Mad and Cheese

I‘m back from Madison, Wisconsin; back from a six-day trip actually, that brought me to Detroit, Chicago, and Milwaukee, the latter city only in passing, since it was heavily snowing. Snowing! Wisconsin, so I learned from the local history museum in Madison right across the Capitol, is basically a German state, so much German that it was considered a traitor state in World War I, and German-language schoolbooks were burned. That's where the museum's history stopped, so I have no idea what happened in World War II. I hope nothing too bad.

I met some progressive people, no coincidence, since Madison has a fairly progressive tradition. Wisconsin once had a progressive Governor named Robert La Follette, not German, evidently, but French; still Old Europe.

Also, I participated in a small rally asking banks, mostly JP Morgan Chase, to pay taxes (or I would have, had it not been snowing), bought a T-shirt that called for solidarity with Madison workers, a piece of  cheese in the shape of the state, read the main local paper, The Onion, had lunch in the Union building (crab bisque), and frequented a coffee shop that served alcoholic beverages, namely Peppermint Schnapps. German indeed! This is how I usually spend my vacation.