Home from Madison

Heidi and I have just returned from Madison, Wisconsin, where we've set up Katharine in her new apartment on Mansion Hill. Like her apartment in New York, this apartment is small in size but in a great neighborhood, right along Lake Mendota. As the name suggests, it is a neighborhood of old mansions built in the 1850's, and now mostly turned into student apartments and B&Bs, but still handsome on the outside and surrounded by well-tended lawns. Katharine's building is a more conventional 6-story apartment house, but it has a great location adjacent to the lake. She's on the 4th floor, looking out over the tops of the trees to the lake.

It's an efficiency apartment, but much bigger than the one she had in New York, with a full kitchen in an alcove on one side, a private bath, a walk-in clothes closet, a broom closet, and a coat closet. The 9-foot ceilings give a great sense of spaciousness. We spent three days in Madison, getting her moved in (many trips up the small elevator with the old-fashioned swinging door and sliding gate), unpacked, car registered, parking permit secured, bank account started, and University ID picked up. After Heidi flew in on Thursday (Katharine and I had driven out in convoy in two separate cars on Monday and Tuesday -- about a 16-hour drive from Washington), we had a classic trip to Target to buy housewares and furnishings, including three bookcases, a small stepladder to reach the high built-in cabinets in the kitchen, ironing board and iron, curtain rods, etc. We spent the next day assembling bookcases, hanging pictures, and getting the place decorated as best we could.

As any reader of Katharine's blog (http://linaslookbook.blogspot.com/) will attest, she has the decorating skills to turn a sow's ear into a silk purse. She has much more to work with in this apartment than she had in New York, so I'm looking forward to seeing what she does with it when we next get to Madison. Her address there is Apartment 45, 522 N. Pinckney St., Madison, WI 53703. Phone and e-mail are the same (she only uses her cell phone): (917) 359-4934 and katharine.wells@gmail.com. She now commences her new life as the "Chipstone/James Watrous Wisconsin Distinguished Graduate Fellow in American Material Culture" in the Art History Department at the University of Wisconsin. Classes start next week.

-- Jack