We The People - Wisconsin

Voices from Madison.  Video produced at WYOU Community Television, Madison.

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."

get notified when what you're searching for is at the library

InvisibleHand is a handy extension for Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and IE that unobtrusively notifies the user when the item they are searching for to buy is available for a lower cost on another website.  The notification also gives a link to the relevant product page on the competing retailer's website.

I really enjoy the extension, as do others, but the only thing better than notifications of cheap items would be notifications of FREE items available to you.

How about an extension that notifies the user when what they are searching for is available at their local public library??

Many people who don't want to pay for movie rentals, for example, may check out movies from their local library.  Generally, they would need to browse the shelves at the library or look at the library's online catalog.

The website worldcat.org helps people find items in libraries near them; why not develop a worldcat browser extension that notifies people when what they are searching for is available at their local library?

Know anyone who wants to work on this?

Big waves in the forecast for the Great Lakes

If you've ever wanted to see people surfing on the Great Lakes, this weekend will be a great time to do it.   Lake Michigan should see waves in the 10-foot range and Lake Superior will have some 15-footers.  And while Sheboygan, WI isn't positioned to see the biggest waves, it will be hosting the Dairyland Surf Classic 2010 this weekend.  My guess is that many of the best Great Lakes surfers will be drawn to places with bigger waves, but the event should be fun to attend nevertheless.

Check out the wave-size forecast from NOAA's Great Lakes Coastal Forecasting system here:

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?

Artist highlight: Tania Brun, alias Babayaga

Today I came across a blog post about an artist I have been trying to learn more about about since I first saw her work in Peru. Artist Tania Brun of Arequipa, uses the pseudonym Babayaga, a witch from Russian folklore with a wooden leg who eats children. Her artwork, which I saw printed in intricate detail on t-shirts in Lima caught my eye.

Featured in the Buenos Aires, Argentina-based zine Money In My Pocket, Babayaga describes her work (translated here):

     The influences for my drawings are the Mexican engravers, especially José Guadalupe Posada, the Mexican tradition of Day of the Dead, Catholic art of the era of the Viceroyalty, but also the cultural manifestations of people here in the mountains of Peru, like the way they decorate their combi-vans and moto-taxis and also the concert posters of different cumbia groups that can be seen pasted around the city.
     In 2004 I left the faculty of art because it was not for me and I kept drawing on my own, then in 2007 after a trip to Mexico, where I found it incredible the familiar and daily ways they deal with death there, I started this series of illustrations with the theme of death.
     The technique I use is ink on paper; I began to use these materials because I could then use the images for screen printing on t-shirts and that I think is a good way to make my work available to those who like it and I can share with them.

I love that she prints her designs on t-shirts. Seeing the shirts in Lima, a clothing manufacturing center of South America, her designs distinguish themselves from the other million designs flooding the streets. In Lima one can buy a Peru-manufactured Armani Exchange shirt for $5 before it is exported, and on the street it seems like everyone and their grandma (literally) is wearing a brand-name shirt that would cost $40 or more in another country. But when I realized that those Armani shirts were really just shirts (and their designs rarely consist of much more than the letter 'A' or 'X'), I gained a new appreciation for shirts with a great design, story, and artwork, like those of Babayaga.

View more of Babayaga's designs on Flickr here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/xbabayagax/