The New York Times has a nice article about the wind sled students on Madeline Island in northern Wisconsin sometimes have to take to get to school in Bayfield on the mainland. One part of the story did make me laugh however:
“I thought it was kind of strange at first,” said Emma Dalzell, 14, who recently moved to La Pointe from Madison, Wis., where she did not have to cross an icy bay to get to school. Now the commute has become routine.
Now, I lived in Wisconsin for a dozen years -- including three and a half just a few miles from Bayfield in Ashland -- and I would say that the vast majority, all but the dozen or so students who live in La Pointe, don't have to take a wind sled to school. I get the feeling from the story that Wisconsin is seen as a vast wasteland to New Yorkers, where people hunt animals for their flesh and to wear as skins. OK, that may be true in some parts of the state -- but Madison?
OK, a few musical notes. Ex Jayhawk Gary Louris has an excellent solo album, Vagabonds, that is just out. At the other end of the musical spectrum, the jolly sounding Hate Eternal have unleashed an absolutely brutal death metal album with Fury and Flames. Genghis Tron (one of my favorite all-time band names, by the way) continue to mix metal, dance and industrial music in a fresh way on Board Up the House. And I've been catching up with an amazing black metal band from the Pacific Northwest called Wolves in the Throne Room, who make a rather tired genre sound fresh again.
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