Appleton rocks, especially this past Saturday where, within a two mile stretch, you could watch a National Tree Climbing Championship, attend the first annual Irish Fest, walk through a peak-season Farmer's Market and enjoy Rhythms of the World, a celebration of multi-cultural generosity and transcendent beauty. After all of that, we were also lucky enough [...]
I have Jumped Around on multiple occasions at Camp Randall, including football games and graduations. But, one of my favorite Jump Arounds to date happened Saturday afternoon on Pondview Court in Appleton. Led by my mother, we joined her neighborhood in a celebration of all that is great and virus-proof in Wisconsin. Laughter, for example, [...]
My mother jitterbugged into her ninth decade on a dance floor full of friends and family. She wore a fresh corsage pinned onto her shoulder by her lifelong friend and high school prom date, Larry, and brought a spare pair of dancing shoes to a venue full of both memories and plans. My mom likes [...]
Had we brought our steins, we would have raised them to the plucky participants of Cedarburg's Oktoberfest. Neither rain, nor wind, nor invasion by Polish/Croatian interlopers kept them from their appointed rounds. Prost! We wandered into the main tent on a soggy Saturday afternoon just in time for the Pommersche Tanzdeel Freistadt dancers (and, fortunately, [...]
Back when she went by Peggy Jo, rolled her dungarees and flipped her hair, my mother used to jitterbug across the smooth, waxed floor of her parent’s basement. Self taught in bobby socks, she and her friend Beanie spent hours practicing dance steps with whatever partners they could scare up from the neighborhood gang. Their [...]