We are spending several days in Baraboo, Wisconsin.  We plan to visit with relatives living in Eagle River Wisconsin, and then on to Willmar Minnesota, to see family that we’ve not seen for many months.  For the most part our stay in Baraboo has been delightful.  There have been bare glimpses of the ideological chasm that underlies the anti-vaccine resistance.  It certainly helps to spend blocks of time engaged in activities that do not involve news reports.

Tonight we visited the Al Ringling Brewing Company which has been added to the Ringling Mansion in downtown Baraboo.  A spacious dining room with a performance stage at one end and large brewing vessels visible at the other, was impressive.  We enjoyed a light dinner, and listened to some live music.  The facility was appointed with some of the artifacts from the early 1900s when the Ringling Bros Circus was in its heyday.  I liked the golden angel suspended from the ceiling.

Relaxing after our meal, I opened a small notebook of quotations from some time ago.  I reviewed these lines which seem more so true today than when I wrote them down.  “Uncultured” here means a condition of marginal literacy, without tools for exercising good judgment, and possessing confidence in one’s judgments.  Such tools be learned…

Uncultured man
sees in conscience, in reason,
in so far as he recognizes it as his own
no universal objective power;
therefore
he must separate from himself
that which gives him moral laws,
and place it in opposition to himself,

as a distinct personal being.

Belief in revelation
is a childlike belief,
and
is only respectable
   as long as it is
      childlike.

— Ludwig Feuerbach