Saturday, September 12, 2015

Helt sends letter to Journal-Sentinel (we clip it); Lawn less; Mr. Rhutabaga; Why worry?





John Helt
on Scott Walker's
 Eagle Scout rank

Walker and the Boy Scouts

"Gov. Scott Walker likes to remind us that he was an Eagle Scout, that his boys were in scouting and that his wife was a den mother.
Walker has used this resume footnote to suggest that he is qualified to be president of the United States. He has attempted to bolster his Wisconsin governor credentials with this scouting history, especially in relation to his ambitions to become a national and world leader: commander-in-chief, protector of the environment and guardian of youth.
While achieving the highest rank in the Boy Scouts of America movement is laudable and something to be proud of, as a fellow Eagle Scout, I do not appreciate Walker's attempt to link his radical right agenda with the scouting movement. Beyond his ridiculous comments about being prepared to fight terrorism abroad because he held off Madison protesters, his overall record and strategy has been divisive in a way that contradicts the values of scouting.
Walker is reminiscent of the last Republican president who famously claimed to be a "uniter," but, it turns out, was the consummate "divider." I am surely not alone in hating to see the BSA in general, and Eagle Scouts in particular, associated with this ambitious politician who has proven to be such a "divider" during his time in the governor's mansion."
The Rev. John Helt
Colgate
......

John Helt's recent letter to the JS

Our addiitonal illus:









s e m a p h o r e (ed. note)


^,^

Lawn less

From JS 9-10-15



http://www.jsonline.com/features/home/two-teachers-make-their-home-bloom-outside-and-inside-b99564907z1-325815941.html

Let the sun




Son David Jr greets sun
at John Helt's former church
which he pastored - St. Pauls UCC
Hubertus WI







The Lawnist


The tuneless tantalizer is at his tiny tines again,
showing our one-block-long street
how to wrap our leaves; how
in the face of raw nature's fluttering intrusion
never to sound lawn-care retreat!

Yes, it's true, the lax commoner rakes his leaves
to curbside and waits for the city vacuum patrol
to eventually come
and suck up the colorless artifacts,
but a True Lawnist -
and he is one - cannot countenance the slug's delay;
in never leaving leaves to new wind,
the requisite re-rakings must bereave the rascal's eves.

Moreover, he's almost - have we not noticed? -
got his grass golf-course-grandiose; gr-r-r-reat!
The perfect shade of green and blade count per square inch
so close to being on the weedless button,
albeit by means of contracted and self-ministrations
of many merchanted murder-lizers
and species-endangering sprayed spuriosities.
That,
and his criss-crossing, thrice-weekly mowing patterns
are to me a head-in-the-grass reality avoidance;
a harm, illicitors of sound-begotten
yawns.

Thus,
The Lawnist packages leaves that aren't even his,
some of them,
in plastic drawstring pajama bags
and trucks them elsewhere to sleep; city-dumped.
Fast,
before the vacuum truck might traumatize
his pedigreed grass roots
with too much harsh suction.
He's invested too much of himself
on his monk cell-sized tract that
anything could be otherwise.

Soon snow will fly, another of his property blights
which will demand of his ordered lawn creed
incredulous shovel-rounded snowbanks
at his sidewalk's rulered edge,
no matter how deep the snow becomes.


I in an unthrown spirit of slowly-mown grass,
formerly done with a push reel,
and eternally shifting leaf piles
will offer my counterpoint of
a jagged serpentine snow lane,
a studied randomness
garnering from the grumpen Lawnist
neither a summery hello
nor a wintery thanks!



DZD



^,^


Elsewhere,


Sun man son
DD Jr.
greets it again outside our tent
- his morning ritual -

Peninsula State Park WI
2006

.........................

David Sent this link today


^,^







A genial rhutabaga
was contained in a bunch
of them purchased at
the Farmers Market

This one had a stringy beard
and eyes, nose and mouth
colored similarly to the
plainer faces of his brothers
and sisters

A stand-out
but like the others he was
picked up in the cruel
mandibles of life

and was cooked and eaten

he had looked resigned to it


^,^


More Muriel Anderson


Why worry?
Imagine



OK ONE MORE



----

Still pending
WAUKESHA WATER
a breaking story
underway