By Riverside

Last night I went down to Riverside to check out the La Crosse Concert Band playing their second-to-last concert of the summer.  The theme for the all-volunteer band was channel surfing, playing everything from Disney themes to the theme to the West Wing before ending on the Imperial March from The Empire Strikes Back, at which point conductor Christopher Werner donned a Jedi robe and lightsaber (and a sneaky drummer was in costume as well).

I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I was impressed by the turnout.  There’s free popcorn, and the Lion’s Club also provides a concession stand for drinks.  The show lasts about an hour, with a “children’s march” in the middle during which they collect donations, which support the group along with local business contributions.  They rehearse each concert only once, the night before, and they do an excellent jobs.

With the exception of the past year, I’ve been in some sort of concert band every year for over a decade, so I feel safe in saying the atmosphere there is considerably different than other concert performances.  The outdoor venue makes it very casual–you can be as close to or as far away from the stage as you want.  People sitting up front get a good view and best sound, while people sitting further back can listen casually while talking, and people further back played frisbee while still being close enough to appreciate the music.  Except for the occasional motorcycle, it’s an ideal setting.  If you haven’t been down there to check them out yet, you probably should.  They’ll be playing their final show next Wednesday, July 29 under the direction of Tammy Fisher, performing a tribute to Sousa.

(Here’s some more pictures from the show.)

Interested in the band?  They do require an audition to participate in, but members range from highschoolers to senior citizens.  I believe they said they hold auditions in April, and I think I’m going to try out next summer.  I stopped being in concert bands because I just didn’t have time for all the rehearsals, but their schedule is very manageable (especially in the summer) and not everyone plays at every concert.  If you’re musically inclined, you should consider it!

If you were downtown Friday or Saturday, you may have noticed it was a little more crowded than usual–especially considering the unseasonably cool weather.  Did anyone find any good deals for Krazy Days?  I myself went wedding band shopping, and we found our rings at Howe’s for 20% off!  It was a fun little adventure.

The next remnant I found is just off the trail between Riverside and Myrick, at the north end of 7th Street where the marsh hits the city.

I actually took this picture at the beginning of the summer.  Now, there’s enough green around to mostly block out the debris at the bottom of the hill, but you can still see it if you look.  This particular collection is even stranger than the stairs by the river.

I’m assuming these things weren’t always where they are now.  By the looks of it, there was a building on the side of the hill that collapsed when the hill started to erode.  It happens–a few decades from now, there are other places along the hill that may need to be worked on to keep the same thing from happening.  It’s what got left there that’s so strange.

A rusted shell of an old truck is the most noticeable, but there’s more down there.  Lots of bricks and boards.  A tire.  A lawn chair.  Random things.  My personal favorite (not pictured) is a set of stone stairs (most likely the entry to the building) that leads straight to a tree.

So I can’t help but wonder what used to be there.  What it looked like back when it was still standing.  And every time I go by, I want to go down and check out the debris and see what else is down there, but the desire to not trespass or fall down a big hill always manages to talk me out of it.  Shame.

This Wednesday, the La Crosse Concert Band will be performing in the park!  They’ve played down there a few other times this summer, but this will be the first time I’ll have seen them.  The concert is at 7:30, and it’s free, so you should go!  And don’t worry about the weather–even though we’re supposed to have another not-so-sunny week, there’s a rain site.  I’ll look for you there.

I decided to spend my lunch break yesterday at the park on a beautiful, if breezy day, where I met Tom and his 14-month old son Spencer.  They were killing time while Tom’s wife was at a job interview at a church here in town, but he wasn’t sure which one.  After a two day drive from New Hampshire, Spencer (all smiles while I talked with his dad) was more than ready to spend some time in the shade outside a car, but he took his first major road trip pretty well.

If his wife gets the job, they’ll be considering moving to La Crosse.  Though his wife went to a Lutheran seminary, Tom, a computer programmer back in NH, says he’s never spent much time in the Midwest and this was his first time in La Crosse.  Riverside just happened to be the nearest park, and it looked like a nice place to spend some time.  Spencer, an only child (so far), certainly seemed to enjoy it.

I hope everyone enjoyed Riverfest!  There was a lot going on at the park this past weekend, and unfortunately, I don’t have anything to post about.  I wanted to try something different for Riverfest–I went down to the park and took a bunch of short video clips rather than focusing on a single person to ask people how they were enjoying the fest, what they’d come for, and where they were from, but I discovered when I got back that my camera couldn’t handle the background noise and the audio was essentially useless (which I was afraid would happen, but tried anyway).

Riverfest was fun, though, even if everything didn’t work out exactly how I’d hoped.  By Riverside will be returning to at least a weekly schedule again this week.

I was in Milwaukee for the weekend, so I asked a friend and fellow English major if she’d like to fill in.  Please welcome guest blogger Kelleen Nolan!

In the midst of the heat wave, it was impressive to see so many people still visiting Riverside Park. Amongst the visitors were Kevin and Deanna Johnson. They were spending the day in the shade feeding the ducks along the river bank. Kevin works for UPS and Deanna is a stay-at-home mom to their six-year old son, but today they able to take some time off and visit downtown La Crosse.

Both are La Crosse natives, and they love being on or near the river. When they aren’t feeding the ducks, you can probably find the Johnsons boating. The couple enjoys fishing, swimming on the sandbar enjoying a beer or a soda. “I was raised on the river” says Kevin, who also feels that the river is one of La Crosse’s better attractions.

Even in the winter, these two do their best to visit the river often. “We’re even out on the ice” says Deanna. They will be some of the first people out on the river come spring, too.  “We’re breaking up the ice.” As you can see, they try to be out there as often as possible.

“Pretty much the river is my life.” So don’t be surprised to see Kevin, Deanna and their son out and about this summer!

Ah, Wisconsin–you have to love it when in the span of a week temperatures range everywhere from unseasonably chilly to deathly hot.  Needless to say, I wasn’t highly motivated to get outside these past couple of days, and although I did finally get out to the park tonight, I didn’t have time to stop and talk to anyone since I had to get home and get ready to head down to Milwaukee for Summerfest tomorrow.  So I’ll be out the rest of the week, and this post might seem like somewhat of a cop-out as a result.

While I was in the park, I did stop and take some pictures of a spot that I’ve been curious about since I first found it–a set of stone stairs leading down to the water just behind the museum.  There’s nothing attached to it, and the root growing over the lower steps suggests that the stairs have been there quite some time.  I go down them whenever I have a chance.   But I know nothing about these steps–I don’t know who built them, or why.  I don’t know when they were built, and I can only imagine just how many people have used them (though I imagine it’s largely been fishers and photographers these days).  There’s a certain mystery that surrounds them, a remnant of La Crosse that was.  The area is full of them.  I’m probably romanticizing, but I still have to wonder what the stories are behind these pieces of the past.

I took a bunch of pictures from the steps, and if you’re interested, they’re up on a Flickr photostream.  I’ll be highlighting a few more areas like this throughout the summer.

At last!  I have the internet again, and staying inside on a night as nice as last night would have been a criminal offense.  I caught the end of an art class, so I talked with the instructor, Peggy Baumgaertner, for a few minutes.

Peggy’s been a portrait artist in La Crosse for 32 years, and has lived here most of her life.  She works on commission and teaches workshops about 3 months a year, and also has published several articles and videos.  The class in the park was a plein air class focusing on color use and manipulation.  The lighting and shadow of the park made it an ideal location for this.  Because the class is so focused on a single element, it was open to all skill levels, although this was the first experience any of the students had in plein air portrait art.

Peggy is a recognized faculty of the Portait Society of America, and the students had traveled from Washington, Florida, Canada, and Panama for this workshop.  She’s taught across the country, but ultimately decided to stay in La Crosse and currently has a studio on Main Street she’s been at for six years.  If you’re interested in her commission work, you can check out her personal site, and for more information about her portrait workshops, head to portraitclasses.com.

I also learned that she was looking for some models to sit and be painted for her classes–so I might be giving it a shot!  It should be a good time–this site is opening all kinds of doors that I wouldn’t have thought about before.

First of all, I’d like to thank everyone for your support these past couple weeks, and follow that by apologizing for still having only three profiles so far.  Between a streak of bad weather and switching my internet provider, I haven’t been able to get anything up.  I’ll be trying to remedy that, and while it looks like tonight might prove to be a bit too wet to hit the park, I’ll do my best to get more profiles up ASAP.

In the meantime, I realized that while each post has the ability to be commented on, By Riverside is still missing something crucial–an opportunity for readers to contribute.  So I want to try something–on the right, there’s a new page in the sidebar marked “Share Your Stories.”  It’s really just another post, but I’m opening up the comments to let anyone and everyone share their own stories from Riverside.  Met anyone interesting at the park?  Tell us about it.  Done anything fun?  Tell us about it.  Seen anything interesting, unusual, or notable?  (You see where this is going.)  I want to hear from you!

Thanks to some unseasonably cold temperatures, it’s been a slow week for By Riverside, but the weather finally started to look up yesterday, and I was able to hit the park again.  Then I got home to discover that I didn’t have internet access, so I had to delay posting it until today.  Sorry about that!

Wednesday started out sunny, but by the time I got off work and headed to the park in the afternoon it had become overcast and a bit dreary.  I was worried that there wouldn’t be anyone at the park, and sure enough, it was nearly empty compared to a sunny day.  But as luck would have it, I managed to find a few adventures who weren’t deterred by the weather.

I caught Ryan and Libby just as they were packing up one of their kayaks after spending the last few hours on the La Crosse River.  Both English majors at UW-L, they decided that renting some kayaks and hitting the water sounded like a good way to spend a day off, and they stopped at a sandbar for a picnic lunch.  Luckily, Libby carried the food–Ryan ended up flipping his kayak not once, but twice shortly after they started and ended up getting drenched (though he insists he had the skinny kayak and she had the easy one).  Still, despite the cold water, the ever-present mosquitoes, and a key-forgetting incident, they had a good time and saw some bald eagles and herons (or cranes–they didn’t know the difference, and neither do I).  Afterwards, they planned on going to see Up.

As it turns out, they weren’t the only ones kayaking today.  Apparently just as they were starting to pack up, the Coulee Canoe & Kayak Club was just heading out.

Ryan and Libby rented one of their kayaks from UW-L; I wasn’t even aware the program existed, and it’s also open to the public, though students get a discounted rate.  Now that I know about it, I might try to get out on the river too…once the weather levels out a bit.

I’ve had a few people ask me: If By Riverside is a community-based site, what happens if you meet someone who isn’t from the area?  I wasn’t expecting to have it come up so soon, but I have an answer nonetheless: I write about them anyway.  Perhaps the most important element of a community is the people who live in it, but there’s more to consider–such as the people who pass through, and why.  Today I met my first out-of-towner, Jennifer Olson.

I met Jennifer in the wetland area behind Myrick Park where she sat taking in the view and beautiful spring weather (pictured below: the view).  She’s originally from Indiana, but she’s currently attending Beloit College, where she’ll be entering in to her sophomore year.  She’d first considered taking on anthropology as her major, but now she’s considering international relations–basically, she says, she just likes too many things.  Having shifted from Music to Computer Science to English in my time at UW-L, I can relate.  Jennifer’s also an avid reader, and says that her interests are broad enough that she’s willing to read just about any book in a library.

Jennifer was in the area for a traning session–she’ll be spending the summer as a camp counselor at Bethel Horizons, a Lutheran camp in Dodgeville for children of low-income families. The camp gives parents who may not be able to afford other camps the opportunity to give their children the summercamp experience–camping, hiking, swimming, etc.  She first learned about the camp when someone on campus spoke about it, and decided that it seemed like a worthwhile cause that would be a positive experience.  Her training group stopped in Myrick Park in the afternoon to relax and have a cookout, and she took the opportunity to explore a bit.

Bethel Horizons seems like a great program, and Jennifer sounded excited to get started.  From the looks of it, she’s in for a fun summer.