Just two photos from my morning drive to work.

First, I was on 10th Street just west of the Wisconsin Club, housed in the 1843 mansion built by Alexander Mitchell, founder of the Marine Bank and president of the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul Railway, later known as the Milwaukee Road, a major Midwestern transportation force for many years, plus grandfather of Billy Mitchell, who commanded all air combat units in France during World War I, who had a primary part in creating the United States Air Force, and for whom Milwaukee’s Mitchell Internation Airport is named.

Aside: Another interesting FYI about Billy Mitchell is that he’s buried in Milwaukee’s well-known Forest Home Cemetery, which is not only a beautiful and unusual place somewhat reminiscent of the Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris but is similarly also the final resting place of many (local) luminaries. (The Père Lachaise is home to the graves of many world-renowned figures like Balzac, Chopin, Fourier, Colette, and, of course, Jim Morrison 🙂 ).

But anyway, I was headed north on 10th Street, stopped for a traffic light just west of the Wisconsin Club and just east of (and above) the freeway, when I glanced slightly left and noticed these comma-shaped, spiral-looped clouds.

Aren’t they cool? I’ve never seen clouds look like that. I don’t know what they indicate in terms of pressure systems or anything else meteorological, but I took a quick picture before the light changed so I could remember them.

The next photo is another stopped-at-a-traffic-light moment, this time at the corner of Water and Kilbourn. I just liked the way the boulevard plantings framed the buildings, although I know the resulting photograph itself is kind of a clichéd “convention bureau” or “visit Milwaukee” kind of image.

But I don’t care. Sometimes bland, “conventional” pictures are nice, too 🙂