Among other things, this week has been riddled with panic attacks regarding the September opening of “Agincourt Redux.”

“Reflux” might be a better word.

Atop the 1889 Fennimore County courthouse there is or, rather, was a weather vane. It withstood the elements and the vagaries of men (a frequent target for kids with their first rifle) from the day of dedication in October 1890 until it was struck by lightening in 1966. For those seventy-six years, it hinted at the direction of prevailing breezes, though it weighed so much that gale-force winds could barely move it. Firefighters found it while extinguishing smoldering debris in the days after the fire.

But this was no mere arrow with N, E, W and S on its cardinal extremities. Ours was a five-foot iron representation of a Mediæval bowman, the sort who prevailed at the Battle of Agincourt on October 25th, 1415. Weathered and worn, beaten and burned, retrieved and lost and found again, it spent several decades misplaced in a pole barn on the Schütz farm, before being donated to the Heritage Center at the old Vakkerdahl Farm. I’m pleased to report that the preserved artifact will be prominent—with other building components and decorative objects—at this year’s exhibit at the Rourke Art Museum.

The exhibit’s main event, not incidentally, will occur on Sunday afternoon, October 25th, 2015, the six hundredth anniversary of the very battle that the weather vane represents.