WAUKESHA SEWER RACCOON NEWS

Can you spot the bone china?

2012-02-02T04:54:00.000-08:00

Wednesday, 2-1-12 was Dee's sabbath (day off).

She likes to spread out her writing projects and notes

on the 6 foot round all-purpose table

we have here at the Odd Fellows hall.

It serves for committee meetings as well.

(Note to WHS '54 reunion planners, you'll be sitting here.)

3:32, and Xmas tree is still ornamented.
Expected guests have come and gone in the past days

and the plan is to remove the ornaments for another year, but leave the tree

with its white mini-lights up for a while. Congo wreath (left) still looks pretty, too.

Will stay up, nneedles not dropping yet.

Dee likes to light candles at the table when she works, even in daylight. I sit back with camera and drink iced coffee

from the old Mobil thermos mug. (with a straw)

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

From today's Milwaukee Sentinel-Journal:

Brewer-Obama Incident shows morning in America is over

By Leonard Pitts

Jan. 31, 2012

A picture, the saying goes, is worth a thousand words. Unfortunately, we have only about 550 with which to appraise a picture that has raised eyebrows across the country: In it, Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer is seen wagging her finger in President Barack Obama's face during his visit to her state last week.

The two were apparently engaged in a discussion of Arizona's controversial immigration laws and of a 2010 White House meeting that Brewer described at the time as "very cordial." She has since written a book in which she now claims the president's demeanor was "condescending."

As to her demeanor in that picture, Brewer says she, ahem, has a habit of talking with her hands. She also says she felt "threatened." Apparently, she thought the scary black man might hurt her even though he's president of the United States and they were standing in broad daylight surrounded by security. Good thing he didn't follow her into an elevator. She might have Maced him.

Perhaps you are old enough to remember when it was morning in America. That was the title of a 1984 campaign ad for Ronald Reagan, but it also came to symbolize an era. Say what you will about Reagan, but credit him with this much: He restored to his party and the nation a sense of vibrant optimism that came as a welcome jolt after Jimmy Carter's malaise and Richard Nixon's crookedness. Nearly 30 years later, as his putative political offspring attempt to claim his mantle, it is obvious by many measures that none of them is Reagan. But the most glaring deficit is embodied in that picture.

It reminds us that Republicans are no longer about sunshine and can-do. These days, they simply seem cranky and dyspeptic. As in Herman Cain vowing to build a fence to electrocute Mexicans, Newt Gingrich verbally punching out the media and debate audiences cheering for record executions and the death of the uninsured. As in Jan Brewer poking her finger in the president's face.

Under Reagan, optimism about the future was the Republican brand. But that brand has curdled in the ensuing 30 years, and the party that once sold hope has become instead the party of grouchy codgers yelling at the future to get off their lawn. More to the point, it has become a party of those unable to process the sense of dislocation, the loss of primacy and privilege our present demographic path portends. Thus, it has become the party of resentment and resistance, the last stand against ongoing racial, religious, cultural and sexual upheaval, the Alamo in the fight to forestall change.

This is why a Jan Brewer feels herself empowered to wag her finger in the face of the president. And why the charisma-challenged Mitt Romney spends long weeks out in the cold looking for love like a character in a country song while bomb-throwing zealots who would have been laughed out of previous elections take turns playing frontrunner.

They will likely settle for him, but what Romney offers is not what many in the Republican electorate evidently seek. At bottom, they seem less concerned with competence or a new economic plan than with finding a gunslinger for a showdown against the future.

Ronald Reagan would not recognize his party today. Morning in America is almost 30 years gone. It's high noon now.

Leonard Pitts is a columnist for The Miami Herald. Email lpitts@miamiherald.com

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

In today's mail:

Bright Sun after Heavy Snow, by Jane Kenyon

2012-02-01T07:49:00.000-08:00

This morning we hold a print-out of the WRITERS ALMANAC daily poem, Bright Sun after Heavy Snow by Jane Kenyon. Anyone can get this website, and as SRN readers know, it is a mainstay for us. Bonnie Camp is to be thanked for that.

Jane Kenyon

1947–1995

WilliamAbranowicz

NewHampshire's poet laureate at the time of her untimely death at age forty-seven,Jane Kenyon was noted for verse that probed the inner psyche, particularly withregard to her own battle against the depression that lasted throughout much ofher adult life. Writing for the last two decades of her life at her farm innorthern New England, Kenyon is also remembered for her stoic portraits ofdomestic and rural life; as essayist Gary Roberts noted in ContemporaryWomen Poets, her poetry was "acutely faithful to the familiarities andmysteries of home life, and it is distinguished by intense calmness in the faceof routine disappointments and tragedies."

Born in Ann Arbor, Michigan,Kenyon spent her first two decades in the Midwest, attending the University of Michigan in her hometown throughcompletion of her master's degree in 1972. It was while she was a student atthe University of Michigan that Kenyon mether future husband, the poet Donald Hall,who taught there. After her marriage, Kenyon moved with Hall to Eagle PondFarm, a New Hampshirefarm that had been in Hall's family for generations and where she would spendthe remainder of her life.

Kenyon published only four volumes of poetry during her life: From Roomto Room,The Little Boat, Let Evening Come, and Constance, and translated a volume of works by theRussian poet Anna Akhmatova.Despite her relatively small output, her poetry was highly lauded by criticsthroughout her lifetime. As fellow poet Carol Muske remarked in the NewYork Times when describing Kenyon's The Boat of Quiet Hours,"These poems surprise beauty at every turn and capture truth at itsfamiliar New England slant. Here, in Keats'sterms, is a capable poet." Indeed, Kenyon's work has often been comparedwith that of English Romantic poet John Keats;Roberts dubbed her a "Keatsian poet" and noted that, "likeKeats, she attempts to redeem morbidity with a peculiar kind of gusto, onewhich seeks a quiet annihilation of self-identity through identification withbenign things."

The cycles of nature held special significance for Kenyon, who returned to themagain and again, both in her variations on Keats's ode "To Autumn,"and in other pastoral verse. In Let Evening Come, her thirdpublished collection—and one that found the poet taking what Poetry essayistPaul Breslin called "a darker turn"—Kenyon explored nature's cyclesin other ways: the fall of light from day to dusk to night, and the cycles ofrelationships with family and friends throughout a long span of years broughtto a close by death. Let Evening Come "shows [Kenyon] atthe height of her powers," according to Muske in a review of the 1990volume for the New York Times Book Review, with the poet's"descriptive skills . . . as notable as her dramatic ones. Her renderingof natural settings, in lines of well-judged rhythm and simple syntax,contribute to the [volume's] memorableness."

Constance began Kenyon's study ofdepression, and her work in this regard has been compared with that of the latepoet Sylvia Plath.Comparing the two, Breslin wrote that "Kenyon's language is much quieter,less self-dramatizing" than that of Plath, and where the earlier poet"would give herself up, writing her lyrical surrender to oblivion, . . .Kenyon fought to the end." Breslin noted the absence of self-pity inKenyon's work, and the poet's ability to separate from self and acknowledge thegrief and emotional pain of others, as in her poems "Coats,""Sleepers in Jaipur," and "Gettysburg:July 1, 1863," which imagines a mortally wounded soldier lying in wait fordeath on the historic battlefield.

In Otherwise, a posthumous collection containing twenty poemswritten just prior to her death as well as several taken from her earlierbooks, Kenyon "chronicles the uncertainty of living as culpable, temporarycreatures," according to Nationcontributor Emily Gordon. AsMuske added in the New York Times Book Review, Kenyon avoidssentimentality throughout Otherwise. "The poet here sears ahousewife's apron, hangs wash on the line, walks a family dog and draws herthought from a melancholy, ecstatic soul as if from the common well, 'where thefearful and rash alike must come for water.' In ecstasy," Muske continued,Kenyon "sees this world as a kind of threshold through which we enterGod's wonder."

Big Maryland fighter had no bone to pick with us

2012-01-31T13:24:00.000-08:00

Visiting fireman John Means Jr.

came to Appleton WI Jan. 30, 2012

to see the new Pierce Fire Engine tiller truck

being built at the Appleton factory

for his Howard Co. Maryland fire company.

John has driven fire engines for several years

and is licensed now to drive tiller on this

2 million dollar truck. A tricky job.

He humbly describes it:

"You gotta turn left when it feels like

you should turn right...."

Highly maneuverable for getting a big rig

into tight places,

fireman John, Dee's 'little' brother,

will handle the machine deftly,

we know.

See a sample video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGPeDYOAiBM&feature=related

Below, there is a current Facebook photo

by photographer

Emily Means:

'firefighter's togs at the ready to jump into.'

Volunteer firefighters have these rigs set up

to go at a moment's notice

by their front or back doors.

Emily is John Means Jr.s' daughter,

a senior at Westminster High School, MD.

There are a total of I think seven firefighters in the immediate

Means family. Emily's mother, Doreen, a paramedic,

has been one one of them.

While John was here to view the new firetruck

we rendezvoused with him after hours yesterday

when he was off duty from the Pierce engine plant.

As it happened, Pierce put the fireman contingent up

at a night-time rest site, The Raddison Paper Valley Hotel,

which was only a few blocks from Lawrence University,

Erin's work-site where she is the Archivist.

We picked John up at his hotel and had a joyous evening

together. Part of the time we were at Erin's apartment

where we got some pictures:

Left to right, Erin, John, Dee, and Erin's friend Ben

gathered around the Phil Kari moose femur leg bone.

See previous SRN post about that. We took Phhil's bone with us

to show John.

It rests on an old chair from the Wildgrube family farm

circa 1880. The Wildgrubes were our great-grandparents.

Erin refurbished and reupholstered the chair, with Ben's help.

This was John's first visit to our state.

He brought a CD of a brilliant grand-parents interview

done as a school project by daughter Emily with her Gramaw Jeannie and Grandpa Poppy.

(See previous SRN postings: 'Poppy's Barn'.)

Gramaw and Poppy share their happy memories of many years together in Pleasant Valley MD

with Emily and a video camera which quickly did not inhibit them.

It was a golden family time together. A partial reunion, an earth-salt family I am lucky to be

part of. Same for Leland and Erin, too.

All things are connected, especially if you live long enough

2012-01-30T00:22:00.000-08:00

Bob Sellars

communicated by Email yesterday

a piece of technical information

he wanted to share

because he was truly amazed by it.

It has to do with the modern VW plant

in Dresden, Germany.

Bob, no longer able to facilely operate

his typing fingers

due to his degenerative muscular problem,

has a willing caretaker

who types what Bob asks him to.

A scientist by profession

Bob has for his lifetime shared

info on what amazes him.

(He once told us how raccoons

if pursued by dogs in water

will, when it comes right down to survival,

turn and bitingly attach a dog over his snout

and hold the attacker under the water

until it drowns.

And many other intriguing

and useful facts have been imparted

by Bob.)

We welcome Bob's return to

his keyboard, with the help of

a hired aide. His faithful wife Libby

is heartened too by the

continuation of Bob's word-smithery.

Yesterday's video was

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nd5WGLWNllA

Bob's Email read as follows:

This is one amazing emails we’ve seen in sometime. We thought you will enjoy watching this.

I have watched a number of advertisements about the new developments of VW. If you are ever in Dresden area, be sure to include this factory in your tour.

Love, Libby and Bob.

Received this from Bob. Marshall, whom some of you know.

Subject: FW: A Factory Like You've Never Seen Before

Only the Germans can do this. INCREDIBLE

Want to see why the Germans have a positive trade balance, in

spite of paying workers some of the highest wages in the world? Watch this: It is truly incredible.

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

Lt. Les Dix on maneuvers preparatory to landing on D Day in WW II

The below poem arrived 1-30-12 from THE WRITERS ALMANAC:

Letter Home

by Ellen Steinbaum

I love you forever
my father's letter tells her
for forty-nine pages,
from the troopship crossing the Atlantic
before they'd ever heard of Anzio.

He misses her, the letter says,
counting out days of boredom, seasickness,
and changing weather,
poker games played for matches
when cash and cigarettes ran out,
a Red Cross package—soap,
cards, a mystery book he traded away
for The Rubaiyyat a bunkmate didn't want.
He stood night watch and thought
of her. Don't forget the payment
for insurance, he says.

My mother waits at home with me,
waits for the letter he writes day by day
moving farther across the ravenous ocean.
She will get it in three months and
her fingers will smooth the Army stationery
to suede.

He will come home, stand
beside her in the photograph, leaning
on crutches, holding
me against the rough wool
of his jacket. He will sit
alone and listen to Aïda

and they will pick up their
interrupted lives. Years later,
she will show her grandchildren
a yellow envelope with
forty-nine wilted pages telling her

of shimmering sequins on the water,
the moonlight catching sudden phosphorescence,
the churned wake that stretched a silver trail.

"Letter Home" by Ellen Steinbaum, from Container Gardening. © Custom Words, 2008.

ON THE SAME GENERAL TOPIC, THIS:

Backwards In the Sun

A man loathe to give up the manual typewriter

To bow to the age ofcomputers

Who liked push reellawn mowers

Wringer washers

And treadle sewingmachines:

I announce that

Something goodhappened here to mitigate

My reluctantaccessions adopting the new over the old

While sitting as amachinist

Marveling at what my word processor

And color printer cando;

I like to correspond with fountain pen

And then hang theletter backwards in a sunny window

For a while beforesending

To study the linewithout the ability to read text

As though the rightor wrong will show

And save me frommistake or unmeant innuendo

Hand script, evensupposedly horrible hand script

Sometimes dangerousfrom the front side

Takes on a lovelinesswhen viewed backwards

And this isinteresting when one thinks

Of evaluationsinvolving all angles and facets

Rather than merelythe most obvious surface

(How often have Isent letters not so carefully inspected)

The thinner the paper for this sunlit viewing

The better:

I remembered a box ofold onion skin typing paper

I had from whenthinner meant more copies

Yielded bytypewriters and carbon paper

Before clicks anddouble clicks and infinite production

I got this dusty box down and opened the lid

To find nearly a fullbox of crispy thin sheets

Audibly-crinklingonion skin paper

Talking paper veryloud to the touch

After all that timebeing cooped up

Like a presumed useless ugly duckling

Or love-starved oldster getting dryer

It leaps to respondto the slightest tactility

And you cannot buy itanymore

Who needs it?

On the word processor so novel to me

I can practically putcardboard through

And obtainglorious-looking pages

But they don't talkwhen I handle them

They are dead exceptfor the images on them

Not so with onionskin

It says something

You must be of an age to appreciate V Mail

From World War IIwhen loved ones communicated

Across seas ongovernment-mandated crackling tissue paper

To keep the weight oftransport down

And to reduce bulk

It was a practical and beautiful medium

I inspected myfather's letters then on the flip side to the light

After I had digestedall from the most obvious facade

I knew there must bemore from him than that

Which showed on justone surface;

I was only six years old

I searched side-waysboth sides and between the lines

I became familiar with the look, feel andsound of onion skin

My one contact withDad and so much preferred

To the dreadedtelegram on dead yellow paper;

That bad paper neverwanted never came here

And to find a wholebox of lively paper fifty years after

Those haunting hungryscrutinies was a blessing

I had it among my high basement cobwebs

Must have known ithad value

It had escaped yearsof throwing out

In silent peace likea covered bird

Intact a perfectly good box of now off-whitepaper

Backwards fountain-penned sheets in sunnywindows

Will vibrate whilethis irreplaceable and

Obsolete box lasts

It will last long this new lost art

Because there are somany dry leaves fitted in the old box

Like memories theyare so very thin

But strong

Tearing such gossamer is notas easy as you'd suppose

In my cyberspacial kingdom there are manycolor images

In my computer'smemory favorite old snapshots

And vivid drawingsI've committed to that realm

And my fountain penwill not quit till I do

A way is pointed to a blending

Validating proceduresand leanings in the doing,

Printingcomputer-generated transparencies

On talking paper -with penned script -

And backlighting these marriages not on an electric monitor

But in the windowbackwards in the sun

(DD CIRCA 2000]

(When Dee helped June Bjorklund move last year, June gave her a partial box of rare onion skin paper for me)

Lee closing the gap

2012-01-29T05:30:00.000-08:00

See this:

http://vimeo.com/24342426

Rerun this:

http://vimeo.com/14756565

Leland Dix updated his cover photo.

January 11

For those in travail, and you know who you are....

2012-01-28T07:58:00.000-08:00

Illustrated, so to speak, by the raccoon news

Love IS all there is

2012-01-27T08:22:00.000-08:00

Painted on a gourd leat as it died

517 Arcadian Ave, Waukesha

Granny holds on

2012-01-27T08:00:00.000-08:00

Margaret Helt

with son John, daughter MaryAnn, and the late Clifford Helt,

Burlington IA farmer

who himself took 10 days without food and water

before he passed

A pickup with its battery on ground

seen at the Dousman WI Firkus farm sold by me as a realtor, once

John's mother Margaret takes a motorcycle ride in 2008 with a friend

Margaret does a stint at a local food pantry

http://raccoonnews.blogspot.com/2009/11/granny.html

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

Margaret Helt today lies dieing hard

in a Burlington health facility

with her family at her side,

if she goes......

This report from John this morning:

Dear Friends

I wish I could report that Mom crossed over in the night, but....

Yesterday morning she rallied a bit: puckering her lips for a kiss, opening one eye a bit, and moving her jaw as we sang hymns and prayed. I thought that might be the final push to get to the other side of that apparently deep and wide river. But it wasn't.

Cindy's father lasted 10 days after food and drink, so we know this could potentially go another two days. Every day is another notch lower, but she has not yet hit bottom.

Everything is set and we are just waiting. We have said and sung and prayed everything we know.

If her death does not occur by 3 this afternoon, we call Anni in Boston and tell her not to get on the plane, and her brothers not to rush here tomorrow, and we move our plans into the future.

The one good thing is that Mom is not suffering.

As I reassured son Aaron last night, it is OK to pray for death at this point.

John

(John will eventually do his mother's funeral.)

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

From The Writers Almanac, Garrison Keillor

Jan. 27, 2012

Don't Look Back

by Kay Ryan

This is not
a problem
for the neckless.
Fish cannot
recklessly
swivel their heads
to check
on their fry;
no one expects
this. They are
torpedoes of
disinterest,
compact capsules
that rely
on the odds
for survival,
unfollowed by
the exact and modest
number or goslings
the S-necked
goose is—
who if she
looks back
acknowledges losses
and if she does not
also loses.

"Don't Look Back" by Kay Ryan, from Say Uncle. © Grove Press, 2000.

Playing? Or, a life and death struggle between hummingbird and honeybee? / WHS 2014 reunion

2012-01-26T06:21:00.000-08:00

had some inquiries* about yesterday's SRN-featured
tiny-tongued bat

so we revisited the video clip

(furnished by St. Paul, MN RR museum docent, Bob Heeschen,
play it -

http://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/xHkq1edcbk4?rel=0).

Indeed, the bat was stopped by our digital
aimed at the monitor

as he lapped cactus nectar

with a minature (but not so for him) tongue.

And that was not all the delightful video

disclosed.

Hummingbirds' whirring wings were slowed

by the slow-motion filming videomaker
to allow us to witness what

in real time would be barely visible:

a hummingbird did roll-over flips through the air
with a competing nectar gatherer,
a honeybee.

Over and over the hummingbird rolled
as it chased the bee away

- I tried roll-overs in 1966 in a Cessna 150 single-wing; it was chancy -

the bee/bird encounter happened

so fast that it nearly escaped the eye
were it not for slow-motion photography.

Just before that, a hummingbird flew

into a spider's web and was nearly caught

by an also hungry spider.

No matter how tiny the tongues of

some animals are

the urge of nourishment attainment

is universally potent.

The tongue shape
is an oft-repeated theme
in nature.

Bill Vollmer, using his tongue, cleans wall-eyes he caught in the Menominee River
near Marinette WI

Yesterday I bought a can of Pringles
and thought of a tongue
as I placed a Pringle on my
own similar tongue.

A battle of tongues
so to speak.
The frail potato chip wafer
was no match for my
75 year old crushing proboscis.

And it was not easy to eat just one.

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

And speaking in of tongues,

Fellow classmates at Waukesha High School, class of 1954, are planning
another, yet another reunion, for the year 2014. That will be their sixtieth
(60th).

As fresh meat, I have been gently pressured - tongue-talked - into participating in a planning committee
for this elderly event. Although I have not gone to a single reunion, ever,
when the tongue screws were turned by Bill Nelson (above center top)
and Sally (Martin) von Briesen (below, leading a cheer)
and augmented by another '54 classmate, Jack Hill
(see the end of this link to a post
http://raccoonnews.blogspot.com/2012/01/mike-dixs-extreme-fall-bucket-lists.html)
all three, coaxing, coaxing, coaxing.....

I said today - OK, count me in.
It could be fun.
I might have been missing something.......

...............................................
*Comments?

People wishing to register comments

to the SRN are invited to do so via Email c/o

ddix1@wi.rr.com

Let's stay together/a campaign slogan is born/SRN says Amen

2012-01-24T21:34:00.000-08:00

THE VIDEO:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pScGXz7LWEU

Al Greengushes after Obama sings song

January 23 2012 at 08:00pm

Reuters

Obama’s rendition wasdubbed “terrific” by the musical great, who thought the head of state totally“nailed it”, reports TMZ.com.

Green, of course, isreferring to Obama singing part of the first verse of the song on Sunday nightat the Apollo Theatre in Harlem.

The clip was swiftlyposted on Youtube by amused viewers, garnering millions of hits.

“I was thrilled that thePresident even mentioned my name, and if the President can get the economygoing again and get everything going that he wants to, then we'll all betogether,” Green told TMZ.

Licking: a lexiconography

2012-01-24T06:41:00.000-08:00

A bat pollinates a desert cactus flower;

Postage is applied in England;

Maryland niece-in-law has a seriously-studded tongue;

But if you're REALLY serious;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&NR=1&v=QRveJCEAQMk

BEEF TONGUE
2 1/2 lb. beef tongue 1 onion, sliced 2 tbsp. pickling spices Place tongue in pot. Add onions and spices. Cover with water. Simmer uncovered for 3 hours. Drain and cool. Remove skin and serve.

Having gone in this from the tiny tongue of a bat to the large tongue of a steer, the raccoon news does not represent to have run a detailed gamut of miraculous tongue uses and effects.

Still Fickle Bat

A bat I thought was you

Fluttered around my head

Last night after the lights

were turned off

I opened the door

To let you find your way out

But you stayed

Would not go

Winging around my sought repose

Nibbling my ear lobes

The way you used to do

I went out myself

And you followed me

Joining another bat

Zig-zagging in the darkness

Both of you exchanged squeaks

And left

I lay awake a long time

Wondering if you’d be back

The only way to keep you

Is to set you free

[DD 2007]

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

Ice sculpture; Dee's dish; Pueblo bowl; new old friends

2012-01-23T06:15:00.000-08:00

As stated yesterday, our Saturday outing at Key Westconsin for dinner was preceded by a look-see at the ice sculptures performed on the sidewalks of downtown Waukesha as part of the annual Janboree winter events.

Above, an ice block chipping is in the foreground of the raccoon news in the aforementioned Putney Building. Out site is outlined in pink, with an orange arrow pointing to our three front windows. Hospitable candles glow in these openings pretty much day and night. Our friends doing drive-bys can spot where we are by those lights.

Dee was writing one of her numerous letters down in the living room before we went outside to look at the ice sculptures.

This view of the sculptor at work in front of our Five Point locus was shot from our loft office, with zoom. You can see the leaking thermopane window behind the 'matching' beveled-glass (icy) cross. It's a small diminishment of our otherwise mostly splendid living condition in this vintage 1882 one hundred and seventeen million year old limestone building. The windows and other features of the old Odd Fellows unit were updated about 17 years ago. The double glass is leaking between the panes of glass, not on the inside, unlike the Arcadian Avenue house where the wavy, original 1914 windows sometimes on super cold days had frost on the inside of their single panes.

The ice, never a problem here, would melt as the furnace eventually warmed the rooms. It was a lot ruggeder there.

Yesterday, we said that Dee had crab cakes at the restaurant but we failed to show them in the illustrations. Here she gets ready to mash her superb baked potato. The cakes were full of crab meat, not much filler.

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

In 1972 I took a six month trip from Milwaukee up through Canada, down the west coast and eventually back to WI through New Mexico. (See http://raccoonnews.blogspot.com/2011/11/never-to-die-snapshots.html)

On that long journey I bought a bowl from the Pueblos in Taos. Have guarded and treasured it ever since. It is made of micaceous clay, a material plentiful to the NM aboriginals. I don't know how old the bowl is. It would date at least from 1972 which now is a long time ago. The natural, unpainted, unglazed surfaces of the bowl, inside and out, offer a visual and tactile treat for me. I cradle the bowl often, and to look into the many particles of the rough clay.

Touching this precious bowl is something for me like touching a mezuzah.

bottom

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

Last week I took the opportunity of introducing two men who have both been pictured in the raccoon news but have never formally met. As a meetng ground we looked no further than Dave's watering hole across the street, a frequent topic in the SRN.

These chaps are like Dee, and I don't just mean they are friendly toward me. Like her, no matter how and when you point a camera at them the exposure is assured of being a winner. No second tries needed.

Waukeshans Hawk Mahoney and Joe Beringer

Key Westconsin*

2012-01-22T15:31:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, Jan. 21, Dee and I decided to leave the 0 degree

weather, just walking through it the block from our door and then into the tropical environment of the one-year-old Waukesha restaurant, Key Westconsin.

After viewing the ice sculptures on the sidewalk below our windows we scooted across the salt-melted, formerly icy sidewalks into the warmth of the restaurant, where guests are greeting with (doors-held-open) smiling entrepreneurs glad to see venturers-out on such a cold night.

After a couple of their specialty drinks ( one ea), called The Hurricane,

we unleashed our appetites, I, falling hungrily upon the Saturday Special surf and turf special at $19.95. Dee, Marylander that she is, tried the $17.95 crab cakes and was delighted.

We purposefully arrived at 5 pm ahead of the crowd, found immediate seating and had time to take a few unobstructed pictures before the customers began coming in, eventually filling the place.

Our second time there - the first with Lee and Erin during their Xmas break - we noted again the creative decor of muted, hand-painted murals, done, we were told, by the happy owner-manager.

The dominant palm tree motif, I can attest, runs all the way through the nautical blue passageway to the immaculate men's rest room, where even the touch of a palm-tree tissue box rests on the vanity. Perhaps not a dominant observance, but it was noticed.

A tiny glass-shaded counter lamp is also gives a palm tree impression. Our photo was blurry; next time I will get it.

*The Dixes can wholeheartedly recommend this place to our friends and fussy food-washing raccoon readers.

Yes, we only have to come down a few stairs and walk just a block to get to Key Westconsin, and yes, there are many other good restaurants to frequent in regenerated downtown Waukesha.

If you are driving, ample parking is right in front of the restaurant, facing the Fox River and the Waukesha State Bank situated across the flowing current. Views of the infamous gazebo and the Geo. and Edith Love memorial bridge were also seen from our table.

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

For another nautical impression of Waukesha, near and seen from our Five Points Odd Fellows windows:

http://raccoonnews.blogspot.com/2010/10/imagine-that.html

'FRIENDS FOR LIFE' DEP'T.

2012-01-20T08:27:00.000-08:00

Dee *

Mona *

The Immortal Babes *

John Helt*

(* = true blue)

I have a bone to pick with you

2012-01-17T11:58:00.000-08:00

There will be more on this later

from our Facebook page:

- David Dix Sr.
  I am holding a giant moose femur leg bone (just part of a leg) presented to me by son-sin-law Phil Kari if Wasilla AK. Laurie's husband. Phil likes to present me with parts of his kill, sort of like one of our cats used to proudly display mouse kills on the bed covers. Though not a hunter I understand Phil's feeding of my kin in a rough land. This one at circa 1500# provided meat for others in his hunting party as well as stocked the Kari freezers. I really like this specimen and the kindness that drove Phil to carry it on the big airplane past customs, etc. Very very heavy to lift.

What's that about lions and lambs?

2012-01-16T10:41:00.000-08:00

The Law Of The Wild says kill ONLY when you are hungry

Photographer Michel Denis-Huot, who captured these amazing pictures on safari in Kenya's Masai Mara in October last year, Said he was astounded by what he saw:

"These three brothers (cheetahs) have been living together since they left their mother at about 18 months old,' he said.
'On the morning we saw them, they seemed not to be hungry, walking quickly but stopping sometimes to play together.
'At one point, they met a group of impala who ran away. But one youngster was not quick enough and the brothers caught it easily'."

These extraordinary scenes followed.

sent by Bob Heeschen, St. Paul MN

Hey Mister, can raccoons go to heaven? Can they, can they, huh, can they?

2012-01-15T17:48:00.000-08:00

I WANT TO GO THERE!

Play:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QXHpmgayoOM&feature=related

It started with a ukelele

2012-01-12T16:02:00.000-08:00

Bob Heeschen in St. Paul MN

sends this rolicking link

to bring cheer. We forward it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=oXvJ8UquYoo&vq=large

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

Little boy, my son, intently learns to play a (banjo) ukelele

in Chicago, 1959

He has a daughter getting married this Saturday.

Mike Dix's Extreme Fall; Bucket Lists

2012-01-11T08:42:00.000-08:00

Grandson Mike Dix

If you want to be a dave-devil

You gotta start somewhere.

This year-old video is of Mike

still with a lot to learn

but he has been intent on learning it

and he has become more of a master.

He isn't finished yet

though has taken many a spill

as this video suggests.

But Mike is a true Dix

- somewhat foolhardy -

but always read to get

back up and try again.

Watch:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h79F2Lrm2y4

Mike works as a snow board

instructor now at Olympic Village

Delafield

and hopes to go to college.

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

This inclusion in the SRN

was stimulated this morning

by a bucket list video

sent by Rev. Dr. Tom Bentz:

http://sorisomail.com/email/229251/mais-uma-compilacao-espectacular-de-as-pessoas-sao-incriveis.html

Also in our mind is the

Grand Canyon float trip

mentioned recently by

fellow Jimmy's Grotto

Italian sausage sandwich eater,

Jack Hill, WHS class of 54

http://raccoonnews.blogspot.com/2012/01/choosing-words.html

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

All of Which

points to the sage advice

Uncle Norman Rupnow gave

last Sunday at the Caribou coffee club.

Since 1960,

I've heard Norm utter these words often

but this time I wrote them down

on my NYT Book Review section

at my side.

Norm initialed his nearly timeless finding:

"LIFE IS VERY TRICKY."

Uncle Norm

'Uchie'

2012-01-10T07:45:00.000-08:00

Bob Uchner

and Walt Lohman

pay a visit at the Odd Fellows hall yesterday.

Find their way down the long corridor

across the creaky floors

to our doorway.

Bob and Walt are both members of the Odd Fellows

officially, whereas we merely squat

as poseurs.

Yet both men have stood by the

raccoon editor when he has been down

and still,

even now,

support him with the brotherly love

afforded true lodge kin.

Bob is ailing himself

after years of breathing the flux fumes

from his stained glass work

and has a bone-fide condition

the VA is treating him for.

He walks slowly

and thinks slowly.....

But he still shows up

which as we know is

99 percent of everything.

Walt affords Bob the logistics

of the brother that he is

and he knows.

We've known Bob ever since he

was running into the Saylesville

mill pond near his house and studio.

Bob was sound of limb

and almost of mind then

when he led stalwarts

into the icy waters

on polar bear's New Years Day.

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

Also, later yesterday,

Joe Beringer meets us for coffee

at the Steaming Cup.

Joe, wating for his coffee,

ever the friendly one,

reaches up and caresses the

shiny black long hair

of another waiting customer.

He doesn't know her

but knows a good thing when he sees it.

She smiles and accepts the compliment.

Men like Joe

and Bob

and Walt

know; they

move blood

through ageless veins.

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

Rubber stamps

Allowing easy identity change

we use them

in shape-changing

and sometimes in metanoias.

Addresses and interests come

and go; and

like the Ozian wizard,

we pull the levers

and emit puffs of clouds

as in Sandburg's Chicago fog.

Will true authors

please stand/stamp up?

Choosing words

2012-01-08T12:28:00.000-08:00

Email to daughter Erin yesterday:

Sweet Pea,

Decided to put on the comfy blue sweatshirt you gave me. I was planning to paint it on the back first:

"My daughter

was an honor student

magna cum laude at

Lawrence.

And now she works there

as the University

ARCHIVIST"

But I decided to break it in first. Maybe I'll leave it plain, without braggadocio. I like it a lot, fits perfect, not too tight, just right.

Thanks again for everything!

Dad

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

Jack Hill

Elm Grove, WI

A Fellow Waukesha High School

class of 1954er

has been after me since the first class reunion to attend just one.

One reunion, he's pled. And others similarly implored me in their numbers-boosting drives. But I demurred all these years until recently when I told Jack I would meet him sometime for lunch, as long as it could be Jimmy's Grotto on Main Street.

We'd kept in semi-touch via Email in recent years but a few weeks ago we had our first sighting of each other in 58 years.

That's a long between drinks.(See Chet's beer joint on Bluemound.) Jack, a retired plastic magnate and a volunteer business advisor through SCORE, has adhered to a different political philosophy, but we've agreed to leave such matters outside the Jimmy's door. And we have done so.

On our second lunch at Jimmy's last week, Jack brought a gift; his second and therefore surfeit 1951 yearbook, the Megaphone, and we had fun pouring over the old pictures of classmates. I presented him with a reprinted portion of the 1999 LANDMARK Waukesha Historical quarterly, containing my poem (signed), Were You Pulled By the 400?

Jack is working through his 'bucket list' of last thrills before he kicks off. Upcoming he hopes is a raft trip down the Grand Canyon. He wants me to come with him.

In our meandering discussions we've talked about credo's to live by.

Jack subsequently mailed me his favorite by George Bernard Shaw:

Jack in 1952

melting pot city

2012-01-07T16:38:00.000-08:00

Frightening 9-11 boat lift rescue

little known;

man says he "wuz concoined because he's an Italian person...."

A touching video clip shared by Bob Heeschen

of St. Paul MN

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDOrzF7B2Kg

I hates your scrawny neck

2012-01-02T07:19:00.000-08:00

I hates your scrawny neck

Your neck skin is fitted so tight to allthe cords

and bones inside that when you swallow

animation is given to all those interiorparts

I have absolutely no interest in seeing;

Your head perches atop your golf-tee neck

and swivels so anxiously left and right

twisting all those cords and should-beinvisibles

you look like a perpetual motion

twist-left, twist-right lab mechanism.

You look like an ostrich;

your lips

protrude flatly out in front of you

like a bill, and when you talk,

I hear a clacking sound;
any words arelost!

I wouldn't have noticed all this ugliness

had it not been for your constant stoking

of your mouth,
hiddenly, I'll give youthat,

with fresh pieces of chewing gum.

The movement, the cnutch-cnutching

draws attention to your big head

and your scrawny neck.

I also don't like the speed with which

you chew, like a jackal trying to consume

something before it's snatched away

Because of this, you are not desireable,

but if you could get along without thegum

I wouldn't notice you,

you'd be just another unfortunatepop-eyed

guppie face in a crowd.

Get some fat on your neck,

will you please?

If you're going to chew that gum

day in and day out, I'd consider

It a favor if you'd make it so

I wouldn't have to watch your

peristalsis swallowing wave

moving gum juice down your

shrunk-wrapped throat!

This is my thing about you.

[Zep1-4-00]

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

PS 1-2-12:

Yeah,

then 12 years later, I develop my own scrawny neck.
& etc,

Exorcist neck turn-about

is fair play, I guess.

But at least I do not

chew gum.

That far I will not go.

(for the reasons previously mentioned)

(+, See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_Are_Old,_Father_William)

Impolite rats unwelcome at Grandpa's bank

2012-01-01T12:08:00.000-08:00

Ray S. Dix as a boy

(left to right) Ray, Maynard, Leslie, Meredith, Leland, and Myrtle

DID I TELL YOU THE STORY of my dad as a kid selling magazines door to door posing as aone-armed waif? He pulled one arm inside his jacket and conspicuouslyfastened the empty sleeve with a big safety pin in front. Allegedly, hewas selling a lot of magazines in Cedar Falls, Iowa until his suspicious dad, Ray Dix, previously mentioned in http://raccoonnews.blogspot.com/2011/12/grandpa-his-post-office-to-sever.html, driving by one day inhis jitney, (looking for him?) saw his armless, first-born son up onsomebody's porch. My dad was taking anorder, whereupon there was a wood-shed re-enactment later, and an end tothat.

That's thesame grandfather who pulled a Colt 45 from behind his bank cashier's window andshot the meandering rat that had a lady customer screaming. I might have toldyou that one too. He actually missed it in the bank and pursued it downthe dirt street in Ainsworth Iowa, bangingaway till he hit it.

Business atthe bank picked up after that. People from neighboring towns moved theiraccounts there, for Grandpa thereafter had a fanning reputationin rural Iowa forbeing a small but brave man with a big gun and not afraid to useit. Bonnie & Clyde gave the screen-doored Ainsworth bank a wideberth. The map showing their rambling robbery route that was found in theirbullet-riddled car that fateful day of their machine gun murders by the law was said tohave a circle around Ainsworth and a boldly written warning: RAY S. DIX.

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

I stood on the front porch at 2009 Clay Street, Cedar Falls IA practicing with my own gun in full cowboy costume. (Upper right photo) In the attic of that four-square house there were boxes of saved toys

my dad and his 3 brothers had played with. One was an old erector set assembly of a pick-up truck.

That rusty toy reposes in my office, and the gun-toting picture is co-framed with a similar photo of John Helt, also drawing a gun, in Burlington, Iowa.

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

Personally, I myself would not shoot a rat to preserve the peaceful halls of any bank.

And truthfully, the rat shown in our yesterday post was a wooden one, dated Feb. 28, 2003,

a birthday gift to commemorate my being born in the Chinese year of The Rat.

That is not necessarily a bad thing.

http://www.paranormality.com/rat.shtml

Man Astounded at Odd Fellows Rat

2012-01-01T05:31:00.000-08:00

Visiting cleric amazed that a house rat eats only oyster crackers

Even the domesticated beasts

at the Odd Fellows hall happily

ate on New Years Eve, thanks to Denise

who put on a multi-faceted spread

for the man and his wife who married her

and the raccoon editor

on November 11, 1983.

A joyous, arms-outstretched Dee

thinks of everyone as equals,

even raccoons and

a well-mannered rat.

While Cindy & co. dined on Gramaw's fruit cake

and many other delightful comestibles

including frozen chocolate mousse balls,

the O.F. Rat stuck politely to his ruder

crackers l'oyster,

stepping politely around the tabletop,

keeping his I think pretend

disinterested eyes

straight ahead on his preferred fare.

Rev. Helt, perhaps stunned

at the etiquette of the rat,

seemed to ruminate

discreetly on the varied

habits he has seen other parishioner-

friends engage in.

His career is long.

Happy New Year to all!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&feature=endscreen&v=OIb7zfhTuvM

As of this date.....

2011-12-30T15:11:00.000-08:00

the Sewer Raccoon News will no longer be sent out unsolicited.

We have retained an undisclosed mailing list that will

go out with every post. Persons on this list are those with whom we

have had some interchange; all others occasionally desiring to

read the SRN are invited to Google it.

Thank you, and happy new year!

Ring in the old, out with the new

2011-12-30T08:54:00.000-08:00

AS THE NEW YEAR APPROACHES,

we take stock at the Odd Fellows Hall.

Of treasures we have many

though shekels wane

in circumstances and the economy;

of words,

we will remain at the

telegrapher's key;

of true friends it rains cats and dogs;

well, minus one signficant cat -

vastly diminishing the deluge;

of lov-ed ones, they answer:

PRESENT!

and they are there.

Gauzy good health

gauzy good luck in the year of the rat

the uncertainties of these times

offer a net that could well

be breached.

What might the new year bring?

everyone wonders

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

GONERS
BUT GOOD DANCERS

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOoNOs8Ql28

A reasoned voice predicts violence

2011-12-29T10:38:00.000-08:00

"There Will Be Violence, Mark My Words"

By Michael Thomas, Newsweek

28 December 11

magine a vast field on which a terrible battle has recently been fought, the bare ground cratered by fusillade after fusillade of heavy artillery, trees reduced to blackened stumps, wisps of toxic gas hanging in the gray, and corpses everywhere.

A terrible scene, made worse by the sound of distant laughter, because somehow, on the heights commanding the dead zone, the officers' club has made it through intact. From its balconies flutter bunting, and across the blasted landscape there comes a chorus of hearty male voices in counterpoint to the wheedling of cadres of wheel-greasers, the click of betting chips, the orotund declamations of a visiting congressional delegation: in sum, the celebratory hullabaloo of a class of people that has sent entire nations off to perish but whose only concern right now is whether the '11 is ready to drink and who'll see to tipping the servants. The notion that there might be someone or some force out there getting ready to slouch toward the buttonwood tree to exact retribution scarcely ruffles the celebrants' joy.

Ah, Wall Street. As it was in the beginning, is now, and hopes to God it ever will be, world without end. Amen.

Or so it seems to me. It was in May 1961 that a series of circumstances took me from the hushed precincts of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where I was working as a curatorial assistant in the European Paintings Department, to Lehman Brothers, to begin what for the next 30 years would be an involvement - I hesitate to call it "a career" - in investment banking. I would promote and execute deals, sit on boards, kiss ass, and lie through my teeth: the whole megillah. In consequence of which, I would wear Savile Row and carry a Hermès briefcase. I had Mme. Claude's home number in Paris and I frequented the best clubs in a half-dozen cities. But I had a problem: I was unable to develop the anticommunitarian moral opacity that is the key to real success on Wall Street.

I had my doubts from the beginning. A few months after I started to work downtown, I ran into an old friend from college and before, a man later to become one of New York's most esteemed writers and editors.

"So," he asked, "how do you like what you're doing now?"

"I like it quite a lot," I said. And this was true: these were new frontiers for me, the pace was lively, the money was good enough ($6,500 a year), and there was so much to learn. But there was one aspect of Wall Street that I found morally confusing if not distasteful: "There's one thing that bothers me, though. It's this: on the one hand the New York Stock Exchange has sent its president, the estimable G. Keith Funston, out into the countryside, supported by an expensive, extensive advertising campaign, to exhort the proletariat to Own your share of America! As if buying 50 shares of IBM or GM in 1961 is as much of a civic duty as buying a $100 war bond in 1943."

I then added, "But here's the thing. At the same time as Funston's out there doing his thing, if you ask any veteran Wall Street pro how the Street works, the first thing he'll tell you is: The public is always wrong. Always." I paused to let that sink in, then confessed, "I have to tell you, I have trouble squaring that circle."

And that was back when Wall Street was basically honest, brought into line thanks in part to Ferdinand Pecora's 1933 humiliation of the great bankers of the Jazz Age and even more so because of the communitarian exigencies forced on the nation by war. From Pearl Harbor to V-J Day, greed was definitely not good, and that proscriptive spirit lingered on right up to 1970, when everything started to change, and the traders began their long march through our great houses of finance, with the inevitable consequence that the Street's moral bookkeeping grew more and more contorted, its corruptions more elaborate, its self-interest less and less governable. What someone has called the "Greed Wars" began.

But now, I think, the game is at long last over.

As 2011 slithers to its end, none of the major problems that led to the crisis point three years ago have really been solved. Bank balance sheets still reek. Europe day by day becomes a financial black hole, with matter from the periphery being sucked toward the center until the vortex itself collapses. The Street and its ministries of propaganda have fallen back on a Big Lie as old as capitalism itself: that all that has gone wrong has been government's fault. This time, however, I don't think the argument that "Washington ate my homework" is going to work. This time, a firestorm is going to explode about the Street's head - and about time, too.

It's funny; the Big Lie has a long pedigree. A year or so ago, I was leafing through Ron Chernow's indispensable history of the Morgan financial interests, and found this interesting exchange between FDR and Russell Leffingwell, a Morgan partner and Washington fixer, a sort of Robert Strauss of his day. It dates from the summer of 1932, with FDR not yet in office:

"You and I know," wrote Leffingwell, "that we cannot cure the present deflation and depression by punishing the villains, real or imaginary, of the first post war decade, and that when it comes down to the day of reckoning nobody gets very far with all this prohibition and regulation stuff." To which FDR replied: "I wish we could get from the bankers themselves an admission that in the 1927 to 1929 period there were grave abuses and that the bankers themselves now support wholeheartedly methods to prevent recurrence thereof. Can't bankers see their own advantage in such a course?" And then Leffingwell again: "The bankers were not in fact responsible for 1927–29 and the politicians were. Why then should the bankers make a false confession?"

This time, I fear, the public anger will not be deflected. Confessions, not false, will be exacted. Occupy Wall Street has set the snowball rolling; you may not think much of OWS - I have my own reservations, although none are philosophical or moral - but it has made America aware of a sinister, usurious process by which wealth has systematically been funneled into fewer and fewer hands. A process in which Washington played a useful supporting role, but no more than that.

Over the next year, I expect the "what" will give way to the "how" in the broad electorate's comprehension of the financial situation. The 99 percent must learn to differentiate the bloodsuckers and rent-extractors from those in the 1 percent who make the world a better, more just place to live. Once people realize how Wall Street made its pile, understand how financiers get rich, what it is that they actually do, the time will become ripe for someone to gather the spreading ripples of anger and perplexity into a focused tsunami of retribution. To make the bastards pay, properly, for the grief and woe they have caused. Perhaps not to the extent proposed by H. L. Mencken, who wrote that when a bank fails, the first order of business should be to hang its board of directors, but in a manner in which the pain is proportionate to the collateral damage. Possibly an excess-profits tax retroactive to 2007, or some form of "Tobin tax" on transactions, or a wealth tax. The era of money for nothing will be over.

But it won't just end with taxes. When the great day comes, Wall Street will pray for another Pecora, because compared with the rough beast now beginning to strain at the leash, Pecora will look like Phil Gramm. Humiliation and ridicule, even financial penalties, will be the least of the Street's tribulations. There will be prosecutions and show trials. There will be violence, mark my words. Houses burnt, property defaced. I just hope that this time the mob targets the right people in Wall Street and in Washington. (How does a right-thinking Christian go about asking Santa for Mitch McConnell's head under the Christmas tree?) There will be kleptocrats who threaten to take themselves elsewhere if their demands on jurisdictions and tax breaks aren't met, and I say let 'em go!

At the end of the day, the convulsion to come won't really be about Wall Street's derivatives malefactions, or its subprime fun and games, or rogue trading, or the folly of banks. It will be about this society's final opportunity to rip away the paralyzing shackles of corruption or else dwell forever in a neofeudal social order. You might say that 1384 has replaced 1984 as our worst-case scenario. I have lived what now, at 75, is starting to feel like a long life. If anyone asks me what has been the great American story of my lifetime, I have a ready answer. It is the corruption, money-based, that has settled like some all-enveloping excremental mist on the landscape of our hopes, that has permeated every nook of any institution or being that has real influence on the way we live now. Sixty years ago, if you had asked me, on the basis of all that I had been taught, whether I thought this condition of general rot was possible in this country, I would have told you that you were nuts. And I would have been very wrong. What has happened in this country has made a lie of my boyhood.

There should be more to America, Gore Vidal has written, than who pays tax to whom. It has been in Wall Street's interest to shrivel our sensibilities as a nation, to shove aside the verities of which General MacArthur spoke at West Point - duty, honor, country - in favor of grubby schemes and scams and "carried interest" calculations. Time, I think, to take the country back.

A TIME FOR OUTRAGE, by Stephane Hessel

2011-12-28T21:30:00.000-08:00

Stephane Hessel, 94

A World War II concentration campsurvivor and fighter in the French resistance argues that people should fightto reclaim the rights of life and liberty, which have been eroded bygovernments since the end of World War II.

The book (on order at the SRN): http://www.npr.org/books/titles/140245924/time-for-outrage-indignez-vous

An NPR audio clip of interest: http://www.npr.org/player/v2/mediaPlayer.html?action=1&t=1&islist=false&id=140252484&m=140670577

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

WAUKESHA WALKER RECALL OFFICE

ACROSS THE STREET FROM HERE:

2011-12-27T17:53:00.000-08:00

Yuletide at the Odd Fellows

Perched atop the Putney building

on the top right 3rd floor unit

one sees the constellation 'Festoon Fox'

illuminated in the loft

through the right window.

Children especially gather on the

street below to ooooo and ahhhhh

and some are heard to exclaim,

"LOOK! IT LOOKS LIKE A,

LIKE A,

LIKE A F-O-X!"

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

Afterglow

2011-12-26T13:07:00.000-08:00

Leland creeps up behind me and shoots us with his new ultra-dandy phone, for which his brain is only an accessory.

(He paid for the phone machine with his own money).

Barefeet in the Odd Fellows hall.

Gramaw's fruit cake. A hit, always.

Four glass Christmas goblets given by Sue Pojaski. Girl in background hopes she was not included in the picture.

Above the previously shared crab Santa ornament hangs the bristly raccoon ornament from

Sally (Martin) v. Briesen.

Dee adorned in octogenarian June Bjorklund's historic angel costume, from June's many costumed enactments at the Congo, Eastern Star, and many other venues.

Dee also goes barefoot.

A cup of kindness yet.......

2011-12-24T07:51:00.000-08:00

Today is Christmas Eve.

from WRITERS ALMANAC

G. Keillor 12-24-11

It was on this day in 1914 that the last known Christmas truce occurred along the Western Front during World War I. In the week leading up to Christmas, soldiers all over the battlefields had been decorating their trenches with candles and makeshift trimmings when groups of German and British soldiers began shouting seasonal greetings and singing songs to each other. On occasion, a soldier or two would even cross the battlefield to take gifts to the enemy. Then, on Christmas Eve, the men of the Western Front put the war on hold and many soldiers from both sides left their trenches to meet in No Man's Land, where they mingled and exchanged tobacco, chocolate, and sometimes even the buttons from their own uniforms as souvenirs. They played games of football, sang carols, and buried fallen comrades together as the unofficial truce lasted through the night.

Could be there be bats in those belfries?

2011-12-23T11:56:00.000-08:00

At the OddFellows, there are so many nooks and crannies through which bats could squeezethat it is not unbelievable that we have nocturnal winged visitors in the darkhours of night. Looking for long hair to tangle in.

I have a handtool for catching them when they circle overhead. It was made tobe a landing net for fish, and many havebeen the lunker and smaller species of piscatorians that I'velanded in this old net. There was one I never could catch, alreadywritten about.

(http://raccoonnews.blogspot.com/2010/02/bespangled-behemoth.html)

Catching batsin this net is easy, like swingingat a tennis ball,

although batswill zig and zag, per their nature.

A determined fish-or-bat netter will snag the creature,

whereupon the bat is taken outside and carefully released,

unharmed.

StillFickle Bat

A bat I thought was you

Fluttered around my head

Last night after the lights

were turned off

I opened the door

To let you find your way out

But you stayed

Would not go

Winging around my sought repose

Nibbling my ear lobes

The way you used to do

I went out myself

And you followed me

Joining another bat

Zig-zagging in the darkness

Both of you exchanged squeaks

And left

I lay awake a long time

Wondering if you’d be back

The only wayto keep you

Is to set you free

[DD 2007]]

Or, perhaps I just spent too much time studying the bat-like 1995 Maryland crab ornament, before retiring last night?

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

The nicest, brightest upper-apartment Christmas lights

are found nextdoor to us, at 312 South Street. There must be two identical apartments above the stores at that oneaddress. They each apparently have side-by-side bay windows, and are accessed from thestreet through a Gothic doorway (right). While I was taking thispicture a woman came out of that medieval door and entered a car parked acrossthe street. Pulling next to me she rolled down her window and said,"You like my lights?"

"Yeah, Ilove them! So very cheeerful for our street. I live next doorto you."

She said asshe drove away, "You oughta see the INSIDE!"

Unfortunatelyfor the quality of this digitally-shot exposure (I tried several) her interiorlights were also blazing. Those bright ceiling lights somewhat diminishedthe many strings of colored lights bannering her window glass. But maybeI will try again when she has the lights off.

Meantime, I'llrack this sighting up as a simple antidote to the outlying Waukesha dwelling's massive, electric meter-spinning illuminations. So bright and lustrous that people atChristmas-time take drives through these 'better' neighborhoods, to o-o-o-o anda-h-h-h-h as they slowly meander the streets and lanes. Have been there,done that.

I'd invitethem to see what this up-beat girl did with her 'lesser' windows. Take adrive down South Streetbetween Grand and Clinton.

Rejoice!

2011-12-20T08:35:00.000-08:00

From SRN to Jack Hill, this date:

Jackeroo:

I thought of you when studying this picture. It's a Xmas gift from one of Dee's home companioning clients.

The cookies are sumptuous-looking, too good to eat, but get a load of that plastic container. The form is used all over - in the supermarket deli self-help counters & etc - YET IT IS GREAT.

And to think that my old HS friend made his fortune in plastics. Yet he's still humble enough to eat with me at Jimmy's Grotto!

MERRY

CHRISTMAS

^.^

This photo was sent to the raccoon news by Rev. John Helt yesterday. The Helts removed the old inverted cone heat-losing fireplace that came with their house, and replaced it with an energy efficient state-of-the-art enclosed wood stove. It's what you see straight ahead when entering the front door. A warm welcome, instantly.

The added mantle gives a justification for the traditional rifle, the feel of a fireplace and a place for the hanging stockings.

^.^

The article from today's Freeman says that people stood outside on the sidewalk and cheered when this controversial old gas station and later fruit stand came down. The cheerers might have been from the YMCA, and/or backers of their expansion plans, who knows?

It seems downright un-Christmasy, even if the hungry clawed crane is red and the demolished roof is green.

One more casualty from my Waukesha youth, in the name of PROGRESS.

If I had a nickel for every time I walked as a kid past that charming, blending-with-the-neighborhood 'filling station' I could buy many many of cups of Steaming Cup coffee.

And the Cup, across the street from our Odd Fellows hall, used to be Morey's News Stand.

TIMES CHANGE, AND WITH THEM, THEIR DEMANDS.

^.^

Lee, now home for Christmas from Houston, enjoys a piece of Cleo Glasenapp's stained-glass candy.

When told where it came from, Lee took a piece and, breaking it, said,

"LOOK, GLASS. SNAP!"

Thank you, Jesus

2011-12-19T11:09:00.000-08:00

play BALL!

http://www.google.com/#m_1

LINK TAKES YOU TO MENU

CHOOSE TEBOW SNL SKIT

ON RIGHT SIDE

I oppose

2011-12-19T05:33:00.000-08:00

A friend sends this

as a memorial to Mona:

PLAY: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6CcxJQq1x8

Out to pasture, in style

2011-12-18T10:59:00.000-08:00

Old folks get to ride, too

On Wheeling Island in West Virginia there was a rooming house

we spotted a few years ago on a walk across the ancient suspension bridge

spanning the Ohio River.

From the looks of the house's exterior, the elderly hosteled there

were treated to cleanliness, mirth and merriment.

The residents probably got to ride plenty of

fully -connected merry go round horses in their day.

Fancy should run the full gamut in life.

It looks like Wheeling Islanders know how to put their old folks

out to pasture, in style.

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

Of interest today:

1. From RSN

ChristopherHitchens: Reason in Revolt

By Robert Scheer
Hitch is dead. Not, obviously, his brilliant body of work, or the stunningexamples of a grand and unfettered intellect that will forever survive him, aswill the indelible record of his immense wit and passion. But, sadly, a lifeforce that I had assumed as an indissoluble part of our political and literarylandscape, as well as my own close circle of friends, has ended, and with it anindispensable element of our collective moral code.
Christopher Hitchens could be wrong; we had harsh public debates about theIraq War, but I never doubted that, even then, he was coming from a good placeof humane concern. In that instance, he allowed his great compassion for theKurds and his justifiable loathing of Saddam Hussein to overwhelm a lifetime ofopposition to the arrogant assumptions of America’s neocolonialism. Despitethe vehemence of our debates, both public and personal, he and his saving graceand wife, Carol Blue, held a gathering at their home to discuss a book I wroteon the subject. This was a man unafraid of intellectual challenge and committedto pursuing the heart of the matter.
That was his driving force, a seeker of truth to the end, and a deservedlylegendary witness against the hypocrisy of the ever-sanctimoniousestablishment. What zeal this man had to eviscerate the conceits of thepowerful, whether their authority derived from wealth, the state or a claim tothe ear of the divine.
Hitch was the opposite of the opportunistic pundits who competed with himfor public space. He took immense risks, not the least in offering himself forwaterboarding before concluding it was unmistakably torture, or challenging thegreatness of God, knowing full well that he was exposing himself as an objectof wildly irrational hate.
So it ever was with the Hitch I knew for decades, going back to the youngex-Trotskyite challenging ex-Communist and fellow Brit writer Jessica (Decca)Mitford through nights of lively debate about everything, and then joining thatequally grand and kindred spirit in several drunken and rousingly heartfeltrenditions of “The Internationale.” Much like Mitford, Hitchens became worldfamous and well rewarded and, like her, Hitch was to the end singing thatworker’s anthem on behalf of the deluded and abused masses with whom, for allof his personal success, he most profoundly identified.
Advertisement

He was a great man, perfect in his intellectual courage, butI am reminded more of the writer, profoundly dedicated to his craft andcommitted, for all of his sparkle and bouts of excess, to a prodigious workadayeffort at making this a better world. In his memory I offer these lyrics from“The Internationale,” as I recall his somewhat inebriated and ever bemused, butno less heartfelt, rendering of these verses:

Arise ye workers from your slumbers
Arise ye prisoners of want
For reason in revolt now thunders
And at last ends the age of cant
Away with all your superstitions
Servile masses arise, arise
We’ll change henceforth the old tradition
And spurn the dust to win the prize.

That was him. A slayer of superstitions, thundering reason in revolt.
Lift a glass to comrade Hitch.

2. From today's NYTimes:

Panning Salon

Therecord $52.4 billion spree shoppers went on from Black Friday through CyberMonday was really just for show. Beneath the holiday spending, consumers aregrouchy. You can sense their mood just by scanning the posts at consumer-reviewsites like Trip Advisor and Yelp.

“Produce59”at Trip Advisor had this to say about a room at the Comfort Inn & Suites inFredericksburg, Va.: “The heating/AC unit was nice and quiet;however, the thermostat is on the wall, so turning the knobs directly on theunit will not get you any results.” We’ll keep that in mind. (“ExArmyRN” hadthis nit to pick: “It would have been nice if the mini-refrigerator had a smallfreezer section.”)

ViaggioRistorante and Lounge in Chicagois positively reviewed, but “Johnny T.” logged in at Yelp to say this:

“Thesalad was passable ... The orecchiette was ... a little less than a-ok.Serviceable, perhaps... I enjoyed the white beans but there was no heat to thedish ... This was bland. I added red pepper flakes to the dish in search ofsome sort of seasoning. At the end of the meal, I was left feeling confused.”

Who arethese people? I’m not sure, but they are more exacting than professionalcritics.

If you’restaying at, say, the Econo Lodge in Cave City, Ky., what doyou expect at breakfast time? “Tropicanadan” weighed in at Trip Advisor: “Thebreakfast was adequate but unremarkable.” Really? At an Econo Lodge? In Kentucky?

If theconsumer-review Web sites are any indication, the American consumer has becomea pain in the neck. Maybe we were spoiled in the blinged-out 1990s and early’00s and have yet to adjust to hard times. Take “Lisa C.,” of Millbrae, Calif.,posting as follows at Yelp after having visited a Starbucks with her boyfriend:

“thebarista ... looked at me confused when i said ‘grande hot apple chai’ as if hedidn’t know what it was ... then he said ‘apple juice infused into chai tea?’ iresponded, ‘yeah...’ my bf usually gets that ‘ice vanilla latte with restretto(sp?)’ and they stared at him too ... my drink didn’t taste that well ...something was off balance and i ended up tossing it...”

We usedto understand that convenience comes at a price. The food you get at McDonald’sor Burger King is not meant to be a major culinary event. But now the chains,perhaps in response to customers hopped up on Food Network shows, have goneupscale. McDonald’s plans a $1 billion, Starbucks-like makeover of itsrestaurants, and Burger King has Whopper Bar restaurants. With the new frillscome new expectations. After visiting a McDonald’s in San Diego, a Yelp contributor, “Caroline B.,”wrote:

“TheGelato was some of the worst I have ever had in my entire life. The‘Watermelon’ looks like pink colored wall putty and had no discernible flavorof fruit of any kind. No one in our group was able to stomach it. I actuallythrew it away.”

She wenton to say that she was no fan of the restrooms. Not because they were dirty.Because of their “faux marble and faux flowers.”

You can’thelp wondering whether a full-fledged depression might be the only real curefor what ails us.

Jim Windolf is acontributing editor at Vanity Fair.

A versionof this op-ed appeared in print on December 18, 2011, on page SR3 of the New York edition withthe headline: Panning Salon.

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

After Dec. 31, the Raccoon News will be working on its fifth year of existence. The first post was made on that date in 2007.

http://raccoonnews.blogspot.com/2007/12/zep-origin-of.html

The random blog-diary was set up for us by then UW-Madison college student son Leland who perhaps unknowingly gave us something we've loved to do.

We are nothing if not survivors so far.

And many said it would not last.

Guthrie 2011 Christmas letter

2011-12-17T11:19:00.000-08:00

This year's text as follows:

2011-12-16T09:21:00.000-08:00

ABRASS RING

I caught a brass ring

While riding the merriness of

My life

In the person of Denise Means

From Pleasant Valley, Maryland;

In the conduitous way of

life

Through natural selection

Of associations

So did many others catch “my” brass ring

In Waukeshaand elsewhere

Those folks know who they are

Some think I don't deserve Dee in

my life

And maybe just a few think

They do not deserve Dee

Who is wholesome and pure

To gracefully bear their burdens

With bibles and mops

Year after year,

With

Her life.

As to My Life and the Dixes'

Let no one imagine that

- except for frail slips -

We take our brass ring

For granted.

v.Z.

12-16-11

2011-12-16T07:05:00.000-08:00

THE LATE GREAT

Regrettably our aging typesetter mispelled the gorilla's name in the SRN.

it was supposed to be

Samson

Milw, Zoo's 'Samson' shown in his long-time glassed cage

Find below a letter to the Editor of the Milw. Journal published in 1981

setting forth our beliefs on the incarceration of animals in zoos.

This clipping is old and yellowed, yet 100% reflective

of our position today.

New Redneck Party news

2011-12-16T00:48:00.000-08:00

ANGRY AT WALKER'S INTRUSION

Redneck Party's Co-founder Jeana Brown pickets as GOP Gov Scott Walker comes South to raise money for his recall election. We might be Right to Work States in the old South but We Know Right from Wrong. Taking away Collective Bargaining Rights away from everyone across this Nation is Dead

see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7jcWDJS6TcI&feature=player_embedded

Re Job Creation

2011-12-15T15:29:00.000-08:00

Walker Recall Passes Half Million Mark

By Ruth Conniff, December 15, 2011 THE PROGRESSIVE

At noon today, Wisconsin Democratic Party chair Mike Tate announced that the recall petition drive against Governor Scott Walker has passed the half-million mark. Volunteers had collected 507,533 signatures as of December 15.

That's just 32,675 signatures shy of the total needed to trigger a recall election.

Today's date is significant because it is exactly half way through the two-month window allowed by Wisconsin law for collecting the 540,208 signatures that would trigger a recall.

But Mike Tate upped that number, asking volunteers to do better than the minimum requirement and shoot for a goal of 720,000.

"From Superior to Beloit to La Crosse to Milwaukee and all points in between, the people of Wisconsin are rising up," Tate said.

Tate pointed out a recent report from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics that shows Wisconsin leads the nation in job losses, even as the governor justifies cuts to schools and social service programs as part of a job-creating strategy. Walker is "kicking more than 65,000 families off health care coverage just in time for Christmas," he added.

"The people of Wisconsin have said enough is enough," Tate declared.

"Scott Walker continues to spend millions on misleading TV ads trying to convince voters that his drastic cuts to education and other 'reforms' are working," said Meagan Mahaffey, executive director of United Wisconsin, the group that is coordinating the recall effort. "But the people of Wisconsin are not buying his lies and are moving at record pace to stop Walker's destruction and recall him from office."

United Wisconsin endorsed the new goal of 720,277 signatures--or 33% of the 2010 general election turnout, as opposed to the 25% required by law to launch a recall.

As I noted in a blog yesterday, some grassroots activists have endorsed the idea of pushing for 1 million signatures to show the breadth and depth of the opposition to Walker, heading into a 2012 recall election.

Which counties the signatures are coming from will also play a significant role in the possible outcome of a recall election.

United Wisconsin today released data from selected counties, some of which tend to vote Republican:

Specific signature totals from selected counties include the following:

8,007 signatures or 128% of Walker’s 2010 vote total in Douglas County

22,365 signatures or 124% of Walker’s 2010 vote total in Eau Claire County

21,558 signatures or 91% of Walker’s 2010 vote total in Rock County

7,375 signatures or 84% of Walker’s 2010 vote total in Oneida County

6,972 signatures or 81% of Walker’s 2010 vote total in Grant County

Tate went long on sports metaphors in his announcement. The half-million Wisconsinites who have signed so far, he said, would fill "seven Lambeau Fields," and he added some more totals for Camp Randall and the Milwaukee Brewers' stadium.

"You have done something amazing," Tate said. "But now is not the time to get complacent. We'd like to fill Lambeau a few more times."

I wants to get an Airstream

2011-12-14T13:54:00.000-08:00

Vicki The Tall's feet sticking out of the rear Bambi Airstream window?

Vicki's son Adam's painted Christmas shirt, from the front.

He's only two, but He Knows.

Come on, Dec. 25th!

Went to the post office today.

Bought postcard stamps,

Mailed Xmas postcards;

SRN readers now ponder:

Did I acknowledge the raccoon news

often enough to warrant receipt

of such a card?

Time will tell.

I got some extra stamps.

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

I used to have a 'Pray Dieux' red velvet chair

of French Provincial style

but when my first wife and I split up

I exited without many things

for after all, I reckoned,

what were things?

I hadn't thought of that praying chair

which was made for kneeling upon

with the back providing a rail for pious arms.

Imagine my surprise then when the chair

- never really mine anyway,

maybe it went with a bedroom set

and was the property of daughter, Laurie -

popped up on grandaughter 'Graceless'

Facebook photo page. Hand clinging to the prayer rail

while she drinks. Blasphemic.

Grace, a fine photographer who is taking the craft seriously and is going to college soon to study it, evidently thought the praying chair would be a great prop for some of her many photos in Wasilla Alaska

where she lives. A senior at Colony High.

She even perched the velvet chair on the top of her boyfriend's jalopy for another Grace(less) pose. Such has been the fate of a once reverent piece of furniture.

Maybe daughter Laurie passed the chair along to her own daughter?

The strange thing for me is that these people are heavily into JESUS.

In 1997, I painted my own pray dieux chair.

With this one, one kneels on a floor cushion and

places his/her arms on the chair seat.

It accomodates the reverent very well.

I want to re-glue the carven raven on the top finial

before the kids get here for Christmas.

And before the Wasilla Kari family arrives in January for a Waukesha wedding.

I am told the two grandchildren who I haven't seen since 1994, are a bit leery of seeing their Mr. Grandpa Dix.

I can understand that.

From the Western Union

2011-12-14T06:49:00.000-08:00

I DREW ADAM'S NAME

in the Christmas gift exchange with the Maryland relatives.

Busyness prevails here at the Odd Fellows

just now;

I paint a shirt for my 2 year old nephew

to reflect the wise and simple life style

of the Justin Geiman family

into which Adam was born.
The 'Bambi' trailer

is the smallest trailer in the Airstream fleet

and the Geimans have theirs parked in the driveway

ready to go almost on a moment's notice.

It was Rev. Charlie's of Pleasant Valley St. Matthew's, once.

(I would have loved it.)
Now it's recycled for Adam

& family: Big Justin, Vicki The Tall,

Jamel, and Elena.

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

Dee calls me from our bed at 5:45 AM this morning

to show her latest one-up-man-ship of me (smiles).

She took the throw-away back designs

of the cut-up new Mary Estenik gifted Christmas cards

I've been readying for mailing on a post card dime

and fashioned little gift card notes

to go on her gifts.

It promises to be a very MERRY Christmas!

Change for a dollar?

2011-12-13T04:54:00.000-08:00

From my good hearted brother Les

In Shelby North Carolina

came the video clip

we enclose today.

Les, giver of the camera we use in the

WAUKESHA SEWER RACCOON NEWS,

generous to a fault –

sometimes paying for the less enfranchised

appearing people in his rear view mirror

at fast food drive-thrus, telling

the window worker to please take his money

for the people behind

and “Don’t tell”……

it is understandable why this

giving engineer and trombonist

would like a Change for a Dollar

U-tube squib.

CLICK ON THIS:

http://www.flickspire.com/m/Share_This/changeforadollar?lsid=b6e99ecf65420e076527f3e28ad6bf89

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

And at this season of remembering,

yesterday we mentioned

mother Ruth

the toasted cheese sandwich maker

who organized at age 13

a dance band -

a saxophonist and pianist

from Sun Prairie WI.......................

we mention honorably

our father,

Les's and mine,

who, like Mom, is now

at rest.

Merry Christmas to all.

LVD I's cortege in 1998 enters Arlington National Cemetery,

his Valhalla.

Delivering the Goods

2011-12-12T09:43:00.000-08:00

In 2001

Mom had accidentally

Burned out her condo stove

And was not to be trusted

With a 'Michael'-wave

Yet she loved toasted cheese sandwiches

So for Christmas that year

We gave her a brand new toaster

Because she had gummed up her old toaster

in her indomitable charging ahead

By munging up the guts with melted Velveeta;

She had figured out to turn the toaster on

Its side while heating the sandwich

And that sort of worked

But the time was approaching

(Was it past?)

When she was unable to

Charge ahead.

Yet at that Christmas we smiled

And had some good Asti, sparkling.

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

A 2011 CHRISTMAS MESSAGE

from John Helt at St Paul's UCC

splits the arrow again, in the bulls-eye:

35 years ago I had the experience recounted in what follows, an illustration I used on the Third Sunday of Advent to end a sermon. John Rutter’s Carol of the Magi unlocked this memory for me…

I have been thinking lately about the vulnerable, innocent children who have been victimized by the bad apple coach, priest or youth worker. This is such a tragedy, and as we approach Christmas, I can’t help but link this with the slaughter of the innocents that Matthew says a threatened King Herod ordered when the Magi tipped him off that Messiah had been born right under his nose. I can’t help but think about how Jesus, as child and as adult, took on our sin and became one of us in order to deliver us.

When we admire the little child, we see in him or her purity, innocence, enormous and yet unrealized potential. Will this child become prince or pauper, head of state or homeless, victor or victim, Christ or criminal?

The Carol of the Magi by John Rutter puts these words in the mouth of the wisemen who came to worship the Christchild: As you hear these words, think about today’s victimized children and youth in whose faces we might see Jesus, and think about how in Jesus, we see the faces of such children, even today:

We rode all night through fields of darkness,

Our guiding light the Eastern star;

We came to Bethlehem, we all were weary:

We'd travelled far that night, we'd travelled far.

We heard that here we'd find Messiah,

Foretold by seers from days of old;

We looked for palaces: and found a stable.

Could it be here, so bare and cold...?

We entered in and there we saw him;

It seemed we'd known him from long before

A child like any child, yet somehow different.

The face of every child in him we saw...

We'd brought him gifts, and now we offfered them;

We knelt down low in silent prayer.

With eyes that seemed to know both joy and sadness

The child looked down as we knelt there...

So long ago, yet I remember

That child who lay at Mary's knee;

How strange that every child seems so much like him.

His is the face I seem to see.

I recall taking a food pantry delivery to a home one Christmas Eve morning. The living room of the small apartment was full of family. I felt awkward and wanted to just hand over the grocery bags and leave. But a grandmother or great aunt stopped me and said that I must see something first before I go. The small crowd of people parted like the Red Sea and up from the sofa came a young mother, perhaps too young to be a mother, I thought. And in her arms was a tiny bundle, just a few days old, a firstborn child, I was told. Now I don’t remember if it was a boy or girl, but I do recall how someone took the bags of groceries from my arms and replaced them with that infant. A poor child, born into a family of very limited means, a child whose paternity may well have been questionable, and I looked into that little face and saw Jesus. “A child like any child but somehow different.”

“How strange that every child seems so much like him. His is the face I seem to see.”

I held that baby and began to weep. I passed the infant back to the mother and blubbered, “Thank you. Merry Christmas.” Then I hurried out the door. Pathetic words. Abrupt exit. What do you say when you have held Messiah in your arms? I came bearing the small gift of some canned goods and came away touched by an angel, blessed beyond imagining, jolted by a small black face that seemed more like Jesus than any I had seen before or have seen since. “So long ago, yet I remember.” The greatest of gifts.

I did not go to that poor home that day with any inkling at all about what I would find. I was just the delivery boy for our church, being a good scout. But I came away reminded of that greatest of gifts from God to the world, and the holy mystery of which came first, the innocence of the newborn child into which God poured incarnation or the incarnation which forever redeemed newborn life?

It doesn’t matter which came first. They are now and forever intertwined. That’s the heart of the Christmas message.

God bless the children, the innocents and the victimized in whom we see Jesus’ face. May we see and remember them in the face of Jesus, at this birth and always.

So long ago, yet I remember

That child who lay at Mary's knee;

How strange that every child seems so much like him.

His is the face I seem to see.

CHRISTMAS trees around the world, etc.

2011-12-11T04:20:00.000-08:00

FESTOON FOX

THE CONSTELLATION

HOLDS FORTH (smVb)

ON THE LOFT LEDGE

OVERLOOKING THE FIVE POINTS

We like thinking that the people on the street below us look up and see a queer formation on the third (top) floor of the old Odd Fellows Hall building.

"It sort of looks like......like.......A FOX!"

they may mutter as they clamber about, eating at Dave's, or volunteering at the Recall Walker office, or buying beads at the bead shop. Some may just be in from shopping on the periphery of Waukesha as I will just briefly do today.

I have to get a size 2T sweat shirt to paint for my nephew, 2 year old ADAM in Maryland. Dee has tried everywhere to find one with negative results, so I have to go to (gulp; gag) Walmart to find one. So devoted to the family gift exchange name-drawing am I that I will condescend to brave the madcap throngs of that offal place to satisfy such a requirement.

Then, after meeting with the boys at Caribou I will return to the unobtrusivity here to study the Sunday New York Times, in peace.

Yesterday I thumb-tacked our camel tapestry to the wall next to my desk. It was given to me in the early 80s by a woman I knew in Milwaukee's inner city. I regard it, an imitation velvet 'rug' or the genre of the warm ones sold on street corners in the likenesses of JFK, or Pope Somebody, etc. as very much good enough for me. And seasonal.

This lady who gave me the tapestry made another significant contribution to the Dix household when she used a term that has stuck: she called her kitchen appliance a MICHAEL WAVE. A much better word than Micro.

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

We will soon set up our Christmas tree.

An artificial we bought for $6.99 at Goodwill last year, now that we live in a place where natural trees are not allowed. http://raccoonnews.blogspot.com/2009/12/gramaws-oranges.html

AND, today received: http://binagupta.sulekha.com/blog/post/2008/12/christmas-trees-round-the-world-wonderful-email.htm That's CHRISTMAS tree!

The corn abounds in Ioway

2011-12-11T03:34:00.000-08:00

The Republican Clown Car Needs to Drive Out of Iowa. Now.

By Charles P. Pierce, Esquire

10 December 11

he Republican party is legendary for not taking my advice. (Okay, so self-immolation has some ethical and logistical difficulties, especially on the floor of the House, but, hey, this is America - we can overcome anything.) But I still believe in a place called hope, so here's my latest recommendation for the Party of Lincoln Who Is Presently Vomiting in the Beyond.

Get the hell out of Iowa.

Just pack up and leave. Tell it to the snake-handling hayshakers who make up your party's base in that otherwise lovely state: So long, and thanks for all the corn dogs. Sneak out in the dead of night. Sneak out in the dead of noon, with brass bands playing and fireworks bursting overhead. Just get yourselves out of Dodge. And Waterloo. And Keokuk. And Ames. If Michele Bachmann or Rick Santorum want to stay out there and chase Jesus through the dairy barns, let them. Get your party out of there before it loses what's left of its mind.

Just this morning, my man Chuck Todd had a panel on to discuss the state of play out there. He made the point that the "evangelicals" who make up a substantial portion of the people who will be voting in the "crucial" Iowa caucuses have their own networks within which they will make their decisions in three weeks, and that they are untouched even by the blandishments "of Fox News." In other words, the first serious event in the winnowing out of the Republican party's presidential field will be largely in the hands of people who consider Sean Hannity either too godless, or too intellectually challenging, or insufficiently conservative. The panel went on to discuss this judiciously, as a matter of political reality. But, really, that in itself is an indication of something, and it's not a healthy situation to find yourself in.

Look at the available evidence just this week. Having to appeal to this electorate first sent Jon Huntsman into a fan-dance over climate science. It resulted in Rick Perry's releasing a singularly idiotic television ad on the basic theme of "My God's Dong Is Bigger Than Your God's Dong."

(Really, Goodhair, if you've got that much money left, just send every registered Republican in Iowa 25 large. Sure, it's illegal, but it's whole lot less embarrassing.)

And it prompted Willard Romney to "come out swinging" - oh, Willard, you're so...rugged! - at Newt Gingrich, whom Iowa seems poised to make the frontrunner for the nomination. (And, dammit, isn't that fact alone enough for you to beat feet for the Illinois border?) Unfortunately, Willard chose to make the basis for his counterstrike the notion that Newt is not conservative enough, and that Newt's primary heresy is his insufficient devotion to the economic philosophy of the bold boy-genius Paul Ryan, particularly Gingrich's at one point calling Ryan's put-granny-on-the-ice-floe changes in Medicare "right-wing social engineering." So, if you're keeping score at home, Mitt Romney has managed to become simultaneously Dr. Mandrake Q. Mandate From The People's Republic Of Taxachusetts and the newest champion of a completely voucherized health-care plan that will explode the deficit, inflate prices, leave millions of people uninsured, and which has proven to poll approximately as well as the mange. Well-played, Willard!

But, seriously, what choice did he have? At the beginning, Willard seemed to have tumbled to the fact that a Republican caucus in Iowa has been the Island of Misfit Politics beginning when Pat Robertson finished second there in 1988 and continuing all the way through 2008, when Romney got stomped there by Mike Huckabee, who spent about 11 cents but whose commitment to Jesus Is My Precinct Captain was enough the beat Willard's expensive effort like a tin drum. So, it looked like Willard was going to put up a token effort this time, win New Hampshire from here to there, and then run out the clock while everybody else ran out of money and time.

Then, it became plain that a lot of Republicans all over the country were willing to vote for practically anyone except him, including the gay-crazy Michele Bachmann, the sub-verbal Goodhair, and, of course, Herman Cain, Sex Machine. As these fell away, all of that healthy Willard-loathing had to coalesce behind somebody, and there was Gingrich, sole ruler of his own intellectual universe and the Nolan Ryan of Republican poo-flinging. Suddenly, Iowa became important again. So everybody - especially Willard - went to their closets, found their propeller beanies and their really big shoes and their red rubber noses again, and climbed into the clown car to drive to the show.

Iowa does nothing for your party, folks, except make it look like the Mole People have taken over the process. The caucuses are cute. They are great TV. But Iowa is the place where the political dementia afflicting the Republican party most clearly has taken hold, and to give it a determinative role in producing your nominee is to surrender the process to isolated wingnuttery and religious know-nothingism. It makes your allegedly serious candidates look like jackasses and it makes your unserious candidates look even further off the trolley. Everybody moves less to "the Right" than they do towards the edge of the freaking planet. (Have you been paying attention to what Rick Santorum has been saying out there? For such a profound anti-Islamist, he appears to be running for Mullah.) They are forced to spend the crucial final days before the New Hampshire primary trying to walk back all the nonsense they had to peddle in Iowa. That does nothing but poison the process there.

Some day, maybe, the Iowa Republican party will pry itself free of the people who control so much of it now. It is a state where candidates should be forced to confront issues - food production, foreclosure, land use, etc. - that are quite relevant to the rest of the country. Instead, on the Republican side, we've had gay marriage, and "equal sex," and Who Can Kiss Paul Ryan's Ass the Loudest? This really isn't the way to elect a president.