January 2006 Odd Wisconsin
Here in Wisconsin we've sometimes enjoyed looking down on the corruption of governments elsewhere in the nation. Recently, of course, we've had to trim our sails a bit, as the news media have revealed a series of allegations about lawmakers and subsequent convictions. From county boards to the capitol dome,...
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Posted in Curiosities on January 29, 2006
Our publication this week of Aztalan: Mysteries of an Ancient Indian Town (the first monograph on Aztalan since 1933), and the recent discovery of important prehistoric remains by 7-year-old Joshua Bradford near Sauk City, seem to demand an archaeolgical Odd Wisconsin. Luckily, today is the birthday of Wisconsin's most famous...
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Posted in Odd Lives on January 26, 2006
Public television's series this week on the French and Indian War (1755-1763) sounds like the ultimate in "dead white guy" history. It may seem ancient and obscure, but it's the reason you're reading these words in English instead of French. When the war broke out, the French controlled the interior...
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Posted in Curiosities on January 21, 2006
This weekend's showing of Orson Welles' 1963 film The Trial (1:30 Sunday, at the Society headquarters in Madison) faithfully recreates the surreal tale of a man who finds himself accused of a capital crime but cannot learn what he's charged with, and who gets ever more hopelessly entangled in a...
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Posted in Strange Deaths on January 19, 2006
Last night's annual State of the State address prompted speculation here about the history of Wisconsin's chief executives. Most of us know that Tommy Thompson was the longest-serving governor in Wisconsin history. But who has the distinction of occupying the executive office for the shortest time? That honor, it turns...
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Posted in Odd Lives on January 15, 2006
This weekend we celebrate Martin Luther King Jr. Day to commemorate his life-long struggle to secure "liberty and justice for all" in a segregated America. Our own state was no exception to the rule of racial injustice, but the process by which civil rights were guaranted to all Wisconsin children...
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Posted in Curiosities on January 13, 2006
Dirty Dan, Eight-day Bill, Ham-bone Smith, Moonlight Bob, Prune-Juice Doyle, Smutty John, Squeaky George, The Cleaver, The Pope, and Three-fingered Ole -- these are just some of the names used by lumberjacks around Rhinelander 100 years ago. Doesn't that last one make you wonder? Some were given to loggers by...
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Posted in Curiosities on January 11, 2006
In 1837 two entrepreneurs erected a grist mill on the banks of the Wisconsin just below Portage. Theirs was the only mill for 40 miles and pioneer settlers from Baraboo to Columbus and south to Madison carted their wheat to the hamlet of Dekorra so it could be ground into...
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Posted in Odd Lives on January 8, 2006
When the Civil War broke out and President Lincoln called for enlistments, Wisconsin was teeming with new immigrants. Although they might have been forgiven for not wanting to get involved in the domestic quarrels of their adopted country, many felt passionately that their new homeland of united states should be...
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Posted in Curiosities on January 4, 2006
As 2006 gets underway, let's cast a backward glance at what occured during the '06 of previous centuries. Two great explorers concluded trips in 1806. William Clark returned with Meriwether Lewis from the Pacific and was put in charge the next year of relations with western Indian nations, including Wisconsin's....
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Posted in on January 2, 2006
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