Merry Christmas! Erin and Alana came out the day after winter solstice and are here for a week. Here we are decorating the tree. Margaret, Meg, Reed and Grace are coming over for Christmas dinner. We are off to another snowy season, currently we have over 40 inches of snowfall. Anne and Alana went skiing this morning and Alana went back out for more. Ack stayed home and cleared snow off the roof in anticipation of near 40F weather on Dec 26 - high today is about 12F!
We spent Saturday -- the four of us along with Mark and Sisi's family (Max, Nila, Eli) -- in the museum of the California Academy of Sciences in beautiful Golden Gate Park. Nice exhibits on fish, Galapagos Islands and a white alligator. Mark then took us for a 'car tour' around the city which included some very colorful stairways. We had a very nice dinner at Plouf. Mike and Ev head back home on Sunday morning.
We are having fun in San Fran! We met up with Mike and Ev on Thursday night. Our first day touring, we had breakfast at the Ferry Building down by the piers, visited Alcatraz and toured there for a few hours, climbed up Telegraph Hill (see Ev and Anne panting) and saw the flock of wild parrots there during our climb, visited Coit Tower with their WPA murals, ate Italian in the North Beach neighborhood, read "Go Dog Go!" back in our hotel lobby, drank wine and met up with Mike's friends (Mark and SiSi) who now live here.
On Saturday, we drove over to Chicago to see Tommy Sourlis and Sue Eleuterio at the One of a Kind art show/sale at Merchandise Mart. Tom makes wonderful lamp shades and paintings out of glass. That's him in the foreground and some of the lamps shades hanging on the wall. Sue is a folklore buddy of Anne's.
Louise and James' wedding was a wonderful celebration. A happy time.
Thanksgiving at Art and Lil with the four of us and Andy, Marianne and Louise's family. We had a touch football game prior to dinner. A tie score between the Ellery Eagles and the Brentwood Bombers. Here Erin and Cam celebrate a touchdown. More later...
It has been a below normal November in terms of temperature. Anne gave her talk today and now returns to a colder climate. The river in front of our house is frozen over. Ack stayed home, cleaned, got some cloths for Louise's wedding (a green shirt and tie), hoped that he can beat Mike in Fantasy Football, and worked on a new drawing - images from the NY Gates exhibit in NY Central Park. Anne and Ack went there with Anne's brother Mike and Ack's Mom and Andy. It was a fun visit.
Anne here, in San Francisco to attend the American Anthropological Association conference and give a paper on how Catholics decide to believe (or not) in Marian apparitions. That's tomorrow. In the meantime, since arriving on Wednesday I've attended really stimulating sessions, seen some great and not so great ethnographic films, eaten consistently good food, and saw a terrific play last night, "The Quality of Life." Beautifully written and directed by Jane Anderson, it explores questions of life and death in a northern California setting. This production by the American Conservatory Theater had some stellar actors: Laurie Metcalf, JoBeth Williams, Dennis Boutsikaris and Steven Culp. I laughed; I cried; I highly recommend it if it should ever be produced near you. 
We have had a below normal temperature in October and are on our way to a below normal November. Lake ice is also trying to form! Sunsets on the lake can sit be colorful - even with the cold weather and lake ice.
For the past week, there has been some bit of snow in the air just about every day but today it accumulated. For about an hour, in between wonderful bouts of sun, big fat feathery flakes of snow fell. This photo was taken at noon out my building's back porch balcony.
The last couple of weekend outings with my 'little sister' Bionca included the Wunk Sheek Honoring Our Veterans Powwow last Sunday at UW-Madison and the Cambridge High School's production of "Seussical" last night with some colleagues from Wisconsin Teachers of Local Culture. The powwow was very moving and the musical was excellent in every way. This photo is from the powwow, a men's fancy dancer, but taken with the cell phone. (Don't enlarge it and it will look better.)
The annual AFS conference always offers some pre-conference tours to explore the local culture of the host area. This year, I went on the "Saints and Sinners" tour organized by colleague Nancy Nusz. We alternated between bourbon distilleries, like Heaven Hill or Maker's Mark, and churches in this historically Catholic area, including the Abbey of Gethsemani where Trappist monk Thomas Merton lived. Re: the sinning part of the tour, I learned lots about bourbon including that the distilleries give GREAT tours. The photos here show the 'rick houses' for Heaven Hill (these types of huge storage buildings dot the local landscape) and what they look like inside. The black mold on the outside of the building is from the evaporation going on in the aging barrels; it's called 'terula.'
Anne is at a conference, where Erin has joined her for a few days. Meanwhile Ack is back in Madison trying to win at fantasy football and finishing up a drawing started when they here in DC.
Here are two views of autumn leaves. One before they fall, and the other after they fall! Anne and I went hiking in the arboretum to enjoy the colors on Sunday. We deal with fallen leaves at the house by mulching flower beds, burning and taking them to a compost site.
On Saturday, about 30 people from around the state got together for a 10-year anniversary of the 1998 Smithsonian and Wisconsin Folklife Festivals. We started with a leisurely tour around the Farmers Market where we met another festival participant, Nodji Van Wychen, selling her cranberries. In the afternoon we gathered at Essen Haus where Eleanor Bagstad shared her scrapbooks, the Queens of Harmony sang, Tip, Rick and Mark played fiddle, accordion and clarinet, and we caught up on each other's lives. That evening was a concert at the Barrymore with NEA Heritage Fellows Liz Carrol on Irish fiddle, Michael Doucet on Cajun fiddle, and Ron Poast with his Hardanger fiddles. Three of these photos are by my 10-year old buddy, Cherice.
Moonrise on Lake Mendota early in the morning, on Oct 15. Happy Anniversary to Mary and Joe 10/15!
Anne entered a one-pot cooking festival at the Northside Farmers Market. She might not have won - but all her "Kickin' Carrot Soup" was gone before the end!
We went hiking today along part of the Ice Age Trail - the Muir Loop. We also stopped along the way to read historic signs and learned about Fort Winnebago, a 19th century fort on a hill near the portage site from Fox river to the Wisconsin River. When we got home we went out on the lake and watched the sunset before returning home to watch two episodes of "Battleship Galactica" and then work.
Last night we went to the Northside Planning Council's 15th anniversary celebration at the Warner Park Community Center. This was also the opening of the "Art of the Marsh" show we are both in. Anne donated her photographs to the silent auction fund raiser for the NPC, and it of course sold (and not to Ack)!
On Tuesday I went to the Badgerland Produce Auction in Montello, about 90 minutes north of Madison. Twice a week, all season long, a cooperative of Amish and 'English' farmers sell their produce at a three-hour long auction presided over by the Krueger family of auctioneers. Great prices; when I was there, one flat of 9 mums went for $1 each. Other produce were wholesale quantities of kohlrabi, grapes, basil, apples, pumpkins and more. I went because they usually have an Amish quilt auction but it was canceled this year. I'll try again next year.
On Friday night we went to Gallery Night; an evening where art galleries and museums stay open late to show off art, let you meet artists and munch on snacks. Our two favorite places were Reneeglass, a very nice glass studio run by Renee Miller, and an exhibit by Sue Medaris at the Central Public Library. On Saturday we borrowed Margret's boat and headed down to the UW Terrace to see a different type of art show. Artists painted about a dozen canvas sails and then the boats tacked and jibed in front of the Terrace. This photo is of one boat. The regatta is part of the Mami Wata exhibit on African water spirits at the Chazen Museum of Art. Tomorrow Anne and I drop of our work to be exhibited in a Northside Artists Group show, "Art of the Marsh." The theme - Cherokee Marsh, which is where we live so it's all about home.
Here are three highlights from my recent trip to Chattanooga, TN:
A fun weekend. We went for a few hikes on Saturday. Short hikes at a few different places, including along this farmland border. We saw a few creatures this weekend, as the earlier post notes. 
This morning while sitting on the couch drinking his first cup of coffee, Ack spied our local mink running along the rocks on the shoreline. We didn't get a photo of it but here's another neighbor, a woodchuck that took a break from its travels on our garden stone last week. (The image is a bit unclear because I was shooting through window glass.)
I went rowing this morning in the fog. At this time of year, the fog comes in off the marsh as the cool air flows onto the lake. I took along the fishing rod but no luck there. I was lucky to be notified that I am the recipient of the American Meteorological Society's 2009 Teaching Excellence Award. I was unaware of the nomination so it came as a big surprise.
