Dear Friends,

I’m writing from the common room of my dorm. Mad Men just came on, though we’ve been sitting here for an hour already. The semester starts tomorrow, specifically my translating Herodotus course, and this makes me feel like wearing sweatpants and hanging around a dingy dorm common room.  

It looks like this is a Don and Roger episode, but all I want to hear is how Sally and Betty are fairing in psychotherapy. No bigs, I guess I can devote more mental powers to wrapping up Dairy State Diary.

I decided to write a blog about Wisconsin, my homestate, in May.  The big plans I’d made for travelling Europe had fallen through and I’d resigned myself to a summer of classes and library runs. But perhaps, I thought in a zen-like matter, I should examine Wisconsin through new eyes. After all, the last thing the world needs is another European travel blog.

And it’s been a beautiful summer. Writing this blog has been an incredible experience, mostly because of all my amazing followers and readers. Seriously, your kind comments made my day every time. Some of you are Wisconsinites and know firsthand what an amazing state we live in. Others of you were just interested and someday, I really believe you will impress somebody with the esoteria you learned here.

I wish you all the best this fall. 

Yours truly,

Maddy

maddycourt.tumblr.com

I woke up extra early to get donuts at the Appleton Farmer’s Market. There’s vegetables and organic peanut butter, but everyone’s really there for the donuts.

I said goodbye to Madison yesterday. And then I surprised myself my thinking about moving back next summer.

Here’s where I want to live:

I’m going to miss my old street.

Saw a great poster at the Willy Street Saint Vincent de Paul, probably the best thrift store in the world. Me too, Rufus, me too.

I’m moving to back Philadelphia in 5 days. Just as the sand slips through the hourglass, so do the days of our lives. But seriously, how did that happen? 

I feel like such a long time has elapsed without anything really happening, even though logically I know that’s not true. Lots of stuff happened. Today, for example, is my dad’s birthday. Happy birthday, dad!

A week ago I looked at some bubblers (yes, bubblers) for sale in someone’s yard.

Then I went to the park and wondered who smashed the top off all the grills.

I spent a lot of time looking out at bodies of water and taking pictures.

So there. I have done things and I have photographic proof. Just to prove my point I’m spending the next couple of days in Madison, Milwaukee, and of course, Crappleton. I’ll be taking tons of photos to remind myself of all the things that happened this summer.

I’ve been spending most of my Appletime driving around. People always say they feel like they live in their cars, but this summer, I actually do.

Since I can’t actually drive (gasp!), it’s lucky my big brothers also enjoy driving around. Usually we start by getting a really enormous beverage, preferably from Kwik Trip. Then we hit up some thrift shops or drive slowly past the houses of people we have crushes on. Just kidding, we would never do that. That’s creepy.

In other words: there’s some serious moss collecting on this stone. I took lots of precautions against this kind of life-stagnancy, but to no avail. I started a blog, got a Netflix account, and made a ballin’ collage on my bedroom wall.  I even signed up for a creative nonfiction course and spent a month churning out such creative personifications as:

I am Yellow and I am a color. I am a color for babies of undetermined sex. Small children misuse the yellow crayon to wrongly depict the sun, lions, and worst of all, gold. And it was all Yellow, sings Chris Martin on a charity visit to the cancer ward.

Read it and weep, Dave Eggers.

So you see, I had all these diversions planned out. But as it turns out, you can only spend so much time writing about yellow and noodling around State Street. It had just turned July and hours and hours of free time stood ahead of me, so I put Belle and Sebastian’s “A Summer Wasting” on loop and resigned myself to a July and August of total laziness.

Fortunately,  I’ve developed an immunity to boredom typical of a small town cop or human sign holder. The most exciting part of this week was driving around with my brother, Drew. He gave me a hundred dollar bill to cover our coffee—or my coffee, his root beer.  I felt like, dare I say, P. Diddy.

Then he kept trying to buy me an ElectroMan. I made him buy me an issue of Bust instead with the reasoning that I could easily kill an hour reading ads for Goddess Cups and plus-sized vintage clothes. Plus, I don’t need a man to organize my life.

Driving around aimlessly with Drew felt unexpectedly right. Like I was in motion, but since there was no destination, nothing was expected of me.

 Left, silo. Right, Seymour Townhall.

If you’d told me in May when I started this blog that I’d abandon it for 11 straight days, I’d have pooh-poohed you. What can I say? It was a different, more innocent time. I’m not going to apologize.

I’ve been busy doing lots of important things offline. Thursday I went to the grocery store and bought an assortment of industrial sized antacids. Yesterday I scrubbed paint off my windows before Steve, my disarmingly jolly apartment manager, could put my security deposit towards another inter-apartmental mixer. Today I got the $1 large soda at McDonald’s.

The Fox Valley, it’s a gas.

By far the most exciting thing I’ve been up to is shopping at thrift stores. I’m usually obnoxiously reluctant reluctant to spend money, but sometimes I get in these moods when I want an Oompa Loompa and I want it NOW! And by Oompa Loompa I mean paisley blazers and by NOW I mean 9-5 Tuesdays through Fridays.

For example, I bought sitar necklace (though it could be a lute if you’re Eurocentric) and a maroon jacket to match the other day. Today is Senior Day at Fox Valley Thrift and while I won’t qualify for another 37 years, I found some genuine Argentinean belts.  This is why I should not be allowed to carry money.

I’ve been digging the Wisconsin thrift scene ever since I realized how much the one on the East Coast sucks. Whereas thrift stores on the Main Line are run by the Junior League and have Lilly Pulitzer-specific racks, thrift stores in Wisconsin have kitsch in spades: beer steins, punch bowls, saddle shoes, and even the occasional bedazzler. Below: Great selection of Crock Pots at Fox Valley Thrift.

It’s heaven to me, but I spoke to one ultra-cynical thrift store employee who said:

“If you went by thrift stores alone, you’d think Wisconsin is a lot more multicultural than it is.”

He then retracted and apologized for that statement and continued:

“Wisconsin is a stingy state, I’d describe thrift stores as being picked over. The only furniture we get is junky television cabinets and crap like that.”

Good thing I don’t own a TV.

Camera in hand, I mounted my bike yesterday to do some fieldwork in Wisconsin lawn ornaments.  It was twilight so I didn’t have time to go too far. I peddled furiously around my hood and got lots of great shots of artfully arranged beach wood, cement forest animals, pinwheels of all sizes, and even an Elvis mailbox.

I saw arrangements of lawn ornaments:

 (True story: the metal moose-like kitsch to the far right is an ornamental Christmas card holder my mom got as a present ages ago.  I sold it at a rummage sale in the 10^th grade, but I guess we were fated to meet again.)

I zipped past my favorite house in the entire world:

I didn’t see any gnomes, but I definitely saw evidence of their civilization:

I saw lawns where the ornaments were contained in patches and some of Olmsteadian complexity. The people with the Elvis mailbox, for example, had this magnificent birdbath encircled by concrete squirrels.  I did see ornament-less lawns, but they were in the definite minority.  

Like all accoutrements, lawn ornaments are a form of personal expression. They communicate worlds about the homeowner to anyone who cares to look. My older relatives, for example, use the term “Bathtub Catholics” to pejoratively describe poor, rural Catholics (themselves, basically). The term refers to makeshift shrines made by partially burying a bathtub and placing an icon— usually the Virgin Mary— inside. Bathtub shrines are everywhere in the Wisconsin countryside—they’re the consummate thing you see constantly once you start looking.

Anyhow, I was pondering Catholics and their tubs when this guy pulled over and beckoned me to come over. Since I’ve already gone 18 years without being held at gunpoint and thrown in a trunk, I put on my stranger face and rode past. He just kept following me though, so I shifted down a few gears and hightailed it home through the woods near my house.

I wonder if one of the lawns I photographed was his. Maybe he just wanted to tell me about his Elvis mailbox.