Wisconsin 2006 - Two days in Wisconsin

Hey guys – I spent a couple of days in and around Madison, Wisconsin this week. It’s about a 4.5 hour drive from Minneapolis. Got there Monday night and then spent most of the day Tuesday at Taliesin – Frank Lloyd Wright’s home. It is SO awesome!!! There are three top Wright sites – Taliesin, Fallingwater, and the Johnson Wax Building in Racine. I started to go there, but it is close to a two hour drive from Madison in the opposite direction so I will save it for another time. Maybe sometime when the Brewers are in town, I will get back up this way and go to Milwaukee and Racine.

Anyway, Taliesin was so beautiful. It was his home as well as his architectural school. The school is still operational and there are a couple of senior fellows there who knew Mr. Wright (that’s how everyone there refers to him). You know, he had a very scandalous life – three wives – nine children – always in debt – living a lavish lifestyle. He had an affair – and didn’t try to keep it a secret – while he was still married to his first wife with whom he had 6 children. The woman was the wife of one of his clients. They did eventually both get divorced and married each other, but she, her two children, and several household employees were murdered at Taliesin when one of the Ecuadorian servants went mad, set the house on fire locking all doors and windows except one door – when everyone tried to escape through that door, he hacked them to death with an ax. Wright was devastated for a long time after that, but eventually went on to marry a woman 30 years his junior to whom he was married for 30 years until his death in 1959.

The next day I saw the Unitarian Meeting House that he designed and built in Madison – he was a lifelong Unitarian and built many meeting houses and temples, but this particular one was his home church where he worshipped.

For those of you who recommended that I see HOUSE ON THE ROCK – I was in the area – it is close to Taliesin – but just didn’t have time to see it. Maybe next trip.

I did, however, drive about 15 miles south of Madison to a small town of about 5,000 people called Mt. Horeb. There is a mustard museum there that I thought would be interesting and it was – over 4,500 different types of mustard from all around the world. AND – I had quite a nice surprise there, too. They had a book called THE SEVENTH GAME – 35 WORLD SERIES THAT WENT THE DISTANCE. What a GREAT book. Several pages are devoted to each of the series that went to the 7th game. AND – the book was written by the owner of the mustard museum – he was there and we chatted a bit about baseball and he autographed my copy of the book. Very interesting guy – he was born and raised in Boston so is a life-long Red Sox fan. He was Attorney General for the state of Wisconsin. Don’t know why he left that or opened a mustard museum – wish I’d asked him.

Oh and the other Wright structure I saw in Madison was the Monona Terrace Convention Center. Beautiful, beautiful building in downtown Madison. Madison sits rights between two lakes and Monona is right on one of them. Now, except for that, I did NOT like downtown Madison. It’s dirty and ugly and the people are skanky. Yes, it is the capital, but the building is just a big, white building with a dome. Not particularly pretty and the grounds it sits on are yucky. It was scary downtown. In fact, I wasn’t particularly impressed with Wisconsin over all – of course, I only saw a little part of it.

Well, my friend Barbara arrived today and we are spending a couple of days in Duluth and Lake Superior before heading back to MSP for some sightseeing there. Looking forward to seeing St. Paul as I have really spent any time there yet.