REMARKABLE TO SAY THE LEAST

After my blog entries this past week regarding cemeteries and my

participation as a guide in the La Crosse Historic Society's Silent City, my friend Cheryl shared how visiting cemeteries as a child with her Grandmother was not an uncommon occurrence. She pointed out it was a good way to learn history, reflect upon one's own mortality and life choices. Cheryl also reminded me that Autumn itself is a reflective time of year. How very true on all accounts.

Our tour visitors to Silent City had these same opportunities as they heard about some of the "remarkable" women who preceded us here in La Crosse and their resting place, Oak Grove Cemetery, as both a beautiful park with its majestic oaks and historic site as well. 

We were blessed with perfect weather, a pleasant breeze, some cloud coverage but sun and no rain like the previous day.

Besides two early busloads for those that preferred not to walk, twenty folks made up each walking tour given every fifteen minutes between 11and 3. 
Clever outside bench seating at the 7 outside stops included long boards supported by bales of hay. Chairs would have sunk into the soaked ground and the hay can be returned to the farmer and the wood repurposed!

Guide couples

Two assigned guides accompanied each group. Guides could choose to wear black and white/ dress up. This dapper couple of 53 years volunteer being guides together. (He has one terrific melodic deep radio voice.) 

As you will see all the actors dressed in historic garb as they reenacted their characters.

Dorina Lukins as Fredericka Levy

Stop #1 : 
Fredericka Augusta Levy and her great niece
Fredericka with a heavy German accent, spoke of her disappointment of being welcomed by a dirty log cabin, not the beautiful homestead she had envisioned. Her great niece prodded her for stories and Fredericka shared her strawberry picking adventure when to her surprise she looked up to see her neighbor, an Indian.  Reenacting her shock, her scream resounded throughout the cemetery and we all started laughing. In her quick retreat home, she had forgotten her basket of berries but they were awaiting her return on the front porch.  Fredericka admitted the Indians were far better neighbors than those who helped themselves to her chickens. When her husband was off trading, Mrs. Levy ran the store attached to their house and the post office.  These early settlers were indeed strong women.

Lottridge played by Sara Slayton

Stop #2: 
Dr. Mary Elizabeth Lottridge (1826-1906) used to accompany her father, a physician, on his house calls.  Through necessity she became a practioner, being one of the first women in the US (She added after '3' courses to become a physician.) She not only received a degree in medicine but also was licensed to practice surgery.  Despite saving so many, she grieved being unable to save her own 2 children from the fever and when remarried, her husband's son who she cherished, also succumbed.

Jill Pein as Johanna Heileman

 Stop #3: 
Johanna Bantle Heileman
 (1831-1917) of German descent workedas a maid in the Pabst mansion where she met and married a fellow German immigrant with the surname Heileman. You know the rest, they started another brewery, raised a family with 7 girls and one son. They always fed all the single men in town. There must have been some ulterior motive, don't you think?  After Johanna's husband passed, she was named President of the brewery, tripling its business and running it until she was 80, remaining on the board for 5 more years. Johanna was one of the first women CEO's in Wisconsin. 

Stop #4: 

Dr. Abby Adams,1842-1924 & Rev. Nellie Opdale,1860-1941

Susan Fox (L)  as Dr. Abby Adams and Deborah Nerud as Rev. Nellie Opdale 

Dr. Abby Adams, came from a middle class New England family with little means but educated. She moved to La Crosse with her brother and sister and started a women's clinic. She became good friends with Nellie Opdale who was not only a great advocate for women's suffrage but active in the Temperance Society. Unfortunately Nellie was married to a real scoundrel, the first Wisconsin lawyer to be disbarred for impropriety which obviously didn't sit well with her views of alcohol.  Nellie's misfortune of losing both her husband and child and being in debt, led her to the pulpit.  She became La Crosse's first female minister after being asked to give a sermon. She found the set sermons so boring she wrote her first sermon incorporating her own story. Her success continued in the Universalist Church for many years as their Reverend.

Terry Visger as Leona Linker

Stop #5 :
Leona Linker
Leona met us in the 1912 Italian marble and cement mausoleum where she is laid to rest. Leona is responsible for the 'Leona,' a special ladies undergarment that combined the corset, camisole and slip, creating a slenderizing garment open at the bottom for the women's ease to use the toilet. You can imagine how the arrival of flappers affected the Leona's popularity. 


Stop #6:

 Sara Pilatzki-Warzeha

Mary Markos, a Syrian immigrant, living in Pennsylvania at 18 met the Markos brothers who owned a clothing business there. She married Salem, who according to her was the most handsome of the brothers. They moved here to La Crosse and she had 3 sons. Besides bringing the Levi brand of pants to town, Mary reminded us of a former Syrian community that was also not well received in the 1900's in north La Crosse like the Syrian immigrants of today. She spent her life working in civic organizations and fostering better relations between the Syrian and La Crosse communities.

*The Final Stop:

Wendy Mattison as Van Steenwyk

Grace Pettengill Hogan Van Steenwyk was a hoot as she told of the chaos created in the cemetery as her friend, the grieving Losey widow, asked Grace to use the car to transport the flowers from the cemetery so she could remain longer graveside. As Grace started driving off, her hem caught in the door as she opened it in order to free the cloth, the car started accelerating to a whopping 25mph and she lost control. She  holding on as long as possible until she was thrown. The electric car continued running without her, but no one knew how to turn the car off. Eventually it rolled over with its wheels still spinning. Grace's claim to fame which has never been exceeded of knocking down more headstones than anyone else. 31 to be exact. Truly "remarkable."

All of our actors did a phenomenal job portraying their 'remarkable' women as they transported us to a different time and proved something we have known all along which is strong women have helped make all our communities better. 

REMEMBERING THE WOMEN

If you look at the following pics, you can probably guess where I will be spending this Saturday. 
As my Dad always jokingly said,  "Folks are just dying to get in..." Ba da boom.

But this volunteer will be a tour guide for the La Crosse Historical Society's 17th Production of Discover the Silent City in La Crosse's Oak Grove Cemetery on September 17th no less. 

If the mosquitoes/gnats don't carry me away, (Don't worry they will go straight for me,) we should have a fine time learning about 8 Remarkable Women of La Crosse who are buried here. Each year the tours have a different topic (i.e. the Civil War Years) and this year will create some gender balance concentrating on some of its female residents's contributions. 

This guide will be donning period appropriate clothing equipped with a script filled with cemetery factoids for the visitors. Eight costumed actors will be strategically placed near their grave sites relaying their stories on the hour long cemetery tour.

Additionally this year will be 2 motor coach tours one departing at 10:45am and a second at 11am with the remainder tours being walking tours between 11am - 3pm.

If you are lucky enough to be in the area, come join us for a walk back in Wisconsin history at 1407 La Crosse St, Oak Grove Cemetery. Hope to see you there.

[art] i fact

La Crosse's Pump House was packed for their opening Gala night for ARTifact, a collaborative effort with the Pump House Regional Arts Center, La Crosse County Historical Society, and the Public and Policy History Department at UW-L. City historical pieces were interpreted by area artists.  

Interested artists  presented portfolios applying for the opportunity to interpret an historical artifact and once chosen the 15 were assigned an artifact with a 3-month completion time. Their results were nothing less than "AWSM."

Starting at the opposite side of the gallery room working backwards like a salmon swimming upstream, I moved amidst the people and works, reading descriptions until the crowd bottle necked. I have to admit I was willing to endure the bumping into folks to hear reactions to the artifacts and their artists' interpretations. 

Cigar box inspires Black Rose by Sarah Pederson

Each artifact had a description accompanied with the contemporary piece and its new title. Some pieces even had headsets with recorded explanations. A return trip before April 17th will be a must to study the pieces more in detail.

Included in the show was a mosaic 'Harvesting the River' by mosaic artist Ingvild Herfindahl reminding us of the area's important button trade. 

Kathleen Hawkes's 'Heartbeat' inkjet print imitated the rhythmic beats and repetition of a Ho Chunk drum while 3-D paper artist Martha Shwem created a paper mobile timeline of the paper fastener.

Sometimes it's the unplanned like lighting that enhances one's handiwork. The shadows cast on Jonathan Eimer's la crosse sticks (far left); one forged and the other carved from wood were exquisite.  Jonathan's work received an honorable mention. BTW Eimer is a fine arts degree grad and works as a locomotive engineer with BNSF Railway.

 Jill Rippe's A Visual Journey,
 A Look into  My Eyes

An Imperial #6 camera inspired an oversized mosaic bust by food scientist Jill Rippe. A sign encouraged the viewer to look into the bust's visor which was a kaleidoscope with a myriad of mirror pieces refracting as does the camera's lens.

Prestan Lawing's wood cut of the blacksmith emphasizes the numerous blows and action it must have taken for the metal forging of the knife pictured to the right.  Tong Khai pictured here (l) demonstrates this age old forging tradition at the Hmong Cultural Center.

La Crosse entrepreneur Giles  Montague also started La Crosse Cracker and Candy Factory in 1894. Printmaker Ben Alberti translated the booming industry of its time in his woodcut "Abundance." 

Abundance woodcut by Ben Alberti, printmaker

The fur muff had a lot more intimacy and Freudian connotation than I realized as when a woman had her hands inside it, it meant she was unavailable. Who knew? Brad Nichols, UW-L Professor of Metalsmithing created a 'status' jewelry piece yet it also represented the bonding and inequality of the sexes "just as the fur traders trapped the animals to make the muff." 

Pictured below Gussie's wedding dress, its contemporary counterpart was a fabric collage interpreted by public school (elementary-university) art teacher Marcia Thompson. I apologize for darkening the photo to enable seeing the intricacies of both pieces as Thompson's piece is much lighter and more delicate. Sorry.

T

Kim Vaughter's,  La Crosse painter and fabric artist, had the antique trunk being opened in a different time with whimsical creatures investigating its contents. Titled  The Ones Who Could Not Resist Will Be the Prettiest of All.  This trunk originally made by George Herken who ended up  manufacturing trunks and patenting a luggage label in the 1930's in La Crosse. 

Community, Family and Faith

Many church ladies participated in creating quilts as fundraisers. Such was the case in this 'signature' quilt by the Norwegian Evangelical Church where members paid 10 cents to have their names included on the quilt. Fiber sculptor, Kate Vinson, created the fabric church as the connecting thread to the community of these Norwegian families. 

The bottles to the left of the print are from the late 1800's to mid 1900's bottled within were soda waters, not beer. Surprise. Roger Boulay, Gallery and Art Collections Coordinator at Winona State uses photography to represent the bottles with an inkjet print.

Unmentionables by Misha Bolstad, UW-L graphic design prof

Leona's 3 in 1 undergarment, was light weight and easily washable. The open crotch suggested femininity and actually afforded its wearer modesty when needing to use the facilities. Hmmm. Modern colorful crotchless lingerie perhaps gives the viewer a different perspective. 

Lisa Lenarz's  "Cloth of International Friendship"was the overall 'winning' interpretation of traditional Hmong hemp pleated ceremonial skirt. 








A formal narrative painting recreates the area's socio cultural  1980's Friendship Program. Actually one of  my Show and Tell group  regifted his parents's ceremonial garb from the Hmong community to the La Crosse Historic society. Kewl indeed.

Ariel polishing her remarks

Somebody had to initiate and implement this ingeneous collaborative effort and it was the brainchild of UW-L's Canadian Ariel Beaujot. With the help of students, her colleagues and our community this exhibit came to fruition.  Kudos to you all and Thank you for showing the importance remembering a community's history through art.

* Additional 2016 presentations THE PUMP HOUSE REGIONAL ARTS Behind (art)i fact will take    place Sundays at 2pm :

 March 6, April 3 and 10th , and 17th