The Raccoon News and Entourage Move to Five Points Is Complete
Several years ago we penned a poem about the Five Points, the historic city hub, and the original formation of this convergng street pattern we now look down upon. At that time it was not known that we would someday live here. Irony of ironies. And we wrote:
IN WAUKESHA
We don’t think about it very much anymore
but the ghosts of Native Americans might;
we walk, or alas, drive their ancient trading trails
paved many times over;
even our later inter-urban streetcar tracks
are now out of sight,
buried like their lightly-beaten paths
by time and poured concrete,
and newcomers can’t get the gist of traveling downtown,
can’t figure these streets out because so many diagonals
cut through strangely, they say.
But it was all so simple then
for the woodland people
to follow their converging spoke-like paths
to the now downtown five points trading posts,
no doubt
going through thick woods
from their outlying settlements,
intending to live forever in their homeland
upon which they trod so gently.
Pioneers built great improvements
on their sacred burial grounds
and cannons stand in the library park
passing time’s additions, tentatively,
muddying the purer water of days
dim to us, unknown;
but not to the ghosts
who watched the flowing streams
clear away many other silty stirrings
only for a moment hiding customary clarity.
We are being watched by these patient spirits,
these spector ‘savages’ who knew so much.
Their way to our downtown
is abiding.
(Originally printed in LANDMARK, the quarterly of the Waukesha Historic Society)
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Here we are today in a loft while the sewer raccoons we began writing about in Dec. 2007 romp - or ceremonially, somberly progress in and out of their primary meeting chamber - which is beneath the old post office. Only one block from here.
Unlike before, the SRN is very close to the raccoonage zeitgeist. We feel the electricity. And we are plugged in through the help and muscle and kindness of many friends and relatives to whom we tender great thanks!
These are early pictures. Things are not arranged as they will be. Pictures are unhung and leaning against the walls, objets d'art scattered about, boxes to be unpacked; some order to be established.
