Milwaukee

Peter

There’s Flooding, and then there’s FLOODING

Milwaukee Wisconsin, as I learned in grade school sits on the convergence of three rivers: the Root, the Menominee, and the Milwaukee. I was told as a child, and never bothered to question it, that the original First People’s name for the area meant “Stinking Waters” because the confluence resulted in sitting, stagnant water that, frankly, stank! In the areas further outlying the convergence the city is built on a lot clay soil. Not great for digging in, or for drainage.

The water problems were such that when the city began developing it was quickly realized that the soil beneath the central business district needed a lot of shoring up in order to achieve a stable building platform. Buildings, factories, stores, etc., were built atop tall trees cut into large posts that were pile driven dozens of feet and more below the surface and formed the foundation. That’s part of the reason that Milwaukee’s downtown never had skyscrapers even though the city was built and rebuilt in eras when tall buildings were the new thing. The instability of the ground being the blame.

the view 320 feet below the surface in a pump cistern, showing one of the feeder lines emptying into the reservoir.

Our new “skyscrapers” are built EAST of the convergence and on a rock base that speaks to an underground fault line not understood in the days of the city’s origins. Recently we have had a few taller buildings join our relatively low-lying silhouette.

As I write this we are engaged in a Water Drop Alert. Milwaukee was sued by the City of Chicago because our three rivers and our city run-off were claimed to be polluting Lake Michigan. And, they were. Whether they were doing more than the City of Chicago I highly doubt, but that’s the way the legal cookie crumbles, and this city was required by the courts to dig deep, deep, deep tunnels into which the surplus run-off could be channelled until collected water could be processed for release into the lake. So, it is that today we have billion gallon man-made reservoirs below the metro area.

Near my home on this morning’s social media I see that two major intersections are closed due to flooding. Other posts speak to half a dozen places along the Interstate highway where either the highway is closed or the ramps leading to or from have been flooded.

You can guess the. public outcry. Blah, blah, blah.

The thing is:

  • this city has never been without flooding
  • the city has for decades been hiding natural tributaries to the three primary rivers so as to make them less intrusive on the built up part of the city. Of course trying to contain a creek that turns into a river depending on water flow creates problems if the volume of water exceeds the “planned for” capacity.
  • Year after year we insist on putting down more and more concrete and asphalt to make room for cars, and for parking, and for buildings — so that every year we reduce the amount of earth surface that can absorb water — even though water doesn’t quickly absorb into clay soil.
  • And on top of all that is the still highly argued about question of global warming and how that is affecting our rainwater/snow downfalls

People have one trait that seems universal. We all love to complain. And when we complain we feel better if we have someone to blame for whatever it is that we are complaining ABOUT. So, it’s government, or some particular politician, or the engineer who signed off on the project or the commission that approved the idea, or, or, or, or.

But no one offers a solution. At least not among those who are complaining. And the problem lingers until someone in a position of authority has the guts to stand up and say, “why don’t we try something different?”

One of the reasons I don’t spend much time on the popular social media is because there is only so much whinging and complaining that a person can take without it affecting you. I have always been about finding a solution for my problems to that they stop being a problem. My recent blog about projects around the house being an example. I’m wanting to get things done and not finding a means to accomplish that end. Well, in the bigger world there are a lot of similar situations and we need people who are willing to consider solutions, not just problems.

Ok, that’s it from me from soggy Milwaukee. I hope you’re well and dealing with the world around you as best you can. Stay safe and I’ll be back again soon. Cheers. :-)

Peter

Milwaukee Art Museum

Milwaukee is not exactly the place that you think of when you think about stunning or tend-setting architecture. We really only have one really trend setter and that is already a few years old, the Calatrava wing of the Milwaukee Art Museum. But I wanted to reminisce a little about the Milwaukee lakefront — the location for the art museum and how its location has changed. This first image is from 1945. At the left edge of the image, that dark gray long thing was the Northwestern Railway train station. it stood at the base of Wisconsin Avenue overlooking a plain that marked a fault line and a drop to the level of the lake. In the bottom center — that white concreted area served as a large promenade.

c1945 – A great aerial view looking west over the city before the War Memorial was built, and before the freeway system.

Before the Milwaukee County War Memorial Center was built in 1955, a statue of Abraham Lincoln was the focal point of that area, after years of fundraising. A movement to raise funds for a fitting memorial to Lincoln began in 1916.

The project was interrupted by World War I, but became a reality in 1934. Most of the money came from the city’s schoolchildren, with the rest given chiefly by labor unions and the city’s black community.

On Sept. 16, 1934, the 10’6″ bronze statue, created by sculptor Gaetan Cecre, was unveiled. The memorial site provided a magnificent view of the city’s shoreline. In 1955, the statue was moved to make room for the War Memorial Center. Today the statue stands just south of the center.

Photo/Info: MPL

After World War II, Finnish architect Eliel Saarinen was commissioned to create an arts complex on the Lake Michigan shore, with a museum, performing arts center, and veterans’ memorial. After the architect died in 1950, his son Eero Saarinen took over the project. When fundraising proved insufficient, Saarinen reconfigured the plan without the performance space. Construction began in 1955, supervised by Milwaukee architects Maynard W. Meyer & Associates.

Eero Saarinen’s innovative design for the War Memorial Center was influenced by the abstract geometry of modern French architect Le Corbusier. Saarinen incorporated many of Le Corbusier’s ideas: lifting the bulk of a building off the ground on reinforced columns; eliminating load-bearing walls to allow a freeform façade and open floor plan; and using plazas, courtyards, and rooftop terraces to allow an interaction between internal and external spaces.

The Milwaukee Art Museum, which overlooks Lake Michigan, was partially housed in a building designed in 1957 by Eero Saarinen as a war memorial. From the outset, two lower floors were allocated for use as an art gallery. Further exhibition space was created in 1975 by David Kahler’s 160,000 square meter addition — a structure that extends to the water’s edge and effectively creates a plinth on the axis of the Saarinen building. The Saarinen-Kahler ensemble is notable for its massive character: a concrete structure with rectangular geometry, connected to the city by a concrete bridge. However, despite its growing importance, the museum lacked architectural identity and functional clarity.

Calatrava proposed a pavilion-like construction on axis with Wisconsin Avenue, the main street of central Milwaukee. Conceived as an independent entity, the pavilion contrasts to the existing ensemble in both geometry and materials, as a white steel-and-concrete form reminiscent of a ship. It is linked directly to Wisconsin Avenue via a cable-stay footbridge. Pedestrians may cross busy Lincoln Memorial Drive on the bridge and continue into the pavilion. Most visitors, though, will drive to the museum, entering either from a vaulted underground parking garage or from a drop-off in front of the new entrance.

The design adds 13,200 square meters to the existing 14,900 square meters, including a linear wing (made of glass and stainless steel, with lamella roof) that is set at a right angle to Saarinen’s structure. The design allows for future expansion, offset from but symmetrical to the exhibition facilities, on the other side of the Kahler building. At shore level, the expansion houses the atrium; 1,500 square meters of gallery space for temporary exhibitions; an education center with 300-seat lecture hall; and a gift shop. The 100-seat restaurant, which is placed at the focal point of the pavilion, commands panoramic views onto the lake.

The pavilion features a spectacular kinetic structure: a bris-soleil with louvers that open and close like the wings of a great bird. When open, the shape also becomes a sign, set against the backdrop of the lake, to herald the inauguration of new exhibitions. The pivot line for the bris-soleil’s slats is based on the axis of a linear mast, inclined at 47 degrees, as a parallel to the adjacent bridge mast.

Ok — enough about architecture for a while. Take care of yourself and I’ll chat with you tomorrow.

Peter

Order out of Chaos

And so it begins. Bringing order out of chaos. Boxes and boxes and boxes. Hanging pictures. Finding places for various things to “live” in their new surroundings. All the accoutrements of moving. And they are all FUN with capital letters. I love it!

I no longer enjoy the physical hauling. Age has its drawbacks. Climbing stairs with heavy objects in my arms. Bending over and then standing again in rapid succession. Those things my body reacts violently against. And I hate the process of notifying all the people who need notification of one’s new location. Half the time I forget important people to be notified! But other than that, Moving is an adventure and I love adventures — mostly.

Quite accidentally Peggy thinks she has figured out what it was about our temporary domicile that was kept me from feeling “at home.” She thinks it’s the fact that all of our art hadn’t been hung (because we didn’t want to be making lots of holes in walls that weren’t going to be permanent. Personally I think there was way more to it than that, but if it makes her happy I’ll go along with it.

Ya know, over the years I had a few jobs that had me traveling during the week. A few nights away from home in a hotel bed were a normal part of life. We got used to it and flourished. But this last six months have not been fun. Nothing ever fit. I never knew where things were. Between our summer place and the new flat I was always wanting things to be where they weren’t — or wondering if what I wanted at the moment was actually still sitting in a box in a rented storage site 2 miles away — and why had I not thought to bring that specific thing along to the new place because I should have known I’d be wanting it. Argh. It was maddening.

And then we’d be out at our summer place for a couple weeks and I’d get used to being out there with our “mini version” of a house and sort of forget about the chaos in town but for a good part of the summer I wasn’t wanting to BE there because my orderly brain kept wanting to get settled in new digs. It maddening. I was totally First World problems. I know that. I was largely age related — I just am not as quick or was organized as I was in my youth. I know all that but it hasn’t kept me from complaining about it.

I just mentioned my organized brain. Well, to illustrate the quandary let’s talk about wall colors. Peg and I have never been white wall people. Sure, since 2017 we HAD to suffer with white walls because our landlord forbid painting. But all the way through life we have had colorful homes. Blue and yellow (ala Provence) in one home. A chartreuse office at one place. A jungle theme bedroom. Yellows and browns and all manner of colors have been or happifying friends. And we missed them.

A new color palette

All the while in our temporary flat we knew we would be moving downstairs in a couple/few months. But we never once talked about wall colors. So at the end of September when we signed on the dotted line it suddenly dawned on us that we could PAINT again! Hooray. And “Oh my aching back/legs/arms.” Are we out of shape for painting.

We actually took a few days struggling to let our minds fly to new colors suitable to this stage in life. We settled on yellow in the living room with an accent wall of deep purple. The yellow continued down the central hallway providing a continuous sightline. One bedroom because a light rose. One bedroom turned a dark brown. And my office went to a light lavender with an accent wall of the same purple we used in the living room. Kitchen and bath stayed white but then there is oak cabinetry in the kitchen and the bathroom is still the original 1959 light brown ceramic tile that it was when new.

It took a good week to apply the paint. Well, I should say it took parts of 6 days. That’s because neither of us is able to paint all day long like we used to. For 35 years we owned a multi family apartment and we painted a lot. And often. But those days are long gone and we struggled to get what is about 1500 sq ft I guess covered in paint. Double Argh.

It hasn’t even been 48 hours as I sit here writing but already I feel infinitely more “at home” than I have since February when the whole moving idea came up.

Katy & Mike brought it up back then as:

  • Closer to them — for mutual convenience
  • First floor living (after the initial 6 month delay)
  • A potential final abode that we would be more comfortable in than living in rented accommodation.
  • They would handle all the maintenance and renting of the property so we wouldn’t have tenants to worry about
  • A chance for them to get an income property that would help future proof their retirement.
  • As an owner-occupied duplex we could get a lower interest rate from banks.

The reasoning wasn’t completely sound. But they are family and we want to support them in any way we can. There have been dozens of times when I have thought to myself “What have we gotten ourselves into” as we waded through the soggy swamp of doing business in 2024. Documentation and certifications. Ugh. Peg and I haven’t down a real estate purchase involving financing in more than 1/4 of a century. We were lucky enough to take the money from one sale and pay for whatever we were buying next. But this was agony. And we got pulled way further into the process than we ever wanted to be. But now it’s done and it’s life and we’re here.

And pretty soon it will feel like we’ve been here forever.

And, we are HAPPY to be here. Sure, there are things needing doing. And just this morning I realized that I need to move furniture around in my bedroom because …. well, I just need to do that. But that’s life and it’s fine.

I think this will be the last post about moving. It’s time to move on to life.

So, take care of yourself and I’ll talk with you again tomorrow. I love having my office back so I can get up and write — first thing in the morning.

Peter

The Year Without Home

It’s DONE!

I have been uncharacteristically quiet for a long while and maybe now the situation will resolve itself. Since February of this year we have been not exactly “home” less, but rather ‘house’-less. Through a peculiar series of events we got involved in a real estate purchase that has taken 10 months to conclude.

I’m not going to bore you with all the details but what we started in February took on what felt like sketchy details when we needed to moved at the end of the then current lease which happened in April. Knowing we had a deal in place — but one which would not finalize till the end of summer or the beginning of autumn we were faced with the quandary of what to do/where to live in the meantime?

Our future home would be a two story/duplex. Half of it was being used 6 months a year by the owners — Snowbirds who spend half the year in Arizona and half in Wisconsin. The other unit — the upper — had been set up as guest accommodations for their friends and relatives and as a result had really not been lived in for 12 years. It was clean. And well cared for. But neglected.

We worked a deal whereby we would occupy the upper until the transaction closed and then we would move to the ground floor. Our lovely, caring daughter however decided to open her mouth and tell the then-present owners that Peg & I spend most of the summer out at our trailer near Wisconsin Dells. That was “sort of” part of the agreement that we felt we had to live with — moving into temporary quarters that we were expected to not spend a lot of time in until the deal closed. The old owners were buyers and sellers who had lots of “stuff” stored here and they would need time to garage sale and clear out.

In the end it turned out that they never really did any garage selling — they ended up moving all their “stuff” into the garage at a new, smaller, residence that they purchased in the interim. This too they will occupy only 1/2 of the year. And while they are nice enough people they are not folks we found easy to be around. Being “away” for as much of the summer as we could manage actually seemed like the most comfortable solution to an uncomfortable situation.

The idea in all of this is that we are now one mile away from our daughter and son-in-law. The residence is on the first floor and with a little luck should be the last place we ever live. Kind of a “final” sounding fact — and obviously dependent upon future health events. Still, the idea is noble. Our kids are looking out for us and that feels wonderful.

Still and all it didn’t change the fact that for 6 months — April till yesterday — we have been betwixt and between. Having a place to lay our heads — yes. But never having a feeling we were HOME. It’s a 1st World problem to be sure. SO MANY millions of refugees and displaced and catastrophe caused homeless have life so much worse than we — but it remains that we have had a difficult time adjusting to what we were hoping was going to be a new life.

We closed on the property at the end of September. Then came three weeks of painting and fixing and dealing with materials put into temporary storage, and all the good things that go along with the verb “to move.”

Yesterday it all came to fruition. After countless trips up and down during recent days and with the help of three able bodied younger folks we completed the move. My Apple health app says I’ve been doing between 15 and 25 flights of stairs daily, but that should be done now. I still have locks to change (we are replacing all the locks which were old enough and outdated enough that they offered zero security), and a few little things to handle but WE ARE IN!

And here I am, the first morning after the first night’s sleep in our actual NEW HOME, and what am I doing? I’m writing. It feels good. I have missed writing. I’m not sure what life will have in store from here forward but I’m in a much better frame of mind and I have a much more conducive set of surroundings. Life is good. It’s always good, but sometimes it’s a little easier to appreciate it is all.

Cheers and take care of yourselves. :-)

Peter

we dodged a bullet

Moving day! Always a pain. But little did we realize our changed move date was fortuitous.

The Milwaukee Marathon runs the day we had originally scheduled for our move. And it ends less than 1/2 mile from our new hacienda!

I’m glad we made the change. It’s been a long time since Peg & I did any jogging or running. It was a pleasant part of life in the 80’s, and a great way to decompress after a day of calling on customers in the outback of Wisconsin before heat to a lonely hotel room.

I was interested to note that the event of the race was cause for grumbling and hand-ringing on the community bulletin board. It seems that everything — including charity events displeases grumpy citizens.

Well, we’re safe. By 24 hours!

Image Peter

Snow Flyer

Milwaukee Snow Flyer ~ the 1920s


I don’t have much info on this photo, other than the guys posing for the picture were journalists traveling on snow-covered roads somewhere in Wisconsin…

There’s always something serious to think about, so today it’s just a quick look back in time.

Besides, with this summer’s heat, a few cool thoughts are more than welcome.

Peter

Former Glory

We frequently walk (for exercise and pleasure) at the local nature reserve. Being in Wisconsin, when there is water there are often a lot of willows and cottonwoods. They love having their feet (roots) wet — even standing in water. And…. they live for a good long time!

Along our regular path is this old willow. A far cry from its former glory, two thirds of it is dead — Originally there were three main stems coming up from the roots. One on this side (as seen from the camera) died long ago and has since rotten and fallen into the pond. The third stem that you cannot see as it’s on the opposite side of the tree from the camera angle still stand some 20 feet into the air with no branches, no signs of life other than offering hotel space for migratory birds, and a gazillion bugs and microscopic critters.

Its branches no longer tickle the surface of the pond. Indeed, the branches that once spread out over the pond have all fallen off — and only the crown of the tree continues to product new growth — for how many more decades that may be is anybody’s guess.

We humans go through similar processes. We sprout and grow. We extend our lives into new and exciting endeavors until out strength no longer supports continued expansion. We enjoy our existence for a period of time and eventually the ability to sustain life as we have known it diminishes; for some more than others, indeed some don’t even make it to maturity and perish while still in their youth. But at some point we are no longer prospering and we begin to struggle along — instead of grabbing life by the horns.

The other morning as Peg and I sat on a bench part way around the pond we got to talking about how our visits there have changed over the years. I first came to this park as a little nipper of 11 or 12. There was a County Executive — king of like a mayor for the county surrounding the city we lived in — who did nature hikes in that park and for several years he lead Saturday morning birding walks — which my parents and I took along with him. We brought our daughter here as a child. We walked the same trail in our 30’s and 40’s and 50’s and 60’s. So many of those walks after the bird walks were brisk and invigorating as we were in our prime and we seldom actually saw critters — no deer, or beavers, and probably not even a lot of squirrels or chipmunks as I’m sure we were chatting away and moving fast enough that the wildlife chose not to make their presence know. Today we amble along, Peggy still recuperating from her mild stroke, me with wonky legs. We stop at the benches more often — specially at one in the densest part of the woods — where we just sit and listen for a good long while during each visit. We aren’t the same people who once visited this place. We have changed as has the place.

Some of the trees in the are are known to be over 270 years old. In our lifetime we’ve seen several of the huge cottonwoods and a couple of the willows just disappear from the landscape. More than one has fallen into the pond — and water hastens the rotting process. But death provides life to other creatures. And there are plentiful birds and mammals who find food and shelter and make their presence known.

Now, when we walk through the park we see them. Deer, fox, beaver, all sorts. I wonder why we never saw them — perhaps we just weren’t ready to see them. We were too busy with our own lives and not tuned in enough to the life of the earth around us.

I love this time of life. It’s not easy like it was in our 30’s or even in our 50’s, but it’s sweet. I love being able to actually live with my wife — by that I mean not just living in the same house and being so busy that we hardly got a chance to talk or share — but being with her 24/7 and having the time to talk in depth about the things on our mind and the joys and sorrows we see around us. It’s maddening that there are so many needs around us and we are scarcely able to help ourselves much less do a lot to help others but we have learned to spend more time in prayer and to commune with each other.

We’re not much to look at…. but what you see is rarely what’s important. Like that willow in the photo — it may look old and decrepit but it provides life and vitality for a whole host of other creatures. I hope in our own way we do to.

Peter

It’s been a rough season…

With our second great grandchild, the first boy in the family in 3 generations.

All my life I’ve been an optimist. I’ve recognized “problems” along life’s way but I’ve always been able — quite easily — to put them to the side and keep moving forward. But even aside from COVID I’ve found the past year or so to be exceptionally challenging.

I’m not yet sure if this marks the beginning of my return to regular posting or not. I’m going to give it a try, to see what happens. But I am at least going to give it a try.

That said, the blogosphere as I know it has changed significantly over the past couple years. While I have tried to dribble out a few posts here and there — to keep the site just a little bit active — a good number of the bloggers I have followed with interest seem to have disappeared from sight/site altogether. That makes me sad. I know we are all struggling our way through the longterm effects of COVID isolation but sadly making our own non-face-to-face isolation even worse won’t help anyone’s mental health at all.

Let me take a few minutes and catch you up on what’s been going on.

  • WE have both (Peggy and myself) avoided contracting COVID. That’s the good news.
  • No one in our nearby family did either.
  • That said, Peg’s brother Fred in California did in connection with a fall and broken bones which put him in hospital and at 80+ years of age with throat cancer he sadly passed a couple months ago. It had been several years since we’d seen him and we felt we could not safely make the funeral trip ourselves so that has been the sad part of our life.
  • Just before the beginning of COVID we were blessed without ur first great grand baby — a girl named Sophia. She is now a month shy of 3 and a lovely addition to the family.
  • A month ago we added another great grand child to the list — a boy named James.
  • On the health front we have been visiting more doctors than pleases us.
  • On top of the routine visits I’ve had my appendix removed.
  • And then there was a Fugax Amarousa (or maybe it’s Amarousa Fugax, I don’t know)— which is a short term partial loss of sight in one eye. Obviously they were concerned about a conventional stroke but after more tests than you can shake a stick at they concluded that it wasn’t veins, and wasn’t heart, and wasn’t clogged arteries — that it was just the optic nerve but still they are monitoring me as a stroke patient out of safety concerns. And they permanently installed a LINQ monitor to determine whether I’m having any heart issues that haven’t been diagnosed.
  • All of those things have seen multiple appointments, multiple blood draws, multiple tests and while I’m glad to be near world-class medical help, it all does get boring — and tedious.
Sophia & James / June 2022

With all this stuff going on in the middle of a pandemic it’s been challenging. I freely acknowledge sometimes feeling depressed — but I sincerely believe that anyone alive in 2022 who doesn’t have situational depression simply isn’t paying attention to the world around them. So, while I have talked this through (actually Peggy and I both have) with our general practitioner it’s not something needing treatment.

We live in a suburb of Milwaukee. While Milwaukee is a hugely Democratic community the outlying suburbs are not. Our town of Franklin is way more GOP than I’m comfortable with but there are reasons we live here that override out our dissatisfaction with the political climate. That being the case I still find myself in a very uncomfortable situation. And the idea that literally 1/2 of the country seem to feel that Donald Trump and his kind are good for the nation strikes me as horribly disheartening. While I have always been optimistic I find myself less so than at any point in my life.

On the COVID front we are both vaccinated and twice boosted. My own lungs give me good reason to NOT WANT to contract COVID. As a result we still mask up for anytime we are in public — which isn’t all that often. Routinely we are the only people in the grocery still wearing masks. Even going at early hours so as not to be around many people. We have ventured out a few times to restaurants where we felt less than comfortable even though all the places we chose were doing a decent job of keeping customers separated and taking appropriate health precautions.

The results of all the stress and the COVID-necessitated isolation has been that I simply haven’t felt like putting anything down on paper. Partly because I don’t want to be reactionary — and there have been a lot of events that push me in that direction. Partly because I’ve ben thinking thoughts about the overall world scene that I’m not sure I want to share with anyone yet. And partly because as one ages it’s simply not quite as easy to compose intelligent content.

We still have a place near he Wisconsin Dells where we can get away from the city and it’s a welcome haven. But at the cost of fuel lately we no longer view the 250 mile round trip quite as casually as in times past.

I guess that’s enough of a catch up for now. I’ll try to talk with you again soon.