Photo by Allan Haas

Allen Haas took this photo of the river today. (Click on it twice to enlarge it- it really is quite evocative.) And to think, I was cursing the rain and fog today, instead of seeing beauty.

Friends of the Monarch Trail

In a post on his Cognitive Dissidence blog, Chris Liebenthal describes a recent public hearing about the possibility of the UWM engineering school expansion project sucking up even more of the Milwaukee County Grounds. (Completely illogical. A campus feeds off the proximity and energy of people working, studying, and learning together; off-site experiences are for internships. Selling off and building up more of the County Grounds is foolish and short-sighted.)

Also, if I ever have a kid, nine-year-old Izzy- who wore her butterfly wings and spoke at the hearing- is the kind I would want to have. She shares the opinion of Friends of the Monarch Trail, who is urging the county to create a conservancy to maintain control of the land before any deal goes through with UWM. Sounds like a good idea to me.

Fond memories part IV

Every fall DH and I go up to northern Wisconsin and camp alongside one of the little lakes in the Nicolet National Forest. It's a very special place for us. Because we go up after the high season- usually September or October- it's very private, quiet.

One time I was down at the water in the early morning and there were several Northern River Otters swimming together, cavorting and making schnurfing noises. I called to DH to come down, to bring the camera. I was so excited, and of course I scared them away. The next year I watched and waited, carefully, quietly, and didn't see any of these amazing and elusive creatures. I cried on the last day of our vacation with this deep and brutal disappointment.

The picture is of the lake: dawn, cool and crisp. The otters are hiding.

We were bored

So far, I've pretty much only talked about the good things about Milwaukee. I haven't mentioned any of the bizarre violence, the infant abandonments and deaths; that doesn't mean that I don't think about that stuff. I see it more closely than you probably realize.

One news tidbit that really caught me was the recent beating of a can collector by some teenage thugs in the central part of our city. It really bothers me for several reasons. The man, 76-year-old J.T. Downs, was just trying to make an honest living, and performing an essential service, especially since we've abandoned recycling in that part of the city. Mr. Downs was minding his own business two weeks ago, quietly picking up other people's party supplies when he was attacked by five youths who cited "boredom and peer pressure" as legitimate reasons to beat up an elderly man.

I think the larger reason this bothered me so badly was that the kid said they did it because they were bored. Did you do stuff like that when you were 13 years old, or 18 for that matter, and bored? I didn't. I read books. I had all kinds of nerdy hobbies. I spent a lot of time with my grandmother, in fact, who was much older than Mr. Downs at that time.

Suspect Leroy Bentley III also stated that he didn't want his peers to think he was "soft" - then cried when he heard that the man had lost his eye as a result of the beating, which made me feel a bit sympathetic at first- but he probably just realized that it would add to his own punishment.

One eye doesn't seem like that big of a deal- after all, Mr. Downs does still have the other one- but think about it: that means he has no peripheral vision on that side. He may miss half the cans, or spend twice the time to collect the same amount. His work will be that much more difficult.

Sterling Spring Water Company

A few years ago I was at an estate sale where there were many fondleable, weird items from the middle part of the last century. One thing that caught my attention was an old bottle labeled

"Bottled at the Source

1053 N. 115th Street Wauwatosa

Sterling Spring Water Company"

I had never heard of this, and wrote the label information in my notebook (what the hell am I going to do with an old bottle, cool as it may be? I have enough crap [although, if anyone is sufficiently intrigued, this site has one for sale for $10. As of this writing, it's item #S-417]). Do any of you have any further information on it?

The company does not seem to still be in existence, but here is a map of that address.

There is at least one spring still in use in Milwaukee, the Bay View Iron Well, which I used to drink from copiously. It always seemed ancient and pure and mysterious, even though everyone knows about it. If anyone knows about this Sterling Spring Water Company, though, please post a comment about it.

Here is a photo of that area now, where 115th street crosses over Underwood Creek, courtesy of Google Street View. It is interesting to note that the watershed divides just west of there, at approximately 124th street. Is there still a spring there? Is it safe to drink from?

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!

Yesterday's County Board meeting

At yesterday's Milwaukee County Board meeting, the vote on the Estabrook Dam was, like Gaul, divided into three parts: Dam Repair (the $5000 to repair the stop logs, as ordered by the DNR in autumn 2008), Debris Removal, and whether the idea of the many-headed Hydro Power should be studied. Results:
Repairs passed- split 16-3. Debris removal passed unanimously. Hydro** passed unanimously.
I'll patiently stop for you to either yell an early cautious "Wahoo," or start cussing.


Now, here's something that I hope you will be excited about too: the new Friends of Lincoln Park group. DH and I joined already. It's a subset of the Park People, who have a long history of being a Lorax-like voice for the Milwaukee County Parks. Many of the parks have had longstanding active Friends groups, but not Lincoln Park, my neighborhood park, which would particularly be devastated by the dam's removal. The lagoons would no longer exist. In fact it is possible that canoe rentals might even be started up again, which would be wonderful.

In fact, our real message is not “Save the Estabrook Dam” (a hunk of graffiti-covered concrete) but instead, “Save the Lincoln Park Lagoons." What would Lincoln Park would be without the impoundment of water? See for yourself. (PDF alert)

**Murray Sim of Titus Energy Management Services will be conducting the preliminary hydro study.

Gallery Night

What makes a city a vibrant, exciting place? Art, architecture, real diversity, street musicians, people out enjoying these things, and the visionaries who dream of and create them.

I had the opportunity to wander Gallery Night this past Friday unaccompanied. DH was performing at one of the galleries, which meant I was free to take my own sweet time (ah, freedom) and stop anywhere I chose.

This was not at all lonely- the streets and galleries swarmed with people.

My first stop was O Salon where Binky Tunny had her art on display. Above, at left, she describes her creative process to interested parties. The real party started after I left, as usually happens.

After that, I visited at the Grohmann Museum on the MSOE campus, having never been there before. Often traditional styles of art are kind of spiritual in nature- angels, Biblical elements, etc. One thing that struck me about the Grohmann is that every single piece of art on display celebrates man's achievements (including paintings of the building of the Tower of Babel and Noah's Ark)-- most strikingly the ceiling painting in the wonderfully airy round atrium.

"Fun," as they say, "was had by all."

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.

Earth Day

Funny how Earth Day is April 22nd- didn't it always used to be on the 21st? As in, typical Equinoxes and Solstices? As in the 1993 song "What Are We Gonna Do" by Dramarama?
It's April 21st and everybody knows today is Earth Day,
Merry Christmas, Happy Birthday
To whoever's being born
And now I'm trying hard to think of something meaningful and worthy,
Kind of earthy to make everybody ask themselves just
What are we doing here?
And what are we doing to 'her'?
You know I end up randomly singing a lot of songs (sorry, neighbors), and this is one of 'em, any time of year. I never realized how full of existential angst the lyrics are until I cut and pasted them just now.

On a more hopeful note, what I actually meant to write for today was a quote from my mom this past Saturday, after her condo complex did a noxious weed cleanup of their pond. Now, the complex she lives in is mostly older people, most with mobility problems or health issues. "See how beautiful the area of our pond looks. We had a beautiful day and good turnout for our cleanup!!! People who I thought were going to come didn't while others who I did not expect to help did. One couple who live by the pond but are unable to help physically, put out coffee and doughnuts and offered their bathroom for us to use." She later added, "Forgot to mention that one of the men helping yesterday was 2 years post lung transplant. Did not expect to see him come down to help." She sent a photo of the cleaned-up area- so different than the invasive weed-choked area that it was last year. Awesome!