Steven Helmer Publications

My wife and I decided to give each other birthday experiences this year instead of birthday presents. This is why I took her to the Mid-Continent Railway Museum last month and, for my birthday this week, she took me to the Wisconsin Maritime Museum in Manitowoc, WI. This is a museum I've wanted to visit for some time now but never seemed to find a free weekend to do so. Now that I was finally able to do just that, I can say it didn't disappoint. The museum isn't overly large and only took us about an hour or so to go through it. However, there were quite a few items on display, and we learned a lot about ships and the Manitowoc community, especially during World War II, when dozens of freshwater submarines were constructed there. Sadly, the USS Cobia submarine is currently in dry dock and wasn't available for us to tour. However, there were quite a few other things in the museum we found entertaining. My personal favorite (and my wife's) was the submarine simulator...

Synopsis: A non-fiction and illustrated historical account of Wisconsin's circus heritage and the people who were responsible for bringing entertainment to the crowds. Review : I received Badger State Showmen as a birthday present a couple weeks ago and as someone who enjoys history, I decided to move it to the top of my reading list. Overall, it ended up being an enjoyable book. I knew, mostly from our visits to Circus World Museum in Baraboo, Wisconsin had a long and historic connection to circuses. However, outside of only a handful of well-known circuses, I never really fully understood the full scope of that connection until reading this book, which also happened to be published by that museum. The authors put in quite a bit of detail too. I had expected this to be a brief summary of the various circus owners and performers, but the book goes far above and beyond in that regard. In fact, there were a number of pages and paragraphs I had to re-read just because I wasn't ...