Rosey's Dream

Several months ago, I, together with Cheryl Schwarzenbart, had the opportunity to interview Rosey Harden about his restaurant, Rosey's Dream, which was located on Main Street in Reedsburg.  Harden operated his diner from 1972-1985 as a minority in Reedsburg and had many stories to share about his experiences running the restaurant.  I think that his stories are a wonderful and unique part of Reedsburg history.  I have enjoyed sharing them, as well as hearing the stories of Reedsburg citizens who remember his restaurant.  I recently selected six clips from the interviews to share on YouTube.  I hope you enjoy them and learn something new!

I realize that addressing an issue such as race can be controversial and/or difficult, and I welcome and encourage your thoughtful comments below.













Special thanks to Rosey and Donna Harden, Cheryl Schwarzenbart, Donna Neuwirth, The Reedsburg Public Library, The Reedsburg Times Press (archives), Bill Schuette, Katie Godfrey and Katie Schofield for their help with this project.

Rosey's Dream diner is currently on being highlighted as part of an exhibit at the Woolen Mill Gallery in Reedsburg.  The Smithsonian Museum's "Key Ingredients: America by Food" exhibit "examines the wealth of history and culture that shapes our dining habits and taste preferences."

Sauk County Historical Society's photo collection now online

Shortly after I helped upload the Reedsburg Library's historic photo collection to Flickr, the Sauk County Historical Society has decided to do the same.  I'm happy to see that this great image collection (of more than 30,000 photos!) is now available for public viewing.  View all of their image sets here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/sauk_county_historical_society/sets/

The Historical Society's collection, which includes 6 times as many images as the Reedsburg Library's collection, includes images from Baraboo, The Army Ammunition Plant, Merrimac, Leland, Lime Ridge, Prairie Du Sac, Spring Green, Sauk City, the Al Ringling Circus, Devil's Lake, and many more places in Sauk County.  Check out the above link to see more.

Also, did you know there used to be a giant water slide at Devil's Lake?? Why would they get rid of that?

See some more of my Flickr favorites here (recent favorites are mostly from the above collection).

Cleaning out the closet

I have been cleaning out my belongings from the basement and have found some treasures including my 2nd grade invention, a 'reading machean':

"My second invention would be a reading machean (the first one was a 'time mashing').  It would read to me out loud and tell me the questions to reading"

I also found a letter I wrote to USACityLink.com (for a class, I assume).  USA CityLink was described by 'Virtual Reference Desk' in 1997 in this way: "The USA CityLink Project is the most comprehensive United States city and state listing on the web, as well as one of the most visited sites on the Internet today. It provides users with a starting point when accessing information about US states and cities."

To summarize, I told them in hand-written detail, "for the most part, your page is pretty good," but I had some words of advice, too:  (1.) "You should try to get this page on to as many search engines as possible." (2.) "You should include sports, lakes, and more fun things to do (in Reedsburg), and (3.) "Also, what good is a chat room with no people? I went there and was the only one there. You should try to publicise this chat room or hire someone to stay in it to answer peoples' questions."

Well, it appears they haven't changed the site much since I wrote those recommendations.  Their listing for Reedsburg still does not include sports, lakes, or more fun things to do in Reedsburg.

These two papers I don't mind putting on the internet now, but there were also plenty of middle- and high-school writings that I would not want published on the web.  My question is how can kids and teenagers publish their papers, tweets, or blogs online without being embarrassed by what they wrote 15 years later?

Reedsburg area historic photo collection now online

I am proud to announce that the Reedsburg Public Library's collection of Reedsburg-area historic photos is now online for public viewing.  The collection of over 5000 historic images from Reedsburg, La Valle, Loganville, Rock Springs, Plain and Ironton is now viewable HERE.

The image collection has been housed on CDs at the library for the past 10 years; now is the first time the public will be able to browse the images online.  It is a remarkable collection, with some of my favorite images being area soldiers, 1970's Halloween costumes, big bucks, kids, wild fires, swimming holes, early settlers, Indian natives, cigarettes, fun people, the Badger Theater at its best, and local cartoons.

For the past several months, I have been talking with Reedsburg Public Library director, Sue Steiner, and staff about the challenges and benefits of putting the historic photo collection online.  Our goal in putting the images online is not only to provide a valuable resource for area people, but also to provide more exposure to the collection and encourage sales of full-resolution versions of the images.  The library currently sells full-resolution images for $5 through the request form on their website.

With support from the Reedsburg Public Library and a grant from the Sauk County UW Extension, Arts & Culture Committee, I was able to go forward with the project by transferring the library's 19 GB photo collection from 37 CDs onto my computer, use Picasa (free) software to organize, edit, annotate, tag, (even made a map) and then upload the collection to Flickr.

Here are a few photos from the collection:

Please take a moment to browse the collection on your own, and if you find an image you really like, consider buying it at full resolution!  Also, if you have information about any of the photos, feel free to leave comments.