Pegging Around Wisconsin

We played a game on our new Wisconsin cribbage board. We made some miscounts I’m sure, but it was because we had so much fun talking. We lived in Madison for a short time many years ago and managed to see quite a few sights in the south-central region of the state. And even after we moved back to Iowa, we made return trips to visit Wisconsin because there’s a lot to do there.

Madison itself is the capital of Wisconsin. One of my first impressions is that a number of fascinating people live there. I remember we were walking west on State Street, and I saw a guy walking in the middle of the street wearing a live rattlesnake coiled on his head. Sena missed that for some reason. He was moving carefully and slowly, probably to avoid rattling his headgear.

I don’t think the sculpture of Harry Dumpty is still standing in Madison, but for several years it was a distinctive bronze sculpture in front of the Madison Municipal Building just south of the intersection of Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and East Doty Street. I can’t see it on Google Maps nowadays.

I never knew the sculpture was Harry Dumpty. It sat above a large concrete wall with an inscription on it which I just assumed was connected to the sculpture and probably still sits there although we couldn’t find it in 2012 when we returned for a visit:

“David James Schaefer, 1955-2004
was a phenomenal phenomenon. Though plagued by the progressive debilities of cerebral palsy, “Schaefer” was an uncomplaining and generous friend to many. Disability Rights Specialist for the City of Madison in three different settings, his death of a heart attack in September 2004 made a hole in our community which cannot ever be filled.
Erected by the Friends of Schaefer at private expense.”

It turns out Harry Dumpty has no connection to David James Schaefer. In fact, Harry is one of several similar sculptures created by artist Brent George, who made him in 1997, saying he’s Humpty’s brother. If you look closely at the book sitting open next to Harry, it’s entitled “Harry Dumpty.” Brent George’s name is below it. Brent’s phone number is on the front of the wall. Evidently somebody called him and asked about the sculpture. Brent says there’s no connection between the sculpture and the inscription.

On the subject of art, the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art (on State Street) is a place to see. Although the art works are free to view on the web, they’re copyrighted and you can’t reproduce them without permission of the artists. However, at the time we were there in 2012 we saw Typewriter Eraser by Claes Oldenburg. I think it’s OK to share our picture of the giant one we saw in Washington, D.C. In 2015.

Typewriter Eraser in Washington, D.C.

One of the more relaxing times we had was having pizza for lunch at Paisan’s in Madison. We were outside and had that breathtaking view of Lake Monona, the breeze was coming off the water, cooling and refreshing—like the Moose Drool brown ale, which is not a Wisconsin brew; it’s made in Montana.

Wisconsin is known for its beer, among many other virtues. New Glarus Brewing Company is famous. I tried a few of the brews. One of them was Stone Soup. It had oil of clove in it and my lips got numb.

We took a dinner train ride at the Mid-Continent Railway Museum in North Freedom. It was great food and great company.

One of the more interesting stories about Monroe, Wisconsin is The Great Limburger Cheese War, which I mangled during the heat of the game. I first heard about it on a TV show; it seemed to me it was on Mysteries at the Museum, but when I googled it, I couldn’t find it.

We had a great time in Wisconsin. Maybe someday we’ll go back for a visit.

Wisconsin Memories

We’re just reminiscing on our time in Wisconsin years ago. We’re hoping this will be a prologue to making a video soon of us playing cribbage on our new Wisconsin board. Until then, you can check out the mini travelogue, including hanging out with the Fonz in Milwaukee. The big mansion in the video is Black Point Estate and Gardens in Lake Geneva.

It was during a July 2012 visit to Madison that I found, at Browzers Bookstore, an old medical book my class used in my first year, Robbins’ Pathologic Basis of Disease. My class used the nearly 7-pound red 3rd edition containing 1,467 pages. 

Also on that trip, we rented a couple of bicycles from Machinery Row Bicycles. We can’t imagine paying $7,500 for a bicycle, much less what looked like $25,000 for a double tandem.

We rode all the way out to Olbrich Botanical Gardens on a sweltering summer day. The Thai Pavilion shown in the video was a gift to the University of Wisconsin from the Thai government.

We never ran into a Bigfoot in Wisconsin, but there have reportedly been over 70 squatch sightings in the heavily wooded areas. Don’t tell the Appalachian Investigators of Mysterious Sightings (AIMS). Wild Bill would just cuss a blue streak and shout, “Hell, that ain’t no Appalachia!”

Wisconsin Cribbage Board Arrives

We got the Wisconsin state map cribbage board yesterday and there’s a little story behind it, right off the bat. It was delivered by the United States Postal Service (USPS) and I remember the slap as it hit our porch from the USPS worker just tossing the package.

When we opened the package, it turned out to be not the board we ordered. It was not as thick as the Iowa cribbage board and it didn’t have a storage space on the back for pegs. The packing material for the Wisconsin board was not as interesting as that used for the Iowa board, which was packed using a local newspaper with a sermon on one of the pages, “In times like these we turn with trust to God.”

In contrast, the Wisconsin board was shipped from the same place in Minnesota, but this time in a plain white USPS envelope, conventionally secured with eBay tape, bubble wrap, and a plain brown shopping bag. No sermons.

Wisconsin cribbage board packing

Sena arranged to return it for a refund (which was the only choice other than having the exact same item reshipped from the seller), carefully rewrapped it and drove out to a couple of the UPS stores—both of which happened to be closed yesterday. She was late by just a couple of minutes.

This morning we noticed that the seller sent an email apologizing about shipping us the wrong board and offered us the choice of shipping it back for the full refund or keeping it at 70% off the price. We took the latter.

We’re now brushing up on our memories of Wisconsin, chuckling at our snapshots, and considering using the deck of cards we got at Lost Canyon gift shop at Wisconsin Dells, where we took the horse-drawn wagon tour 13 years ago.

Lost Canyon wagon tour in Wisconsin Dells

Musing on Coincidences

We’re waiting for another state road map cribbage board, this one is Wisconsin. If you’ve seen the cribbage game video we made, “Pegging Around Iowa,” you get the idea.

We’ve been to Wisconsin, briefly. It’s a complicated story. It was roughly 13 years ago. We moved to Madison so I could make another stab at private practice psychiatry.

During the lunch break between interviews, I read The Onion for the first time. It was set up as a college newspaper in which none of the stories were factually accurate—and wildly satirical. I thought it was really funny. It started back in 1988 in Madison, Wisconsin. It’s now based in Chicago. They published a large paperback book entitled The Onion Book of Known Knowledge: A Definitive Encyclopaedia of Existing Information.

I’m pretty sure none of the information was true. I owned a copy, but the print was so small, I couldn’t read it without a magnifying glass. It either got lost in one of our moves or I got rid of it.

Scott Dikkers was one of the originators. Coincidentally, in 1993 he was interviewed by a columnist for The Daily Iowan, the University of Iowa college newspaper. Scott also wrote a cartoon called Jim’s Journal. This is another coincidence because I kept a sort of diary in between blogs for a while a few years ago. I called it Jim’s Journal. Back in 1993 I wasn’t paying attention then to The Onion or much of anything else except surviving my first year of residency in psychiatry at Iowa.

The Onion was one of my favorite reminders of Madison. We loved living there, but unfortunately, I disliked private practice. We moved back to Iowa, but not before doing a lot of fun things in Madison and places nearby.

Another coincidence that is admittedly minor is that, several years ago I accidentally walked into an auditorium ready to present my Grand Rounds lecture to a crowd. The only hitch was that it was the wrong crowd. I had arrived early and the previous group was still in the auditorium. That was embarrassing. When it was time for my performance, I sort of ad libbed a series of jokes about my blunder. This got me an award from the residents—Improvisor of the Year.

I think I also blogged about the experience and used a feature image of myself with the caption, “And now for the juggling of produce,” a reminder of my clownish performance at the Grand Rounds. If you look closely, you can see one of the produce items is—you guessed it, an onion.

Years later, I happened to find a video of older people being interviewed on their 100th birthday. They were in Madison. I left a comment saying I thought it was a gas. I still do. Coincidentally, I worked at St. Mary’s Hospital, albeit briefly. I left that comment in 2012, about 3 years after I returned to Iowa.

And, coincidentally I found another video that sends pretty much the same message, pertinent to our times. It was taken for a January 2021 news story about a lady named Mary Gerber who was celebrating her 100th birthday who had volunteered for 33 years at St. Mary’s Hospital and got her first Covid-19 vaccine. 

These coincidences happen only occasionally, but continue to reverberate in our lives, even to this day. I think of the 2002 alien invasion film, Signs. In it, the lead character is Graham Hess, a local pastor who has given up being a minister because he’s lost his faith related to his wife dying in a car accident. He and his brother Merrill are discussing the many lights in the sky (UFOs) that have been seen recently. I think of what he says,

People break down into two groups. When they experience something lucky, group number one sees it as more than luck, more than coincidence. They see it as a sign, as evidence, that there is someone up there, watching out for them. Group number two sees it as just pure luck. Just a happy turn of chance. I’m sure the people in group number two are looking at those fourteen lights in a very suspicious way. For them, the situation is a fifty-fifty. Could be bad, could be good. But deep down, they feel that whatever happens, they’re on their own. And that fills them fear. Yeah, there are those people. But there’s a whole lot of people in group number one. When they see those fourteen lights, they’re looking at a miracle. And deep down, they feel that whatever’s going to happen, there will be someone there to help them. And that fills them with hope. See what you have to ask yourself is what kind of person are you? Are you the kind that sees signs, that sees miracles? Or do you believe that people just get lucky? Or, look at the question this way: Is it possible that there are no coincidences?

Merrill answers “I’m a miracle man.”

I’m not sure yet what group I fall into. Things happen sometimes that make me hope there are miracles.

Ten Month Countdown to Retirement

Starting this month, I’ve got a 10-month countdown to retirement. I was reminded of that when I got a brochure in the mail for the University of Wisconsin 7th Annual Update and Advances in Psychiatry. It’s scheduled for October 11-12, 2019 at the Monona Terrace, which is the usual location.

I’ve received these announcements in the mail every year for longer than 7 years. I’ve never had the time to make it to a single of these meetings. I’ve always been on duty. I’m not sure why they are advertising them as though they started only 7 years ago.

I can remember getting an announcement in 2009 in which the title of the update was Nontrivial Neuropsychiatric Nourishment from Noble Notable Nabobs. How’s that for a sense of humor? There were several like that prior to 2009 but I never kept the brochures. I haven’t seen any brochures like that for the last seven years.

I don’t know who came up with the humorous titles. I wonder if it was Dr. Jefferson. I noticed this year’s brochure had an In-Memoriam notice about James W. “Jeff” Jefferson, MD, who has been a luminary of psychiatry for decades. He was also a major presenter at these psychiatry advances meetings. He was active in psychiatry for over 50 years.

And me? I’m retiring after a much shorter career, by comparison. I’ve been running all over the hospital as a Consult-Liaison Psychiatrist during the busiest time in academic medical centers everywhere–July and the early part of August when senior medical students become full-fledged resident physicians. Newly-minted doctors tend to request many psychiatric consultations. On average I’m putting close to 4 miles and 30-odd floors on my step counter (with C-L psychiatrists, maybe it’s not the years but the miles that count—literally). I’ve not taken vacation during the past 2 years of my current phased retirement contract—and don’t plan one for this final year.

That reminds me of time in 2012 when my wife, Sena, and I went to Madison, Wisconsin on a vacation, the first in a long time. The residents were wondering when I was going to get away. Madison is a great place to visit and we lived there briefly when I took a stab at private practice.

We stayed at the Monona Terrace, which gives a great view of Lake Monona. We loved Olbrich Botanical Gardens. We rented a couple of bikes at Machinery Row Bicycles and rode all the way to Olbrich. The rental bikes were a far sight more affordable than a lot of the ones you could buy. Many were priced at several thousand dollars.

And I found an old copy of Robbins Pathologic Basis of Disease at Browzers Bookshop on State Street. I used that book as a medical student. My class used the nearly 7 pound red 3rd edition containing 1,467 pages. This book is hailed as an outstanding foundational text, which it is. Dr Stanley Robbins has been eulogized as an exacting editor who championed writing of the type espoused by Will Strunk in The Elements of Style.

Not to be picky, but the book contained the phrase “not excessively rare” in reference to some process or disease which I can’t recall. I do recall that a majority of our class howled about this verbiage, which seemed the antithesis of what Strunk tried to teach.

You could see a lot of interesting sights on State Street. During a previous visit, we saw a guy walking down the middle of the street with a rattlesnake coiled on his head, wore it like a hat.

We had a lot of fun in Madison. It’s that kind of relaxed, good time that I want to retire to. Ten months to go.

Who is Harry Dumpty?

My wife and I spent a few months living in Madison, Wisconsin back in 2008. I had taken a new job as a psychiatrist there. It was the second of two blunders moving from academic medicine to private practice, the first being a move to Illinois, also very short-lived.

We really liked Madison and sometimes dream of moving back there after I’ve retired. It’s an interesting city with many sights to see and things to do.

One of the interesting sights we saw was a mysterious bronze sculpture that I’ve only just today found the explanation for. It looks like Humpty Dumpty of the familiar nursery rhyme and riddle. I found out a lot more about Humpty Dumpty and his odd brother Harry Dumpty, who is actually the subject of the sculpture found in front of the Madison Municipal Building just south of the intersection of Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and East Doty Street.

Harry Dumpty

I never knew the sculpture was Harry Dumpty. It sat above a large concrete wall with an inscription on it which I just assumed was connected to the sculpture and probably still sits there although we couldn’t find it in 2012 when we returned for a visit:

“David James Schaefer, 1955-2004
was a phenomenal phenomenon. Though plagued by the progressive debilities of cerebral palsy, “Schaefer” was an uncomplaining and generous friend to many. Disability Rights Specialist for the City of Madison in three different settings, his death of a heart attack in September 2004 made a hole in our community which cannot ever be filled.
Erected by the Friends of Schaefer at private expense.”

It turns out Harry Dumpty has no connection to David James Schaefer. In fact, Harry is one of several similar sculptures created by artist Brent George, who made him in 1997, saying he’s Humpty’s brother. If you look closely at the book sitting open next to Harry, it’s entitled “Harry Dumpty.” Brent George’s name is below it. Brent’s phone number is on the front of the wall. Evidently somebody called him and asked about the sculpture. Brent says there’s no connection between the sculpture and the inscription.

A copy of Harry Dumpty sits outside of the Dekalb Public Library in Dekalb, Illinois. Brent moved from there to Madison, Wisconsin. In the local online newspaper, the Daily Chronicle, news editor Jillian Duchnowski wrote a couple of stories about it in 2014 which eventually led to the proposal of a contest to find a rhyme for him similar to Humpty’s. I couldn’t find the results. One newspaper speculated that Harry is less well-known because he never fell off a wall.

In the online news website, Isthmus, a staff writer named David Medaris wrote a few paragraphs about Harry in 2008, which we somehow missed back when we were first learning about Madison. Medaris comments that this kind of irreverent art is common in Europe and is a marker for cities where “…people who have a sense of humor live with gusto.” He identifies Brent George as the artist but never mentions David James Schaefer.

There has been a lot of speculation about deep political and scientific meanings for Humpty Dumpty, but it’s likely just a nursery rhyme and riddle.

On the other hand, there’s very little written about Harry Dumpty. If anyone knows the results of the Dekalb, Illinois poetry contest mentioned above, please let me know.

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