A Guest at Cole Watch Tower

   

      Want to be a guest at Cole Watch Tower? Many do. It's an extraordinary structure with quite a history.

      It was a popular place to the first known natives. Close to the river and heavily wooded, it was prime hunting land, and fed lots of people. It's also situated between burial mounds to the north and south, so it can be deduced that they truly loved this land and held it sacred. There are stories that suggest this area was still in contention long after the Menominee people ceded the last of their lands by treaty in 1848.

      When the white settlers first occupied this land, it's easy to imagine some of the trials and hardships they had to endure. From surviving the harshest Wisconsin winters, to fending off Indians who either didn't know or didn't care about the treaty with the whites, the experiences had here are a legacy that still reverberate through this unique property.

      These days, we get loads of curiosity-seekers. At least once a day, someone will pull over and take pictures of our home. Sometimes they stay on the side of the road. More often, they pull into the driveway, or even walk into the yard like they have all rights to do so. Imagine yourself in our position:

      You're working in the basement, or relaxing on the couch, or having some private time with your spouse. You hear your dogs outside, barking like mad, alerting you to a visitor. You walk outside to see who it is, only to see a car quickly leaving at your approach. Nobody said hello or goodbye, or took the time to greet you and ask questions; they only fled from your driveway like they were doing something wrong.

      How would this make you feel? Would you be nice and polite when it happened the first time? What about the 100th time? How about when there's a knock on the door that wakes you up, only to have a stranger ask what the place was used for; or cars honking in the wee hours of the morning as they pass?

      We understand the fascination with this place. That should be obvious. We bought it; made it our home, in spite of all the challenges it brings. We worked hard to make a sign to post at the top of the driveway, with a couple places online folks could visit and get more information. Still, strangers come stand in our yard taking pictures.

      If you want to act like and be treated as an intruder, and be met with hostility and suspicion, then by all means do those things we just discussed. If you want to be a guest at Cole Watch Tower, act like one. Call ahead, unless you're family; in that case you know our door is open to you. If you have business here, then walk up boldly and conduct it. Under no circumstances should you run when approached. We'll only suspect the worst of you.

All along the watchtowers....not always a happy ending.

Fox farmers built watchtowers to view the breeding foxes without disturbing them and to protect their investment from getting "carried" away.   Most towers were 2-3 story freestanding wooden structures.  Only a very small handful were built as part of the home.  The towers were abandoned after the fall of the fur of trade.  You can probably count the total remaining towers that have not been reclaimed by the elements on one hand now.  They are almost completely erased from our history. The remaining towers are truely irreplaceable. The pictured tower is in Canada. They believe it to be one of two still standing in the country that started the fox farm fever.  The barn is in poor condition. In 2012, a group was formed to save the structure.  I cannot find any recent updates.   I am afraid this will be another one lost.

http://www.mhs.mb.ca/docs/sites/foxbarn.shtml

TL;DR

"Nobody wants to read your wall of rant," I was told not too long ago. I guess I can't blame 'em, either. Looking back at some of my writings, they range from barely-coherent pubescent tantrums, to pretentious, pontificating puke that might be at home in a university thesis (though ridiculed as a barely-coherent pubescent tantrum), but probably not a public forum. But look out: I have a soapbox now too!

A Tale of Two Authors

If you don't already know us and our change-up style of Life In General, you may look at this blog as extremely schizophrenic, or ADD/ADHD; and you'd probably be right on most counts. But, the fact is, this blog has two authors. This is complicated by the fact that she sometimes writes for me to temper my tendencies, and vice versa. Maybe it's just my fevered little fantasy, but won't it be fun to guess which one of us is currently writing? I hope you think so too, because by-lines are pretty low on our priority list.
We're not going to make it easy for you, though. Guessing which one of us has the caustic sense of humor might be a real chore sometimes. 

Bottom line is, we just want you to enjoy being here and sharing with us; and being shared with. We want you to think; not to think like us - that wouldn't be any fun at all; just Think! We believe humanity is wide-awake and aware, and is just taking a pause to ponder the next step. Let us know how we can help (except by shutting up - that just ain't gonna happen), and we will do our best.

Namaste,
Nyoka the Jungle Girl
and
 Billy Jack

A Few Words About Advertisements

Jimmy Wales, the Founder of Wikipedia, had this to say about asking for donations instead of using ads to generate funds for their operating costs:

"Commerce is fine. Advertising is not evil. But it doesn't belong here. Not in Wikipedia. Wikipedia is something special. It is like a library or a public park. It is like a temple for the mind. It is a place we can all go to think, to learn, to share our knowledge with others."

This really resonates with us. We whole-heartedly agree, and we really do feel the same about Cole Watch Tower. We want it to be "...a temple for the mind...a place we can all go to think, to learn, to share..." And we would dearly love for it to be ad-free. We agonized over the decision to monetize for several reasons, some obvious, and some very subtle.

First, we're not too keen on corporate America. Their slippery slope has become a high bank where it's getting tough, if not impossible, to see things the way they used to be. There's a parasitic culture out there spending millions upon billions to convince the viewing public that you absolutely must have this product; the next big thing. It will make you good-looking and popular, skinny and sexy, intelligent and the envy of all your friends, if you'll only buy, buy, buy it. This was, by far, our major moral/ethical hurdle to allowing ads on our site in the first place.

We would love to give you a totally ad-free experience across our whole web-presence. That said, you probably noticed we jumped in with all four feet when we decided to monetize. We live on very little income because we are both repulsed by corporate slavery. We don't have a problem with being career-minded, and we heap praise on those who have learned to do what they love for a living, and on those who are just now beginning to walk that perilous path; we just know that investing your life and your family's time to serve foolish men with material standing is the same as throwing away the keys to Heaven.

Getting our web-presence started has been far from cheap, and this is only the beginning. Besides the substantial out-of-pocket expenses, there's time; literally hundreds of hours so far; sleepless nights; several day binges of learning to code HTML, CSS, and Javascript; fanning out into new social media and deciding which ones have the most immediate reach so we could draw in like-minded people as quickly as possible. We plan to put a donate button on the main site in the very near future, but until then, if you like us and want us to be able to stick to our plan to be here for you for decades, we only ask that you tolerate our ads.

If you want to take it a step further and be active, consider a donation. I promise you, this isn't a lucrative venture. All proceeds, whether from ads or donations go right back into rehabilitating Cole Watch Tower, or tweaking our website technique and content; especially to help get the word out about the massive amount of education, culture, and history available to everyone at no charge via the internet.
It's against corporate policy to encourage anyone to click our ads. What I can say, though, is go visit our sponsors. They're not hand-picked right now, but they could be, with just a little feedback. If you visit them, and find you just don't like them (for their content, or policies, or lack of conscience), please let us know. We want to make the world a better place. In the meantime, we can parasite the parasites, and eventually do the one truly noble thing capitialism is capable of: voting out the unwanted with our buying power.

The Yeti Hunter's debut paranormal investigation at The Historic Cole Watch Tower

Keeping it "historically accurate"

Keeping it "historically accurate"

Is HISTORY or HERITAGE more important? Both words conjure up a feeling of the past but in truth they are very different. History is based on the concern with events in the past. Heritage is our personal legacy, given to us by those who walked the same path we tread before us. 
Should we erase our heritage in favor of history? Should we restore items to historically accurate when ever possible? Who decides what historically accurate is before we can restore it?
At lot of time when we restore a building to historically accurate, what we are really doing is erasing the heritage given us. Those before us usually had reason for the changes made and those should be honored. In the 1950's, the previous owners of my house removed and upstairs bedroom and put in a kitchen. It still has the original red, curved counter top they put in. Should that be ripped out in the name of historical accuracy and turned back in to a bedroom so it will look the same as the other houses built 140+ years ago? If that is the case, I hope less places will be restored to historically accurate and more will be mindful of the heritage as well.

I believe "historically accurate" is an ugly idea.  It does a great disservice to these wonderful old places. For Cole Watch Tower to be put back to it's original condition, THE TOWER WOULD HAVE TO GO. That's right,  the tower is not historically accurate for a 1870's Italianate-style home. Historically, early settlers made do and prospered with what they could make work already on hand.  Bailing wire and bubble gum.  Yea, I would say we are historically accurate here and we will honor our heritage along the way.

They Might Be Giants first album free!