29 July – 2 August 2025

The coincidence of birthdays in July—my brother-in-law Reed “Chad” Andrew turned 91 on the 13^th and nephew Rob Andrew 58 on the 25^th—brought me back to Wisconsin once again this year and a most welcome reunion with family, some very fine brunches, a return to the still astonishing Milwaukee Art Museum, and a rather disconcerting sense of the distance, both metaphorical and literal, between coastal New Hampshire and the Midwest, deliberately exaggerated by my returning to New Castle Common on the eve of my departure out of some sense of closure that so often now accompanies my travels.  Putting things in order (in case of no return) includes a quasi-ceremonial “last look” at what I love.

Arrival in Milwaukee that Tuesday evening was easy if somewhat disappointing:  the airport Best Western I’d booked for its capacious indoor swimming pool let me down, its unairconditioned atrium rain forest humid and sweltering in the heat wave, and the pool crammed with children playing Marco Polo.  I passed on a swim.  Last year the funky bar and grill In Plane View’s patio was just the place to enjoy a post-flight burger, but this time the heat sent me on a search that led me first to a place with senior karaoke at full volume (nope!), at last ending in the Mexican place right next to the sad Best Western for a dinner of mediocre tacos.

I made up for such fare the next morning with a fine brunch at Blue’s Egg and Bakery en route to the Andrew home in Portage, and the warm embrace of family.

Over our two days together, we did a lot of catching up and some walking around the Saddle Ridge development amidst drumlins and a kettle lake called Swan Lake (thank you, glaciers of 30,000-10,000 years ago, for the landscape). We made a pilgrimage to the home of superior grilled-cheese-and tomato-soup lunches, the Sassy Cow Creamery in Columbus (“Unlimited Milk Refills!”); took in the open skies and rolling cornfields as well as the depleted little downtown of Pardeeville; played Sequence (made me wonder if the gay version would be “Sequins,” a speculation I kept to myself); and for breakfast enjoyed Jan’s excellent Baked French Toast Casserole (via a recipe from appropriately named pioneerwoman.com).

Time passing, however unacknowledged, was inevitably, wistfully on everyone’s mind:  will another such reunion be possible next year? 

My perhaps obsessively acute awareness of my own accelerating aging made me wonder, and sent me back to Milwaukee searching for solace, comfort I happily found both at the Wisconsin chain Culver’s (home of butter burgers and frozen custard—and good, plain, reasonably priced food; wish we had a Culver’s in NH) and in the Mitchell Park Domes, Milwaukee’s second botanical conservatory, beehive-shaped conoidal glass domes designed by Milwaukee architect Donald L. Grieb in 1955, constructed from 1959-1967, and dedicated by Lady Bird Johnson in the fall of 1965.

The three domes—Tropical, Desert, and Show—proved unexpectedly charming, especially the tropical one, no doubt exotic to native Wisconsinites (aka Cheeseheads) in winter, but homey to this Floridian.  The Desert display pointed out the importance of date palms that for the first time made me realize that Date Palm Avenue, South in St. Petersburg had resonance beyond my home address.

Having bailed on returning to the disappointing Best Western, I was pleased that the La Quinta in New Berlin just west of Milwaukee proper was indeed newly refurbished, quiet, and comfortable, though I’m not sure the badger on the wall exuded hospitality.

I slept long and next morning had a fine sustaining Saturday brunch at nearby BrunchBerry, bustling with weekend trade and complimentary cream puffs.

Since my flight home did not leave from MKE until 6.30, I had decided to spend most of the day at the Milwaukee Art Museum, whose iconic architecture I’d first discovered last year only days after the attempted assassination of Donald Trump at the Republican convention; admission then was free in honor of the visiting conventioneers, but downtown was crawling with not-so-Secret Service in large, black, tactical vehicles, lending architect Calatrava’s futurism a disconcertingly dystopian cast.

Not so this year.  I arrived in the cool underground parking lot at MAM just in time to make my way up to the sky bridge across Art Museum Drive to witness the noon closing of the Brise Soleil (sun break), the most iconic feature of Santiago Calatrava’s Quadracci Pavilion, its 217-foot wingspan not only practical in controlling the sunlight entering in and thus the temperature of Windhover Hall, but evocative of the sails and seabirds just behind the soaring structure perched on the Lake Michigan shore.

The closing takes 3.5 minutes, and occasioned lots of camera swapping among visitors eager both to video the event and record their witnessing of it.  Back inside Windhover Hall’s 90-foot glass nave, a crew of Museum personnel were setting up for a wedding, which made me realize that the uplifting if secular sanctity of that space was just what Calatrava had in mind:  the flying buttresses, pointed arches, ribbed vaults, and soaring nave are a Gothic cathedral reimagined.

The collection housed inside, though not expansive, is choice and very well captioned.  I was heartened by the number of young families visiting on this sunny Saturday, and impressed by the kid-friendly opportunities to not just appreciate, but make art.  One of the young gallery staff even pointed out to me a place to sit and recharge my phone:  everything at MAM felt both elevated and accessible.

I had tea on the lakeside porch where last July I had had to deal with the bogus Amazon publishers who were trying to scam me out of rights to my own Will to Live manuscript, a phone call all the more memorable for being so out of place in such a blithe setting.

Good to be back at the same spot with that mishigas finally resolved.  And the promenade of passersby deploying an amusing array of transport amused:  strolling, jogging, running, rollerblading, scootering, pedaling 4-seater canopied surreys, riding bicycles, Segways, and one motorized unicycle.

After a final visit to the American collection, I walked to the south façade of MAM to discover the wedding party who would later celebrate in the Windhover nave and dine in the Baumgartner Galleria.  Tacitly wishing them well, I set my gps for the airport, and 8.5 hours later, returned to my home sweet home.