Ex Fabula

What? There really is forensics for adults? YES! It's called Ex Fabula- a series of true-storytelling events. Last night it was held at Stonefly in Riverwest. Real people (real people, just like you and me!) come prepared, put their names in a hat, and a few are chosen at random to get up on stage to tell their own true story using the night's chosen theme as a guide, however loosely.

I have to admit, I was a little nervous to be in the audience. Would it be anything like the poetry slams they used to have at Y-Not II back in the '90's? (No, thank heavens.) Would any of the storytellers be unrelentingly boring? (No.) Would it be painfully hip? (No!) It was awesome. The proctors or whatever you call them- the people in charge- run a pretty tight ship.


The next Ex Fabula event will be held on Friday, May 14th, in the decadent splendor of the Turner Hall Ballroom.

Arab World Fest

We went to Arab World Fest last night.
Camel rides were available- "desert ships."

Hoop dancing. I am now officially obsessed.

I surreptitiously took this shot of the couple in the background, who had dressed for the Renaissance Faire on accident.

Mohammed Al-Farra, who was like the Palestinian version of Eminem.

GOD GOT U

I am not sure if this license plate is indicating that "God's got your back" or if the intent is that God is like Santa Claus, seeing when one is naughty. Either way, it made me slightly uncomfortable. Maybe it is a reference to the Rapture. (There was a bumper sticker popular a few years ago, something like, "In the event of Rapture, this car will be unmanned" or something like that.)

It doesn't come even close to SPA RIB though. I saw that plate last week.

ESL love and hate- amor y odio

I just read yet another vitriolic post on the always-vitriolic blog, Ichabod, the Glory has Departed. The author lives in Arizona, but he regularly bashes many of the Milwaukee churches at which I have worshipped over the years, and their pastors, and their coffee. I don't know what happened to this man to make him so hateful, but his writings always make me think of how Hitler got rejected by a Jewish art school.

Here is the particular post that has me in a rage right now, in which Ichabod bashes my beloved ESL (English as a Second Language) program for which I volunteer. I love this program; I have volunteered approximately weekly for over three years. It has changed my life in a deep and meaningful way. Milwaukee has always been a city of immigrants (just ask John Gurda.): German, Polish, Italian; now African, Hmong, East Indian, Russian, and especially Latino. This is huge. As a health care worker, I see the need to learn Spanish to better serve our clientele, and I see the equal need for Latinos in the US to speak fluent English. Milwaukee is, has always been, a melting pot: culturally, linguistically, religiously, politically. It wasn't always comfortable, but I think we have a greater appreciation of one another's cultures than ever before. And it's beautiful. (I also love ethnic food, which Milwaukee has in abundance.)

Since Ichabod likely will not approve my disapproving comment, I paraphrased it here.

Beth is a wonderful woman with a true heart for Christian service. She TEACHES ENGLISH to struggling immigrants. There are devotions offered (not compulsory) after class in English and Spanish by Pastors and seminarians, and the students are welcomed to Sunday services. The language lesson has no religious component, unless it comes up in the conversation practice between volunteer and student- any topic could come up, in fact: it is conversation (in addition to grammar, vocabulary, etc) like you would have with a friend. In fact, you [Ichabod] would do well to see such faith in action that the dedicated volunteers demonstrate- it is stressed at every class that we do this out of love for our brothers and sisters from around the world. This program has changed my life. It has changed many people's lives.

I encourage you, whoever may be reading this, to find a way to serve others that suits your own interests, that will help you grow, that will help Milwaukee be an even better place. Whether that means picking up garbage from a park, sharing helpful information, writing letters to our elected officials; whatever that means to you, do it.

Queries

Photo by Brett Cole.

Today would have been the perfect day for getting out in the kayak, for going for a bicycle ride, for looking for otters to photograph, or even just a nice long walk. I am still not up for any of this yet, but I hope that you, gentle reader, were able to take advantage of the (finally) gorgeous weather and get the heck outside for some soul-soothing R&R. Maybe you even had an extra can of ice-cold PBR for me.

Meanwhile, I've been inside, resting my injured self, and basking in the computer screen's soft comforting glow instead of the bright light of the sun. You did apply sunscreen, right? With a sufficient SPF?

Now, one thing I have learned from this blogging experiment is that it is easy to get caught up in looking at one's own blog stats. Who's looking? How long did they stay? Where did they come from? And my favorite: what search engine queries led them here?

Here are some of my favorite search queries that led folks to The River Otter. Enjoy. Bonus points if any of them were yours.

*the benefit of an apple at morning

*river otter penis

*i love river otter (me too. Warms the cockles of my heart.)

*getting rid of river otters under house (Why would you want to do that?)

*pictures of otters peeing

*shoe (sic) me live river otters for my students (This was, apparently, from a teacher?)

*uwm (How random!)

*dam but (but what?)

*river otter cupcakes (Yum! I hope the reference was to the decoration, not an ingredient.)

*why is important to save the river otter

*otters eating toads

*Do Otters use binkys?

And my favorite new one- *my grandfather was frederick bischoff chocolate

I'll add more as they show up on my stats. I'm not making fun of people- I am expressing delighted amusement. Yes, there is a big difference.

Do art NO WAR

"Neutijo" sent me this picture. It is part of her 53215 photo series- things she sees in her daily life. The graffito in the bottom right corner is what she called my attention to- "Do art NO WAR." I've been pondering this for a few days now.

Note its juxtaposition with what appears to be a gang identifier. That's irony for you: a different kind of war; a war at home, so to speak. It's a concept I've actually been pondering for years (hobbies as a means to self-confidence and self-worth rather than troublemaking and gang affiliation).

On a lighter note, Riversplash is this weekend, but after last year's mayhem Brain and I will not be attending. Going to a summer festival is not worth going through a security checkpoint.

DH

People have asked me the meaning of DH: it stands for "Dear Husband." As in, love of my life, my dearest heart, my completion, my everything: The Man in the Houndstooth.


It's a blog convention, and kind of a silly one I guess. I thought it was started by knitters somehow (multitudes of knitters have blogs). Elizabeth Zimmerman called her husband "the Old Man" in her iconic book Knitters Almanac and that is maybe where I got that notion (pun- "notion" -for you crafters).


Since I am trying to remain basically anonymous on this blog, it seemed like a good idea- but maybe I should find a different name for him. Besides his own, I mean, or "Brain" (which he has earned, BTW), which often garners me the well-meaning comment, "You spelled your husband's name wrong." Not wrong, exactly, just skewed, and true.

Boys at war

The son of a very wonderful lady with whom I used to work was quite recently deployed to Afghanistan. I had hoped that whomever our new president was to be would have had all our troops home by now, but that was not to be, and he is there. She put out a request that anyone could write to him, and any of the other Marines there, if we wanted. The postage is 44 cents- same as a US stamp, which seems less steep somehow when the letter travels overseas like that. I sent him a letter. I had only met him perhaps three times, but she talks about him so much, you know, like any good mother. She said write about anything back here at home, the Brewers, weather, whatever.

I encourage anyone who likes at all to write to put a pen to paper and write to someone in the military serving overseas. Support our troops, even if you don't support the war.

The food was good, too.

Yesterday I had lunch at Mayura on Farwell with my brother. We love Indian buffets! They had a glorious Bollywood musical playing the whole time. This sign was posted on the inside of the ladies' bathroom door- so a person would only see it on the way out after all bathroom duties were already completed:

You know I love "almost English" but #5 was like, what universe are we in? And, where's MY time machine?

Bullies, vindication, and forgiveness

I don't know why I let things like this still bother me, but I was bullied in school. This was back in the '70's and '80's, before there were things like "Awareness" and programs that dealt with bullying. Back then, nerdy kids just got bullied and that was that.
Now of course I am a successful adult with my own Facebook page and I get emails like this:
"Just started on Facebook am surprized who I am all finding , wonder if ya remember me .. :) .. Jaosn"
Of course I remember Jason. He made sure I would always remember him.
When I got that message yesterday, I looked him up on CCAP and he had the criminal record that I suspected he would: an indicator of a sad and unfocused life. I also note an inability to successfully spell his own five-letter name correctly every time. At some point I had found out that he also had his own problems- the woman that I had thought was his mom was really his grandmother, and so on. So it's hard to know what to really think. Thinking about it doesn't change anything. Does it?

Here's the Google street view of the building that used to house my grade school (on the northwest side of Milwaukee). God finally shut it down. The building now houses Jesus Cares Ministries for people with special needs and their families. It's a resource center and library, I guess.

Life is a complicated place.

MADtv Webster's Dictionary video

I found this video from MADtv hilarious and hope you will too. Reminds me of the time Dewey Peters called me a butterface at the bus stop in 1988! Except that he had to circumlocute (poor guy), because that word is a neologism. Good times!

I feel meta tonight

Feeling a need to decompress tonight after the late shift, I stopped at a favorite thrift shop conveniently located on the way home, and perused the bookshelves for awhile. Paperbacks are $0.89 there. I left with four: Roget's 21st Century Thesaurus (I collect and frequently use thesauri); The Language of Argument, which promises to give me the edge in pursuasive rhetoric; The HTML Sourcebook; and an almost-new copy of The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros, of which we have frequently read portions and discussed in the ESL class.


These are some of the things that excite me: using a precise word; tweaking my blog layout; helping people learn English; editing, re-editing, and coming back around a bit later to edit again.


And one more: knitting/crocheting, which brings me to my real "meta" point here. A while back my mom and I were showing each other some of our favorite crafting blogs. There are some amazing ones, carefully crafted in themselves, with seemingly no other thought than to share with others- tutorials and such, free patterns carefully written out; not as if to show off- but instead to really, honestly give. It really is kind of amazing, labors of love brought forth to share with the wider world. We were like, what leads people to spend time doing that? Now I get it. Now I understand.

Got little German in you? Oh yes you do.

Last year I did a river cleanup with some coworkers, one of whom brought her toddler along. We were walking together when his sippy cup fell to the ground. I picked it up for her, and said, "You better clean it off. It got some schmutz on it." The word, even as I said it, startled me. Where had that word come from? I had no idea how I even knew it, much less said it.
Fast forward to a month ago. My dad got some German books and started studying the language to prepare for an upcoming trip. So, I did what any helpful offspring would do and picked up "Getting along in German" from the thrift store (an auspicious find, as Germans are known for thrift). There it is: schmutz, dirt; schmutzig, dirty. In between the fact that English itself is derived in large part from Anglo-Saxon, which is a Germanic language; the German-flavored history of Milwaukee where I grew up (with our Teutonic place names and surnames); and, in my specific case, having been steeped in staunch Lutheranism, somehow many of the words look and sound comfortably familiar. (Schnecks, anyone? Or delicious butterkuchen? Sitten zie down and have some.) So achtung! You too may find yourself sprechen more Deutch than you realize.