Pumpkin Everywhere All at Once

Posted on September 11, 2023 by admin

A rainy day today, first one in a while, after a pleasantly warm but dry weekend. We can use the rain.

On Sunday I visited a popular grocery store chain, one – and there’s more than one such chain – controlled by shadowy German billionaires. Pumpkin merch is already front and center, including actual pumpkins. A pretty array.

Inside the store, I was inspired to look for pumpkin-adjacent products. They weren’t hard to find.

Does all this mean the pumpkin crop is larger than it used to be, to satisfy the lust for pumpkin-flavored this and that? I decided to look it up when I got home. In the meantime, the pumpkin parade continued. Even though it’s still September.

Pumpkin-flavored sandwich creme cookies.

That sounded pretty good, so I bought a box. They are good. Not great, but sweet and pumpkin flavored all right, though not overwhelmingly so.

As for the pumpkin crop, the USDA tells me that all states produce some pumpkins, but six states produce most of them.

This was a surprise: “In 2021, Illinois maintained its leading position in pumpkin acreage, harvesting more than twice as many pumpkin acres as any of the other top states, at 15,900 acres,” the agency says. “In the same year — California, Indiana, Michigan, Texas, and Virginia — each harvested between 4,500 and 7,400 acres.”

That’s a distinction that I never knew about Illinois, as long as I’ve lived here.

“Annual U.S. per capita availability of fresh pumpkins averaged about 5 pounds over 2019 to 2021, similar to levels during the past two decades,” which might mean the impact of those various products is relatively small. On the other hand, 2021 is at the high end of that average, so maybe all that pumpkin in all that bread, breakfast foods, cookies, alcoholic beverages and personal care products is starting to add up.

Moonsky Star ’94

Posted on September 10, 2023 by admin

On September 11, 1994, we boarded a train in Beijing that would take us to Ulaanbaatar, which is about 1,200 miles. That was the first leg of taking the Trans-Siberian, though the company which arranged our trips called the route the Trans-Mongolian, as it didn’t originate in Vladivostok. A quibble.

One thing do to before the train left was visit the engine.

And stand on the front, to pose for pictures. I think the woman stepping off the front was Iris, a Swiss we met on the train and corresponded with for a few years afterward. Of course, I had to pose as well. Yuriko didn’t want to do anything that silly.

The booking company was called Moonsky Star, located in Hong Kong, as noted on the self-printed booklet we received when we booked passage from Beijing to Moscow, about 4,880 miles all together. After Ulaanbaatar came Irkutsk and then Moscow.

The booklet was most informative about the trains, the accommodations, the cities and other places along the route, visas, and more.

The chimp was the company’s cartoon mascot. Formed in the late ’80s, as passage across Eurasia had become somewhat easier, Moonsky had offices in the warren-like Chunking Mansions in Kowloon, which I understand is still there, and about the same as it ever was. Looks like the potential for a terrible deadly fire.

Some years ago, I checked, and Moonsky Star was still doing business; but today I checked again, and it seems to have closed up shop. Could be too many other ways to get tickets these days; or the pandemic as last-nail-in-the-coffin; or the fact that Russia’s at war at the moment, and demand to ride the Trans-Siberian might be in a slump; or who knows what else. Maybe the proprietor retired or died.

Too bad in any case. I don’t have a bad thing to say about the company, which delivered the goods for us, allowing us to spend about two weeks getting from a remarkable point A to a remarkable point B with much in between.

The Demise of Cousin Oscar

Posted on September 7, 2023 by admin

Unlike Wednesday morning’s thunder but no rain, Thursday morning provided rain but no thunder. At least, none that I was awake for. Not a lot of rain, but enough to kick off a cool cloudy day.

Not long ago I watched an episode of All in the Family on a whim, as the series is available on one of the streaming services I pay for. I was curious to take a look at the program, so famed in its time, with my older eyes – older now than any of the characters.

I didn’t watch it every week back in its heyday, except maybe during the fall of ’73, when CBS had its remarkable Saturday line up: All in the Family, MASH, Mary Tyler Moore, Bob Newhart and Carol Burnett.

As I was 12 that year, Saturdays weren’t yet for social occasions; that would come later, sometimes causing me to forego television I would have enjoyed, such as a number of episodes of the original-cast SNL. It was years before I saw the Killer Christmas Tree sketch, for instance.

The All in the Family episode I watched recently, “The Saga of Cousin Oscar,” originally aired on September 18, 1971, as the first episode of the second season. Even though the show had found its footing by then – All in the Family became No. 1 that season, probably as a result of word-of-mouth that summer — I’m fairly certain I’d never seen “Cousin Oscar” before. As a 10-year-old, I wasn’t paying attention to that kind of word-of-mouth.

As a start for a season, the episode was a good one. It was actually funny at times. The main reason, I believe, is that there was very little in the way of discussions, or arguments, about the issues of the day, except maybe a comment by Mike complaining about the funeral industry. That’s often the case with comedy, and especially this show: the lower the level of tendentiousness, the funnier it is.

The titular character Oscar, a ne’er-do-well cousin of Archie’s, was described in the first act, but not seen, as he was reportedly sleeping late upstairs. Why he had no other place to go at that moment wasn’t entirely clear, but it was clear that Archie considered him a moocher and planned to kick him out. Commercial break.

I was entirely sure I knew what would happen next. I’ve seen enough sitcoms in my life.

Sure enough, like the luckless guest in “The Kipper and the Corpse,” Oscar checked out sometime that morning. Now the Bunkers had to deal with that, including a series of long-distance calls to other relatives, trying the raise money for Oscar’s funeral, which Archie doesn’t want to pay for. I’m not giving much away when I note that in the end, he’s stuck with the bill, though it’s played as him reluctantly doing the right thing.

A lot of sitcoms could have done that story. I could imagine a cousin of Fred Sanford’s doing the same. Plautus could have done the story too. Maybe he did, and the scroll waiting to be discovered at some buried site in the Near East.

Some observations.

Archie was incredibly bossy, which I suppose fits, but more remarkably everyone else goes along with it, including Mike.

One forgets what an involved process long-distance calls used to be.

Edith, of course, had more sense than Archie, and more empathy too, a pattern that persisted throughout the series. Plautus could have done that as well.

No one even mentioned the possibility of cremating Oscar, a cheaper option. I know it wasn’t as common then, but it did happen. Or, for that matter, having Oscar buried in a potter’s field at county expense (Mike’s suggestion) and then holding an inexpensive memorial service. It was either all or nothing when it came to a funeral.

This was before residential sets were often depicted as more expensive than the characters could afford (viz., Friends). I marveled that there was supposed to be enough room upstairs for Oscar to have his own bed to die in.

In terms of sets, the show had a remarkable economy: the living room and the kitchen. I can only remember a handful of times the upstairs was seen, including one memorable moment when Archie got on Mike’s case – nonpolitically, mostly demented – about the right way to put on socks and shoes.

The show could have used more material like that.

Late Summer Tomatoes

Posted on September 6, 2023 by admin

Heard the rumble of thunder at some distance during the wee hours this morning, but upon looking outside after dawn, no rain came of it, at least here. We’ve had a few dry weeks now, with the local grass retreating to its brown state till water comes again.

From our back yard. We’ve been watering our small tomato crop through the dry days.

The quarter came from the Royal Canadian Mint facility in Winnipeg, and I picked it up somewhere near Lake Superior last month, and exported it to the United States.

There were more tomatoes in the dish until recently, today in fact, smaller in diameter than the quarter, but we ate those. Man, garden tomatoes are good. I’m hardly the first person to notice that, but it’s worth repeating.

Did some reading about the late singer and businessman Jimmy Buffet today. This paragraph made me smile.

“Mr. Buffett’s original idea for Margaritaville was ‘to expand the opportunity for as many people to experience the lifestyle immortalized in his iconic song as possible,’ according to the statement on the company’s website,” the New York Times reported. “The company had $2.2 billion in gross annual revenue last year.”

The lifestyle immortalized in his iconic song? That of a drunken layabout? You don’t need to visit a resort to do that.

Gary Wright also died recently. That makes two popular musicians who first had hits in the 1970s. You know what that means, according to unfalsifiable popular notions. Number three dead ahead, and I do mean dead.

Ollie & Whitman

Posted on September 5, 2023 by admin

Just ahead of Labor Day weekend, an ad for Ollie’s popped into my YouTube feed. Ollie’s? Then on Sunday, as I was driving along near home, I spotted an Ollie’s where vacant retail had been until recently. Coincidence? No, not at all.

“Ollie’s is now America’s largest retailer of closeout merchandise and excess inventory,” the retailer’s web site says. “The chain currently operates 492 stores in 29 states.”

I stopped by for a look. “How long has the store been open?” I asked an employee. Four days was the answer. A new Ollie’s for Labor Day weekend, it seems.

As you’d expect from that description, it’s a hodgepodge of a place: canned and boxed food, books, personal care products, cheap furniture, clothes, toys, pet supplies, mattresses and on and on. I found a few items to buy, mostly food, but also a book: the 2023 edition of A Guide Book of United States Coins, the Red Book published for a long time (since 1946) by Whitman. Remaindered: the 2024 edition is out now.

Still, ’23 is mostly current, and it’s packed with information. The Red Book an almanac for U.S. coinage. Moreover, it’s a sturdy volume, with strong binding, meant to be opened an closed a lot. List price: $19.95. Ollie’s price: $2.99. Nice, Ollie, nice.

The recto-verso of a real book makes it easier to thumb through, I believe, than a similarly informative web site, and chance on interesting things. Or look them up. I already had the vague idea that I’m unlikely ever to own a Brasher Doubloon, for instance. Whitman quantifies that for me. One sold for about $9.36 million at auction in 2021. Other examples have sold in the millions as well, and one version is so rare that the Smithsonian has the only one.

The doubloon counts as a post-colonial issue, but before the U.S. mint was established in 1792. Since I bought the book, I’ve been thumbing through the entries on colonial and post-colonial coins. A fascinating array I didn’t know much about: Willow Tree and Oak Tree and Pine Tree coinage, Lord Baltimore coinage, American Plantation coins, Rosa Americana coins, Carolina Elephant tokens, Gloucester tokens, Higley coppers, Nova Constellatio coppers and the mysterious Bar coppers, among many others.

“The Bar copper is undated and of uncertain origin,” the Red Book says.

Summer’s Lease Hath All Too Short a Date

Posted on August 31, 2023 by admin

Adios, August. The black-eyed Susans are looking a little wilted, and the hibiscus are thin, but golden rod is on the way (and ragweed, I assume). Last night’s “blue moon” was a nice full moon, which we took note of when walking the dog. Back on September 5.

Last week, after walking the dog on a particularly steamy evening at Volkening Lake, I used my crummy camera to document her panting, because why not. Sometimes the crummy camera takes interesting shots.

Does the procession of seasons care about our calendar? I suspect not, but September 1 is always worth a mention. In July, I had a zoom with three old friends – Dan and Rich and Steve – for first time in quite a while.

The first day of September is relevant to us, since Rich and I, who already knew each other, met Dan and Steve, who already knew each other, on September 1, 1981, and it wasn’t long before we formed a pretty tight unit.

Not long ago, I got a request from the manager of a non-hotel property I stayed at this summer, who asked for a five-star review, or whatever. I replied.

M—-,

In your previous email you asked for a top rating for your property: X, where I stayed from Y to Z. I would like to rate the place highly, but I cannot. The property itself was comfortable enough, and well located, and I had no issue with access (fortunately).

However, when I arrived at the property, I noticed that the fan was broken — it could not be turned on, as the on/off knob did nothing. These things happen; I understand that. The room was a little hot when I arrived, so I sent you an email at this address, calling your attention to the issue.

That went out at at 7:11 pm. A little later, at 8:50 pm, I sent a text message to [number] asking whether you’d received my email. In both messages, you had my phone number.

As it turned out, the room cooled down enough in the night so that the fan wasn’t really an issue.

What is an issue, is that you didn’t respond at all to my messages. Or, if you were busy, someone else you’d tasked to answer didn’t. In either case, that is a serious red flag. What if I couldn’t get in? What if the toilet had overflowed? Or some other serious problem?

In short, you must respond to your guests. Even if you’d said, I can’t get you a new fan until tomorrow, that would have been satisfactory.

I hope this was an anomaly. But I don’t know. So I’m not posting any recommendation.

Take care.

I haven’t heard from him since, and I suspect he’s learned nothing, dismissing me as a whiner. That guy, wanting service and all. Geez.

Some images from this summer, now waning. At the Getty in June.

“St. Margaret,” German, ca. 1420

Ann’s water bottle, July. Note the – yes – iconic figures.

Taken today: the last remaining creations from Yuriko’s cake class.

Caramel and pecan eclairs. They won’t last much longer.

Along North Avenue, Chicago (Murals &c.)

Posted on August 30, 2023 by admin

My stroll along North Avenue on Saturday gave me an opportunity to look more closely at murals I’d seen before, but only from the vantage of a moving bus window, which isn’t optimal. Murals have always been around – one I looked at is over 50 years old – but I can’t help feeling that now is pretty much a golden age of murals, at least as far as North American cities are concerned: commercial, polemic, vernacular, idiosyncratic, ghost, ars gratia artis and uncategorizable.

To start: not actually on North Avenue, but steps away, a new-looking advert on a wall under the Damen El station.

An eatery about as Chicago as can be, but I wonder. What are the odds the restaurant will outlast the mural? It’s a tough game, doubly so considering how many other joints in the city offer dogs and burgers. Chicago’s a city of dogs and burgers, you could say.

Equally new, equally commercial, on the opposite wall (a detail).

Not a painted mural, but built-in concrete relief mural and adjacent art on North Ave., making a wholly nondescript brick building into something notable.

“Life-Tree” or “Arbol de Vida” (1989), according to writing on the wall. No random reference, that.

The building traded for $2.9 million in 2017, according to the now defunct DNAinfo Chicago, closed in a fit of anti-union pique (and whose workers later formed the nonprofit Block Club Chicago, which is still around).

The work was created “by artists John Pitman Weber and Catherine Cajandig,” the DNAinfo Chicago archive says. “They were helped by nine community-based youth artists, who contributed other works along the same wall.”

As pretty much all Chicago streets do, North Avenue also features works by those who don’t sign them, unless I’m missing their code (and I probably am). Such as this entire graffiti’d wooden fence.

Encouraging one and all to – bake?

There’s something vaguely unsettling about this rendition of a famous cartoon rodent. The more I look at it — an unholy melding of Mickey and Goofy?

A graffito, see the bottom, that encourages warm interpersonal relations.

As this mural seems to do as well.

Not a mural or graffiti, but advertising posters tell a story as well, such as the rise of Korean chicken in North America (and corn dogs, too).

And the persistence of tobacco, in spite of everything arrayed against its use.

I don’t think I’ll take up premium cigars, or any cigars, but I have to like an outfit whose web site quotes in large script: “If a man says he is not afraid of dying, he is either lying, or he is a Gurkha,” which is attributed to Indian Army Chief of Staff Field Marshal Sam Manekshaw (d. 2008).

Soon I came to North Avenue’s most intriguing mural, and certainly the most polemic of the ones I saw. One not to be appreciated from a bus, whose title I had to look up later: “La Crucifixion de Don Pedro” (1971). It’s a little hard to get an unobstructed view, unless you’re up close.

Left.

Center.

Right.

“ ‘La Crucifixion de Don Pedro’ was painted in 1971 by three community artists: Mario Galan, Jose Bermudez, Hector Rosario, and was commissioned by the Puerto Rican Arts Association,” notes Clio. “It is the oldest Puerto Rican mural in the city. The mural shows Don Pedro Albizu Campos being crucified between Lolita Lebron and Rafael Miranda. Campos was the Vice President [sic] of the Puerto Rican nationalist party, which fought for Puerto Rican Independence. Lebron and Miranda were also members of that party.”

The backdrop is a Puerto Rican revolutionary flag raised against the Spanish in the 19th century.

My sources don’t say who’s depicted as the figure stabbing Campos, paralleling the soldier stabbing Christ, but my guess would be Luis Muñoz Marín, first elected governor of Puerto Rico and generally considered the architect of the Estado Libre Asociado status of the island that the nationalists so bitterly opposed. Enough to organize violent uprisings in the 1950s, which landed Campos in prison most of the rest of his life. In the case of Lebron and Miranda, they wounded a number of Congressman by opening fire in the U.S. Capitol in the pre-metal detector days of 1954, which earned them about a quarter century each of hard time in the federal prison system.

Another polemic on North Avenue.

Not polemic.

Unless you count the comment about ICE that Homer wouldn’t be able to see, even if he weren’t sloshed.

Along North Avenue, Chicago (Buildings)

Posted on August 29, 2023 by admin

By Saturday, the high heat of last week had disappeared, leaving too nice a day to spend too long at the Art Institute. So to return to meet Yuriko after her cake class near Humboldt Park, I took the El from the Loop to Damen station, got off and walked westward for about half an hour along North Avenue, instead of transferring to a bus.

I began at the North-Damen-Milwaukee intersection. The former Noel State Bank at 1601 N. Milwaukee Ave., I’m sorry to say, is now a former Walgreens, with the excellent building boarded up and slightly forlorn.

The handsome former North Avenue Baths (2041 W. North Ave.) has been home to a number of restaurants since its redevelopment some decades ago.

I didn’t investigate closely, but a spot called Vajra seems to be the first-floor occupant now, offering Indian and Nepalese food.

Continuing west. A slow parade of ordinary, but interesting buildings.

An intriguing former church.

At one time, it was St. Paul’s Norwegian Evangelical Lutheran Church (2215 W. North Ave.), as indicated on the building itself. As indicated online, it has been stuck in redevelopment limbo for some time now.

Oakley and North Ave. Oddly enough, Google Maps refers to Oakley as a boulevard south of North, but an avenue north of North.

Smaller structures, some with redevelopment potential.

Someone spent some money on both 2542-44 W. North Ave. and 2646-54.

Further west are newer developments, rather than redevelopments.

I spent some time with Google Street View, whose images of the site go back to August 2007, when whatever had been there had been razed, but the apartments weren’t in place. By March 2009, four stories had been finished — or at least the building skin was finished. At that moment, I’m sure construction had ground to a halt.

By June 2011, the developers had found the money to add another floor, which suggests to me that the interior probably wasn’t finished in 2009, either. The first-floor retail was vacant for a long time, with Be Kids Cafe appearing only by July 2019. Not good timing, but who knew?

“This is one of the few cafe/kids activity spaces in the city that is both fun for kids and great for parents,” said an early 2020 review. “Nicely made Metric coffee drinks, chill spot for parents to hang, and awesome climbing gym for kids.”

Metric coffee? Coffee by the kilo, I guess. A brand I didn’t know, but what I know about coffee brands would barely fill a cup.

Now the Etheria Cafe occupies the spot, opening early last year. It doesn’t actually sound all that different.

The corner is across from Humboldt Park which, sad to relate, has seen its homeless population rise even in the few months since we last visited.

Not a tent city, exactly, more like a village: 40 or so unfortunates, according to local reporting.

The Less-Crowded Galleries

Posted on August 28, 2023 by admin

Yuriko went to her intermittent cake class on Saturday, which means I got to drive into the city and hang out there for a few hours. I went to the Art Institute of Chicago, since it had been a while.

The big show at the moment is “Van Gogh and the Avant-Garde: The Modern Landscape,” which closes after Labor Day. The exhibit features not only works by the one-eared Dutchman, but also Georges Seurat, Paul Signac, Emile Bernard and Charles Angrand.

I’m sure it’s a fine collection of works. But as I could see from the exhibit entrance, the galleries were packed (almost) like rush-hour subway cars. That was a deal-breaker for me, so I sought out other artwork, somewhere in the museum I hadn’t spend much time before. This was easy to do, since it is such a large place.

In fact, I didn’t have to go far. Just downstairs a floor from the Van Gogh et al. exhibit are the galleries of the Arts of the Americas. Few people were around, certainly not as many as the floor above. I had an enjoyable ramble, looking here and there at my leisure, not having to navigate other onlookers.

A few details, such as from Frederic Remington’s “The Advance-Guard,” or “The Military Sacrifice (The Ambush)” (1890).

From “Nouvart Dzeron, A Daughter of Armenia” (1912), by an artist I didn’t know: Ralph Elmer Clarkson.

A fireplace (1901) designed by George Washington Maher.

A lock by one Frank L. Koralewsky, illustrating the Grimms’ “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.” It won Korwalewsky a gold medal at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition of 1915, and I’d say he deserved it.

The more I looked at its detail, the more amazing it seemed.

This statue caught my attention.

I don’t think I’d seen it before. Soon I discovered it was “The Puritan” (1883-86) by the great sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens. Anyone who can design a thing like the $20 Double Eagle gold piece is great in my book, and I was delighted to find one of his works. Even better, there were more on the wall nearby.

“Jules Bastien-Lepage” (1880).

“Violet Sargent” (1890) (sister of the painter).

And “Amor Caritas” (1897).

Van Gogh is well and good — and probably better on a weekday — but Saint-Gaudens is equally worth the trip to the Art Institute. Another example of the limited imagination of crowds, too. I bet that for every 100 people who’ve heard of Van Gogh, maybe a handful know Saint-Gaudens.

The Peshtigo Fire Museum & Fire Cemetery

Posted on August 27, 2023 by admin

You can drive from Sault Ste. Marie to metro Chicago in a day. It would be a long day, maybe eight or nine hours depending on traffic, construction, etc., but you can do it. I decided against such a long day, breaking the trip roughly in half by spending the last night of the drive around Lake Superior – which I was leaving far behind by this point – in Marinette, Wisconsin.

One reason: so I could enjoy a leisurely drive through the UP, including westward on Michigan 28 and then south on National Forest 13 through Hiawatha National Forest.

These are roads unlikely to make it on conventional best-drive lists, except for one that I might compile myself according to idiosyncratic lights, which might also include the Icefields Parkway, Lake Shore Drive, Alamo Heights Blvd., North Carolina 12 on Hatteras and Ocracoke islands, among others that come to mind. That the UP has two such favorite roads says something about the car-commercial driving to be had in the mostly forested UP.

Light enough traffic, at least on National Forest 13, that you can stand on the center line and take pictures at your leisure.

Another thing about NF 13: It took me to Pete’s Lake once upon a few times, and again on August 5, though I didn’t camp this time or experience a thunderstorm or yahoos yelling in the distance. It remains a sentimental favorite spot.

On the morning of August 6, I finally headed home, with one more stop in mind: Peshtigo, Wisconsin, a place that demonstrates, if nothing else, that the human mind is a creature of habit.

That includes me. I only mentioned the town in passing in 2006, when we stopped at the Peshtigo Fire Museum.

The building is a former Congregational church, on the site of a Catholic church that burned down in the firestorm of 1871 – which remains the deadliest wildfire in U.S. history, according to the National Fire Protection Association. Remarkably, the Maui wildfire is, for now, placed at fifth; modernity can’t protect us from everything.

“On the night of October 8, 1871, in Peshtigo, a lumber town about seven miles southwest of the Michigan-Wisconsin border, hundreds of people died: burned by fire, suffocating from smoke, or drowning or succumbing to hypothermia while trying to shelter in the Peshtigo River,” notes USA Today.

“But the fire also raged across Oconto and Marinette counties into Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, while another blaze burned across the bay of Green Bay in Brown, Door, and Kewaunee counties.”

No one knows exactly how many people perished in the Peshtigo fire — I’ve seen varying estimates, all in the low thousands — but it was certainly more than in the Great Chicago Fire, which happened the same day. Which one is mostly remembered? Chicago, of course, thus illustrating a habit of mind. Once a thing enters the tapestry of the popular imagination, it can crowd out similar events.

Peshtigo isn’t a large museum, but it is full of stuff.

The museum includes much information and a few artifacts from the fire, though naturally not much survived. The fire itself is illustrated not by photography, but artwork.

Two volunteer docents were on hand to spread the word about the fire. It’s the only distinction for modern Peshtigo, pop. 3,400 or so. One was a woman about my age, the other a woman about Ann’s age. Again, good to see young’ins up on their local history.

Speaking of that, the museum is actually more local history than the single incident of the fire, as important as that is. As such, there are many artifacts from the entire spectrum of the town’s history (including in the basement).

Next to the museum is the Peshtigo Fire Cemetery.

Including survivors of the fire.

Along with many who did not.

Too grim a note to end on. Not far south of Peshtigo is a roadside plaque I’d seen before, but not photographed.

“The most obsessive of all of 45th Parallel markers are the plaque-on-rocks sponsored by Frank E. Noyes,” says Roadside America. “We know that he sponsored them because he put his name on every one.

“Frank was 82 years old, a faithful Episcopalian and 32nd degree Mason, and president, general manager, and editor of The Daily Eagle, a Wisconsin newspaper founded by his dad. For reasons lost to time, he became fixated on the intangible world of latitude in 1938 and put up plaques around his home town of Marinette to mark the halfway line.”

There are other such signs, of course, not of Frank Noyes origin, such as at the Montana-Wyoming border, as seen in 2005.

Except for bathroom and gas breaks, the Wisconsin 45th parallel proved to be the last stop of the nearly 2,000 miles around the lake.

Been There, Seen That

By Dees Stribling

Author Archives: admin