Thursday evening for a meandering walk down State Street, but had to be there much earlier in order to pick up my mail before the post office closed. A hot dog at the Old Fashioned sounded like a good idea -- and the price was right.

Unfortunately, the restaurant was packed and there was a serious wait for tables. Despite the brief, intermittent rain showers, I decided to order my hot dog deal to go and have dinner across the street on the grounds of the State Capitol.

Compared to the din inside The Old Fashioned, my outdoor picnic spot was calm, quiet, and relaxing. In addition, although the sky was overcast, it was bright enough outside to take some photographs of my dinner without using my flash attachment, something that would have been impossible inside.

Under normal circumstances, I might not write such a seemingly mundane post about hot dogs. But Himself has been MIA for the past several days and I'm hoping to attract his attention. He takes a certain satisfaction in critiquing my food photography and delights in pointing out any spelling and grammatical errors I may have failed to catch. Sometimes I wonder whether... but, no, that's a pensée for another post.

Led astray by "The Gift From 93 Million Miles Away"

As someone who spends a lot of time in libraries and archives, I know you can't find everything on the Internet. Nonetheless, I'm surprised I was unable to learn more about a Kellogg's Corn Flakes jingle that I wanted to use as a lead-in to a blog post.

There are a couple of things I remember only if I sing them. One is the correct spelling of encyclopedia. I learned how to spell it by listening to Jiminy Cricket sing the letters on The Original Mickey Mouse Club.



The other is the distance from the Earth to the Sun, something I learned from a Kellogg's Corn Flake television jingle that, as I recall, went (without the music), "It comes to earth each sunny day, from 93 million miles away...sun for Kellogg's Corn Flakes."

I couldn't find that jingle anywhere in any format (text, images, videos). The closest I was able to come was a print ad that talked about the sunlight that made the corn grow as "The gift from 93 million miles away." All I can hope for now is that one of my sharp-eyed regular readers will come to the rescue and assure me my memory isn't a soggy as a day-old bowl of Rice Krispies with milk. If they can find missing commas, mis-spelled words, and mixed metaphors, they can surely find this jingle -- or at least assure me that they, too, remember the distance from the earth to the sun with reference to corn flakes.

While I'm waiting, I thought I'd share with you three Kellogg's television ads that I found during my search for the elusive jingle. All feature Superman as played on television by George Reeves. I seem to recall that I had a pre-teen crush on him, which was soon replace by a crush on David Stollery (a.k.a. Marty in The Original Mickey Mouse Club's "Spin and Marty" series). Of course, I may have made this all up many years later: As I sometimes remind Himself, when it comes to remembering crushes of yesteryear, my memory really can be as soggy as a day-old bowl of Rice Krispies with milk.







As for that idea for a blog post that sent me on this voyage of discovery, it will have to wait for another day. I've frittered away too much time already, letting myself be led astray by Google results and hyperlinks. I need to catch up on my sleep after a long, hectic weekend. And tomorrow morning when I arise, I'll cook McCann's steel cut Irish oatmeal for breakfast, because I never did learn to love Kellogg's cereals despite the best efforts of Superman and all those presumably clever people on Madison Avenue.

Today's funeral service for Kurt Pechmann, a man who spent most of his life creating memorials to other people's lives

Kurt Pechmann was an artist who worked in stone. He did not sculpt marble into statutes of famous men; he worked with granite, carving memorials to police officers killed in the line of duty, members of the armed services, and ordinary and extraordinary people. Sometimes, without calling attention to his gift, he helped to create memorials to people whose graves might otherwise go unmarked.

This evening at his funeral service, speakers described some of the other roles he played in people's lives: husband, father, grandfather, an engaging storyteller, a man with a passion for learning and doing things right, a man who was always upbeat, a man who was greatly respected, and a man who first arrived in Wisconsin as a German prisoner of war.

I first met Kurt Pechmann, founder of Pechmann Memorials in 2004 when I was working on a feature story for The Capital Times about preserving gravestones and cemetery memorials. We met in his office, its wall covered with awards and photographs. After he had answered my questions, the conversation veered off into the kind of storytelling that is the real reward for traveling to interview someone in person rather than relying on the telephone.

Born in Kuhnern, Germany in 1922, the youngest of six children, Kurt Pechmann became an apprentice stonecutter while still a teenager. At 18, he was drafted into the German army. Twice, he marched to the Russian front, where he was hospitalized for frostbite. On November 6, 1943, he was captured by Allied Forces and sent to the United States as a prisoner of war. Eventually, he was sent to Wisconsin, which, as retired history teacher Betty Cowley reported in her book, "Stalag Wisconsin," was home to 38 prisoner of war camps during World War II.

In May 1946, Kurt Pechmann was sent to a prisoner of war camp in France; but in 1948, he escaped and returned to Germany where he married his sweetheart.

In June 1952, he and his wife arrived in the United States, the country whose people he had grown to admire during his previous sojourn. For the next 57 years, in addition to becoming an American citizen and building a successful business, he made generous donations of his time and skills to his community.

The photographs, plaques, and letters of commendation that graced his office wall were on display this evening at the funeral home, along with scrapbooks and a slide show. Among the items on display were photographs of him as a young man in Germany; the plaque commemorating the occasion upon which he was award an honorary Purple Heart (the first POW in American history to be accorded this honor); and the letter from President Ronald Reagan, written at the behest of World War II veteran Akira Toki, thanking him for donating his professional services to the restoration of the Veterans Memorial at Madison's Forest Hill Cemetery, as well as "for making America your home."

A small selection of Kurt Pechmann's awards and photo albums on display at his funeral service (note the stonecutter's tools on the left hand side of the table, near the rear).

Three people spoke at the funeral service, addressing a crowd so large that many people had to sit in an overflow room across from the main seating area. Retired army colonel Cliff Bender, "representing countless Wisconsin Veterans" praised Kurt Pechmann's work on the Wisconsin Korean War Veterans Memorial and the Dane County Veterans Memorial in Monona, calling him "one of my heroes." Pechmann's granddaughter, Molly, shared fond memories of her grandfather and reminded us that "he didn't want us to be upset or hurt" and, fighting back tears, that "this should be a day of celebration."

After introductory prayers and Bible verses, Revered Jerry Amstutz, of Glenwood Moravian Community Church served as the evening's primary storyteller, relating Kurt Pechmann's history and comparing him to the Good Samaritan. "Often people teach louder with their lives than their words," he reminded us.

Prior to the commencement of the service, polka music wafted through the funeral home's speakers, a reminder that Kurt Pechmann "liked to dance polkas with his family." After the final prayer, Reverend Amstutz asked us to stay in our seats for the closing song: Louis Armstrong's rendition of "What a Wonderful World."

John Dillinger and the Little Bohemia Lodge in Wisconsin

If you don't have a ticket to tonight's Madison preview of UW-Madison alumnus Michael Mann's new film, "Public Enemies," starring Johnny Depp and Christian Bale? Consider spending a few minutes brushing up on a some Wisconsin history, by watching this short video about Little Bohemia Lodge in Manitowish Waters, scene of the 1934 shoot-out between the Dillinger Gang and the FBI (spoiler alert: before you can watch the vintage footage, you'll have to endure a short Nikon commercial featuring Ashton Kutcher; or perhaps a commercial about fabric softner or something equally enlightening).

John Dillinger

Once you've watched the video, visit the Little Bohemia Lodge website, which has lots of additional information, including the fact that one of the items on the breakfast menu is "Eggs Dillinger - scrambled eggs in a puff pastry with Canadian bacon, a tomato slice and spinach,topped with hollandaise."

Remembering Joel Gersmann...who died too soon

Joel Gersmann hated blogs: He thought they were filled with scurrilous gossip and the inane, meandering thoughts of people who, if they really wanted to write, should be writing serious stuff...like plays, and novels -- or at least articles about his beloved Broom Street Theater.

Joel died four years ago today. Were he still alive, I think he would have changed his mind about blogs -- and he probably would have a Facebook page for the theater if not himself. Once he began to see how useful and effective the Internet could be for disseminating news about Broom Street Theater, as well as locating obscure, out-of-print books and CDs, he would have twisted arms and convinced people to blog on his behalf while he used his mighty intellect to create new plays and finish translating Homer.

But, as I've said before, Joel died too soon. Four years ago, I poured all my grief and energy into writing a tribute to him for the Wisconsin State Journal. Trying to cram everything I felt needed to be said into 1,000 words was a formidable challenge.

The State Journal was consistently generous about giving me plenty of space for feature stories, but occasionally there wasn't quite enough room on the page and some paragraphs had to be cut. In this instance, some of the content of an accompanying sidebar, featuring observations about Joel from a wide range of people he's worked with over the years, also had to be excised. Tonight, for those of you who remember Joel and those of you who are, alas , just being introduced to him now, I'm going to post the original, uncut version of my story, as well as the complete sidebar content -- and since this is a blog on the Internet, I'm going to add some links, too.

Goodbye, Joel (the original version)

Joel Gersmann died too soon. There were many plays he still wanted to write and direct, including “Wisconsin Arts Board: The Musical;” a play based on University of Texas history professor David Oshinsky’s recent book, “Polio: An American Story;” and “The Most Beautiful Jew in the World,” a comedy about fashion designer Ralph Lauren.

Joel spent so much time on the telephone it’s difficult to imagine how he accomplished anything. There were dozens of people who received calls from him every day. He’d call to rant about the death of theater, the state of the union, or a surly actor. He’d call to suggest lunch: He didn’t own a car, so accepting an invitation to dine meant you’d probably also be driving him to the grocery store, the bank, and a beauty supply store selling the inexpensive blond wigs he needed for an upcoming play. Or maybe he’d interrupt your sleep to read you a poem.

“Joel was studying Ancient Greek and he’d call me up at 3 a.m. and read his latest translation of Homer,” says Dickie Swaback, who designed and constructed sets for many Broom Street productions.

Whenever Joel telephoned, there would be music playing in the background. He was passionate about classical music, opera, jazz, and folk music, as well as modern dance. His knowledge of these subjects was encyclopedic. His preferred the new, the offbeat, and just plain weird. He was eagerly awaiting the arrival of a CD by The Suspicious Cheese Lords.

An avid reader, he sometimes fretted that more people knew him for the annual book review essay he wrote for the Isthmus newspaper for 28 years than for his work at Broom Street Theater.

The amount of work he did at and for Broom Street Theater was prodigious, despite all his other interests and activities, including a recent addition: learning Arabic.

During his 36 year tenure as Broom Street’s artistic director, Joel wrote and directed 88 original plays. Additionally, he made and directed 26 adaptations or versions of famous plays for the theater. He also directed four plays for Quixote Productions and was hired to direct a nationally broadcast radio play with a cast that included actor Laurence Luckinbill. This was not an entirely pleasant experience for Joel.

“Luckinbill was one of the people he hated most after that,” remembers Jacques Burdick, a retired theater professor who earned his Ph.D. at UW-Madison. Burdick met Gersmann when Joel enrolled in the masters degree program in theater arts at Adelphi University after spending two years in the U.S. Army.

Burdick, who Joel called “my mentor” (and telephoned every day) says, “Joel went to Madison because I went there and because I knew A.C. Scott who taught Asian theater history in Madison at the time.”

But Burdick influenced more than Joel’s decision to go to Madison. “I can only surmise that something I did at Adelphi set him off -- and I think it was studying Grotowski’s investigations of what it means to be doing theater with next to nothing.”

Grotowski developed a concept he called poor theater. He believed theater could happen without costumes, scenery, or stage lighting: All theater required was a live communion between an actor and an audience in a special place.

“Broom Street’s tradition is about cheap, curtainless theater,” says Rod Clark, who has acted in, written, and directed many plays at Broom Street and currently serves as the chair of its board. Clark met Joel in Madison is 1967 when they were both involved in “the cultural side of the revolution,” whose members resisted the rigidity of the political left.

“We didn’t want to be constrained by what was appropriate,” says Clark.

Two of Joel’s first plays for Broom Street were “Junk Show” and “Junk Show II.” He said he coined the term “junk theater” to describe his work after reading George Orwell’s observations about junk culture.

But his work was constantly changing, evolving. Joel believed his most recent play, “The Ballerina and the Economist,” was vastly different, for instance, from his controversial 1988 production of “Joe, A Life or Angel on the Edge, the story of Senator Joe McCarthy of Wisconsin.” It was more layered with meaning and highly choreographed.

To all of the above, it’s necessary to add that Joel ran the theater: raised money, paid the bills, handled the publicity, made certain the theater building was well-maintained. He lived frugally, but for many years worked at day jobs in order to keep the theater going.

“You can’t produce theater year after year that people hate,” says Clark.

But Joel was unwilling to compromise.

“I’m not going to throw myself on the railroad tracks and get hysterical,” he said recently. “At 62, I’m just not going to reinvent theater for 21st century yuppies.”

“And the miracle is that the theater survives in the black, ”says Clark. And Broom Street Theater remains the only company in Madison that owns its own building.

“Buying that building was a leap of faith,” says Mary Berryman-Agard, former chair of the Madison Arts Commission. “It was a decision without which there wouldn’t have been a Broom Street Theater today. Joel’s real genius was his administrative skills.”

If you’ve read this far and your favorite Joel story isn’t here, don’t fret. There’s more to come. The Broom Street boys are already speculating who’ll be the first to write and direct “The Joel Gersmann Story” and whether it might make it to the stage before the end of the year.

Sidebar: Remembering Joel

Film director Stuart Gordon, who, in partnership with his wife, Carolyn Purdy-Gordon, co-founded Broom Street Theater in 1968, and then left after directing one play:

“Joel was one of the few remaining people in theater who continued to experiment with new forms. He never sold out, or softened his views, or went commercial.”

“Theaters are like children and Joel really saw it through. I was like the traveling salesman who got the farmer’s daughter pregnant and then abandoned her. Joel married her and raised the kids.”

Rob Matsushita, playwright, director, actor, and sometimes gunmaster at Broom Street since 1995:

“Joel was a uniter. I think I learned more from him about human character than theater. He could make people who didn’t get along work together. We united together for a reason: we were angry with Joel. He wanted you to be angry, to fight. Joel believed that if you didn’t fight for something you didn’t really want it.”

Mary Berryman-Agard, arts consultant and former chair of the Madison Arts Commission:

“Joel was a completely non-sentimental person, but he had a fundamentally sweet and tender engagement with the world, all appearances to the contrary aside.”

JoAnn Schmidman, founder (in 1968) of one of the oldest and long lived experimental theaters in the United States, Omaha Magic Theatre:

“Joel was an unheralded genius. He was one of the most giving and caring souls I’ve known.”

Callen Harty, playwright, director, actor at Broom Street since 1983:

“The one thing I think about often is Joel’s mentorship role -- how many lives have been changed because of him.”

Megan Terry, a founding member of New York City’s now legendary Open Theater:

“Joel Gersmann and Joseph Chaiken are two of the geniuses of the American theater, both working at opposite ends of the spectrum.”

Not on hiatus (or even marching to a different drummer)... just too busy to blog

Lunch at the University Club with Molly Eddy, winner of the 2009 Iwanter Prize for interdisciplinary excellence

Molly Eddy, Winner of the 2009 Iwanter Prize

It had been a dark and stormy night and I hadn't slept well. I didn't want to get out of bed. I turned off the alarm clock and hunkered down under my quilt, hoping to give my sub-conscious another stab at writing a lede for a story I had been working on for days.

Then the telephone rang. It was Sidney Iwanter calling from Los Angeles to tell me I had something else to do. He wanted me to attend and blog about a luncheon in honor of Molly Eddy, winner of the 2009 Center for the Humanities Sidney E. Iwanter Prize for outstanding interdisciplinary scholarship for her senior thesis entitled "Spirit and Body: Paradox and Ambiguity in Brigidine Devotion."

The annual Iwanter Prize provides an unrestricted $2,000 award to one graduating senior who demonstrates outstanding humanities-based scholarship of a broad and interdisciplinary nature. It is based on a review of each applicant's senior thesis and overall academic record.

I've never met Sidney, but we attended the same high school. Several years ago, I interviewed him for a story I was writing for the Wisconsin State Journal. Sidney did give me a good quote, but it ended up on the newspaper equivalent of the cutting room floor. Ever since then, he's insisted I owe him. That morning he was calling in his marker.

That's why on Friday, the first day of the three-day 2009 Spring Commencement weekend at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, I found myself serving as Sidney's emissary, joining six other people for lunch in the J.R. Commons room at the University Club on State Street.

The other luncheon guests were Molly Eddy; her parents, Barbara Eddy, a retired high school guidance counselor, and Thomas Eddy, who has been a high school biology teacher for 33 years; Sara Guyer, director of the Center for the Humanities at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the organization that administers and awards the prize; Caroline Levine, a professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who served on the panel that selected this year's award-winner; and Kirin Narayan, Molly Eddy's senior thesis adviser, an ethnographer and professor of anthropology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. I'd met Narayan about 15 years ago, when I interviewed her about her novel, "Love Stars and All That."

Barbara and Thomas Eddy talk with Molly's thesis adviser, Kirin Narayan

As usual, Sidney, who endowed the unrestricted $2,000 award, cannot make it to the lunch. In fact, he admits, he's never made it to the event and he's never met any of the award recipients. That's one of the reasons why he called me at 5 a.m. in the morning to suggest I attend the luncheon and blog about it.

"As a regular reader of your blog, it appears to me that it's time for you to write about something other than food and artwork that looks like cows," he said. He also threw in a heaping does of flattery, reminding me I'm "a blogger of note."

Grilled Mahi-Mahi at the University Club

Sidney says he has always been far more interested in learning more about the brilliant young scholars who win the award than talking about his own checkered academic past. "I wanted to create an award that would have been virtually impossible for me to win no matter how many tutors or years I attended Wisconsin as an undergraduate," he says.

"I wasn't a great student when I was the UW-Madison because I too busy running around escaping tear gas canisters, collecting 1960s radical black light posters from trees and telephone poles – which my mother eventually threw out, just as she threw me out after college – and sneaking my tape recorder into Agriculture Hall to tape Harvey Goldberg's lectures," he explains.

Sidney has read Molly's senior thesis – as well as those of every student who has applied for the Iwanter Prize since its inception in 2001. This year there were a dozen applicants.

According to Sidney, it is the only time of year he ever uses a dictionary on a regular basis: "The rest of the year I just guess the meanings of the words," he avers. He does not, however, play a role in deciding who wins the prize. He cedes that responsibility to a committee of faculty members chosen by the Wisconsin Center for the Humanities.

The Center's website lists the criteria for applying for the Iwanter Prize. Among other things, potential applicants learn, "Theses must be interdisciplinary but need not be interdepartmental. The topic of the winning thesis must reflect a breadth of interests and learning experiences as well as depth in its main area of focus. It should draw from more than one scholarly discipline (for example, history and Italian literature; philosophy and art), but it may do so in a variety of ways."

During the luncheon, I ask questions and takes notes; later, I telephone Sara Guyer and Molly to confirm some details.

Molly Eddy

Although her parents were originally from Iowa, Molly was born and raised in Green Lake, Wisconsin.

Molly says for a long time she wanted to be an archaeologist. Her father remembers that she had "a keen interest in Egyptology and Egyptian myths." During her last year of high school, she took an anthropology course at Ripon College and that persuaded her to change her focus and major in anthropology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Molly's senior thesis explores some aspects of the Congregation of Sisters of St. Brigid (Brigidine Sisters), founded in Ireland in 1807. In order to do the research for her thesis, she used her skills in reading Old and Middle English, Gaelic, and Ancient Greek. She also knows French, Spanish, and "a little Russian."

Saint Brigid of Kildare, says Molly, is one of the three major patron saints of Ireland (along with Patrick and Columba), and one of the most popular. At one time in Ireland, Brigid was the most common name for girls.

Molly's academic interest in Brigid led her to analyze documents about the legends of the saints and how they reflected the struggle for church supremacy in Ireland (whether Kildare or Armagh should become the "ecclesiastical capital") that occurred between the 7th and 9th centuries. She says she approached her subject from three different points of view, studying ecclesiastical records, folklore collected after the Great Famine in Ireland, and modern Brigidine devotions.

"This is exactly what the award was set up to encourage: interdisciplinary excellence," says Sidney.

When Molly began her research, she says, "I was interested in how Brigid was perceived by society and how this perception changed historically." One of the main things she noticed in traditional Brigidine devotions was the important of bodily practice, such as planting crops for a good harvest. Today, this is reflected in the order's focus on work in the world, such as protecting women's rights and encouraging environmentalism – a focus that emphasizes the here and now.

Although her parents were Catholic, Molly's mother says, "She came home at 11 and said, 'I just shouldn't go to Sunday school; it's not my thing.' She wanted to study world religions."

"Molly was always interested in reading," adds her mother. "The local librarians would go to great lengths to get books for her."

In addition to reading books, Molly currently has a job in the Conservation Lab at Memorial Library helping to repair and restore old books and manuscripts. When asked about how she used the Internet to facilitate her own research, Molly acknowledges that it can't be ignored, but says she prefers reading books she can hold in hr hands.

Molly, who will be pursuing her interest in Celtic Studies at New York University this fall as a graduate student, plans to spend most of her summer in Madison, working at the library and pursuing her lessons in Gaelic. Eventually, she says she would like to work with old Irish manuscripts, translating them and making them more accessible to people.

Lest you think this lovely young woman is a bookworm, be advised that she has also studied Tae Kwon Do. She is a black stripe, which she says is a level below a black belt, something she did not aspire to earn because, "I was tired of competition." Besides, she notes that her relatively short height and small hands put her at a disadvantage in competitions.

She wasn't at all reluctant to compete for the Iwanter Prize, however. "Molly is very diligent and worked hard to complete her senior thesis before the May 1st deadline," says Narayan.

Professor Kirin Narayan and Molly Eddy

Note: When I talked to Molly on the telephone, she mentioned that during the course of her research, she had acquired much more information than she needed. I can empathize with that: During the course of writing about the Iwanter Prize, I've acquired much more information than I needed.

Molly may be able to incorporate some of her extra information into a master's thesis. I'm likely to write some more blog posts. Expect to read some posts about the Center for the Humanities, as well as the intriguing story about the events leading up to the creation of the Iwanter Prize. Expect to read them later, however. Right now, I have something else to do…

It's too nice outside: I'm on hiatus

Report from Woodstock: Searching for clues about the missing Dick Tracy Museum

"Hey, Babe! Just checking in to see how you're doing."
"Where are you?"
"I'm sitting at an outdoor café overlooking the scenic Woodstock Square."
"Woodstock? I thought you were in Lake Forest."
"I was, but I'm on my way home and I stopped in Woodstock to do a telephone interview."
"Woodstock, Illinois?"
"Yes."
"So what's there?"
"This is the city where they filmed 'Groundhog Day' and where Orson Welles attended school after he left Madison."
"What school?"
"The Todd School."
"So are you going to take photos and blog about this?"
"It hadn't occurred to me. I was just going to walk over to the Dick Tracy Museum to buy you a postcard…"
"Dick Tracy Museum? What's a Dick Tracy Museum doing in Woodstock?"
"Chester Gould lived here."
"I thought he was from New York."
"Sheesh. Dick Tracy was a Chicago Tribune comic strip."
"Well that doesn't mean he was from Chicago."
"So I'll find out where he was from when I go to the museum."
"Well take lots of photos so you can blog about this."
"OK. I'll take photos, but I may not have time to blog. Are you going to be home when I get back to Madison?"
"Probably. I have to go out to the grocery store though."
"Why?"
"I need to go pinch some fruit in the produce section."
"Dick Tracy would not approve of you stealing apples, Babe. He'd pinch you if he caught you doing that."
"I'm not going to steal fruit; I'm going to pinch fruit. Check out the first definition."
"Do you mean the one about gripping flesh tightly and sharply between finger and thumb?"
"Sounds right."
"And exactly what are you going to pinch?"
"Cantaloupes."
"All men are pigs."
"You already knew that. Go take some photos."

I disconnect and walk around the square to the Old Court House Building. The Dick Tracy Museum is gone. There are no traces of evidence.

I walk a bit farther down the block. It looks as though the Courthouse Grill is no longer in business. La Petite Crêperie is apparently still in business. Across the street I see a sign for the Woodstock Chamber of Commerce and Industry. Maybe they can reassure me that the Dick Tracy Museum wasn't a figment of my imagination.

The receptionist at the Chamber of Commerce and Industry tells me the Dick Tracy Museum closed about two years ago because of lack of funds. I ask her where the collection of art and artifacts from the museum is now. She tells me the family has it. She tells me the family ran the museum and just couldn't afford to continue to do so because there weren't enough admission-paying visitors.

I ask about the Chester Gould connection to Woodstock. She tells me he lived in Woodstock for over 34 years. I wonder why I let Himself keep challenging my facts and memories. OK. Sometimes he's on target – but he misses the rim a lot, too.

The Chamber of Commerce sells postcards. I buy one leftover from the Dick Tracy Museum even though it doesn't show our hero wearing his 2-way wrist radio. I buy one commemorating the filming of "Groundhog Day." Bill Murray is not in the photo. I don't think he's selling vodka in crystal heads either – that's the other guy, isn't it?

I stop in a nearby bakery and find myself more entranced by the horse ride in the hallway than the cookies in the display cases.

A little farther down the street, I spot a gelato shop. I walk in and look at what’s on offer. The woman behind the counter asks me if I want a sample. I decline. I ask for a serving of pink grapefruit sorbetto. She asks me if I want to sample it first. I decline. She asks me if I'm sure. I start to become irritated, and then I realize what she's worried about. "It looks nice and tart, I don't think I need a sample," I tell her. She looks relieved. Someone who didn't know from tart must have complained. I know someone who pinches cantaloupes --- you think I don't know from tart? But I don’t say that aloud.

Sitting at an indoor table, trying to write something witty and memorable (or at least coherent), I realize I should have ordered my tart treat in a dish instead of a cone. It's difficult to write a postcard when one hand is holding a leaky cone. Plus, the lovely mosaics on the top of the table make it difficult to write (my pen wobbles). I finally finish the cone and card and head outside to find a mailbox.

Then I walk over to the scenic Woodstock Square to take some photos. This is a veterans' memorial park and many of the trees are festooned with large yellow ribbons with names on them. I take some photos of the ribbons.

I take some other photos, but I'm not bursting with enthusiasm for this assignment. I've been there and done that a couple of years ago. When I get home, I discover it was in July 2006 – and that time I was on the way home from Lake Forest, too. Just goes to show I don't tell Himself everything. Turns out I also took a photo back then of the signage outside the Dick Tracy Museum, so I have evidence it existed.

Walking through the square, toward the Woodstock Opera House, where Paul Newman once performed, I sight some guys sitting on a park bench. I don't have my 10X zoom lens, so I can't sneak up on them. I ask if I can take some photos. They agree. After I take some photos, they ask me if I want to take some goofy photos, too. Of course I do.



After securing an e-mail address from one of the guys, I shoot some photos of the Opera House, and then walk back to my car.


I wonder if Himself is on the way to the grocery store to pinch cantaloupes. I tell myself this is probably only a bit of imagery he's concocted for the story he's writing. It's all a metaphor. The reality is more raw cauliflower and hummus dip.

I turn the key in the ignition and head for Harvard and Emerald Grove and points north.

It's Tuesday, May 12th. My father would have been 88 today. I haven't forgotten, but perhaps I've been trying not to think about how long he's been gone. It's not easy to drive when you're crying.

This is one of the presses my grandfather kept running

Pressmen at the Wisconsin State Journal building on S. Carroll Street (date and photographer unknown)

When I wrote the previous post, I thought I had enough images to make it work, but Himself noted that it was difficult to see what the old press looked like in the photo on the scanned newspaper page. So I've been looking for a better photograph for several days -- and I found this one in one of my grandmother's albums. It's undated, but judging by my grandfather's appearance (he's the one in the center, wearing bib overalls), my guess would be that it was taken sometime before World War II.

If you can help me pinpoint the date, or identify the other men in the photograph, please contact me.

He kept the presses running and could never have imagined a world without the aroma of fresh ink on newsprint...

The letter from the United States Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware arrived a few days ago, but there's no need for me to respond: The Tribune Company doesn't owe me any money. I received my last check from them a few days before Sam Zell completed his leveraged buyout of the company.

Although this bankruptcy proceeding may presage the beginning of the end for yet another great newspaper, I'm not keening and wailing. I mourned the Tribune's demise decades ago when we started to receive a truncated version of the original here in Madison. The so-called Midwest Edition wasn't worth the time or the money, so I abandoned it.

Even though I was born and raised in Madison, I grew up reading the Chicago Tribune as well as the local newspapers. I read the Tribune because my maternal grandfather subscribed to it. He was a fan of its feisty conservative editor Colonel Robert McCormick. He admired the Colonel's work ethic and stamina, but cautioned me not to be taken in by his bizarre campaign to reform spelling, taking care to point out words that should not be spelled the way they were spelled in the Tribune.

It was in the funny pages section of the Chicago Tribune that I first encountered that dashing, adventurous red-haired reporter, Brenda Starr and her man of mystery, Basil St. John. She became a role model. He became a source of fascination. Looking back, I think it may have been because Basil, like my father, seemed elusive – always being lost and found.

My grandfather preferred reading about the adventures of another redhead: Little Orphan Annie. We both marveled at Dick Tracy's 2-Way Wrist Radio. And it was my grandfather who taught me to look for the annual "Injun Summer" story on the front page of the Tribune's Sunday magazine: It spoke of long ago days and reminded those of us who lived in the Midwest that winter was not far off.

My grandfather spent his entire career in the newspaper business, so I not only grew up reading lots of newspapers, I spent many hours hanging around the Madison Newspapers building on S. Carroll Street, watching the Wisconsin State Journal and The Capital Times being created on a daily basis. On the upper floors of the building, reporters typed copy, made phone calls, smoked, drank coffee, took a nip from the bottle of booze hidden in their desks, and told colorful stories never destined to make it into print.

The press room with its huge, noisy machines and dark, pungent-smelling ink was on the ground floor. This was my grandfather's domain: He was superintendent of the press room. He arrived in Madison on Thanksgiving Day 1918, and during his almost 40-year tenure "Mike" and his team never missed an issue – even though the presses were replaced several times over the decades. He loved newspapers and loved his job – and he couldn't stay retired. When yet another new press was installed in the building on S. Carroll Street in 1961, my grandfather, who was born during the depression years of the late 19th century, when Grover Cleveland was President of the United States, was called back to supervise the process.

During his 91 years on Earth, my grandfather lived through several economic depressions and two world wars; he was witness to extraordinary changes in science and technology and usually embraced them. He watched hundreds of individual newspapers dissolve and merge, but he would never have imagined that the newspaper as an institution would find itself in the throes of death. He could never have imagined a world without newsprint and ink. He could never have imagined a world where the Chicago Tribune found it necessary to file for bankruptcy.

Large rolls of newsprint paper being unloaded in from of the Wisconsin State Journal building at 115 S. Carroll Street, circa 1939 (Wisconsin Historical Image ID: 14535)

I find myself increasingly ambivalent about the fate of newspapers. I love the look, the feel – even the aroma – of a freshly printed newspaper. I can't imagine reading a newspaper on a Kindle. But local newspapers are increasingly filled not with local news, but warmed-over wire service stories and inane syndicated feature stories.

If I want news, I turn on my computer and search the Internet, where I can find local news, as well as news from around the world, great photography, and an extraordinary array of videos. If I want inane stories about vapid celebrities and tedious articles about how to redecorate on the cheap, I'll hang around the dentist's waiting room and read magazines.

If I crave old-fashioned newspapers, I'll have to use some of my frequent flyer miles and head across the pond to London, where I can still spend a Sunday morning in bed with Himself and a basket of chocolate croissants, wading through a variety of newspapers with distinct personalities, clever writing, stunning photography, amusing gossip, the court circular, and the latest rugby scores.

On hiatus from blogging (again)

Too much work, too little time and energy...

Revisiting the Easter Cow on Madison's East Side in order to check out the bovine beauty's 2009 holiday attire

Last year when I visited the Easter Cow, there was snow on the ground and she was wearing an elaborate headdress, not an Easter bonnet. The ambient light was good.

This year, the light wasn't great and her head and horns were bare. In fact, Holstein Parade seemed to be wearing her birthday suit – a sad state of affairs, utterly disappointing. But then I looked down and realized that this year's theme was booties, not bonnets. Check out her stylish footwear.

If you want to read more about this bovine beauty who resides on Madison's East Side, read last year's post. After spending the weekend unplugged, I don't have a lot of time for blogging tonight. I have something else to do…

A short tale about how I was temporarily lured from my hiatus by the Library of Congress and some pugilistic pussy cats

It might look like a cat fight, but this very short video is a piece of history. It was filmed in July 1894 at Thomas Edison's Black Maria studio, and features "amusement entrepreneur" Professor Harry Welton and two furry felines wearing gloves.

This historical oddity is one of 70 videos added to YouTube by the Library of Congress (LOC), which yesterday announced the launch of its own YouTube Channel, while noting that the LOC is "the world's preeminent reservoir of knowledge...the steward of millions of recordings dating from the earliest Edison films to the present."

Discussing the move to YouTube on the LOC blog, the library's communications director, Matt Raymond, writes:

But this is just the beginning. We have made a conscious decision that we’re not just going to upload a bunch of videos and then walk away. As with our popular Flickr pilot project, we intend to keep uploading additional content. We’re modifying some of our work-flows in modest ways to make our content more useful and delivered across platforms with built-in audiences of millions.

Not so incidentally, all of the videos we post on YouTube will also be available at LOC.gov (and many, many more, of course) on American Memory, many of which are newly digitized in much higher resolution by the fine Motion Picture, Broadcast and Recorded Sound conservators in Culpeper, Va.

And that's all I have to say right now. I'm still on hiatus from blogging, but this news was too good to wait. Follow the links in this post and you'll discover a myriad diversions. Meanwhile, I have something else to do...

On hiatus from blogging, but not, alas, on vacation

A lunchtime adventure during which I do not engage in networking with Brazen Careerist author Penelope Trunk

It's raining at a medium windshield wiper pace and I'm running late for lunch with Penelope Trunk. I was going to park in a ramp, but I spot an open space on West Washington Avenue only a block away from my destination; so I take it even though I only have 85 cents in change for the meter and may well end up with a parking ticket.

The wind is so strong it blows my cheap umbrella inside out, so I decide not to risk taking my Nikon D40 with me. Instead, I tell myself if there's an opportunity to take a photo I can rely on the little point and shot Olympus I always carry in my purse. Besides, the Olympus has a 10X zoom, so I can sneak up on my subject from a distance if necessary.

I may have to use that zoom lens because I won't be sitting at the same table as Trunk. I probably won’t even be sitting at a table because my destination is "A Brown Bag Lunch Networking Event" sponsored by Wisconsin Women in Government and it's being held in a conference room. I may also have to use that zoom lens if I'm late and relegated to standing in the back of the room.

There are still quite a few seats available when I arrive at 11:30 a.m. I pick up my nametag and pause to look at the rows of bottled water and platters of cheese and crackers, fresh fruit, vegetables, and sweet desserts sprawled on tables just inside the door to the conference room. I haven't brought a brown bag lunch and there is no one standing at the front of the room about to launch into a lecture, so snarfing some goodies and laying claim to 500 ml. of Aquafina seems like a good idea.

Problem: No silverware, not even a bowl of toothpicks. I'm deft enough to pick up small bits of melon without touching somebody else's nosh, but putting some cheese on a round cracker is a challenge. Someone already tried to dip into the semi-hard cheese ball and there are bits of shattered cracker littered around it. I stick with fruit and baby carrots.

I take a seat on an aisle. It's a habit I developed from all those years of writing on deadline. It also makes it easier to slip out of the room if the speaker is boring. Not that I expect Trunk to be boring: I've been reading her blog too long to believe that.

It's 11:35 a.m. by the time I finally sit down in this room full of women. There's still no action in the front of the room. I turn down the volume on my cell telephone in case Himself decides to call me. I haven't told Himself I'm having lunch with Penelope Trunk because recently he admitted that, "When she writes all of the blood in my veins rushes to the appropriate locations." I call this Priapic Trunk Syndrome. My spellchecker refuses to recognize the "p" word and offers "prosaic" as an alternative.

In the back of the conference room is a collection of shovels from a groundbreaking ceremony. All the shovels have names. Maybe I should take a photo, just in case I need to blog about shovels if Trunk doesn't show up to enlighten us about our careers.

The Arrivals

At about 11:45 a.m., I think I spot Trunk outside the conference room, in the entryway space where the tables with the nametags and copies of her book, "The Brazen Careerist," reside. She's tall, attractive, emanates energy, and has a certain je ne sais quoi presence. I take notes about what she's wearing: black and white pinstripe trousers and a fitted grey jacket. From a distance, she doesn't look quite like the photographs I've seen. Her hair is shorter than I expected.

After she hugs a few women, she enters the conference room and removes not one, but two expensive leather bags from her shoulder and puts them on a chair near the rear of the room. She heads for the tables with food and comes back with a paper plate filled with cucumber slices, cauliflower, watermelon, and crackers. I take notes and think this is all a bit odd. Why isn't she in the front of the room?

About 10 minutes later, the real Penelope Trunk arrives. We'll soon hear her tell us she was running late. The real Penelope Trunk is wearing a black dress and looks more like photos on her Facebook page than the woman in the pinstripe trousers does.

I pull out my camera. The batteries are dead.

The talk

After a brief introduction, Trunk begins speaking. In the beginning, her talk is peppered with too many "ums" and "likes" and I begin to think my seat on the aisle may be put to good use. Soon, however, she picks up speed and the verbal tics vanish. She speaks so rapidly even Himself would find it difficult to interject a bon mot, a good joke, or an inept pick-up line. She's smart, funny, occasionally outrageous, and always entertaining.

I jot down a few notes, not certain whether I'll steal some of her lines, share them with Himself, or lose them in the bottom of my purse. I think I'll probably follow some of her advice, but not heed the admonition to start Twittering.

She talks for half an hour. I take six pages of notes. After she finishes talking, she asks if there are any questions. The first one is from a man: "The guy who came in late is asking the first question," she says as she acknowledges him.

I take three more pages of notes while she answers questions. I learn she has very few friends but an amazing company. I don't learn much about what her company actually does.

Most of the people who've been following Trunk on Twitter and Facebook (where she has hundreds of friends) want to know if she's pregnant; but no one in the audience asks her that question.

The brown bag lunch and networking event ends at 1 p.m. I'm not certain anyone in the conference room did much networking during that 90 minutes. When I leave, Trunk is seated at one of the tables in the entryway, signing copies of her book. Someone else is handling the money.

The aftermath

It's not raining very hard as I walk back to my car. I check the windshield, but there's no parking ticket under the wiper blade. Whew. I check my cell telephone. Himself called just before Trunk arrived in the conference room. Sigh. I'm in no hurry to call him back. I want to ponder what Trunk said before I engage in a conversation about whether or not she's hot.

I stop at the library to drop off some books. I also stop at a grocery store to buy some broccoli for dinner. I stop again to buy some batteries for my camera.

When I arrive home and check Facebook, I discover Trunk has already left a comment (via Twitter) about today's networking event: "Giving a speech. They want to network. I don't want to talk. I want to text my boyfriend. I want to text him to tell him he's my boyfriend." No word about whether or not she's pregnant.

Two hours later, Trunk posts another comment on Facebook (via Twitter): "Now I'm nervous to call him my boyfriend. So I say: "You can't be my boyfriend because it's too many characters to tweet. You have to be D." Several people respond with comments of their own. At 7:50 p.m. Trunk responds, "Wow. No. D is not for dad. I am not pregnant. Negative test: hooray. And D is the first initial of his first name. I am a practical girl."

Mystery resolved. Now, perhaps, we can go back to pondering more important things, such as her observations about résumés: "A résumé is a marketing tool, not a life story. If you have a good life story, you'd have a book about it."

If you missed today's opportunity to meet Trunk in person, get to know her by reading her blog. Then leave some comments – or as she said today, "Join the conversation: Force yourself to put your ideas out there."

She also said, "If you want to be known for your ideas, you must blog." Of course I knew that long before I made her acquaintance.