Allie Oop's Photo Blog

Story behind the Yellow Capitol from the Wisconsin State Journal can be found here

Yesterday I noticed that there were a bunch of people canoeing in Wingra Creek, So today I stopped by to take some pictures. These students at Wright Middle School were being taught how to canoe as part of their regular gym class. As urban students many of them aren’t exposed to this type of activity, even though Madison had 4 lakes and many places to rent canoes and kayaks. The canoes are lent to the school from Madison School Community Rec (MSCR) and the teachers were taught how to teach canoeing through a grant.

I spoke to two students who were curious why I was taking pictures and they said that they loved this part of gym class. The students were quite entertaining, they had a hard time going straight, unlike some of their peers who picked up the paddle quite easily.

Unlike alot of people my group of friends in Madison are my friends from high school. It’s hard to explain but we weren’t exactly good friends till highschool ended and I was accepted into their group. I hung out with one of these girls, “B”, in 8th grade when I moved here, and another one, “E”, I went on a trip to New York with that same year, but we weren’t friends exactly. E and I became friends when I was on Yearbook our senior year of Highschool, when I was taking pictures of the Gymnastics team for the spread I was working on. At that point I had no idea we’d become friends. L and I met through one of our other friends K. We had study hall together and would goof off on online forums. She changed how I viewed cyberspace. K was in many of my classes from freshman year through senior year. Our senior year, I was invited to K’s house for a Pre-prom party. I bonded with these girls that night over burgers, brats, boys, and my first viewing of Top Gun.

Four years later we graduated from college. Every summer we hung out together, at the union or just watching movies and eating brownies at someone’s house. The past 3 years since College graduation, E has lived out west and now returned home, K has gotten married and moved out east, B has now gotten married and soon with move to South Dakota, and tomorrow L leaves for Texas.

This fondue dinner was a celebration of many different things, marriage, birthdays, moving on, and life.

For a century, the statue of President Abraham Lincoln has watched over Bascom Hill.

Those 100 years will be marked by a ceremony sponsored by the Wisconsin Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission at noon on Wednesday, Sept. 16.

UW-Madison Chancellor Biddy Martin, the 1st Brigade Band and a number of Lincoln enthusiasts will gather at the iconic statue to mark its centennial and the bicentennial of Lincoln’s birth.

“It’s a unique opportunity to learn something significant about President Lincoln, about his relationship to the University of Wisconsin-Madison and about the role that he played in a variety of ways in the development of the campus,” says Jim Hoyt, an emeritus journalism professor and a member of the Wisconsin Lincoln Bicentennial Commission and 1st Brigade Band.

John Skilton, chair of the state’s bicentennial commission, and Hoyt will speak during the program, which will also include Ron Knaus of the Sons of Union Civil War Veterans, the group that donated the Gettysburg Address plaque beside the entrance to Bascom Hall in 1937.

The 1st Brigade Band, a recreation of an actual Wisconsin Civil War band, will perform 15 minutes before the event and immediately after.

Lincoln signed the Morrill Land Grant College Act in 1862, legislation inspired by a broad educational reform movement in America that allowed designated universities to expand their curriculum beyond traditional scientific and classical studies.

The university’s College of Agricultural and Life Sciences, College of Engineering, Cooperative Extension Service and the Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) programs can trace their origins to the Morrill Act of 1862 and subsequent additions to this legislation.

The act provided each state with the means to sell federal land to generate an endowment to create programs that would teach practical skills in agriculture and engineering, which was then referred to as mechanic arts.

The act also called for the teaching of “military tactics,” in response to the need for an expanded officer corps at the beginning of the Civil War.

It wasn’t until 1866 that Wisconsin officially declared UW-Madison as its recipient of the land grant. The university purchased an additional 195 acres of land to the west of Bascom Hill to establish the University Experimental Farm at less than $28,000.

Soon after, apple orchards and vineyards were established on Observatory Hill and the first professor of agriculture and chemistry was hired. Later, research on the farm improved varieties of wheat, oats, barley and corn.

“If another college or university in Wisconsin had been designated as the land-grant institute, Madison would look very different today,” says Daniel Einstein, program manager with Facilities, Planning and Management.

The Lincoln statue is a duplicate of the statue located in Lincoln’s native town of Hodgenville, Ky.

UW-Madison alumnus Richard Lloyd Jones worked with the sculptor, Adolph. A. Weinman, to cast an exact copy of the original statue for the university campus.

The Lincoln statue was first unveiled in 1909, a century after Lincoln’s birth. Ten years later, the statue was re-located from its original position between North and South halls to its current site in front of Bascom Hall.

To mark the anniversary, Milwaukee art conservator Cricket Harbeck power washed and waxed the statue to get rid of surface deposits from air pollutants, grit and bird droppings.

Harbeck also cleaned and preserved the Gettysburg Address plaque and the sifting-and-winnowing plaque that flank the main entrance to Bascom Hall. Hoyt and Skilton funded the cleaning.

This was Lincoln’s first detailed sprucing up in a decade.

“He looks 100 percent better,” Hoyt says. “It was a project well worth doing.”

Text from: http://www.news.wisc.edu/17078

Please go vote for Riley ( photo of him. You can vote here , and vote once a day!!
Thanks!!!

Please go vote for Riley ( photo of him. You can vote here , and vote once a day!!
Thanks!!!

Blue moon ice cream is a very local thing. It is found mainly in Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin. It’s has the same attraction as Bubble Gum Ice cream does for little kids. My friends and I got a tub of it this spring after a heated discussion trying to remember what it tasted like.

I was planning on taking a picture of a friend of mine while she was swinging, to show gravity, but it got too dark and too mosquito-y, so at 9:45 I had to come up with a different idea. As I left the ballpark last night I drove through town instead of jumping on the Beltline to make a bee line home. I went downtown looking for the letter “G”. First I thought the obvious.. the glowing capital, but then I stopped at a stoplight at the Crystal Corner Bar and realized that was my shot for today. I really like how it turned out with the biker in motion going across the neon lights.

Tonight was my last night of my Woman’s softball team, our overall standings were 4 wins 7 losses. Sadly this team was undefeated the year I began (2 or 3 years ago). This year bought quite a few new people plus we also lost some good players. The past few summer’s I’ve played in two softball leagues, an all woman’s league and a coed league. Having my coed team play on Monday nights always warmed me up for the competition the next night. Every year I see improvements as the season progresses. Unfortunately I think it’s too short, just last night I saw my throwing arm get stronger, and my batting improved like 20%! I might not be the best player on the field, but I have fun!

A friend asked me to put up some of my fireworks pictures from this weekend. But before I do I’d like to preface them with this, I have been photographing fireworks for a few years, my first and favorite was when I was looking at a college in St Louis. They were amazing, the fireworks were shot off a barge on the Mississippi River, and from where we were sitting they looked like they went up through the St Louis Arch. It was amazing! Every year since I’ve brought my camera to fireworks. To some fireworks, I’ve gone alone so I can just click away and not feel weird only half paying attention. Since I went to fireworks last weekend for Madison’s Rhythm and Booms, I decided not to bring my tripod, but to lay back and enjoy the fireworks with my boyfriend and my friend. This was the first time I saw them in Glendale, Wisconsin. Here are a few of them: (to see them larger please click on the photo)

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Not everyone loves their city, but I love Madison. The frank Lloyd wright inspired Monona Terrace is soo beautiful day or night. I love how the lights shine and how on calm days it reflects inthe water below. To me, Monona Terrace looks at the capital maybe making a statement.

Day 165 June 15 Picking out a bonsai Plant, originally uploaded by Allis0n J.

There was this little man with a van sitting in a parking lot selling Bonsai Plants. There were quite a few of them, Something I hadn’t seen there before. I had missed it but moments before he and someone else were sitting in lawn chairs working on the plants. The Bonsai man and this women spent quite a while choosing the best one for her!