I love the Fair!

Kind of spur-of-the moment, I decided to join the rest of the sun-baked crowd today at the State Fair to get my Wisconsin on. Again. I love the fair. The weather was fantastic.

You can get anything you want on a stick at the Fair. Deep fried mac & cheese, for instance, or solar energy, or what have you. (Isn't energy the same thing as calories, anyway? Meta!)

There it is. On a stick.

These critters were just so cute, posing like this. Many, many city folk were taking their picture. They didn't seem to mind a bit. They are somewhat denuded here- their fleece was for sale, for human use in the harsh Wisconsin winter. Way to go, sheep and camelids! Thanks!

One of my favorite things at the Fair is the craft section. I loved this piece- it is just so meta: fourth-place ribbons proudly framed for display, and it earned a fourth place. I hope the entrant does not base his or her self-esteem on ribbons won. The judging is harsh. Man, I know!

And, cow poop. Hooray for the digital "macro" setting!

Guest post from James Brozek

Here's an open letter from James Brozek, one of our MRPA members. (I edited it for punctuation, clarity, and spelling.) It was sent to many public officials and others. He sent the photos, also.

Dear friends,

Last year the Milwaukee Riverkeeper organization stated they believe that removal of the Estabrook Dam would have the greatest positive impacts on water quality, sediment management, fish and aquatic life, terrestrial wildlife, and recreation. Here are my observations this spring of the Milwaukee River in front of my house.

As of June 6, 2009, the water level is four feet lower than its natural and historical level. I've seen a marked absence of Bluegills, Sunfish, Catfish, Bullheads, Northern, Bass, Western and Midland Painted Turtles, Common Snapping Turtle, Green Heron, Night Heron, Egrets, and Coots. But what I have seen is an abundance of hundreds of yards of mosquito-breeding puddles in front of my property. During the spring runoff, the river's currents scoured into the river gravel these wonderful, made-to-order incubators for the cute mosquito larvae wigglers. The abundance of algae covering this gravel is an exceptional food source for this Wisconsin State Insect. Can you say "West Nile Virus?" Ahhhh, did I mention the lovely aroma given off by the thin layers of ooze on the river gravel? No? Well, depending on the warmth of the day and the directness of the sun, this football field-sized area of river bottom rivals our hatched mosquitoes as the gift that keeps on giving. I've not seen anyone fishing. Where are the fishermen, now that the river is running free? Paddlers also have become an extremely rare site. I've seen a pair more drifting then paddling in the narrowed river channel. The Boys and Girls Clubs paddlers are nowhere to be found. Hikers? Nope, the river bottom is just too soggy and smelly. Long live the Lincoln Park Lagoon & Urban Wildlife Place.

Sincerely,

River Bro

Now- River Otter here again- I missed Thursday night's MRPA meeting. It sounded like it was a good one.
I'm wondering, does anyone from the MRPA ever read my blog anymore? I no longer post much about the dam or the group. It just didn't seem like a useful tool for getting out any information, as was my initial hope and inspiration for starting it. I just got lots of nasty comments from anti-dam folks, and verbal comments like "Only our enemies read it, anyway." A few nice emails came in here and there though, and informational ones like this. So, I just post (almost) whatever I feel like now. The Internet is very accommodating that way.

If any MRPA members or sympathizers still read this (or enemies, or frenemies), leave a comment. At this point, I doubt that anything could hurt my feelings any worse than they were already today, so feel free to go at 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.

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.

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.

All comments disappeared

I deleted my whole blog last night, as I was just fed up with the whole thing, but this morning I felt a bit differently- and was surprisingly able to resurrect it. Unfortunately, all comments are lost in the blogosphere. I can't say that I am 100% sad about that. My apologies to anyone who feels otherwise. I may be able to find those 1's and 0's; but if not, well, that's life among the thin-skinned and impetuous.
Addendum 2058- blog magic performed. Order has been restored.