George and the Boys

Anybody can be good in the country. There are no temptations there. Oscar Wilde

Living the Lifestyle of Charlotte Vale

George has moved and improved the firepit. The addition of a massive block of white marble (a misspelled and discarded gravemarker from his son's days at the granite works) now serves as a fireside work station. It's just about the size of the egg box pictured above.

October 13th, 1968, Mount Morris, Wisconsin.

October 13th, 1968, Mount Morris, Wisconsin. The Beatles video for "Revolution" was on the Smothers Brothers show that night.

Let's Go, Elmer! All Right, Mirandy!

All's Fair at the Fair A couple of sticks visit the Fair grounds, and find themselves participating in a series of adventures with the ultra-modern mechanism operated by robots.

Gloves and Scarf: Because It Is Dangerous

“Dress has never been at all a straightforward business; so much subterranean interest and complex feeling attaches to it. As a topic, it is popular because it is dangerous – it has a flowery head but deep roots in our passions. On the subject of dress, almost no one, for one reason or another, feels truly indifferent: if their own clothes do not concern them somebody else’s do.”

- Elizabeth Bowen -

Elizabeth Bowen - County Cork Ireland

Her husband retired in 1952 and they settled in Bowen’s Court, where Alan Cameron died a few months later. Many writers visited her at Bowen's Court, including Virginia Woolf, Eudora Welty, and Carson McCullers. For years Bowen struggled to keep the house going, lecturing in the United States to earn money. In 1959 the house was sold and demolished.

Milwaukee Urban Water Trail - Pere Marquette

The map indicated §§ fast water §§ where dams used to be (North Avenue) and where the breweries had harvested ice (north of the Locust Street bridge). Here, as we pass beneath the Juneau Street bridge, it is placid.

City Sister in the Urban Wilderness

The New York Times recommends the Milwaukee Urban Water Trail and what a wonderful waterway it is.

Indeed, it is respectable.

Mushrooms in May Aren't All Morels

I wish Tula Erskine was still about to help me identify this one.

Derleth spent the month of May hunting morel mushrooms in the woods in and around Sauk City

In his record morel collecting year Derleth harvested over 10,000 mushrooms.

hobble-de-hoys, nincompoops, bumpkins, and clod-hoppers

Your city boy is a kind of super-boy, a born sceptic, lord of the streets; and it is quite natural that he should have a huge contempt for hobble-de-hoys, nincompoops, bumpkins, and clod-hoppers, as he nicknames country boys. Your country boy looks down immeasurably and with justice on the city boys; for he is lord of the fields and forests; he knows all about horses, and is on friendly terms with the beasts of the field; he can crack a whip and has under his dominion all the treasures of the earth, from willow-switches to ripe poppy-heads.

Intimate Things - Karel Čapek

In at Andrew's Landing, Out at Bridge 24.

Hope to Paddle the Crooked Kickapoo on Tuesday

Reflections of Milwaukee

Lux Living

City Sister is so happy she's not living in Sty Town. However, she does appreciate Jeffrey's photo of the projects in Washington Heights. He's doing that County Mouse/City Mouse (comocimo) thing, too. Bopping back and forth between the borough and the coulee.

City Sister

I am happy in my country home.

There I have nuts and good water.

And I do not have to run for my life.

Good day, I am going home."

And the country mouse ran home
as fast as she could.


I'm mostly a City Sister at heart but find that I'm quite happy in my country home, too.