The Wall Street Journal had a front page article this week about fake towns, the new zones being created in many towns to simulate a clean, healthy small town downtown environment, with restaurants, entertainment, interesting shops, easy access, and high levels of safety. From my point of view, these fake towns are attempts to create what we in Appleton almost take for granted in our community.

If you're looking for some quality real estate for the next phase of your life, don't mess with a short-lived, unproven fake town - get a real town with a healthy, wholesome community. Move to Appleton!

The Fox River offers many opportunities for water sports such as jet skiing, boating, and fishing. Below are a few photos of aquatic scenes I took during a walk near Telulah Park in Appleton last Sunday.

This Saturday is the annual Greek and Serbian Festival held at Pierce Park (1206 W. Prospect Ave.), 11 AM to 7 PM. The event is sponsored by the St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church in Appleton. Come enjoy food, music, folk dancing, and lots of fun.

Photomax.com, a new online photo service, recently had a digital video and photo contest, with winners announced at a meeting in Salt Lake City. Walter Reade of Appleton was one of the first place winners with a video montage of his two young daughters prepared as a gift for Mother's Day. You can see a low-bandwidth version of the video here. Congrats, Walter!

The 32nd Annual Commencement Concert with the combined symphony orchestras of Appleton East, North, and West High Schools was held Sunday evening at Lawrence Chapel. Wonderful program with some extremely talented soloists and great orchestras. Here's a photo of Lydia Phillips, the dancer who performed while the Appleton West Symphony Orchestra played Morris Danse by Edward German (directed by Gary Wolfman).

Monday night I took some of my family to Galvan's Restaurant, 2220 E Northland Ave. by the Superbowl bowling alley. Galvan's is a family diner that has been praised for their gyros. They also offer basic sandwiches, soups, pies, etc. Fairly inexpensive and generally OK basic food is my take, but there were a couple glitches. I started with an order of their soup of the day, seafood gumbo - but they were all out of that. This was a bit late, around 8 PM, but still, that's a real shame. They also offered white chicken chili and regular red chili, or so the waitress claimed, so I ordered a bowl of the red chili. What was served me was a version of refried bean soup, similar to a recipe that my wife has used, but far less appetizing because this version had a lot of cream in it. I think the ingredients were cream, pureed refried beans, tomato chunks, chicken, and chili spices. It was an awkward combination with a coarse, almost gritty texture and did not seem to fit into any chili category that I was familiar with. I couldn't finish it.

The gyro was good, except that the white sauce was based on sour cream instead of yoghurt used with "real" gyro dishes. I'm sure many people prefer the fattier sauce, though. Others had a basic hamburger (looked OK) and a Reuben sandwich that was good but was inadequate when it comes to the sauce that should be inside on the bread - just not enough or not tasty enough to enhance the sandwich.

By the way, the nearby Superbowl is one of Appleton's more popular bowling alleys with several dozen alleys.

Last year I gave a negative review to Pancheros, a low-cost Mexican restaurant with two locations in Appleton. But after a second try, I think they have made some improvements that have won me back again. Pancheros serve burritos, fajitas, quesadillas and tacos that are offered in several varieties featuring chicken, steak, pork, or grilled vegetables. They make their flour tortillas fresh after you order, with pre-made balls of dough that are rapidly pressed flat in a tortilla maker and then cooked on a grill. The problem last year was that the tortillas were pressed too hard and too long, resulting in an extremely thin and rubbery tortilla inferior to less fresh store-bought versions. But now it appears that they have an improved technique: when the press that flattens the dough is operated, it is given a couple of quick pulses to more gently press the dough rather than hammering the dough with one long high-pressure episode. As a result, I think we've got much better tortillas now with more body and a great texture.

I had a quesadilla with grilled vegetables, and it was excellent. Others in my party had burritos or fajitas, and they were all impressed with the food. The items cost around $4 to $6 each.

I took this photo tonight in downtown Appleton. The Old Bavarian Restaurant has been recommended to me twice in the past week and really is a great place for German food.

After a couple trips to New York City, my bagel awareness is at an all-time high, and I've been on a quest for Appleton's best bagels. While several bagel shops and bakeries sell a lot of bagels to hungry Fox Cities dwellers, I hadn't found true bagel greatness in the area until last month when I walked into Big Apple Bagels. Oh la la! These people know their bagels, bagels that come close enough to actual New York bagels to fool most non-New Yorkers. While a quirk in the laws of physics actually makes it physically impossible for perfect bagels to exist more than about 30 miles outside of Manhattan, Big Apple gets close enough for my taste.

I'm delighted at the many fine varieties they offer. Their egg bagel is light and flavorful, for example. I have tried five varieties so far and think they've really got a winning approach. Delicious! They also offer a variety of sandwiches, smoothies, and other fare. Great place for a quick lunch!

Big Apple Bagels can be found on the west side of town at 2601 W College Avenue, phone: (920) 739-0618. A second location for you east-siders is near the southeast Wal-Mart, across Calumet close to Kohl's: W3192 County Road KK, phone: (920) 733-3120.

Had lunch this week at the Asian Garden Restaurant, formerly Great Wall Chinese. This is a good Chinese buffet conveniently located near the Fox River Mall at 405 N. Mall Drive, Appleton. The restaurant features a large spread of items, rivaling that of Hong Kong Buffet in Neenah. It's a good choice for lunch, with comfortable booths and a quiet atmosphere. The food is good and fresh with an excellent variety, but not many of the dishes stand out as really excellent -- a common problem for buffets, of course. The buffet includes a Mongolian barbecue, but the selection of ingredients is relatively small and the cook prepares only one person's food at a time, resulting in a painfully slow wait during busy times. I suggest skipping the Mongolian barbecue and focusing on other items, including the good California rolls and excellent variety of fruit. Open all week long. Phone: (920) 954-8888.

Other good Chinese buffets in the area include two of my favorite places, Hong Kong Buffet on Main Street in Neenah, and Mindu's on west Wisconsin Avenue, with a smaller selection but generally higher quality items, including a broader selection of simple sushi items (California rolls, etc.). I also like China Dragon near Regal Cinema on the southeast side of Appleton and China Buffet on Northland, in the Northland Mall. These are described in more detail on my page about dining in Appleton.

I had lunch recently with Matt Mars, the industrious proprietor of what is said to be the best haunted house in the Fox Cities area, the The Burial Chamber on the north end of Lake Street in Neenah. (Though I'm not personally into haunted houses, a trusted fan of haunted houses assures me that this is the place to go.) As I learned about his business, I was impressed with Matt's attention to detail, safety, regulations, and customer satisfaction. He's a real professional who puts a lot of thought and care into his work and trains his employees carefully.

One of the challenges with the industry is that a lot of rogue haunted houses spring up that violate safety regulations. For example, in some other haunted houses, you may be in a maze with cardboard walls and no sprinkler system. If a fire were to start, it could become an inferno in moments with no easy escape. I suggest you avoid the unregulated houses - unsafe conditions are just too scary for Halloween or any other time.

Forbes magazine has rated Appleton as #27 in its list of the best small metropolitan areas for business and careers. This is a big honor given the huge selection of competitors. Green Bay was ranked #106, Milwaukee #124, and Madison #31. The listings are based on considerations of economic conditions, quality of life, education, income growth, job growth, cost of doing business, etc.

Among the large metro areas was #4, Boise, Idaho - a town where I spend some wonderful boyhood years. But Appleton is hard to beat, and I'm so pleased to be raising my family here.

Fox Cities residents with text messaging can now receive free information through the 4INFO system brought to us with the help of the Appleton Post-Crescent. A story about the introduction of the 4INFO system is here, but for details on how to use the system, see the explanations at 4INFO.net.

To use the system, send a search request to 4INFO (44636), and you'll get a response a few seconds later. I tried it on somebody's Razr phone by entering the stock ticker SLW (Silver Wheaton, my favorite stock and one that I think is about to break out sharply and one that will easily double this year - yes, I'm big on precious metal stocks as an important part of one's portfolio). A few seconds later I got back not just the current price but some other info about SLW trading that day. Fun!

To get weather in the area, send the text string "w 54915" to get weather for the zip code 54915 (one of several codes for Appleton). You can also get movie show times, sports scores, and Yellow Pages information, as shown on the instructions at 4INFO.net. Plus you can get info on airline flights, FedEx package status, horoscopes, or get info about hotels. For sports buffs, type a player's name and get his latest stats. Cool!

Gannett Digital, the company that owns The Post-Crescent, has a minority investment in the firm 4INFO of Palo Alto, California - a real plus for Fox Cities dwellers.

Just before meeting began at my church this morning, I stopped at a little pond along Highway 41 at the Breezewood exit in Neenah, next to Plexus, to look at a beautiful great egret that was hunting for food. It's a pond that attracts egrets, blue herons, Canadian geese, ducks, and other birds, but it seems to be a favorite spot for a few egrets and a blue heron in the area. They seem much more shy than other birds and don't let me get close enough for a good photo even with 10x zoom. Maybe I'll have better luck some other day, but here's low-quality photo for now.



Here's another shot taken yesterday on my way to a baptism at the church (click to enlarge):

Millions of pounds of sediment from the bottom of Little Lake Butte des Morts and the Fox River continue to be sucked up and processed at sites like the one shown below for landfilling in a terribly expensive effort to remove PCBs that were deposited decades ago. More than just sediments and delicate river bottom life is being sucked up - over $1 billion from the local economy is being spent in this vast effort with little hope of measurable benefits. In fact, there is a high possibility that PCB levels in the water will increase by stirring up the PCB-laden sediments that have been buried for years. My, my, my. Thank you, Governor Doyle!

Wisconsin Sex Offender Search provides an online way to learn if someone is a registered sex offender. Sometimes one needs to check.

It's also good to know about the Wisconsin Court Search, where you can find out who's been convicted of what in Wisconsin. Even minor court actions and traffic tickets show up. Ouch! (Please note that I am not Jeffrey Michael Lindsay.)

It's a beautiful week, with most of our flowering trees now in bloom. Appleton has thousands of beautiful flowering trees througout its streets, parks, and homes. May is one of the prettiest times of the year!